Garden of Thought

Managed to make myself sit down and work on watercolor for a bit, and while I was there I remembered I hadn't prepared any kind of "welcome back" treat for the preschool teachers this year so I made them some quick mini-pictures.  They're not super duper and some came out better than others but I was kind of pleased that I Did The Thing instead of just buying a pack of cards at the shop.  If I can get the ball rolling, maybe I can save a little money on greeting cards at the very least. 

Just finished another round of our annual preschool fundraising dinner and basket raffle - as we were setting up the tables one of the grade school girls, the sort who has several small siblings and as a result speaks more like a wise mom than a kid, made the observation that "Oh yes, now all the little girls will come in and get their heart set on something in baskets, and then when they don't win they'll cry and cry." 

Watched as families mobbed the hallways, enthusiastically dropping tickets into the little buckets.  Plenty of little girls (and boys) who obviously had already decided whatever was in their chosen basket was theirs - especially the three beta fish artistically floating along among themed items in three different places.  Winning tickets were drawn and the halls filled with the sound of wailing as small children were given the "Sometimes these things happen, that's just the way it works" lesson.  One girl whom I would have thought old enough to already know that stood and just sobbed - she'd apparently fastened onto one of the betas and even given him a name.  In her heart, he was already in a fishbowl in her room and now a stranger was taking 'her' pet away from her.  So many small childhood hopes dashed amid the celebration.

I divvied up the decorative balloons and handed them to the kids who seemed to need to have something that they'd 'won' in their hands the most.

A notice came up for me to renew my DWth and I kind of went "Oh wow, I haven't posted since April!" and thought it seemed worth doing a little updating, if only for me to look back at later on.  Been quite a year.

First off, the disabled lady I help take care of FINALLY got her disability approved and I've had a lot of extra time dealing with the paperwork, banking and various updates she needed now that we can finally buy stuff to replace/update her life.  It's been good to finally go forward on that, though it does mean time invested of course.

Then my beautiful, wonderful Starflower graduated from high school this past June, but not before she was the lead in their school play which meant a lot of fun time spent there, as I did the costuming and helped paint the set.  Scads of hours over there, but good times all around and we survived graduation and everything that goes with it, hoorah!

THEN in late May I was diagnosed with breast cancer - small and early, thank God - so after graduation was over I had lumpectomy surgery, did recovery from that and then found I was right on the statistical line for whether I would need chemo or not. I was given the choice and decided if it was that close to the line better safe than sorry.  SO at this point I have three more chemo treatments to go through the end of October and my hair is falling out like autumn leaves on a windy day.   I went shopping for colorful hats on Etsy and am trying to make the best of it, thankfully I haven't been too sick at this point.  The unknown is always more fearsome than the reality. 

LIfe is kind of crazy, I keep up with two households, my own and my friend's, and two churches as well... I assume all of you out there are likewise not letting much moss grow on your proverbial rocks - I'll have to spend some time reading now to see what's been happening.  *hugs*

Started thinking of what we could do for small summer trip in celebration of my daughter's upcoming high school graduation and ended up picking the Oregon Shakespearian Festival (which is quite good, but expensive and far away from me so I haven't been since high school m'self) - wow, I'm thinking as I preen myself,  I'm ahead of the game! I'm gonna get us something nice this summer because I was clever enough to think ahead! 

*goes online*....*discovers LOTS of people are waay more ahead of the game than I ever will be and everything suitable is booked up and/or sold out* 0_0

BUT - I was not foiled! At least not entirely.  After much virtual hunting and gathering yesterday, voila - we have a nice setup with four great plays and a cottage coming up, I just had to shove it all the way past summer into September to do it.  What a novelty, we get to go somewhere in September, as for the first time in 20 years we won't have anyone needing to be in school - what a grand (and alien) feeling!

Only a little over 2 months until my son graduates from high school. Maybe. I can't even express how frustrating and stressful it has been having to drag him inch by inch towards the finish line over the past years, and I still don't know for sure he'll make it in time.

Left him to work on a big paper on the Cold War he has that is now overdue and when I return he's on facebook. I get him off the computer so I can do my own work and he gravitates to his video games. If computer or video game is unavailable, then he takes naps and hangs around reading Tom Clancy novels. I want to pull out my hair, and then his hair but at this point I have to take an observational backseat (and grumble here, apparently, lol...) lest I not let him fall on his face if it is really what he needs to do to wake up.

We had to make a deal with him that we weren't going to do any more behavioral modification (i.e. punishments, rewards, hollering, guilting, etc.) as he is of age and it's his life (and it was making a very unhappy household) but it's so hard to watch him scraping along knowing he will seriously regret it later if he flubs this.

So close. Maybe so far away. Maybe snatching the golden ring. Maybe missing the last banana. Maybe a moment of relief. Maybe we just wasted money on senior pictures.

&*%#@! I hate parenting sometimes.

I'm gradually working my way through a stack of history textbooks for my daughter's high school, trying to help them eke out another year or two of use and abuse by students before they fall apart, they're so expensive to replace and it's a private school so every penny counts.  Nice to have my somewhat obscure super-power of repairing books come in handy from time to time, though I can't do fancy stuff like complete rebinding or restitching, sadly - wish I had the tools for that, this is more like Book Glue, Tape and Contact Paper 101 with occasional bouts of scissor work and forcing books into rube goldberg contraptions I've positioned with fat rubber bands and bricks to keep them in their girdle until the glue dries their girlish figure back where it belongs.

*snip, tape, fold*

Nice thing is this counts toward my volunteer hours for this year.  What do you do for volunteer work?  Do you have schools or organizations that require some of you?

Starflower got a long list of potential famous people from various points in history that she could write her main English paper for this year and on it was James Stewart.  She had no problem choosing!  Now we get to enjoy going through the various research (war hero! yay!) and revisiting some of the many works of that incomparable gentleman bean-pole, Jimmy.  
This bodes well.

We are blanketed in thick fog here (not unusual for winter) but driving up and over the mountain to take my son to school we abruptly lifted up and out into a world of sunshine, an 'island' of bright trees and meadows all hemmed 'round with an impenetrable white lake of cloud tinged in the pastels of morning.  All we needed was an air-boat to set sail upon it, lovely.

Happy Father's Day to any dads out there!

As for me, I'm tackling the job of cleaning out some of the old stuff we still have stored in our church building, mostly leftovers from our grade school and am sitting here shaking my head over literally hundreds of uniform pieces. What the heck does a person DO with *piles* of khaki pants, white button-down shirts, sweatshirts, etc.... I mean, really? I haven't been able to find another school that uses the same colors and I hate the waste. Wish I could somehow turn them into at least a little money, we could really use it.

Also heaps of VHS movies and audio cassettes - no one uses them anymore, sigh... makes me feel old. I suppose they'll all just go into a rummage sale, unless we make rag rugs out of them. The clothes that is, not the vhs tapes, lol...

There are times I am grateful for an abundance of material goods, but this isn't really one of them.

Finally got my beautiful, wonderful daughter off to college - she's officially settled into her apartment and well content with her two roomies... nice little place, backs to a park while right there in the city. Watched lots of parents and a few students in varying states of separation anxiety on move-in day. My goal has always been to NOT be a "helicopter parent" that hovers over the offspring, I can only hope my attempts to launch her in a healthy way worked - caught me a bit off-guard how *hard* it was just to walk away from her that afternoon, like some huge alien magnet was taking over my feet and trying to drag me back.

Missing her like mad! Popped very briefly yesterday to drop off a needed bookcase and said I missed her...she said "But it's only been three days!" in disbelief... oh how different it is from this end! But I remember, yes I do. I barely looked back at my parents when I finally moved to college, I was so ready to fly on my own. I was so glad to have 'my own space'. I remember, and I understand, and we'll be fine - all of us.

Still. I miss her, her smile, her voice, her music - though I am so very glad and grateful for what she has going and for the years we got to have her in our home. One more new season to adjust to in life, we'll be better once the school routine starts up again and all of us are as busy as she is. Life goes on!

Dang. Really struggling here with Greek.

My kids new school is a marvelous thing, and we have really enjoyed doing this half-home-school routine, but the one thorn in the proverbial side is they have to have Greek. I understand the idea, that the kids would eventually be able to read the New Testament in the language in which it was originally written, a very noble cause - but shoot, it's in another *alphabet* for pity's sake... My kids now have Greek homework and I am completely helpless, I can't even understand what I am looking at much less what to do with it if they need aid. They are having a really difficult time with it too, the only point of real stress we've had raise its ugly head.

Grrr.

I miss Latin! At least it used the same alphabet and I could puzzle things out and help them.

Sigh...just venting.... mutter.