Category Archives: Scouting

Paint and Storms

paintsignIt’s Tuesday morning and I have paint all over my hands. It’s white latex paint and I have speckles and splashes all over my fingers, fingernails, and ingrained in the lines of the heel of my right hand. I scrubbed in the sink and again, in the shower before falling asleep last night. No worries, I’ll have more paint on my hands this afternoon and maybe even tomorrow.

I’ve been painting the music room at W and O’s elementary school. We spent ten years in elementary school as a family. Our time at Wiesbrook School began in 2003 when W started kindergarten and ended in 2014 when O moved up to middle school in’14. My how time flies.

September 2004 - first a Tiger, then a Wolf, then Bear, and on to Webelo as a Cub Scout
September 2004 – first a Tiger, then a Wolf, then Bear, and on to Webelo as a Cub Scout

Actually, it’s we, not me, that’s doing the painting in the music room.

We’re back to paint the music room for W’s Eagle Scout Project. I remember the first Cub Scout meeting at the school when W joined as a first grader. He was so excited being a Cub Scout. My how he’s grown.

last Thursday at the doctor's office for his annual school physical - I saw this book and laughed!
last Thursday at the doctor’s office for his annual school physical – I saw this book and laughed!

Continue reading Paint and Storms

License plates and sunshine

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our route – I think I could do it with my eyes closed….

We are all back up north – B, W, O, Ivy, and me. If I could, I’d stay up here forever, but there is something called money, and a job, that keeps me from doing just that. And, perhaps being up north might lose it’s luster if it weren’t an occasional treat like ice cream or chocolate. This is the place that grandpa built – it’s the place for family and more memories than I can write about for now. B’s sister will be joining us later this evening for a short visit and grandma will be coming up next week. It’ll be a good time.

We came up Sunday afternoon. We had planned to come up Sunday morning, but we just needed to take our time. I’d been at Beauty and Charm all week and W came home from football Saturday afternoon and wouldn’t move – he was so tired. He needed to pack for his scouting trip next week to the boundary waters trip in northern Minnesota, but he just lied there on his bed, so we let him sleep. He slept from 6PM until 8AM Sunday morning, he must’ve been tired, because when we got here Sunday night, he slept another ten hours into Monday morning. We drove both of the cars because W has to go back Friday for his trip and one of us has to drive him.

O, Ivy, and I left first in my car and B and W followed hers with W driving. Driving 359 miles can be a drain. O was watching a movie on the iPad beside me and I was driving, paying attention to traffic, and listening to a Market Place podcast when I had a brilliant idea, why not count the number of different state license plates we saw along our way? I nudged O and explained my idea. I asked her how many she thought we might see and she replied 24. She was in. We had rules for our game – only cars and pickup trucks, no buses, and commercial vehicles like tractor-trailer rigs or delivery trucks. And, only US states, no Canada plates. She quickly called out our first license plate – Illinois. We quickly had ten or so – Illinois, Michigan, Indiana, Iowa, and Minnesota and we had fourteen when B called to check in and I told her about our game. She took it as a challenge and it was game on. Driving along the interstates made it easier: I-80, I-90, I-94, and I-196 are heavily trafficked but once we were north of Grand Rapids, we didn’t see another new license plate.

We finished with 24 and B and W beat us Continue reading License plates and sunshine

A New Morning

I didn’t sleep well last night. I woke at 3 and went back to sleep. A couple of hours later, Ivy was up and wanted to go outside and I stumbled to the door, clipped her tether, and opened the door. The full moon shone brightly over the lake and I could see ducks on the water in front of the cottage. I am sure it was more than the ducks that woke her but she silently inspected the yard and was at the door, wanting to come in, moments later. I went back to bed, but couldn’t get back to sleep. I grudgingly got up and took a few photos of the moon hanging over the lake. I took the photos below with my iPhone, couldn’t get the camera to take a snap, too little light. But the iPhone didn’t care.

I’ve been up ever since. Continue reading A New Morning

Day 15: two weeks in, nine more to go

day15School let out two weeks ago and I have never been tireder. Is that even a word? Actually, it is not – I checked. The correct word, or words, should be more tired. It is the comparative form of the adjective, tired. In case you are wondering the superlative form is most tired and not tiredest like you’d think. Its comparative and superlative forms are irregular so the normal rules do not apply: example small – smaller – smallest and big – bigger – biggest. I would have thought tired – tireder – tiredest, but that does not work. Oh well, I have never been MORE TIRED, seriously.

The basement isn’t going as smoothly as I thought it would. The paneling is glued to the studs with super adhesive stuff and some of the paneling has come off easily, and others have not. The job is taking much longer than I anticipated. I did find a couple of the cracks in the foundation, they were the cracks we discovered in April and they were hidden behind the paneling near the window wells. Fortunately they are small cracks and easily sealable or seemingly so. I still have a lot of work to do. Continue reading Day 15: two weeks in, nine more to go

Oh, how did I get here?

daynineIt is Friday morning, almost a free day, and no camps, only quiet until everyone wakes. Sleeping in is a summer tradition, after all. Even Ivy joined in. Me, I slept until 6.30, then got up, made coffee, read the paper, and then got started on the computer. That was forty minutes ago.

I started ripping the paneling off the basement walls yesterday. It felt good, really good. We have cracks in the foundation, small ones, but small ones leak when it rains especially when it rains a lot. We learned that in April. We knew about one leaky crack, but we discovered others hidden behind the wall that soggy Thursday morning. I have a lot of work ahead, three and a half walls to go and then there is the re-build.

Between Tuesday and this morning, we’ve endured powerful storms Continue reading Oh, how did I get here?

Day 6: Chicken’s Roost

chickensroost

It is the sixth day of summer and it is off to a great start. I just have to keep it moving. I have 15 hours and 10 minutes of daylight today, but it’s light for a bit more. The past few days have been busy with stuff I said I would do when school was over. Now, the chickens have come home to roost.

Summer has its own schedule and as the kids have gotten older the more structured it has gotten. W is off scuba diving with the Boy Scouts at Sea Base in the Keys. I know he is having a good time, how could he not? O started basketball camp at the high school – eight days of basketball drills and instruction with the girls’ varsity team and the head coach. Next week there’s softball camp for four days and interspersed there are softball games – Wednesday, Thursday, and next Monday. Tonight I have a Boy Scout meeting and Word Press training. I’m not going to camp this year with the scouts. I will miss it. It’s a lot of fun Continue reading Day 6: Chicken’s Roost

A walk in the park

gratitude with my 'Superhero' pen
gratitude with my ‘Superhero’ pen

It rained Thursday morning, at least part of the day, when the rain ended, it left a beautiful afternoon. W and I made it to school and got all of my teacher stuff moved to my new rooms. It took only a couple of hours, having W move the boxes made it easier for me to work on the pitch, the pitch where I looked through stuff and tossed into the recycle bin. It felt good, but there is more to toss, but that will have to wait for another day.

Friday was beautiful, the kind of early summer morning when it is not quite summer and yet, still not quite spring, either – cool crisp air, bright sun, a sky so blue that it makes the green deeper and brighter. A perfect day for a walk in the park. Continue reading A walk in the park

Old toys

takeanumberI had been looking forward to last weekend for almost a month because I knew it would be a good opportunity to visit one of my favorite shopping haunts – a hobby shop. Unfortunately, circumstances foiled my scheme.

We have a railroad layout in the basement, not twenty feet from where I sit, dream, plan, write, grade, fume, and for the most part, avoid real work. I suppose I could be over at the table avoiding work instead of sitting here, but the layout has been gathering dust for the at least the past year, perhaps two, who knows, I’ve lost count. I have been lured away from my railroad by other activities – family, sports, scouts, school, and you can just about name it, whatever it was it had a higher number than railroading. Continue reading Old toys

Fall is here

a picture of me – on an iPhone5 screen!

Fall is here, like it or not. I’ve known it was coming. I could tell, every morning the light seemed to come later and later, and last Wednesday I returned to O’s softball practice in a panic that she was waiting for me because practice had been called for darkness. They were still practicing, but I can no longer rely on time of day as a way gauge light or dark. Today is the Autumnal Equinox when we’ll get an equal amount of daylight and darkness and then it will go downhill from there. Continue reading Fall is here

Friday

four-fifths of the Troop 35’s mile swimmers – 6/29/12

I have been up for almost two and a half hours and I have yet to start writing. Yikes, where did the time go? I spent some of it reading a couple of blog posts, some of it wandering the yard and watering the plants, and I just finished working to resolve an technical issue I have (and have had) with the teacher association website I run. I have ignored the issue for a while, telling myself, I will get to it in the summer. Well, it’s summer and I am on to it. It’s probably some setting or something simple, but I haven’t been able to figure it out; I e-mailed tech support and I replied this morning. Maybe, hopefully, it’ll be resolved and then I can move on to other things I have been ignoring for a while. Continue reading Friday