We are on the downside of summer break. We’re past the busy part of summer. We’ve been focused on the world up close and when I reflect on what we’ve done
I’ve finished two professional development classes. CHECK
O’s softball season is complete. CHECK
W is finished with summer football. CHECK
O is home from church camp. CHECK
W’s Eagle project is completed. CHECK
W is off to Philmont and hiking in the Sange de Christo Mountains of northeastern New Mexico. CHECK
The busy part of summer ended Wednesday afternoon when the train pulled out of the station; actually it ended when I finished loading the cars and pointed the car east, then north early Thursday afternoon. I could feel the muscles in my neck loosen and relax with each mile away from home.
Sure, we have work to do, there is always something to keep us busy, to keep us on our toes – we have two kids, a house, and a dog and that’s more than plenty.
B has plenty of gardening work and I have to begin thinking of the coming school year. Up close, the work is easy, it’s when I look at what I have to do from afar that it seems monumental and overwhelming. One step at a time. Continue reading Close Up→
I started blogging five years ago, it had been an awful school year and I had been out of my comfort zone the entire year. The previous summer I had lost my dad, in fact today is the sixth anniversary of his passing. That summer, the summer of ’10, lay ahead as an open wound with questions about my past, present, and future. Towards the end of the school year, I had experienced a few successes and school ended on a high point for me as an educator and human being.
That school year ended on a Friday – May 28, 2010 – and I came home from school to an empty house. B and the kids had left for the weekend to visit her mom and dad in Ohio. I had stayed home because I had a cough and we didn’t want to get my in-laws sick. I had a lot of time on my hands and thoughts running through my head. The combination is never good and the blog happened somewhere between Friday afternoon and Saturday morning. I bought the url – MakingtheDaysCount.com, and dot org, dot net, and dot info. I had wanted MaketheDaysCount.com, but it was taken, already in use. I bought a hosting package and jumped in the blogging water.
There is another half of summer yet come, waiting. Or, summer is more than half-complete, finished; depending on your perspective. According to my summer calendar, 29 days remain. For O she has 31 days, W has 22, and B has 31 days left of summer. It’s cruel how fast summer moves.
the team gathers for the final time this summer, as a storm clouds gather on the horizon
The past several days our weather has been interesting. Monday it was warm and muggy. Tuesday the weather changed and it was cool enough to open windows and rely on nature to cool the house, and Wednesday evening was cool and getting out of the pool after my swim was a chilly experience. Thursday was overcast and rainy, and then Friday arrived. Friday arrived with excessive heat warnings and afternoon thunderstorms. O and I tried to make it to the pool, but the lightning and thunder closed the pool. Instead, we watched nature’s light show and decided to try again Saturday. Continue reading Half and half→
It’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
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!
I had seen a car crashes and crushed cars, but I had never seen a car tossed to the side of the road and left behind destroyed after hitting a camel. I will always remember the drive from Dhahran to Riyadh across the Saudi Arabian desert in the middle of a hot July night with my dad, my new stepmother, and Warren and David, my two brothers. I was thirteen and it was 1975. It was the summer between my seventh and eighth grade. It was my summer vacation, it was our summer vacation, and we were driving across the desert to spend the summer with my dad in Riyadh. When my parents divorced, the divorce agreement gave him forty-five days of summer visitation and monthly visits, which were impossible because we lived in Sugar Land and he lived eight thousand miles away in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. When I first learned, I was going to spend the summer in Riyadh with my two brothers, a summer in Saudi Arabia sounded exotic and exciting, but soon the feeling of leaving and leaving my friends, my home, and fun things in our neighborhood made me resent my dad and the trip.
my passport – issued in 1973
Our summer vacation had begun normally. School let out and we were able to see our friends and have fun in the neighborhood. However, I knew, really and the three of us knew we would be leaving for at least a month to see my dad in Saudi Arabia. To get ready for our trip we had to get new passports and have our immunizations updated. We had our pictures taken and went to the health department in downtown Houston to have our cholera shot. The shot didn’t hurt, though the hustle and bustle of getting ready made getting ready for a trip I didn’t want to go on even more difficult. We also had to pack and make sure we had the things we needed especially, the medicines I needed and the shots for my asthma and allergies that my mom gave each week. It is hard to remember everything you need, until you need it. Finally, my dad came over to pick us up and fly with us. As glad as I was to see my dad, I knew his arrival meant we were really going and that made me sad. Continue reading 40 years ago, today – part 2: Camels in the Night→
“Every now and then one paints a picture that seems to have opened a door and serves as a stepping stone to other things.” ― Pablo Picasso
Our cottage has two doors, one in front and the other along the side. A key unlocks the side door there is no key for the front door. The front door faces the lake and I’ve spent many a morning sipping coffee talking to grandma, B’s mom, or sipped coffee alone and thought of the times we shared our morning coffee. Lately, it’s been only Ivy and me. Ivy curls up on the footstool leaving barely enough room for my feet and gazes out over the front yard as I enjoy my morning coffee. She keeps an eye open for ducks in summer and deer in winter.
the front door and the view over the lake
In the afternoon, the doors open to yard and the sounds of play, wind, and the lake.
I’ve seen every season through that door and it’s held back every season, too. It’s kept the cold and snow out and allowed the sunshine in to bring us light. I’ve watched the sunset in the evening and the sun creep across the yard from behind the house each morning.
W on the Fourth of July in 2001 – my he’s grown and the doors have remained the same….
Yet, not all doors are physical. Sometimes doors are barriers keeping us from exercising our free will and then, there are those that declare our freedom to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Continue reading Door→
“If you don’t like the weather wait a day and it will change” anonymous
I’ve heard that said about the weather almost everywhere I’ve lived and visited. I heard it in Houston, Chicago, San Francisco and when I visited – London, Paris, and northern Michigan. And, yes, it is true to a certain extent. Weather does change and it should because that is what weather is – change.
The weather yesterday and day before was cloudy, blustery, and downright chilly, especially when you consider it was the last day of June and the first day of July. This morning, it’s chilly but clear and looks to be a million and six times better than yesterday.
yesterday morning
this morning
I taught geography for fourteen years and most of my 7th graders always mixed up the two terms – weather and climate. Weather is the day to day change in the atmospheric conditions in an area and the climate is the long term pattern of weather in an area or region. I wanted my students to understand that climate influenced where people settled, where cities grew and civilization developed.
Weather changes, climate should not, but it appears that our climate has been changing since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution and is the change is accelerating
Two weeks ago, Pope Francis issued his encyclical on Climate Change and it was the hubbub of the news for a few days, and then it disappeared. The subject will reappear after the next large weather event and folks will be concerned for a moment and then all will be forgotten. It’s an awful cycle – for a moment, a fleeting moment, we are concerned, then we return to the behavior that got us here.
It was 48F here when I began writing and 83F in Paris yesterday it was 103F. Yikes, that’s hot. It’s too cool here and far too warm there. Not normal.
It is morning Up North. O, Ivy, and I loaded the car and left home yesterday and after a couple of stops, we were on the open road headed east, then north. We pulled into the cottage driveway a little after sunset, but the lake was bathed in blue with a crisp orange and red northwestern shoreline. Venus and Saturn provided bright white punctuation marks in the evening sky. B and W followed in another car a few hours later.
the first sunset of summer – at least for us at the cottage
It’s sleepy and peaceful this morning Ivy sleeps on the footstool in the front room while O watches a video on the iPad on the couch. B and W are still sleeping and I am here struggling with the right words to match the photos. Continue reading muse→
My brain hurts AND that is a good thing; it’s a very good thing.
School has been out for sixteen days and today is the Day 17. When I first started blogging in 2010, I numbered all of the posts – Day 1, Day 2 and so on. In 2010, Day 17 was in France and the first full day of my trip to Paris and take my dad back home. Looking back to 2010, Day 17 was June 14th and this year it falls on June 26th – the days do not line up because every summer is different. Some summers begin early and others start late, some summers are influenced by the weather and others are not. This summer is no different, we had bitter cold this winter and it cost us three days; it really cost five days when the last day of school was moved from a Thursday to Tuesday and enveloped a weekend –swallowing two additional days of summer break. Sometimes it happens, sometimes it’s too cold to go to school, too snowy, or too wet, or even too hot – we’ve had bad weather days almost every year I’ve been a teacher. It happens. This summer is no different, we’ve been on the rainy end of a wet and stormy weather pattern for almost two weeks and the area has had over 6 inches of rain in June – well over the average of 4.5 inches for the month.
The Pope issued an encyclical on climate change last week, it got a lot of coverage in the press, and then it disappeared off the radar. But, is shouldn’t have, the issue of climate and climate change should be on all of our radars. That’s one reason my brain hurts, I am thinking and wondering, but there are other reasons.
I was in class last week – material science class. It was amazing and I walked away with many ideas of how to incorporate what I learned in science class this coming year. I melted metals, bent glass, made pottery, played with polymers, and all sorts of materials. My brain hurt all week trying to soak up new ideas and meld them with old ideas to form a composite.
This week, I am in class again. This week’s topic has been water. Clean water, storm water, sewage water, stream water, ground water – all kinds of water. The class began with a trip to the Jardine Water Filtration Plant in Chicago where the water I use to drink, cook, clean, and flush begins its journey to my house. The plant processes about 400 million gallons of water a day and provides water for Chicago and several suburbs with a population of almost 4 million people served.
the quarry – not even close to being full
We visiting a large storm water facility that is an old quarry and it can hold a lot of water – something like 2.7 billion gallons of water. Which if you do the math is like letting faucet run from the Jardine plant straight to the quarry for a little less than a week. That is a lot of water and part of why my brain hurts.
“It’s not the will to win that matters—everyone has that. It’s the will to prepare to win that matters.” Paul “Bear” Bryant
The first game in 2015 high school football season is 75 days away. The first official practice is a 56 days away. School is out for the summer and summer football camp started last Wednesday. The 2015 Tiger football team began preparing, for W it will (likely) be his last football season as a player. He has learned a lot and grown a lot as an athlete and as a person. Being part of a team has helped hone his sense of responsibility and preparation as well as his sense of service. He is a team player – that’s what it takes for a team to be successful – players willing to put the team before themselves.
Coach Muhitch addresses the team – the good, the bad, and the ugly – that’s why he is 103-24 with 3 state championships and 2 runners up – preparation
It’s during the off-season that the players come together and learn to work and play as a team. It’s the off-season when the coaches develop players and teach. There is a lot that will happen between now and the first game – a lot of growing – mentally and physically.
