Skipping Town

The school year is finally, finally over. Grades (precalc) have been wrestled out of the ashes; final quizzes and retakes are done; last-minute teacher gifts and notes are given.  Andrew and I went to Greta's eighth-grade Moving Up Day ceremony in the morning. There are a few awards given, and then the eighth-graders receive their Middle School completion certificates. We'd been told that Greta would be receiving an award, but we weren't told which one. We were very surprised when her name was announced as the winner of the eighth-grade award given to a student who "has been consistently outstanding in demonstrating friendliness, loyalty, and sincerity." This is a peer-voted award--truly an award for character. So proud! (Not to brag, but Greta also won the seventh-grade character award, which was faculty-voted.) Her name was called again, as faculty had chosen her (and three other students), for the Middle School Growth Award, given to students who have shown ...

We had a nice family weekend. Saw a lot of both kids, which is unusual in this crazy time of Maycember. It's now June, so Maycember is technically over; and indeed, this week already feels a little less chaotic. Saturday, Greta went to a going-away party for a friend for most of the day; Lucia studied; and Andrew and I did more yardwork. Then Lucia took a break to power-wash the porch and stone walkways in the backyard, a massive and much-needed task. Between last weekend and this weekend, we (well, Andrew) have distributed 60 bags of mulch around the front and back of our house. We've planted flowers. We planted three saplings against the new fence by the retaining wall. We've weeded. Andrew set up a hammock. We are pleased to have reclaimed our yard for the summer--a spectacular yard. It needed to be wrangled back into submission, but now it is glowing. Even Andrew, who spent much of the winter threatening to put the house on the market every time there was some kind of w...

What is even happening. I have been so busy this blog has been sadly ignored. That's unlike me and I blame it 100% on the kitchen chaos. It is still not done. It is close, but it is not done. And it is hard, very hard, to feel like I am organized and have a handle on things when I have nowhere to lay out my planner, collect important documents, leave notes to myself, find a pen, grab a box cutter, etc etc etc. I'm talking, of course, about a kitchen desk, one of my non-negotiable pieces of this kitchen renovation. I miss my kitchen desk desperately. Mournfully. I never had a kitchen desk until moving into this house, and I couldn't give it up when we planned the renovation. I rely on it. Where even is my planner right now? Attic? Basement? Bench by the front door? It's anyone's guess.  The other thing on my kitchen desk is my home, non-work Chromebook. This has been where I type up my blog each morning or evening. It's right there in the kitchen, easy to just fl...

On Saturday, I flew to Orange County alone, on a spontaneous trip to see an art exhibition at the Orange County Museum of Art. I'd learned only a couple of weeks ago--thanks to an idle Google search--that the museum was currently showing the first-ever North American retrospective of one of my very favorite artists, Sophie Calle, and that it was closing on May 24. It had been in Minneapolis but would not be traveling elsewhere in the U.S. I've seen a few of her exhibitions in New York and Paris, but not for a long long time, so I decided to go.  And it was so great! I arrived around noon on Saturday 5/16, checked into my hotel, which was right across the street from the museum, and then spent the next four hours with Sophie Calle's work. Some of it I was familiar with, some I'd seen in galleries in the past, and some was new to me as well as brand-new and never shown before. What a treat to wander the rooms, reading all the text, sitting with it. I took a little lunch b...

You'll notice a gap of days. May 8 - 12 are missing from this blog, but rest assured they are all pretty much the same as what I'm about to describe. The blog as well as everything else has gotten away from me, and I blame it 100% on the fact that we are still living in the basement. The feeling of being disorganized and displaced has only gotten worse as these months have worn on. And the project now feels like it's at a standstill as we await the countertops--a step that needs to be completed before additional, final (?) steps can take place. Things have been appearing incrementally, and it is very hard to judge how they actually look when they are out of context with the rest of the kitchen. Every time I come home from work and see something new, something that looks out of scale and out of place in all the unfinishedness of the spaces around it, I decide I hate it and lament to Andrew that we've made a huge, huge mistake in choosing it, and Andrew tries to make me f...

We're deep into Maycember now, the frantic rush to the end of the school year when there are five million things to do in addition to all the usual things. Andrew was, once again, out of town, this time on a last-minute trip to a farm demonstration somewhere in Florida; but fortunately it was only two days. In the meantime, the kids had track and crew; I partnered with friendly frozen foods from Costco to keep us all alive; I forgot to take out the garbage on garbage night; and had my monthly labs and checkup. (Another decrease in my CA-125, plus an acceptable level of absolute neutrophils--good news!) By Thursday, a few things had been achieved. I got Greta and her friend tickets to Olivia Rodrigo by waiting in the ticket queue and then refreshing the seat options one thousand times. Andrew, also in the queue, grabbed two more for Lucia and her friend. It felt like an achievement.  Lucia ran the 1600 and 3200 at her "last chance" track meet--the last meet where the kids ...