Rosario Beach

Last weekend our church had a retreat at Rosario Beach, which adjoins the Deception Pass State Park near Anacortes.  We just couldn't fathom getting everything loaded up for a whole weekend, so we passed our cabin on to another family and went up just for the day.  So glad we went.  So refreshing.  Here are a few photos from a hike.  I enjoyed talking with several different people during the day.  I didn't put up any pictures of Anne, as every shot I got with her also included friends...  She had the good fortune to run into one of her best buddies from Walla Walla Suzuki Institute who lives near Anacortes right there on the beach!

The after-effect of this was that everyone, especially the kids, were quite tired on Sunday.  And we descended into a week of pretty-much chaos. 

Sunday I had one project planned.  It was a pick-up-shelves-from-Craigslist and dig-up-boxes-from-the-garage project, with the aim of turning the Shoe Pile of Doom by the back door into something useful.

Sunday Jared had one project planned.  That was a build-another-top-of-the-room-book shelf.  And then my part was to unpack three boxes of books and get them lined up.

All of which was beyond enough for the day, given tired kids, unpacking from the beach, and the usual chores. 

But I also got a message from Linda that she'd found this free dresser

in her neighborhood, and it was loaded up in the trunk of her car and they would be arriving in 27 minutes.  And it was true that Jared's closet needed a complete overhaul, complete with offloading the wire drawers that didn't fit his clothes at all, so I did that.  It was Jeff and Linda's anniversary, but they spent quite a bit of time with us rearranging furniture and doing a couple of small fixes on the chest.  Very sweet of them!

After photo, courtesy of Anne

By Monday morning, the house was a bigger mess than you can even imagine.  And Monday through Friday, Jared and I took turns up at UW to watch masterclasses all week, and the highlights were watching the incredible Mimi Zweig at work with violinists of all levels and chatting with other area teachers.  So inspiring and thought-provoking!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  The cherry blossoms were in full bloom on the Quad, and all Seattle was out to see them. 

The kids spent hours and hours in the car.  Two days they got to go to the children's museum in Bellevue. 

The creature up top is Anne...

This bench is also a marimba.

Checking out astroturf

And Jared got to visit with a cousin he hadn't seen in maybe 15 years, unfortunately at the UW hospital. 

Here was a post I wrote on Thursday night:

It is possible the highlight of my evening was watching my hobbits eat their second dinner on the back patio in the dark while I danced with the baby on the back steps and improvised in full-lung-ed operatic style about the myriad horrible and chaotic messes in my house, car, and yard and all the things I am behind on. If any neighbors were paying attention I hope at the very least they were amused by the airing of my dirty laundry (both literal and figurative. )

So today we are trying to finish up the projects of last Sunday, and clean the house up to be useful for another week of teaching, and get more planning done for events coming up, like the summer, for example...

Economic Fly-Over

I'm not sure if any economic lessons were learned this week, but...

Friday:

My small entrepreneurs. They are selling weeds and pinecones they picked up on the alley. Anne is trying to get enough money for another slime kit. Jared bought a pinecone on his way to the bank.

Sunday early afternoon:
Today's lemonade is a more desirable commodity, but with more sellers, the per capita earnings are lower than desired....

Sunday evening:
She came up with a more lucrative deal - performing for the yard sale shoppers across the street.

Monday, same set up, but only contractors were over there, so she was disappointed not to be receiving any tips during her practice.  Now, let's see if I can convince her that she can buy more slime supplies if she buys them separately rather than in a fancy kit....

Small Pleasures

There are many small pleasures in life, and one of them is reading.  Not that I have much time for it on my own...

There are two little free libraries in our neighborhood, and I often stop by.  Sometimes it's to drop off books or magazines I don't want any more, it's always to look at the offerings, and it's occasionally to take something home.  In the last year I have brought home five treasures for myself, plus two for the kids.  I have read from this box pictured above:

The Plague and I by Marilyn McDonald.  She is the author of the Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle books, and knowing some of her personal history (this was one part of her autobiography) made the kid's books even better to me, and placed them in 1940's Seattle, which I feel connected to deeply on a couple of levels. 

A Wrinkle in Time  by Madeline L'Engle.  Great older kid's book which I hadn't read since late elementary school.

The Song of the Lark  by Willa Cather.  I'd been wanting to read something of hers, and this was a great starting point.

My Folks Don't Want Me to Talk About Slavery edited by Belinda Hurmence.  This is a compilation of interviews of former slaves, taken down in the 1930's and the stories they contain cover the gamut of human emotion.  There are certain limitations to the stories as well, and I really appreciated the foreword so that I could understand that before I dipped into the interviews. 

Lazy B by Sandra Day O'Connor and H. Alan Day.  This is their autobiography of their growing up on a massive ranch in the Southwest.  I am half-way through, and I am enjoying the slice of life so different from my own, and how it produced some great personalities.

Also, Anne is of an age now where she can sort of start to appreciate some of the children's literature I actually like, so I have been reading to her and getting books on CD that I want to hear from the public library and from my own personal shelves. 

In addition to Calvin and Hobbes, we have lately read Lewis'  The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe and are partly through The Magician's Nephew. (The other night, Mr. Two-and-a-Half was wading through the pile of hula hoops in the laundry room, saying, "These are trees and I'm Digory!") Also, we have listened to... Dragonwings  by Laurence Yep (Highly recommended! historical novel full of immigrant Chinese culture and Victorian culture in San Francisco).  John Erickson's Hank the Cowdog: Mopwater Files (If you're a fan, you get it.)  And we're partway through Scott O'Dell's Island of the Blue Dolphins, an incredible story of Native life on an island off California. 

To understand another small joy, you'll need to know that the junker house across the street from us sold to flippers a couple of weeks ago.  There has been a flurry of activity which the kids have enjoyed standing in the yard to watch.  18-wheelers with attached forklifts have brought so many moving crates and picked them up again.  A huge junk truck has come to haul off loads and loads over and again from the yard.  Once the flippers get to work, there will be even more to see!  Anne has decided to be a forklift driver when she grows up.  When you see all the junk in this photo, this is after all the moving out and junk hauling happened.  Just imagine it before.

A third small joy is the little yellow studio out back.  Jared and I played the third movement of the Kodaly Duo at our library studio recital last Sunday, and we're playing it again on Tuesday night at our recital in Gig Harbor.  This requires being in physical shape as a violinist, an almost impossible task in the midst of my other responsibilities.  Most days lately I've been putting 30-60 minutes (which does NOT constitute being in shape, but we'll take what we can get) before too many kids wake up, out in my little sanctuary of quiet.  The view isn't spectacular, but it's fun to see different things out the window than I do when I'm teaching out there and from our house windows.  The light is nice, and it feels very focussed and peaceful.

Also, there is hot tea. 

Awash

I am awash in responsibilities.  Other people have many responsibilities, too, so I am not trying to compare myself.  And I am glad for the privileges which attend them, so I am not complaining.  But this is why I say no to a lot of things...

Responsible for taking care of my health: Thanks to Jared's cooking, that part is going fine.  The exercising part is fairly abysmal right now.   The sleeping part is prioritized, so although it could be better (see three children under 6), it's pretty decent.

Responsible for taking care of the house and yard: Jared does most of this stuff, but when there is organizing and sorting and cleaning out and dreaming up better ways of doing things and working with the yard, that's my deal.  Reminder... we are slowly working on a massive fixer-upper project.  It's not just the laudry-dishes-mopping stuff going on here.  I'm behind the times.

Responsible for caring for and educating my children:  That takes up most of my time, and although I'm pretty hands-off, I do love them and want to spend time with them when I'm not doing other things.  And potty-training toddlers and nursing babies are pretty need-intensive.  So also are almost-six-year-olds who were born teenaged.  It is possible that after two hours of practicing a musical instrument yesterday, which could reasonably have taken 20 minutes, I told Jared I wished I was into drinking something stronger than herbal tea.

Responsible for my relationship with God:  Well... Last week I missed my Bible study because I was one day off in knowing what day of the week it was.  This week I was there but had managed not to have done any of the lesson, although I had read the assigned Bible chapters.  I was physically present at church today, but spent at least half the service not in the sanctuary.  We'll just leave it at that.

Responsible for my relationship with my husband: We got to talk a little bit this morning as we were both able to eat breakfast before the kids got up.  That is a rarity. 

Responsible for income to pay the bills: Self-employment is never-ending.  You can't leave the office and go home.  But I like the freedom to choose direction in a way that teaching for the entities I have taught for in the past doesn't afford.  We haven't gotten to the point where the business recruits for itself.  Yet.

Responsible to my students: They pay an arm and a leg for lessons and struggle to do the work at home.  They have my fullest sympathies.  And I want to keep growing and learning as a teacher and improve my work with them.  It's one of the most challenging and rewarding and frustrating things I do regularly.  See also, *parenting. 

I think about whether *if I had the option* it would be easier to be only a stay-at-home-mom.  And all I can think is yes, and no.  Yes, I'd have more time and energy for my kids.  Yes, I'd have more time and energy for the house.  But no, I'd have to do more of the house stuff than I currently do.  And no, I wouldn't have the musical outlet that keeps me/drives me insane.  And I don't even try to imagine my life without kids, because that not what I have ever wanted.  Oh, and being the stay-at-home-mom is not an option anyway.  See *Pay-the-bills.

This list is why I am saying no to a birthday party this weekend.  And a school picnic.  And told our pastor I could not lead a strings group at church despite the fact that I look like the obvious choice.  Many people have NO idea how much responsibility we're awash in here; they can't see all the moving parts.  It probably looks so simple from the outside. 

I have two weeks of laundry to fold.  And several boxes of books to unpack onto the shelves Jared built a week-and-a-half ago.  And work for my students.  And recital prep for next Sunday's shebang at the library on MANY fronts.  See, *Business does not recruit for itself yet.

We are just managing to stay afloat.  And if you showed up here telling Jared he should be shouldering more of the responsibility, we would both roll our eyes at you, because we both know how much he does.  I wouldn't trade lives with anyone else.  I like the good we have going well enough that the bad is worth it.