Test time

Yep...it's high season of the all-important-state-standards-test here in the Peach State. It is time for the CRCT. Which means the school year will soon end.

My kids have been attending speech at the local elementary school for....4 Springs now. And I have been looking at the same CRCT posters each and every year.
Up and down all the halls, are signs reminding the children to "read carefully" and to "reach the stars."

My not so favorite posters, however, have been conspicuously absent this year. (The Rosa Parks and MLK ones.)
That's an improvement in my book. But sadly, my other ideas have not crept into the school's head. The art displays are still without any educational merit. (But they had some pretty neat artwork this year. I do have to give credit there.)

It's very ......um....interesting for me to visit the school each week. I get a glimpse of what most homeschoolers do not.
And it doesn't change my mind about wanting to homeschool.

Sure, I get a little wistful when I watch the school plays. (We get to see the ones on our speech days.) The Principal is exactly the type of person that I would want as a principal and the custodians are the absolute nicest people I have every met. And the students are happy to be there. I don't think I have ever witnessed a major bad behavior. The music teacher is downright phenomenal.
And they conduct a very quick and thorough fire drill. (We've been there for two this year.

But I'm not tempted. No....not at all. Sometimes I am impressed by the level of work shown but I don't for a minute think that they maintain that level of work day in and day out across all the grades.
So I don't feel that I am dropping the ball with my sons.
I don't see that they are missing out on enough to justify enrolling them. Or to justify them missing out on the stuff they get here at home.

But my kids are a bit odd. My oldest is highly self-motivated and is an absolute dream student .... at home.
Around friends, he metamorphoses into Mr. Social. In a classroom setting, he would be every teacher's nightmare: the kid who does all his work quickly and correctly then chats with his buddies who haven't finished their work.
He would be like me...in class until he finished all his work and being sent on errands for the remainder of the school day.

My second and third would not be able to handle the distractions of a class room setting. The would come home every day with unfinished work that they were completely capable of doing. Another type of teacher nightmare: the one's who can but don't.

And then the baby would get into the worst possible mischief and flash that dimpled grin to get out of all repercussions. You know that kid from your own school days. The Teflon Don of the elementary school.
That grin works on works on everyone else...but I am immune.

Nope....I can't see it working for the boys. At home, they get more than what the school can provide them.

Except those school plays. That place can really put on a show.

A question from the Nine-year-old.

Momma, does the President get to pick the price of gas?

No, he doesn't.

Then why do they blame him on the news? They always say that the President needs to do something about the price of gas.

Yes, they do. But the President doesn't have anything to do with the price of gas.

Who does?

The people who sell the crude oil to oil companies and the companies that take the oil and turn it into gas. Plus the people that sell the gas too.

Well, why isn't anybody on the news blaming those people?

I don't have the answer to that one.

I think someone should let the news people know so they can start telling the right people that they need to do something about the price of gas.

Have

I have a floor. It is wondeeeerrrrrfuuuullllll.
I have a new cabinet too.
I have paint on the trim and the new cabinet.
But I have to paint the buffet and hutch some other color than the yellow it currently is.
I also have a big mess of clutter to put back where it belongs.
I have to put all my decorations back up.
I have to hang curtains too.
I would post a bunch of pictures
But I also have a dead battery in the camera and I cannot find the charger.

Until then want a peek?
Here's the replaced cabinet.

Yes, I have green cabinets. The color is actually "Outback" by Behr paint. The dining room is this same green.
Zd and I are partial to the green.

The floor....it is vinyl. A thick vinyl tile.
It's Adura Flooring from Mannington.
I have the the Sicilian Stone. Apparently it is indestructible. Or darn close to it. I wiped up a crayon mark. I wiped it up. With a paper towel. And plain water. Red crayon. Like I was cleaning up spilled milk.
That is so awesome! I opted for the solid surface installation but you can also get it with grout. I thought that the grout would just add to the maintenance and I wanted as little maintenance as possible.



Here's the back door. Please ignore my unattractive laminate counter. That's the next thing on my wish list.
Notice how the floor is 'dirt colored.' Yesterday, I swept up a pile of dirt and then walked away to find the dustpan. When I came back....I couldn't find the pile of dirt.

That is impressive.
Check out my white door. That used to be the home of the flat frog. He's gone now and the door is now glowing white.

That's my new wall color also. "Malted Milk" from Lowes. I really love the new wall color. I've been gushing over it since I bought it.
ZD is amused. He says, "It's just off white. Wasn't it off white before your painted it that yellow color?"
Maybe....but it wasn't that particular off white.

He likes the new look though. Last night I caught him standing in the laundry/utility room just staring with this approving expression on his face.

I do the same thing.

The email that cuased bad words to fly out of my mouth...

ZD messages: "There is a one in four chance that I will get this."

The attached message about a position that must be filled by one of the 4 people in his course (counting himself)......24 months command sponsored.......in Seoul.

Wonderful.

Holey Moley.
Our mothers will kill us if we try to take the grandsons with us. They will.

Any good yarn stores in Korea?

Updates

The painting is finished. Well, the walls and trim are done. The cabinets need a some work and the "big yellow thing" is going to become the "big green thing." (It's a buffet and hutch that are normally in my kitchen.)

The middle children go to the developmental Pediatrician today. That's always a fun filled life affirming trip. Then we have OT and after that, second child has a baseball scrimmage.
Tomorrow....my floor arrives. I will take pictures.

ZD did call the man who was so very annoyed at me about his problem. His conversation went like this.
"I was told that you had a conversation with my wife. I'm not happy about the tone of this conversation. You will not have any further conversations with my wife."
That was it. ZD was ticked off.
The guy was very contrite. His response was, "That's understandable." No apology was offered but ZD didn't ask for one either. He didn't want so I didn't need it.
So that is done.
I thanked the guy for standing up for my honor. My brave knight... slaying dragons and fielding phone calls.

Other stuff, there is knitting again.
I was so busy with the dang painting that there was no knitting. But that has changed.
I'm not happy about the knitted object so far so there may be frogging soon.

I'm off...I have to call a concrete guy. Can you believe that the county only offered to pay for half of the torn up section of the driveway. They seem to believe that we are half responsible for letting them in driveway in the first place.
They also feel we should have cut the tree roots ourselves. (But our insurance company begs to differ.)
I guess they live in an alternate reality where they are responsible for anything except the new library and a sports league.
ZD is meeting with legal tomorrow to see who is right in this situation.
But I need to start getting estimates on a new driveway.

Always some sort of action here in the Zoo.

This post is fueled by Paint fumes

I am painting the kitchen/utility/laundry room. The kitchen walls are painted and all is good. The utility/laundry is half done. Well, actually a quarter done. Half the walls have one coat. The washer and dryer are blocking my path to the other two walls. And the small mountain of laundry is helping block the other wall.
My plans to finish all this by Friday night were sadly derailed by the new eye drops that I have to take. They are very freaky...but this is my post about painting. More on the eye drops later.

In the kitchen, the 1st coat of trim is done. I am dawdling. I really don't feel like doing the second coat.
Oh, and if you have visited me before....the squashed tree frog in the door jamb of the back door....he's gone. It was surprisingly easy to remove his flat and very dried up remains. Then I painted over the crime scene.

The new paint color is "Malted Milk." It looks just like the inside of a Whopper candy. Quite nice. The children have stopped asking me if this is a base coat or if it will change color when it dries. I guess they've given up on the color becoming something more exciting than the creamy very light tan that it is.
The new floor is supposed to go in on Tuesday. I sure hope it looks good with the new paint.
After that, we can finally start getting back to normal. It will be nice to get the refrigerator out of my dining room hallway. The whole house has suffered with our house's heart in such disarray. It'll be nice to be able to find the cleaning sponges or the cookie sheets.

My to-do list for tonight and tomorrow:

1. Finish trim in the kitchen
2. Paint walls in the utility/laundry
3. Paint trim in the utility/laundry
4. Hang curtains in the kitchen
5. Hang blinds and curtains in the utility/laundry
6. Wait patiently for the new floor so I can put all the junk back into place and get all the stuff off the deck and out of my dining room.

$%%&#&*!!!

I hate people who chew me out.
I especially hate people who chew me out over the phone.....at seven o'clock in the morning.

People who are mad at me because they made a mistake and now they have a problem.

I really hate people who chew me out even when I am trying to solve the problem that they created. When I am going above what is required of me and trying my very best to help them out.

People that do not appreciate my very best. And feel that I should be doing way more them to fix the problem that they created...thusly chewing me out at 7 in the morning.
And if this "person" is someones husband with whom I've never even spoken to before....I will take it the wrong way.

According to him, I "dropped the ball."
According to me....The deadline was March 28th. I'm doing you a favor please act accordingly and stop telling me that I need an attitude adjustment for pointing out the time of your call.

ZD plans to speak the very unappreciative man. He feels that a man picking on a woman is a coward.

About the deck

**This post will be pretty boring for anyone who is not Dy or is not contemplating building a new deck. Sorry**

A few years ago, our deck fell off the house. It really did. It was nailed to our sill with flashing what-so-ever. The sill rotted. (That wood was supposed to hold up the whole house) and the deck came loose. Thankfully, it was only a 4 feet off the ground. That's when we discovered that not only did the deck not have footers but that the posts were just sitting on the ground.
ZD picked up the deck and moved it.

Very scary after the fact.

So we built a new deck.
After the house was jacked up and 18 feet of double sill was replaced.

New deck:
No nails at all. We used only bolts and screws. Each part of the deck is removable.

18 feet by 20 feet.
Completely over engineered. . Bolted to the house (not nailed) with 24 six inch lag screws. Flashed with nice big washers to make sure the holes do not strip.
We made sure that the joint across the span was not at the door that we use to get on the deck. (Previous deck had a joint at the high traffic area...bad plan.)

Double joists every 6 feet for the decking to sit squarely on. 1 inch deck boards with way more screws than needed.

We did two beams with four posts per beam. The beams are double thickness.
All posts have poured footers and are bolted in with galvanized post holders. (We set a j shaped bolt in the concrete and then attached the post holders.)

Then the entire deck has a 2 foot cantilever. This allows me to plant under the deck and hides the posts holding it up. The only problems with this was the railing. The posts holding the deck are not part of the railing in any way. (I see that Dy's old deck...the posts are part of the railing. Our posts are way under the deck.)

But this made installing the decking really easy. No posts to cut around.
The posts for the railing are bolted onto the deck and the rails were screwed into place. The rail was designed to have a 6 inch wide cap on it but .... well....that has happened yet. It will happen though.

Oh...on our railing....the bottom rail lets the pickets float above the decking. There is a 3 inch gap between the bottom rail and the pickets. That's so I can blow off the deck without all the crap getting caught by the pickets. You have to make sure the rail is set in though....or the kids will try to fit through that little gap.

Thing I wish we had done differently:
I wish we had left the rail posts higher than they are. That way we could put a nice decorative top on the post and put the cap rail between the posts.
I wish we had left a few posts very tall for a bird feeder or hanging plants. (To over hang the deck.
Also, I really wish we had not waited to stain it.

But I do love our deck.

Any other questions? Anybody have any other ideas for Dy's new deck? What about your own deck. What do you like and what is a really bad idea?

I have no floor

Well...I have floor. It's just really ugly. I was supposed to get a new floor yesterday but my new floor is in Florida. (Which is oddly apropos.)

My new floor will get here tomorrow and will be installed on Tuesday.

Until that time, my refrigerator will remain in the hall of my dining room blocking access to my kitchen. Thankfully, we can just walk around through the living room. So we can have cold food but we won't have ice. The supply line that caused all this mess in the first place, won't reach into the dining room.

So what do you do on Spring Break week and you kitchen is destroyed?
You paint it of course.

I've got one coat on the entire kitchen and today I'll finish that off and do the laundry/utility room. I may even repaint the cabinets before the guy shows up to put the new floor in.

Kids are being kids. Sam's foot looks better. He still screams and fights about the eye drops. Matthew's eye looks pretty good. He still has the redness and swelling. He's been awesome about the whole thing.
Andrew managed to miss the whole cold thing. So the nebulizer is back in the closet.

ZD however, did not that bus. He is one miserable Army guy. But he can't smell the paint fumes so he isn't complaining about them.

In which Sheila officially throws in the towel

The boys were supposed to go down to Grandma's farm today. They had planned to spend Spring Break down there. That was going to be a good thing because today is the day that the contractors are coming to tear out the water damaged cabinet and rip up all the flooring. (We had a refrigerator supply line leak.)

Tomorrow they will replace the flooring and then Thursday will be the grand replacement of all the things that they drug out.
My kitchen will be out of commission for 3 days. Hopefully, only 3 days.

Hopefully.

But the boys won't be at Grandma's. Nope.
M's eye are healing great but he has one medication he receives three times a day, another is 4 times a day, and then an eye ointment at night.
Thankfully, he is very compliant.

Just to add some excitement, the baby developed cellulitis in a cut on his foot. That means soaking his foot twice a day and antibiotics three times a day. Oh....and he also has some serious allergy conjunctivitis. So he also has eye drops twice a day.
Let's just say that he is not the best the little patient in the world and leave it at that.

To round out the troubles, A is developing a cold. Unfortunately, he also has asthma so any cold leads to croup and days on the nebulizer. I'm just waiting for that to start up.

So I made a check list of what to do for which kid and when.

Which will be fun ..... without a kitchen.

If you see me this week and I have that maniacal look on my face... you'll know why.

Third time's the charm

Today I'm sharing some pictures of my son, Matthew. I'm usually quite careful to make sure he looks his "best" for pictures. So some of the things that I am pointing out may not be so evident in these pictures. Plus M has learned to accommodate his eye alignment by turning his head or looking at us from the side.

Matthew has a myriad of eye alignment issues. Basically, he has strabismus. (lazy eye) He has had glasses since he was three years old. He's done patching for 10-12 hours a day for months. He had two previous eye surgeries.

Patching at age 5 to strengthen eye, 12 hours a day for 6 months. Second pair of glasses. Left eye went from 20/80 to 20/30.

He's always been very stoic about his eye problems. He has never complained about wearing glasses or not wearing glasses. He was patient and willing during all that patching. He trusts us and his doctor about surgery. He's just been wonderful patient.

Oct 2005 Age 7, first lost tooth, no glasses because he is working on strengthening eye muscles after second eye surgery to correct right eye going outwards.

Yesterday, he had his third surgery. This one was tough to recovery from. He cried in the surgical recovery room. His eye hurt so much that he needed three doses of morphine. This same kid cut his finger to the bone and needed 7 stitches...and never cried at all.

Nov 2003, age 5. Here's what it looks like when the patch is off. This was a few months before 1st surgery.

We got home from the hospital about noon yesterday and the poor little guy slept for the rest of the day.

April 2003, age 4 1st pair of glasses are 1 year old. Left eye starting to cross again.

Today, however, he's back to his normal self. He just looks terrible.

He has to take it easy for a few days to keep the swelling down. And he has eye drops and ointment several times a day for the next month.

Summer 2007, age 8. Left eye is going way outwards. Planned surgery for September 2007 but postponed because of ZD's deployment.

But his eyes look straight, to me at least. He has his first post-op visit on Monday.Cross your fingers....but not your eyes. But feel free to cock your head to one side.

World Autism Day

Autism Society of America

Autism: The Miracle Project trailer One of my own sons is very much Like "Henry."

If you have HBO, try to catch the documentary "Autism the Musical." But bear in mind, having a child with Autism is not all gloom and doom.
Not all families are torn apart and some even learn to embrace their children just the way they are.
We have.

Our boys play team sports. They get invited to parties. They have friends. They do well with their school work and plan to go to college.
They even have career goals. They plan to be husbands and fathers.
And Matthew can cook a mean grilled cheese sandwich.

In fact, we frequently get my least favorite comment, "Really? They seem so .... normal."
That's due to a lot of things. Wonderful therapists. Early intervention. Sensory Therapy. Sports groups that don't exclude "kids with special needs." Patient swim coaches. The world's best pediatrician.
And ZD and I have to take credit for our work. We try to be consistent in our rules. We teach the boys coping techniques. And we try to keep them in situations that they can tolerate. (Due to M's generalized anxiety...we won't be PCS'ing to Hawaii. M is a bit scared about living on a volcano.)

Sure, it isn't always smooth sailing. It does wear me down some days. But it's not some death sentence.
Sometimes it's even a good thing.

laugh

ZD is down right funny. He's so deadpan and sardonic that most people don't appreciate (or get) his sense of humor. They think he's serious.

So...ZD discovered that his credit card magnetic strip is no longer magnetic. (Most likely from his extended vacation to the desert.) He called the bank to request a new one. Now, ZD is not the type of person that enjoys the automated phone system. He really has no love for that particular bit of technology.

He finally got a real live person and explained why he needed a new card when the old one had neither expired nor was lost. (Automated system didn't have an option for "My magnetic strip is fried by all the sand and static.)

Bank person asked him what designed he wanted for the front of his new card.
Without a moment's hesitation, ZD replied, "Do you have one with little puppies on it?"

The bank person was quiet until ZD informed her that he was kidding and the plain gold front would be just fine.

I, of course, was cracking up.

Aren't you jealous!

My four children are all in the living room arguing quite loudly.

They are fighting over which one will clean up the carpet stain.

I kid you not.

I'm not sure if I should go break up the fight or just let them divvy them all up between themselves.
I'm thinking about starting a dusting war or maybe a window washing competition.

Words from Sam

I was whistling while I was knitting. I guess I don't whistle much since Sam was impressed by my ability.
"Mom! You can whistle..........with your mouth!"

Huh? I was genuinely perplexed.
"Honey, what else would I be whistling with?" I asked because I just had to know how he would answer me.

He looked at me with that "oh you poor foolish woman" look and he sighed at me.
"With a whistle." he answered. The boy is convinced that his mother is daft.

That's why the Army guys love them.

Littlest guy Sam came running downstairs after dressing himself.
He was was wearing a pair of tan cargo pants and a red shirt and we was really excited.

"Mom....Mom...Mom....Look!" he yelled to me, pointing to the pockets on the legs of his pants. "I've got TWO extras. Two! See." He pulled apart the Velcro holding the pocket and immediately began stuffing little Star Wars figures inside.

Apparently, when you're a four year old boy, having extra pockets is one of the best things ever.

Because we love excitement around here.

These are not my trees. They belong to the county. They county's property butts right up to mine. They removed these trees at our request because the pine tree was a. leaning towards our house and b. tearing up our driveway.

The Bradford Pear was a favorite tree for climbing. Most days, there would be at least 5 kids up in the tree. They even named all the branches. But it had to go because it would have been destroyed when the pine tree came down.

The pear came down fairly easy. The county folks knocked down my cable wire and tore up the corner of my siding. (I have that on my list of things to complain about.)

Then the pine removal began.

That's an 85 foot bucket truck. It wasn't tall enough. Notice the lean. This is the best angle to see just how non-straight the tree was.

That tree was a house killer. The boys had to sleep downstairs during heavy storms.
The roots grew under my driveway and pushed up the concrete...and grew into my sewage line. Can you tell that I have no love lost for the giant pine?

The view from across the street. This is after most of the limbs were removed. We left the house early and missed the initial action. This is what we found around 10 am. That's my driveway where the bucket truck is. There were another dozen county vehicles in the road. Wood chippers, backhoe, dump truck, fuel truck, and then various pickup trucks. They pretty much blocked the entire road.

While two guys from the power company cut down the big pine tree, another 10 county guys watched them. The work started at 7:30 am and they didn't finish up until after 4 pm.
And look what they left me with. I had no idea that they could possibly tear up my driveway more than it had been... I underestimated them. The funniest part was, they used leaf blowers to clean the debris off the driveway. I told them that that was an exercise in futility. (click on the pic to make it bigger. The expression of confusion on Andrew's face is hilarious. Ignore the ugly trailer. It's there temporarily.) Of course, the first thing I complained about was the oil stain. That set ZD off. "Well that's just the last straw....An oil stain. Now the driveway is completely ruined."

Here's another shot. For reference, those are ZD's size 13.5 feet. Notice the huge chunks of concrete sticking up. Lovely, huh?

And to add insult to injury, they left the two giant stumps. 50 year old pine trees leave a very big stump. I swear, my kids do own shoes. They just don't like to wear them.

ZooDad has already drafted his next letter.

And that's not all. Next post.....Water damage in the Zoo.

Guess what my children and the neighborhood gang are doing?

They are making origami water bombs, filling them with water, then climbing as high as possible in our Bradford Pear tree....and finally dropping them down on the driveway to see what happens.

Thankfully they aren't pelting the dog walkers with them.

This is apparently big time fun for the neighborhood gang.

Honestly, he really loves animals.

I walked into the house from homeschool PE and found that ZD had set up a table in the living room. And he filled it with file boxes from the attic.

This wasn't done on a whim, he needed copies of orders from 1985.
I'm not kidding.

Even more amazing was...he found them. I don't think I own any paperwork from the 80's except my high school diploma.

After about 10 minutes in the house, the sound finally registers with me.

"merow.....merooooooow......meeerrrrroooowwwww"
"Is that Mango meowing?" I asked when no one reacted to the very loud plainative cry.

"Oh, yeah" ZD piped up as if he just remembered something. "Mango might be locked in the attic crawl space."

She was.
She sure was glad to get out of there. At least the kids know where the saying "Curiosity killed the cat" came from.

We've been very busy

The last few days have been....welll...a little crazy here at the zoo.

I'll see if I can catch you to speed in a series of posts.

Let's start with Friday.


On Friday, I went to my special "old eyes" opthalmologist. She needed to check the little holes that she burnt into my irises, were still open. (I have narrow angle glaucoma and Fuch's endothelia dystrophy. I'm 37 years old and I have the eyeballs of a 60 year old.)

One of the holes was not doing it fair share of the pressure reducing work. So it will need further prodding along. Actually, I have to have some other laser procedure that will flatten my iris a little to help the hole stay open.
(The procedure was supposed to be today....but I had to rescedule. More on why later.)

When I came home from the doctor, I explained all this to ZD, who reacted by deciding that he needed to go ahead and sign in for duty.
(That's means he went and joined up with the Army again.)

He really did. He threw on his uniform, we packed up the kids, and we headed on post with a crate full of paperwork. By noon, we were an Army family again. Offical and everything.

We had lunch at the PX and then went to get ID cards. (For the experienced, it was not bad at all other than a DEERS issue. And the ID people were helpful and courteous. I was as surprised as you are.)

By 3 o'clock we had done all the work we could and then headed home. The kids played outside with friends while ZD and I kind of took in what we had just done.