HE DID IT!!!!!!!!!!!!

Report cards are in, and Samuel presented us with a perfect report card- straight A's for the whole year! We're so proud of him! James will be taking Samuel to buy his well-earned laptop this evening. (A carrot to inspire just that little bit of extra effort towards excellence. . . and the motivation to prove to himself that he can do it!) We don't want him to feel pressured to keep it up all the way through high school, but to know that he is capable of working at that level. Perfection is NOT required, but please set his expectations high. He's already negotiated "appropriate" rewards for future years of stellar performance-a contribution to his cause of choice for the second year, and a scooter after three years (when he's sixteen and has at least a learner's permit).

Miriam likewise turned in an excellent performance. Math was her only non-A grade this marking period/or semester final grades. She's content with being the only one using the "kids' computer"-at least for now. (If I let her use my laptop a bit, so she could see how much faster it is, would she want her own?)

I do so enjoy my kids!

And we had a marvelous time at my family reunion in Florida last week. My sibs are some of my favorite people in the world- but I think I've mentioned that before. We had a bit of a down mood to get over at the beginning-missing teenagers and Beck bringing her kids out late, along with Evan having a rough day of seizures early on in the week, but being together left us all happy and exhausted.

My best friend from high school, Aimee, is here for a quick visit this week, and we're still trying to convince her to move up. Of course, convincing anyone to leave the islands can be difficult, so we're not having too much luck, but we keep trying.

I'll be heading out to Colorado for a few days next week to stay with Beck's kids while she's in Africa fixing their water problems (if anyone can do it-she can!) and Mitch is working his 24-hour shifts at the fire station. I'm glad they trust me with the kids, and think that the kids would most enjoy having me there.

Then Liza gets home on the 10th, and we head to Florida for a quick trip the following week. It won't be anything like the reunion, but at least she'll get to visit with her grandparents and great-grandmother, and hopefully see my cousins newborn twins. (We're still waiting on their arrival!)

James and I want to fit in another trip to Berea before I start school at the end of the summer, but all my travels have my homebody self craving some time at home, so I don't know how that will play out. A trip to visit James's side of the family, and a skydiving trip with Liza (count me out of that one-my pilot grandfather convinced me early on to stick with the airplane unless it's going down!) are higher priorities.

Life's good!

Why don't they. . .

. . . have a button labeled "fix what I messed up"?

I can understand code to a very limited degree, and I know when I messed up the format (most likely when I removed the AdSense code, but it could've been adding FeedBlitz), but finding that code line, now that the AdSense stuff is gone requires a heck of a lot of scrolling and comparing!

I'll get it figured out someday, or maybe I'll just change layouts? Update colors for Spring/Summer???

Grins! (with only an occasional grimace)

Gift from a prayer, and thoughts about faith & religion

A Friend offered a prayer today during our Silent Worship that went something like this:
O, Gracious One,
I come here today to wait for you in the Silence.
We all come here with our quirks, our rushing, and our egos-
Sometimes too big- to wait for you.
And I realize that you're always waiting for us.
Thank you for waiting for us.

Can you understand how this prayer reached into my heart to soothe and heal the pain I've been feeling this week, wondering how long I/we might be waiting for Kyle to have time for us?

As I pondered this prayer, I felt so strongly comforted.
If the Divine One is our role model, then can't I draw on that example to wait patiently, to be calmly here whenever any of our children turn to me?
I do have an easier time with that patience with the other kids. For one, the wait has never been as long as it has with Kyle. Even since they've moved out of the house, it is unusual for me to go more than a few days without hearing something from each of the big girls. We have more of a history of sharing than I have with Kyle. I'm more a part of their lives, because I've always been a part of their lives. Kyle was delighted, at 11, to be able to "really call you Mom now!" And I gave my heart to that precious boy. At 15 1/2, he wants much less to do with all of his parents, and really doesn't want to risk conflict just to spend time with parents. That's certainly normal behavior. Just makes for a very different relationship than I have with the kids who live with me. (I'm blessed to still be able to enjoy morning cuddles with my teenagers fairly often, and Samuel and I share a game of kakuro before school more often than not.)
Another piece of the challenge comes from Kyle's age. He's only 15, he's not "supposed" to be gone yet. That's something to happen at 18, or maybe 17 if he decides to do a student exchange! But he is gone, for all intents and purposes. Hopefully we have enough foundation for a relationship as adults to be established in the future. Only time will tell.

From thinking about LeeAnn's prayer in light of my feelings about my relationship with Kyle I moved on to thinking about faith and unity.

I believe the purpose of religion, the practice of faith, is to bring us into unity with that Divine Presence that waits for us in the Silence-whatever people call that presence, and to bring our actions into alignment with that peace.

I've been reading Bird of Another Heaven by James D. Houston. (I highly recommend it!) The female protagonist, Nani, is a hapa woman (Hawaiian/Native American from one of the California tribes) living (mostly in California) at the end of the Hawaiian monarchy. I bring the book into this topic because Nani knew, followed, and worked to integrate the "religious" practices of her Hawaiian father, her Native American mother, and the Christian minister with whom she taught. Quite a challenge.

I'll continue these thoughts tomorrow. . . I started this post over two hours ago, keep getting interrupted, and it's past bedtime.

The Dark Side of Mary/more on Why Sociology?

I've had another restless night, and lots of time thinking about Kyle. I rarely post about the issues we have with our children's other parents. Part of that is because I don't like the negative tone, part because I don't want it out in the world forever. Since this has been going on for a week or so, and I'm getting ready to start a doctoral program with an interest in this post-divorce parenting stuff, I guess I should start from the beginning with an open admission that I fall far short of my ideal of cooperative co-parenting!

With my other kids, I'd think that something was going on that they needed me if they showed up in my dreams four times in a week, with enough intensity to leave me wide awake even if I don't remember what the dream was about. But I don't have that level of connection with Kyle. He's never been here for any longer than about ten days at a time, and only eight nights since school started last fall.

I think this has to do with Father's Day coming up, and our excitement about the family reunion the following week-for neither of which will Kyle be joining us. After all, he needs to spend Father's Day with his "real" father- the one who's there for him every day. (Okay, so what if James doesn't even hear about things going on, and that set of parents bristles if we find out about a concert and show up, and that's the set of parents who set 100% attendance as the standard for participation in such activities as the church ball league or Scouts-and then schedule Scouting events to conflict with his time with his birth father??? And they tell him we're "not his real family"-yes, that's a quote, along with we're going to hell so he shouldn't love us too much. They live a different view of Christianity than I do!)

After our visitors last February/March, I'm somewhat relieved not to have the threat of a spy in the house.

But I'm angry with his mother for setting up the game this way. There's no way we could stand up for time with Kyle without putting him in the middle when she scheduled birthday parties for his weekend up here, and then made it a twelve-year-old's choice- "just tell him you want to be here for ____'s party, and remind him I don't owe make-up time."

When we met as all four parents two years ago, to refine the schedule, I tried to generate a common vision for parenting Kyle, but they just wanted to hash out/fix the schedule that they didn't like. Since Kyle was already struggling with grades and work ethic at that point, I suggested home schooling as a possibility that would both give us more flexibility in the schedule as well as give Kyle an opportunity to learn how to study. That was rejected outright and vehemently. "Home schooling doesn't work! They don't learn anything!"

Oh, yeah?!? Let me tell you, I'm so tempted to photocopy Samuel's straight-A's-for-the-whole- year report card and send it to her with a comment about "home schooling doesn't work?" My son wasn't kicked out of kindergarten the first week and sent to first grade. You've used that as a marker to say your son's so smart. Then why is he going to be in the same math and Spanish classes as my son, who's two grades behind him? Could it be that Samuel learned some academic stuff as well as how to learn while he was home for school?

I won't do that, because that wouldn't accomplish anything besides feeding resentment between the boys and making her angry. But sometimes I get tired of being adult and responsible, and I want to throw a tantrum and hit out at the perceived cause of pain.

Okay, I acknowledge that it's my thoughts causing me this pain. I don't think she or Kyle have done anything new to hurt me or James. It's my silly thoughts that Kyle "should" be here with his father for Father's Day, and with us for the reunion, and remembering the past that is causing me pain.

But today, I just want to take that "superior" place, and claim to be a better mother because I don't make my kids choose between me and their dad, and I do support his relationship with them-even if it doesn't feel like it to him. I think the kids (my birth ones) are better off because I do encourage and support them loving their dad, stepmother, and little sisters. They have more people to love and love them. Yes, at times it's more complicated for me to continue to try to negotiate & coordinate with the other household. And yes, they do still catch a bit of flak when we don't get things worked out smoothly. But they know that I want them to have a real relationship with him, and I expect them to be a part of both households. And even parents who are still together don't always agree.

I wish "She" were comfortable with the idea that Kyle could love us without loving her less. (I use the pronoun rather than her name to protect her privacy. Few people who might ever read this will connect her with my version of the story if I leave that out. I am specifically trying not to de-personalize her even though I'm feeling angry and hurt right now.) That's the only way I can make sense out of her attempts to keep James out of Kyle's life. They had such a good relationship when I first met them. I can only think that, after her apparent attempts to replace James with her second husband as Kyle's "dad", she felt like I threatened her position as Kyle's mom. Not gonna happen (even if I had wanted to do it, which I most certainly did NOT)!

Divorce sucks! It's a bum deal for everyone-kids, custodial parents, non-custodial parents and step-parents/sibs/etc. And yet, I still think we're better off than we would have been had I stayed in the marriage that wasn't working. Choose your partner wisely and carefully, and wait until after you've got a pretty good idea of who you are as a person, kids!

FeedBlitz available

You can now have my amusing posts emailed straight to your inbox, so you don't miss anything when I decide to come back after a long hiatus. Messages will arrive daily, if I understand how this works and if I've written anything that day. If you're interested, just fill in your email in the box on the sidebar. I promise not to spam you!

Unfortunately, in setting this up, I've scrambled my layout and will have to play with that tomorrow.

Lisa, thanks for getting me headed in the right direction!

Kid news at the end of the school year

Alphabetically this time. . .

What we hear of Kyle is focused on music. . . He had a solo at last month's school band concert and word is that he did well. He's thinking about organizing a youth praise group (songs & scripture study) in his area, but they may travel to revivals in a larger area. Go for it, Kyle! He finishes school for the year tomorrow, and has a busy summer of travel with school & family and lots of camps (Scouts, church, and band) planned.

Liza (pronounced Leeza by all her Hungarian friends and "family") is resisting the creeping of the calendar. Her language skills have really clicked, and she loves the country, the culture, and most of all the people! Besides her travel around Hungary, she's trying to fit in a quick run to Salzburg before she comes home next month.




Miriam is glad to be finishing up her school year also, and has done very well. She will be receiving at least one award next week-but they won't tell us what it is until the assembly! She's done well academically, making honor roll all year. She's really growing up. Besides having pulled that trick of turning into a young woman over night, she's really become a dependable contributor to our household. She baked me a cake for my birthday Monday, and gave me one of the pieces she'd painted in Art this year. I am certainly blessed to have such creative daughters!


We've attended our last middle school concert for our children! Here's Samuel too busy playing to hide from the camera. . .

Samuel's also receiving an award at school, but he couldn't get one in the same assembly as Miriam is. Nope, James will be late to work TWO mornings next week so that he can come help me embarrass the kids (oops, I mean cheer them on!).
Besides family adventures and church camp, Samuel will be busy this summer working on Scouting projects with a week at Conservation camp earning badges toward his Hornaday Award and making his Eagle project happen.

Tori came by yesterday for a visit to celebrate my birthday. Have I mentioned that I really enjoy and appreciate spending time with her? She had a fun time visiting London and Hungary with Liza. (She's the one who provided the Liza pic I used above!) Tori's finished another semester of college, and highly recommends against taking accounting in an online format. (Of course, I never tackled the second semester of accounting at all. I did well my first semester, but couldn't face the idea of three more semesters and changed my major away from business! Guess she's not exactly like her mom.) With the semester over, and a summer without classes, Tori has time to read for FUN, and joined us on our library trip last night. It was delightful having her cue us on appropriate songs on the way home.

I know not everyone breaks into song spontaneously throughout the day, but that's one of the things Liza has commented about missing this year. I love that piece of family culture, and the jokes and laughter from my smart-aleky family. It is a joy and a delight to spend time with these people! One night last month we were sitting at the table and went from discussing school to an old Bugs Bunny cartoon to the Road Runner, then on to planning our "talent" show contribution for the reunion, to quoting and debating the location of various Shakespearean scenes! Wacky!

real estate adventures

After our trip to Berea on Memorial Day weekend, James and I put in an offer on a 5-acre property with a lot of UP! last Thursday. It had much to recommend it-a creek, nice neighbors, and an existing septic system, water, electric and cable were on the property, and it had a southern exposure on an east-facing slope. The previous house burned down about four-five years ago, and there was a pile of rubble/ash that needed to be cleared.
It has a creek down by the street, and goes UP (and UP some more!) from there. We'd have clearing work to do-rubble, trash left in the shed, brush that's grown up during the unattended years, etc. Fauna in the area includes a variety of song birds, deer, some bobcats, a bear that wandered through a couple of years ago, and rattlesnakes that come down to the creek in the dry season. James figured we'd just build them a pond further up the hill.

The neighbors told us there are wet-weather springs, so we'd have to figure out where those were before siting the house, but we could manage that.

We'd need to clear a good bit of underbrush, but that's free mulch. There were a couple of dying pines, and a poplar closer to the house site than we'd like, so those would come down and be cut for firewood. A few other trees would need to be cut to open a clear solar window, and we'd try to use those in our actual construction.

We could make it work!

It had been on the market for about 10 months, so we knew it was a bit over-priced, besides not showing well, so we offered just over tax assessment for it, but included contingencies that the septic system pass approval to get a building permit, and the owner obtain an easement for the driveway that the last survey (1995) showed as encroaching on the neighbor's property. We'd already talked to the neighbors and knew they didn't think it did, but we wanted to avoid problems in the future.

We submitted the offer Thursday morning, with a 5 PM Friday deadline for response. Late Friday our agent called to request an extension because the owner's agent had found out that he was out of town for the weekend. Could they have until Monday morning?

There was no response on Monday, so when I called my agent at 7 PM I gave the owner until 10 AM Tuesday to actually get in contact with me or we pulled the offer. About 9:30 AM I got a call from a gal in Berea who understands the permaculture/eco-friendly (eco-freak) scene, and she had some questions about the street possibly becoming a corridor, or paralleling the corridor for the future continuation of the bypass under construction to the north. (One more concern about that property.) Timmie also said she just bought almost two acres with a tear-down house four miles closer to town, so appropriate property is available. She's going to keep her ears open for us.

Discussing this with James, we had gotten to the point that we weren't going to do anything further to pursue the original property. So, of course, when we got home from our family trip to the library I had a message waiting from our agent.

The seller's agent had finally gone out to his house. He hadn't checked his messages and didn't know he had an offer! He accepted the price as long as we dropped the driveway easement contingency. If we hadn't already gotten to the point that we weren't going to renew the offer, we would probably have negotiated from there to increase the price of the property to cover the cost of a survey and filing paperwork at the courthouse, but we were past that.

Not wanting to buy a property that might lose use of the driveway should the neighbors decide to sell, and being too far from the site to deal with things ourselves, we're letting this offer go.

I'm back to shopping!

We're moving. . .

to Berea!!!!!!!!

Okay, so we won't be moving for another four years (or three if both twins choose to follow Liza's example and graduate early), but -after looking for at least two years- we've found our community.

We want out of "the city", space to extend our gardens, a simple life of gardens, music, relationships, and so forth. We'd been focusing on the eastern side of the Appalachians with no success. Our thinking has been that James's family is in C'burg & Waynesboro, and I still have two brothers in the DC area. We'd like to be near them. Getting other places is easy from the DC & BWI airports.

But we want out of the megalopolis, and the traffic and density, etc. We already live our lives at a slower pace than most folks, and quite happily so.

James's military retirement gives us options since it provides a minimal income-but with medical coverage for a very reasonable price. We figure that once the kids graduate and we clear the housing expenses (mortgage, primarily, but also most utilities), we could easily make enough money to cover the rest of our expenses (in a lower cost-of-living area) with part-time or temporary work. We'd be able to select work based on interests/passions/values, rather than having to focus on the paycheck.

Our goal is to have the property paid off and money saved for building expenses so that James at least, if not both of us, can take a year or two and focus on the building without having to fit it in around a job. And be able to spend much of our time making the world a more beautiful place. . .

After investigating and visiting various communities in the Piedmont (NC through VA, and looking into PA) without finding "our place", I figured we'd widen the search field a bit.

What are we looking for?
A community within an hour's drive (or a little bit more) of a good-sized military base so we can take advantage of the retiree's benefits (medical and maybe commissary), a college town to provide a more diverse perspective on the world (since other small towns can be very homogeneous) and opportunities for me to teach (which rules out most church-affiliated schools except Quaker ones), a public library, a Friends' Meeting, hopefully a Buddhist group of some sort for James, contra-dancing nearby, and affordable non-toxic land (we can build soil but cleaning up major toxins can be a problem). Access to the Interstate system is a plus, but we don't want to be within sound range of the road or train tracks.

We want something in the 2-10 acre range within a couple miles of the college so we can use bikes as our primary mode of transportation for much of the year. Outside a neighborhood association because we don't do lawns! A southern exposure or at least solar access is essential.

Nice-to-haves include: bike trails nearby, a creek or pond, established nut & fruit trees

We'd rather not have a house on the property, since we want to build and won't be moving for a couple of years anyway (vacant houses deteriorate and we aren't looking to be landlords!).

James and I spent Memorial Day weekend in Berea, KY. Why Berea?
It has all of the must haves PLUS an active sustainability group and other environmentally-focused folks. Berea College even has an Environment and Sustainability Department, a history of supporting the Appalachian people and culture, and a philosophy I love! The town grew up around the college, and the community seems to have a more tolerant/open-minded attitude than other small-ish communities we've visited. I received multiple welcoming responses from emails I sent to the Friends and the sustainability group. We met a local musician, Mitch Barrett (check out his Sacred Yard song!), our first night there-and he put us in touch with other folks we needed to talk to.

In short, it feels like a place we could almost "fit in", feel comfortable, connect with like-minded folks, contribute, and so forth. And it's beautiful country, besides being where all my mother's family has come from for roughly two centuries!

I'm going back to school!

I wanted to upload pics but I can't find the camera cord we bought to replace the one left on Liza's desk in Hungary, so. . . I can't show you the pics from Samuel's concert last night or the last two weeks of garden pics. (Aw, shucks???) I'll work on that.

In the meantime, I gave you a kid update (and you need another one), but I didn't share my good news here, and I got lectured Sunday night for not telling everyone-so, to all my loyal readers, ;-)
I hereby announce that I will be starting my PhD in Sociology this fall at the University of Maryland. Between my last minute decision to apply, and a few computer glitches, it took them a while to make the decision, but they offered me admission with an assistantship that includes full tuition and a stipend that will cover books, fees, transportation, and other expenses related to this adventure. As Mom put it, I'll probably learn more from that part of my education than I do from my classes.

Why am I going back to school?
With the big girls out of the house, and the twins starting high school, I'm really moving out of the intense parenting phase of life. (No, Beck, we're still not going to adopt a few more, much as we love yours!)
I considered employment, but with those aforementioned big girls in college, 47% of my after tax earnings go to the increase in their Expected Family Contribution, so I'd be working for a third of whatever the nominal paycheck was. James & I looked at that, and had a hard time finding anything that would pay enough to make it worth the restrictions on our family schedule, unless it were something I'd enjoy doing for "free". I am pretty comfortable with computers, but I'm no geek.
I miss the delight of watching the light go on in my students' eyes, but I still can't handle the noise inherent in a middle or high school situation. (Thanks so much little Lyme buggies!) There are more teachers wanting to teach Spanish at the community college than they need, so it's takes timing, luck, and connections to get in there.

With this as background, I was thinking about our co-parenting situations, and began wondering about if & how it is possible to create a situation where children of divorced parents really feel like they belong in both households. . .more questions: how to define that?, how to assess it?, is it better for the kids to feel like they are part of both households?, how would that be measured?, what are some strategies that support (& interfere) with that belonging?, etc. As the project developed, I quickly realized that, as diverse as my background is, my limited experience in social research would present challenges and I needed a couple of courses in research design & methodology to do this well, and make it meaningful. Investigating the graduate programs in the area, I realized that the courses I would need to feel confident in doing effective and safe research would get me most of the way to a Masters degree, and the other classes I'd need for the Master's degree would complete some 70% of the coursework for a PhD. The project itself will easily work into a dissertation research project, so. . .

The end of the first week of January I decided to apply for the PhD program. Never mind the deadline for applications was in early February and I had never taken the GRE! I scheduled that, checked out three review books from the library, and went to take that as the January ice storm rolled into town. I managed a 700 Verbal/800 Math (better than my SAT scores!)-we do enjoy the challenge of standardized tests!- and had the scores sent on to UMCP. I filled out the first part of the application online, and somehow there was a glitch and I never could get into the supplemental part. Two of my recommendation letters made it in on paper, but the other one was waiting for the electronic format, but the department stopped sending the weekly status reports so I thought everything was in.
And so I waited to hear from them. . .
And waited. . .
And waited, until late March, after the letters were supposed to go out. They pulled my application off the shelf, decided they really did want me in the program after all, but had to figure out where they were going to get the money to offer me the assistantship. . .and so things were still "pending" when I left for Hungary. The Graduate Adviser called while I was gone, but I didn't get the message for some reason (?!?). I had an emailed acceptance waiting for me when I got home, and the official letter came the first week of May.

I'm really looking forward to: being back in class, the intellectual exchange, learning new things, meeting new people, teaching again (eventually), etc. At this point I'm expecting (and the department is too) to specialize in Social Psychology and Gender, Work & Family areas. Now, if they only had some environmental sociology courses. . .but I've tracked down a contact with that background to guide me in some independent study in that area!

The family's screaming that it's dinner time, so I'll post more later (and won't wait a month this time!).