Kids and kin

Samuel (and two friends) started testing for his black belt in kung fu in February. At Jing Ying, testing to Black is a 6-12 months long process. Besides demonstrating excellence in the forms, including multiple weapons forms, the students also take responsibility for teaching others. It’s wonderful to see how much Samuel has enjoyed and accomplished over the last four+ years that he’s been studying here. I really appreciate the family feel of the school.

I tried to start kung fu last month, but reality intervened this month, and I’ve postponed that adventure until next month- when I’ll have more time during the summer (yeah, right!) to get into the groove there. Samuel had figured he’s far enough ahead of me that I wouldn’t be able to catch up with him. . . James just wondered when/how I was going to fit it into my schedule. (You can say “I told you so” now, darling.)

Miriam has been busy with learning Russian dances for a performance this weekend. I’ll try to get a picture of that posted, but you’ll be more likely to see it on James’s blog first!

Kyle called James on St. Patrick’s Day, just before he headed out for a band trip to Florida, and then was going to be heading to Ohio Valley University this month for a Bible Bowl event.

Liza was out for a quick visit last month, and it was wonderful to see her! She’s taking a photography class at the local community college, and busy with plans for next Fall.

Tori’s working and taking classes and dancing and still finding time to travel to dance weekends and drop everything to come down and be here for her little sister when Miriam needed her.

That’s one of my biggest joys. I enjoy the relationships I have with my kids, and treasure the time we spend together, but I am still the parent. There are times when I have to push or set a boundary, and there’s an imbalance in our relationship because of our role differences. It makes my heart sing to see how close the kids are to each other. I love my sibs, and am so glad to have them in my life. I’m thrilled to see my own kids growing into strong relationships also.

Last Friday James and I drove down to Alexandria to watch Aria’s theatrical debut. She was a spider in her elementary school production of Sleeping Beauty-the Enchanted story of Princess Briar Rose. It was a fabulous production, put on at the high school!, with live music and incredible performances. Aria was spectacular! She takes after her Aunt Becky in her delight at being in the spotlight (but I’m her favorite aunty because I was there!).

I’m so glad we live close enough to Rob & Lisa to enjoy watching their kids grow up! We were down last month for our annual Epilepsy Walk adventure, this time representing SeizureTracker.com! James and I were brochure distributors extraordinaire (“Have you heard about SeizureTracker.com yet?”). I’m so proud of what Rob and Lisa have done with that project! They’re fabulous parents, especially with all that they have going on with keeping their brilliant kids challenged while managing Evan’s medical needs. And somehow they’ve created time to develop this site and provide this service for others.

Our own beautiful corner of the world

James and I are enjoying the bursting Spring as we take our walks around the neighborhood. I haven’t had much time for gardening, but we did stop by Homestead Gardens Saturday and picked out a few plants. James got them all planted Saturday afternoon while I was doing my homework. We also picked up hyacinths in a pot for my desk at work (almost too fragrant for the enclosed space!), and another orchid for James’s collection. (Is it fair of me to encourage him to buy another one, and then tease him about doing so???)

Last night was just about the first time I did anything in the garden besides enjoy it. . . I took a few minutes and untangled the kiwi vines and wrapped/tied them further up the arbor. I had taken a few minutes last week to pollinate the peach blossoms (all 7 of them!) with a paintbrush since we hadn’t seen any bees around at that point, and helped a bit with planting peas last month, but James is doing most of the garden work these days.

James will be driving down to Georgia to pick up his special small-cell bees sometime in the next couple of weeks. Hopefully they’ll be well established by next Spring, and I won’t have to hand pollinate the peaches then.

We’ve accomplished one goal: eating something fresh from the garden every month of the year. We had fresh kale and black-eyed peas for dinner last Saturday (and lunch on Monday!) and I just harvested the last of my wintergreen berries. We may have strawberries before the end of the month. There are a few blossoms already. The peach tree and our bush cherries have blossomed. The apple and pear trees, along with the figs, kiwis, grapes, wolfberry, & quince are beginning to leaf out. The blueberry bushes are loaded with blossom buds. We’re going to thin those a bit, but will let them bear some this year.

James cleared the pachysandra from another bed in the front so that he could use that space for growing food.

Our frogs made it through the winter, and we even had a pair of wood ducks stop by for a visit to the pond last week. I was hoping they’d stay around and eat slugs, but haven’t seen them since. (Anyone know where I can buy slug-eating beetles???)

We’re looking forward to showing off our gardens, and are busy plotting ideas to share with my brother Chuck. He just bought another five acres- and has to hurry and get the gardens laid out before that plot gets infested with the equine epidemic that got his first lot. I figure that we’ve got four kinds of apples and four pears and a peach on our 1/5 of an acre. He can have lots more in an orchard in one corner, and still have room for his hops and salsa gardens. And he already has a handy source of manure to enhance the soil! I overheard James trying to talk him into a couple of beehives. . .

Catching up-school stuff. . .

After two months without blogging, I guess I’d better do a bit of catching up. This post is about my school stuff. I’ll do another one about the garden and a third about the kids.

School is going well, but keeping me very busy. I really set myself up for a challenge this semester when I carried a research project over from last semester, and then just kept complicating my life- with a trip to Hawaii and then taking an extra class- but that shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone who knows me.

The research project was for my Sociology of Mental Health class, and I thought it would be interesting and relevant to research the long-term mental health consequences for children whose parents divorce. Interesting? Maybe. But definitely NOT fun, and way too close to home. As the original due date approached, I thought I’d change topics, but then I couldn’t get timely access to materials for my alternate topic (the University of Maryland doesn’t do much with Appalachia), and just before school resumed in January I admitted I’d be better off going back to my original topic, even if things with Kyle seemed to “blow up” every time I got into my research. I did finally finish that paper over Spring Break. The good news is that the vast majority of children whose parents divorce end up in the “normal” range as young adults (up to about age 30 is as far as the research goes), with about 10% moving from a low normal range to display clinical-level depression at some point in their twenties. Much of that seems to be related to their exposure to continuing parental conflict, or loss of relationship with the non-custodial parent (hence the personal relevance particularly with Kyle’s absence).

While post-divorce parenting questions were my motivation for returning to school, I won’t be following that path unless I can find a team to work with on relevant issues. It’s just “too close to home” at this point in my life. I joked about studying sex, since it’s much more fun, but I think I’ll be doing more with education or work-life balance issues, and probably involving the military. We have a fabulous Military Sociology program here at UMCP, and the advisors are tremendously helpful. It’s also the community with the most “older” students, and I’m quite comfortable there. I realized the other week that I’ve carried a dependent’s ID card for all but 8 years of my life!

Which leads me to another factor that complicated this semester: taking an extra class. The program pays for 10 credits/semester- three courses and a seminar that meets once/week or every other week & has minimal homework. My courses this semester are: second semester Statistics (Multiple Regression Analysis), the core course for Gender, Work & Family (only taught in alternate years), and the new Survey of Research Methods course that is designed to introduce us to various research methodologies and to help us prepare our proposal for the Second-Year Paper (Master’s Thesis equivalent but designed to be just about ready for submission to a journal for publication). Typically students also take Contemporary Theory Spring semester of their first year, but I couldn’t fit it in and it’s offered every year so that got postponed. I also had to postpone taking the Military Families course that I’d wanted to help with my research for next year.

. . . I asked Mady Segal for some guidance on foundational readings for my research on the impact of parental military service on children’s educational attainment. She first suggested that I scan the course syllabus, and then talk to some students who’d taken her course in the past. Then she thought I’d be better off if I audited the course this semester- do all the readings and attend seminar, but save the papers for some later time and get credit for it through Independent Study credits at that time.

The official “seminar” this semester for our cohort was a statistical analysis programming workshop (STATA). “Unofficially” I’m also in the Military Sociology seminar that all of the MilSoc folks attend, whether or not we’re registered, AND the Works-in-Progress seminar that meets every other week to discuss individual student research projects.

So, I’ve ended up doing most of the work for four classes, and that after taking a ten-day trip to Hawaii for most of the first two weeks of the semester! No wonder I’ve felt a bit busy.

Fortunately I’m figuring out how to play the grad school game more comfortably. The reading is easier now that I’ve learned the jargon and format of the articles. I am having fun.

It looks like I’ll be teaching my own class next Fall. I’ve tried to talk my way into a research position, but keep hearing that they have me in mind to teach. . . So this summer I’ll be preparing for that, plus creating my own mini-research experiences. One of the profs in our department is working on a Community Greens project in Baltimore and needs interviewers, so I jumped on that. And I’ll probably be helping with coding and analysis of another qualitative research project over in the Family Studies Department. Then trips to Colorado to help Becky with her yard, Boston for the American Sociological Association annual meeting in August, and Baltimore Yearly Meeting the week after that. No time to get bored here!