Where Do the Loyalties Lie?

R's favorite gymnastics coach, Coach D,  left the WS gym a couple weeks ago. WS was real close-mouthed about his departure, even though we'd been working with them for six years and had a very close relationship with Coach D. That felt....wrong somehow. Like they were trying to scab over sore spot just as fast as possible.

Well, we picked at that sore spot. Forgive us. But it was for R's benefit.

You see, the WS Team Director and R just don't get along very well. The coach can't figure out how to relate to R, R can't figure out how to relate to the Director. They're both good at what they do, they're not a good fit for each other. It was the assistant coach, D - with whom R worked most, and best - the kept it all together for all of us.

And with him gone, it was clear that R felt unhappy about WS. His fire dimmed almost immediately.

And, truth be told, we just didn't 'click' with the parents committee. Try as we might, the communication just wasn't very effective. We were often left out of the loop. We heard similar things from the parents of R's peers in Level 4 and Level 5.

So, we started picking at the scab. It took a couple weeks of calling around. It wasn't easy - some old-fashioned gumshoe action was involved:

• We made a list of every gymnastics club in the metro area, and started calling
  • Did they have a level 4 and up boy's team?
  • Did they just hire Coach D?
  • Did they know Coach D?
  • Did they know where he went?
    
• We learned that, though there was a gym studio within three miles of home (a geographical winner!) they did NOT have a boy's team (loser!). BUT, they did refer us to a new gymnastics studio that just started up, and is building their boy's team right now. They wouldn't tell us names, but they were all to happy to connect us.
  
• It felt like that scab we were picking at had just lifted a bit. Suddenly, we felt like sharks, smelling blood. So we called; made the strike.  
  
• It was Coach D!
  
• Coach D is now the program director for competitive boys gymnastics at a brand-new gym staffed (interestingly enough) with former WS staffers. The staffers, it turns out, who relate well to R.
  
• So the next afternoon, R paid a visit and ran through a workout with Coach D's new team.
  
• R discovered that virtually all of his Level 4 and Level 5 teammates had also hunted Coach D down. The entire developmental base for WS's boys team did what we did! There may be one or two level 4/5 boys still with WS, but not very many. R's workout was with all his WS peers!
  
• This's got to smart over at WS, as they slowly come to the realization that we all figured it out anyway!

But I don't really care about what WS feels, do I? They make their choices and I make mine. You see, ummm, R was feeling lost as a side-effect of their choice to cover up Coach D's departure. Now that we've found him, R doesn't feel lost any more. He feels better than ever about gymnastics. The new gym is exclusively gymnastics. It gives him a place with his "people" -- just his "people," no other groups to dilute the effect of being surrounded by his "people." That's where his loyalty lies.

And Coach D got the confidence boost he needed: the gift of a ready-made team of boys he's already been developing, who have love and loyalty for what he's all about as a coach. The boys bonded to each other and to the coach. The parents bonded to each other, in part because we all were feeling excluded by the WS parents committee. Not that we knew it, but we were all poised for exit, weren't we? WS's handling of the situation was the final one-finger push needed to propel us all forward and out the door.

We'll still be driving to Tigard for gymnastics, but suddenly it feels like there's a PURPOSE to it all. R feels serious, important, valuable. He now has a real sense that he has real work he can do there. He has purpose. And that's where MY loyalties lie; with my son's ultimate well-being.

What a blessing. Glad we picked at that sore spot.

Photo from The Weekend

Here's a photo from the Black Butte weekend I mentioned last week (see "Now Where Did August Go?") Photo credit goes to E our hostess for the weekend.

 

Thanks to E, M and N for opening up their house to us. We had a wonderful time. It's nice when you find another family with whom you can be at-ease and compatible across the entire family. Our experience is that only a minority of families with whom we interact that we could share a house with for a weekend and get along so nicely.  The Johnsons surely feel compatible with YOUR family. We just hope the feeling is mutual.

 

** I see some family resemblances here. It's nice to have photos that other people take. It makes the resemblances more obvious. For example, R and M both have Mom's eye shape. The boys have near-matching smiles, while the girls' smiles  match each other. R has Grandpa Joe's ears. And in this photo, M looks exactly like her Mom - except for the line of the eyebrows.

Carpe Pianem

The piano arrived yesterday. On R's eleventh birthday, coincidentally. This is the $100 piano that I found for sale from a coworker. It had been a student piano for her children and they were upgrading. I jumped at the opportunity. It's an upright, about 80 years old or so, with a black-ish finish and simple, clean craftsman-style details. In other words, a perfect period match for our Cottage. Especially when you factor in C's favorite black cathedral-backed chairs that coordinate the cottage with the craftsman with the piano.

It slid right into place in the living room, directly opposite the front door, like it had always been there. In talking to the piano movers, there may have been a reason for that.

The senior guy on the movers team said to me as they were setting up the ramps to get up the front stairs, “Hey, didn’t we move a piano out of your house about two years ago?”

“Possibly." I replied, "That would have been about the time the previous owner moved out. I don’t know if she had a piano, but she might have.”

“Oh, I was definitely here. I remember the stairs. And the tree. I had to back the truck up into the tree then, too. Had to be this house.” he then pointed to a corner in the living room and said, “It sat right there.”

“Well, that’s where we’re putting THIS piano!” I offered back, "Must be where it belongs."

And belong there, it certainly does.

Immediately after the piano movers left, I headed out to meet the rest of the family for birthday dinner with Grandma Gin and Grandpa Jerry. We often celebrate Grandpa's Aug 25th birthday in conjunction with R's Aug 26th birthday. After a great dinner with everyone, R, M and I headed over to Wunderland at the Avalon Theater to play some video games. C stayed at the mall for a while to shop closeouts for good deals.

It wasn't until after 9pm that everyone reunited at home. And it was then that C, M and R alternately took time exploring the piano. With C's first piece - one that her fingers remembered from childhood lessons - it was obvious that the house had prior knowledge of a piano. You could just tell. Like it was pressed in to the paint. It sounded so right. You could almost feel the house dance. Like there were musical ghosts present, thankful for the return of a piano in the physical realm.

While C was playing, exploring the action of the keys, R came downstairs from his room, saying "Hey! The piano sounds really good from upstairs. It fills the house up with music!" Everyone was happy, smiling.

While M took her bath, R explored melodies for about 15 minutes, then faded off to bed (and a good late-night read). But M and C sat together at the keys, in their pajamas, for almost an hour.

"Teach me everything you know about playing the piano!" begged M.

"That won't take me too long," grinned C, "who then launched into a flourish and a full-blown two-handed arrangement."

Finally, when I shooed them off to bed at 11pm, M was reading simple music for "I'm A Little Teapot", playing the melody with one finger, and singing along with her own accompaniment.

When it came to the piano last night, who didn't seize the opportunity?

Now, Where Did August Go?

I'm laughing because C and the kids have been making the Pacific Northwest Grand Tour of cool destinations. I've already blogged about them going to Leavenworth for four days, then continuing on to Black Butte for a long weekend. It just dawned on me that they'll be home for, what? four days? Then they'll be spending the long holiday weekend at the beach at Grandma & Grandpa's. This is all AFTER our week away at Badasht.

Sooo.... by month end, C and the kids will have been on the road for 16 of the 31 days in August, including nine work days

I thought this was going to be a stay-at-home-and-be-lazy month? That may have been the idea, but the reality is WAAAAY more fun!

Ice Cream ROCKS, but is it Really a Rock?

Maria Blumm blogs under the title GREEN GABBRO, on geology type topics. BoingBoing pointed at this specific blog entry on how ice cream can be re-cast as an igneous rock. Below are a couple illustrations from her blog entry, and an excerpt. But I don't want to bury the lead here, as I see it. For my purposes, the lead is in now being aware of an entire blog environment devoted to science topics.

 

 

ice cream

 

igneous rock

Much like igneous rocks, the same liquid mix can turn out very differently depending on what happens while it is freezing. The goal of most ice cream and sorbet is to have a smooth and creamy texture, which would be ruined by the presence of large ice crystals. To achieve this, you want to cool your ice cream so quickly that the crystals don't have time to grow, and keep the mixture stirred up while it freezes.

Read the entire entry here: Green Gabbro : The Igneous Petrology of Ice Cream

Death Star at Fleet Week

San Francisco is famous for Fleet Week. What if Fleet Week included the Star Wars Imperial machinery? After all, Lucas and the Skywalker Ranch are in the bay area...it would make sense to pay "daddy" a visit, yeah?

BoingBoing picked this up, and I just HAD to share. I embedded the video above. Also, here's the link [here]

This I Have Done

Over the weekend, we:

• Started staging garage sale items into the garage.
• Scoured through the upstairs rooms and closets, pulling out 'stuff' that is no longer useful for us. This included (among other things) clothes that are now too small, toys now outgrown, books for audiences now too young, and science kits now exhausted of their contents.
• What 'stuff' we kept, we organized into logical and centralized locations. As an example, instead of three various locations for science kits, we now have one. We can now take complete inventory of what we have to experiment with!
• Sorted the last of the toys/books boxes from the garage. Some of these items went into the house, others went straight to the garage sale area. These qualified as the final six boxes of the move. They're now unpacked.
• Cleaned the majority of the workshop space in the basement; getting the clutter picked up and returned to a tidy storage mechanism.
• Prepared a space for the piano.
• Wired up the last remaining yard spot, highlighting the Lilac tree in the front. As hoped, this additional spot created a balanced light pattern from the street that is much more visually appealing than before. One light, well placed, made a big difference.

This was a lot, actually. It took a lot of slow, methodical time to accomplish. It took children choosing to make hundreds of individual decisions. It took the involvement of the kids and patience from parents as we taught the process and thinking that goes into de-cluttering one's space.

So, we generally just turned on the Olympics and worked through the coverage. On Saturday, when the temperature was in the high 90's, being upstairs was really hard. But Sunday, with the temps in the high 80's most of the day, it was pretty tolerable. Nevertheless, things continue to settle in.

To me, this felt *typical* and like a return to normal. We were doing the normal sort of clear out a family does from time to time. It wasn't associated with a home rehab project; we're just cleaning up our personal stuff that was lurking behind the construction, just out of reach.

 

I spent all day Sunday barefoot. I mean, I was all over the place. I mowed the lawn barefoot. I carried boxes of stuff to and from the garage. I took trash out to the alley. I worked in the garage and the basement. All barefoot.

During the construction period, my feet would have been muddy, dirty, grimy - awful, and within minutes - sometimes without even leaving the house. So I was expecting rather the same situation once again.

Given my expectations, I made a specific point at the end of the day to wash my feet.  Imagine my surprise when I stepped into the tub and did a quick check -- they looked clean! I hadn't washed them yet! I went ahead and washed them, and yes, there was some dirt there. But amazingly little - too little to show.

Healthy, green, vibrant lawn; regularly vacuumed floors clear of construction debris; a patio, path and parking area that is essentially clear of debris and dirt. All these things finally come together to allow me to create a 'clean' place instead of a "mud pit" as C sometimes referred to it.

 

Late last night, as thunder storms rolled past in the very far-away distance, C and I sat on the bench in our front yard. The newly installed spot cast a halo of indirect light around us, without causing any discomfort. The rest of the yard lights showed off the plants and the verdant green grass. The traffic moved by at a light Sunday night pace, with nearly as many bicyclists as cars. Up above the street, we could see everyone else, but were not noticed - privacy in plain sight. We sat there, her head on my shoulder, admiring our yard and the beauty of the house. After a number of moments of quiet, C said, softly but proudly, "This I have done."

She spoke for us both.

Badasht

Badasht is the Baha'i Faith Family camp that we attend every year. I've mentioned Badasht before (2007, 2006), but not blogged extensively about it. It was, once again, wonderful for us; I do not think I can blog in detail this year either. I think blog readers who have been will understand and agree: you just have to be there to get it.

We've had some evolutions and stretches this year as members of the Badasht community:

• R has graduated to the Junior Youth class - again a rite of passage that sends him a message to step up his game. This year, R had to figure out how to manage his feelings of separation from his best friend, X, who isn't old enough for Junior Youth yet.
  
• M continues to thrive in whatever group she is assigned, as always. 
  
• The whole Johnson family stepped out of our comfort zones, picked up a guitar, and began singing as a family. We even sang a song in the "Festival of the Arts" program. It wasn't spectacular, but we didn't totally embarrass ourselves, either...at least I don't think we did...
  
• C continued as devotions person - putting on a terrific program.
  
• I served as Registrar again, training someone to take over in my stead next year. Who knows what role (if any) I will have in next year's camp. That will remain to be seen.

I'm likely to toss some photos up on the blog...but I'm feeling in no particular rush to do so.

 

Feeling in No Particular Rush.... I like the sound of that.

For me personally, a number of things have taken place in the past weeks that created a prolonged and strong environment of pressure and expectation upon me. I would not say that I am burned out, but after so much effort, it is time to rest a bit. The result? I don't want this to sound negative but I'm feeling not particularly in a rush about most things right at the moment. The feeling - like all feelings - will pass. Until it does, the expression of my frame-of-mind stands here .... duly noted.

Make's Wireless Garage Door Opener

[link]

Informal Housewarming - Follow-Up

It was good. Could almost leave it at that and be done. Having S (C's sister) and her husband, K, around was delightful. Using their visit as a deadline for getting the house in order was also good. By the end of Saturday, the house was deep cleaned like never before. We rearranged the master bedroom a bit to make it more functional as well as pleasing. It's no surprise that we're still tuning our room; it was the last room we even considered organizing.

The front yard looks good. The back yard magnetically drew the adult guests. The playroom, loaded with toys, became the kids' hangout. All of them (six total, ranging from 11 to 20 mo) played together with much better than expected harmony and delight. The rest of the house was lovely and admired by all. Then, out to the back yard to enjoy the open air, the garden and the shade they went!

After dark, with the yard lights in place and the chiminea alight, the adults did NOT migrate back inside, but stayed put. Some talked deep into the night. With a 2000-2200 sq ft house, 1,500 sq ft of back patio, this place lives awful big.

Overnighting accomodations included the boys in the boys' room, girls in the girls' room, and parents in the common room. Everyone seemed well placed and satisfied.

An interesting fact of the house I did not fully realize: from the patio, sound from the upstairs common room is easily heard through the open skylights. Monitoring the interactions upstairs is much easier than I would have guessed. Can't make out exact words, but can definitely determine if the sounds are happy, argumentative, or expressions of distress. That's good. 

Even the relative shortage of toilets did not create a bottleneck. It was manageable. Though I don't think we could live with nine people long-term, a weekend visit with that many people does NOT bring our house to a screeching halt.

So, in other words: the house, tested for it's first sort-of housewarming, worked like a champ.

And it was SO good for all of us to have a day with K and S. I think the Johnsons needed that time. I'm hoping K & S and family had a similar experience.

Time For Photo Updates

Cleaning house for our weekend guests (and to leave a clean place for our return from Badasht). We've done lots of work on the 'house tuning front'. Meaning that many of my AFTER photos need updates because we're now up to, shall we say, POST-MODERNIST AFTER status.

• Low voltage yard lights (15 total) throughout the back yard.
• Low voltage lights now illuminate the east side path and the front yard steps (8 lights).
• Low voltage spots are getting worked in around a couple key landscape items in the front yard (2 more).
• Upgraded the low voltage power pack to handle the actual load of lights.
• Step stones in place in front and east side (thanks to R, M and C).
• SE corner rain gutter replaced with a copper gutter chain (again, thanks to R, M and C).
• Final work to pound down decorative gravel around all the pavers and step stones.
• More bark dust to finish off the front and side.

I need to bury the new lighting wire in the front yard. We need to clean and organize the living space of the house at a minimum. It'd be ideal to clean up my workbench, too, but optional.

If the yard, though, was starting to ''pop' before, it's bounding on a trampoline now. The lights have been an attention to detail that has taken the yard appeal to a whole new level. None of the other houses around us are using outdoor lighting for anything other than a minimal street sign or sidewalk lamps. Now, we have a night time look that includes hightlighted trees as well as illuminated paths. It may be night, but its still a garden; not a dark place.

The comment with M last night was, 'wow, Dad. It looks like Disneyland!'

The coolest part? Mostly we've been financing the lights by returning our surplus materials. They're not really costing us much.

One concern I had was all the electricity that we'd be burning with the yard lights. First, the lights are on a timer, running only for about 5 hours a night. Second, these are low-wattage bulbs. For 25 lamps throughout the house, we're using a total of 250W; averaging 10W per bulb. That's less than our dining room chandelier would use if it ran on incandescent bulbs.

Excel Usage Tips

From the PointyHairedDilbert's blog:

"Who said Excel takes lot of time / steps do something? Here is a list of 15 incredibly fun things you can do to your spreadsheets and each takes no more than 5 seconds to do."

[link]