"Cheers to a new year and another chance for us to get it right." -Oprah Winfrey
Every year I set the goal to take a photo a day. Perhaps this is the wrong time to set such a goal because there are no two weeks of the year that are more blasé or humdrum than the first two weeks in January. Here we sit. Out of money. Out of PTO. School has placed its insufferable noose tightly around our necks. And the January haze has settled its murky keister into the valley. What a perfect time to start faithfully documenting daily life! Which is why my photo-a-day goal usually lasts until about January 3rd.
But this year I'm on a roll. I am standing at seven days in a row of daily documentation. It took some effort. A couple of photos were of the still life right before hitting the sack variety, but I'm taking credit on this one. It's the photos of the simple and the mundane that I figure I will cherish most when the children have all flown the nest, so I'm doing my best to capture those moments.
Here is our first week of 2015 in a nutshell:
January 1st. Do you have that restaurant that you like to visit for that one menu item? I go to Roosters for one item on their menu. NAUGHTY FRIES! That is one pile of batter-dipped deep-fried goodness dipped in gorgonzola, pepper jack, Louisiana hot sauce heaven! Naughtiness never tasted so good!
Followed by a viewing of Night At The Museum 3. Cute show. Made me miss Robin Williams.
January 2nd:
Jessica packs up all of her clean laundry, new winter attire, bedding, and Christmas vinyl and heads back to Logan for her second semester. We're all sad. But that little turkey peeking into the frame from below may be the saddest.
Drive careful. Study hard.
January 3rd:
Spencer has been walking around with quite the shaggy hair these days. He begged me not to let Neil come near him with a pair of clippers. So we took him over to Smartcuts where he was much happier with his new year's haircut.
We finally took Sabrina on her birthday date. Gabor Brothers. Her favorite. A very large chicken nugget sitting on a bed of pasta? Yes please.
January 4th:
First Sunday of the new year. 9 a.m. church! Yea! Everyone was up bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, excited for new Sunday school teachers and new primary classes and Sunday naps. Did I just say that?
January 5th:
I hate winter in new houses! Neil spent two Saturdays painstakingly lining our roof with heat tape so that the snow would melt and drain off of our North facing house properly. The ground froze where our sidewalk meets the yard. The heat tape melted the snow no problem, but the water has nowhere to go but up and over the tube connected to our down spout and onto the walkway in front of our porch, where it immediately freezes and forms an ice rink for all who visit us to enjoy. Neil spent a good two hours digging up our yard trying to find the problem and trying to melt the ice in the tube so that we can somehow get more heat tape under our sidewalk. We won't mention who's brilliant idea it was to stick a blow dryer into the tube. Problem solving is not one of my stronger suits.
This is in conjunction with a full month of trying to figure out the mystery musty smell that has been lingering in our unfinished basement family room for the last month. Turns out water got into the room somehow and has been unable to dry under the insulation. It's just been festering under there creating all sorts of mildew and making me one step shy of certifiably insane.
This is my question. Is it better to stay in your old house with all of its problems, or to buy a new house with new problems? At least I knew what my problems were in the old house. Now everyday brings new surprises!
The ice under our sidewalk still hasn't melted. Now we just have a huge tube connected to the downspout, draped over the sidewalk, and held into place in our front yard with a bag of gravel. If you need help finding our house, it's the ghetto looking one in that nice neighborhood. And don't mind the smell when you go inside, we've been carefully growing a mildew farm in our basement and we hate to disturb it.
January 6th:
Sabrina currently has straight A's and an F in science. Her science teacher believes in "self-guided" learning. This is code for, "I really only want to be a wrestling coach but the school system says that I have to teach some kind of curriculum too to justify my job so my teaching 'method' is: look up the online text book and fill out the online study guide and take the online tests, and fill free to ask me any questions, but not after school because I've got wrestling practice." This high school has far too many coaches teaching core curriculum. They aren't all terrible teachers. But most of them are very terrible teachers.
I have noticed something about the rising generation, namely my household of the rising generation. They are googling maniacs but they freeze up the minute they have to pull information from a textbook. Children no longer have six textbooks sitting in their locker that they lug home everyday to do their homework with. They just don't know how to navigate their way through textbooks. Enter mom, who grew up lugging four textbooks home everyday.
"Look Sabrina, see how it's asking you to define this word right here. See if you scan down this paragraph, there is that word in bold print. See there's your answer." Granted, online textbooks are more cumbersome than leafing through a hard copy. And to Sabrina's credit, she can navigate her way through an online history textbook with great precision. But science isn't her forte. She would rather draw or write novels. We'll be transferring her out of this science class and into, you got it, another coaches class. Heaven help us.
When I'm done doing biology it's time to snuggle on the couch with Jonah for some good Tolkien reading before bed.
January 7th:
After reading Tolkien last night, Jonah had to show me the latest addition to the ever-expanding Arabor that he has been building out of Legos. He will spend hours in his bedroom adding new creative features to his little dwarf kingdom. I love it. I love that this is a creative outlet for him.
He was describing to me last night what he plans on adding next. He said, "Mom, I don't think Arabor will ever be finished." I told him that as long as he continues to create in his head, Arabor will forever be under construction. This is my favorite kind of learning. I wish this sweet little boy who struggles so much in school could do more of this kind of learning.
I guess it's a parent's job, not the school system's job, to make sure that our kids get every opportunity to use the gifts they've been given. I guess it's our job to help them seek education and careers that allow them to capitalize on these gifts. It's a hard job this parenting thing. So much harder than I ever imagined. Helping your child reach his greatest potential? I'm not quite sure how to do that. But for this week, it meant helping my college student make some choices for her class schedule this semester. Helping my sophomore navigate her way through biology according to Mcgraw Hill and oohing and aahing over my sixth grader's engineering masterpiece. I hope it was enough, because that's all this momma has got.
