Settling in

The kids are getting into the groove of serious school now, past the heady first days of orientation and nametag art projects. Skipper feels pretty optimistic* that this year will not be as terrible as last year, and that her teacher is less of a tyrant than last year's edition. Duchess is thrilled to be back among her people, and resigned to her class schedule. They're settling to the after-school schedule, as well - Skipper walks herself home and reads for hours after school (except for her once-weekly roller-skating class) and Duchess catches a ride from a teammate's family to her rowing adventures and busses** herself home afterward. 

There are two major battles we're working through with the kids right now.
1) Sibling assholery. They're awful to each other, and it poisons our family life. Our current approach is to pair off on a revolving basis for on-on-one time*** (which I'm calling "dates" in the absence of a better term, much to Duchess's dismay, because she's revolted by the notion of a date with her dad) to strengthen our connections to each of us so we can better deal with all of us.
2) Duchess's phone. I don't even... it's just shitty. What I  hate most is that her attention is always partly in phone-land. We just recalibrated our devices policy to create more blocks of phone-free time, so she's either totally on the phone or totally off it and she's pretty much being a jerk about even the mild restrictions we're enforcing. I'm sure the drama will continue to unfold.

What else? I have been reading this blog from the beginning (and so have the girls), and I was struck by how wearisome and unstable our life was from 2008-2012. Reading it, I remember how exhausted, how spread thin, and how despairing about the future I felt. Our current state, in which I can casually buy expensive groceries every week AND a new hammock chair for the porch AND a pair of brand-new shoes for Skipper AND save money for retirement, and our kids take care of themselves after school, is dramatically better in almost every way (except for trying-to-guide-a-kid-through-growing-up-in-the-smartphone-era and the president). Also, I really enjoyed watching videos of Skipper in her moray eel phase.

I might get a job for real (at the place where I've been temping in one form or another for four years). I'm interviewing in a few weeks.

That's pretty much the news. I'm leaving out The Great and Endless But Slow-Moving Saga of the Crumbling Foundation. You're welcome.


*Or what passes for optimistic in Skipper-ville.
**It will very soon become too dark after rowing ends for me and Cook to feel comfortable with this - she catches the bus at a physically isolated stop on a bridge (under another bridge) near multiple homeless encampments, a stop where I wouldn't feel comfortable waiting alone. So we're going to have to start picking her up, which adds another step to the evening. I recognize that it's still a much easier routine than when both kids needed retrieval from daycare/school, but it's annoying.
*** Some of the dates so far: Cook and Skipper went to see RBG, Skipper and I baked blondies and made lemonade, Duchess and Skipper went to see a bad second-run kids movie and eat lots of candy and popcorn, Cook and Duchess played video games together. They've been pretty successful. SO FAR.

It isn't summer any more.

It's fall!

Duchess is in eighth grade, and she seems cool with it so far. She has a pretty brutal rowing schedule lined up, so it remains to be seen how that works in balance with homework and her demanding social media brand. I'm guessing a bunch of tantrums will be part of the process, but I'm holding out hopes.

Skipper is in fourth grade. She would like to drop out of school. I'm guessing a bunch of tantrums will be part of her school year as well.

We took first-day-of-school photos, and they were really adorable. However, there was no memory card in the camera, so they exist only in my memory.

Summer catch-up, part two

Momotaro has a sister now! We got to visit her in August, combining the trip with Duchess's first rowing regatta. (I say first because she's decided to go all in on rowing this fall. She rows every weekday after school for two hours, and on Saturdays for three hours. Rowing is not a sport, it's a cult. More about that later.)

Momotaro, incidentally, doesn't think much of me.

Skipper was thrilled to see Momotaro, who is pretty much her favorite person in the world, but she was willing to spend a few moments with his sister.

Summer catch-up part one

So, the rest of summer happened.

We went to Timothy Lake with friends. This involves camping right next to a man-made lake and a whole bunch of other (loud) people, only a short drive from home. We pretty much just alternately float around the lake (with a priapic floaty) and take naps in the hammock all day. A good destination for half-assed campers like us. (I should note, though, that Cook went running several times, so he EARNED his hammock time.)

Duchess and her friend spent a lot of time taking photos of each other, as middle-schoolers seem to do.

It was a lovely weekend. On the way home, we stopped at a food cart. This is the way Duchess always looks at me these days.

We went on vacation!

We did. We took the guinea pigs to a sitter and left town for a week and a half.

First we went to Boston and stayed at a hotel overnight before taking the bus to Maine. We hunted around for dinner in one of those miserable, frustrating, whine-filled searches for food that satisfies everybody, and ended up eating dumplings at 9 pm at a place that brags that it's the second best Chinese restaurant in the United States. The dumplings were good. The hotel beds were comfortable.

I was only in Maine briefly before heading back to Boston to hang out with a friend and enjoy traveling on my own. The rest of the family kept the camera and had some classic Maine summer adventures, including kayaking, nature walks, swimming, and sailing.

We reconvened in DC (dragging Papa Big Cook with us) and spent five days visiting museums. memorials, and federal government buildings. We stayed in Arlington, and took the Metro a LOT. We also walked a lot, and it was HOT. Finding food everybody could live with was a daily challenge (ramen and pizza are the only things Skipper really wants to eat anymore). It was also a really nice trip, even punctuated with whine-splosions.

































Day One: Duchess nearly passed out in the Diplomatic Reception Rooms at the State Department, greatly alarming the security guards escorting us. However, that was a fun tour, and Duchess rallied for a full day of slogging to the Lincoln and Vietnam memorials and past the White House, lunch in a highly-secure food court at the Ronald Reagan International Trade Center, and a visit to the Museum of American History. We saw many Objects, including Abraham Lincoln's top hat and the Swedish Chef. (I find that I really enjoy looking at historically significant Objects.) We met our first very tame squirrel.

Day Two: We visited the Holocaust Memorial Museum (just the exhibit designed for kids, because that's all we could manage), the Jefferson Memorial, and the National Museum of African American History and Culture. We ate frozen lemonade.

Day Three: Air and Space Museum and Museum of the American Indian. (Duchess had a buffalo burger in the cafeteria.) We also had a lovely evening visit with some friends we haven't seen in a very long time.

Day Four: We went to Jeff Merkley's constituents' coffee in the morning, and then got a tour (from an intern) of the Capitol buildings. We ate at the cafeteria, where Papa Big Cook ate Senate Bean Soup, s, and then we waited in a long line to make a brief visit to the House of Representatives. Duchess was very excited and is now building a life plan around being a Congressional page and then an intern and then going into the Foreign Service and then maybe a Congressional staffperson... We made a stop at the National Archives,* and then a quick visit to the Museum of Natural History. We had dinner at an Ethiopian restaurant, because that was all Cook really wanted out of a trip to DC. Skipper was sure she was going to hate it, but she did not hate it at all.

Day Five: Newseum, which was surprisingly effective. They had an exhibit of Pulitzer Prize photos that was emotionally overwhelming for all of us; Skipper and Duchess and I all left in tears. They also had a nice view of Pennsylvania Avenue. We wrapped up the trip with visits to the Library of Congress and the Supreme Court.

We flew home yesterday, and here we are, mopping up (in very hot weather) and preparing to return to normal life tomorrow.




*I finally bullied Cook into agreeing to watch National Treasure with the kids, so we were totally ready to see the National Archives. Though as it turned out, my favorite thing on display there was a homesteading claim payment by Charles Ingalls.