The things Moms do for their kids.....

Let me tell you about the past 36 hours or so.

(At this point, Himself would moan, "And if I don't want to hear about it?"
To which I'd respond, "Listen anyway." In kind, loving tones, of course.)


Let's rewind back to early Tuesday morning.

3am ~ My alarm goes off. I hit it and it shuts off. It's somehow therapeutic to have an alarm clock that turns off by slamming.....um.....pushing a large button on the top. I stagger out of bed and check to make sure Cameron's awake and up. I hear the shower running. Good. He's up. I go back to bed.

3:10am ~ I think I hear a loud whisper. I look to the doorway of my bedroom. No blurry shape blocking out the dim light from the kitchen. However, being a mom, I get up again to see if I was hearing things or if Cameron really did need to talk to me.

He really did need to talk to me. As in, "Mom, I feel like I'm going to puke." Now my children don't come to me with that statement after about age twelve and he's eighteen. His problem was that he had to go to work. I mean he HAD to go. He's in his first-30-days-probation period and if he calls in sick, he kisses his job goodbye. He knew this and I knew this. He was asking for help in making his guts settle down. I made him sip peppermint tea and nibble saltines for about thirty minutes and then sent him to work with the tea and crackers, and with crossed fingers I went back to bed. It's 3:45am.

5am~ Mike's alarm goes off. His has a little push-button on the front and it's on the other side of the bed, anyway. I haven't done much for the past 75 minutes except doze and wait for a phone call.

5:30 ~ Mike leaves for work. I go back to sleep.

5:45 ~ I wake up feeling as if I've slept well for at least half an hour. I check the clock and give up on sleep. I get up and start to put together the last-minute stuff Richelle's asked me to take care of for her Girl Scout event she's putting on.

7am ~ I wake up Richelle and we run around like the proverbial chicken, getting showered and dressed, getting everything checked off and loaded up. We leave for town at 8am. (Breakfast? What's that?")

8:30 ~ My cell rings. It's Cameron. "Mom, I need you here."
"There? At the mill?"
"Yes. Here. Now."
"Why?"
"They found me in the bathroom throwing up during break and they're sending me home. They don't want me to drive myself."
I knew the policy had changed over the years with the company in regards to vomitus. Back in the dark ages twenty years ago, Mike would go to work with the flu. When I asked, he said that if he needed to throw up, he'd just head for the outside door and puke around the corner. The only time he'd stay home with the flu is if he had the trots. Can't very well head for the outside door with that condition.
Cameron wasn't being sent home because he was caught throwing up during break, he was being sent home because he was throwing up. Them sending him home is a different color of fish than him calling in sick. Newer policy having to do with bodily fluids. But to be told that they didn't want him driving himself home? Wow. He must have been white as a sheet. His boss offered to drive him home. The poor guy didn't know how long a drive that was. Cameron turned him down.
I, however, was between that well-known rock and the unyielding hard place. The rock was that I HAD to be with Richelle all day as her adviser and to meet the adult/youth ratio. The hard place was that my son was sick and needed me. Fortunately, his best friend's mom was willing to make a round trip of about 100 miles to get him and take him home. Lovely lady. I am deeply in her debt.

9am ~ The girls helping Richelle with her project begin to arrive. I'm going to skip the next six hours except for one darling funny story and a brief description of her project. Richelle is earning her Bronze award, the highest award available at her level of Girl Scouts (henceforth abbreviated as GS). Along with other requirements, she needed to think up, plan, and execute a community service. At this level, the service can be within GS. She chose to plan and carry out a Daisy (kindergarten level) bridging workshop - a program where the girls complete the requirements to earn a special badge worn on their Brownie uniforms (next level up). She also planned a ceremony for the girls to "bridge" from Daisies to Brownies. She has put in a total of 36.5 hours so far, six of which was the event itself, and not counting the follow-up paperwork.
The funny story: The girls were eating lunch and there were three little Daisies sitting across from me. The one in the middle had a little container of potato chips that got knocked off the table, spilling the chips onto the ground. She picked them all up, sat back down, and with the chips cupped in her hands stated, "Now I can't eat them." I don't think she was complaining, she was simply stating a fact and was uncertain what to do next. One sweet, helpful little Daisy next to her snatched a chip, blew furiously all over one side of it and then the other, handed it back and confidently announced, "Now you can eat it!"
I successfully swallowed my hysterical laughter.

5:15pm ~ We headed home after a brief stop at the grocery store where Richelle actually rode in the cart for a while she was that tired.

Sometime before 7pm ~ Discussion about how Cameron was going to get to work in the morning since his car is still in the parking lot. I offered to drive him but Mike said he could just as easily go to work early and take him. They work in the same mill. We eat supper, Cameron included.

9pm ~ House is quiet as a tomb with a hamster. Mike and Cameron are asleep and have been for almost two hours, Richelle is nearly so, and I'm dragging pretty hard.

3:15am ~ I jolt awake, not having any memory of smacking the alarm silent. I stagger out to the kitchen (deja vu) where Cameron is putting his lunch together. Cameron asks who's driving him. I shuffle back to the bedroom, wake Mike up, and ask him if he's going to be getting up.
"Yeah, but we don't need to leave until quarter after four."
"That'll put him at the mill at five." That's when his shift starts and they're both rabid about getting there half an hour early at least.
Long pause.
"Oh." .....slightly shorter pause.........."You're right." Deep breath and sigh..... "You can go ahead and take him," and Himself shifts to a more comfortable spot in the bed.

3:30am ~ I head out on a 90-minute round-trip drive. The trip down was fun with the chit-chat but the drive back.......do you have any idea of the totally off the wall topics discussed on radio talk shows at 4am? Discussing UFOs and Sasquatch quite matter-of-factly as if they're as real as jumbo jets and bighorn sheep? Cameron said one morning they were having a conversation with Jesus. Odd flock of ducks.

5am ~ I get back home, kiss Himself goodnight and goodbye, climb back into my lightly used side of the bed, fall asleep and don't wake up until 8am.

The rest of the day I have this nagging headache and feeling of lethargy. I manage to get five loads of laundry done, the kitchen cleaned, and the family and dining rooms straightened up but I copped out and picked up pizza for supper on the way home from the Oakland City Council meeting where...

...Cameron was given a commendation for his Eagle project! They are sooo pleased with that sign.

And now I see by the clock that today has become tomorrow. I'm going to bed.

Bits and Pieces

I felt like posting but there's not a whole lot to post about that's all that interesting......

Richelle's hamster is growing almost as we watch him. He drove her out of her bed and to the couch two nights in a row because his wheel was noisy. I put a drop of vegetable oil on the mechanism today and it quieted down considerably. We'll see how she does tonight. I told her it was like having a new baby - they keep you up until you're exhausted and then wake you up in the night. Richelle named him Sokki but Mike insists on calling him Stewart as in Little which annoys her no end. This evening he referred to Sokki as his grandchild (!!!). I never, ever thought he'd enjoy a hamster but he sure seems to.

Cameron's holding up under the strain of ten-hour days of hard labor. He was having a hard time with fatigue and even resorted to caffeine pills a couple of times. I remembered an athletic teacher from high school talking about how he made peanut butter balls dipped in chocolate for energy while cross-country skiing so Wednesday night (yes, night!) I made a search online for Buckeye Ball recipes and made a batch. They didn't look all that pretty because I didn't want to wait until midnight for them to chill hard before I dipped them but Cameron said they were quite tasty and did the trick nicely. He took six to work and ate four of them first break and the other two last break and had no trouble staying alert. I think I'd rather him eat a homemade candy like Buckeye Balls instead of pop a pill containing about 150mg of caffeine.

He's bulking out and I can see a difference just in one week. He's always been a solid boy but he's getting some serious muscles on him now. Look out girls........or maybe I should say, "Look out, Cameron!"

The flowers in the baskets are growing but with the cooler weather we've been having, not that rapidly. We had a decent June day today with clear skies and temps in the mid 80s. Himself has ceased complaining over their slowness and has resigned Himself to wait. I was given a basket of petunias that smell so delicious! I don't have it hanging, yet, but will get to that tomorrow.

We had our Girl Scout Court of Honor last night. We do this twice a year and it's a time where the girls' families come together at a potluck and witness the girls being awarded the badges they've completed, the honors they've earned, and the participation patches for the events they've attended. The parents who've helped in the troop are thanked and are usually given a small gift of appreciation. That's where I got the petunias. I have such a great leader to work with! I headed up the project to nominate our leader for Outstanding Troop Leader award for our area and of course she got it! How could she not with all she does? Fortunately, the awards committee is an intelligent group of women and agreed with us that she is a fine, outstanding troop leader.

Tuesday, Richelle holds the Daisy Bridging Workshop and Ceremony event that she's been working on so hard the last few months. This project completes the requirements for her Bronze Award, the highest award for her level of Girl Scouts. I am looking forward to next Wednesday morning because then the event will be behind us and only paperwork to finish!

The Hamster

Richelle brought home her little hamster today. It was a little traumatic getting it. We went in Saturday to get one only to find that they were sold out. How disheartening! Poor Richelle had to wait until the last errand was run before we went to the pet store to pick one out and, believe me, it was a long wait. We'd left the house at about 11:30am and we didn't get to the pet store until around 5:30pm (since it costs nearly two gallons of gas to get to town and back in the Explorer, I consolidate errands whenever I can). The store was completely sold out. There are two basic kinds of hamsters, normal size and pygmy, and this store also carries long-haired breeds of each but they were out of everything. Not one single hamster. We talked to a sales person who told us she was expecting a fairly large shipment early Monday morning and to come in after school.


Late this morning, Mike had an errand to do in town so we talked him into taking us with him. Richelle was antsy and shot to the back of the store where the small animals are kept (ferrets SMELL!) to be greeted by....................empty cages. Evidently, the shipment wasn't due for a while, maybe a couple of days. Richelle's frustration was evenly divided between the store in general and the sales person from Saturday in particular. They suggested, and we did, leave our name and number with the front desk to call us when they arrived. Mike told Richelle that she looked as if she'd just lost her last friend.

The store called at 2:30pm to tell us the shipment had arrived and the hamsters were ready for sale. There was no question in my mind; this called for a special trip into town. She went, she saw, she's happy. The little rodent's name is Sokki pronounced "Soak-ie". She's had the name for weeks now and is ecstatic to have the animal to go with it.

The first picture is of little Sokki climbing the tube from the living area to the exercise ball. It must have been quite a climb for him because after a couple of runs he fell asleep in the flat part of the tube between bends.

The second picture is of Sokki cleaning himself. Or maybe he's nibbling on something. The blue is the corner of the cage, the clear yellow is the tube leading up to the exercise ball, and the food dish is the green in the right corner. The colorful thing to the left is his little house made from his carry-home box with the flaps cut off and a hole cut for a door. There's a yellow chew-toy inside. She decided that a cardboard box was just fine for his house and she didn't need him to have a fancy-dancy igloo. Besides, that's a $7 savings for her. Good thing, too, if he's going to be sleeping in the tunnel. She's paying for everything at her own insistence and our encouragement. The only thing I bought was a $6 book on the care of hamsters.

Her allowance covers food and bedding but she's wanting to earn extra money to pay for habitat extensions and other fun stuff for little Sokki. So now we have clean windows, my plant leaves are dusted......

First Day of Work

Cameron had his first full day at work at a "real" job. He chose to take the 10 hour day/4 days a week shift. The shift starts at 5am. This means that he needs to plan on getting there by 4:30am because of the length of the commute. It takes 45 minutes to drive there. This morning he needed to be there by 4:30 for last-minute training so he had to leave at 3:30am. GAG! This was hard on me because I was afraid he'd sleep through his alarm. He has a habit of thinking he's awake and he isn't. So I set my alarm for 3am, thinking that if he wasn't up when it went off there's still be time for him to get up and out the door by 3:30. Not to worry. He was up and around by 2:45. I quietly turned off my alarm and when he left, fell back asleep.

It wasn't a very good sleep because I kept waking up with a jolt and had to remember that he'd already left for work in good time. I had programed myself to worry and did a fine job of it all night long. I took a short nap this afternoon and felt guilty because Cameron couldn't.

So you know how your kids come home from some function or overnighter or something and have to share with you every single detail of their time away from you? Cameron didn't even wait to get home. He called on his cell. It was interesting because Mike worked in the green end at the time we were married and for, oh, maybe six years more before he went into management. I was curious about what Cameron would tell me about pulling green chain. One of the first things he complained about was the stench of peeled hemlock. I was transported back in time about twenty years and it was Mike complaining about having to pull hemlock. I guess it's something pretty bad and any slivers you get fester up in a matter of hours.

A quick explanation here for those who aren't familiar with the process of making plywood. The logs are stripped of their bark and sent into a pressurized steam tunnel for an amount of time depending on the type of wood. The purpose of the tunnels is to drive the water into the wood, totally saturating it. The logs then come out of the tunnels and are peeled with a lathe. Just like a wood-shop lathe where the wood spins and you press a knife to it to make the design, the logs spin and are laid against a very long blade (4, 8, or 10 feet long) that has been adjusted for how thick the peel needs to be (measured in millimeters). The log is reduced to a very, very long "ribbon" (called veneer) of very, very thin wood. Here's where the steam is needed. If there isn't much moisture, the wood will break and curl. Soaked with water, it holds together and lays flat. The veneer goes through the clippers and then down a chain where most is removed by machine and some is removed by hand. This is where Cameron is. Yes, it is heavy. In about a week and a half, you'd be silly to challenge him to an arm-wrestling match.

I guess he didn't do too badly and got some encouraging words from his crew. He came home starved and exhausted and ate a large supper, but I couldn't get him to go to bed until about 11:30pm; he was that wound up. He doesn't work until Monday or he'd have gone much earlier. The beauty of working 4/10 is that you get three day weekends.

So endeth his day.

Flowers and baskets

Thought I'd post some pictures of my roses and of the hanging baskets.




This one I picked as a bud and watched it open indoors.



This is the same rose shot with the micro setting. I spritzed it with water and Cameron took the picture.


Cameron took this one too. He went outside in the dark and rain where he used a tripod, the low-light setting, and a mini-mag for lighting. That kid sure has an eye for the artistic. He had a little trouble because of the rain. This is really the only one of about eighteen shots that turned out very well because with the low-light setting, things have to be perfectly still or they'll blur and raindrops hitting a flower cause just enough motion to make things interesting.



And now (drum roll, please) the persecuted hanging baskets.....

Himself wants to yank out the alyssum and put in something that will bush out and droop faster. If I can only keep his impatient fingers away from them another week, he may become grumpily resigned to their rate of growth. I may talk him into inserting flowers into the sides of the basket through the coconut fibers. That'll give him the illusion that the flowers are filling out, anyway.


A picture of our front patio. The full baskets hanging on either side of the windows are my Mom's Day gift from him. THAT is what he wants the new baskets to look like already. Never mind that they were started WEEKS ago!

Sunday

Sunday was a very interesting day. Mike's brother Bob and his wife Jackie just celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary on the 28th of last month and their daughter put together a small, informal get-together for them. It was to be a surprise, so those that had early service at their churches attended it and came to Bob's house afterwards. Jessica opened the house, decorated, set up the lunch, and everyone gathered in anticipation of Bob and Jackie's arrival from the later service (they almost attended early service causing great anxiety but that's a different story).

We waited and paced........paced and waited........turns out that someone wanted to talk to Bob about the kidney he'd donated in March and then they decided they needed to stop by the store for a few items. As Jessica said, it's hard to call someone and tell them they're holding up the party that they know nothing about!

They finally arrived and were quite surprised. We didn't leap out at them and yell or anything primarily because our cars were parked at the curb. No one wanted to park a block and a half away and walk to the house. So they figured something was up when they saw all our cars and, being the intelligent people they are, figured it was something along the lines of an anniversary party.

Then came the surprise for Mike and I. Everyone else (excluding Bob and Jackie who knew absolutely nothing) knew it was a double celebration in honor of both Bob and Jackie AND of Mike and me! NOW who's surprised?! What a nice bunch of people!

(That's our nephew behind us)

You see, when our anniversary came in November, our kids didn't plan any celebration for us in spite of the pressure applied by Mike's parents. This didn't bother Mike or me at all. I don't know about Mike but if there was some big to-do for us, it would have painfully reminded me of the gap left by the loss of our Melissa. Knowing her love of all things celebratory, she would have had something planned in detail months in advance. So it was a perfect celebration for Mike and I to take a week's quiet, leisurely tour up the Oregon coast. We never thought we'd missed out on anything and the thought never crossed our minds to be envious of Bob and Jackie or to feel sorry for ourselves. What a lovely bunch of people to include us!

(I tried to flip this pic but couldn't figure out how. It was right when I uploaded it.)

I was so oblivious to looks, comments, and whispers that when Lela asked me to help bring in the cake, I trotted along after her. There were two boxes and I STILL didn't pick up on anything. I just thought that they needed two cakes because they were small and there were a couple dozen people. Didn't occur to me that they'd get one bigger cake instead of two smaller ones. I was about to set the box on the counter when I heard Mike behind me say, "Dear, I think we've been Shanghaied." He had to say that a couple times before it sank into my admittedly thick skull just WHY there were two cakes. Some people are so oblivious!

(Richelle showing the aging parents the controls)

Ray and Lela gave each couple a beautiful wood and crystal music box that plays 16 full songs for each of the three settings of "bells", "piano", and "organ" for a total of 48 full songs. We were also given a double picture frame to hold 5x7 "then and now" pictures. And, of course, congratulatory cards. What a sweet bunch of people!


(Is this pretty or what?)

So that was an amazing Sunday afternoon. I left feeling like a queen!

Those flower baskets

I saw Mike walk outdoors this evening with his measuring tape and followed him to see what he was going to build next. Turns out he was measuring the flowers in the baskets. I guess he wanted solid proof to back up his assertions that they are growing.

Cameron keeps walking into one of them....you'd think he'd learn after getting clobbered a few times.

When I get my camera back, I'll post a few pics of them. I'm suppose to get it tomorrow. We'll see if Nick remembers it when he brings back the camping gear he borrowed along with the camera.