A juggling technophile shares personal stories, challenges, humor and perhaps some political commentary.
Saying Grace:
Amy: "Thank you God for all this food and for the whole world you made well and Ben Franklin but you made most of he well he made some of .. ah somethings and since you made this world we should help you and thank you Amen."
Evan: "Thank you God for this food and for the bunnies helped make food and now we scare the bunnies away…and the sharks. Eeeeemen."
It just occurred to me that I sent my little girl to school with an empty lunchbox today. Oh I’m going to get it when she comes home!
Amy, 6.5: "Daddy, your belly is BIG!"
Dad: "Is that a good thing or a bad thing?"
Amy: "I don’t know. It’s just funny looking." She then proceeds to put on some Teen Spirit deodorant that her 15.5 year old sister gave her. I’ll tell you what’s funny looking!
Amy will be selling Girl Scout cookies at West Town Mall’s Belk’s Mens department from 2pm to 4pm today. Feel free to drop by and say hello! Oh, and buy some cookies of course 🙂
I feel like a failed parent when my children suffer a health issue. We are a remarkably fortunate family when it comes to health. We see very little sickness. Granted, we have a bug going through the house right now but it really is not terrible. Everyone is taking turns so only one person has it at a time.
Evan has a tooth that grayed a while back. We took him to the dentist and everything was assessed as fine. The tooth whitened and seemed fine then died. We attempted to extract it at the dentist but the twilight drugs made Evan too loopy and uncooperative. A surgery was scheduled but the anesthesiologist flipped out when she saw his older brother is diagnosed with Von Willebrand disease (which the doctor thinks is a misdiagnosis) and canceled the surgery until Evan had blood work. Why this wasn’t noticed on his paperwork the month prior to the first surgery attempt is beyond me.
His second surgery attempt was scheduled for March 19th but we got a call yesterday that an opening had come available. "Don’t give him anything to eat or drink after midnight. Your appointment is at noon." Huh?! That’s a long time for a 3.5 year old to go without food. In a different phone call, clear liquids were okay’d until 9am. Cathy and Evan will be off to the hospital shortly. I will remain home with a feverish Amy and working on programming and talking to bureaucrats on the phone. I hope all goes well. These things worry me so much.
Update: Surgery canceled. In the same post I talked about be blessed with decent health, I get to say my child has pneumonia.
Update 2:08pm: Apparently he had pneumonia and is at the end of recovery so they are proceeding with the surgery. Lungs still rattley.
Update 3:30pm: Evan out of surgery and in recovery.
Evan, 3.5 years old, points at the Russett potatoes on the food shelf: "I want the gun."
He relates potatoes to a potato gun!
Amy: "Can I go to A’s house?"
Dad: "Sure. Wear a jacket."
Evan: "I want go to A’s house."
Dad: "No, you are sick."
Evan, crying: "I not sick! I want go to A’s house with jacket."
Dad, feeling like a cad.
Monday saw school canceled early. Yesterday the road conditions did not permit school and the children stayed home to play.Today, it is too cold for school. Even Lincoln Memorial University closed leaving the question "how will students living on campus eat today?" Perhaps we need to have some homebound lessons.
Yesterday started off beautiful and almost spring like but the forecast said we were at the high for the day and the children were just getting off to school. As the high schooler left in a t-shirt and no jacket I suggested that she was making a mistake.
Cathy and I have a routine that makes having 5 children in 5 schools work without anyone losing their sanity. I’m a morning person and Cathy is a night owl. So I get the duty of waking the children, making sure they are ready for school, and seeing them off. Sometimes this cuts into my morning productivity so at night when Cathy is getting the children bathed and ready for bed, I am often downstairs typing on my computer in the evening. I drive the children in the mornings; Cathy picks them up in the afternoons. I cook the dinners; Cathy does the dishes and laundry and lays out the children’s stuff for the next day. (Yes, the children help and have chores..to listen to the children, they have so many more chores than their friends…)
Yesterday, I took Evan to pre-school. As we drove, Spring turned to rain. Rain became mixed with snow. Evan arrived at school 18 minutes late (9:18). I left noting that Weigel’s had gas at $1.629 per gallon. I was on fumes but thought I’d buy at Sam’s. I forgot and drove right past it because by now the mix of snow and rain had turned completely into large, fluffy snowflakes. It was beautiful!
At 11:00am, the pre-school calls to say that Knox County Schools is considering canceling and wants to get a jump on it. Cathy is caught off guard having only downed half her daily dose of caffeine so I’m off to pickup Evan. [Update: I am reminded that Cathy couldn’t drive because Evan hid her driver’s license..which we just found today.] I test the road in front of our house and it is already slick. I achieve a 15 foot slide with ease. Noting that I need gas badly, I pull into Weigel’s. The gas has rocketed to $1.779/gallon! I put just a little in and decide to fill up at Sam’s. We are out of milk so I look like a snow panicer as I go in for a gallon. The tertiary roads are a bit scary and the secondary roads are slushy (that’ll become ice!). The primary roads are fairly clear. While picking up Evan, Knox County Schools officially cancels at 12:30 (an hour away) so Cathy and I debate pulling Sarah out early.
I drive to the high school and the line is already long. The elementary school calls to say some buses cannot get the children and they are asking all parents to come pickup the kids. As I sit in line pointing uphill on Gallaher View Road, the slush compresses and turns to ice under my tires. Each time we nudge forward, my wheels try to spin and slide. The high school makes a royal mistake and instead of having their duty officer directing traffic, he is inside directing parents into the office. See, since school isn’t officially canceled for another 40 minutes, parents still have to walk into the school and check out their children who are on the break of becoming adults. The duty officer and a couple of others should have been directing traffic and someone with a clipboard and a radio should have been letting parents sign their children out from the cars ala drive-thru. They could have done the paperwork as the cars entered the parking lot and radio’d the office to send the child out. That would have prevented road rage, dangerous situations and sped the process along. As it was I ended up parking on the grass and walking into the school to find that the line for the office was about 20 minutes long. At this point, the students would be dismissed in about the same time. Evan has played in the snow in front of the school, shoes wet, socks wet, and pants soaked to the knees. He and I give up on the high school and start driving to the elementary school. Traffic at the high school has backed up onto Kingston Pike and is now interfering with the normal flow of traffic.
Cars are backing up traffic on Morrell Road as they try to either turn into the bus lane or go against traffic to turn into the carpool lane. Why don’t these parents just drive to Northshore and turn left at the CVS? The line is lengthy but no more so than a normal carpool line. You can tell the parents who never drive their children because they keep hopping out of their car to look up the road trying to figure out what is taking so long. The road behind the school has a 90° turn. Snow melt from the tires has covered that corner and traffic has me stop in the turn. When traffic begins to move, the van doesn’t. Oops. After some gentle encouragement, I am moving again but I worry about the cars behind me bouncing off one another as they try to navigate that turn.
Sarah calls for the pickup plan while I wait in the elementary school line. I had told her to walk to Downtown West so that I wouldn’t have to fight the high school traffic mess. She and her mother adjust the plan to have her walk to the mall. Sarah gets her boyfriend to drive her to the mall; his father is following behind. She asks if the boyfriend can driver her home. Both his father (whose parents live in our neighborhood) and I firmly say, “NO!” My neighborhood is a bit like an Alpine slide in the winter and is the last to see any road clearing equipment from the city or county. I agree to letting the father, a Philadelphia native, drive her home. Evan is miserable from his cold, wet wait in the car. I drive Amy and Evan home. Sarah arrives a couple of minutes later.
The middle school buses cannot run until all the elementary school students have been bused home. I debate picking Noah up. One phone call later I learn he is already on a bus en route so I take some pictures of the jolly children and dogs enjoying the snow, then I retreat to the basement to do some programming. Telecommuters don’t get snow days.
Knox County Schools made the right choice to wait and see what would happen with the weather. They made a poor choice by not anticipating the rush of parents to the school when it got out that they were debating canceling schools. The schools need the equivalent of an evacuation plan for handling heavy traffic when closures happen. The plan should include traffic direction, separate entrances and exits to the school to avoid congestion, allowing children to use cell phones, and keeping parents in their cars rather than having them exit and go to the office. Here’s how the high school should have worked: The Gallaher Road entrance becomes exit only with a patrol car directing traffic to the south entrance of the school. The Kingston Pike entrance becomes an exit only. This forces all traffic to the Gleason Road entrance with the possibility of congesting traffic on Gleason but takes advantage of being able to create a much longer line of cars on school property in a single file rather than having any merging. Traffic direction has the line of cars S through the ROTC parking lot to maximize the number of cars off the city roads and on the school property. Traffic direction has cars go north beside the stadium, left past the bandroom, north beside the western side of the building, right in front of the school and then immediately left out to Kingston Pike or Gallaher View Road. Students should be allowed to contact their parents by cell phone or text message. If a student says, "my parents are waiting in line" they are dismissed on their honor to the office (not out of school) rather than waiting for contact from the parent to bring them down. Students contacted by cell or called over the intercom convene in the common area until their ride pulls up out front. A parent volunteer, teacher, officer, or other school staff with a radio in hand and a signout clipboard will be positioned far enough down the line to be able to call children out of class such that when the car gets to the front of the school, the student is already there. IDs are checked at the car, signatures taken at the car, and the loadout goes like clockwork. I was in the car for three hours trying to pickup children from schools and I only went to 3 of the 5 schools my children attend. The children really enjoyed the snow! And today is another snow day!
Words to not say to a parent if you’ve been watching their child: "Is your child at your house?"
Amy was playing with the neighbor’s kids. He stepped into the bathroom and came out only to find Amy and his youngest missing. He sent his oldest over to see if there were here and then the hollering started. The neighborhood could hear our calls of "AaaaaaMMMMY! OoooTTHHeeerRCHhiiiiiillllddd’ssssNaaaame!" And people came to their porches to see what was going on. Their dog had escaped and we deduced that the six year old and seven year old went searching. If this sounds familiar, it should. Amy went searching for this dog on her own April 20th of last year (see My child walks the road where dogs go to die). While the teenagers struck out to the woods, I drove directly to Northshore and started working back into the neighborhood from its most extreme points and the other father drove out from the houses. I multitasked and started making phone calls to various neighbors. Darkness fell fast so I dialed the non-emergency number for the Sheriff. Halfway through filing my report, we got the call that the children and dog were safe. They had stayed in the neighborhood but still walked roads that they should not have been on. No one is mad. We are all happy that they are safe and hopefully a lesson has been learned.
So I’m thinking about starting a separate blog to chronicle the times Amy has vanished.
On Friday, Cathy had to go get Tommy from school for the weekend. That’s our deal with him. While he is on academic probation, he comes home every weekend for forced study time. Of course, that places me upstairs doing double duty of programming and watching the children. I am under the gun to get some work finished, wrapped, closed out and it is not moving fast enough so I lost my temper with the children about three times on Friday, once when the new drywall fell to the floor. Hmmm. Now that I think about it, this may have been earlier in the week when Cathy had a meeting. Cathy’s post on Amy Says reminded me of these words:
Amy to Dad: "We don’t want you to stay home and watch us anymore. From now on, you have to do all Mom’s errands so she can stay here!"
Cold. -4°C outside. Brrr. So I took Amy and Noah out on the porch and threw a pot of boiling water into the air. Both children enjoyed seeing the water turn to vapor and float across the yard like a scene from a Scooby Doo swamp. I let them have their moment and did not bother with the science lesson.
Temperature conversion by OnlineConversion.com.
A sight no parent wants to see is your child poised to regurgitate the evening meal. The only thing worse is realizing that this is round two and round one is on the bed, the child, the floor, and the fringe blanket. Vomit has magical powers of stupidity. For one, the smell makes you instantly want to join in the fun. "Oh look! Your spaghetti looks like stringy glue! Let’s see if mine’s the same…blarp" Secondly, as your child’s gag reflex audibly kicks in, you run to comfort her without a trashcan, a towel or any thought of what to do with the vile muck that is working its way up the child’s throat, so placing one hand on the child’s back, you stupidly cup your other hand just under her mouth as if you could miraculously keep round two from somehow not adding to round one. Blarp! Then you lie, "It’s going be okay."
That was last night. Let’s hope this is an isolated event and doesn’t rip through the family.
Evan and Amy were told to clean.
Evan. 3.5 years old, stomps up to Mom in a huff: "Amy not letting me have fun! Hrrumph." Stomps away.
Our yard is practically devoid of grass. Basically we have leaves and mud so today I spread a bale of hay to cover the mud.
Amy, 6 years old arriving home from school: "I was playing in the hay!"
Dad: "Explain ‘playing in the hay.’"
Amy, doing jumping jacks: "I made a hay angel!"
Dad, with great hesitation: "Turn around…"
Update: Evan, 3 years old, came home later, plopped down in the hay, and, of his own accord, started throwing it all over himself.
