flea

Conversation at bedtime last night:

Me: Casper, could you [something or other, like put on your pajamas].
Casper: Yes, ma'am. [beat] I have to stop saying that.
Me: Yeah, nobody says 'Yes, ma'am" in Ohio.
Casper: And they don't say y'all! I had just gotten used to the y'all!

(Note, of course, she was born in North Carolina, but in a sliver of it that wasn't very Southern.)

I think this is my first post out of friendslock, but we're planning a big move to Ohio in 6 weeks. mr. flea was offered an excellent job rather suddenly, and we'll be moving to Cincinnati. This has many excellent aspects - we will be closer to family, especially the children's cousins (only an hour away!) and grandparents; mr. flea gets a nice raise, a steady job with excellent benefits and a fair amount of tenure doing work he really likes with excellent people; we have many friends still in Cincinnati from when we lived there in the late 1990s. On the down side, there is a lot of work. On the serious down side, we will be leaving the wonderful neighbors and elementary school community we have had in Athens.

I wrote to the kids' teachers today to tell them about the move. And now I'm crying at my desk because Casper's art teacher wrote such a sweet note. "[Casper] has a real gift in art and I truly hope that she continues to pursue it. She is really special." "I would love to see some pictures of Casper’s art as she grows up."

(Like we could possibly stop Casper from continuing to make art. But we're taking her away from lovely Miss D.!)

Kids are home again.  So they will have had 2.5 weeks of Christmas break, 3 days of school, and then another week plus Monday (MLK Day) off.  Three days in school over the 30-day period from Dec. 17-Jan. 17.  It's lucky we're not reverting to a state of nature around here.

I am in the Resigned phase, which coincides with the Watch a Zillion TV Shows phase.  Today I get to go to work after lunch!  And I work Sunday afternoon.  I may never know what day it is again.

First, I don't think I know anyone in Austin here, do I?  I'll be there for a wedding Feb. 26.  Anybody been to Austin lately and can suggest fun things to do or places to eat?

So, it snowed Sunday night - supposedly 8.8 inches, but we got more like 4-6 - with maybe a scanty 1/4 inch of ice on top.  Unlike most Georgia snowstorms, it may not melt for a loong time - it was above freezing today, but not by much, and it was cloudy, and it's forecast to be at or below freezing for days to come.  I've heard two separate reports of a snowplow sighting in our city, but if we own more than the one I'll be shocked, and the main thoroughfare two blocks from our house did not seem to me as if it had seen a plow, and was also not sanded or salted, as of 11am today.  With tens of thousands of healthy young students in the city, you'd think we could organize and clear the roads pretty well by hand, but because the snow mostly does melt quickly there's a sense of fatalism about it.  My neighbors, lovely people, were kind of boggled that I cleared the ice from my sidewalk with a pointed garden shovel this morning.  Clearly it did not occur to them that they might do the same - why bother?  As a Facebook friend put it, "I'll just wait for the sun." 

School and work for me are cancelled tomorrow for the third day.  It's getting pretty boring.  So far in the past 3 days we have made waffles twice, brownies, blueberry muffins, lentil soup, spaghetti and meatballs, and potato and leek soup.  The kids have finished their thank-you notes. At least the power didn't go out.

I feel like I've been working pretty continuously - at some times quite hard - since school started in early August to get a Girl Scout Troop going at Casper's school. And I've "succeeded" - we have 4 leaders, so we can run both a Daisy (K-1) and a Brownie (2-3) troop, we had a parent meeting on Monday and have about 12 girls all signed up, and I expect to add several more who are definitely committed and couldn't come to the meeting.

But I feel like I've failed. 85% of the girls are white and upper middle class. The demographic mix of the school is only about 25% white, varying a little by grade. The paraprofessionals who ran the troop last year at after school (all of whom left the school, and after school is not an option any more because of a new district policy - we are meeting on Tuesdays at 6pm at a friendly church, kill me now I did not want to meet on a weeknight but the people present voted for it) managed to run a Junior troop (4-5) as well, and pull a lot of black and Latina students, with 60 girls total.

I don't know how they did it, except maybe having existing relationships with the girls and parents, since they worked at the school. I have tried really hard to send print messages home as well as emails for people without internet access, and to send all messages in Spanish as well as English. I always emphasized that there are financial scholarships for girls who can't afford the $12 registration fee (sadly, there are a lot of families in this situation - including one of our troop leaders. 39% of the children in the city live below the poverty line (which, remember, is only about $21,000 for a family of 4), according to the new American Community Survey data.) And the turnout was all people like me. I guess we keep trying to recruit. I have some names that we can try phone-calling, but I am terribly phone-phobic; maybe my co-leaders are braver.

I'm just so worn out by it all, and we haven't even started actually meeting.

My next-door neighbor, who works from home and is a long-time dog owner and all-around sensible person, is reporting on Facebook that she and her (college-age and tenant) niece just saw a coyote in her back yard.

We live in the CITY, people. Two blocks off a busy 5-lane road. Whoa.

Casper went to a birthday sleepover last night, 3 houses down, with 5 other girls, all of whom are in her class at school. It sounds like it went okay, except when they were going to bed, she was being noisy and the other girls yelled at her, so she went and slept in another room all by herself and pretty much played by herself in the morning. I haven't talked to her about it (mr. flea did), but it makes me so sad, the social issues thing. I know kids are just kids and learning to deal with stuff, and I think she found a good solution. But at the same time it brings up some of the negative social dynamics in the class that I thought had faded. The dueling bossy girls were both at the party.

Meanwhile back at the homestead, Dillo planned a "sleepover" for himself in the living room. He fell asleep in his sleeping back watching Olympics, but woke up coughing at 10 and we had a long night after that. He's developed a phlegmy chest cold, and kept freaking out at coughing up mucus, and waking himself up. So, while last night we had a queen, a double, and 3 single beds set up in our house (the extras from overnight guests on Weds.), Dillo slept on my chest on the couch most of the night.

I hauled myself out to sell Girl Scout cookie at Target (sans Casper) at 9am, and had a good time getting to know some new people. One of whom turns out to be Vic Chesnutt's sister. Athens being Athens.

Despite serious trying, we couldn't get either kid to nap today, so we're feeding them and hoping they fall asleep sooon! Although it was gronky, it was a beautiful day, and I did some yard work and hope to do more tomorrow.

Nope, not members of REM. A friend of ours was out for a run yesterday and passed, going in the opposite direction, Alberto Salazar. He actually stopped and said, "Alberto Salazar, what are you doing in Athens?" And Salazar turned around and jogged with him for a while. Apparently his daughter is a first year student and on the championship equestrian team. Our friend said, "if you see a skinny guy, my height but with legs up to HERE running around, that's him."

The last part of my spring project for library school.

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