flea

Casper had a hard day for no reason at school yesterday, and came home with a drawing of our "forever house." We've been talking about this since before we moved; some of it is silly, and some of it is real. Casper wants a fireplace, a big porch, a tree that's right for a treehouse, and a creek in the back yard. Also, a weeping willow. (She wanted a weeping willow for the treehouse, but I explained they were not well suited for such.) She also at various points has wanted dolphins and a Giant Pacific Octopus to live in the creek (while realizing this is environmentally implausible).

Today Dillo said he liked our old house better than this house because it had good places to play outside. Yesterday at after school he drew our current house, quite nicely and accurately, with the driveway and our car and his room and the big field in back that we sometimes let the kids play in.

I'm having a hard day today myself; it's dark, and our schedule has me in the car 80 minutes a day, and we don't meet anyone at the kids' school due to it so we don't know anyone except our (very nice) neighbors, and my job is high-stress and poorly paying, and we won't have much of a Christmas (we're not poor; it's lack of effort and inspiration) and it feels like obligation rather than joy to see family and exchange gifts. I am mourning our move today. I liked our OLD forever house.

Let us begin with school. The school is a "neighborhood" public school, in a very nice neighborhood (some rentals in the zone, but houses for sale at $4-500,000 are the standard.) Judging by eye the student body is about 10% non-white, largely black but a few Asians (south and east); I have not seen a child I would guess is Latino. There are a lot of blondes; we're back in the land of the Germans! We're scheduled to get on the bus route on October 24 (there is no stop within 1/4 mile of our house, so they have to create a stop for us, and this takes 2 weeks), but in the meantime our routine is mr. flea drives us all to school at about 8:30; the kids play on the playground and I watch them (other kids start showing up by 8:45, the before-school program, kids off the buses, and drop-offs); and at 9:15 they line up and go into school and I walk 2.1 miles home.

In the afternoon I walk 2.1 miles back to school, pick the kids up when they are released at 3:35, and we all walk home. We haven't actually walked the whole thing yet. Day 1 we were 2/3 of the way home and our neighbors drove by and picked us up (on purpose - I had mentioned the bus assignment delay, and their 8 year old saw us from her schoolbus and begged her mother to come get us so they could play. Neighbor 8 year old and Casper have hit it off great guns - a sleepover is planned for tonight.) Yesterday it rained and mr. flea did the pickup, but he forgot and was late and was unreachable at work, so if it rains again I am calling Nice Neighbor and asking for help rather than spending an hour and a half trying not to panic about whether someone is picking up my kids. Today is cool but sunny and I am planning to break at the library.

Dillo is in K is a large mixed class (I think it's actually K and 1 together) of about 36 kids and 2 teachers, although one of the teacher is his primary. He seems to be doing fine, and the work is at his level, and to his interests (they are doing planets and the sun; we had a talk about why Pluto was no longer a planet this morning). He had an accident yesterday, but this is hardly unusual for him.

In general, Dillo has pretty much taught himself to read this past month. He sounds out words everywhere and all the time - from boxes, on signs, anything with letters. He hasn't grasped the Silent E concept yet, and in general tends to be frustrated that letters do not always make the same sounds, but once he's read a word he tends to remember it. SO completely different from Casper at this age, who got letter identification and sounds, but never had any spontaneous interest in sounding out words and in fact is still not very good at it.

Casper is in 3rd grade in a small classroom with about 20 kids and 1 teacher and a part-time student aide. She got off to a decent start socially - the teacher cleverly seating her next to an extremely social and outgoing girl - but has been overwhelmed and disorganized about work. She never brought the homework packet home, and I discovered last night that she had a spelling test today, but she had no idea on which chapter in the spelling book, and she seems to have lost the book (Danger Along the Ohio) that is serving as their reading and social studies text (it has never come home). The teacher has been responsive to email, so I hope we can get Casper sorted out soon. She is happy, in general, and they have started division (with Smarties) and she picked it right up, and I sent her in with $5 to buy a recorder for music class.

At home she had a brief phase of obsessively reading Dahl's Matilda (her proper first chapter book) but she has stalled out on p. 91 and I need to get her going again. Neighbor 8 year old takes a dance class that seems fine, so I think we will sign Casper up for that too. Next to look at are Girl Scouts (although she does not seem interested at the moment), and maybe Art club at school, and then when our finances settle out some kind of music lessons I think.

Every afternoon the 4 kids on the block play together, outside, at their house, and at ours (Neighbors have a 5 year old girl with an October birthday, so she is still in preschool; she and Dillo are not BFFs like Casper and the 8 year old, but they deal perfectly well). I was brave and spent 45 minutes with the parents over a glass of wine yesterday (and nearly burned our soup - gas stoves are enthusiastic!) so I am starting to get to know them.

mr. flea: What happened here? Why is this all wet?
me: Someone knocked over a cup of water!
mr. flea: Who knocked over a cup of water?
me: That fucking cat!
Casper: What fucking cat?
Dillo: *Simon* fucking cat!

We're in Cincinnati. Surviving. Facebook is for hearts and flowers, but this apartment is not as nice as our house, and they aren't bringing our furniture until MONDAY at the earliest now. (The day the packed it, it was Friday.)

We have a place to live. It's the 2-3 floor apartment of a 2-family, brick, vaguely tudor-style foursquare ca. 1910 or so. Hardwoods on 2, and berberish on 3, where there are slightly sloping ceilings. I think the kids go up there. Only 1 bathroom, on 2. Not much of a kitchen, but it has a dishwasher. W/D and storage in the basement. Quiet street, it dead-ends in unused train tracks and backs up against the Whole Foods Parking. It's flat with big sidewalks and street trees. We have 2 spaces in a garage but no back yard, and a maybe 8-foot wide front yard, and a balcony above the porch. The kids will have to take the bus to school; it's at least 3 miles. But I can walk to the nice local bookstore, and Whole Foods and Kroger, and Hyde Park square with 3 pilates studios and a post office and library. Buses to downtown stop at the end of the street.

mr. flea is leaving here Saturday afternoon and plans to stay with friends (whom I strongly suspect he has not yet contacted; I offered to contact my father and/or our mutual friends who have a guest room, but he makes his own bed, so to speak.) He can get into the house on Thursday night.

My last day at work is 9/30 and we haven't made a moving plan yet. Movers are pricey but I suspect right now we do not have the reserves to deal with a UHaul situation. I have lined up transportation for Casper to dance classes for all but the last. I need to make some calls to get a grocery solution (probably our neighbor - I can leave the kids at her house and we can shop together; we did this once before when our car died.) I can do school. I am working 4-day weeks until I finish, as well, and tonight is my last evening shift.

mr. flea has been trying to get everything scheduled as far as house stuff; he had a painter in today and is getting an estimate, and I think has scheduled the driveway-gravelling folks. There may be some porch and deck painting to do, which I can probably do, and some general yard-tidying. The porch is done and the fellow mr. flea has been working with is trustworthy, so I am comfortable with him having a couple of days worth of things he'll be doing after mr. flea goes.

I started packing things for mr. flea to take; an aerobed (and once in the house he can buy a mattress, since Dillo's is impossibly sprung and should have been replaced ages ago), the porch chairs and table (all folding), a duffel with sheets and towels and his clothes, a box of kitchen basics, and boxes and boxes for his office. The last is the most problematic - really, a lot could be recycled, but I can't make those decisions for him.

There's a lot to do. There's stuff I'd like to be rid of, but would like to get a return on; I've listed a beautiful fancy but impractical chair on craigslist, and I'd love to get rid of one of our four sets of dishes, but I suspect that will not happen. I've been culling stuff as I go through spaces and putting everything I don't want to keep in my closet, but I have to decide what to do with it. And I won't have transportation. A yard sale might just be a decent way to get people to come take my stuff. The hardest culling - of the toy bins - is yet to come, too.

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.!)

It's been a tough week in a lot of ways, and I think I need to remind myself that it is HARD to move, to have every single routine change, and at only 3 weeks in we can't expect things to have settled down yet.

Work is tiring just because every single thing is new. I am not subject to the stress and overwork that my new colleagues are (since classes start Monday and there are a billion things happening - new grad student and faculty orientations, prepping for the first big teaching push) but their busyness means stuff like teaching me how to use the calendaring system (Oracle calendar, and if I thought Lotus Notes was wonky I have been schooled) is by necessity a low priority.

The kids have much longer days than they used to, and newness is stressful and tiring for them at the same time as having a structured routine is helpful . Casper's school starts a full hour earlier than her old school, and the adjustment to waking up in the mornings is slow. Today was a good day getting up and out of the house, but she wanted to be walked in to the building (although she knows the way) and was clingy. With drop-off at 7:40 and us picking her up from after school at 5:20, that's 9 hours and 40 minutes in someone else's care. Last year it was 8h 20min or so. Long.

Dillo's also doing a long day. He's at day care from 8:10 to 4:50 or so - 8 hours 40 minutes - and last year he was generally only at day care from 9 to 4:40 - 7 hours 40 minutes. He's most clingy on the way home - wants to be held as we are driving, cries when we stop to get Casper, wants to nurse immediately and for a long time in the pink chair. I have no idea how we'll get dinner on when mr. flea is working next week (he's been in charge of dinner this week). I forsee some cooking the night before.

I really hope mr. flea's schedule is flexible and he won't have to stay until 6 or something horrible. That would frell everything up.

I haven't been dealing well with the children's neediness this week because I have my own neediness. They whine and cry and fight and I can't take it and yell. And mr. flea and I have not been working well together. I don't feel supported by him right now, and I need that. And practically, we didn't get as much done of the around-the-house things as I wanted to before my work started. I want to finish unpacking, find places for things, start hanging curtains and the like. I don't want to do these because I care about what other people think, but because I need to make the place my own and have order and set routines for my own sanity. I'm buying a new iron this weekend, because not being able to find my iron is stressing me out immensely.

Things aren't getting easier; if anything, they are getting harder. A big contributor is Dillo's current nap strike (3 days now); first of all, he really needs a nap still, and second of all, when he does take a big nap, I can park Casper with a video and get things done. He's up lots in the night and Casper has had a screaming festival in the night most nights in the new house so far, too. She's got a bad cough which has been going on for more than a week and worries me, and they both look so worn down and tired. And yet, no napping.

Since unpacking the kids' rooms first did in fact help them a lot, I tried unpacking MY stuff today, or starting. mr. flea set up the computer (my computer) but can't find the power cord, oops. The cable/internet people are supposed to come tomorrow between 8 and 10 am, so assuming the power cord turns up we won't have to fight over the laptop and will have a better connection. And PBS! AND SYTYCD!!!! (Cable/internet is Charter.com; they are certified evil, but we have very few choices.) We put the mattress upstairs, so mr. flea can sleep up there, but given the children, I'll probably have to sleep downstairs for a while. We've got Dillo on the double futon mattress, on the floor, so there is room for me.

We're in the market for a queen-sized bed that uses slats instead of a box spring (because a queen box spring won't go up the stairs) and doesn't have a footboard (because mr. flea is 6'6" and his feet need room to hang off the end. Unfortunately all I can find are modern platform beds in this vein, whose style I don't like. I'd love cherry, traditional, but they all require box springs.

We also need a desk for the computer. I should check craigslist; we also might go to Atlanta some day soon, to go to the aquarium, so we can check Ikea too. The idea is something that can go in the living room for now, and can be Casper's desk when she's a little older.

We found out today that Casper's school will start at 7:45 am and run to 2:30; I need to get the scoop on after school. This argues for an early schedule for me and mr. flea, too. We'll see. He is stressed because his "I finished" letter is being hung up and unless it gets to the EPA tomorrow he can't start working on Monday. And I am stressed too.

X-posted with the b.org:

We're in Athens. We're mostly alive. I found the toolbox. The bed won't fit up the stairs. I closed the baby's finger in the car door. We locked ourselves out of the house 10 minutes after we arrived, but mr. flea broke in using a crowbar, so that was okay. The cat is missing at the moment; I think she is probably in the house somewhere but mr. flea is sure she has escaped and will be lost/killed. The poached wifi remains slow slow slow and we won't have real internet for days so I will be dim for a while. Please wish us sleep-ma. I am so tired.

As we move, I've had a bunch of people suggest I take up blogging so I can keep in touch that way. Of course, I have a blog - you're reading it - but I'm really not up for reviewing and editing the security on the past 4.5 years of this one to allow it to be readable for work folks and other people whom I like but really don't need to be able to read about, say, my vagina.

I know a couple of you maintain double blogs - one at Blogger or somewhere that's more sanitized or more formal or whatever - the kind your mom can read - and one here. I like the idea in theory, but I suspect in practice it would be trouble - things would bleed over from one to the other, I'd neglect one in favor of the other, that sort of thing. What do you think?

I do have a good name: I Moved To Athens and All You Got Was This Stupid Blog.

mr. flea surprised me by leaving to work for a few hours at 8:30 am (he tried to leave before I'd even had coffee and I flat out refused to let him).

TROSA was scheduled to pick up at 9; when I had seen nobody by 10:30 I called and they were very rude, said they had looked at the things on the porch and rejected them and seemed offended by the fact that I would have liked them to ring the doorbell and speak to me when they were picking up things on my property (if they even actually came by - we don't have a big house and I was on the lookout for them; maybe they did a drive-by?). So much for the accolades I've always heard about TROSA. Does everything suck? First the clusterfuck of flake and annoyance that is Freecycle, now TROSA. (Okay, the Philco recycling dude ruled.)

The landlady just walked through with the painter and is coming back with another tomorrow AM.

Our house is a pigsty and the children are bored and unruly and it's hot and going to rain and we're hosting 55 people for a cookout at 5 and have done none of the prep yet and I am not having a good morning.