flea

I am doing better suddenly than I have been in a long time. Today I did work on my "hobby" projects, got the kids to help (a little) cleaning the living room, played a lot with Dillo as Casper was out at the neighbors' doing girly stuff all day, and cooked a proper dinner and dessert of raspberry fool and dark chocolate digestives, which we actually ate (well, most of us) at the table while having a sort of conversation.

Now I'm tired, but not depressed and mindlessly surfing the internet, they way I am mosy days at this hour.

(Now watch, tomorrow will be hell. Casper is going to work with mr. flea, a special program for employees' kids, and it's just me and Dillo.)

This summer I am planning to be home with the kids most of the time (Dillo all of the time; Casper will go to some part-day camps.) We'll do Camp Mommy again; I need the structure. I have to be careful not to get out of hand with the planning, but if I try to have a rough daily schedule, and theme weeks, I think we can manage okay.

One week is going to have to be Geology/Fossil/Dinosaur week; Dillo said this morning that he wants to spend the summer in the Badlands looking for fossils. (I told him that when he's a teenager we can probably find a volunteer project where he can do this.)

But! Cincinnati is actually very well-suited for fossil-hunting; my father used to do it as a child. Here be links to follow up on:
http://drydredgers.org/
http://ohiodnr.com/tabid/22049/default.aspx
http://familyfriendlycincinnati.com/2011/05/24/trammel-fossil-park-a-rocking-good-time/

I should also talk to our local friend who is a geologist manque and looooves to do outreach about geology, and see what he can cook up.

I also want to do a weekend trip to Pittsburgh to go to the Carnegie and see the dinosaurs (One of my few memories of living in PA from ages 3-6 is the dinosaurs at the Carnegie.)

See what I mean about getting out of hand?

We're in Week 7 of the summer this week - there are 11. The last one is the camp-free week, which I am taking off, but it looks like mr. flea has no vacation for, so maybe his mother and his sister and her kids will come down (his father has jury duty, which I'd have thought you could postpone for a family vacation, but he's not that kind of guy.) All up in the air, mostly.

This week Casper is at her second non-YMCA week camp - the local nature center, run by the city. She wasn't as wild about it as I'd expected - she was much more enthusiastic about the first day of Zoo Camp. Her friends the twins are there, but have been for several weeks so have a regular gang, and S. didn't sit with Casper at lunch. (In Good Save news, a friend of hers from Zoo Camp is there this week, and sat with her.) Her small group is all boys but her, and nobody interesting she says, and her swim buddy is a girl she knows from school but thinks is weird. I emphasized that she needs to be friendly to swim buddy girl just like she wishes S. would be friendly to her.

She's had a good social summer up to now, and this was supposed to be the highlight, with her close friend, but oh well. She's made good friends this year at the Y (so strange to have met none of them) and has successfully navigated some mean girl social stuff there (a girl told her her parents have stupid jobs - that girl's parents are apparently a musician and a tattoo artist. So sue us for not being hipsters!)

Dillo does okay at the Y, but he's not very happy. Like with school, he would much rather be at home, and tells me so. Several boys - at least 5 (Clayton, Michael, Eli, Cooper, and Baptiste) - from PreK - are at the Y too, but they are all already 5 and in the older group. He is with the little dudes - they have nap time! (Dillo hasn't napped in YEARS). Every Monday (this week, Tuesday) I have to use all my persuasive powers to get Dillo to go to the Y successfully. Luckily I am damned good.

He's also had a couple of evenings when he's overtired, and at bedtime segues into a litany of worry and fear and complaint about the upcoming kindergarten. He is afraid of homework (which they do not have in K, and he knows). He once wailed, "They are going to teach me to SPELL!" and it was all I could do not to laugh. I have talked about the cool K teachers (teacher assignments aren't until right before school starts) and how he will have some old friends from his PreK class and some new friends, but he isn't buying it. He's started to ask me to homeschool him, though not in so many words. Poor guy just doesn't like change, and doesn't like organized stuff, and wants to do his own thing. I hope we get the teacher our PreK teacher recommended, who is said to work well with the independent. He used to like school...

To sign one's daughter up for swimming lessons at the beach after watching the teachers do private and small-group lessons for a couple of hours, without even asking what it's going to cost (we pay at the end of the week - they cancel for thunder, and if they cancel we don't pay. We do go if it's merely raining, like this morning).

The University outdoor pool is open to University affiliates in the summer. We went a few times last summer and enjoyed it - lots of acquaintances seem to go there. It also happens to be just about across the street from my building, so I could go do laps at lunch. Hmmm. I definitely need more exercise than I am getting in this new job/location (I used to walk more to work and do more physical activity at work).

The question is to buy summer passes or not. The pool is open May 21-Aug. 13 (with shorter hours, late pm only, Aug. 3-13.

Summer passes would cost: $80 each for me and mr. flea, $50 for Casper, free for Dillo until he's 3, which is July, so I think we can fake that. Also $10 for an all summer parking pass if you buy pool passes: Total: $220.

25 visit passes would cost: $62.50 for each of the three of us over 3, I think. Parking would be $5 per visit. So if we went 25 times that would be $187.50 plus $125 for parking (ouch): $312.50. Better to get the season passes if we think we'd go as many as 25 times.

Day passes would cost: $3.50 for me, $4.00 for mr. flea, $2.50 for Casper, plus $5 parking per visit. Total $15 per visit. So, if we went 14 times or fewer the whole summer, day passes would be cheaper, but if we went 15 times or more, it would make sense to get the summer passes.

There are 18 weekend days we could go to the pool over the summer, leaving aside times I know we will be out of town. Plus evenings - it's open until 7, so we could do a late afternoon dip.

Hmmm. It's a close call, unless I take up lap swimming at lunch. I suppose we could get me a season pass and a parking pass, ($90) and just pay $6.50 every time we went as a family.

It got hot and sunny. Okay, it's only 80, and still nice in the house with no AC, but it was damned hot in the sun, with a hat on, pushing some 65 pounds of child in a stroller to the farmer's market. Didn't have much cash, so we just got strawberries (eaten before we left the market), some beets, mixed purple and orange (casper's choice) and some salad mix. Next weekend maybe we'll plan to go pick our own strawberries; they are a dollar a pound, but I imagine people always pick more than they mean to.

I resisted all seedlings, because: moving! So this year will be peas and that's all.

The first of the iris bloomed today. Peas 1 are fading blooms and have 3-4cm pods; peas 1 are starting to bloom; peas 3 and 4 are well up. The kale seedlings I planted have done NOTHING. Rabbit fodder soon, no doubt.

When we moved down here from CT I brought my lemon thyme, a lily-of-the-valley, and a wild iris in pots. They are all still thriving in the garden here. I'd like to take several things with us, but not sure how the space issue will work out. I can certainly dig up some daffodils once the foliage fades and transport them as bulbs. The iris probably too, and the big clump desperately needs a dividing, though I've never moved iris father than across the yard. I'd love to take the thyme again. I have calla lillies in a pot that don't bloom (maybe this year? I thought I'd killed them but they are in shoots again) and two amaryllis that need to be planted out to grow foliage and rebuild. All of those will have to come in pots. I planted parsley and basil in pots on purpose, to be transportable (need to move them outside as they are leggy and unhappy, but it's been too cold at night until just now).

Must mow lawn. Really should have gotten mower sharpened.

BY bunnies, not OF bunnies. OF my pole beans, and to a lesser extent the beets. Damned bunnies. Casper said, "Tell those bunnies to not eat your beans. They should eat a carrot." (The carrots are blissfully untouched, in poitn of fact.)

I watered the garden some just now, ensuring that the approaching thunderstorm (it is dark and rumbly now) will produce actual rain. mr. flea mowed the lawn in great haste.

Last Sunday at the Kroger I scored a lot of Burpee seed packets for free - they had expired (though they're 2006) and they were giving them away. So I planted bush beans Tuesday AM, and started some canteloupes, and put some Burpee 7 inch carrots in a big pot, since there's no way to grow 7 inch carrots in my clayey soil. The beans and the cantelopes have begun to germinate already. I need to plant more canteloupes, some more of my Johnny's beets and beans, and some of the marigold seeds (3 packets) I scored. Saving the mesclun and arugula for a fall crop.

Ah, here's the rain. May it bring cool, too.

I donned my bug spray and attacked the garden this morning, early enough that it's hotter in the house than outside. Two houses down they ahve a tree that is very well-placed at this time of year and keeps much of our yard in shade until 7:30/8.
-weeded and mulched veg bed with cow manure. Unfortunately I should have bought 3x as much cow manure as I did. I always do this.
-beets are struggling and have suffered some from rabbits.
-carrots are flourishing and need to be thinned again, but I didn't do it today.
-pole beans are doing well and 3 feet high. A few have been amputated by rabbits but not many.
-zucchini gearing up to take over the world.
-tomatoes all flourishing, also basil
-eggplant seems a little feeble; I mulched it heartily.
-mesclun lettuces still have some life in them, though partly gone to seed.
-picked the last of the peas but did not pull the vines yet.
-have a few shoot of calla lily, one torenia is blooming, and he seocnd wave of lilies is in bud.
-rose is gone by, but clematis still flowering.
-Round-uped the poison ivy thoroughly. Happily it is far from "desirable plants" and pretty far from the garden bed, and it's sunny and not windy so we should be good.
-now watering.

Have headache, whether from water or caffeine deprivation I'm not sure. Which to apply?

Hot. Yuck.

Not a lot got done this weekend, and a fair amount wanted/needed to get done. Excuses include pouring rain Saturday and vagaries of what The Child wanted to do Sunday.

To do:
mow side (desperate!), back, trim needy places
thin sprouted carrots and beets
plant dahlia
bring calla lily, amaryllis, ficus out from indoors
build bean trellis and plant pole beans
acquire tomato seedlings and plant (we missed the farmer's market Saturday)

Many things happened despite my lack of activity, however:
The later producer of peas I and II is blooming.
The earlier producer has 2-3 inch pods, not yet fattening.
We ate a small salad of baby spinach and mesclun. Unfortunately someone of the rabbit variety got there before me, or it would have been a bigger salad.
Iris are blooming; of course the biggest and showiest are the ones I like least (5-inch yellow bearded iris). They suffered some in the rain and wind, and from Casper's complete inability to resist touching/picking flowers.
Tulips, dogwood, anything else previously mentioned is gone by, except a few straggling azaleas. The oak trees have fully leafed out and I'm packing away the sweaters and calling it summer.