I’ve had a crush on Spock since I was something like thirteen years old. I LOVE the direction the Trek reboot has taken the character in.
This is the very first music video I’ve ever made, and clearly I need to work on my pirating skills some more because WOW, that picture quality is crap. You almost need to have seen the movie just to know what you’re looking at.
It has Tony Bennett though, so there’s that.
Check it out and tell me what you think:
This reawakening of my artistic drive has been an incredible experience for me. As long as I limit myself to short 30-minute bursts of working on my Christmas card project during the mornings and early afternoons, and make sure to get plenty of fresh air and exercise in between sessions, the whole thing is one big joyous renaissance of creative bliss. Seriously, it’s like a drug.
But I have learned something about myself: I cannot be a good artist and a good parent at the same time. When it’s time to drive to the bus stop and pick up the kids after school, I have to shut down my computer before I go and leave it off until after they’re in bed. Because as a Solitary Artist I am joyful and inspired and full of happy, but as an Artist Who Keeps Getting Interrupted By The Needs Of Children I am cranky and impatient and snappish. Apparently art mode and mom mode are mutually incompatible frames of mind. Hunh.
So anyway, my Christmas card. I’m creating it entirely from scratch in Photoshop, which means it won’t be quite as polished as what I could make with the Corel Paint program, but it will still be quite lovely. Eventually I will get my Mac’s memory upgraded and then I can get all fancy with Corel Paint.
This is the beginning of something big. I can feel it.
In my last post I mentioned the wonderful sermon Pastor Bill gave last Sunday and how it reminded me of why I love this little fellowship and its Pastor so much. I want to add a link to the mp3 recording of that sermon, since I know that some of my out-of-town friends might enjoy listening to it.
I feel like I should…prepare them first, though. Most of my out-of-town friends were raised in “high church” religions, and are very comfortable in traditional Catholic/Episcopalian/etc settings. Backcountry Christian Fellowship is exactly as casual and nontraditional as it sounds; we are a VERY laid-back bunch. Folks come to service wearing shorts and sandals and that’s completely fine. Pastor Bill comes from a traditional Catholic background himself, but I think he’s come about as far from that environment as it’s possible to come and still be a preacher. This is not going to sound like what you are used to, is what I’m saying.
Check it out anyway. It is awesome.
So without further ado, here is my favorite man of the (hawaiian-printed) cloth delivering my favorite sermon to date:
Enjoy!
We’ve been having some glorious sunsets lately. This is also the kids’ favorite time of day to play on the rope swing, when it’s not so hot outside.
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Wednesday we went to the Ingalls* homestead for a playdate. They live pretty close to us, a ten-minute drive away, so I was hoping the kids would have lots of fun and we could start doing that more often, at least until school starts. (The homeschooling idea was nipped in the bud by Steve; I think my mistake was telling him that I know the Ingalls from church.)
Luke had a blast at the playdate. He and the two boys closest to his age spent hours playing manly games with forts and such, and every time I asked him if he was ready to go home yet he responded with a definite “No!” I never get tired of watching him frolic happily with his own kind, after spending the first seven years of his life so distrustful of other people in general and males in particular.
Elizabeth was a little off that day. At our urging she hung out here and there with various Ingalls children, but she kept gravitating back to a half-grown black kitten, one of two litters there, and when it was time to go she got very adamant about bringing it home with us. I sympathized, because her own black cat disappeared last May (the attrition rate to owls and coyotes is very high around here), but we need another kitten like we need an outbreak of swine flu, and I told her so. It turned into a Whole Thing, and when we left without the kitten she was Vexed and Sulky. I suspect that we’re rolling into that adolescent phase everyone’s been warning me about, because Elizabeth’s temperament swings between “Affectionate and Agreeable,” “Distant and Secretive” and “Vexed and Sulky” like a three-way metronome these days.
*Not their real name; they’ve asked that I give them an Internet pseudonym.
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Friday I captured photographic proof that while childhood is temporary, immaturity is forever.
(Yes, that’s the male “kitten” of Stripes’ litter.)
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Saturday there was a party at Oceanside Beach in honor of Geoff’s girlfriend’s daughter’s birthday, and most of the worship team went to that. It was a lot of fun.
The ocean was very warm this time; nothing like the icy waters of last fall. I guess that means a warmer winter this year. I can totally live with that.
There was another near-death experience on the same jetty that Elizabeth nearly met her demise on last October, but at least it wasn’t one of my kids this time. The worst part was that I saw it coming and got there too late to avert it but just in time to see a giant wave slap down on a group of boys and actually wash one of them off the rock he was clinging to. He snagged on another rock on his way down though, so no fatalities. But the four of them had actually had to walk past a “Jetty Closed Today” sign to get out there, so while I was very glad that the kid hadn’t died, I considered the big scrape on his leg to be a useful reminder about respecting warning signs in the future.
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Since that last hearing three weeks ago Steve has been more courteous and friendly to me in our brief interactions than he has ever been before at any point in our entire relationship. I’m sure it’s some sort of ruse to lull me into a false sense of safety or somesuch, but whatever. It’s easier than dealing with Hostile Steve. Pretty much my only complaint on that front is that Elizabeth has started coughing all night after visits with him, because Steve and the woman that’s moved in with him smoke in the house. That is irksome.
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I’ve gotten a few fall crops planted in the garden. I’ve discovered that some stuff actually does better here in the fall and winter than in the heat of summer, but the trick is to plant them early enough that they really hit their growth stride before the first frost when everything slows way down. So far I’ve planted snap peas, broccoli, cabbage, lettuce and radishes. I’ve also started digging up garlic bulbs and replanting the cloves in new beds, because for once I actually planted enough to have a surplus this summer. I’ll need to do the same with my shallots and bunching onions soon, but I’m running out of garden beds to transplant into. The perennial section of my garden needs to be enlarged, but alas, I’m having a hard time finding the motivation to do that since I’m just waiting for the chance to move out anyway. And there are signs of that all over: the weeds are running rampant in the orchard and my house hasn’t had a really good cleaning in weeks. I have lost my desire to tend to this place. I really want to move on, but this is apparently where I’m supposed to be for now, because events keep conspiring to keep me right here. I can accept that, and even plant a fall garden to prepare for another winter here, but I can’t CARE about this property anymore, and it shows.
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There are other things that I’d like to write about, but I can’t. Those of you who have been reading here for a while may be astonished to learn that there are people in this town who Do Not Mean Me Well (I know, hard to believe, right?) and I think some of them read this blog. There have been too many times that I’ve posted about some plan or prospect or new friendship only to have it fall apart within days after hitting the blogosphere. I think I might need to fire up a new private, password-protected blog for journaling all that stuff so I can keep my venting outlet without compromising my security.
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School starts in less than two weeks; I can hardly believe the summer’s gone already. Elizabeth will be starting middle school this year and I think she’s looking forward to being on a different campus than Luke. The events of the past few weeks have had the side effect of making him cling tightly to her as the one stable feature in an everchanging landscape, the one person who’s always with him no matter whose house he’s in or who else he’s with. I understand that and sympathize, but now it’s time for him to start developing his own inner strength to sustain him when she’s not around. And frankly, Elizabeth needs a break from the little barnacle.
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I think that’s everything bloggable. The heat wave has broken and the air feels like autumn, at least for a little while. I wish it could be just like this until November or so, except with some rain thrown in. And as long as I’m putting in requests, I wouldn’t mind meeting some nice heterosexual single guy who likes kids, has mastered basic communication and relationship skills, and lives at least a few miles away from Silkotchland.
That would be swell.
Yesterday was the kind of day that, at the very beginning of my marriage, I thought we’d be having all the time once our kids were about this age. (That sentence is kind of hard to parse. Read it a few times until it makes sense.) It wasn’t a spectacularly exciting day, or expensive or complicated, it was just…fun.
Slight tangent: there is a family that goes to our church that is seriously Little-House-On-The-Prairie homesteading old fashioned. They are very nice. They have something like eight or nine kids, and Elizabeth has bonded with one of the girls, and two of the boys are pretty close to Luke’s age (one a little younger and one a little older). I’d mentioned to the mom and dad how disappointed Luke was that his trip to camp didn’t include a visit to the gold mine, and that I planned to take him to see it myself. They told me that they homeschool all of their children, and that they are planning an educational field trip up to Julian as soon as school starts (so they can get school credits for it), and that they plan to visit the gold mine, the museum, the old historic jail, the old cemetery…all the stuff that Luke would go absolutely wild over. So OBVIOUSLY I invited myself and my kids along for that trip. And also I am seriously considering having them homeschool Luke and Elizabeth along with their kids.
But I didn’t want to make Luke wait another month for his first gold mine experience, so I hopped back online to see what else we could find in the meantime, and I discovered The Smith Ranch. As soon as I saw that there was a ride on an old narrow-gauge mining train involved, I knew this was what I was looking for. Luke has been crazy about trains pretty much his whole life. I made reservations for the following Monday.
The homesteading family — lets call them the Ingalls since they’ve requested that I not use their real name on the Internet — had mentioned a nice park in Julian that they planned to stop at for lunch on their field-trip day, so I looked it up and figured I’d add that into Monday’s trip too.
So yesterday me and the kids packed a picnic lunch and drove up to Julian. The park was a bit farther off the beaten path than I’d expected, but we found it with no problem. And then…somehow I managed to lock my keys in my car while filling out the parking fee ticket stub for the front window.
On a family trip with Steve that might have been enough to sour the whole day right there, but yesterday it was one of the little things that are not worth sweating. My one concern was that we might not make it to the Smith Ranch in time for the mine tour, but my spidey-sense (I don’t know what else to call it but I’ve come to trust it over the past 15 months) was telling me that everything would be fine, so I sent Luke and Elizabeth and the lunch-filled cooler off to frolic on the playground together while I examined my options. I found a park employee with a Slim-Jim, but my door locks would not bend to his will, so I called AAA and as it happened there was a AAA assistance place thingie just seven miles up the road and there was already a truck headed in my direction on another call and maybe 15 minutes after I phoned for help my door was unlocked and I was good to go.
I didn’t have time to explore the park with the kids, but we got to the ranch right on time and still in fine spirits.
The Smith Ranch? Is awesome. The guy who owns it used to be a high school teacher and he obviously knows how to connect with kids. He was in constant teaching mode but in the best possible way. There was only us and one other couple there, so Luke and Elizabeth got most of his attention and he really drew them into the historical setting.
The tour began with the train ride:
It stopped several times at various points of interest, like this pear tree that was planted in the 1840’s by the miners that had originally settled the claim:
One of the stops was at a little fort the family is constructing from trees that have died in the drought. Teacher Guy asked Luke to help him raise the flag there:
There were old 1800’s-era artifacts all over the place.
Eventually the train pulled up at the mineshaft entrance, and guests were given the option of walking in or riding in an ore cart. The kids chose the ore cart, the rest of us walked.
The mine itself is still in the process of being re-excavated after having been filled with dirt at some point before the current owners moved in. It only goes back about 40 feet right now, but that’s deep enough to be pitch-black and cold…you really get a sense of being underground. But what I enjoyed most wasn’t the mine itself, it was the way Teacher Guy (and his wife, when she joined us as we were coming back out of the shaft) wove a steady stream of verbal imagery that vividly brought that period of history to life for us.
After we left the mine we were brought to an old sluicing trough with crushed quartz and sand and water and a few gold-painted pebbles in it. They showed us how to pan for the “gold,” and we all had fun trying our hand at that. Then they opened up their little “general store,” which was fascinating because it was full of more pioneer artifacts, and we got to trade the “nuggets” we’d found for stick candy and red licorice. We adults enjoyed the panning (and the candy!), but Luke and Elizabeth were MESMERIZED by the whole concept. They stayed at it long after the rest of us had wandered off.
Later we all got to cross a shallow gully on the kind of rope bridge the old settlers used to make…
…and then we sat down in a shady spot while Teacher Guy and his wife showed us more artifacts and told us the stories behind them. I know it probably sounds dry and boring, but it wasn’t at all. Even the kids were hanging on their every word.
They had a reproduction of a letter that a Great-Great-Uncle of the wife had written during that time period, and apparently back then sending letters was seriously expensive business because the writer had gone to great lengths to conserve paper and postage and this letter had still cost him $5 to mail — one-third of a month’s pay for him! And look at the tricks he’d used:
He not only used both sides of the paper, he actually used each side TWICE — once writing vertically and again writing horizontally. And he left a little blank square on one side, where he wrote the mailing address after he’d folded the letter to create its own envelope.
Mrs. Teacher read us part of the letter, and it was very entertaining.
The whole experience, the whole afternoon, was relaxed and fun and educational and awesome. I was so glad we’d gone.
Julian was settled as a gold rush town, but what it’s most famous for nowadays is its pies. The whole town is full of fruit trees, mostly apple, and the Julian Pie Company uses nothing but locally grown fruit. We stopped there on the way home and picked up a dutch apple pie.
It was scrumptious.
So that was our first family trip to Julian, and definitely not the last; I think there’s enough historical stuff up there to keep Luke hooked for quite a while. I’m really looking forward to our field trip with the Ingalls next month.
The funny thing is, Steve used to go up there all the time during our marriage, and he made it a point never to let me or the kids go with him. (And now I know why, but that’s another subject.) How ironic is it that we had to ditch the cowboy before Luke got to explore a fascinating, historical Old West town only 60 miles from home?
Tomorrow the kids have a playdate at the Ingalls homestead, and Mrs. Ingalls and I will be discussing the possibility of having Luke and Elizabeth homeschooled with her brood. I’d have to clear it with Steve, but he knows as well as I do what a crappy school Hamilton is.
It’s breathtaking, how fast the changes are coming these days. I wonder what our lives will look like a year from now, or five years from now.
I’m looking forward to finding out.
An Invincible Summer 