the Ides of March

Ok, well it isn’t actually the ides (the 15th) but I bet it will be by the time you read this.

Once again, much time has managed to elapse since I last wrote.  I read through my last two posts and nearly felt tired all over again just reading them.  Good grief.  David did NOT work 3 days in March.  I have put the foot down on that one, although I’m not sure he noticed.  But in all seriousness, I don’t think he is anxious to repeat that either.  We’ve had a bit of a lull since then, but it’s been steady and busy.  Since I last wrote, we’ve all been sick some more.  It’s been a weird winter.  We’ve been sick more than ever before in our lives.  I guess this is part of what comes of having a kid, but no one told us that one, so we’ve not been prepared.  And the crazy thing is, Jan’s actually a really healthy kid compared to a lot of kids his age, so go figure.  I can’t imagine what some families go through who have several kids all being exposed to piles of germs and bringing them home.  Parents’ immune systems don’t stand a fighting chance!

So what have we been up to lately.  I actually had to look at my calendar it’s been such a blur.

Jan:  He had his first overnight when we had a concert.  Going to Ian’s had to have been the highlight of his young life.  No separation anxiety in that child, no sir!  Thrilled to get away, I tell ya.  Pleased to be picked up in the morning too, though, so I don’t feel totally bereft.  He’s also been doing a lot of letter learning on a pretty nifty website called starfall.com  It’s a pretty cool thing for free.  They have numbers too, but you have to pay for that.  So far, for Jan, every letter is an E, but I’m sure some of it is sinking in and he asks to do it, so that’s all good.  Jan has also been much more pleasant since he’s stopped being so sick, and we are all thrilled at the transformation from ogre to normal little boy.  He had Grandma here for a whole week lavishing attention on him and he loved every second.  He now prays for Grandma every night along with Papa, Mama, Bla-bla (his stuffed dog), and Smeer.

    Just a silly picture of the goofball.  .He already broke his drum set that we got him for Christmas (who’s surprised by that?) so he plays the one at church as often as we let him.  I have no idea what “good” for a 3 year old would be, but he hasn’t hit himself in the head and he hits all the various things.  He loves it soooooo much.  Craziness.

.  These are just some photos taken at the local zoo where we went with Jan’s best friend, Ian, and Grandma.  You can see Ian in the picture of the train.  I also include the photo of the flamingo because I think it’s obvious that birds were related to dinosaurs.  Doesn’t he look like he is going to open his mouth and have something like t-rex teeth and chomp my arm off?

Speaking of Smeer (I did, way up there)… he had a good visit to the vet where his blood sugar had plummeted so we all had high hopes.  But then the visit after that he had sort of plateaued.  But then he had a super low-blood sugar episode where he could barely walk, so we took him in again and he had a fever of 104!  One thing I’m learning is how much cats are like humans, that’s for sure.  Although cats can cure themselves of diabetes, did you know that? Amazing.  But it doesn’t seem he’s done that.  So anyway, he had to be on all kinds of antibiotics at, of course, a price, and plus he’s still on the insulin and some low-carb special food.  Well, I got the bill from that last visit and burst into tears.  That’s it, I said.  We can’t afford this business.  I mean, what if Jan got sick or we needed a new car or we wanted to give a chunk to some charity and we couldn’t afford it because we’d spent money on the cat?  Goodness sake.  I mean, we love him and all, but enough’s enough.  So he is currently in limbo.  He isn’t getting any insulin because he isn’t eating very much, but he is acting more or less normal.  So we’re just kind of counting the days.  He’s 14, so that’s a pretty good cat life.  He’s seen two countries and how many cats can say that?  I tell ya, he’s an international cat of mystery.    And here’s a picture to prove his liveliness.

He loves loves loves running water.  And you can see Jan’s not averse either.

David has been working steadily, but not as hard as it was in March.   He and our pastor Mark have created a new installation that will be up and it promises to be a good one.  One of his colleagues was relieved of her duties so things have been a bit different around the church.  He’s currently working on possibly having a concert in the summer.  We had never considered that because we thought our audience was largely university students.  It turns out we have many more community people and high school students than we had thought so there would be an audience for a summer concert.  This is good because it can be hard to sustain a”business” if you basically disappear for several months.   He put together several really good and successful concerts that we had in March.  We had a lot of people in the church and the bands were really pleased.  We had Maps & Atlases (annoying voice, but good music, really nice people), My Brightest Diamond (crazily talented woman who had an 8 month old with her) and Frontier Ruckus (again).  Here is a photo of Shara, MBD:

Next week is Holy Week, so in addition to the usual busyness, just stay tuned for the usual crisis in our lives.  Maybe we will emerge unscathed this year.  I predict it will be the car.  Or the cat.  Maybe both.

I have been working as usual.  Learning a lot about Ancient Rome and the Gospel of Luke.  Or at least I think I am and I hope my students are. We have the Medieval Banquet tomorrow and I’m in charge of organising the whole thing.  It’s supposed to thunderstorm which would really suck since we are supposed to have an hour of medieval games outside.  My one colleague who is working on things with me a bit assures me that we can still do archery indoors in the locker room/cafeteria.  I hesitate to even ask.  But if you never hear from me again it’s because I’ve shot a student or allowed them to shoot each other or something and I’ve been carted away to the old Pen.  In any case, outdoors or in, it will proceed one way or the other because let me tell you, this thing is organised to the HILT.  I’m not my mother’s daughter for nothing.  I even have an indoors parade route drawn out.  Man, this thing is golden and they WILL have fun (dammit) because I have decreed it to be so!  I also had/ have to do an emergency baby shower organisation for tomorrow because although the real reception (have to call it a reception if boys are invited; showers are for girls only I’m told) is in May, the gift the faculty is giving is a set of stuffed backpacks for twins a colleague is adopting from the DRCongo.  He was told Monday that he has to leave this Saturday to get them.  Since the backpacks are for the plane ride for the twins, that had to be put together in a big fat hurry.  Who knew Amazon could ship things so fast?!  Oh yeah and a couple weeks ago I organised a bridal shower for another colleague.  Let me tell you, people better stop doing fancy stuff around here, because I’m getting showered out.   blaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah.  That’s just my sigh of exhaustion.

I’ll take the camera tomorrow and hopefully have some journalistic evidence of these things of which I speak so you can see I tell no lies.

After Holy Week, there is a week off of school so that will be a great relief.  Although naturally I did schedule almost every class to have a test right before the break.  Doesn’t every teacher do that?  Which means we have to start new units in every class after too.  sigh.  But at least I can do in the old PJs, right?  Yay for vacation!!!  So stay tuned because there is always fun times to be had around here.  If you don’t work that hard yourself, you can just read our blog and feel like you have and I say that should count.  Don’t you?