Telling Time

I know that I should be helping Sunil learn to tell time instead of working against him, but I was so tired yesterday. He did exchange the scooter for a pair of skates. Then we went swimming and that wore us all out. Sunil can actually swim now. So he went back and forth between us endlessly (in really shallow water). I fell asleep twice after we got home and before dinner. By 8:00 PM I was ready to bribe him to go to bed. Instead I told him it was 9:30 and he'd already been up too late. He went right to bed with no complaints. I was in bed by 8:30 more or less. I had to get up a few more times to switch around the laundry but I feel like a whole new woman today.

Merry-go-round

While up at the mall for ice skating adventure with Grammylyn Sunil took a ride on the carousel.

Let the vacation begin...

Sheela and Grammylyn have left for Tennessee. I'm sure that they will have a wonderful time while we sit here at home.

To fill our lonely days we are intending to overwhelm poor Sunil with way more attention than he is used to as a second child. His new scooter is not working out. The ride board is warped (I thought that his balance just wasn't that good) and it isn't ride-able. So we will return that today. He may choose another scooter if the next delivery has come in, but if they don't have another one he has his eye on a pair of in-line skates with training wheels. Too cute!

We may even get to the roller rink to break them in, and then we plan to go swimming at the natatorium. His swim classes start again tomorrow night and will take up most of his evenings while Sheela is gone.

Playtime

Well Grammylyn has been here since late Wednesday night. She and the kids are having a ball. It makes it hard to enjoy working when I know that they are off having fun. My vacation is coming and it is almost Friday afternoon. I guess I'll survive. Sheela is still going to Kids Club. Sunil is getting to have someone-on-one time with Grammylyn. Yesterday they went ice skating, twice. Today they may even go again. Sheela will go to friend's house for awhile this afternoon and then Grammylyn is going to take them to a play.

You call that a storm?

We finally had a little bit of rain here. Massive thunderstorms flew through last night they actually had to cancel the Grande Finale of the Kaboom-town Fireworks show. The storms that came our way were a little bit more tame. We had nearly 10-minutes of great, big, beautiful rain drops but when it was all said and done, the grass underneath the Frisbee wasn't even moist and the ground wasn't muddy. We still need 20 inches of rain to get out of the drought, storms like this just aren't going to do it.

Our traditional fireworks show is put on by the city of Plano. When we lived there we just walked across the street to the park to watch the show and then walked back home. Last year we drove back over, so we had to deal with traffic on the return trip, but the viewing was clear, easy and free. This year when we got to the park, it was empty (except for one group of four teenagers). I was afraid that the show had been cancelled due to weather. So we drove South to the launch site to make sure. Normally the high school is all roped off to restrict access (unless you walk-in and pay to enter the grounds). This year there were no gates, banners or signs (there was one sign -- we'll get back to it in a minute). We waited in line for a few minutes and joined the throng to enter the grounds, once we got in to the parking lot we realized that it was less than 1/3 full but everyone was set up to watch the show. I thought I'd seen a sign on our way in, it was the size of a "FOR SALE" sign in someone's front yard. I wasn't sure but it looked like it said "Oak Point Park", which is about five miles away. We went back to see the sign and sure enough "Fireworks moved to Oak Point Park", so we left everyone else sitting there and tried to get across town. Because of weather they started the show 20 minutes early, we didn't make it all the way over. We stopped to watch from the Wal-mart parking lot. Sitting under the parking lot flood lights cost the night a lot of charm and magic. At least it didn't rain on us, and we had chairs.

Independence Day

Happy 4th of July! We have nothing special going on today -- its all general clean up and home maintenance. Boring but necessary. I wanted to take the kids to the pool but of course, as a National Holiday the pool is closed so that everyone can spend time with their families (doing nothing, because all of the fun things are closed).

OT and PT

Having Mommy home is better than having her gone. The nurse came by on Saturday to check on things. She will start in-home occupational therapy and physical therapy on alternating days. They may come today, or today may be a holiday. Someone will come for sure on Wednesday.

She is only getting up to go to the bathroom and to take meals. The rest of the time she is staying in bed. I expected her to want to be up in the wheelchair at least.

We installed remote controls for her ceiling fans (since she can't reach the pull chains). Unfortunately, we managed to lose one of the remote controls before we even installed the receiver. I'm sure we will find it just as soon as we quit looking.

Adequate Protection

Here the kids are showing off their new toys. Sheela bought herself in-line skates and Sunil bought himself a scooter. They actually already had all of the pads and such but its been awhile since they've been fully decked out.

Lemon Battery

Here Sheela is showing off the lemons that she used as a battery to light up this LED. We had to move the whole contraption into the laundry room (the only dark room in the house) to really be able to see that it was working.

Parched Earth

This is what the ground looks like where the city has stopped watering the parks. Some of these cracks in the ground are over a foot deep already and some are three inches across. There is a lot of concern over how safe it is for the kids to run and play in these parks. This is right across the street from us, but our kids don't play on the grass. They either go all the way to the playground or stay in our own yard.

Finished

Round One of the swim lessons is finished. Sheela passed her Bronze level class and could take the Silver level if she wasn't already booked for a three week vacation. Sunil did very well with all of his Block Two requirements but still needed support to swim the required 15 feet lengths. So he will repeat Block Two after a week break. I'm actually pretty pleased with the way that this worked out. When I registered for the swim classes that was how I set it up. So Sunil is already registered for the next round.

Recalls, etc

I took my new van in today to get a few minor items resolved. Mostly stuff that any self-respecting dealer would have fixed before they sold the van. One of the power outlets in the front (there are two) doesn't work. One of the lift gate lights doesn't work and the lens is missing. Apparently there are a couple of recalls on the car as well that they failed to address. It will all be taken care of today... or so they say.

The dealership that I took it to (not the one that we bought it from) is about half a mile from my office. I pulled in at 7:30 and there was no one in line. I asked for a ride to the office (it's close enough to walk but I'm not dressed to be cutting through fields) and was delivered at my door less than ten minutes later. I could get used to having the world revolve around me.

Homecoming

Today is the day that Mommy is to be released from the hospital. It has been 20 days since she has been home. The support rails are up in the shower. The bed has been lowered a few inches. The furniture in the living room and family room have been rearranged to allow for easier access. I meant to throw away a few of the area rugs on my way out the door this morning but I forgot. Daddy knows that they can go and will probably take care of it himself before I get there. The three rugs that she would walk over most often have had the non-slip backs shredded over the last few months and are a danger to everyone. We will just wait a few months before we replace them.

Project Management

At work we typically use a computer program called Microsoft Project to manage our project schedules. We are all fairly comfortable with the basics but we use only a fraction of its capabilities. Our IT department took it upon themselves to not just upgrade us all to the latest revision(that was at our request, when some people upgrade but not others everything gets complicated) but to take it one step farther and get us to use their whole project management suite. In general, I enjoy these big initiatives and I think it makes more sense than barely using the tools that we are given. However, this time I resent having the IT department fix this problem for me. I've been working for two years on a suite of tools, that would have addressed this small piece of design process as well as our complaint files, our corrective and preventive action system, our discrepant material tracing and a host of other items. I can't lobby to add it in to next year's budget until August. By buying this software now, it weakens my case for why I need the other package. The project management portion is the piece that was to contribute the hard dollar savings that would make it possible to realize the soft money compliance savings.

It will take me a few days to get over being ticked and get on board. I will eventually be on board. I like the software, it just changes things I wasn't ready to change and doesn't provide the scope of what I really needed. Of course there was a very real chance that I wasn't going to get approval to spend the $500K on what we really need. This will be better than nothing.

Work day blahs

With no major crises at work the energy level here has taken a dramatic drop. That is supposed to be a good thing and yet it doesn't seem like it. There are still things to do but none of them seem to hold my attention for very long. At least I still get paid.

Extra pictures

The last post stopped letting me add pictures... it could be a comment on picture quality but I choose to look at it as a size restriction. Here are the kids at the beach and sitting like automatons in the car.

Jaden's Birthday Weekend

Saturday night we swung by the hospital to visit Mommy. Her hard cast was put on on Friday and she is doing very well. She has graduated to a blue star on her door. That is the code for being able to do most things without assistance (though supervision is still required.) She is even getting around on her walker a little bit. She doesn't seem to enjoy it quite as much as Sunil does... of course she has to do the work herself and he still gets a free ride.

After the hospital we went on to Sheela's soccer game. It was not one of their better showings but we enjoyed seeing Sheela back in the goal (much more than she enjoyed being there I'd guess). Neither of the regular goalies showed up and neither did most of the normal front line. With Sheela in the goal and only Kelzie taking shots it was rough.

On our way out of town we actually let the kids set up the portable DVD player. It's pretty rare but it was going to be at least a ninety-minute drive all at one stretch. I wanted the kids to be good and drowsy when we got to the campsite. I didn't realize it was going to be a quarter mile hike in to the site and I needed the kids to be alert and shlepping junk like the rest of us.


Then we went on up to Lake Ray Roberts. There are a couple of State Parks up that way. We camped at Isle du Bois. The weather was a little bit too warm for actual comfort (until around 3 am) but it was bearable after midnight or so. The location was beautiful, we were right along the shore in the trees in a very secluded "primitive" spot. The original plan had us staying in the RV area with the pop-up camper and A/C, but those spots were already booked. So we didn't even take the camper.
We went over to the playground/swimming area early the next morning to stake out some prime spots for Jaden's party. We had the entire playground to ourselves for a few hours before it got to be too hot. I expected more kids and thought that we should be close to the playground. I don't think any of the kids that came were playground age (except for Sheela and Sunil and they were over it by the time the party started). We spent most of the party swimming in the lake of building sandcastle's with Brenda and Jaden.

Swim Class

Both kids have been enjoying the annual swim class ritual. Sunil uses it as an excuse to pick up chicks (for a change this one isn't a 10 year-old named Taylor).
Sheela actually works on refining her strokes. I use it as an excuse to sit outside and catch up on some Sudoku puzzles.

Just when I thought it was over...

Sheela has been free of all lice indications for two weeks. I wasn't quite celebrating but I knew we'd gotten through it. I forgot about the rest of the kids in the world. The signs are up at Kids' Club. Many children had to be sent home yesterday for lice. At first I was pleased as neither Sunil nor Sheela were sent home. Then I found out that even though we were told that they'd all been checked they hadn't actually been checked. Fearing the worst I took them home and began picking at them again. Both kids really are clear at the moment but I'm going to keep on oiling Sheela's hair until she leave town in July. I want to make sure her head is clean when she goes to Mom's and I'm not taking any chances. Sunil's hair is so short it isn't really a problem.

Sunil's Life Plan

Sunil has begun to plan for his future. He intends to work at a car wash in order to pay for the walkie-talkie cell phone that he wants. That will happen when he is 15. Two years later he expects to buy himself a car. Longer term he intends to own a car wash in Rhode Island where expects to live with his new family (a wife and her two kids). When he wants a hug from me he'll jump in his car and drive to Texas. He may even come by every morning before work.