2nd week of February

Co-op
Well, it's three weeks post surgery and the co-op went more smoothly than two weeks ago but still had more hiccups than normal.  I was so worried I'd sleep through the phone call from the truck again that I hardly slept all night.  I didn't know there was a different driver so when I checked my alarm for the umpteenth time and saw that it was 5:15 am (1/2 hour later than normal), I got so worried I checked to make sure there was a dial tone on the phone.  There was!  The driver showed up at 5:30 and Isaac and Dode transferred the produce to the trailer.

We had plenty of volunteers that I supervised from a chair with my foot up on a stool.  One of the volunteers brought a bin with a lid and stop sign on it for small bulk items to go in and we didn't loose any this time.  It was only as checkout was winding down that I realized there were a few problems.  I have to create an order for myself manually each time.  The other orders go through google checkout and are downloaded into my database as a CSV.  When I printed out the checkout sheets Wednesday morning, my order wasn't on it.  I thought that was weird because I remembered entering my order but when I checked there was no record of it.  So, I created an order and all was well.  When I went to see who I'd need to call to come get their produce, I noticed that there were two orders for the same person, another Stephanie.  Dode built my database to sort by first name and when I'd created my order, I'd accidentally assigned it to her.  It worked out for the best though because one person had ordered that didn't show up on the checkout sheet and I still had a basket for her.  The problem was that I'd ordered two conventional, one organic and one Asian pack.  I didn't need double of everything and suddenly was faced with $60 of produce that no one had paid for.  I was able to advertise their availability on my Facebook page and within 5 minutes, they were all spoken for.  Relief!

this should eliminate the honest mistakes

The 2nd problem that I realized too late to fix was that the volunteers weren't very careful when they distributed produce.  When we're distributing big things like lettuce, pineapples, bags of carrots, it's easy to know if someone got missed by how many are left over.  Small things like apples, oranges, avocados, and cucumbers come in boxes that are sold by weight not item count.  When I hear how many are left over, it's not obvious if someone has been missed.  Several people commented on missed items this week.  I'm going to have to try to think of a way to prevent this.  Maybe as we finish up the baskets I can hand out a list of what they are supposed to have and ask different volunteers to each take a row and check that everything is there.   We're always done long before people start picking up so it shouldn't be a problem.

One thing I struggle with is how to motivate people to help out.  The same people generally help week after week while others pick up week after week and never help.  In fact, I have a stellar volunteer who showed up today to help even though she had missed the order deadline and wasn't picking up any produce!  In my reminder emails about ordering produce and pick up produce I always include the following information...

"As a participant in the co-op, please remember that this is not a business, it is a volunteer effort. I am facilitating this co-op as a volunteer.  If you choose to participate in the co-op, please plan to help in some way at least once for every four times you receive produce.  There is a list of volunteer jobs on the web site under “Sign up to Volunteer”.

I know that there is no way that everyone will help, it's just not human nature, but we definitely need a few more to commit each week!  I wish there was a way I could get people to feel that they are a part of a co-op, not that they're just taking advantage of a cheap way to buy produce.

Saturday work day
Some Saturdays are for fun, some are for laziness, and some are for projects around the house.  Today was a project day.  Dode and Anastaya worked together (well Dode worked and Anastaya kept him company) to build her some hurdles.  She is planning on being on the track team again this year and she really wants to be one of the students selected to run the hurdles.  She thinks that by practicing at home, she's got a chance.  Dode bought some conduit at the hardware store, bent it, welded it, and created two competition sized hurdles.

I'd decided that it was time to freshen up the front door.  Our house will never have much curb appeal, but I do my best to make it a welcoming and fun place.  (We're doing pretty well on the fun aspect!).  Thinking about it, we actually do great on welcoming too.  The UPS man, the mail lady, friends coming over, small children have no problem opening up the front door and coming right in.  I think it's because it has a clear window you can see through.  I want every house I ever live in to have a door like that (the old farm house did and the apartment we lived in before that too) so that people will feel like we're an informal kind of house where all are welcome.

Getting back to the front door, it was painted barn red when we first moved in.  Nice and safe.  I decided to be bold this time.  I choose a robin's egg blue.  While I love our welcoming front door, I hated all those windows that I had to tape off.  I started on them and then headed off to the hardware to buy the paint.  When I got back, Anastaya had completed the job for me.  What a kind service!  Once I painted the front of the door, I realized that the back of it was looking pretty worn so I taped off all the windows on the inside and painted it and the trim around it too. I used the same paint I used in the girls room on their doors.  When Miriam saw it she said, "Chocolate!"  My thoughts exactly!

before, with the windows taped

love the leaning tree!

Dode bought me the wall plaque on the left of the door on the due date for our 1st pregnancy, which ended in a miscarriage at 17 weeks.  The plaque has hung next to the door of three homes now.  Even though we're blessed with six children now, my heart still remembers the pain of that loss.

during

(You can peek into the packed useless room (our pantry) through the open doors behind me.  Doesn't everyone need a wall of food?)

finished

Isaac says it makes him happy to see the color of the door.

Jacob loves the color so much, he wants to paint one of the walls in his room the color.

I was also working on fixing the door to the useless room.  It's right next to the front door so everyone sees it when they come inside.  It's a cheap hollow core door that had a hole knocked in it from before we moved in.  I'd looked on craigslist to see if I could buy a new door but it's a non standard size and I couldn't find anything.  So, I bought myself a mesh drywall patch and some wall compound and fixed up the door.  My fix isn't perfect but I think that now people won't notice the door instead of seeing that ugly hole.  I painted that door chocolate brown too.  Then I realized that it was a project that just kept going and going.  All the doors and door trim are pretty beat up after living here for seven years with six kids.  Less than a foot from the useless room door is a closet, a few yards down the hall is a bathroom door.  Every door needs paint.  My foot wouldn't cooperate today but it's on the "do someday" list!

Once Dode and Anastaya finished up the hurdles, he got to work assembling a tumbling compost bin I bought at Costco.    I figured Dode and Isaac could use the time spent assembling it for Isaac's "handyman" class.  It took them 3 1/2 hours!  Dode gives it a big thumbs down for ease of assembly.  It required specialized tools that your average homeowner wouldn't own but there was no mention on the box of that requirement.  Now that it's assembled, Dode agrees that it's built very sturdy and should work well.  What it won't work for is food composting.  It's made of thick plastic.  For food composting, which I'd love to do since I create so much veggie waste, I'm going to have Isaac build me a plywood worm bin.  That way, the squirrels and other rodents won't have such an easy time gnawing their way through.

Speaking of rodents
I don't know if any of you remember the fun we had last week with a rat in the house.  I was never able to trap him and assumed that he'd left the way he came.  Friday night we were sitting in the living room when William wandered over by the piano.  He hurried up to me and whispered, "The mouse is over by the kapano (piano)."  We weren't convinced but when Isaac looked, sure enough, there it was.  It wasn't moving, it had died right there.  When Miriam saw it she said, "I guess he wanted to sleep next to the piano."  Dode got the fun job of disposing of it.  No more rodents (that we know of anyway!) is a good thing.

1,500 water meters down!

Dode has been working on a big project at work for months.  He's been finding and mapping the water meters on the Tulalip Reservation.  The water meters were put in years ago, but the tribes have been billing a flat rate for water so the tribes hasn't visited the meters in years.  They now want to be able to charge people by the gallon for the water they use but first they had to find them all again.  Dode has used this opportunity to add the exact locations of all those water meters to his water system database.  Dode used survey equipment to measure the location of each meter to an accuracy of about 1 inch.  Some days, Dode would be in an area with dense housing and clear skies (no trees) and would locate 40-50 meters.  Those days he could just grab the GPS and jump from meter to meter measuring the location of each one without any resistance.  The survey grade GPS has to have a clear view of most of the sky to get the survey grade accuracy.  Some days, Dode would be in areas of dispersed housing with dense trees and would be lucky to get 5.  Once he physically visited each meter, he had to go back to the office and import them into his master map.  Once he was completely finished, he had to go back out and visit a few again because they'd been assigned the same number.

carrying his survey equipment

getting ready at a water meter

Cracking open the meter to get its number (every meter has a unique number).

Isaac saw all the little white things and asked, "Is it filled with drugs?!"  They're Styrofoam packing peanuts to help prevent the water meter from freezing.

Some of you might have heard a rumor that Dode is a bit of a tightwad.  The picture above is a perfect example of his thrifty ways.  He's holding a spring puller from our $50 craigslist trampoline.  He used it to open 1,497 water meter lids to get the information inside.  Three water meters from the finish and it broke into two pieces.  They had a much more difficult time getting those last three meters open than the 1,497 that came before.

Another exciting thing happened at work this week.  He got to use his GPR (ground penetrating radar) for the 1st time.  The utilities people were digging and came upon a water line that wasn't on any records.  Dode brought out his equipment to show they were the line went.  It is the location where the federal government had an Indian boarding school and hospital over 100 years ago.

Tulalip Indian School, 1912

"The Tulalip Indian School began under the supervision of Charles Milton Buchanan, a physician who also served as Indian Agent for the reservation. The first year it had only one dormitory, but by 1907 both girls' and boys' buildings were completed and the school had a capacity enrollment of 200 students. The children ranged in age from 6 to 18 years and came from many different reservations as well as some off reservation communities. It was not uncommon for teachers at day schools to recommend certain students for the boarding school. Because Tulalip offered a maximum of eighth grade education, some students transferred to Chemawa for more advanced training."

The Indian boarding school movement was extremely unpopular to the tribes.  They had no choice if their children went, some people tried to hide their children from the government in order to keep them with them.  The structures have all been wiped out and there is no sign of what was once there. While locating the water line, he found the oldest manhole cover he's ever seen. It's now a foot underground!

oops!

Oldest manhole Dode has ever seen

Using the GPR to find the water line

He should have taken a photo of the screen he's looking at.  It just looks like a bunch of lines.  Somehow, he's able to see the water line in all the noise.

1st week of February

Enrichment Activities
At the end of every school quarter, the school the homeschoolers attend part time (an Alternative Learning Environment in official speak), has something called Enrichment Week.  It's a time for fun one day classes, field trips, and guest speakers.  This enrichment week we took part in activities on two of the days.

Wednesday was a presentation for parents.  Bruce Campbell, a classroom teacher with 38 years experience, came to teach us about the latest understanding of how the brain works and how we can enhance learning.  He travels the world doing workshops for teachers and we are lucky enough to have him living in the area.  Back when I was going to college at Western, there was a program where they brought an outstanding educator in for a year and had them teach skills to prospective teachers.  I was lucky enough to attend his class one quarter.  When I saw that he was coming to our school, there was no way I was going to miss out. 

His two hour presentation was very informative.  He taught us about dendrites (part of our brain cells) and how we can continue to grow more through learning.  He shared research that shows that in order to learn and grow, our brains need continual challenge.  He also said that previous thinking about fixed intelligence (the idea that once you have an IQ score, that's what you'll always be like) has been changed to reflect current ideas that we can continue to improve throughout our lives.  I have several kids who seem to be developing on a different timeline than the "norm" so that gives me a lot of encouragement.

Thursday was a fun day for students.  We started with a presentation by the Reptile Man.   He brought about 10 reptiles which he showed the children and taught them about.  Elizabeth loved seeing the big turtles and having a chance to help hold a 12 foot long snake. 

Elizabeth is holding a rubber boa, one of two kinds of snakes native to Western Washington.  The other is the garter snake.

After the reptile man was done, the cooking class at the school had arranged for a Luau.  Before the feasting, they had games set up in different classrooms.  It was a student led activity where the kids in charge of the games were the only ones supervising what was happening.  One of the games they offered was "deep sea fishing".  Once we waited in line, I saw a small sign that said, "$0.25 a fish".  I wasn't excited to have to pay but it was a quarter so I gave Elizabeth the money.  She threw her line in and ended up with a tiny cheap notepad, not even worth a nickel!  The mom behind us also was a bit hesitant to hand over her money.  She only had a dollar bill and the boys said, "Sorry, we don't make change."  Not wanting to disappoint her child, she paid her $1 and let her child fish four times. 

Once the games were finished, it was time for the luau.  The students had made pulled pork, rice, coconut cream pie and punch.  They also had fruit and veggie trays.  I'd paid in advance not knowing if I'd find anything to eat.  I filled my plate with fruit and an orange and decided my real lunch would have to come later.  I noticed a mom sitting down in front of me with a similar plate and asked her if she was a vegan.  She was and said she'd noticed me drinking my green smoothie and wondered if I was a vegan too.  We had a fun conversation about our eating choices.  Elizabeth came up and sat down beside me, totally disgusted.  She'd found out that the boys in the fishing room were "free agents", they hadn't been told to collect money, they hadn't been authorized to collect money, they'd just found a way to collect money!  She felt like we'd been totally robbed, of our quarter!  I had to smile at the audacity of those boys.  Future entrepreneurs apparently!

After eating, we got to watch a professional hula dancer perform a few dances before teaching those interested in learning a hula dance.  I used my bum foot as an excuse for not getting in there and joining Elizabeth in the fun!  Elizabeth and I went home and Isaac stayed behind where his robotics class demonstrated the robot they've built to anyone interested in seeing it.


A quick trip to Portland
I was asked to teach at National Camp School for BSA again this year.  Although it's called National Camp School (NCS), it's held in Olympia at a scout camp.  The name reflects the fact that we are teaching a nationally approved curriculum.  All day camp directors and program directors (volunteers) are required to attend the three day training in order to run a camp.  It will be my third time teaching at NCS.  I love day camp and think it's one of the highlights of summer.  I love having the opportunity to share my enthusiasm with new volunteers.  I've also learned quite a bit over 10 years of running day camps, little things that help a lot, that aren't part of the syllabus.  It's nice to pass on my knowledge to help other camps.

All this introduction to explain why on Saturday I went down to Portland and came back the same day, eight hours of driving for a 5 hour meeting!  The NCS volunteer staff come from BSA councils (geographic regions) in Washington and Oregon.  There are 10 people on staff from 5 different councils.  Each camp school has a volunteer director who works with a professional advisor (a paid BSA employee) to run the camp.  This year the advisor is based in Portland.  The volunteer director lives near Renton, about an hour from me.  I drove down to Seattle and hopped in with her to carpool to Portland.  On Saturday, we all got together to meet each other, decide who's teaching which classes, and try to create a shared vision for camp school.

I was a bit nervous going down.  I knew I'd be in a car with a person I'd never met before for six hours.  I worried my foot would hurt.  I worried I'd be the youngest person in the group.  How did it turn out?  I'm really good at making small talk.  I've been told I have the gift of listening.  It's not really the gift of listening, although that's a part I guess.  It's the ability to ask questions that get people talking.  I kept the driver talking for 75% of the time.  Success!  My foot treated me pretty well.  Driving my van is really tough and by the time I'd gone 30 minutes, I was trying to find a comfortable place to rest it.  The thought of all the miles ahead of me was quite worrying.  Once I climbed into the other car, I was able to stretch out my leg and my foot felt much better.  Was I the youngest person in the room?  Almost!  The professional advisor looked like  he was probably in his young 30's.  There was one other staff member who looked to be close to my age.  Everyone else has many many years more experience in life and BSA.  I'm looking forward to the time in my life when I don't feel like the most inexperienced person in the room.

Back in Arlington, Dode was left with a pretty empty house for the day.  The three girls had gone to stay with my dad for a few days.  Isaac had a school activity in Bellingham.  Jacob was doing his  own thing.  That left Dode and William with a free day.  It was a beautiful sunny day so they went to explore.  They went to a park, checked out an old campground and after much begging from William, they went on a bike ride.  Willian got about 100 feet and decided that he didn't want to be bike riding any more.  In fact, he was convinced that he'd never wanted to go bike riding in the first place.  When Dode reminded him that he'd been asking all morning to go, he countered with, "No I didn't."  After a while he admitted that it had been his idea but said, "Well, I don't want to go bike riding any more!"  So, they came home.  They also did the fun boy activities of going to McDonald's, the hardware store, and two auto parts stores.

Getting Pampered
I have a friend who is learning to be a massage therapist.  Last week was the end of the quarter so they have clinical experiences where people come in and they practice on them.  They were finishing off their "Spa" quarter so you could choose from lots of fun treatments: hot rock massage, aromatherapy, body wraps, deep tissue massage, and Indian head massage.  I looked up Indian head massage and decided it sounded very relaxing.  You get a scalp massage and they focus a lot on the neck and shoulders, the areas where I store all my tension.  I didn't know that part of what Paula needed to practice with the Indian head massage was also a foot soak with foot and leg massage.  I can't soak my foot for another two weeks so she offered a hot rock massage as an alternative.  It was very relaxing.  The hour went by much too quickly!  The podiatrist told me that massage is the best thing I can do for my foot and she wasn't afraid to dig in and really work around my scar and bruised toes.  It felt painful/great and I noticed a greater range of motion in my toes when she was done.  Does that mean I can justify the $30 I spent on the massage as have being done for purely medicinal purposes?!

The fun of heating with wood

One of the fun things of heating with wood is cold mornings.  Here is Anastaya dressed up for church, hiding under three blankets to stay warm!

Big improvement in my foot

Tuesday, two weeks post-op, I got the stitches out.  The process went pretty painlessly until the last stitch came out.  It ran the length of the incision under the skin with one knot part way up my toe.  The nurse had to slide it out from under my skin, not the most pleasant activity!  The doctor told me that my foot would be extremely sensitive for a while because of being wrapped up in the bandage for so long.  The best thing I can do to help the recovery along is to massage it.  He said if I baby my foot, I will just prolong the problems so all the way home from the doctor (Sharon was driving!) I kept rubbing and rubbing my toes and foot.  It definitely helped.

You can still see the faint mark where the doctor signed my foot to make sure he got the right (or left!) one.

I still have a lot of bruising and some swelling but now that the stitches are out, my foot feels exponentially better!  I get a weird tingling in my foot and toes but if I rub them, it goes away.  When it starts tingling and I first touch my toe, it tingles and hurts more but as I continue to rub them, the weird feeling goes away and I get some relief.  I think my nerves are trying to figure out who is in charge now that one of them is removed and get a bit over eager to take the job.  By rubbing them, they can calm down and realize what their proper purpose is.  At least, to my non-medical mind, it seems that way!

A mouse, a mouse in the house!


Tuesday morning, Anastaya and I heard a strange gnawing sound in the morning.  I tracked it down to a mouse in the bathroom.  We have a pocket door with a window in it between the bathroom and the laundry room.  The door was partially closed with about 2 inches of window showing.  Somehow, the mouse had gotten up to the ledge on the window and I saw the little head peaking out.  The gnawing we heard was the mouse chewing on the window frame, trying to get out.  I opened the door all the way (pushing it into the wall) and when I pulled it back out, the mouse was gone.

A few hours later I was sitting at the computer and saw movement out of the corner of my eye.  It was the mouse, casually strolling across the floor towards me.  I gave an "Eeke!", stood up and he disappeared.

Wednesday, I was once again sitting at the computer and once again the mouse made an appearance.  I followed him to the living room and Dode and Isaac gave chase.  We thought he'd gone under one couch but when we looked, he wasn't there.  We gave up but I looked under the other couch (a sectional) and saw what looked like a tail.  When I watched the tail disappear, I knew where the mouse was.  They dismantled the couch to tip it up piece by piece.  Dode had a bucket and was hoping to trap the mouse under it.  The girls stood nearby screaming "I'm so scared!".  I thought it was pretty funny because if they were truly that scared, they wouldn't have been crowding around Dode as he tried to find it!  Well, after chasing it around the room a bit, we lost it when it climbed inside a hole under the bathroom cabinet.  A little while later, I heard screams again.  It had ventured into the room where the kids were watching a movie and was hiding out under the couch they were standing on while screaming.     We put out a trap for him but could never catch him.  I think he's more scared of us that we are of him and hopefully he's left to find a more peaceful home.