A few small repairs

My pack arrived! I am babysitting quite a bit this week, while simultaneously beating back the (early, but obvious) spring-time laundry beast and making the tiny home improvements that make life better.

N-man has learned to make grits by himself and is now only eating grits for breakfast. We'll see how long that lasts! I love watching these guys learn to cook. They are so happy with their burgeoning independence!

My cell phone (which had a busted usb port) has been repaired. This was at least a minor issue, but because the phone was under warranty, my contact wanted to get it done. I shouldn't say repaired-- replaced is a more accurate statement. Shiny!

My cranky van is in the shop for its annual tax-time money-suck. No, I am not kidding. Every year at tax time, this van has had something go wrong with it that doesn't involve less than 250.00. Last year, it was my son breaking out a window and then a few months later, a fuel pump failure combined with a shorting out computer. At the time, we chose to replace the fuel pump because that was all the money we had.

This year, it is the brain. One of the ongoing issues with this vehicle has been intermittent failure to stay cranked. It always cranks, but then some kill switch is activated, as if it had an alarm (it doesn't) and it stops. Other, less invasive electrical problems persist as well, but that's the attention grabber. This season's issue involved a two week hiatus for the minivan in which it refused to start at all. Out of the blue-- the day we got our tax return-- it began to start again.

Hmm.
Just "well" enough to get it to the mechanic.

Some people would go along with conventional wisdom and ditch this van altogether. I can't say that isn't tempting. P-daddy had the idea to convert it into a chicken coop, and if we had 5 acres, I might even go along with it. Personally, I have been having fantasies about buying a vintage Vanagon for 2 grand and once again having a vehicle I can repair myself. But rationally, given that we can't yet finance a late-model vehicle, if we were to purchase something we could actually afford right now, we'd still be 1. paying more than this repair will probably cost and 2. buying someone else's problems. The cost-benefit ratio doesn't pay out.

Just in the 4 years we've had this thing, we have replaced so many integral components, it really is a better vehicle than it sounds like it is. The computer issue is probably going to resolve a great many of the trouble spots, and we will at least be able to have an accurate picture of what is going on under that hood. So, whatever. I can't burn energy worrying about it when our path is fairly clear. I don't want to be a one car family, but we can do it if we have to.

So how does one "update" life this crazy?

Maybe not catastrophic (for us) anyway but crazy. A friend of mine just bulleted through, so I suppose I should too. In no particular order of chronology or importance:

I went blonde. Blonde. Like, really blonde and slightly reddish on the ends, as is the fashion, don't you know. Blonde, as in the first time since I was three years old that I was lighter than a muddled burgundy. I despise that it makes my skin light up-- I look so much younger, they say, and even with my behind still fat and my hair chopped short (to accommodate the perfectly expected damage from such a gigantic chemical step), I get a lot more attention. Go figure. It makes me look good. It does suit my coloring. The color worked very well and looks nice. I hate it. Ugh! I can't determine whether I despise the cut, or whether I am just so resistant to change that the stranger in the mirror makes me uncomfortable. I will leave it for now.

Twilight. Nearly everyone around me has caught the bug. I rented the movie and read her online tome, (what there is), Midnight Sun. I have to admit that it is engaging, but not one to suffer from spoilers, I read ahead and I can't buy into the whole dead-guy-still-makes-active-sperm thing. I do like her take on the Vampire as an animalian subspecies, not a soulless, dead-but-not entity. I have one friend in particular who should lay some bricks when she gets to book 3. I can't wait.

Our garden is growing. P-daddy and I have been working together nicely to shore up the homestead. He built fine, square foot gardening boxes in the front yard. We mixed fill soil from our own compost, store-bought vermiculite, sphagnum moss, and Tagro a friend of ours scooped and delivered to us for free. All told, our garden beds cost us around $72.00. I know we would have done this years ago had we known! We tied them off in grids together, and have recently put in all our starts and our things we are willing to start from seed. Typically, once there is the slightest outside activity, I abandon the computer, so this is what partially explains our absence. The other is that my camera is all funky, so even on days when I would normally have great, wordless blog entries to share, ah, shucks.

Just today, the kids started their own children's gardens. When he built our primary garden beds, P-daddy used our leftover Trex board from building the treehouse and gave each of the kids a 2 X 2 box of their own to fill as they see fit. G-girl and D-meister chose to put them in the front yard with ours, but N-man placed his in the back, close his original garden and adjacent to Presley's grave. He says this is how he will grow flowers for Presleydog. They will still have access to the side gardens, but we have to get P-daddy's yard waste* out of there.

The neighbors moved for real this time. It has really saddened me on a number of levels; we will miss the little girl terribly, we enjoyed having neighbors so close to us in age and family composition; and we would like it if they had left on a completely voluntary basis. Most of all, though, it causes me some discomfiture to benefit so greatly from their departure. They moved offshore, so they left an amazing amount of things behind, including big ticket items like a chest freezer, a 10 X 10 garden shed and a yakima roof box. They gave their swing set to a friend of ours, and they gave us all their lawn furniture, which is great for us because the winter decimated ours. The kids in particular are thrilled with the influx or yard and sports toys. P-daddy has spent the past three weekends helping them sort their last things and then rebuilding the shed over here*. It's been abject chaos, and I am working so hard to be mor egrateful than I feel guilty. My guilt makes little sense, even to me, because when we moved across country, we did the same thing. We gave away or sold things I miss to this day (like our freezer!), so it's nice for some of it to come back to our family.

Interrupting all of this was a month-long illness on my part; I finally caught the flu / pneumonia / bronchitis beast that took out half of Puget Sound. Thankfully, all our family was better when it took me down. I have never needed an inhaler in my life, and needing one, plus antibiotics, plus weeks of absolute stillness to heal this, was truly startling. The illness prevented me from doing a lot of my planned work for the garden (never got my grow lights hung or my cold frame built) and it made dealing with the suddeen windfall from next door very inconvenient, despite how welcome it was. I simply haven't been fit for anything, much less extra putting-away.

I am having issues with challenging kids, my own and my friends'. My children have been celebrating spring by being mouthy and willful, scrapping with their siblings, disputing my authority and ideas on a daily, if not hourly basis. That's hard enough to deal with from just the three of them, but the thought of adding friends has become so very untenable. With a few exceptions, most of the children I know right now are half-deaf and completely bonkers. Combine that with the extreme physicality I have noticed lately in all of them, and people are getting hurt. Being bullied by my schoolmates and abused my some family, I am very sensitive to getting "beaten up." I am not very tolerant of verbal sparring either, but I really have a very hard time drawing the line between acceptable rough-housing and its resulting misunderstandings and out-and-out bullying. I think because of my awareness of my own sensitivities, I err on the side of letting it go too far. I am fully sick of stick-fighting, whoop-screaming, rock-throwing**"fun". They're all getting hurt, actual bleeding, bruising, why-won't-you-stop-I-said-enough! hurt. I don't know how to handle it; I am not willing to do some of what I've read I should do (remove the offenders from your life-- how does one do that when ones' own child is a full participant?), and furthermore a lot of that advice doesn't apply to our lifestyle as homeschoolers. While it's not natural to get cooped up all day with 35 others of your same age and real estate, its also not natural to just be able to shove people to the curb when you feel like its just too hard, either. Community means being stuck with the same folks sometimes. The goal here is to work forward towards some form of maturity and you know, having FUN when we get together or need to babysit. I'm working on it. The other Moms are good, smart people and do see what I see, so it's all good. I am hoping it's just a rough Spring on the heels of a brutal winter.

**D-meister broke the window out of my van during one of these festivities of "fun." He had a compatriot in the rock-throwing glee, but lucky for everyone it was actually my kid who broke my window. Lucky him I actually DO think spanking is a bad idea. Witholding dessert? That is something I am perfectly comfortable dishing out, especially for 200.00. (get it? Hardy har.)

The economy, in a very direct way. My husband works for a state contractor doing pretty integrated work with the department of corrections. I can't elaborate more on that here, but I can say that both the contract (every 7 years) and the state budget were up in the air this year. Anyone who lives here knows that Washington state has a 9 billion dollar shortfall in it's budget for the forthcoming year. That's a LOT of cuts, a lot. Even if his company does win the contract (fairly likely) which was decided in secret last week, the state budget will have to be appropriate to fund the work. It's been a potentially disastrous, completely perfect storm of happenstance-- the real estate crash, the stock market decline, the state budget crisis, the unemployment rate, the contract renewal date-- that has all these factors working together to a climax to come this month. It's been wearing on us for six months now but I haven't wanted to write any of it out here. All our life savings is in this house, which of course has lost all of its equity from the last four years. If he loses his job, that's it. We start over, middle-aged with three kids and three degrees between us. No home of our own, no job.

So I do what I can, I focus on gratitude and on ways to mitigate the changes for the children, if the worst should come to pass. We have very basic goals-- keep the family together, try to stay in Washington (even better, in this house!) if we can. We will see. Again, that Dalai Llama quote: "If you have fear of some pain or suffering, you should examine whether there is anything you can do about it. If you can, there is no need to worry about it; if you cannot do anything, then there is also no need to worry."

My son celebrated Earth Day

by throwing a rock through the passenger side window. Yay!

Community of mothers: full circle

This is not an easy blog entry to read. Please clink on if you are feeling sensitive today.

Today was an emotionally exhausting day. We've been prepping, full-tilt and with the not so insignificant assistance of friends, towards propping up the house and making it look like we actually live here. The retro-closet look is so out, after all. Today we had plans for another massive project and instead, after canning a batch of peaches, I chose to ferry my friend out to Silverdale.

She'd never been to Tuesday Morning. Oh no, said I, no homeschooler should do without Tuesday morning. So I gleefully took a break. My spirits improved and we did what we needed to and all was well. Until the van wouldn't start. In the hot, so hot parking lot of treeless Silverdale shopping. After about half an hour of cajoling, I managed to convince the thing it was not in alarm mode, and it started. We continued on to the waterfront park.

As we spread our blanket and the kids tottered off to play, an older Asian woman who was cradling a child called out to me. But what she said, urgently was "Mom! Mom? Mom! Can you come here?" As I approached and climbed the gazebo I called out to my friend to be on alert for the rest of the kids. The girl in her arms was much older than I first thought. Sized like a pre-schooler, she was probably eleven or twelve, maybe older. Her arms were drawn up in a pose characteristic to muscular dystrophy and the woman had her face down on her lap. She was appearing to vomit, but it wasn't her stomach. Given our own medical background I recognized she was expelling large amounts of mucuos, from both her nose and her mouth.

The woman was frantically trying to pull it out of her, away from her passages. Given what she had to work with (not much, we found out later), she was doing a fine job of keeping the child breathing. She introduced herself as Anita, caregiver to this child (she told me her name but I won't write it here) and said "Is she breathing? " She kept asking me, "Is it working? Is she breathing?" I knelt down beside the child and took a napkin I had brought from our lunch and cleared the hair from her eyes. She was seizing slightly, or having a nervous tic, as her head kept shaking slowly as if she was saying "no." I murmured, "It's OK, it will be alright. We're getting you clean."

I stood back up and told the woman she was breathing but clearly not doing well. "Is she verbal? " I asked.

"No, no, she cannot talk."

"What happened to start this?" I asked, looking over their table. There was an unopened salad, some orange soda and a swarm of yellow jackets all over the table. A bowl of melon chunks lay on the ground underneath the table.

She gestured to the bowl and said "She ate that then started to vomit. I call the father but he is not answering. I keep waiting..."

"Have you fed her melon before?" I asked her, helping to clean the girl off again, becoming more convinced this was an allergy reaction I fully dread.

"Yes, many times." To myself, I thought "That leaves the bees." They were THICK, and the girl was completely incapable of speech. At this point she thrashed a little and I could see her face. She was more lucid than she had been, and her eyes focused on me, a stranger. She began to moan and I backed up slowly.

"My name is ~L~ and I am not going to touch you. I will help you but I won't pick you up. I am helping Miss Anita to help you." She faded out again, mollified I guess, but went right back to voiding the mucous, working her damnedest to breathe. She had no hives, no visible edema, no vomit left in her.

The cell phone on the table rang and Anita talked to someone on the phone. I heard her say "No, I don't know what to do." At that point I'd had enough. This reaction was BAD. All I needed to spur me on was a conversation long ago with a National Park Ranger; he had spoken to us regarding our own daughter's allergy and how bee sting had a much worse outcome with regards to time-to-treatment.

"Have you called 911 yet?" I asked her, and she shook her head and said "I ...I...no, I cannot" and I realized her language barrier was holding her back. "Do you want me to call them? Can I call them for you?"

"Yes! Yes!" I sprinted back for my cell phone and dialed it in. We were very close to a fire station and I knew it, so I wasn't surprised to hear the sirens before I even got off the phone. The entire interaction I'd had with the woman and girl had taken less than three minutes, if that. While we waited for the first responders, I packed the woman's things and cleared their picnic. I continued to help clear the girl and watched helplessly, having done everything I could do.

I called over to my friend, who was on the blanket not five feet from the gazebo, "You might want to tell Cecily (4) and D-meister (3) what's about to happen." They'd never seen that big of a red, wailing truck that close, and it was coming to their picnic.

When the EMTs got there, I got out. I went to the park bathroom and washed my hands and only then did I get out of the-business-end-of-Mom mode. That's when I had a jolt as I realized that I hadn't used our epipen on the girl. Should I have? NO, I thought, I shouldn't have... but would they be able to get anything out of Anita? I sprinted back to the site and spoke to the medic who was taking notes from Anita. I asked him if they carried epinephrine, and he said they did. I told him what I saw, what I thought about the bees, and that the girl was nonverbal. He paled, said "I'm on it," and sprinted back to the medics who had taken her. Right about then, her Dad rolled up and I was satisfied I could release the situation.

The whole thing was a fantastic blur. Was this why my van failed me today? To put an allergy Momma right in Anita's sights? The medics were so fast, so competent, and truly responsive to the changing situation. They didn't blow me off, and as it happened, I was spot on, so they probably saved her life today. Anita came back to me later to thank me. She looked so tired, so small, but she was smiling. "Dad came. He knows, he knows what brings out her allergies," she gestured.

"The bees?"

"Oh yes," she smiled.

We went back to the park situation, my friend and I, while I struggled to stop thinking about anaphylaxis as the elephant in my room. I spoke about how grateful I was that Washington state allows their paramedics to not only administer but to carry epinephrine (they did not in SC), and how interesting it is to me that mothers just turn into everybody's mothers when it falls upon us. How frustrated I felt that the parents had not prepared that woman in any capacity to contend with a known life-threatening allergy. How grateful I was that our children can tell us what the heck is going on with them.

Maybe I shouldn't have said that last bit out loud. The hour ground forward as my friend's son Raeden started screaming from down the hill. The play structure was visible to us, but it is situated just below a little hill so we could hear him, but not see him. He lay screaming on the ground, "Mama! Mama!" as we booked it down there. He'd been stung, also, as one of these crazy swarm had crawled into his sandal. Crazy indeed-- a moving 6 year old boy on a playground does not an attractive hiding place make.

Pascha carried him back up to our blanket where we did our version of first aid on him. He got benadryl, arnica, green goo and Mama hugs. His friend N-man gave him a feel-better toy and he seemed to rally. Bee stings hurt, so it took him a while, but N-man stayed with him until he was ready to roll again. Before that could happen, however, we were approached by a couple of other mothers.

"Is he feeling better?" First Mom asked. "I was hoping to see him again, because bee stings are so hard. They hurt so much, don't they?" she directed to Raeden. Back to my friend, she said, "My little guy is allergic to nuts and so we really watch out for stuff like this. Did you give him benadryl?' Second mom came up and First Mom indicated that Second Mom's family was allergic to nuts AND bees. Basically, they refused to leave until they were assured that Raeden had been administered both painkiller and benadryl.

I sat there, ready to pack it in and leave Bee Park, but I was struck by how quickly I had shifted positions. I had been that Mom, less than an hour earlier, stepping up to make sure someone else's child made it through, survived. I felt very included, along with my friend there, in a community of mothers. Despite the Mommy wars, beyond parenting techniques, there are very basic issues that will tie us together, and you can never be sure when they will appear. But they did today, and I was grateful, so very grateful, for it.

Leaving on a Jet Plane

Tomorrow is the day we leave here:

and arrive here:

We're very imaginative in our choice of domiciles, are we not?


Among other good news is that our van is back in our garage, snoring happily. Pashca and I have a working theory that I inadvertently broke it by keeping it clean for too long. It had some form of reactive seizure, which sent the transmission sensor to automotive heaven. After a 261.00 repair, it is happy as a clam. While the van did eat the 1000.00 we wanted to put into savings this month, it is still much nicer than paying for a 2061.00 transmission, like last time. It is far better to have a broken van not on my mind while we travel.


We're staying with very well net-connected people, so I hope to be able to update with pix and such as we go, if the opportunity arises. Children or not, I intend to relax, so there should be time for that. I want to enjoy my people and show the kids where we come from-- those will be the primary goals of this trip.

You won't believe this

The van-- which had no error codes two weeks ago-- now read five at the local (free testing) Schucks, all tranny related. I took it in because it has been slipping in odd ways, stalling, intermittently being weird.

We call the transmission people from when we purchased a rebuilt tranny in OCTOBER, only to find that he's not there. He sold the business. Good Guy Bob now pilots a tugboat on the Sound somewhere, and the new owner won't warranty anything. We're simply new customers to him.

I wasn't too perturbed at this news initially-- just more proof that you're on your own in the wild west in some ways-- but then, surprisingly, the van stayed in second gear the entire way home (about 10 miles). Thank God for coasting down hills because otherwise that transmission would be on fire right now. Miss M is coming with a loaner van right now cause she loves us.

This van is seriously damaging my calm.

Tax season, Van Season. Three years running!

Literally, right at a year since the last van dance.

It goes like this:

file the taxes

pay the property taxes
pay off the credit cards
strand yourself and have to repair the van
have a wonderful friend drive your children to classes for you
run up the credit cards fixing said van until your household is flat broke
spend a year struggling
file the taxes.......

I choose not going to participate in the dance this year. Repairs are going to have to be cash.

It's better than last year, and I know it. I will hold to this, and focus hard upon it.

We know it's something (relative to replacing the engine and the transmission last year) minor. We know how it started (bad engine replacement mechanic: Eric in Port Orchard is a CROOK, people!), with a stripped flashing on the windshield that allowed water to go in during the rainy season and short circuit our wiring.
We rebuilt the brakes yesterday for 600.00. We know this mechanic is both good and honest. We just tested the starter, selenoid, battery and alternator yesterday and they all check out.
So when the van wouldn't start today-- I was frustrated. Very frustrated. But not despondent.

This is a boring entry to anyone who hasn't suffered through this van with me, I know this. I refuse to give up. It's basically a new machine now and until we can get something a hell of a lot greener than this (I am not talking hybrid, I mean greener) then I will keep it. We knew going in that the repairs would be big, and costly but the original price we paid for it more than evens out the budget. No reason to add MORE consumption and MORE money drain to our family. It basically works, it's paid for, and I will drive it until it dies.

Carseats Make my Head Spin

Washington has changed legislation again so the kids will be in seats way longer than I thought they would be when I bought them all. I had two Alpha Omegas (with which I remain happy, despite a lot of online carseat gourmands complaints) which would have been all I needed had we remained in SC. It kind of boggles my mind that in my home state , G would soon be out of her seat and in P-daddy's home state, only D-boy would be in a seat at this point. Yet here, I can expect them to be in seats for a very long time. Only Maine is stricter, according to this map I found. (click to see it)

Children under the age of 16 years must be restrained in a vehicle according to the following steps:

. 1 year of age AND under or weighing less than 20 pounds:
a rear facing infant seat

. Between 1 - 4 years old or 20 - 40 pounds:
a forward facing child safety seat

. Children under 8 years of age, unless 4 feet 9 inches tall:
a booster seat with a lap and shoulder belt

. Children over 8 years of age:
a properly-fitting seat belt or a booster seat with a lap and shoulder belt

NOTE: Doctors and safety experts recommend that children ride in booster seats until the lap and shoulder belt fit right, usually when they are at least 4'9" tall, or around 8 years old.

So this week, the ugly and ratty boosters I bought for the big guys were replaced with larger, highback convertible boosters. The ugly ratty ones will live in P-daddy's car now, because while ugly, ratty and now uncushy, they are still legally sound. They love the new seats, but because we grow tall children, both seats are extended pretty high, and I will be sewing in additional padding where there are gaps. D-boy still fits very well in his seat, even at5 point, but I am thinking about him too. This seat has never been in an accident, but it is 4 years olds already-- maybe 5. I don't want to replace it at all because aside from the cover needing a good laundering, it's in great shape. I really thought I was done with carseat considerations.

IT WASN'T THE HEAD GASKET!!!

364.00 sounds like a really bad car bill, but you know what? When it returns your vehicle back to silent, cat-like T&C running, jumps your gas mileage by ten mpg and disproves a head gasket theory---oh that's a happy paid receipt to have. P-daddy has asked me to formally request that the C-family release the flaming-van-off-cliff curse, thank you. When the mechanic* brought the van around, I thought he was giving me my keys as he opened the door to the waiting room. I came to him and he gestured excitedly at the van. "Your van!" he said, thumbing at the van parked by the curb. "Yes," I said. "My van."

"It's ON," he said.

"WHAT??????" I screeched. "It's ON????"

Then the big, happy grin of a mechanic who actually likes people.

*This mechanic (Danelle did you meet them when we changed P-daddy's oil?) has worked on P-daddy's car but not our van. He has helped us over the phone before--gratis-- but never actually laid eyes on the van. We really should have taken it to him first. Trying to save a buck, we probably cost ourselves waaaaaaaaaaaaaay more than we could have. If you're in my area and need a mechanic I will gladly pass on the number!

~N~ started performance class tonight (theater) and really enjoyed it. It's a two hour class and he seemed to hit it in stride, despite never having been in a class situation alone before. I was really happy to see him come home (P-daddy picked him up) with a tired little grin. "I had fun Mommy, but I am glad to see you, too."

~G~ and I spent some time this evening reading back and forth to each other. She's doing so much better than she thinks she is. It's funny, because she thinks--really believes-- I buy the BOB sets for her. She likes them but she mows through them like so much spring grass. I buy them for ~N~, but the first set is what gave her the keys to the kingdom, as it were. She applied what she already knew, and gave herself permission to say she was reading.

Tomorrow ~G~ starts choir and is much less than enthusiastic. I hope she releases her tude long enough to let the fun in. She has actually asked to go back to ballet in lieu of starting music class, which is ridiculous if you know her. I feel bad about forcing the issue, but I also know the girlie and this is a passion of hers. I will not require a commitment from her in this regard, but I will require her to try it.

Damn van

I am so not kidding. Damn. Van.

It sounds like a tractor again, despite Paul taking it BACK in and having the guy redo some something on it.

This morning, P-Daddy called me on his way to work to say there is a large puddle of transmission fluid (?) underneath it. "I didn't want you to freak out when you went out there, so I am warning you about it."

At least we hold the title.

ETA: our friend sent us instructions to " send your van off the nearest cliff, burning as it goes and then buy a hyundai"

Testing the van today

Wish me luck!

Can you guess where we are going?

I am trying to remain positive

But I am really hating my van right now. So I shall go on about the positive, and ignore my pounding sinus headache, in itself the just desserts for well, desserts.

On an upswing, we had a lovely weekend. We did. We got the van back Friday night* and on Saturday, drove to a friend's birthday party at Odyssey. The kids love what Chiknman refers to as "the human habitrail," and they did the party very efficiently. My kids havenever been to an arcade before, so when they took the children to that half of the play complex, their little heads started spinning. By the time we were ready (omg please let me out!) to leave, the children were, too. They each got puzzle boxes as party favors and the big kids actually put them together that night. (Their mom is not a fan of jigsaw puzzles, so I was pleasantly surprised by how well that went over here. )

Saturday afternoon, P-daddy got a gardening jig on and dug a new bed for our strawberries. He went NUTS, and built a rock wall around it and everything. I was really impressed with that, [pictures to come], and he was soooore the next day. :)

On Sunday, P-daddy went golfing and then we went to Penrose to scope out the perfect camping spot. You can reserve online, and WA State parks tries to make it as convenient as possible by including pictures , but ...if you can drive to see for yourself, it's so much easier. The tide was lower than any tide I have ever seen anywhere in my life. We walked into the inlet, out past the archipelago, for those of you who have been there. (Not the one on the left, the one on the right--- the two mile nature trail. ) People were clamming everywhere, bringing in geoducks and horse clams. We asked one man how he eats his geoduck and he said "raw." Um. yuck.

I finished two new beading projects! One for The GreenMama's birthday and one for a mother's day gift. GreenMama says the birds remind her of a happy childhood memory.


Valerie is so entirely suited to these happy marine colors. The jewelry is much brighter in person than is coming across in these pics.

Today we're off to the zoo for a birthday party in P-Daddy's car. Out! During the day! With people! And I get to give two of the bead recipients their stash! Yay!

*It is making clickety valve noises and on Sunday, when we drove back home fromPenrose, the gauges stopped working. The van would still run, start and go, but I couldn't see how fast we were going or whether we had any gas. Not acceptable after a 5 week sacrifice and 1650.00 expenditure.

I shudder to think where I'd be without my friends

They've been particularly kind to me this week in my transportation-less and resulting mentally fragile condition.

Mack came for Lunch with Friends Wednesday again, and bolstered my spirits there while we listened to the toddler mariachi band. Again. Her little boy is so eloquent he makes my kids look like slow talkers, and they're definitely not.

Nikay brought me down (so not fair, so not fair, so my travellin' turn) some visitation and tomato starts (enough to share with the rest of you South Sounders btw). We played with beads yesterday while the children enjoyed the company of like-aged homeys. Nikay is dipping a toe into the crazy-ass real estate market here and she's probably, for the first time, as frazzled as I am because of her exposure to the morass they call "the market" in Puget Sound. I have much compassion for her new found affection for their cabin in the woods.

Today, The Green Mama came to visit in her own new found freedom as her dd's schedule has suddenly been freed into "Yay! Friends! We can DO things!" We traded kitchen gadgets, war stories and bean recipes. And yes, played with Beads. We also chatted about homeschooling, which is always a favorite past time of mine.

I have been obsessed with my beads lately. It's been a long standing love of mine, and I do mean LOVE, but I haven't been producing anything for years. Suddenly, BAM! I am back in the swing of things, stringing beads and feeling the inspiration. It's been a joy. I think planning Snaygirl's mother blessing and searching for just the perfect beads for her labor necklace must have turned a switch back ON.

I finally finished the Brazilian Goddess' earrings and felt like I owed her a little interest, so I strung a matching bracelet. The beads are freshwater pearls, garnets and fused cobalt glass works.

Unable to be with her, I made Dalicious a labor gift of her own, also of freshwater pearls and charms, with a goddess anchor.

Well Tuesday didn't happen

Wednesday is winding down and I still don't have my van back. We have some very odd vehicular issues. The same thing happens again and again-- LONG stretches without a vehicle for Lory-- no matter how new or well maintained the vehicle is. I guess there could be worse things with which to be saddled, but it does make like ...inefficient.

today we had hailstorms-- two of them-- in which the sky grew swiftly dark and belched out large, pea-sized hailstones. It was so white on our porch that ~D~ thought it was snowing. Then it would revert back to sunny, blue skies. April showers bring May.....hailstorms?

Head Gasket

Among the many two word phrases in the English language you never want to hear, surely

Head Gasket

is up in the top twenty. Maybe it's ranked the same as

Replace Engine

The newer van.....

The one we bought to avoid the problems like this....

That one....

Won't start.

Sigh.


One day sooner than later, we will kill all our consumer debt and be able to afford new vehicles. Or at least easy-to-maintain vehicles. I was really committed to driving one vehicle for a long, long, long time but the Windstar just costed itself out.

We have a friend coming over tonight to look at it, verify whether it is the alternator. If it IS then we are lucky and got off easy. If it isn't then we will have to look into busting out the powertrain warranty and hoping it is covered.

I have always wanted a T&C and I really like this van, but it is still an older model (97) with the little issues that go along with it. At least it's cute. No one would confuse my teal green Windstar with cute.