Monday, April 1, 2013

The Clone

Today, we heard Chester barking. This never happens. I called him back to the house and here comes Chester with his clone! Come to find out that this guy is lost, and, considering he was pulling a metal chain behind him, Marina and I are imagining he pulled loose from his house out of youthful enthusiasm.

We are practicing Ceasar's techniques on him with great success! Unfortunately, he does not meet the calm submissive requirements of adding a family dog to he house hold. But we are keeping Chester loved up and stress free during this visit. Chester actually even growled at him once. Marina and I couldn't believe it: Chester behaving like a dog! We have called the radio stations and hopefully he will be reunited with his family by the end of the day.



Tuesday, March 19, 2013

Chester

Last night we were watching the dog whisperer and Caesar was teaching us how to introduce a new dog to the pack, "it is important to find a dog who is calm submissive to the first dog." I said, "we would have a difficult time finding a dog more, calm submissive than Chester." Vince said, "with a heartbeat". The entire family laughed hard for 5 minutes while Chester laid on the floor with his butt to the fire.


Saturday, March 2, 2013

Enjoying the morning view....

I am enjoying the morning with a special guest! I drink coffee, she munches birch. It is a beautiful day!





Thursday, February 28, 2013

The Latest

I will begin by writing about milk. I have a friend who has a cow and she is bringing me fresh, raw, beautiful milk. With this milk I have been making fun milk products with my family. These products include, butter, buttermilk, mozzarella cheese and drinking milk. That's right. I'm that woman. Of course, this is all on the learning curve and there is room for improvement, but, I'm looking forward to making fresh pushki butter from the milk of the cows who have been nibbling on the fresh pushki shoots in the spring. My mom said she hates fresh milk because when she was young the cows were eating wild onions from the fields of their farm and the milk and butter tasted like onions! I told her people pay big money for that flavor now...

Marina is off at the Challenger Learning Center today on a field trip to learn about climate change and its impact on the planet. She is not seeing how this could be a fun or interesting mission or why it has anything to do with space. She can be such a mumbler! This is a new program NOAA is creating to help students understand planetary changes due to climate change. Marina doesn't understand why CLC would need to create an entire program for this as she feels it should be obvious (after our short visit to China especially). I explained that there are many people in the country who don't understand the scientific definition of 'Theory' - as in Theory of Gravity vs. 'I have a theory that my teacher will be absent from school today'. Should be interesting to see what she comes home with!

The Girl Scouts have been busy. We have taken a trip to the veterinary clinic to learn about becoming vets and we cooked Sri Lankan Food for International Thinking Day. Yes, most troops brought pizza and said they were Italian. These troops have smart and sane troop leaders. The girls loved cooking such complicated recipes and we really had a blast.

On the other side of the giftedness spectrum, Falcom is in the middle of spirit week and today is dress up like a celebrity day. Seems like it should have been a no brainer, but... As it is with genius, the more you know the less able to be decisive one becomes... Drama! He wanted to be CeLo but was afraid of getting teased for wearing an earring and that friends would pull them off. He wanted to go as Jennifer Tilly but I felt the reference was too obscure for middle school. I also didn't see how he could get teased more for CeLo than Ms. Tilly, but...this is modern middle school so who can say. He ended up going as an obscure indy rocker. And so the middle school turns.

Now that I have sufficiently worked into the blog far enough to where the non readers will have already bailed, I can talk about W. Mema and I 'borrowed' him from K after my last blog post. We had a super day together. I got a lot off my chest and I was able to see for myself how bad off he is cognitively without the structure, sleep, and nutrition necessary for kids with his disability need to have in order to be successful. It was truly a miracle of a day. Lucy happened to call from Guam and talk to him. He got to go to therapy with us so that Falcom could get the closure he needs. Marina got to slap him and hug him.

Little did I know that K would totally freak. She took to her facebook and posted how he was missing. Her sister had to cut school to help find him. I was about to bring W home to her when a young father and friend of W's showed up at Mema's and brought him a charged cell phone. Seriously. W decided to go back with K and hugged me tight and promised to call me the next day. He was so happy to know that we love him and that we are always here for him.

The next day I got a text telling me "Hey Mom, just letting you know I can't do veggie boxes with you today. I'm very sorry, I had plans with - for Valentine's day." All that formal writing! proper use of punctuation. Amazing... and he spent the day with the boys after K dropped him off with them. There is more to this sad story, but unfortunately it makes the younger parties involved look like such morons that I'm not going to bother reliving it for you. Anyway,

I continue to hold firmly to the belief that God will give me ideas about what to do and that I will carry through with my soul promise to both W and to the mother of K.

Speaking of mothers, mine had two surgery's in a week! First the leg and then 'the eye'! That is right! Mema spent a whole day with one working leg and one working eye. She doesn't believe this but she is actually doing really well and just because she doesn't feel great does not mean that she is not doing great. Good job Mema!

Falcom and I had a date to see the Air Force party band "Top Cover". Falcom had seen them play at the middle school and loved it so we decided to go together last night. Of course, the minute he gets there his friends see him and our date is over. No problem...I got to sit with Valda instead.

What else, what else? I was gifted a restaurant espresso machine. It wasn't working and Vince has been fixing it with the help of a tremendous man who works on these up in the valley. The main goal or having it is fundraisers, but the thought of having a delicious drink here at home is killer! Thank you Vince... you are an angel!

Alright! I'm off to making milk products!





















Friday, February 1, 2013

I Still Love Homer


KBBI AM 890 Homer Alaska
From the Homer Police blotter: "Anonymous caller reports driving by local business and observing a cleaning lady trapped in the arctic entryway and banging on the glass. Officers to scene. Business contacted and cleaning lady freed."


There are some really serious heartbreaking agitations in my life (named Willie), sure... But one thing holds true...

I Love My Family, I Love My Community...


I Still Love Homer....







Tuesday, January 8, 2013

Bangkok

Another huge day in Bangkok has left us withered and oversleeping. I had better wake up the girl for breakfast so that we can get busy doing it again!

















Tuesday, December 25, 2012

Christmas

The most beautiful, stress free, Christmas...