Greg – Lisa Holcomb

Writing, Family Time, What I Love, Around the House, Crafts, health, Parenting, My Writing

Early Summer Musings

The fact that it is already summer break just astounds me. It feels like it was only yesterday that it was Mother’s Day.

May went by in a flurry of tornado warnings, band concerts and banquets, color guard contests, kids’ auditions or testing for various activities, and all the sayings of “goodbye” to people and places we’ve loved spending time with.

I started helping out the worship team at my local UU church, both developing services and speaking during services. I also agreed to serve as vice president of the church board next year.

My eldest child acquired a car, passing his old one to his younger brother, who just started driving solo, and just like that *snap* life changed overnight. I no longer have to drive anyone anywhere unless there’s an emergency.

I spent a couple weeks preparing for a speaking engagement for the Open Door Writing Group at the Tyler Public Library about writing lyrically. I read or re-read so many books on writing poetry. Two didn’t arrive on time, so I still have those to look forward to.

Unfortunately, all that activity sent my diseases into overdrive. I got a sinus infection, then my joints flared up and I spent the last half of the month in too much pain to think, let alone set down words. It took me an entire month to finish a short story that I’d had outlined and ready to go. *sigh*

Last week my father was in town, so we spent time indulging in watching “Only Murders in the Building” (while I did cross stitch, since my hands had finally returned to normal) and taking time to look over his house here and make lists of future maintenance needs.

He went back to his primary residence yesterday afternoon and now I am back at my writing desk today, updating all the social media things, preparing for my two speaking engagements that are coming up later this month, and trying to sneak in a few new words in my next novel. Hope all of y’all are having a wonderful start to your summer! Let me know in the comments if you plan to join me at any of my events this month.

Everywhere But Home

The Gregory Broken Arm Story

Yesterday he was on the playground at school during recess and decided to try to skip from the first monkey bar to the fifth one. He missed and fell to the ground, landing with his right hip on top of his his right wrist. He was super embarrassed and decided not to tell his teacher or go to the nurse. (This was the same kid that didn’t want to bother anyone when he got locked in the car this summer, remember? I think God’s lesson for him this year is “SPEAK UP!!”) In fact, he came home and didn’t even mention it to me until a couple hours later, just as his Nana walked in the door to work on his words with him while I took his brothers to piano lessons. We went straight from lessons to Open House at two different schools and still he only said “My arm kind of hurts where I fell.”

After dinner he started fussing about it just a little, so I put an ace bandage on it and put him to bed. Got up this morning and it was definitely swollen, but he still wasn’t saying much about. I mean, he was acting fairly regular, just not using that arm for much. I got him ready for school and sent him in, calling the doctor as soon as their office opened. They were able to fit him in fairly soon after that, so I picked him back up from school, we had x-rays taken, then we were sent to the orthopedic doctor.

2014-09-17 11.54.50 There we learned that while he will most likely not need surgery, he needed a cast with a special bend to it to encourage proper growth.

2014-09-17 12.08.48 We’ll have it removed and checked every two weeks until it finally heals (maybe 6 weeks from now, the doctor thinks). The doctor said to keep him home this afternoon with the arm propped on a pillow and to send him back to school tomorrow.

So, my kid who FINALLY has gymnastics and guitar lessons after years of wanting them now has to sit out for six weeks. I feel so bad for him!

Around the House, Books, Computers and Internet, Crafts, Everywhere But Home, Family Time, Friend Time, Parenting, What I Love

Spring Break

This last week was our spring break from school. I’ve already told you about Monday and Tuesday, so I’ll start today’s story with Wednesday. We didn’t make any big plans for Wednesday, since that was the day that we were swapping out D for B at Nana & Pa’s house, but it turned out to be a big day anyway. My parents came up to town and told us that they’d decided not to make us wait for a month to get our new van (which is their old one), they were going to sign it over to us right now. 🙂 And so we began our day long journey to get the car retitled, re-registered, and in all ways made our own. We ended up visiting the registry twice, once with just me and my dad and once with both of us, my mom, and two of the kids as well. By the end of the day we’d gotten it done. G and I spent the rest of the afternoon emptying out our old van, then vacuuming it out, scrubbing it down inside and out, then cleaning all the windows we could reach, all so Nick could start driving it as soon as he came home. (D spent the afternoon catching up on three days worth of Animal Crossing.)

Thursday morning we visited with my parents a bit, then went home very quickly for D’s early playdate with his best friend C. They had a great time playing video games, riding bikes & skates, and wrestling on the trampoline.

While the kids were playing, I once again worked on some jewelry (a post on all of that coming soon). That afternoon my mom watched the kids so my dad and I could also go out and check out a netbook at Best Buy, which they did not have in stock, and to buy a camera, which they did have. We spent some time updating his regular laptop and getting it set up with the camera software and then learning the new cameras ways before going home for the evening.

B came home just before dinner, bearing sundaes from McDonald’s. My in-laws got a tour of the new van and all it’s shininess before they left.

Friday morning B’s friend A came over for a playdate. I made some more jewelry. They spent quite a bit of time playing the Wii, but we also had a picnic in the backyard, since the weather was beautiful for it. We experimented with playing baseball/tee ball in the yard.

After he went home, Nick and the kids and I went out to the bookstore to get the kids their celebration books for having great report cards (and we may have picked up a couple things for ourselves as well. maybe. possibly. what? we never ever do! Leviathon & Behemoth by Scott Westerfeld and Good Eats: the Middle Years.). D got the second Percy Jackson book, B got three Magic Treehouse books (#20, #21, and a research guide about Knights and Castles), and G got two Barbie books (one 3 Musketeers and one Fairies) and an audio book about the movie Toy Story. Then we headed out to tour the big new exciting store in town: our local markets version of Whole Foods.

It’s called “Fresh” and wow, was it packed with people. It’s a beautiful store, filled with lots of things our regular stores don’t carry: lots of organic, whole grain products and a huge array of cheeses, meats, and ready-to-eat foods (for which there is a balcony seating area outside).

We amazingly managed not to lose any children, nor to knock down any displays, though we did pick up a lot of stuff that was knocked down by the little old lady near us, as she had a large purse and was trying not to hit my kids with it, and since we were behind her in the herd (seriously, it was so packed that you pretty much followed the same people all through the store) we did the picking up. We eventually made it back home and Nick and the kids tidied up there while I went over to help my dad with his new netbook, which he’d picked up that morning. I did all my computer magic over the course of a couple hours and got him hooked up with all his software and file needs and headed back home to start reading my book. Bwahaha. Nick went over and spent the evening hanging out with my dad.

Saturday we hung out with my parents again in the morning before we left for church. The kids climbed ropes and played on the swings. Nick and D and Dad played chess. It was a good morning. We went to church, listened to our new pastor (who was a fabulous speaker, lots of discussion of Greek words, loved it), and then kids had snacks while my m-i-l and I practiced our duet on the big piano (which has keys that are very hard to press compared to my piano at home). We headed home, I changed clothes, and headed out for Girls Night Out. Nick and the kids stayed home and did whatever boys do when their mama is away (hung from the ceiling? shot themselves out into space in rockets? who knows! It was Boys Night In!). I had a lovely time with my lady friends and this time we managed to get a photo of all of us together (something we’ve never managed in the two years we’ve been meeting).

Came home and couldn’t sleep, as I am always excited after a night out, so I stayed up late finishing the book I was reading (the second Percy Jackson book; trying to keep up with D), never realizing that the clocks hadn’t already been set ahead for daylights savings time.

Yesterday we all got up unreasonably early. The day turned out to be one of those ones were everything goes wrong. G ran into my room yelling that D was throwing up from atop his bunk bed, B was asleep below, mercifully, or there’d have been extra mess. I got up, cleaned up the mess, got the boy into the bathroom, then looked at the clock: 5:45am. My husband, who was mysteriously in the kitchen and not at work (he’s been working a lot of overtime lately), hugged me and told me he’d reset all the clocks already so I didn’t have to. I tried to go back to bed, but couldn’t since I had a snuggly, wiggly boy (G) in there with me. So we all got up, ate breakfast, then sat around reading until it was time to leave for the last basketball practice of the season. David and I stayed home because of his icky tummy. He played more Wii and I wandered here and there doing chores and trying to finish up another necklace. The laundry that I thought was clean was mysteriously dirty, the necklace that I “finished” I turned out to have left a bead out of.

After the other kids came back home, we tried to go to the zoo and got verbally assaulted by the director of said zoo for bringing in a check that wasn’t signed by me — it was a gift membership from my in-laws, which I had filled out paperwork for and brought in with me, but he refused to listen one word I said, no matter how polite I was. It was a disaster all around, so I decided to take my children elsewhere. We got to the frozen custard place and discovered that my two-for-one coupons had been left in the hallway when we were swapping stuff around between the vans earlier in the week, but by then I decided to just make the best of it and we paid full price. The custard was perfect and by the time I’d finished venting to my husband, my best friend, and finally to my mother-in-law (who is going up to talk to the zoo about their communication skills today) I was feeling much better. We had a movie night with the kids, watching an old Valerie Bertinelli movie about a robot dog, which they loved. The movie ran late, so the kids ran late getting into baths and storytime, so it was nearly 9:45pm before they went to bed. I made their lunches last night and set out clothes for them so they could sleep in this morning and it’s just now time to get them up so that’s the end of this post.

Books, Music

I write 750 words a morning; sometimes they’re for you.*

I got up this morning, wandered through the house, and thought to myself “How is it that it all gets THIS messy in just one day of me not tidying?” Nick said that I do more than I think I do or than maybe he thinks I do around the house. No, the house is never totally clean, but is anyones? I mean, other than those live-alone (or just couples) neat freaks? I really don’t think so.

We spent the morning yesterday playing outside before heading over to the DSP for a play date with Greg’s friend B. DSP has changed themselves up with a lobby over in the front corner near the street while their real lobby is under construction. They have opened up this room in the middle that I always though was a classroom so that we can all easily move between the rooms and I was so interested in that room. At one end is a stage, a real stage with doors going out the sides for entries and such. It had a nifty ceiling and places for projectors and lights. They’d moved some of their displays in there, things that used to be in the hallway and out here, where you can see them, the kids were delighted with them. In the hallway, where they were, you kind of just rushed past them on your way somewhere else. There wasn’t enough light or room to back up and look at them (plus if you were trying to look at them, you were in the way of other people rushing through the hallway).

So anyway, we had a play date. Greg & his friend B. played for a little while before B. had his screaming fit. He screamed through three play areas before B’s mom dragged him out to the car for a time out. I don’t think I’d have lasted that long with a kid screaming and pulling on me. Greg put on a play for me in the theatre area (not the place with the stage, but the little house in the other room) about a mechanic with a dinosaur hat that didn’t fit. It was pretty funny, especially since he was wearing a painter’s smock with cowgirls riding horses on it. B’s mom and B. finally came back in once he’d calmed down. By then Greg and I were in the play car, driving to the “saladbee” place. We still don’t know what that word was supposed to be. Greg’s response: “The place! Where they have the saladbees!” No idea. We played in the ambulance for a while after that and then let the kids roam on their own in the big play area together while we talked about Bible studies and different views on various verses. After that we had some lunch; or rather, the boys had some lunch while B’s mom tried to get B. not to wipe his hands on his clothes and I tried to get Greg to eat some carrots (we both failed in our attempts, sadly). Then the kids played in the toddler area, jumping in and out of that little room until it was time to go.

Greg and I came home and I attempted to eat lunch, but the tomato soup we had was fancy and weird flavored, so Nick ate it. We watched most of an episode of Hawaii 50 before he had to go back to work. By then I was feeling pretty puny, so I sent Greg off to watch a video while I laid down on the couch to rest. Eventually I took my temperature because I was freezing cold and the thermostat told me that the house was hot and it turned out that I had a fever. I think it must have just been the arthritis related fever because I am feeling lots less achy and no fever this morning. I bundled up in a blanket while Greg played outside before we went to get the big kids.

We picked them up, brought them home, and started them practicing their piano music and theory before moving on to David’s piano lesson. Well, it was supposed to be David’s lesson, but the piano teacher had a mostly verbal lesson to give both kids, so she did a bit of David’s lesson, then called both kids over to tell them the story of how the piano came to be. David will have a bit of a lesson this afternoon, as will Ben. I liked how the piano teacher incorporated the Bible into her lesson, telling the kids that in Genesis 4:20, they tell of Jubal and his brother Jabal and how one of them was a master of string and organ. That really got the kids interested. 🙂 I need to find them a map of Italy today so that they can see where the language of music comes from. I’m sure there must be one somewhere on the internet that shows where all the major composers came from.

*ok, so this isn’t really 750 words. It’s not always. A lot of times it’s more than that, but I am trying for 750 words of something every day, just to keep up the habit of writing, if not always the fiction writing. Some mornings, like this morning, my brain is a little too scrambled for fiction. Those mornings are lucky for the blog because then I’ll ramble about daily life instead. Woo hoo for scrambled brains!

Uncategorized

Rainy Day activities

Some days I wish I had a more focused blog, the kind that was chock full of advice about something, but I don’t have that kind of focus, anyway. However, today, you will get to hear about our rainy day activities, just because.

Since we’ve been sick for about a month, we’ve gotten used to having the TV on just about every hour we’re awake. Today was the day I said "ENOUGH ALREADY!" and unplugged it (literally, the screen portion is unplugged).

Things we did instead:
-I built towers out of blocks so Greg could knock them down
-Greg started building towers, then let me finish them so he could knock them down
-tried to learn to juggle (again, for the 15 millionth time)
-fed each other tortilla chip crumbs
-pretended we were tied down on a pirate ship and had to figure out how to get loose without falling off the ship (this is harder when the ship is invisible, but today it was the sofa)
-went through the whole house with a magnet to see what was metal and what wasn’t (with the attending screams of "NO, DON’T TOUCH THAT TO THE COMPUTER STUFF")
-talked Greg out of flushing Lego guys
-played hide-and-seek repetitively
-we threw a sticky frog at the tallest ceiling in the living room & tried to make it stick; it was too dirty, so we washed it and hope it’ll work later
-destroyed & attempted to rebuild Lego Star Wars thing without instructions(we crashed into it while chasing through the house)
-trimmed his hair in the front, but not the back because "that’s Nana’s job"
-test-smelled all seven kinds of lotion in the house before choosing one to get rid of the itchies after rolling on top of tortilla chip crumbs (which we also spilled while chasing through house) – his favorite: the cinnamon kind from holiday inn express– mmmm
-we took a picture of his half-wet-half-dry hair and uploaded it to facebook (his idea, not mine)
-then Greg discovered twitter and made his first tweet
-then we had a crazy jam session (first Greg on recorder & cymbals, me on tamborine, jingle bells, & shaker; then Greg on both tamborines & jingle bells attached to his legs, me on castanets, Christmas bell, & shaker between my toes; he shouts pause and then presses me to hold more and more instruments) / dancing jazz band parade
-(We also sorted laundry & stuff that came in from the van & looked for paperwork for the car registration, but none of that was fun)

And now it’s lunch time, so we’re going to go eat, otherwise I will collapse.

Around the House, health, Television & Film, Writing

Why does February always suck?

So hey, it’s February, and so therefore we have the Plague. David has this on again off again stomach virus at least one day every week since the end of January. Ben & Nick have been coughing, but seem okay for the most part. Greg has been snotty & feverish and coughing for a solid week now. I got a sinus infection three weeks ago, spent two weeks literally writhing in pain before that started dying off, and am now living in the land of Am I Sick or Not? (Which means one day of feeling good & productive followed by one day of deathly-sinus-headache followed by one day of chills/fever/but otherwise fine followed by one day of sore throat/sinus pain). Greg and I have missed all our MOPS stuff & coffee dates & play dates. It’s making me cranky.

I’ve pretty much watched every movie in the house that is safe to watch in front of Greg and am now starting to watch things like Pretty Woman and wonder why,oh,why anyone thought a movie about a prostitute was acceptable for young people to watch. As a kid watching it, it was AWESOME, but as a mom watching it, I’m thinking about things like Vivienne getting tetanus from getting scratched on the fence and what kind of horrible germs are in that toilet that she just plunged her hand into and whoa, all the dirt! Yeah. I watched Legend & Total Recall last week (after kid hours) and was amazed at all the gore. My brain, it is exploding. I shouldn’t be allowed movies in this state. No, no, no.

In other news, we’ve been on a science kick around the house. David had to do a research paper & model & report on a natural disaster and he, naturally, chose a meteor shower. So we did that. We also made a tsunami, because a meteor strike in water can cause that. Then we made a tornado in a jar. One of the other class mom’s is a biologist of some sort & she brought a bunch of chemicals up to school & did a demonstration, so David wanted to know what kind of chemicals he had access to at home, so we tried to figure that out & then figure out what kind of experiments we could do from here without buying anything special.

Ben’s started doing math at school. He got a 100 on his first paper (BEST IN CLASS, MAMA!!!) and has ever since been making his own math problems to work after school. He’s also been learning about coins and passed that mania on to Greg, who has been playing pirate or shopkeeper, whichever one takes his fancy as long as he gets to count the money. Ben’s been trying to teach him that each coin “costs” a different amount, but Greg just counts number of coins. It’s very funny to watch them argue about it.

I finally got my writing notebook back in the mail, so worked on that a bit yesterday. Progress notes to be posted at dreamwidth.

Nick is obsessed with the Olympics, which has been fun, I guess. He’s the kind of person that will watch any event, so if the Olympics is on at any point, he turns the TV on. I, on the other hand, am mainly just interested in the figure skating (so I went to bed way early last night).

I guess February doesn’t completely suck. I just wish we all would get better finally.

Saving Money, Writing

“We started right here, in the ovary”

I hate giving subject lines for these posts, especially when I’m just updating about everything. Maybe I should go back and retitle this “More of everything” Hmm.

David has been doing a lot of scouts stuff from his book, which means that all of us have been doing a lot of scouts stuff because you can’t have just one kid doing all the “fun” stuff. The kids liked making family trees again (this time with phone calls to relatives to ascertain actual dates & real names) and finding the page in the phone book that has all the emergency info and calling different city officials to ask questions about how the city works and doing more of the recycling on their own (including picking out everything from their Happy Meals that could be recycled & taking that home to put in our bin rather than leaving it there with all the other trash “They waste SO MUCH, Mommy! Why do they do that?”)

Ben is steadily growing stronger reading skills. It’s been really hard getting him to read aloud to us at home. He’s the second best reader in his class (behind Amy, whose mom is an elementary school teacher), but reading at home has just not been something he’s willing to do. So now we just have him read a few pages out of each book we do at bedtime story time (in addition to whatever they send home as reading homework.) Knowing that he only has a few pages and that we’ll fill in all the hard words seems to make it easier on him. Ben has also taken to my old Cabbage Patch Kids lately. He has a few that he especially likes and will dress up for certain occasions. It’s pretty funny.

Greg is still climbing everything in sight. He has ropes that he carries around with him nearly at all times and will tie to things. He gets his brothers to help him tie them up higher than he can reach. During the day when they’re not home to assist him he’ll do general kid stuff, but as soon as they get home, he’s back to finding new & better places to climb. Oh, and when he paints stuff, he mixes all the colors & makes all his painting black. He paints weird stuff, too. like Oklahoma.

Nick continues to spend loads of time in Beaumont, but that will end on February 12th. I can’t wait for him to be home for real, but you know what? It’s going to be an adjustment. I’ve gotten used to my weeknight schedule & I don’t know if I’ll transition back to Couple Time all-the-time very well. Currently I’ve been doing Monday nights as project nights, Tuesday nights as other-people-time, & Wednesday nights as TV time. We’ll see if Nick likes that plan.

I’ve been writing, cleaning, etc. When I’m not writing, I’m thinking about writing. (Writing updates continue to be at my dreamwidth journal)
Or fixing people’s computer woes. Apparently word has spread that I have a way with computers, so I’ve gotten a few phone calls the past month or so requesting assistance. Mostly over the phone “how do I?” stuff, but this weekend I went to someone’s house & set stuff up, then fielded calls/texts about it all across Saturday afternoon & Sunday morning.

Speaking of calls/texts, we’ve noticed an upswing in our phone usage in the last 6 months, not because Nick’s been gone (we actually talk less during the day, so the extra call at night just blends into the regular usage), but just, ya know, being friendlier or something. I don’t know. So we started running our usage stats, first through Sprint (who actually said our current plan suited us, despite our being $20-$50 over every month), then on our own. We added in our wishlists of how we’d like to use our phones that we aren’t currently doing, looked up plan comparisons, phone reviews, etc, and found out that we’re better off staying with our current carrier (Sprint, which works well here all the way to CS) and getting smartphones with the unlimited family plan. So once our refunds from last years medical expenses come in, we’ll be doing that. We’re looking at the HTC Hero phone and the Samsung Moment (we haven’t actually played with them in store yet, but I’ll be doing that tomorrow if the sick kid goes back to school by then).

In other randomness, I’ve been drinking tons of tea lately, trying all different kinds from various places. My favorite is the supergood ginger kind that my friends sister gave her from Teavana (more details once I’ve seen the canister again). Republic of Tea’s Cinnamon Plum loose leaf tea is also very nice (but Blackberry Sage remains my favorite from them). Lipton has a flavored green tea that’s orange, passionfruit, and jasmine that I like for afternoons. I also have a new favorite otc bagel: Sara Lee’s Blueberry. There’s something different about them now: they’re more lemon flavored than they used to be. Mmm.

I have some news that I’m sitting on currently that I’m really excited about, but am awaiting more information before I can announce it. Eeee. I love having exciting news & I hate waiting to share it, but that’s the way it goes.

That’s it for this week’s update. More later. 🙂
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Now playing: Michael Mucklow – Pipe’s Canyon Sunset
via FoxyTunes