One of those skills our kids should master before leaving home

Today I taught Josiah how to do something he hasn’t done before.

Well, he may have done it a time or two, but it’s surely not a task he’s practiced with any kind of regularity.

No, it’s not ironing, although that is on my mental list of “skills to pass on to Josiah this summer.”

No, it’s not cooking, although I probably should add that to the list.  Cooking’s priority rank  is lower because, while his R.A. at PHC will give demerits for not having his pants creased, he won’t starve if he can’t cook.  And that food is going to cost us all (sigh).  Katie never eats breakfast and so went with the 14 meal-per-week board plan, but Llamas definitely prefer to input calories at least three times a day – more if you include the mandatory evening ice cream serving.

Josiah has opted to grow his hair a bit longer, and since he’s doing a presentation with his dad this evening – and he needs to look sharp – I had to teach him how to comb his hair.

He bought a comb today for that very purpose.  He’s never owned a comb before.  You see, as a young child, the Llama was a bit of a challenge, and I decided to cut my losses (pun intended).  I buzzed his hair short, and it never needed to be combed.  Believe me, we all had enough else to deal with, without that!

So his hair has always been short, until last week.  When it started to get long.  And last night I trimmed it, just because if you have very coarse, thick, wavy hair, when it gets long it starts to curl around your ears, and that’s okay if you are a girl, but not so okay if you are a young man!  So I trimmed it around the edges and left the rest of it long.  This was no simple task, because, as I’ve told Scott for years, I really have no idea how to cut men’s hair.  Buzz it all one length, yes; actually cut it properly, no.  I think it turned out okay, and I told Josiah that I wouldn’t be offended if he wanted to go to Wal-Mart and have someone there fix it.

Tonight, there were various curls sticking out in various places, and it needed a part of some kind, so I told him to soak his head and towel dry it.  I combed it and then sprayed it like crazy.  It held for a while, but after the presentation tonight, it was coming loose again.  I think if he’s going to wear it long (er) like that, he’s going to have to go with some mega-hold gel or putty or something.

Like other aspects of my life, it’s just a new season!

Jeopardy question: What is two?

Answer:  The number of crutches required for a llama with a sprained ankle to navigate a backyard cookout.

It’s been a full day for Team Roberts.

I took Andrew to meet his boss to help clean the Rendezvous.  Scott and Josiah went to play tennis and Josiah sprained his ankle. I went to Wal-Mart to get some more food for tonight’s cookout.  We all attended the homeschool graduation ceremony at First Baptist.  Scott went back to Wal-Mart to get more food, because several people at the graduation said they’d see us tonight.  We had the cookout, but sadly, Josiah was not able to play kickball.  Josiah went to a movie, and the Grays stayed to play bridge.  (The guys won this time.)

It was a true bummer for Josiah to be injured the day of his big party, but I think he made the best of it.  I also think I got pictures of almost all the 32 people who attended.

Llama of many skills

I may have mentioned this in the past, but it hit me again last night when I was printing some stuff to take to church.

I had just printed ten copies of a Jessica update, and before I could go to bed, I needed only to print one measly copy of a recipe to give to a friend.  I hit the print button, and nothing happened.  Being either a woman of great faith or a total fool, I hit the print button again.  Same result.  I decided that my computer – which I really should name, I think, but I guess that will be a task for another day and a survey for another post – had decided that it didn’t like the print button.  Well, perhaps it would find the full print dialogue more to its liking.  I opened that dude, set the various options appropriately, and hit ok.  Nothing happened. Being a creature of habit, I did it again, with, of course, the identical result.

At that point, I did what I normally do when some computer-related something fails to deliver as promised; although, come August, I won’t be able to do it, so sometime soon I’d probably better start developing a work-around. . .  I opened my google chat and asked if Llama-Tech could make my printer print.  Now, the nice thing about Llama-Tech is that most times, excepting Tuesday afternoons, Llama-Tech responds quickly, fixes my problem, and charges me nothing. Gotta love that South American beast of burden!

Sure enough, within two minutes, I heard the hairy mammal trundling down the attic stairs.  The Llama has had a hard time sleeping on his less than wonderful mattress and box spring, and so has moved his “stall” to Katie’s room.  I am pretty sure the biggest result of the move is that he is now able to simultaneously trash twice as many rooms as before, but at least he is sleeping.  He also has the advantage of claiming that way up there in the third floor he just can’t seem to hear us calling to help put away groceries or whatever.

So he examined the print situation and quickly determined that he had no idea what was wrong or how to fix it.  His only idea was to turn the printer off and back on, which he did.  Then he told me that that process might take a while, because the printer – we call it the Big Printer – always feels compelled to check itself (reminds me of those upper torso exams we women are supposed to do) when you turn it off and back on, and those checks take a while to complete.  That made me think that maybe I should just send the recipe to the Ancient of Days printer in the closet – we call it the Little Printer – which would take longer to print the page, but would start sooner and so might actually let me fall into bed a bit earlier.

And THAT made me think of the noise the Little Printer would make as it fed the paper, aligned the ink cartridges, and printed the job; which is why I asked Josiah, “So, tell me, what noise does the Little Printer make?”  To which he replied with the perfect and very funny series of sound effects that always makes me laugh uncontrollably.  I laughed uncontrollably.  He is indeed a Llama of many skills.

 

Just can’t relate

The other day Josiah offered to help me make burger patties for the Promise Keepers cookout tomorrow night.  He clearly did not know what he was getting into.

Burgers for Team Roberts were many years ago ordained to be made a certain way, and that way is messy and tedious.  We had five pounds of burger meat, and following the various designated additions, I intended to end up with 20 burgers.  I know exactly how much meat to squish in my hands to make a quarter-pound burger, but since Josiah’s hands are considerably larger than mine, his burgers kept coming out too big.  I pointed to our sample meat ball in the bowl and urged him to relate his to that one

His reply cracked us both up:  ”Mom, I just can’t relate to a handful of raw meat!”

Furrier courier

One of the families in our church lives next door, and right now they don’t have internet service at home.  Every Wednesday, I send out an email reminder to all the people who will be serving during the service Friday night – usher, children’s church, nursery, clean-up, etc.  Since I can’t email the reminder to the Fringers right now, I print a copy of the email and somebody (usually a kid, but sometimes I) walks it over to them.

Yesterday the high temp was something like 15 degrees, and although I did do my walk and pray thing in the morning, I really had no desire in the late afternoon to hike next door, through the snow, in the wind, to deliver this piece of paper.  However, the kids had gone out to play.  After trying our hill and finding it less than optimal, they had gone walking and had ended up down at the Asselin’s house, where they had found a nifty sled hill AND had been treated to hot chocolate and brownies.  Can’t beat that!

I noticed that Josiah (a.k.a. The Llama) was walking back home along Coffee Road, so I hung my head and upper torso out the laundry room door.  The laundry room egress sports both a major inner door and a minor outer door.  The inner one is all solid wood.  The outer one is wood on the bottom, and it used to be glass on the top.  But a few years ago, the glass broke, so we just used needle nose pliers to pull all the shards out of the wood frame and left the door as a half door, so to speak.  I leaned out, waved the paper, and called for the Llama to please come carry it next door for me.  After all, he was already suited up with coat, hat, gloves, and boots.  It would be a small act of service for such a beast.

He circled around, so as not to ruin the lovely snow in the side yard, took the paper, and delivered it as requested, but as he went, he called to me over his shoulder, “maaaaaa!  Llama Courier Service!”  Then, when he returned home, he informed me that Llama Courier Service would gladly deliver papers or packages, but that there was a fee for such services.  Aacckk!  I would have to fork over $10 per delivered page and $25 per delivered package!  Wait a minute.  Those prices were highway robbery!

Scott overheard this conversation and dryly remarked, “Yes, and we need to calculate stabling charges for llamas, too.”    = )   At that, a little gleam of insight pricked my gray matter and I said, “HA!  He’s the FURRIER COURIER!”  I thought that was “kinda’ clever, hehe.”

Talk about Schnazzy!

We had a planning meeting for our church caroling party after group tonight.  Then on the way home, we had to go by Wal-Mart to pick up some more colored lights for the tree.  Did you know that every year after Christmas, at least one string of the colored lights that had been on your tree, that you tested after carefully removing it from the tree, that you coiled up neatly into a zip-loc bag so it wouldn’t get tangled, that you tenderly placed into the box that holds all the other Christmas lights – yes THAT string of colored lights – undergoes a slow-burning chemical reaction that, between January 1 and December 10, causes its bulbs to change from colored to white?  I kid you not.  The white lights never morph into colored ones, as is plainly evident when you open your light storage box in mid-December.  It will always contain one lone string of colored lights – just enough to encircle the hem of the tree two point five times – and an ever-increasing number of white strings.  I think this year there were four or five.

Then, after we got home around 10:00 PM, I still had to clean up the monstrous mess we’d left in the kitchen when we flew out the door to the group; late because we’d been in one of those oh-so-important and ever-emotional family meetings.  I had to clean up the kitchen in order to find some counter space to make the ramen salad Scott was taking to work for a potluck/party at lunch on Monday.  I wasn’t willing to make it in the morning, because that’s my walking time, and I don’t give that up for much of anything.  In fact, this morning it was 18 degrees with wind speeds of 25-35 mph, and I walked.  If a blizzard won’t keep me from walking, a ramen salad surely will not.

Anyway, at 10:45 PM, while I was mixing oil and vinegar, Cody (our next-door-neighbor) came to the door.  I think he may have woken Jessica.  At least she was in her PJs.  He wanted to see Josiah, so she went up to find the Llama.  Cody’s leaving tomorrow to spend the next three weeks with him mom in Florida, so we won’t see him again till January 7.  When Josiah came down, Cody, grinning from ear to ear, handed him a Christmas present, and what an amazing gift it was!  We (Josiah, Jessica, Andrew, and I) were all just stunned.  So creative!  So perfect!  I wish you could have seen the smile on Cody’s face. . . and the gleam in Josiah’s eye!  I’m sure he’ll blog about it.

 

 

Extreme grace and favor

Josiah’s been missing his wallet.  The last time he knows he had it was somewhere in Georgetown, Colorado.  We stayed there August 29, 30, and 31, and we left on the morning of September 1.

He is not generally greatly concerned by things – any things – unless they deal somehow with whatever his latest computer/programming project might be.  Missing things don’t bother him, because, like at least one of his siblings, he is confident that they will turn up sometime somewhere.

I, on the other hand, cannot STAND to lose things, and I tend to get very stressed over lost items.  (My bad, I know.)  The wallet itself is not a big deal, but it did contain Josiah’s driver’s license, his debit card, his library card, and his Silver Dollar City season pass.  The library card could be easily replaced for $1.00, but the others would require a bit of work on his part – and, alas and alack, driving on mine.

I told Josiah that I didn’t want the replacement of those cards to drag out.  For one thing, I need him as a driver(!), and besides, he needs his debit card for purchases, and no one knows just when Scott might decide that our family or some subset thereof is going to SDC.

Josiah surmised that he might have left his wallet in The End of the Line, the Georgetown gift shop and soda fountain on 6th Street that he and Andrew frequented for ice cream and caramels, so I found an email address for that shop and on Wednesday morning sent an inquiry about his wallet.  I received no reply as of Wednesday evening.  Then Josiah mentioned that it was actually more likely that he had left the wallet somewhere in the rental home where we had stayed.  I didn’t put much stock in that because I had gone over all but the boys’ bedrooms with a fairly fine-toothed comb while we waited on Scott and the tire.  I had even gone up TO those bedrooms and asked Josiah (who was up there straightening) if anything could have fallen behind or under his bed, and he said no.  Well, if the owner had found his wallet while cleaning the house, she would surely have let him know, so I assumed the wallet was gone and that it was time for Josiah to call the bank, go to the license bureau, and see what kind of deal he could make with SDC.

I did ask Josiah to email Scott at work and ask where he (Scott) might have a phone number for the rental home owner.  Scott said he’d look into it when he got home that night.

When we all got home from church Wednesday night, the following unsolicited email had been sent to Scott.  Please bear in mind that no one had yet called or emailed the rental home owner, Angie, to ask about the wallet.

“Scott, I just got a call from my guests checking out of the Georgetown house today. They discovered your son’s wallet somewhere in the upstairs bedrooms. They will leave it at the house since they are headed to DIA. [I'm guessing that's Denver International Airport?]  Unfortunately, I am not able to go up to Georgetown and retrieve it until we get back from our California trip (leaving tomorrow.) Nobody is staying there until the end of the month, but I can mail it to you before then. . . Angie”

Angie has told us that she is able to rent her house out at a fairly low rate because she does all the cleaning herself.  (After Katie’s summer job with Whirlwind Cleaning, we know all about cleaning vacation rental homes!!!)  Anyway, it seems that Josiah checked his bedroom and didn’t find it, I checked the house and didn’t find it, Angie cleaned the whole house and didn’t find it, but her next guests found the wallet!!!

Josiah clearly walks in the extreme grace and favor of God.

It wasn’t a snake.

But Josiah thought it was.

Scott and I were playing a game of pool (eight-ball) in celebration of his completion of the ministry’s 2009 year-end report, in preparation for our upcoming annual ministry board meeting.  He had been way ahead, but I had come back nicely and was just about to sink the eight-ball to win the game, when Josiah came hobbling into the playroom and somewhat hysterically asked us to help him with his foot.

New neighbors moved in next door today.  We had met the four kids (blended family?), and after supper our kids had gone out to play with them.  They all went down to the creek.  That’s where I thought they were when Josiah burst in on my painstaking shot alignment.  He was hollering that he was pretty sure he’d been bitten by a snake, and there were two (fang?) punctures in his foot, and it hurt like crazy, and it was bleeding profusely (he held up his foot to prove the point, and, to his credit, it was dripping blood all over the place), and would we PLEASE come and help him, and would we please HURRY, and he surely hoped it wasn’t poisonous, because that would be very bad.  He was pretty intense.

So, we followed him back through the dining room – where there were splotches of blood on the floor every few feet – and into the kitchen, where Scott helped him get his foot into the sink so we could clean it up.  Once it had been rinsed off and doused with hydrogen peroxide, Scott examined the foot (while Josiah gritted his teeth and winced) and declared that it had only one puncture (maybe a nail or something?), that nothing appeared to be stuck in it, and that it wasn’t a snake bite.

Dried and bandaged, Josiah said the cut no longer hurt.  Really, I’m not sure how anything could hurt his feet, as they must be as tough as cowhide.  He never wears shoes except in public, and his feet get banged up, beat up, and cut up all the time.  In fact, two or three days ago, he did something to the same (snake bit) foot and has a nasty cut right up under the toes.  Does that motivate him to wear shoes?  Heck no.  Do I get too bent out of shape over his foot injuries?  Heck no.

As he hopped on one foot into the living room to read and pray with Scott, I did overhear him say, “maybe I should wear shoes tonight.”  Don’t worry.  I’m sure his backwoods hick image is still intact.  That thought about shoes probably only lasted ten minutes.

Traveling light

For an AIMonite, Josiah has clearly not mastered the technique.  This morning, he left with a team on a four-day service project jaunt to Tennessee.  There will be no presentations, no make-up, no gloves.  In fact, he’s supposed to bring “old clothes that can get paint on them,” because they will be doing a lot of cleaning, fixing and painting at Camp Ridgedale.

You should see the MOUNTAIN of stuff this guy took:

- an AIM duffle bag (who knows what was in it)

- a sleeping bag (slightly damp)

- a pillow

- a backpack of school work

- a lunch bag

- a water bottle

From the rest of the folks’ stuff loaded into the back of the van, I would guess that each other participant took a sleeping bag and an AIM duffle bag containing everything else.  At least he will be well-equipped.

Best of all, when he began packing this morning and realized he had run out of deodorant, he drove himself to Wal-Mart to buy more.  Thank you, God, for licensed drivers!

Driver, when you’re clear

It took some time, to say the least.

First, we went to Wal-Mart so Josiah could buy a pair of shades.  Tuesday, February 23, 2010 was a sunny day, and turning out onto 248 he’d be looking straight into the sun, in the van, where, when you pull down the visor it just falls into your lap.  Not a good thing during a driving test.

So, we were late getting to the license bureau, arriving at 8:50 AM, instead of at my planned time of 8:30 AM (the time they opened).  Not to worry, however, because it turns out that although they actually open at 8:00 AM, they don’t start doing driving tests till 10:00 AM.  We could either wait 70 minutes, or go home and come back.  The latter would mean losing our place in line, and my whole goal was to be at the front of the line and get this test over with QUICKLY.

We stayed.

At 10:00 AM, Josiah was greeted by “Katie,” who we’d been told was the nicest tester.  I took a deep breath, and he casually sauntered out.  Well.

Some fifteen minutes later, they returned and Katie was all smiles.  She said that his parallel parking (the ONLY part of his 10 months of driving practice overseen by Scott) was PERFECT!!!  But he did get points subtracted for not using his turn signal when exiting the parallel parking spot.  = (  He also lost some points for a couple other minor infractions (not setting his parking brake on a hill, etc.), but he passed and she was pleased.  In fact, it turns out that Katie is a Preacher’s Kid, now married and considering homeschooling, so she and Josiah had a lot to talk about during their little sojourn.

Now Josiah has a driver’s license.  Hip-hip-hooray!  And what a grand convenience it is to have another driver in the house.  Ahhhh!