Now that's something you don't hear everyday

Neil Gaiman convincing Adam Savage to sing "I Will Survive" as Gollum. Whut?

Forty-eight inches

In case you've forgotten, my daughter is now 48" tall, which means she's tall enough to go on many of the roller coasters and spinning rides at Cedar Point.  This is a good thing, because if we'd had to hold her to the meager selection of rides available to the 46" tall kids for another year, someone's head would have exploded.

Liza has been in love with roller coasters pretty much since the first time she saw one, and generally she's not scared to climb right aboard and try anything she's tall enough to ride.  Makes sense, right?  She's always been the kid who wants to go higher, harder, faster, longer.  So this year we got season passes to the park and have gone about once a week since school let out.

Once a week.

I'll let you absorb that for a moment while you think about how many nausea-inducing rides I've had to endure in the past four weeks ...

I don't actually mind riding these with her - just not half a dozen times in a row - especially since we've been going to the park in the evenings during the week to take advantage of the smaller crowds.

I mean, seriously?  Fifteen minutes' wait to ride a coaster I've waited as much as 2.5 HOURS for in the past?  Sign me up!  Liza isn't tall enough to ride some of the most popular attractions, so we're doubly lucky and can frequently just walk right up and get onto our chosen ride.  Sometimes we even get walk-on front seats.

Waiting in line isn't always a bad thing, though.  Last time Liza and I were there by ourselves, we used the walking and wait times to concoct a story about her secret identity, The Pink Streak, fighter of crime and archenemy of the Iron Dragon.

Jason isn't that big of a Cedar Point fan, and he has to work during the week so that Liza and I have money for overpriced pizza and parking, so he's only come along once this year.  I'm glad he did, though, since it gave him the chance to see how gleeful Liza is at the park, and it gave me the chance to ride some of the attractions Liza's not qualified for (yet).  It's been killing me that I can look at maXair, and I can see there's no line, but I still can't ride it because there's no one with me to watch Liza.

Having him along as a photographer was pretty handy, too, especially once I told him how to prep the camera to get faster shots.

We're taking a girl-scout-camp-induced hiatus from the park for a week or two, but when we go back I'll have to bring the camera with me, even if it is a pain to lug around.  I've had plenty of time to scope out some nice shots, and now I just have to work on getting the lighting and framing just right ...

Wonder if I'd get in trouble for bringing in a tripod ... those sunset shots aren't going to focus themselves, you know.

Patio pics, part the first

Remember the patio room?  You know, the one that we started prepping for a year ago, poured the pad for last year, and started building a month ago?

It's (almost) done.  The contractors are finished, we've been able to use the semi-finished room for a couple of weeks, and the building permit is gone from the front window of my house.

But in order to save money, I'm doing some of the finishing work myself.  Why pay the contractors to install a floor and paneling when I can do it myself (and take 10 times longer, curse more, and have it look almost as good as if it was done by professionals)?

(primed, not painted, so don't worry, it will look better soon)

The humans haven't been using the room to its full potential yet - we haven't even ordered the carpet, and walking around on the DRIcore subfloor barefoot isn't the best idea - but that hasn't stopped other family members from taking full advantage of the three walls of glass surrounded by birds and squirrels (and even an occasional chipmunk).

 

I've got to get one final coat of trim paint on the paneling, wait for the carpet to be installed, and I'll be done.  And then it will be party time!

One quick photo before bed

My stage crew buddies from high school would have been so proud of me, standing on one leg and bracing the plywood with the other leg while cutting it with the circular saw.  Clamps?  Who needs clamps?  We have plenty of body parts for that!  And OF COURSE that lumber will fit in my semi-compact car ... it just takes me 15 minutes to figure out how to wedge it in so I don't lose the load (or the kid's head) if it shifts going around a corner.  All I needed was a Welch's soda and it could have been 20 years ago.

More pics to come soon - Liza's at Girl Scout camp this week, so I can actually get some work done in the house and on the computer.  It's a nice change from the past few weeks!

(and Liza gave me the manicure ... I was in favor of waiting until after the construction was done, but she HAD to do it NOW, so I got to rock the neon pink nails for several trips to Home Depot.)

Remember this week

This was the week I ...

- became the mother of a rising first-grader

- took a road trip with a good friend

- worked with my daughter to produce hundreds of yards of cord to "yarnbomb" my craft camp

- learned to make my own blocks for printing

- discovered the power of the flying purple olive of doom

- saw this, and felt something inside me unclench

- evicted silkworms from their cocoons and used them to make yarn 

- taught my daughter some of the skills I learned at Squam

- confirmed that my daughter is 48" tall, so I don't have to ride this thing over and over and over every time we go to Cedar Point

- was constantly impressed by the thoughtfulness, flexibility, humor, bravery, smarts, and maturity shown by my daughter.

It's been a good week, and I'm really hoping that this is what I remember about the summer, not whatever disagreements and grumpiness are sure to occur at some point over the next few months.  My heart is full, I am happy, and I can't wait to see how long we can keep this up.

Anybody need a vacation home?

My Sainted Mother-In-Law has been hard at work for the past six months, rehabbing a house she and her sister inherited last year.  It's finally finished and on the market, so if you've got a few spare $$$ sitting around and would like a place on the Shore, check it out:

http://www.coldwellbanker.com/property?action=list&freeTextAddress=15250+locust+street+onancock+va&countryId=1

I mean come on, who wouldn't like a view like this out of your sunroom?

I plan to be proud to partake of your patio room**

Yesterday morning, before the work began:

Yesterday afternoon, as the work was winding down:

Yesterday evening, after the storm that dumped several inches of rain and hail on us:

Luckily, the track that will hold the third wall up wasn't installed yet, so I used a shop broom to sweep the water out of my new, 2" deep swimming pool that's located conveniently right above the sump pump in the foundation.  Then I spent an hour this morning blowing all the leaves out, and setting up fans to try to get the concrete dry enough for them to glue down the third track today.  The volume of leaves knocked down by the hail was impressive - maybe 25% of what was on the trees in our neighbors yard ended up plastered all over the side of our house and every other vertical surface in our yard ... like the panels that will make up parts of the walls of the room:

I keep telling myself that at least I won't have to rake those leaves up this fall, but the suckers will probably regenerate by then.

The hail wasn't record-sized, but it was kind of cool to see that it was obviously formed in two steps instead of one continuous process:

Not huge, but we got quite a bit of it.  This was taken more than an hour after the storm:

My plants were not exactly in favor of the giant julienne-slicers falling from the sky: 

What's funny is that I always take pictures of my new gardens right after I've mulched them, and I always joke that I have to do it then, because it's never going to look that nice again.  Good thing I did, too, since this was what it looked like on Sunday:

Notice the non-shredded hostas right above this?

Oh, well, at least we didn't lose any trees, have the power go out, or end up with a flooded basement.  Things could have been much worse than having to do a bit of sweeping and ending up with a lot of new "green" material for my compost pile.

** When Harry Met Sally reference.

Young authors

Have I mentioned recently how awesome my daughter's school is?  Last week was the culmination of the Young Authors project that each grade has been working on for the past few months.  Liza's kindergarten class used the project as an opportunity to learn about non-fiction books, and each student capped the project by writing his or her own nonfiction book.

The kindergarteners' books included all of the standard non-fiction items, including a table of contents, author biography, and glossary.

This project has been going on for months - can you imagine the level of dedication and skill required to usher 22 kids through that whole process and come out the other side with your sanity intact?  Kudos again to the K teachers for managing to pull this off!  And then on Thursday evening all the parents were invited in to see the books and learn more about what some of the other classes had been doing.

It was a great chance to celebrate the students' achievements and take a look at some of the other kids' books.  It was amazing the breadth of subjects the kids picked, and how excited they were to tell us all about what they wrote.  The kids do this each year, so by the time Liza graduates, we should have quite a library of her books!

The traditional spring "Wow, look how high the river is today" post

Yeah, I talk about the river a lot.  And we go there a lot, especially in the spring, because it's just so darn interesting.

The weather has been so weird this year that we didn't make it down to the river until last week.  We brought out rubber boots with us and scoped out a few favorite spots, like the frog pond.

An old friend - who may actually be old enough to remember us from previous years, if herons have enough brain cells for that - was remarkably tolerant of a certain Nosy Parker who wanted to watch him eat dinner.

 We climbed around on our favorite knobbly trees (as best we could while wearing rubber fireman boots).

We checked to make sure that the antique graffiti hadn't disappeared over the winter (it hadn't).

 

We made mudcastles and looked for crawdads (found one, too!). 

We took artsy photos we'll probably never get around to selling.

And, oh, yeah - we watched the whitewater kayakers.  


Kayaks! On our little bitty stream that's more of a drainage ditch than a river for 11 months of the year!

Seriously, these guys were having so much fun, and they were so cool about letting us watch and take pictures.  I wish I had gotten one of their e-mail addresses so I could send them some of the shots I got - they turned out really well, considering I have never even seen the sport in real life before.

It was a great end to a great afternoon.  Looking forward to more river adventures later this summer (when the water goes back down!).

Okay, this one actually isn't too terrible

Remember the Christmas concert?  Well, in order to get the full grade school experiences, Liza's school does a spring concert, as well.  It was mercifully shorter than the winter concert, and somewhere along the way this year most of the classes found a bucket in which to carry a tune, so it wasn't as painful, either.

The kindergarten and first grade kids performed songs from "Barnyard Moosical," with each class taking the part of a different animal.  Costumes were easy - try to dress vaguely like a farmer,

... and put on a chicken headband right before you go on stage.

Liza's been running around singing her performance song for the past few weeks, so we already knew it was going to be a cute song ... but when you get 22 kids up there doing the Funky Chicken Strut, the cute increases exponentially.

Isn't that impressive?  You can actually understand many of the words they're singing!  Way to go, 5- and 6-year-olds!