Geocaching || Thursday, May 22, 2008

So, who knew there are like a hundred geocaches along the Greenway between Southland (Everyone's Favorite Used Bookstore... cha ching) and Midland? Three hours, a picnic supper, threat of poison ivy, and the trade of a Disney pen for a squishy ball, all while traipsing around outside while a 7 year old navigates with a GPS? ... WAAAAY better than watching tv :)

Last Day of 1st Grade || Wednesday, May 21, 2008

So, first grade was awesome. Emily--your mom is the best teacher ever (she would make an excellent grandmother :) ... no, she didn't pay us to say that, but let me just say Bailey had straight As). Both Bailey and Myers loved 1st grade. We're just worried about second grade, now. And after second grade, MIDDLE SCHOOL... and having to move to the city... but for now, it's summer.

Yak || Sunday, May 18, 2008

So, today had a pretty crappy start. We paid off my car last week, so on the way to church this morning my car went all fubar. Within a mile of leaving home, we had to turn around and come back. We were really frustrated with my car, feeling like we couldn't get ahead, that every time things were going great (see yesterday's blog), something else would happen to bring us back down. So, we got back home, did a quick car change, and headed off to church. We were a few minutes late, but glad we showed. The message was on how to deal with life when you're discouraged or discontent or overwhelmed and feel like you can't get ahead because every time things are going great something else happens to bring you back down. Uncanny timing. ("I, like God, do not believe in coincidence." -- V for Vendetta).

At church, we also saw Sam, and saw that Sam had his brand spankin' new kayak lashed to the top of his car. Needless to say, long story short--a long story involving a case study in Murphy's Law... as my mother's van, which I was going to borrow since my car was out of commission, wouldn't start... -- we were on the water a few hours later. Basically, it was just a flatwater paddle around Tellico Lake. If you go down 129, it's the first pull-off for a TWRA/TVA boat dock. It had been storming, but stopped raining as we were putting the boats in. Windy, but very nice. Extremely peaceful without the motor boats zooming past. Good times. We also came up with an idea for a future charity event... Not sure which charity, but hey... details details details... Across the lake (which used to be a river), there used to be a bridge, but the bridge is gone. Only the supports/footers/columns/whatever remain. In the vein of Tour de Cure, Relay for Life, etc., we're thinking about holding a slalom canoe/kayak event. Since my wife is the coordinator for a Teen Mothers support group (www.youngmothers.org), I'm thinking maybe Paddling for Pampers? It's hard to come up with an alliterative and memorable name for a watersports event for teen mothers. Anyway, it'll probably never happen, but it'd be fun.

Get Outside || Saturday, May 17, 2008

We planned to take a trip to Chattanooga this weekend to bebop around a nice, pedestrian-friendly downtown while taking in the waterfront, the aquarium, the discovery museum, etc. But, as gas surges higher and higher, we decided to ex-nay the plans and stay local. I was bummed out about the change in plans, but Jodie, through her cunning research skills, found out about the Get Outdoors Festival. In short, it was a festival for local outdoor activities and vendors and demonstations held at the World's Fair Park. We forgot the camera, so we don't have photographic evidence, but here is the short list of what Bailey got to do--a free tennis lesson, disc golf, geocaching (a new family favorite), kayaking in the reflecting pool behind the World's Fair Amphitheater, and several other booths. We also went up in the sunsphere for an eagle-eye view. After the fair, we walked to Market Square for the Farmer's Market, where there was a couple with a butterfly breed and release program selling monarch butterfly chryssalis's and butterfly attractant stuff to put in the garden (so, of course, we now have a soon-to-be monarch butterfly in the kitchen). From there, Tomato Head was packed, so we went to Subway, where we were fortunate enough to be served by the most self-loathing Subway employee I've ever met. We then walked to the Mast General Store to visit the candy barrels. From there, it was a nice walk back to the car. On the way back through Market Square, Farmer's Market was closing up and there was a guy selling tomato plants and rosemary out of the back of his car. Now, considering my history, I found it ironic that this time it was Jodie purchasing herbs out of the back of a shady stranger's car in a downtown back alley. The trip back to the car was largely uneventful except for Bailey blowing on a whistle pop. Do you remember those things? Well, 33 cents at Mast. What a deal. Anyway, as she was blowing on it, Jodie taught her how to use the slide whistle function, and Myers decided to be her vocal accompaniment. This only slowed us down because we had to wait for me to bash my head into a brick wall every few blocks :)



On the way home, we stopped at the 3 Rivers Food Coop on Broadway, which was great--except for the fact that the smell of sandalwood and pachouli makes me want to scratch my eyes out. Definite shopping spot for future backpacking trips. Dehydrated foods in self-serving hoppers. Beautiful.

Both Bailey and Myers fell asleep on the way home, Bailey with a whistle pop still in her mouth, and a line of blue-ish drool extending from the pop to her shirt. How cute--

Once home, Bailey planted her Garden--cant elope, broccoli, spinach, peas, heirloom green beans, carrots, tomatoes, and another veggie I can't remember right off. Then... dun dun dun... the long awaited.... the oft alluded to... the frequently and fondly spoken of...

Dia de llavandiendo las Botas. (okay... it's been a decade since I took Spanish... leave me alone).

Me. Two Children. Pressure Washer. Water hose. 2 kayaks. 1 canoe. A shitload of craziness. Random tidbit: if a two year old accidently points a water hose with a mist/jet attachment at their own face while pulling the trigger, they are so shocked by the outcome that they are totally unable to release the trigger, thus further serving to soak themselves fully. I got really frustrated with the pressure washer because it kept zonking out, but aside from that, the boats are clean and ready for the season (btw--let me know if you want to go kayaking or canoeing this summer...).

After coming inside to warm up (Myers's feet and legs were purple), we had a quick supper and then went to drive around and gawk at our dream houses in the Maryville City Schools district. We're partial to one that's about 15 feet away from the Greenbelt and 100 yards from Sandy Springs and 125 yards from the Recycling Convenience Center. Ah, sweet pipe dreams (btw, if you own a house the matches the previous description, and you want to give it to us, we'll take it. gladly).

1st Grade Field Trip || Monday, May 12, 2008

Today I chaperoned a field trip for Bailey to Cades Cove. Her class was doing one of the Parks as Classrooms programs put on by the Park Service (free of charge) in the CC picnic area. The program focused on major animal groups (mammals, reptiles, amphibians, fish, birds, and invertibrates), as well as requirements for a habitat (food, water, shelter, space, a habitat is a wonderful place--cha cha cha). After the program wound up around 12:30, we decided to go around the loop road. In my many hundreds of trips around the loop road, this was probably one of the best ones. We started with the basic plan of pulling over wherever she wanted to pull over (hence the pictures of horses from the first 25 feet of the loop road... boy did I feel like a tourist pulling over at THE very first pull off... still within view of the entering Cades Cove sign... but hey). Next, we pulled off at the John Oliver cabin trail... It's 1/4 mile to the cabin, and I expected a straight walk there, look around, walk back. Bailey is normally not very adventurous. Well, we walk up there, walk around the cabin, and then she sees some little unmarked side trail and starts pulling me along. Long story short, we spend the next 45 minutes traipsing around the woods searching for cicada molts (we eventually saw 119), cicade holes, trees (she can now ID tulip poplars--her favorite kind of tree... damn, how much do I love that my daughter has a favorite kind of tree at 7 years old??, maples, oaks, magnolias, sycamores, and hemlocks), evidence of boar rooting, turning over rocks for salamanders and bugs, rock hopping in a dried up stream bed, practicing the scientific method, and playing "survival quiz." It was also a spring board for a conversation about the hemlock woolly adelgid and similarities between American and Chinese climates. Yup, I think we went a little over the 1st grade curriculum. Long story short, she's now trying to think of ways to raise money for hemlock saving efforts in the park. Up to 70% of trees in the entire park are hemlocks, and if we continue at the current rate, they will all be dead before Bailey can buy beer, thanks to an exotic species of insect that is just super tiny. Needless to say, I am very proud of her immediate sense of social outrage: "What can we DO about it?" was her very first response, which made me kind of embarrassed that we hadn't done anything about it. Like all environmental movements with the catchphrase "it's a tough job, but we can do it," the adelgids are totally eradicatable (is that a word? I don't know). There is a chemical treatment that can be sprayed at the base of the tree that will be sucked up by the roots and enter the sap and kill the bugs and let the tree live (I've heard the chemical is the flea and tick repellent you put on your dog's back between the shoulder blades... I don't know if this is accurate). This is a good treatment, but due to the number of trees spread over 500,000 acres, it's very impractical. There is also a natural predator of the adelgid from China that feeds exclusively on the adelgids. For all of the Jurassic Park, "Life will find a way" nay-sayers, the cool thing about this predator beetle eats only the adelgid, and if it runs out of the adelgid, it eats other members of its own species. So it wipes out the adelgid and then takes care of itself. The only problem... about $2 per beetle. The NPS is raising money for these options through the sell of bumper stickers and t-shirts, but at the current rate, you may want to start taking lots of pictures of hemlocks. Even the hemlock in our yard is covered with adelgids. Little buggers.

Anyway, I digress. Next, we continued on the loop, stopping at the Methodist Church and one of the Baptist churches. At the Methodist Church, Bailey asked why there were two doors at the front of the church. Response: "One for boys, one for girls. Back then, boys weren't allowed to look at girls' ankles, so they had separate entrances because when girls stepped up their ankles would show under their dress." Bailey response--That's silly. Her act of civil disobedience: refusing to go into the church :) . From there, we walked around the cemetery. My family has a strong background in Myers's and Sparks's, hence William Myers Lombardo, and there are plenty of each in this cemetery. Even though the tombstones are old, it is kind of weird to see a tombstone with the name William Myers on it. I'm not quite brave enough to broach the subject of infant mortality with her, so thankfully she didn't really notice the predominance of infant graves. Nor did we go into much detail regarding the grave of our relative Tom Sparks who was shot and killed at the herders cabin at Spence Field by a mentally retarded (which I mean literally, not in the 7th grade "you're retarded" kind of way) man who was told Tom had a stash of money hidden at the cabin.

At the Baptist church, we practiced scientific method and came up with these hypotheses: 1: Cicadas like the shade; 2: Cicada larvae live in trees; 3: Cicada's exit their molted skin through the thorax. We're not sure how accurate these are... we're going to save them for middle school science projects.

After the Baptist church, we exited the cove via the Rich Mtn Road... winding 11 miles from the Cove to Townsend. Good times, good views, water play, a quick lesson on how to, um, urinate in the woods (FYI: 10 feet off trail, 100 ft from water source, preferably away from trees and vegetation--animals like to lick pee and it can damage trees and veg if too many animals lick it too often... who'd've thought? SO, if you ever see a trail sign with large segments of paint worn off or gnawed away, yup, someone peed on the sign).

All in all, we had a great day.

Daughter of an English Major || Sun., May 04, 2008

Jodie was feeling ill this morning, so Bailey, Myers, and I took off to the Foothills Parkway Open House. As a brief history lesson, this is the 9 mile section of Foothills Parkway that was begun ages ago and hasn't been completed. The section is normally closed to cars, but is open to walkers and bicyclists. The last time it was open to cars was one weekend in 1998. So, it's kind of a big deal. Basically, the road is like the finished sections of the Foothills Parkway in that it has a fair amount of solitude and some excellent vistas with lots of pull-offs. It is unlike the rest of the parkway in that it isn't fully paved, there are no lines on the road, and there are no guardrails (kind of nerve racking at times...). SO.. we pulled off around mile 3 to let Myers walk some at one of the pull offs with a particularly breathtaking vista of the mountains with fog transpiring a la "smoky" mountain style, and Bailey's response was: "It's beautiful, like a picture painted long ago by a great artist." This is the same girl who, upon looking into a campfire last year said it was "glowing like an orange monster."

The way I see it, if Bailey received my dominant genes for Language and Jodie's dominant genes for Math, Mendel would have to agree that Jodie and I will be living off her Nobel Prize money or McArthur Fellowship for our retirement. If not, we'll have to live off Myers's lawsuit settlement from an equipment failure that would occur while jumping off of or out of something. All I know is teaching sure as hell isn't going to cover retirement.

--this is where pictures of our trip would go if we'd brought a camera bag that actually had a camera in it instead of just a spare set of batteries and a memory card --

The Drive In || Saturday, April 26, 2008

Tonight we took advantage of one of Maryville's veritable gems: the drive in. Now, historically, we've had some interesting times at the drive in. Like the time we took a car that didn't have a working radio. Or the time we went, but forgot the diaper bag, and had to create a makeshift diaper out of a blanket and some tape. On that scale, tonight was rather uneventful. I personally had to suppress a riot (i.e., keep Jodie from kicking the asses of the smokers parked next to us), Myers fell on his head (I okay daddy. I OKAY. OKAY!!!), and I stepped on a capri sun and got sticky between my toes. Aside from that, things went well. We got to see Nim's Island (Bailey has been begging to watch it since, o, a month before it came out). Things didn't go well enough, however, to take advantage of one of the best deals in town. Did you know that you can get a season pass to the drive in for two adults and two children for $100, and that you can come as often as you want? Two new release movies a weekend, all spring and summer. How great is that? Anyway, I'll end the Parkway plug there. If they had a non-smoking section, we'd be all over it.

Preparing a Child for a life in the outdoors || Friday, April 25, 2008

We can mark the calendar with a major milestone in the preparation for Myers to be a future outdoorsy Grizzly Adams type. Tonight, just a scant hour or so ago, as the shroud of early night wrapped itself around our yard, he peed on his first tree. Talk about a way to celebrate Arbor Day :)

Advocacy of Revolution || Monday, April 21, 2008

Okay... so, without equivocation, I do not support the overthrow of the American form of government. Even though it was founding father Thomas Jefferson who said "a little rebellion now and then is a medicine necessary for the sound health of government," I think the ideals of our system are sound. I could possibly go for some regime change, but no full-blown revolution. So, that's my official stance. That being said, I was looking through the Tennessee Code Annotated today (the big book of Tennessee laws and policies), and was shocked to find this clause regarding teachers and the "advocacy of revolution."

49-5-202. Advocacy of revolution. —

(a) No person who advocates the overthrow of the American form of government or who is a member of a political party subscribing to a political faith which advocates the overthrow of the American form of government shall be employed on either a temporary or permanent basis in any school in this state financed in whole or in part with public funds.

(b) Any person who violates this section commits a Class C misdemeanor and shall also forfeit office.

I don't have to support an overthrow of the government to be worried by this. Thankfully, no one ever reads the TCA. This also kind of relates to a great story I heard on Morning Edition this morning... http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=89803687

To give you a teaser for the story, it mentions a former Brittish minister of information who said (and I paraphrase) "If we're not careful, we will sleepwalk our way into a surveillance society."

Camp Bailey Myers Birthday || Sat., April 19, 2008

What does a rave have in common with Bailey and Myers's birthday party? Glowsticks and a healthy supply of grass.

It's time for the annual birthday celebration. The nice thing about having two kids so close together is that we only have to plan one party. I mean, they both know the same people, have the same family, run in the same circles. This year we went with a camping theme (a stretch for us, I know). We set up a tent in the yard and filled it with balloons, made a homemade papier mache hornets' nest pinata, set up a fire ring for smores, and cooked out turkeyburgers and chicken dogs (I know... it sounds like some kind of inbred meat project... but a statistic to chew on... 17% of greenhouse gases in the world are emitted by cars, trucks, vans, etc. 18% is produced by the beef industry, covering everything from methane gas to nitrogen fertilizer to agricultural production to be fed to cows to cost of transporting food to cows, cows to slaughter, meat to stores, etc. IF every American ate 20% less meat for a year... less, not even cutting it out.... it would be the equivalent of everyone driving a hybrid for a year... wow.... Where's the tax credit for vegetarians?). All in all, a great party. As always, Jodie made a kickin' cake. This year, to add to the theme, she put down a base layer of green icing and then some candy grass we got after Easter to add a layer of realism. It looked great, but the kids freaked out. One kid said at least 30 times "This is gross! It's not even real grass." Yes, folks. He wanted real grass, and around time number 29 I was ready to shove some grass down his throat :)

In the end, any party that ends with a fire is pretty good in my book. We asked Bailey today what she wanted the theme to be next year so we can start planning... SO, I beam with pride as I say this... next April get ready for a kayaking party :)