the sleppys

There’s a Brazilian Pepper that lives on the western corner of our lot. It’s an exotic that starts out as a neat little shrub but grows insanely fast into a tree with a trunk the circumference of a beach ball and dozens and dozens of branches that divide into hundreds of drumstick-width branch-lets that have thousands of blossoms and eventually fruits, the peppercorns, that fall and germinate, starting off as neat little shrubs that grow insanely fast into trees with trunks the circumference of beach balls…. That’s why these plants are under the category known as Invasive Exotics.

The Suriname Cherry is exotic, but it’s not invasive. The Strangler Fig is invasive, but it’s not exotic. The Brazilian Pepper is a menace to wilderness society and must be terminated.

So last Saturday, we started cutting it down, determined to end the reproductive cycle of that brutal, bulky, Brazilian baobab. Dad cut the limbs with the pole saw. I dragged it to the designated work space. The three older children processed it into manageable pieces with the loppers and bypass pruners. We all stopped to take a breakfast break and drink some Gatorade. Then it was back to work.

The sun wasn’t out. The sky was overcast with stratus clouds. The air was damp but not uncomfortable. We were grateful that it wasn’t hot. We did get to see a wake of vultures, both Turkey and Black, gliding above us.

As we were killing this tree, or attempting to, the neighbor’s lawn crew came by, Haitians who spend several hours in the backyard, making all kinds of high-decibel noises with their power tools. Of course, we were also making whirring noises with our God-given talents.

It started raining a little bit, light drizzling but constant, enough to get everything wet. Dad had brought down the largest, ugliest limbs from the tree, so we called it a day. I was sent with the girls to run some errands.

In the evening, while we were at home having dinner, we heard chirping in the backyard. Both Dad and I heard it simultaneously because we perked up our heads and looked toward the backyard. As soon as he could, he grabbed a flashlight and headed toward the noise. The children followed him. The noise stopped.

We both thought it was the chicks from a nest that may have been dropped when its supporting branch was cut down by the neighbor’s lawn crew (because they cut freely). I took the children back inside the house to give Dad another chance to find the chicks.

“There are chicks in the backyard.”
“What?”
“There are three chicken chicks in the yard.”
“In OUR yard?”
“Yea! As if someone stepped close enough to drop them in our side of the fence.”
“Oh Wow.”

We placed them in a bucket and showed them to the children. They were astonished to see real live fowl chicks for the first time. Kendall was the first of the children to see them, and her eyes, looking down into the bucket, were big and brown in surprise.

We suspect the Haitians for dropping off the chicks. Excuse me for being judgmental. Their culture is weird, and maybe they saw through the hedges that they hacked to anemia that we already had rabbits. What’s a few more birds? That’s the first thought that entered my mind when Dad mentioned what the chirping was.

They were placed in the spare cage and settled next to the rabbits. Dad laid out some water in a jar lid, and I propped up some wind protection and a roof over the cage.

On Sunday, they were let outside to run free a little bit, to practice catching bugs and grubs from under rocks, which weren’t many because of the constant drizzling. They scratched and pecked at the compost pile and were finally put back in the cage.

Today, Ty was out there, wearing his rain poncho, in front of the cage, playing with and handling the yardbirds. I just hope they are not roosters, but even if they are, we will all learn a thing or two about chicken culling.

Ty and Kyle both started classical piano pieces: Clementi Sonatina in C and Mozart Minuet K.1, respectively. Kyle prefers to memorize his piece and has a difficult time reading musical notation. I constantly have to remind him to look up at the music, but the piece involves his hands’ moving up and down the keyboard, which gives him a valid excuse to look at them.
Ty started playing his piece using the metronome, which he loathes. He does keep good time when I remind him, clapping along to the metronome. Like most students, he says that it confuses him. “Make it unconfuse you,” I tell him, as I tell all my students. “Play in a pattern that you don’t HEAR the metronome.” He finally understands after he plays correctly.

Taylor started playing piano and reading music. It’s interesting that even the piano teacher’s children behave like other piano students, expressing their unique strengths, weaknesses, preferences, and attention spans. She plays “Yankee Doodle” and “Old MacDonald” by heart.

Talon and Kendall regularly sit at the piano and play sweetly together. I hear them singing, “…lonely world… city boy… SOUTH DETROIT… on and on and on and on….” And the sweet playing turns into banging. Rhythmic banging, mind you, they are trained musicians!

I’ve gotten the three older children to sing in rounds, Row Row Row Your Boat. We were fairly successful but aren’t auditioning for any major competitions yet. We have tried “Carol of the Bells” a couple of times, which has shown slow but steady improvement. I think we should be ready to perform it in Christmastide.

About three times a week, the five children practice all the Christmas songs and carols that I can force them to sing in unison. Because their voices are still young, that means only about 25 minutes of singing can be expected. I try to get both holy and secular ones in the mix.

September 12: Kyle comes running up to me, “Feel this. Feel this toast. This is not toast!” I take a look at it, not a touch of brown. He continues in a Gordon Ramsay accent, “Can we get this bread back in the toastuh?” all while slapping the table rhythmically to the accents of the sentence. Thank you, Gordon Ramsay.

Taylor just completed her first sewing project. It didn’t take long at all, about fifteen minutes.

My cousins and aunt from Alabama came down for a visit. They brought some toys for the boys and twins and a Simplicity Lockstitch sewing machine for Taylor. She was really happy and carried around the machine in its packaging for a day and a half. I told her that I’d teach her to sew as soon as we had time, but with all the home projects that we had, Dad and me, there really wasn’t any time.

Yesterday, before we left to a pool party, I taught her to sew straight lines. But the bobbin thread was too tight. The needle thread was too tight. It was just getting frustrating. I tinkered with it a little; my own sewing machine is nearly a decade older than I am and keeps me versed in sewing machine mechanics.

This morning, I figured that I had about an hour to tinker with the bobbin and the tension some more, and I finally got the thread to behave. After stitching straight lines and zig zags, I thought it was time for Taylor to start on her project.

I had a scrap of fabric hanging around from the twins’ dresses, just big enough to make a little pillow for one of Taylor’s dolls. When I sat her down, she was upset with me because I took too long to get started. I explained to her that I wanted her to have a good experience with a sewing machine. (There are few things more frustrating than a machine that doesn’t cooperate!) I taught her to start with a reverse stitch as an anchor. She sewed straight lines down the side until she reached the end, where I taught her to lift the foot, turn the work, drop the foot, and sew another straight line. She did that for three sides until she was about three inches from the end. Reverse stitch to anchor.

She turned the work inside out and stuffed it polyester fiberfill. As she was doing that, she kept exclaiming, “This is so cute! This is going to be so cute!”

I was thinking about teaching her to hand sew the pillow shut, but I wasn’t in the frame of mind to teach her to wield a needle and produce a whipstitch. She used her machine again to stitch it, practicing the reverse stitch to anchor, forward straight stitch, and reverse stitch again.

Once that was completed, I took a picture of her with her first project and the sewing machine.

I’m thinking about her next project, something that still involves straight lines…

I was vegging out of facebook when I saw all five children hurry out of the living room and down the hallway toward the bedrooms. I figured they were being their weird selves again. Okay. No problem. Several minutes later, I hear some steady chanting, like counting almost, and then quiet. Whatever. They are being weird. Then I hear someone screaming! I mean, more like yelling, like he is mad!

Then they all break out in giggles and screeching laughter.

Taylor runs to me, laughing so hard that she can’t even tell me the story. This is what I deciphered:

We were playing Master Chef, and we were all cooking. The babies were like Chef Ramsay, doing the counting, Three Two One and Stop! (With a British accent, of cou’se) Kyle looked at the food and slammed it on the table and said, “IT’S RAWWW” ha hahaha hahaha hhaa giggle giggle haha haha

Now I’m hearing them yelling back and forth “Blue Team, scallops! I’m walking in thirty seconds! No, no, it needs a little bit of salt. No, you’re supposed to put SUGAR!! Not a little bit. A LOT! Look, it’s like rubbah!!”

I’m laughing as I type this!! LOL At least they know that scallops aren’t supposed to feel like rubber. lol!

We are getting hurricane shutters installed on the windows. Two men came to do the job. Ty hung around them, asking if they needed help. At first, I was concerned that Ty might be getting himself in the way, but the men would ask him for a nail or a bit or whatever.

Ty offered them water. They said they were fine. They do this kind of work all the time, windows need shutters on the outside. Around lunchtime, Ty asked them if they wanted lunch. They said that they had all they needed. Ty made them peanut butter sandwiches anyway. He presented it to them. They were, of course, grateful, but being that they had their own provisions, they didn’t eat the sandwiches right away. Ty told me that he put the sandwiches in their cooler.

After two days of shutter installation, the men were done with what they could do (we are still waiting for a track part). Dear Husband talked to them in the shade of a neighbor’s tree. One of the men told DH that we have really great kids.

Thanks, Ty, for representing our family.

A friend of mine has two daughters, 10 and 11 years old. The older girl recently moved into her own room, so the girls do not need their bunk beds anymore. For fifty dollars, she sold the set to me along with the mattresses. It took two trips to haul the furniture from their house. The first night, the pieces of wood sat in our living room. The next day, Dad and I put the beds together.

We took the bed that the boys had and put it in the girls’ room. Before doing that, I took the cribs down. It was a sad, melancholy sort of task. For nearly a third of my life, I’ve had a crib in my house, which means that I’ve had a baby around. The only reason I would take a crib down is to move it, but this time I was taking it down to store it. So sad that our babies are not babies anymore. Even if we were to be blessed with another little one in the future, it would be a long time before the crib would have to be up.

Dad and I hauled the pieces of furniture from the living room to the boys’ room and assembled them. I told the boys that not girls are allowed on the top bunk. At first I was going to say No Babies, but we don’t have babies anymore and Taylor doesn’t yet demonstrate that she will be able to control herself while on the top bunk. So, No Girls Allowed. That also gives the boys a freedom on the top bunk that boys should have, a No Girls zone.

We’ll be in a transitional state the next couple of days, moving stuff, storing stuff, throwing away bad stuff, preparing to give away good stuff that we don’t use.

And we’re having shutters installed on the windows, so that’s creating a sort of weirdness, too.

I was saying good night to Ty, and he was confirming that this week is really weird… and it’s only the second day!

The babies, I mean younger girls, didn’t want to fall asleep in their Big Girl Bed, where they’d have more room. They wanted to sleep in the bunk beds (because they are new to the house). Kendall cried and whined a little but both spent the night in their BGB.

Our cat, Stupid White Cat, ran away for the last time. If he does decide to come back, he will not be allowed into the house again.

About a month after we acquired our cat, Taylor developed a low-grade on-and-off fever. She was like that for a few days. Some of our other children were passing colds to one another, so we thought it was that… UNTIL… I discovered a lump in Taylor’s underarm. I knew exactly what it was. After some e-research and thinking back upon my own experiences, Dad and I concluded that it was cat scratch disease, or a Bartonella henselae infection. She had all the classic symptoms, from headache and loss of appetite to mild fever. After a week or so of this, we took her to the doctor who asked us if we had a cat, and he gave us a prescription for amoxicillin and clavulanate potassium, which is an antibiotic paired with a molecule that gives it an extra punch.

After a couple of days of taking the medicine, Taylor started doing better (no fever, normal appetite), but her little lump didn’t go away. In fact, I think it got bigger. Dad would massage it to encourage it to drain. Nothing. She even developed a non-itchy skin rash that looked like measles! It was everywhere, from her face to her soles. Now, I can’t be certain if it was from the antibiotics because we were also eating a ton of mangoes: there are people who get rashes from just touching mango skin or sap, eating mangos, or eating too many mangos. Just for good measure, we stopped feeding the children mangos, and Taylor finished up her 10 days of medicine.

The rash went away. Whew!

Warning: Gross nastiness follows; Read at your own risk. But her little lump wasn’t little anymore. It was a big ball. Dad said that it is most likely filled with pus (eww!) and could take months to drain (double eww!). At least Taylor wasn’t holding her arm up to protect her lumpish ball anymore, creating muscle tension in her shoulder and neck, positioning herself to develop awfully bad posture.

After a month (I took her to the doctor the day after Memorial Day), she started getting what looked to be a heat rash under her arm. It looked like the skin on the ball was chaffing, rubbing awkwardly against her own skin and clothes. Because it didn’t hurt her anymore, she was bring her arm all the way down, molding the ball to look for triangular, like a pyramid. She also behaved like her normal self, roughhoused with the boys, and came crying out of the room a couple of times, saying that a brother had hit or kicked her on the lump. “It was an accident!” they’d cry in defense. Still, it was scary as heck as a parent to see this weird, chaffing, soft-on-the-outside, hard-in-the-inside, mushy small golfball thing under my daughter’s arm.

On the first Thursday in July, I was getting our of the shower to get ready to go to work when Taylor opened the door and looked at me sadly. She didn’t look guilty. She didn’t look confused. She had an expression that I’ve never seen before that covered sad, guilty, and confused. She pointed to her underarm without saying anything. I got really worried! “What’s the matter?”

“Somebody vomited on my arm.”
“What?”
“Yea, look.” She showed me her shirt and her underarm.
“Oh, honey! That’s pus! Thank God! That’s a good thing, Taylor. Take a shower and get washed up. Let’s try to drain it as much as we can.” She didn’t understand that we were waiting for the thing to abscess and ooze out. I cleaned it up, gave her a fresh shirt, and went to work. I cleaned it again when I got home and again in the morning and again and again and again.

That Sunday, my brother’s daughter was having a pool party for her birthday. I took the five children while Dad stayed to watch the space shuttle Atlantis’ docking with the ISS. The boys swam in the pool and had a good time while the girls sat under the shade of a mango tree and ate and talked with the other ladies who weren’t going in the pool. I told Taylor on Saturday that she wasn’t going to swim because she had an open wound. She understood and had a good time at the party.

My dad walked up to me with a concerned look on his face, “What happened to Taylor’s arm?” I told him that it looked waaaaaay better than it did a week before. My mom also expressed concern, and I explained to everyone, “I know it looks nasty, but it is on the road to healing.”

So today, after keeping the wound clean, Taylor is back to her old self again. Thank God!

The boys, Father and two sons, went out on a bike ride to the park and the library. I have time to type away my inkling thoughts.

Chess has been going pretty well. Taylor learned the pieces’ movements quickly but is not yet emotionally mature to handle losing all the time. I still haven’t played against her, though. Maybe she’ll checkmate me. Kyle checkmates me ALL THE TIME, so I don’t bother playing against him anymore. Even when I’m up in material (I may have both my bishops and one knight while he lost both knights and bishops), he’ll find a way to checkmate. Fresh brains, I guess. My brains are stale and dusty. I’m only good at playing scales on piano, haha!

Brian, a friend of ours, came over to give Ty a chess lesson. Brian is more experienced in chess than Dear Husband or me, and we thought that Ty could use a worthy opponent that is not the computer. Brian was surprised a bit by Ty’s ability. I’m not sure if Kyle also got a game in. As Brian was leaving, he taught the boys some sword fighting moves (with some pvc pipes that we have laying around). Well, Brian came back to visit us about a week later. He greeted us and went straight to his chess game with Ty. This time, Kyle wanted a match, too, so Brian played. Having no children of his own, he experienced how exhausting it is to train two boys, even if it is just chess. A few days later, Ty and Brian had a chess match over the phone. I think they played two games. I’m sorry that I can’t offer the boys any more chess than I already know. You know, as a parent, you do the best you can, but sometimes, the best you can isn’t enough. Thank goodness for friends!

The boys took swimming lessons at the beginning of the summer. For two weeks, they had instruction for 45 minutes, which really wasn’t 45 minutes because they shared the time with other students in the class. I’ve learned that the best time for them to have lessons is the end of the summer, the last four weeks before school starts back up. Last year, Kyle was the only student in his class. Well, anyway, the second day of swim class, the boys found themselves in the same ugly situation that they did last year: Because of their long hair, some other boys in the locker room called them “gay.” Our boys handled it well, reminding the nasty boys not to call people names. At the end of the swim lesson session, our boys forgave the nasty boys by putting their right hand on them, saying, “I forgive you for making fun of me.” This tactic worked a lot better than bringing the situation to the attention of the park director, who blew us off by telling Kyle that “that word has two meanings.” Oh please, we both know that the nasty boys didn’t call my boys boys “gay” with intentions of stating that they are happy. When she said that to Kyle, I wanted to kick her in the mouth. BUT Jesus taught us to love our neighbor and forgive the way God forgives us. So that’s why I told my boys to forgive the nasty boys on the last day of class.

Last year, the boy that called my boys “gay” was 11, was confronted by Ty, and never returned to class. I’m guessing he was expelled from the summer camp. Or maybe he saw me waiting for him and got scared. Bullies are like that. I was just going to remind him to be nice to people. It’s not like I was going to hit him because, you know, we have to be tolerant.

One day, Dear Husband had to drop us all off so that he could take the van to work. All that Everglades hiking paid off for us because we made it back home in 40 minutes, staying in single file and two meter intervals. Everyone had on their boots. The boys wore their boonie hats while the girls wore their bonnets. We stopped four times to chug water. Sure, it was hot and tiring, but we made it back home without casualties.

We still haven’t turned on the air conditioning. We went without the a/c the summer of 2009. I think we may have to do that again. We call it Florida Cracker Summer. (You might have to Google that).

A friend of mine thought that she had an extra ticket to see U2, so she invited me to go. Turned out that it wasn’t possible for her to get the ticket, so she BOUGHT ME TWO TICKETS. At first, she was going to get just one, but our van doesn’t sit well in traffic (we all know how concert-night stadium traffic is). She offered to buy me an extra ticket to get someone to take me. Well, I jumped at the offer. I invited my older brother to take me since he lives close by and can drop me off.

Dear Husband and the children dropped me off at my brother’s house at about 4pm. We waited around for his wife to come home. I got to spend a couple of hours with my niece and nephew. A few minutes to six, we were on the road. It was so exciting!! I finally got to see my favorite band. I knew all but two songs. The guy next to me had been drinking a little and was excited and happy as I was. He knew most of the songs, too. What a happy, awesome time.

Earlier that afternoon, I was so jazzed up to see U2 that I played the entire Joshua Tree album on piano. I have a songbook that I bought while I was in high school. I learned a lot about chords and chord progression from that book. It’s written for guitar and voice, but I played it on piano, which is my first instrument. I suppose, through the translation of instruments, I taught myself theory (what theory I didn’t learn from my piano teacher, or was taught but didn’t retain). And I always say that Bono taught me to harmonize, as I learned to sing harmony to that album. It really was a great concert, and I’m so glad that I finally went.

Last weekend, Dear Husband came home with a chess set. We have a few chess sets (or have gone through a few sets) in the house, but this set has a sheet of metal under the board to keep the magnetized pieces on it. It’s useful if your children don’t have iPods to listen to in the car or want to wander around the house with the board ready to go, asking people if they want to play.

Ty and Kyle took the chess set into their room and began to play. A few hours later, Kyle asked if I wanted to play with him. “Okay,” so I watched him set up the board, and he played white.

He moved his pawns sideways. He took pieces that his “horse” jumped over.

“Kyle, I don’t think that’s how you’re supposed to play.”
“Oh, Ty and I were playing like this.”
“It’s not checkers, and your pawns can only move forward.”

So I explained to him how the pieces move. He really enjoyed the lesson because he’s an expert at battles and knights and guards and kings and stuff like that. I started with the pawn, telling him that he carries a shield and moves forward easily but because he’s carrying a shield, he can only attack diagonally. A knight can jump over pawns and other fighters because he’s on a horse. And a rook, well, a rook is a favorite in this house because he’s an archer. He, along with the fellow rook and the queen, can hit an enemy from far away.
After a game with Kyle, Ty and I played.

When we go outside to the front yard, I usually practice a musical instrument that’s not the piano and the children climb trees or play tag. After we started playing chess, the boys began pretending that they were chess pieces, rooks and bishops and all, and ran aorund the yard pretending to shoot arrows and run diagonally and capture each other.

Dear Husband turned on the Mac computer and introduced the boys to the chess software. They played and played for hours. They were hooked on it. Of course, the computer wins every game. They also found out how to play against each other and watch the computer play itself.

The next time that I played Ty, he beat me! My only excuse was that I was playing white pieces, which I never practice. But that’s a weak excuse.

I later played Kyle. Although I won, I did notice that his game got better. He did put up a good fight. Days went by, and I practiced my music while the boys slashed with their swords and hid behind trees. Yesterday, Ty and I played again when we were outside. He beat me both times.

That’s it!
Instead of practicing the violin or guitar while I’m outside, I’m going to start pretending that I’m a pawn or a rook.