Camping

We camped in our new (used) pop-up for the first time. There was, of course, a small learning curve involved. Friday, I took off early to help pack things up. Well, actually, I was mostly concerned with trying to figure out how to sanitize the water tank. I never did figure it out before we had to leave, which left Sweetie to do most of the packing.

I started throwing stuff in the back of the truck with grand thoughts of bringing my guitar and the telescope and other things, but the back of the truck filled up quickly with our camp chairs, cooking gear, sleeping bags and food.

Finally, time came to leave. Sweetie and I tried to get the trailer on the hitch while Hobbes filmed us with the video camera. Not entirely flattering, us bickering with each other while trying to figure out how to get the hitch to engage. Finally, we decided to just pull out and see if that did it. It did. The tires on the trailer were kinda flat, but at that point we really needed to get going, so off we went.

Our campsite

We got all the way to the water treatment plant (about 3/4 of a mile) when I realized that I hadn't brought the instructions for erecting the pop-up with us. We stopped and I got out to walk back to town (I didn't want to turn the trailer around) to get them. Calvin decided to join me to get his pillow. Fortunately, a neighbor drove by and offered to give us a lift to our house and back to the truck, saving us precious time. On the road again, we made slow time. It was a new experience driving with a trailer across the bumpy dirt road. I never mind treating the truck to some bumps, but didn't want to stress a 25-year-old trailer too much, so we drove slowly. We finally got to Little Harbor and found campsite 17. It's at the top of the campsite, perched between Little and Shark Harbors. It was nice that we were up away from other campers and no-one was in 17a across the way. Very quiet. Except for the Things.

Popping up the camper went relatively smoothly (since we had the directions). I discovered two things: the battery was dead (not surprising) and the drain for the water reservoir is under the seat in the dining area. Good to know. We started a fire and did a weenie roast for dinner, followed by s'mores for dessert. Sweetie and Hobbes read Deathly Hallows in the trailer, while Calvin and I read Harold and the Purple Crayon in the truck. Then it was bed time. Sweetie and I didn't stay up much past the boys' bed time. We knew they would be up early.

S'mores!

I will note at this point that the weather really wasn't cooperating. It was overcast and wet and chilly (that means 60s during the day and the 50s at night). Not very good for a campout at the beach, but it did make us appreciate our trailer that much more. The previous owners had left us some extra blankets, which Calvin needed before the night was through (since he only had a kid sleeping bag).

On the trail

Sure enough, as soon as it was light (6:30am) the boys stirred and woke us up. We cooked scrambled eggs and bacon for breakfast on the stove in the trailer. Calvin insisted we eat at the table in the trailer. It was a cold (~60) and gray morning. The boys helped clean up, and then we went on a hike. I'll let Sweetie describe it on her blog (A Hiking Diary of Catalina). I will say it was a nice, although exhausting, hike. We returned entirely ready for lunch. Sweetie cooked up some grilled cheese sandwiches and we had a few minutes of quiet time (not enough in my opinion). Since we were camping at the beach, we decided we might as well go down to the water, even though it was, as I said rather cold and gray. The boys dutifully put on their bathing suits and we wandered down to Shark Harbor. We saw a neighbor down there setting up camp and chatted a bit while the boys discovered how cold the water was (pretty damn cold). The boys decided climbing around on the rocks was more fun than freezing to death in the water. After not too long, we all decided it was time to make dinner, and headed back to camp.

Cold gray day; cold gray water; surfers have no more sense than boys.

For dinner, we had a chuckwagon combo of beans and ground turkey. It was pretty good, considering we (Sweetie) just sort of made it up on the spot. This evening, I had Hobbes build and light the fire (12 matches!), and Calvin apprenticed in the art of putting a stick in the fire and lighting it on fire and then waving it around in the air. After more s'mores and Harry Potter, it was time for bed. We were all exhausted.

Sunday morning again came early. The boys are like clockwork with their waking up. It was again rather gray and damp and cold outside, so we had pancakes in the trailer for breakfast. Afterwards, it was time to strike camp. The Things did a reasonable job packing up their clothes and sleeping bags. Hobbes helped Sweetie do breakfast dishes while Calvin helped me pack up the truck. We took down the trailer with ease (and found Calvin's hat on top). Hobbes was very helpful with this.

Breakfast KP

As we were getting ready to pull out, we decided that the one tire was too flat, so since we had a spare, we decided to change it. The truck jack worked very well for this, and soon we were on our way with a marginally less flat tire.

Surprisingly, no one fell asleep in the truck on the way home, but once we got there and unpacked, it was clear that we had some tired boys, so we had a movie afternoon. We had such a good time, that we've already booked three more weekends this summer. Next time out, we'll have a charged battery, inflated tires, and better weather.

Let's go fly a kite

This afternoon, I took the boys kite-flying. We decided to try out these nifty little delta wing kites that Sweetie got the boys a long time ago, but we'd never opened. The kites were made of ripstop nylon, were about a foot across, had a delta shape (duh) and two long tails (10ft?). After a few minutes construction, we went down to the field across from the school. It being the afternoon, there was a nice, constant breeze (locally referred to as the Isthmus Express) coming through the valley from Catalina Harbor towards Isthmus Cove.

I started trying to help Calvin get his kite going, but it would just spin around and around and then crash into the ground. I think there was a balance problem there. Calvin was getting very frustrated. Meanwhile Hobbes was giggling. I looked over and he was laughing because his kite was also going round and round, but what I saw was that the string and the tails were going round and round each other and making a big messy knot. I quickly abandoned Calvin to his conniption and began struggling to untangle Hobbes' kite. Images of Charlie Brown's experiences with kites flashed through my head as I looked at the wound and looped strands. I finally got the tails free, and had one knot left in the string. Now this was not nice thick, high-quality kite string; this was essentially white thread. I pulled on the knot and the string snapped. Hobbes began to have a conniption of his own. (Perhaps I expressed a bit too much exasperation over the tangle, too.) He went over to hold on Calvin's kite so it wouldn't blow away. With Calvin's help (he has small fingers) I managed to tie the two ends of Hobbes' kite string together and he was ready to go. I looked over and saw that he had somehow managed to tangle Calvin's kite string and tails.

After a prolonged sigh, I relieved Hobbes' of Calvin's kite and we managed to get his up into the air. Up it soared, and he started figuring out how to make the kite move left and right and how to get it to climb when the wind started to lessen. He was having a ball.

Calvin, on the other hand, was still in Conniption City. I managed to untangle his with relative ease, but we still couldn't get it to fly properly. It just spun around and crashed. I sent him home to get another kite. (That's the polite way of saying he stormed home to get another kite.) This was a wing kite, and I don't know where we got these, either, but we'd tried them before and had a similar spinning problem. But today, when we got it unwrapped, it sailed up into the sky with little problem and for a brief second I thought we were on our way to a pleasant afternoon. "Don't cross the strings!" I warned.

Seconds later, they crossed strings. Calvin's wing kite, being heavier and having thicker string, managed to saw through Hobbes' thread (or maybe the knot I made failed, I don't know). Set free, it blew across the field carried by the Isthmus Express. I gave chase. I ran down the field, past the pavilion and picnic area, across the street and into town. I kept hoping the kite would fall, but it just kept going. I ran down to the beach and saw that the kite was now over the water, but starting to descend. It hit the water about thirty yards out, just beyond the Baywatch dingy. I trotted down the pier and found a Harbor Patrol employee who said he would take me out to see if we could retrieve it, but alas, it had sunk beneath the surface. I jogged back up to the field. Calvin and his kite were nowhere to be seen. Hobbes was sitting with his head down on one of the picnic tables. He looked up and I told him the bad news. Tears. We started home to get some sympathy from Mom.

So here is the last known picture of Kitey. Ah lad, we knew ye well. Godspeed, and maybe we'll see you washed up on the beach tomorrow morning. (If so, we'll rinse you off and try to fly you again.)

Goodbye green

Well, the brown creep has hit the island. The rainy season is over, and the plants, after a glorious flowering period are starting to die off. The grasses are going to seed and turning an attractive shade of gold, and patches of brown are springing up on the hillsides that were so recently emerald green.

The dust levels have picked up again, too. Driving once again engenders a large cloud of fine dust that coats the back of the truck, the plant life adjacent to the road, and anyone you happen to drive past.

We still have been having some stormy weather, but that consists of low pressure fronts kicking up the channel to uncrossable levels. We've had two such storms in the last month. Poor Sweetie had to make a crossing on a day when the ferry was almost canceled. (I think the passengers all wished it had been by the time they got here.)

In related turning of the seasons news, I recently needed to buy some new pants. I don't believe I will receive any sympathy from anyone, but I had to get rid of some pants I bought when I was a senior in college. They no longer fit in the waist. Alas, middle-age spread has finally arrived. (Sweetie was greatly amused by this, I should mention, while I accepted the situation with grace and dignity.) Apparently the kids still love me, and the cat still sits on my lap, but the young ladies no longer glance my direction. Okay, to be honest it's been some time since a young lady glanced in my direction unless I was shouting something like "Oh my God! I'm on fire!", but I digress.

I just hope I don't start going gray.

Peace out.

'Call me. Don't be afraid to just call me...'

I posted about the B&G dinner yesterday and forgot one of the best parts.

The B&G dinner was Monday night. Wednesday morning, when I got to work, I realized I didn't have my phone with me. At the time I didn't think anything about it - I knew I hadn't picked it up before I left for work. So when I got home, I looked around for it and couldn't find it. I had Lori call the number, but we didn't hear anything. Well, again, I didn't think too much of it; I figured it must be at work buried under some papers on my desk. So the next day I go in and thoroughly search my office to no avail. Well, now I'm puzzled and I'm trying to remember when was the last time I had it. I knew I had it at the B&G, so maybe, I thought, it's in the car. Again, no luck. I figured it would show up somewhere, so the waiting game began.

This was a bit of a pain, though. I hadn't realized how dependent on my cell phone I was becoming. I do have a phone at my desk at work, but it is not easy to make long distance calls on it, and our cell phones have Maryland numbers, so calling Sweetie is an ordeal. And we don't have a land line at the house.

The next day, Lori gets a call. It's a woman who has my phone, and the last number dialed was Lori's. She's calling from Carson. For those of you unfamiliar with southern California, Carson is not on Catalina. It's about 5 miles up the 110 from the port of LA. Lori takes her name and number and passes the info to me. I give the woman a call and ask where she found it and how it got to Carson. Turns out her family happened to be in Avalon on Monday and attended the Blue & Gold dinner. Her mother has a phone that looks very similar, and her younger sister mistook my phone for the mother's and picked it up. I guess they didn't realize the mistake until they got home. I thanked her for calling and said I'd call her back when I could pick it up.

I'm planning on going over on Monday and one of my many tasks will be to pick up my phone. My well-traveled phone. I don't think it misses me, but I sure miss it.

If anyone has gift suggestions for the good Samaritan woman who called me about my phone, post a comment.

Cub Scouts

We had our Blue and Gold Dinner last week, the annual bash celebrating all that is Cub Scouts. This was Calvin's first as a Cub, and Hobbes is now in Webelos. Ceremonies opened with the Webelos group doing a skit that involved a magic hat, the Cub Scout Promise, a rubber chicken, some underwear, and culminated in the Pledge of Allegiance. Beat that.



The highlights of the evening were the skits, the presentation, and the raffles. The Tigers (my group - I'm Den Leader this year) did a hilarious skit (if I do say, myself) about identifying "bison poop" (actually a brownie sitting on top of a chocolate cookie). The Webelos performed the old classic "Tater Bug", which was also very well received. The Wolves did "invisible bench" and the Bears did "test of the emergency broadcasting system".



The presentation was by me. I spoke on the founding of Boy Scouts, this being the 100th Anniversary of the BSA. I talked about what life was like in 1910, and about three of the men who were integral to the founding of Scouts, Ernest Seton, Robert Baden-Powell and William Boyce. The stability of the ideals that comprise Scouting from 1907 to today is really quite astounding. We ended with all current and past Scouts present reciting the Scout Law.



At some point (shortly before my talk ended, I believe), attention of small minds began to wander and the Cubs started slipping outside to run around. Inside we finished up the raffle drawing and called it a night. A good time was had by all. Having been with the Pack for three years, and participating as a leader this year, I'm feeling much more integrated into the social structure surrounding the Pack now. Calvin and Hobbes have both made friends with at least some of the kids in their Dens, and Sweetie now knows and is known by Pack people. This makes Pack events feel much friendlier.



Coming up we have the Pinewood Derby and a Webelos campout. Pictures to follow!

Doings

Wow, I'm really not doing well on my keeping up with the blog thing. My apologies to the millions of fans out there.

Well, I guess the biggest excitement recently has all had to do with the school in town. It's been at a bit of a low simmer all year. We got a new teacher this year, and while my initial impression was that she wasn't a great fit for the island (and didn't realize it), she certainly came with great credentials. Despite her frequent protestations that she "wasn't about drama", there were a string of dramas that followed her around: the restraining order drama, the dog drama, the horse drama, the mail key drama, the mail drama, the disappearing materials drama, the fence for her house drama. But in the classroom, she always professional and on-task (as near as I could tell), and the kids seemed both like her and be learning what they needed to know.

All year, she had been going back to the mainland every weekend, which made sense since her husband was there, but after Christmas, she started missing the occasional Monday, or suddenly had to leave Thursday. The frequency of these absences started increasing, and I was wondering if there was something wrong that she wasn't telling us, like a family member was sick or something.

Also around this time, Long Beach Unified School District voted, in light of the serious budget cuts necessitated by the California state fiscal crisis, that they would not fund the Little Red Schoolhouse, at least for the 2010-2011 year. Minor panic ensued in our very small schoolhouse community. For those of you who don't know, the only other school on the island is in Avalon, a 90 minute bus ride over unpaved roads. Most days the bus leaves at 6:30am and gets back at 5:45pm. And we have two kids slotted to start kindergarten in the fall. This had happened before, in 2005, and at that time the Foundation that had started the school in the first place stepped in and paid the operating cost of the school for a year, whereupon LBUSD picked us up again. No one was sure what was going to happen. Would the Foundation step in again? We heard talk that Avalon would run a second bus for the younger kids. We were considering looking into starting a charter school. There were lots of serious conversations. In the end, the Foundation Board met and agreed to fund us next year, so we have a one year stay of execution, but we still have decisions to make.

Well, around the time we were hearing that we had been bailed out, the teacher disappeared. She just left one Wednesday afternoon saying she'd be back the next week and then never came back. I guess she just cracked. Everyone was surprised at first (except, I think, the woman who works at the school as lunch monitor/janitor/groundskeeper), but upon reflection, it was less surprising. We were now stuck without a permanent teacher, though, and the local woman who usually substitutes couldn't do it long term because she has another job. So two retired teachers from Avalon very kindly offered to step in and tag-team teach the rest of the year. One of them even taught at the Little Red Schoolhouse years ago, and both of them taught some of the PTA parents in Avalon. So we are very grateful to these wonderful ladies (glory, laud and honor to them for helping us out).

Now I guess if the teacher was unhappy here, then it's good for her to be there and it's good for us that she's not here, and from that standpoint I wish her well. But there are a few things about the way she left that I'm really not happy about. I'm not going to go into details because the point of this entry was to tell a story, not dump her, but I thought it would lend emotional involvement to the reader to let them know that there is anger here. (Ooooh! Drama!)

Oh, and I skipped the bit where there was a rumor in town that I was stalking the teacher. I was mildly amused that I had made it into the rumor mill in this very small town, but wearied by how ludicrous the accusation was.

Well, anyway, I believe the drama is over for now. We still need to decide what to do with the school moving forward, but we have a cushion now. So going into Spring Break new week all is well at the Little Red Schoolhouse.

2010: Odyssey 2

Wow. February already, and this is my first blog entry for 2010. I guess writing blog entries was not one of my New Year's resolutions.

Well, it's been a busy year so far. Grammy and Grandpa came out for a visit, but not really for fun. As you may recall, Sweetie had surgery in 2008. Well, she decided it was time to have the follow-up surgery, so we needed someone to look after the Things, and Grammy and Grandpa came right out. Coming from the mid-Atlantic states (where it's been cold) they anticipated having a nice week of hikes and exploring the island. HAHAHaHahahahahahahaha! They were in for a surprise. Poseidon must have gotten angry at Los Angeles for making fun of the rest of the country (which seems to be turning into Siberia this winter). G&G showed up on a Monday, and the marine forecast turned nasty, leading Sweetie and I to leave for the mainland a day early.

We went out to eat and saw a movie (Sherlock Holmes) - it was like a real date night. The next day was a few errands before the Dreaded Prep began. But this time, having a foreshortened GI tract, Sweetie had a much smaller prep, which meant she had to drink less stuff, was done sooner, wasn't as wiped out as she had been for prior preps. (Maybe not being sick also had something to do with it.) All of this was a pleasant surprise, even if it was tempered by knowledge of surgery the next day. There was a great deal of dread on that front, since recovery was so difficult last time.

We had to be at the hospital at early o'clock, so we got up at ridiculous o'clock to make sure we didn't get stuck in LA traffic. We got to the hospital in plenty of time. After checking in and going upstairs to pre-op, we found out Sweetie was first on the docket for our doctor. We waited patiently, yet nervously, wondering why we were voluntarily going through this again while nurses repeatedly asked Sweetie her name, birth date, doctor, procedure, etc. At one point activity noticeably picked up in pre-op and soon thereafter, Sweetie was rolled away. I went down to the lobby to wait.

The doctor had said surgery should be about 90 minutes if there were no complications, and sure enough, about 2 hours later, he was down to report the procedure was a success and complication-free. Hooray! First hurdle cleared with flying colors. While Sweetie went to recovery, I had lunch.

To make a long, happily uninteresting story short, Sweetie's hospital recovery went very smoothly. None of the pain management problems we had before. Her incision was much smaller, so there was less discomfort to start with. Very shortly, she was feeling pretty good, and was getting very bored in the hospital. The hospital stay was just 3 1/2 days, and we adjourned to the apartment.

Originally, we had planned on staying in the apartment for a week, but things were going so well, we considered trying to get back to the island early. So, of course, a series of storms hit southern CA, dumping 5 inches of rain on the island and stirring up the channel so badly that all ferries were canceled all week. Poor Grammy and Grandpa had two boys bouncing off the walls of a small house. School was even canceled Thursday and Friday (yes, they cancel school here for rain), so the Things didn't even have that to distract them. I went up to campus that week and worked, while Sweetie recovered at the apartment. This was marginally less boring for her than recovering in the hospital. (It is a very good sign when your patient is restless, rather than listless.) We finally got back to the island Sunday. The Things were very glad to see us. G&G were glad the rain had stopped and the boys could go outside.

Our weather drama was not over, though. Yet another storm was threatening, and we had to balance boat schedules against the weather and decided that G&G should leave a day early to avoid a 2 1/2 hour crossing on potentially bad seas, or even a possible boat cancellation. That was a bit disappointing for us; what with us having to leave early beforehand and them leaving early at the end, Sweetie and I hardly got to see G&G at all.

Sweetie is not 100% recovered yet, but is getting quite close. This has been a much easier process than last time, which is what we were hoping for, but not necessarily expecting. Sweetie's Mom and sister came out for a week in anticipation of helping out during Sweetie's recovery, but Sweetie was feeling well enough by the time they got here (the day after G&G left) that it turned into more of a social visit. (Not to say they didn't help out - they did, or that it wasn't appreciated - it was, but I think we all expected to have to nurse Sweetie at least a little.) We got to do a little sight-seeing, and Aunt T collected many rocks from the beach, some for our garden, some for hers.

So thanks for all the prayers and good wishes during this process. We are continuously thankful for Sweetie's doctors and the support of family and friends.