Second semester in the bag
As far as I can tell, I am DONE. But, man, it's been a grueling few weeks, which is why I basically fell off the face of the earth for, you know, a month. It was all I could do to keep up with weekly obligations, particularly as I was having a hard time focusing for a couple of weeks, and then I had end-of-term projects due, two Sundays in a row. On those weeks, I not only worked all week, but all weekend. I even built a blanket fort (yes, really) so I could better shut out distractions on days when I wasn't in the mood to work at a table. But the last big project was due this past Sun, and I've just finished my final week of wrap-up activities, whee! I still don't know the grade I got for the most recently-handed-in project, but I got an A on the other one (which I was really in doubt over) so I was happy about that. ETA: I just got my grade for the second project: A! :D
This summer I'm only taking 1 class - I decided to take it a little easier, especially since summer term is shorter and thus they cram more in each week. I'm taking Children's Lit, which I'm really looking forward to. I've already borrowed a mound of Caldecott Medal/Honor (illustration awards) winners from the school library, as the teacher gave us the first two weeks' booklists in advance so we could get started. Once I catch up on a little more sleep - I am exhausted - I'll tackle that.
Yes, I decided to go visit my dad next week - thank you to everyone who offered supportive input. No, he's not vaccinated - I haven't been able to find a way to get him to a clinic. I'm not sure if I'll try to get him vaccinated while I'm there. On the one hand, he never goes anywhere, and hardly sees anyone other than the woman who brings him his groceries and, very very rarely, his next-door neighbors. On the other hand, couldn't hurt. But it would be easier to get him J&J so I don't have to worry about how to get him to Jab #2, and that's proving more difficult.
In other health news, I donated blood today, and that always makes me happy.
Been doing more driving practice with Two , who complains when I try to coax him into driving more than once a week (which isn't that often, anyway, since it's not like we go a lot of places!). He's still working on staying centered in the lane, and on multi-tasking (ie turning his head to check blind spots while also keeping a steady speed and putting his turn indicator on). He's getting his second vaccination on Monday, making him the last person to be done in our house (April was an AMAZING month: every single person in our house got their first and/or second vaccine in April), and once he's past his 2-week mark, I'm dropping a new bombshell on him: it's time for him to get a job. He needs the additional lessons in responsibility, and also doing what people tell you to do even if you don't like it. Also, it will provide more driving opportunities, as long as his shifts don't coincide with MiniPlu's. (And here's where I start regretting that we only have one automatic transmission vehicle in our entire fleet, not counting my FIL's large pickup truck.) I was all set for Two to get a job last year ... and then the pandemic hit. But it's time. (I'm not telling him beforehand, because I don't want him to complain about getting vaccinated!)
Speaking of Two ... well, two things. One is that our district finally went back to a full-day schedule today for the first time since March 13, 2020; we've been on early dismissal since then. But the weather is now generally nice enough that the in-person kids can spread out more - including outside - for lunch, which was one of the main sticking points, since that involves a large chunk of the population taking their masks off all at once. (We've elected to keep Two virtual for the rest of the year - it's actually working surprisingly well, as it's allowing our socially-awkward child who hates to talk to people some physical space, and he's actually communicated - voluntarily - with some of his teachers in this format.) Meanwhile, I'm subbing both Fri (tomorrow) and Mon - we'll see how tired I am after teaching a full day for the first time in forever!
The other thing regarding Two is that, after continuing to amass books (some from us and most from spending his own money), this week he finally sent off four boxes, containing 60 almost-entirely LGBTQ-themed books, to Camp Aranu'tiq to start a library for campers. Thank you again to
spiffikins and loupnoir for donating some books to the cause. ♥ We hope this mini library brings future campers (and maybe even the counselors) a lot of pleasure.
In the realm of books, I recently read
The Captive Kingdom by Jennifer Nielsen - this being the surprise 4th installment in The False Prince universe. I received this book for Christmas, and finally got around to reading it. And then I had to go back and re-read the original The False Prince to re-immerse myself in how it all got started. (I forgot how young Jaron was - just shy of 15 in the first book, which means he's only about 17 in Book 4; I had thought he was 16 & 18.) As for The Captive Kingdom, I really loved it. It had a lot of the twists that had made the first book so good, and which I felt had been somewhat lacking in books 2 and 3. There's going to be a (presumably final) 5th book coming within a year, I believe, and am looking forward to that.
I also re-read His Royal Secret and most of His Royal Favorite (skipping some of the emotionally fraught stuff). I've been clinging to some of my old books that involve intense romantic connections - apparently that's my comfort read right now.
Apparently I never reported on the fact that I read Cemetery Boys by Aidan Thomas (which happened to be one of the books Two is donating, but I bought my own Kindle copy when it was a KDotD). I'd heard good things about this book, and I can tell you that they are largely well-deserved. A trans teen boy named Yadriel comes from a large, loving Latinx family, which has been blessed by the goddess of death. The women can heal any injury. The men can cut spirits of the dead loose so they can "move on" - and they can also summon spirits. Yadriel's family loves him, but they don't really get him and his gender identity, and have refused to allow him to perform the traditional ceremony that is done in place of a standard quincenera - wherein the boys and girls get their respective powers - because they don't think he's a boy, and Yadriel refuses to do the ceremony for girls. Determined to show them that he IS a "real boy" so to speak, Yadriel does the ceremony behind their back, summoning a ghost who then demands Yadriel help him solve his murder (while Yadriel really wants to solve the unexplained murder of his cousin). Yadriel and Julian (the ghost) end up falling in love, which of course comes with a host of potential complications. The world-building - modern Los Angeles, but with this twist - is done really well, and the characters felt nicely built-up. I do have some questions about plotty loose ends, which I found mildly irritating, but aside from that, this was a great read and highly recommended.
I recently also read The Gravity of Us by Phil Stamper, another camp-library book that I bought for myself. This was a very sweet, gentle story about two boys thrown together when their parents (one mom, one dad) are in astronaut training for a future expedition to Mars. Quite a few nice lessons on a) growing into your future at your own pace and b) learning to see other people's perspectives - and not just for the main two boys. Plus a nice eff-you to the manipulations of reality tv. I didn't love the book but I didn't hate it, either. It was sweet and nice, but not earth-shattering (or even Mars-shattering ;-) ).
And, finally, I just finished The Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds, borrowed from the public library. It's written in verse, so it's a quick read. Boy from the 'hood - there are three rules to live by: no crying, no snitching, and get revenge. So, when his older brother is shot and killed, Will is convinced he knows who did it. He takes his brother's gun, gets in the elevator of his apartment building, and descends the 7 floors to the lobby. But on the way down, at every floor, a dead person from his past gets in, and talks to him, and he has to stop and reconsider what he thought he knew, and what he believes. The whole book takes place in just one minute. I'm not normally a fan of things written in verse, but I thought I'd give it a try since it was so highly recommended and, yeah, wow - this book delivers a punch. Really glad I read it.
And yes, for the record, a) sometimes I snuck in reading when I was supposed to be working and b) sometimes I sacrificed sleep. :P
For my read-alouds with Two, we read If I Was Your Girl by Meredith Russo - Two read this on his own a couple of years ago and liked it, but didn't remember much, probably because of reading comprehension issues. Good book about a trans girl in the south, opening herself up for love for the first time, and trying to decide whom to trust about her identity. Warning for suicide attempt, which takes place before the story begins, but there are references to it, and some flashbacks.
Before that was Felix Ever After (out of his camp pile), about a gay Black trans boy/demi boy attending art school in Brooklyn, and an interesting love triangle with his best friend (cis but gay) and a third boy who used to date the best friend before becoming a jerk to both of them ... and then accidentally falling for Felix over social media. I could have done without the normalization of pot (sorry, it's not my thing, especially for teenagers) but otherwise, good story. A good lesson on how money doesn't buy happiness, people aren't always what they seem, moms are sometimes the ones who reject their families (and not dads), and, as with Cemetery Boys a really nice book with intersectionality of gender, sexuality and race.
Also read One Little Word about a kid who isn't intentionally homophobic but IS really clueless, and jokingly calls his friend a "fag" - which gets caught by the zero-tolerance police at school. To get out of punishment, he claims to be gay himself, and dating the only Out gay boy at school, and then has to coax said boy into fake-dating him just long enough to be convincing. Which of course leads to real feelings. Another book that I neither loved nor hated - the main character was an ass sometimes, just out of sheer cluelessness. But they figure it out in the end.
Right now we're almost done reading Running With Lions by Julian Winters (yet another camp book - you can tell where we've been getting all our reading material lately, lol), a summer-soccer-camp-centric story about a 17-year-old boy (Sebastian) reconnecting with his former best friend (Emir), who had moved away for a couple of years when the boys were about 10, and by the time Emir came back, Sebastian had found new friends and his bond with Emir seemed irretrievably broken. Sebastian already knows he's bi, although he's never dated a boy before, and realizes his crush on Emir pretty quickly. Emir, who has some social anxiety issues, isn't well liked by the team, and, also being Muslim, has had his fair share of social rejection to deal with over the years. It's made him pretty prickly. But eventually the boys find their way to each other. I don't know yet how it turns out, but I've really enjoyed this book so far. There's a lot of really great group camaraderie, including boys giving each other good-natured shit. The coach has made a point of saying that differences don't matter and everyone is welcomed regardless of race, religion, sexuality, etc, which means several characters are openly gay or bi, and nobody blinks, which is nice. But what I really liked is that Sebastian has body image issues. He's pretty ordinary now, but he used to be heavy as a kid, and people called him names. He's still getting over the trauma, and finding peace with his body. And he also doesn't feel like he really has his shit together, in terms of knowing what he might want to do with his life, other than soccer. It's a lot of things I often see in books with female protagonists, so it was nice to see this with a male protagonist. This books has felt really real without being depressing.
Hopefully I haven't somehow forgotten any books! Gah, this is what I get for going so long between updates. :P
Also starting to gear up for this year's veggie garden. I've gotten a number of seedlings, and seeds, and also some flowers for my front porch planters.
And speaking of the front porch - a little over two weeks ago, as we were bringing the groceries in, we noticed that birdies had built a nest in the new wreath I'd recently hung on our front door. (In fact, in the week preceding, we'd noticed birds stealing from it.) But, yes, a nest, with three eggs - two that matched, and one that didn't.
Nest in wreath:
Close-up of nest:
Ever since we spotted the nest, we've been doing our best to avoid using our front door - we're going in and out the back door, and around the side of the house, or out through the garage. However, sometimes packages are delivered, or people come to our door, and on those occasions, since Mama Bird has been scared away already, we'll get a quick peek. Twelve days after we first saw the nest (so, last Sat), we saw the babies! Well, two of them: the matching set.
Feed me! (Or, as I joked to my friend Steve: "The room service around here is terrible!")
And today we got another peek. The second birdie is still there, in the back, but it doesn't have its head up so all you see is the fuzzy body.
There is no sign of either the mismatched egg or any resulting chick, and no shells or chick remains on our porch so ... we don't know what happened there.
We had moved one of our security cameras so it pointed at the door, but unfortunately it doesn't have a zoom feature, so we can't get any regular close-up glimpses. However, we've noticed a bird with a reddish tinge to the back of its head coming to visit Mama periodically, which has helped us make some guesses as to the type of bird. Right now, our guess is house finch. And in verifying that, I came across this discussion board where - lo and behold - a number of other people mentioned that the birds had built nests in their door wreaths - AND that cowbirds had laid stealth eggs in their nests. So, apparently this is not an uncommon modus operandi for house finches - or cowbirds, for that matter.
Uh. I think that's everything? For now, anyway? Hopefully I can be a better updater (and commenter - I'm SO behind, I'm so sorry) over the summer!
This summer I'm only taking 1 class - I decided to take it a little easier, especially since summer term is shorter and thus they cram more in each week. I'm taking Children's Lit, which I'm really looking forward to. I've already borrowed a mound of Caldecott Medal/Honor (illustration awards) winners from the school library, as the teacher gave us the first two weeks' booklists in advance so we could get started. Once I catch up on a little more sleep - I am exhausted - I'll tackle that.
Yes, I decided to go visit my dad next week - thank you to everyone who offered supportive input. No, he's not vaccinated - I haven't been able to find a way to get him to a clinic. I'm not sure if I'll try to get him vaccinated while I'm there. On the one hand, he never goes anywhere, and hardly sees anyone other than the woman who brings him his groceries and, very very rarely, his next-door neighbors. On the other hand, couldn't hurt. But it would be easier to get him J&J so I don't have to worry about how to get him to Jab #2, and that's proving more difficult.
In other health news, I donated blood today, and that always makes me happy.
Been doing more driving practice with Two , who complains when I try to coax him into driving more than once a week (which isn't that often, anyway, since it's not like we go a lot of places!). He's still working on staying centered in the lane, and on multi-tasking (ie turning his head to check blind spots while also keeping a steady speed and putting his turn indicator on). He's getting his second vaccination on Monday, making him the last person to be done in our house (April was an AMAZING month: every single person in our house got their first and/or second vaccine in April), and once he's past his 2-week mark, I'm dropping a new bombshell on him: it's time for him to get a job. He needs the additional lessons in responsibility, and also doing what people tell you to do even if you don't like it. Also, it will provide more driving opportunities, as long as his shifts don't coincide with MiniPlu's. (And here's where I start regretting that we only have one automatic transmission vehicle in our entire fleet, not counting my FIL's large pickup truck.) I was all set for Two to get a job last year ... and then the pandemic hit. But it's time. (I'm not telling him beforehand, because I don't want him to complain about getting vaccinated!)
Speaking of Two ... well, two things. One is that our district finally went back to a full-day schedule today for the first time since March 13, 2020; we've been on early dismissal since then. But the weather is now generally nice enough that the in-person kids can spread out more - including outside - for lunch, which was one of the main sticking points, since that involves a large chunk of the population taking their masks off all at once. (We've elected to keep Two virtual for the rest of the year - it's actually working surprisingly well, as it's allowing our socially-awkward child who hates to talk to people some physical space, and he's actually communicated - voluntarily - with some of his teachers in this format.) Meanwhile, I'm subbing both Fri (tomorrow) and Mon - we'll see how tired I am after teaching a full day for the first time in forever!
The other thing regarding Two is that, after continuing to amass books (some from us and most from spending his own money), this week he finally sent off four boxes, containing 60 almost-entirely LGBTQ-themed books, to Camp Aranu'tiq to start a library for campers. Thank you again to
spiffikins and loupnoir for donating some books to the cause. ♥ We hope this mini library brings future campers (and maybe even the counselors) a lot of pleasure.In the realm of books, I recently read
The Captive Kingdom by Jennifer Nielsen - this being the surprise 4th installment in The False Prince universe. I received this book for Christmas, and finally got around to reading it. And then I had to go back and re-read the original The False Prince to re-immerse myself in how it all got started. (I forgot how young Jaron was - just shy of 15 in the first book, which means he's only about 17 in Book 4; I had thought he was 16 & 18.) As for The Captive Kingdom, I really loved it. It had a lot of the twists that had made the first book so good, and which I felt had been somewhat lacking in books 2 and 3. There's going to be a (presumably final) 5th book coming within a year, I believe, and am looking forward to that.
I also re-read His Royal Secret and most of His Royal Favorite (skipping some of the emotionally fraught stuff). I've been clinging to some of my old books that involve intense romantic connections - apparently that's my comfort read right now.
Apparently I never reported on the fact that I read Cemetery Boys by Aidan Thomas (which happened to be one of the books Two is donating, but I bought my own Kindle copy when it was a KDotD). I'd heard good things about this book, and I can tell you that they are largely well-deserved. A trans teen boy named Yadriel comes from a large, loving Latinx family, which has been blessed by the goddess of death. The women can heal any injury. The men can cut spirits of the dead loose so they can "move on" - and they can also summon spirits. Yadriel's family loves him, but they don't really get him and his gender identity, and have refused to allow him to perform the traditional ceremony that is done in place of a standard quincenera - wherein the boys and girls get their respective powers - because they don't think he's a boy, and Yadriel refuses to do the ceremony for girls. Determined to show them that he IS a "real boy" so to speak, Yadriel does the ceremony behind their back, summoning a ghost who then demands Yadriel help him solve his murder (while Yadriel really wants to solve the unexplained murder of his cousin). Yadriel and Julian (the ghost) end up falling in love, which of course comes with a host of potential complications. The world-building - modern Los Angeles, but with this twist - is done really well, and the characters felt nicely built-up. I do have some questions about plotty loose ends, which I found mildly irritating, but aside from that, this was a great read and highly recommended.
I recently also read The Gravity of Us by Phil Stamper, another camp-library book that I bought for myself. This was a very sweet, gentle story about two boys thrown together when their parents (one mom, one dad) are in astronaut training for a future expedition to Mars. Quite a few nice lessons on a) growing into your future at your own pace and b) learning to see other people's perspectives - and not just for the main two boys. Plus a nice eff-you to the manipulations of reality tv. I didn't love the book but I didn't hate it, either. It was sweet and nice, but not earth-shattering (or even Mars-shattering ;-) ).
And, finally, I just finished The Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds, borrowed from the public library. It's written in verse, so it's a quick read. Boy from the 'hood - there are three rules to live by: no crying, no snitching, and get revenge. So, when his older brother is shot and killed, Will is convinced he knows who did it. He takes his brother's gun, gets in the elevator of his apartment building, and descends the 7 floors to the lobby. But on the way down, at every floor, a dead person from his past gets in, and talks to him, and he has to stop and reconsider what he thought he knew, and what he believes. The whole book takes place in just one minute. I'm not normally a fan of things written in verse, but I thought I'd give it a try since it was so highly recommended and, yeah, wow - this book delivers a punch. Really glad I read it.
And yes, for the record, a) sometimes I snuck in reading when I was supposed to be working and b) sometimes I sacrificed sleep. :P
For my read-alouds with Two, we read If I Was Your Girl by Meredith Russo - Two read this on his own a couple of years ago and liked it, but didn't remember much, probably because of reading comprehension issues. Good book about a trans girl in the south, opening herself up for love for the first time, and trying to decide whom to trust about her identity. Warning for suicide attempt, which takes place before the story begins, but there are references to it, and some flashbacks.
Before that was Felix Ever After (out of his camp pile), about a gay Black trans boy/demi boy attending art school in Brooklyn, and an interesting love triangle with his best friend (cis but gay) and a third boy who used to date the best friend before becoming a jerk to both of them ... and then accidentally falling for Felix over social media. I could have done without the normalization of pot (sorry, it's not my thing, especially for teenagers) but otherwise, good story. A good lesson on how money doesn't buy happiness, people aren't always what they seem, moms are sometimes the ones who reject their families (and not dads), and, as with Cemetery Boys a really nice book with intersectionality of gender, sexuality and race.
Also read One Little Word about a kid who isn't intentionally homophobic but IS really clueless, and jokingly calls his friend a "fag" - which gets caught by the zero-tolerance police at school. To get out of punishment, he claims to be gay himself, and dating the only Out gay boy at school, and then has to coax said boy into fake-dating him just long enough to be convincing. Which of course leads to real feelings. Another book that I neither loved nor hated - the main character was an ass sometimes, just out of sheer cluelessness. But they figure it out in the end.
Right now we're almost done reading Running With Lions by Julian Winters (yet another camp book - you can tell where we've been getting all our reading material lately, lol), a summer-soccer-camp-centric story about a 17-year-old boy (Sebastian) reconnecting with his former best friend (Emir), who had moved away for a couple of years when the boys were about 10, and by the time Emir came back, Sebastian had found new friends and his bond with Emir seemed irretrievably broken. Sebastian already knows he's bi, although he's never dated a boy before, and realizes his crush on Emir pretty quickly. Emir, who has some social anxiety issues, isn't well liked by the team, and, also being Muslim, has had his fair share of social rejection to deal with over the years. It's made him pretty prickly. But eventually the boys find their way to each other. I don't know yet how it turns out, but I've really enjoyed this book so far. There's a lot of really great group camaraderie, including boys giving each other good-natured shit. The coach has made a point of saying that differences don't matter and everyone is welcomed regardless of race, religion, sexuality, etc, which means several characters are openly gay or bi, and nobody blinks, which is nice. But what I really liked is that Sebastian has body image issues. He's pretty ordinary now, but he used to be heavy as a kid, and people called him names. He's still getting over the trauma, and finding peace with his body. And he also doesn't feel like he really has his shit together, in terms of knowing what he might want to do with his life, other than soccer. It's a lot of things I often see in books with female protagonists, so it was nice to see this with a male protagonist. This books has felt really real without being depressing.
Hopefully I haven't somehow forgotten any books! Gah, this is what I get for going so long between updates. :P
Also starting to gear up for this year's veggie garden. I've gotten a number of seedlings, and seeds, and also some flowers for my front porch planters.
And speaking of the front porch - a little over two weeks ago, as we were bringing the groceries in, we noticed that birdies had built a nest in the new wreath I'd recently hung on our front door. (In fact, in the week preceding, we'd noticed birds stealing from it.) But, yes, a nest, with three eggs - two that matched, and one that didn't.
Nest in wreath:
Close-up of nest:
Ever since we spotted the nest, we've been doing our best to avoid using our front door - we're going in and out the back door, and around the side of the house, or out through the garage. However, sometimes packages are delivered, or people come to our door, and on those occasions, since Mama Bird has been scared away already, we'll get a quick peek. Twelve days after we first saw the nest (so, last Sat), we saw the babies! Well, two of them: the matching set.
Feed me! (Or, as I joked to my friend Steve: "The room service around here is terrible!")
And today we got another peek. The second birdie is still there, in the back, but it doesn't have its head up so all you see is the fuzzy body.
There is no sign of either the mismatched egg or any resulting chick, and no shells or chick remains on our porch so ... we don't know what happened there.
We had moved one of our security cameras so it pointed at the door, but unfortunately it doesn't have a zoom feature, so we can't get any regular close-up glimpses. However, we've noticed a bird with a reddish tinge to the back of its head coming to visit Mama periodically, which has helped us make some guesses as to the type of bird. Right now, our guess is house finch. And in verifying that, I came across this discussion board where - lo and behold - a number of other people mentioned that the birds had built nests in their door wreaths - AND that cowbirds had laid stealth eggs in their nests. So, apparently this is not an uncommon modus operandi for house finches - or cowbirds, for that matter.
Uh. I think that's everything? For now, anyway? Hopefully I can be a better updater (and commenter - I'm SO behind, I'm so sorry) over the summer!