Mike just dropped Ian off at the ski area - he called me four times before he got home (I did not answer)so by the time he got home (and I had not answered) he was really upset.
He thinks Ian is ungrateful. He thinks Ian is spoiled. He thinks Ian is unappreciative. He thinks Ian is self-absorbed.
My mental/silent response to this was, DUH.
Of course he is, he's 13 and his job in life is to annoy us. That's it; he lays in bed at night devising ways to annoy us.
He's no different from any 13 year old except that a 13 year old girl will also roll her eyes and flip her hair. Ian merely ignores us and his hair isn't long enough to flip.
I reminded Mike of how Jordan was for about five years until he went to college. People in town would stop us and say "Your son Jordan is the sweetest most respectful young man I've ever met." People with daughters would accost me in the Post Office with not-so-subtle remarks about their daughter and what a great pair Jordan and their daughter would make.
I was confused after these conversations. I was convinced there was another dark-haired, tall kid named Jordan who drove a brown pickup. Because this couldn't be the Jordan that lived at our house. Not the Jordan who either grunted or answered in mono-syllabic words whenever Mike or I asked something complicated like, "Could you please pass the ketchup?" This was not the Jordan who got his truck stuck in our driveway (in our driveway) and called me from his cellphone asking if I would drive my car out of the garage and pull him out. This was not the Jordan who one night, at midnight, woke me up to ask if he could drive down to Denver and hang out with some friends - it was January and we were currently under an official blizzard watch, and when I said no he slammed my bedroom door and yelled how I was going to ruin his life. This was not the Jordan who one night at dinner, when I said something about how our pigs were about ready to go to the butcher, pigs we had for four months and who you could see from just about every window in our house, looked up from shoveling food in his mouth and said, "We have pigs?"
When he finally graduated from high school I would meet these same mothers in the post office and they'd lament the fact that soon their child would be leaving the house. One mother even started crying whereby I remarked that she should probably get a job (obviously I would not be a good counselor) I was not a good mother, in fact, I'm pretty sure I was a horrendous mother. I was glad Jordan was leaving the house. I tried to convince him that he needed to be moved into his dorm room one month before school started and the
school was just lying to him about the move-in dates.
Jordan is now about to graduate from college and he has become a personable, mature, interesting person and now I really do miss him. I reminded Mike of this and we both know that this too will pass. Ian will one day become a personable, mature, interesting person.
But until he does I guess the only thing to do is have a glass, or two of wine and say yes, everytime he asks to spend the night at someone else's house.
Saturday, December 18, 2010
Wednesday, December 8, 2010
Skip
Skip is our neighbor and my friend Laura has heard many of Skip's escapades. If I was to make a list of things that I would miss about Granby, Skip would be at the top of the list.
This summer he almost burned down his son's house (who is, by the way, the County Judge). Skip decided to burn his ditches for irrigation. The wind came up, the fire took off and headed up to the road and his son's house. By this time the County, City and Forest Service firefighters were all there (the Forest Service rig got their truck stuck in one of the ditches Skip caught on fire, but that's a whole other story). Skip was fined since he didn't get a permit (Skip doesn't like permits - when he redid the roof on his house this summer, he refused to hire anyone who required permits.) he paid his bill and life goes on. We watched it all from our dining room.
People wonder why we didn't have a TV for so long...we had Skip, why did we need a TV? Then Mike, one week on a business trip in Denver, came home, rather sheepishly, with a flat screen TV which is mounted on the wall downstairs.
Last week when I was visiting with Skip and his wife Roselle, Skip told me he wanted to buy a skidster. A skidster is a small, cat-like contraption with a bucket or these big prong-things on it. We borrow one to move snow around. Skip decided he wanted one. But, as he told me, they were in the $20,000 range. He didn't want to pay that much for something he only planned on using for three or four years.
I said, "Why only three or four years?
"Well, I'm planning on retiring by then."
Skip is 84.
Skip was one of the county's first surveyors. He hates the people who run the county and the people who run the school district. He's my kind of guy.
Skip gave me permission to trespass on Legacy, which is a big second-home development that takes up thousands of acres. The original town of Granby is on it and it's an easy ride to it from our house. He also gave me permission to trespass through the gravel pit across the way from us so I could get to the elk reserve and he even gave me the combination to the locked gate. He said, "If anyone asks you, you tell them I said you could go through there." Last summer a guy outside of his multi-million dollar second home flagged me down on my horse while I was trespassing through Legacy. He asked if I lived there.
"Sure," I shrugged, deliberately vague.
"Legacy, do you live in Legacy," he said quite obnoxiously.
"No, but Skip said I could be here."
"I've never heard of Skip."
"Really, huh. Here's his number, you can call him," and I gave him my number off my cell.
The next time I rode through Legacy the guy waved at me, real friendly-like.
It's good to have Skip as a friend.
Night before last Skip's horses got out. They always get out. They always come over our house. I always feed them then call Skip. Sometimes I just take them home, but I was on my way out the door. So I called Roselle and told her their horses were at our house.She said she'd send Skip over as soon as she found him.
Later, when I got home, I saw Skip barreling through the snow in his jeep, heading straight for the creek, where, of course he got stuck. I yelled at Mike downstairs watching his TV, that he better get dressed and go help Skip.
Mike and Ian both went over (Ian loves Skip's - it always an adventure over there.) It took them about two hours and in that time they managed to also get a tractor stuck. In the meantime, I let Skip's horses out the gate and they walked home down the road-they know the way. Then I went back in the house and watched Skip and Mike and Ian and Ben (Skip's son) get two vehicles unstuck. You couldn't really tell what was happening, just lots of flickering lights and if you opened the window you could hear Skip cuss - Skip's cussing is like poetry, it really is.
The next day I saw that Skip had bought a skidster and plowed a road through his field to ours; I assume to make it easier to get his horses.
We're going to miss Skip.
This summer he almost burned down his son's house (who is, by the way, the County Judge). Skip decided to burn his ditches for irrigation. The wind came up, the fire took off and headed up to the road and his son's house. By this time the County, City and Forest Service firefighters were all there (the Forest Service rig got their truck stuck in one of the ditches Skip caught on fire, but that's a whole other story). Skip was fined since he didn't get a permit (Skip doesn't like permits - when he redid the roof on his house this summer, he refused to hire anyone who required permits.) he paid his bill and life goes on. We watched it all from our dining room.
People wonder why we didn't have a TV for so long...we had Skip, why did we need a TV? Then Mike, one week on a business trip in Denver, came home, rather sheepishly, with a flat screen TV which is mounted on the wall downstairs.
Last week when I was visiting with Skip and his wife Roselle, Skip told me he wanted to buy a skidster. A skidster is a small, cat-like contraption with a bucket or these big prong-things on it. We borrow one to move snow around. Skip decided he wanted one. But, as he told me, they were in the $20,000 range. He didn't want to pay that much for something he only planned on using for three or four years.
I said, "Why only three or four years?
"Well, I'm planning on retiring by then."
Skip is 84.
Skip was one of the county's first surveyors. He hates the people who run the county and the people who run the school district. He's my kind of guy.
Skip gave me permission to trespass on Legacy, which is a big second-home development that takes up thousands of acres. The original town of Granby is on it and it's an easy ride to it from our house. He also gave me permission to trespass through the gravel pit across the way from us so I could get to the elk reserve and he even gave me the combination to the locked gate. He said, "If anyone asks you, you tell them I said you could go through there." Last summer a guy outside of his multi-million dollar second home flagged me down on my horse while I was trespassing through Legacy. He asked if I lived there.
"Sure," I shrugged, deliberately vague.
"Legacy, do you live in Legacy," he said quite obnoxiously.
"No, but Skip said I could be here."
"I've never heard of Skip."
"Really, huh. Here's his number, you can call him," and I gave him my number off my cell.
The next time I rode through Legacy the guy waved at me, real friendly-like.
It's good to have Skip as a friend.
Night before last Skip's horses got out. They always get out. They always come over our house. I always feed them then call Skip. Sometimes I just take them home, but I was on my way out the door. So I called Roselle and told her their horses were at our house.She said she'd send Skip over as soon as she found him.
Later, when I got home, I saw Skip barreling through the snow in his jeep, heading straight for the creek, where, of course he got stuck. I yelled at Mike downstairs watching his TV, that he better get dressed and go help Skip.
Mike and Ian both went over (Ian loves Skip's - it always an adventure over there.) It took them about two hours and in that time they managed to also get a tractor stuck. In the meantime, I let Skip's horses out the gate and they walked home down the road-they know the way. Then I went back in the house and watched Skip and Mike and Ian and Ben (Skip's son) get two vehicles unstuck. You couldn't really tell what was happening, just lots of flickering lights and if you opened the window you could hear Skip cuss - Skip's cussing is like poetry, it really is.
The next day I saw that Skip had bought a skidster and plowed a road through his field to ours; I assume to make it easier to get his horses.
We're going to miss Skip.
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
When it's Good to Walk Away....
or in this case, drive away.
Yesterday in homeschooling was a bad day. A very bad day. I, at one point, had a vivid, in-color moment of picking Ian up and throwing him against the wall. Nobody needs to call CSP. It was merely a quick moment of insanity brought on by Ian's whining, groveling and writhing.
He did not want to do Math. Like it's something I want to do. I've said it once and I'll say it again; 90% of the world's population do not ever need to know how to divide mix fractions. If there is someone out there that uses this "skill" on a daily, monthly or even a yearly basis, please contact me.
That is the first thing wrong with Math - no one uses it. And don't email me with how we use Math on a daily basis, like the grocery store; that's always the math geeks first line of defense. It's not true. If I want to know how much Kraft mayonnaise is per quart versus Kroger mayonnaise, I look on the label in front of the mayonnaise jars on the shelf eye-level. No math needed to figure that out.
Here's the second thing wrong with Math. The Math books. I told a Math teacher once at Rogue Community College that I might be able to understand math if the book was written with language and there were no numbers. Seriously, it's hard for a person's brain to go back and forth, back and forth between numbers and letters. It's practically impossible for some of us. For example: Susan had four balls, two were red, one was yellow and one was blue. What percentage of balls were red?" I totally understand this - 50%. But, if you say "Susan had 4 balls, 2 were red and 1 was yellow, what % of balls were red?" No one who has a modicum of literacy can figure this out and.....then throw in all those graphs and colors and arrows and weird words such as integers and unknowns and algebraic expressions...(is algebraic even a word?) well, suffice it to say that if all the math geeks in the world were a little bit more in tune with the real world, they wouldn't say things like "Expressions with Mixed Operations," which you could almost interpret as some sort of bedroom maneuver.
At any rate, after the math book and Ian's whining, groveling and whining, I left the house and drove down to the post office all the while talking on my cell to my husband wondering why HIS son was such a pain in the ass. By the time Mike got home to check on Ian he had done his math, his English, Spanish and was working calmly on History and wondered why his dad was home.
"Mom said you weren't trying very hard."
"She did? Why did she say that?"
"Well, she said you were having a fit over math."
"No, I'm fine. Mom gets kind of worked up over nothing, doesn't she Dad?"
Fortunately Mike is smart enough to not comment; we've been married a long time.
Yesterday in homeschooling was a bad day. A very bad day. I, at one point, had a vivid, in-color moment of picking Ian up and throwing him against the wall. Nobody needs to call CSP. It was merely a quick moment of insanity brought on by Ian's whining, groveling and writhing.
He did not want to do Math. Like it's something I want to do. I've said it once and I'll say it again; 90% of the world's population do not ever need to know how to divide mix fractions. If there is someone out there that uses this "skill" on a daily, monthly or even a yearly basis, please contact me.
That is the first thing wrong with Math - no one uses it. And don't email me with how we use Math on a daily basis, like the grocery store; that's always the math geeks first line of defense. It's not true. If I want to know how much Kraft mayonnaise is per quart versus Kroger mayonnaise, I look on the label in front of the mayonnaise jars on the shelf eye-level. No math needed to figure that out.
Here's the second thing wrong with Math. The Math books. I told a Math teacher once at Rogue Community College that I might be able to understand math if the book was written with language and there were no numbers. Seriously, it's hard for a person's brain to go back and forth, back and forth between numbers and letters. It's practically impossible for some of us. For example: Susan had four balls, two were red, one was yellow and one was blue. What percentage of balls were red?" I totally understand this - 50%. But, if you say "Susan had 4 balls, 2 were red and 1 was yellow, what % of balls were red?" No one who has a modicum of literacy can figure this out and.....then throw in all those graphs and colors and arrows and weird words such as integers and unknowns and algebraic expressions...(is algebraic even a word?) well, suffice it to say that if all the math geeks in the world were a little bit more in tune with the real world, they wouldn't say things like "Expressions with Mixed Operations," which you could almost interpret as some sort of bedroom maneuver.
At any rate, after the math book and Ian's whining, groveling and whining, I left the house and drove down to the post office all the while talking on my cell to my husband wondering why HIS son was such a pain in the ass. By the time Mike got home to check on Ian he had done his math, his English, Spanish and was working calmly on History and wondered why his dad was home.
"Mom said you weren't trying very hard."
"She did? Why did she say that?"
"Well, she said you were having a fit over math."
"No, I'm fine. Mom gets kind of worked up over nothing, doesn't she Dad?"
Fortunately Mike is smart enough to not comment; we've been married a long time.
Saturday, December 4, 2010
Up and Downs of Homeschooling...or Why I Hate Granby
As you know, I was not real keen on the idea of homeschooling. I would have preferred to have continued to send Ian to a public school and have THEM take care of IT. However, THAT wasn't happening thus the whole homeschooling thing.
I must admit, I resent Granby for doing this to me. You know, making me take charge of my son's education. Making me be the one responsible. Making it so I would have to learn Math.
Ian had a couple of friends over last night and they ended up leaving because they got into kind of a fight. Or more explicitly, they started beating up on Ian. Ian said they always do that since he's the smallest kid in town for his age. Of course, I now hate these kids and their parents and their grandparents and their DNA. But as Ian said, most of the kids in this town are either using drugs or violent.
It is somewhat of a violent culture around here. As you know, we have multiple hunting seasons, everyone, it seems, except for our family, hunts. We now have Air-Soft guns something I thought we'd never have (actually, I didn't even know they existed) and we now receive a weekly edition of "Crossfires" which happens when you order guns online, even fake ones. It goes well with the Catholic Digest we get, courtesy of Mike's mom.
Both Ian and I are looking forward to moving back to Oregon. Oregon's not perfect, I know that. But this town is, quite bluntly, crazy. We're looking forward to having more choices in friends - there's not much of a choice between crazy with drugs and crazy with guns.
I hope to one day look back at my stay in Granby with fondness, but right now I'm so intent on getting out of here, I'm finding it hard to find anything of redeeming quality here.
Ian's looking forward to going to a public (or maybe private) school. He hopes he's not the smallest kid and Jordan, his older brother, says it'll be good to start a high school brand new; he can create the kind of person he wants. I think that's kind of cool - a brand new start with the kind of people you want.
We're both looking forward to it.
I must admit, I resent Granby for doing this to me. You know, making me take charge of my son's education. Making me be the one responsible. Making it so I would have to learn Math.
Ian had a couple of friends over last night and they ended up leaving because they got into kind of a fight. Or more explicitly, they started beating up on Ian. Ian said they always do that since he's the smallest kid in town for his age. Of course, I now hate these kids and their parents and their grandparents and their DNA. But as Ian said, most of the kids in this town are either using drugs or violent.
It is somewhat of a violent culture around here. As you know, we have multiple hunting seasons, everyone, it seems, except for our family, hunts. We now have Air-Soft guns something I thought we'd never have (actually, I didn't even know they existed) and we now receive a weekly edition of "Crossfires" which happens when you order guns online, even fake ones. It goes well with the Catholic Digest we get, courtesy of Mike's mom.
Both Ian and I are looking forward to moving back to Oregon. Oregon's not perfect, I know that. But this town is, quite bluntly, crazy. We're looking forward to having more choices in friends - there's not much of a choice between crazy with drugs and crazy with guns.
I hope to one day look back at my stay in Granby with fondness, but right now I'm so intent on getting out of here, I'm finding it hard to find anything of redeeming quality here.
Ian's looking forward to going to a public (or maybe private) school. He hopes he's not the smallest kid and Jordan, his older brother, says it'll be good to start a high school brand new; he can create the kind of person he wants. I think that's kind of cool - a brand new start with the kind of people you want.
We're both looking forward to it.
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