Jenyfer Matthews

All I ever seem to do anymore is clean.

I know, I know – B-O-R-I-N-G!! You don’t want to hear about how I had to dust the ceilings and walls because they were furry. (Boring!) You don’t want to read a description of the toxic brown sludge the steam cleaner pulled out of the carpet downstairs. (Boring – and gross!!) You probably could care less that I shed blood when I cut myself several times scrubbing baked on goo from under the burners on the stove. (Boring – and painful!)

What can I say? It’s kind of what I do these days.

My husband has movers scheduled to come and pack our things in Cairo next week, and I have a moving company working on getting our things out of (long term) storage for us. That’s kind of why I’m working so hard at the moment to get things in shape : it’s much easier to clean things when the house is mostly empty!

I hope that soon I can turn my attention to other, more interesting topics. For instance: what is up with Michigan and biscuits and white gravy for breakfast??

Since I last checked in I’ve been doing pretty much the same thing – cleaning the house. There is nothing to speak of in it yet, but there is so much to do.

Like cleaning the mini-blinds. Now I know why people so often throw them away and just buy new ones instead of cleaning them. What a pain-in-the-you-know-what. It probably took me an hour per set of blinds. They look great, and I will keep up with dusting them now, but I actually hate mini-blinds and would prefer some sort of more easily cleanable fabric shade. Another day.

On the up side, in terms of my writing and current work-in-progress, all this work to settle in is giving me a better perspective for what it is like to move in to a “new”, less than perfect, house. On the down side, it is exhausting.

This week’s goal: internet / cable service and carpet cleaning. Do I know how to have fun or what?

My time hasn’t all been spent at drudgery though. My luck prevailed and I was able to get the children registered for the local recreational soccer league. I just made the deadline for late registration. I got emails telling me what teams they were on Friday night at 9pm – first game was Saturday morning at 11:30am! We got up promptly at 8am and went out to get cleats and shin guards and showed up at the field to find the coaches. The children were both excited and nervous but quickly forgot all that in the heat of the game. They both got back into the groove and made 2 goals each in their respective games. By the end of the games, everyone knew their names if they didn’t know anyone else’s!

Overall, so far I am very happy with this move. The children like their schools – my son said he didn’t want it to be the weekend because he wanted to go to school! The neighborhood is also great – three different sets of neighbors have come over to introduce themselves and offer assistance and advice on the area. One neighbor brought me a Sunday paper when I mentioned I wasn’t sure where to buy one. No one I have talked to yet has had one bad thing to say about anything which is great – and also a little eerie. I’m actually not used to living in places where the neighbors interact!

If anyone shows up on my doorstep with a pie or a jello-mold I’ll know for sure I’ve moved to the 50s…

For most, today is a holiday, a day of rest. A day off of work. Not so for me. I crammed as much as I could fit in my car (including my children) and headed up to our new home in Michigan. I am sorry to say that not everything fit (how did I accumulate so much in only seven months??) but I’ll worry about the rest another time.

School starts tomorrow.

The children will be going to two different schools. My son will be in what seems to be a very nice elementary school located five minutes drive from our house. We met his teacher on the day we registered him for school and she seems very nice – she basically interviewed my son about his interests and took notes. It is only my first impression, but I feel very comfortable with the school and the teacher.

On the other hand, I’m very nervous for my daughter : she’s going into middle school.

The school building is very nice – pretty mosaic murals on the walls, lovely specialty classrooms and computer labs, and no less than three full time art teachers. However, it used to be a high school so it is also very large – two stories, with every hallway lined with lockers. The contrast between the elementary school and this school was fairly extreme.

I’m trying not to show my nerves because my daughter is nervous enough on her own.

The schools my daughter has attended previously have been fairly small – this one has about 800 students. She’s never used a combination locker before – one of my recurring anxiety dreams is being back in high school and forgetting my locker combination! I keep telling her that even though some of the other kids will know each other from elementary school, all the sixth graders are new to this school and no one will know how to get around, etc.

I don’t know if I’m comforting her or me.

We went this weekend and bought her school supplies and also a small locker mirror with a dry erase board and a couple of cute magnets. Why didn’t they have such fun things when I was in school? It’s not as if magnets are a new thing!

While the children are in school, I will begin working on getting all of our utilities – including internet! – set up and start work on having our things shipped from here, there, and everywhere. Since I’m already freaked out by how much I have to move, I’m fairly certain I’m going to be appalled by how much there is when I finally have it all in one place!

From sitting on my hands for nearly seven months to all systems GO in a few days: that’s me.

I. AM. ON. FIRE.

My husband called to tell me he’d accepted a job in Michigan last Thursday and from that moment I started planning our move. I must have sent dozens of emails over the weekend and drove up to Michigan on Monday to meet with a realtor, planning to stay three days, two nights. My hope was to find a house and, if possible, register the children for school in our chosen districts – school starts next week, September 6th.

My sister has often said that I must have a lucky horseshoe stuck up my butt (ouch!) because I almost always find lost jewelry, find things I need on sale, etc – things just seem to come together for me. I have to say that while I had hoped to find a house, even if it meant taking something not entirely wonderful for the short term, I wondered how practical it was to expect to succeed in only two days. I resigned myself to the idea that the children might start school a bit late.

The realtor showed me half a dozen houses, based on the size and school districts I specified. A couple were awesomely cool in a Mad Men way but too small for a family of four with two very active children, a couple were too small / had no yard, and a couple were just dirty and / or stinky. I was actually still considering a stinky one because it was in the school district we wanted when I went to see one final house – one that I found listed myself on craigslist.

The house was everything that the others were not: clean, well-kept, large, big yard, quiet street, the right school district, and it even has a basketball hoop in the driveway. Given what I’d seen that day, I jumped on the opportunity. I am supposed to sign the lease today and from there I will go and get the children registered in school.

I move in Monday. We’ll be camping on air mattresses until the rest of our things arrive, but we’ll be in time for school. Am I good or what?

And how is this for a lucky coincidence: the realtor took us by the elementary school I had in mind for my son and they just happened to be having a new student orientation. We walked in and had a tour, cookies, punch, and got a school pouch backpack. A nice little school and the cookies and punch really hit the spot!

I may have accomplished what I set out to do for now, but I’m not done yet: now I have to go back to Ohio and collect my things from my friend in Hamilton (near Cincinnati), then go back (come back?!) to Michigan on Monday.

I’ve put 11,000 miles on my car since March and I’m not done yet!

Summer is definitely on the wane here in northern Minnesota. It was 47F when I woke up this morning… brrrr! Time for me to head a bit further south – back to Ohio (at least for now). I am glad to say that in spite of iffy weather forecasts, we were able to have one last wonderful weekend before I leave tomorrow.

I take my children to the Alpine Slide at Lutsen Mountain once every summer – I am so lucky I have children to use as an excuse because I might look a bit odd spending the day out there zooming down the mountain on my own! It is such a fun thing to do. It had rained on Thursday night and was looking pretty cloudy and gray Friday morning but we lucked out because it was clear in Lutsen. The only thing we had a little trouble with was wind – they shut the ski lift down a few times because of it. It didn’t slow us down for long though. I always mean to count how many times we end up sliding and I always forget to do it when I’m caught up in the fun. We were there for a little more than four hours = LOTS OF SLIDES.

Saturday morning we headed out to an inland lake to play in the water. It was another beautiful day, though it was a bit chilly when clouds would pass by. I finally tried out the paddle board my step-mother bought this summer. I was doing pretty well standing and balancing on it until I tried to be cute and do some yoga poses on it. I’m lucky that she got pictures of the poses and not of the splash I made as I slipped off and fell in the lake!

Sunday’s weather was looking iffy again but we decided to go back to the lake anyway. Why not? It was cool enough when the clouds blew past that I wasn’t inspired to swim however – I stuck to my kayak and wore a fleece pullover!

The clouds rolled in thicker and thicker throughout the day, but we never felt even one raindrop.

What a beautiful end to a wonderful summer.

For anyone keeping track, I’ve gained at least five pounds this summer and the children have NOT finished the math workbooks I purchased for them to do for practice. So much for self-improvement. Oh well… there’s always tomorrow!

One thing I have really, really missed since we left Egypt so abruptly in February are my twice weekly yoga classes. I did eventually buy myself a yoga mat but I am just not disciplined enough to use it as frequently as I should when left to my own devices. I not only had a wonderful yoga teacher in Egypt, but she actually used to send me text messages demanding to know where I was if I ever missed class. As a consequence, I rarely did.

So when the urge to do a little yoga struck the other day, I decided I didn’t actually need a mat. Apparently a large rock will do in a pinch.

Good to know I can still do the stretches, though I doubt I could make it through a proper class anymore!

I don’t look too bad here but don’t let it fool you: I was doing pretty well on the whole gain-weight-in-the-summer issue until this week. It was the raspberries that did me in. I’m going to have to do a lot of rock yoga to peel off the pounds that have crept on…

My husband ran out of jam late last week and was reluctant to pay $$ for a small jar of organic jam at the local whole foods cooperative. Instead, I suggested we go pick some raspberries and I would make some.

It’s been a very good berry year – we spent nearly four hours picking berries in the brush and there are still tons to be had. It was hard to stop actually! It was only the mosquitoes and my aching muscles that forced me home. Just look as this bounty:

Who knew that picking berries could be such a good workout? The Warrior I yoga position (an extreme lunge) is a very good position for picking berries growing deep in the brush. You also get to practice good balance while doing the lunge on a rotting log lest you end up face first in the bushes!

Did I say it was a good berry year? It was really hard to make myself stop picking when I kept finding clusters of berries this big, so ripe they were practically jumping in my bucket!

I not only got a jar of jam out of our harvest…

We got a fantastic pie as well.

If I ate too much dessert this weekend, I have no one to blame but myself!

I have taken many fewer photos of wildlife this year than in previous years. There are as many if not more deer and foxes in the yard as ever and while I do enjoy watching them, I haven’t been in the mood to take endless pictures of them.

Instead I seem to be in a more industrial mood.

This old truck has been sitting in the side yard next to the garage for a few years now. In fact, I can’t count how many times I’ve done my best to take a picture of something in the yard and angle my camera in such a way so that the old truck is not in the frame. Then I looked out the window and saw the truck in the afternoon light and just had to go take a picture.

Is this not a picturesque truck? I played with the photo a bit and it looks really, really nice done in sepia tones – and why not? It’s halfway there in real life! It’s easy to make a wildflower or a deer look nice and it’s been easy enough to overlook the rusting hulk of metal until this year.

Once I saw the raw beauty in this truck, I was seeing great old trucks all over the place. There was another not quite as old Chevy sitting just next to the old timer.

How many times have I tried to take pictures of hummingbirds and been frustrated by the old trucks in the background? Much easier to make them the subject of my pictures instead!

This old truck was parked on the side of the road across from my step-mother’s brother’s house and it immediately caught my eye. Look at the colors!

My father is amused by my sudden interest in old trucks and has suggested a few places I might go to see more old trucks. Now I’m feeling a compulsion to go crashing through the brush to find them…

I’ve gotten quite used to having instant internet access, all day, every day – which of course means that I’m constantly checking my email, Facebook, looking up random facts / recipes. Whatever. It’s a little embarrassing to think of how much time I spend in the virtual world as compared to the real world around me.

Not at present however. My father’s house only has dial-up internet and it is painfully slow. I don’t even bother to try and look at email from his house. Instead, I’ve been driving a few miles to a nearby convenience store / restaurant to use their WiFi once a day.

No, it’s not as convenient as having internet access whenever the mood strikes to send an email or check something online, however the situation has been illuminating. It’s not as if checking my email umpteen times a day makes any more of it come in. I get the same amount if I only check it once and now I can quite clearly see how much of what I get is spam and nonsense. I don’t miss that much on Facebook either.

Hmmmm….

Keeping up with my blog is a little more challenging but so far I’ve managed. I may actually have to rethink how I spend my time. Imagine what I could get done if I weren’t constantly clicking on my laptop?

My cell phone doesn’t work out here either. I called a friend the other day from my dad’s land line and she was busy – she said she’d text me or Facebook me when she would be available to talk. I told her that she’d just have to do it the old fashioned way – call the house and if I was around I’d answer the phone (which incidentally is attached to the wall with a long curly cord).

It’s kind of liberating to be so “disconnected”. You should try it sometime…

I’ve always thought that one of the keys to aging well and maintaining a youthful attitude was to keep trying new things. It’s also a great way to gain material for writing. I goad myself into all sorts of goofy activities with this argument.

I’ve jumped off platforms into freezing springs and jumped on trampolines with my children and hiked through the jungle of Thailand in this spirit (though I did decline to eat a fried cricket or the frog curry). Not only do I get a momentary rush of adrenaline and a warm glow from knowing that I’ve tried something new, I am usually taking notes in my head for possible inclusion in future story writing.

I come to Minnesota for the summer nearly every year. When my children were quite small, I learned to drive the 4-wheeler – you haven’t lived til you’ve navigated an ATV through a boggy spot filled with stumps or gotten one hung up on a fallen log. Last year was the first time I’d tried kayaking and I fell in love with it. This year’s new activity? Shooting.

My father and step-mother, both being hunters and living in the country, have a collection of rifles. They wisely started us out with the rifle with metaphorical training wheels: a .22 caliber.

(click image to enlarge)

After a talk about firearm safety and a demonstration of how to work the safety, they let us shoot. We were only shooting at plastic water bottles but it was strangely satisfying to see them jump in the air and fall over and die when you hit them. It’s also amazing how quickly you can use up a box of ammunition just messing around!

I filled up one half-gallon milk jug just because we had it, and simply because it refused to fall over it was the one target that was everyone wanted to knock over. I counted about a dozen holes in it at the end of the session.

My daughter was particularly determined and said she was going to shoot the cow’s face. I couldn’t see the cow’s face from that distance but she obviously could!

She got him between the eyes and in the nose!

I’d like to say that no plastic bottles were harmed in the process of this activity, but clearly that isn’t true. I also predict that my son’s Santa letter is going to include a request for a BB gun this year. How this experience might end turn up in my writing remains to be seen…