Those We Remember

When I was 11 I wrote a poem for my paternal grandfather Popo about his time served in the Navy in WW 2. He was on a ship approaching Pearl Harbor when the island was attacked. His captain decided to turn around and head for Australia, but the crew stood on deck and watched the whole thing shipside. He fought in most of the major pacific theatres after that, but watching Pearl harbor, knowing there was nothing they could do but sail away, was the story he always told us. Perhaps the only age appropriate war story. He kept my poem with all his photos of grandchildren and reminded me to be a great writer every time I talked on the phone with him. He really wanted me to write country western songs.

My maternal grandfather was not a vet, but during WW 2 he was conscripted to serve at a lumber camp in Washington State. He carried tiny books of poetry in his pockets. He was away from his family for over a year doing hard labor. He was a carpenter, a cabinetry guy, by trade. He also encouraged my writing but I did not know he so loved poetry until he left me all of those little books when he died.

Those two heroes have passed on, leaving a shimmering light in my fondest memories. The following still have stories to write:

My father served in Army during Vietnam, but never left stateside. He learned his trade through the Army. Though he served stateside, he never talked about it.

My cousin is a Naval Officer right now. He does something with submarines and has three young children at home. Many prayers to them right now.

My second cousin is re-enlisting in the Navy in January. He loves to travel. His family will miss him so.

I have various other relatives in various degrees of service right now, some of them with new babies and young children.

They are all serving by choice and with honor.

My husband's grandmother was in the Women's Corps in WW2 as well. I don't know much about her experience there, other than her picture is in a local museum. Over Christmas holiday I plan on asking her to interview with me so I can record it for our family history. She turns 85 this year!

Cold Remedy

I've had suggestion after suggestion since being inflicted with this awful cold (which is actually a sinus infection). I can't take medication because I am pregnant and just drinking lots of fluids wasn't cutting it so I sent my dearest to the grocery store for Kosher salt and made a baking soda & salt warm water nose flush and gargle. It worked. I cleaned out all sorts of gunk and dried up so much mucus that my headache went away. I'm not entirely free breathing yet, but continuing the rinse at night before bed is working wonders. My sore throat is gone too.

Funny thing is, a few years back I was going into see our family physician what seemed like every other week, every time with a different complaint: nausea, hurt leg, head ache, infected toe, bug bite, etc and every time the verdict was......drum roll please....sinus infection. Geesh. She's the one who wrote the prescription out for the salt and baking soda rinse. Kudos to her.

Blogging Break and Neat Project

I took a break from blogging over a long weekend. I was not in any way in an emotional state to write. So I wrote draft after draft of emotional vomit and then deleted instead of published. No one would have wanted to read that drivel anyway.

So instead, over the weekend I cleaned the house, painted the upstairs long hallway, and watched X-Men 3. Dear Husband and Lil'Bug tiled the front parlor fireplace. It will be gorgeous when it is finished.

Both our fireplaces and surrounding tile were stolen by urban miners long before we bought the house almost 8.5 years ago. It was not on our priority list (as were floors and ceilings) but now they are. We have to set the tile before placing a mantle. I'll show the after pictures when we finish it (cross your fingers, next week!).

*Edited to Add:
Tile setting is a perfect project for a tot like Lil'Bug. She is great with shapes, color sorting, and placing puzzle pieces. She is incredibly eager to help Daddy at every opportunity and is now pleased that she helped with such an important project. It is one of those moments that I am so happy I remembered to take a picture!

Dangerous, Tot Chasing, and we're all Sick

Thoughts for the week:

There are homeschool blogger awards going on and here are my thoughts on them: anything that further divides and isolates a group of people that should be uniting and supporting each is not a good thing. At first I was disappointed that our blog doesn't qualify for a variety of reasons (though the fact that I am writing from "Mars" may have got me at least nominated in the geography category), I was then mad about other parts of it. The hostility and further division of our growing, yet still small, community is not good. One of the problems that we have with labeling the kind of schooling we do or don't do is that it further others us from the community, we're not radical enough or not normal enough or not religious enough or too religious or or or....we, as all families, are unique. Labels are the first step in othering.

That said, I am seeing similar things happening locally and to the children of some families. We talk good talk about becoming an individual and celebrating what makes us unique, but when it comes down to it a certain level of conformity is still expected. Guess what I think about that? In my daughter's wise words: boo boo to them. I have boundaries, I stand up for them, but I can still accept people as friends who are way different from me, even disagree with me on key issues, to a rational extent. I'm not passive about it either. But I am 30 and watching children explore this dynamic is heartbreaking, even when it is not my own.

On a totally unrelated note: we are all still sick. It has been almost two full weeks that the evil snots and fatigue and off and on fever have ransacked our happy home. Now it's a cough. Something must give. Why is it that wee tots can still have the energy to run and run and jump and jump and tear apart a clean room in a single bound....while they are dripping with snot sick? I can barely lift my weary, nauseous, pregnant self off the couch to turn off the hated Barney and she is feverish, yet dancing and tearing it up old school.