Volleyball's End

Girls in their last huddle after the award ceremony

Aden recently had her last volleyball game of the season.  I'm so pleased she decided to give playing on the team a try and that it worked out well.  Participating in a sport can be good or terrible.  I only experienced the terrible at her age.  I'm glad my daughter got to experience the good.

The Fernwood Pirates 8th Grade Girls' Volleyball team wrapped up the 2015-16 season with 42 wins and 2 losses.  It was really fun to go every week as a family to cheer Aden and her team on.  I enjoyed watching all of the players steadily improve.  It was moving to see how consistently encouraging and kind the coach and the players managed to be.  Aden was not one of the power players, but she got better with every game, and by the last one her energy and commitment made us really proud.

There was a lot to learn by suddenly being a family that did sports, though.  The first was keeping track of the shifting schedule.  We missed the second game of the season because we didn't realize at first that the game times moved so much.  Games could start anywhere from 5:30 to 9:00 (which still seems shockingly late to begin any activity with kids), and if we missed an email about a change it was easy to not show up at the right time.

At a Loss

Some days you don't get to pick your attitude.  I know there is many a pithy quote to be found on Facebook about choosing a positive thought and about how all you can control is yourself so you have only yourself to blame if you are not happy.

Well, when things are on an even keel, sure.  Some days, though, we need to cut ourselves some slack if we don't have the energy to force some more noble perspective.

My birthday is this week and I'm not feeling good about it.  It's my first birthday without my dad.  His birthday would have been on Easter this year and it's the first one of his since he died.  I don't like these kinds of firsts.  I keep tearing up unexpectedly.  I can go weeks at a time at this point where I don't think of dad in terms of loss, just in terms of pleasant memory, but not this weekend.

Entertainment Evolution

I'm often surprised when talking to my children how little I really know about their lives anymore.  We have such a tight grip on everything about them when they are tiny that it's hard to shake that impression of our role even as it changes.  I used to have responsibility for every detail of their days, and now they select their own entertainment, seek out their own books, enjoy inside jokes with people I've never met, and eat foods I had no hand in. Like most of parenting it's bittersweet.

But every once in a while I make a point of grilling them past the one word answers I'm used to getting and try to find more information so I'll understand them better.  Most recently I did that with Aden and her latest computer obsession and I learned a lot.

Compared to most of the kids we know, mine own a fairly limited amount of technology.  They share a single iPad that they got as a Christmas gift a few years ago from their aunt.  (They have about a dozen apps on it, which their friends with pages and pages of apps to scroll through find amusing.)  Aden has a laptop we got her with schoolwork in mind, and a DS thingy that I don't quite understand, but it wasn't expensive and she mostly uses it as an awkward means of creating her own animation.  A few months ago we hooked up an old Atari to the TV, and Quinn enjoys playing Frogger and Pitfall II.  We have Netflix streaming but no cable.  None of them own phones.

Despite this limited access to modern devices, my kids are well-versed in current video game culture.  Aden is obsessed with the Legend of Zelda and can tell you when the latest version of GTA is out.  My kids are all into Minecraft and make many small items in its image out of perler beads.

I've offered to my kids to get them a modern gaming system if they feel left out among their peers.  Same with phones, actually.  Just because something doesn't interest me doesn't mean I want them to be out of step with what the culture they live in is up to.  But they insist they are fine.  They don't mind sharing the iPad.  They don't need video game options beyond what the box of vintage Atari cartridges offers.

Portioning Out Fairness

My children impress me.  I'm biased, I know, and I love them on a level that has become my reason for being, but still.  There are moments when they surprise me with something new and unexpected where I just stop and wonder how I had a hand in creating such lovely people.

I was reminded of this yesterday when I made the kids breakfast.  I don't often make them breakfast anymore because I stay up very late to work so I sleep in a little while Ian gets the kids off to school.  We're in a habit of making them a hot breakfast every morning, and Ian is out of town for Army work this weekend, so I decided to make crepes for the kids before I went to work.  (That sounds fancier than it is but crepes are easy when you make them regularly.  All my kids can make crepes.)

Mona and Aden were still in pajamas upstairs, but Quinn was available to help me.  He emptied the dishwasher and set the table while I stood at the stove.  When breakfast was ready he rang the bell and settled in to eat.

Violin Body

I've put in a lot of late nights recently because I want very much to work on my own instrument, but there just isn't time available to do it.  So I make time between 10 p.m. and 3 a.m.  This means some nights I only get about three or four hours of sleep, but I can do that for a while without a problem.  Eventually I kind of crash and go to bed really early one night which seems to catch me up, but for the most part the late night schedule works out.  I can focus without interruption.  (Or distraction.  When my kids are up I want to be with them, so it's better if I wait until they are all in bed.)

In any case, here is the progress I've made on the violin body I'm working on:

When last I posted about this instrument I'd finished carving the scroll, and had gotten as far as the purfling on the body.

Next up was to rough graduate the top plate, then do the f-holes.

F-holes are the sound holes cut into the top plate on either side of the bridge.  They need to be large enough to help sound escape from the inside of the instrument's body, but not so large that they compromise the structural integrity of the top.  The stems of the f-holes need to be wide enough to easily get a soundpost through.  (As a repair person I know this is essential, since I am someone who has to repeatedly do soundpost work on instruments once they are out in the world.  When I have to work with a violin where the f-holes are too narrow it makes my job more difficult than it should be, so I'm mindful not to inflict the same problem on others in future.)

Carving f-holes is tricky.  They are one of those elements of violin making where there is nowhere to hide.  You can tell a lot about a luthier's skill level by how he or she carves their f-holes.  F-holes by different makers have different characteristics, and this was my first time carving in the Amati style, so that was fun. 

Surprise Mold-A-Rama!

When my mom was visiting recently we took her on her first visit to the Milwaukee County Zoo, and what did we stumble across?  A new Mold-A-Rama!  One we've never seen before anywhere:  A cow!

How cool is that?  We knew they had a hippo now (a rare figure--we only have one other that we found in Florida on our big Mold-A-Rama road trip) because Aden picked one up for the family collection when she was at the zoo on a field trip last month.

Health Update

Simply because I find it easier to post here for anyone who is interested than to repeat myself for people who ask.  Anyone understandably not interested, maybe go read this old post about building our garage.  Or, if you want something more deathy there's this.  (Or something random, or something violin-y.)

I'm doing well!  The new doctor put me on steroids back at the beginning of December, and that's doing the trick.  Apparently steroids either work for people with Granulomatous Mastitis immediately or they don't help much at all.  I am in the lucky category of people for whom they seem work.