Wednesday 10 February 2010

updates

Sunday night I was challenged to pull a dinner out of thin air. We had baked potatoes, Vienna sausages, and um… Anyway, we had two brands of sausages – Armour and Libby’s, so I set up a little taste test. Everyone got some of each, and everyone gave their opinion on them. Armour was the clear winner, for taste and texture. Just thought I’d share. (For y’all non-Americans, Vienna sausages are little processed hot-dog things in a can with some mysterious clear jelly-like sauce. I prefer the “chicken” ones.)

Elijah is 3 months old now, and doing great. As mentioned in the previous post, he sleeps all night now. He is very happy and sociable most of the time. In a crowd, he will latch onto a face and just smile and raise his eyebrows and nod until the person responds. He’s not on a schedule, really, but will often doze off during the day (sometimes while eating, sometimes on his own). Exclusively breast-fed, he’s quite chubby. Everyone comments how he looks just like the other boys. They don’t seem to notice that Cedwryck is quite a bit different from Riah, William, and Elijah. Those three certainly look a lot alike. For me, I can’t say that I’ve lost all my weight gain, because I really can’t remember. My knees still give me fits, and my pelvis sometimes complains (I popped it Monday when closing the bus door), but I’m SO much more mobile than I was the last couple of months of pregnancy. I’m trying to make good choices for my knees, like changing diapers without kneeling on the floor, and limiting my trips upstairs. I’m eating less junk (though still more than I should) and walking (indoors).

Bob’s Math class isn’t going so well. Some of the students got a study group together, but the time settled on was Sunday morning. As we are actually attending church regularly now, he is loath to join this group. The textbook he got for the class is quite clear and helpful. However, the teacher doesn’t follow the book, so it’s a little confusing. Bob is really smarter than I am, and he is excellent at recognizing patterns, which I stink at. If we could figure out how to pool our resources, ‘we’ could ace this class. Too bad he’s enrolled on his own.

We’ve begun the sorting and downsizing in preparation for retirement. It’s more than a little scary to think about striking out on our own. We don’t even know what town to move to, much less all the details. School, employment, market for a studio, housing costs, church, family; this all comes into play, and we haven’t got that sorted yet. Most of this is available just south of Oklahoma City, but we don’t WANT to live there. Ha. We much prefer the north-east of Oklahoma or north-west of Arkansas, but other than the Springdale/Fayetteville area (which gives me the willies), that’s all small towns with little demand for the high-culture images Bob wants to produce. So here we go ‘round again.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I feel your dilemma in miniature. Without family, my decisions were for me only in deciding to move to Seminole, or not. Back and forth, up and down, back and forth, I examined every angle, financially, culturally, and every other way. Tough! jcr

Wil said...

I'll echo Janice -- my decisions have been tough enough without having to worry about children, etc. I cannot imagine.

Since you mentioned northeast Oklahoma, I'll point out: there are tons of smaller communities in the Tulsa area that are within commuting distance and still have a higher class of clientele. Many of Oklahoma's best high schools are in the area surrounding Tulsa (Glenpool, Jenks, Sand Springs, etc.) and that, to me, reflects something about the communities they're in.

MamaOlive said...

Thanks for the empathy and advice. At least we have a few months to get it sorted.