Springy Projects

We lucked out with a very spring-y third week of February. Even though we tried our best not to get our hopes up for a mild-weather upcoming track season, by the end of a 55-65 degree week with hardly any wind and at least two days of sunshine, our hopes were high. High school track season starts tomorrow (February 26th) and the weather forecast shows four back-to-back days of 15-20mph sustained winds. Classic. Would it even be track season without volatile weather? Also, isn't talking about the weather supposed to be a total conversational snooze button? But I kind of like talking about the weather. It's comfortable and relatable--just like my favorite type of conversation. The weather also affects my existence drastically, so I can't help mentioning it!

There was no school on Monday for President's Day, so we had a group of track kids meet at our barn for a run under the umbrella of pre-season conditioning, just like they've been doing all winter. I saw rain in the forecast, so I ran earlier in the morning to avoid getting wet. While the team ran, Jeff's dad Dan and I worked in the barn. I organized and hung our past team pictures on the wall, and Dan cut the rubber flooring to fit the second room, which we were fixing up in preparation for track season. (Eventually we will have 3 rooms with rubber flooring--the entire ground level of the barn.) Soon the runners returned. They were soaked and mud splattered from their rainy run, but five or six of them went upstairs for some basketball and ping pong anyways. After a little bit, Jeff told them they were welcome to stay, but he was going inside our house for a hot shower. I finished up my project and went inside with him. An hour later, I peeked my head outside and heard basketball bounces booming from the barn. That group of kids was still playing! By this point, it was past noon, and I knew they had to be getting hungry--some of them don't even eat breakfast before they run. So I brought a loaf of bread, a jar of peanut butter and jam, and a bunch of bananas out to the barn and told the guys, who had moved on from basketball to ping pong, that they could eat if they were hungry. Then I went back inside our house. It felt amusingly like filling a bird feeder or something--will they come eat or will they leave it? 

A little while later, Amber went out to the barn to get herself two pieces of bread for a sandwich and came back in all downcast and tragic because "the boys ate all of the bread!" I got another loaf out of the freezer to appease her. When I went out to check the barn, the boys were gone and all the food was polished off except one very bruised banana and a few inches of peanut butter in the jar. The boys had cleaned up their banana peels and napkins and wiped the table, and it warmed my heart. I felt a little silly being all mom-ish with my PBJ supplies because Jay, Rose and Amber weren't even out there playing in the barn; it was just a bunch of kids from our team. But I couldn't resist feeding them! We love our kids--all 50+ of them.

Whisperings of an early spring had me assessing and prioritizing what yardwork needs to be done sooner, and which tasks come later. After consulting with our former landlord's foreman Juan this week, I bought the weed killer he recommended and mixed it up in our 2 gallon spray jug. On Saturday, I went to work pumping and spraying every inch of our massive gravel driveway. It was a serious forearm and hand grip workout! I carried the 2 gallon container in one hand and squeezed the spraying hose in the other hand, pausing every few minutes to pump more pressure into the container. It took nearly 90 minutes and 6 gallons of spray to cover the whole driveway! I am determined to get ahead of the weed situation this year! We didn't take possession of this property until April last year, and didn't fully start caring for the grounds till nearly May, and by then the weeds had taken over. So I doused all of our gravel with $55 worth of 12 month weed killer and I may do it again in a few weeks.

Saturday was Jay's science fair at the high school. He put in a cumulative 40 hours of work over the past few weeks on his project: "Can eggshells and banana peels be used to create a bioplastic?" He mixed, blended, and baked at least four batches of eggshell and banana goop at home while testing his hypothesis. Jay has never worked so hard at anything school-related as he did on this science fair project! His freshman honors biology class has really put him through his academic paces. Go Jay!

Other barn work that we did on Saturday: we moved our 15 year old couch out to the barn and put a washable cover on it. We cleaned all of the floors in the barn too, and moved our bikes out to the shed. The barn is ready for track season! Amber caught the cleaning bug and helped sweep/blow out the garage. Then she decided to wash Jeff's car with a bucket of water, some Clorox Wipes, and Windex. When I came inside from all of this dusty work, I discovered that my hair was coated in a fine layer of dirt and grime, requiring a second shower on Saturday afternoon.

This week was a heavy workout week for me. I did FOUR workouts and two other runs: I ran 5 miles on Monday, and did an hour-long strength workout at the PT clinic on Tuesday morning, followed by a 400 workout on the track with the pre-season high schoolers on Tuesday afternoon. On Wednesday I rested. Thursday morning was another strength workout at the PT clinic for 30 minutes, with a 40minute treadmill tempo workout right after. Thursday afternoon I did another 400 workout with the team. Total mileage run on Thursday was ten miles. Friday, I rested. Friday was such a glorious 65 degree sunny day that I ended up going for a slow stroll around our yard--the perimeter of our property is almost exactly 400 meters, so I walked 6 laps soaking in the vitamin D and chatting with my sister. It felt amazing. I capped off the week with a very fatigued 5 mile jog on Saturday. All of that exhausting work only added up to 20 miles run in the week! It felt like way more. But I am feeling strong and starting to consider running a one mile time trial soon to see if I can go under 6 minutes for the first time since college. Why? The same thing that drives all distance runners: pure masochistic curiosity!

Rose and Amber's piano teacher challenged them to play 28 different songs on the piano in 2 weeks. Rose dug deep into our growing stash of piano music and played the piano several times each day. She finished playing her 28th song a few days early. 

This week Amber decided to write a book about rocks. She began by compiling a list of different types of rocks she wanted to write about: one chapter for each rock. She listened to an audiobook about dragons while writing chapter 1 of her rock book. 

High school track season starts tomorrow! The wind has already picked up. 

Working in the barn on Monday: Amber enjoyed hammering nails into the wall for the picture frames. Grampa Dan brought his T-square and made the rubber flooring very well aligned. Rose went back and forth between helping both projects.

Barn gallery wall! We are missing a few team photos (I left gaps for those to be added later), but these are all teams we have coached at Sunnyside High School. That's 7 years of coaching the high school track and cross country teams for Jeff (I was his XC assistant coach for 6 of those years), plus 2 years of coaching the boys swim team for Jeff and one year of coaching middle school track for me. For fun, I hung one picture of mine and Jeff's college cross country team. It was amusing how long it took the teenagers to find Jeff and me in that picture.

On Tuesday morning after seminary, I dropped Jay off as close to the school orchestra room as possible so he could lug his string bass in after a long weekend of practicing at home.

On Tuesday after the track workout, we went to McDonald's to support the Mr. SHS school fundraiser. I let each kid in our van get one thing from the menu. I couldn't think of an McDonald's food that I wanted, so I was glad that we had an extra kid in our car that day--we were driving Jay's friend Jordan home after the run.

Looking out the window at the south side of our house and planning my yardwork schedule. I want my tomato garden in that terrace area by the stairs. There's a lot of clearing out that needs to happen first. That's the only place we didn't get around to weeding last summer.

Taking two entire weekdays off of running--even though it was necessary both times--made me feel oddly antsy, so I assembled the last 2 kitchen counter stools this week. Knowing that we were on the verge of being super busy with track practice every day made me feel antsy, like I needed to be enjoying my free time while it lasted. I know from experience that it's impossible to "store up" that blissful free-time feeling of NOT having somewhere to be in the afternoon, but I still tried to enjoy it while it lasted. For the record, I wouldn't want to always live in that zone of blissful free time either. I'm not dreading track season itself, just the grind of never having another break until the end of May.

Jay finally spared a few seconds to be measured this week, and we discovered that he is officially over 6 feet tall! 6 feet and about 1/8 of an inch tall.

Rose hit 5'10'' officially this week. 2 weeks ago at her birthday she was 5' 9.5'' (not pictured is Amber, coming in at 4’10’’).

Jay takes his rest whenever and wherever he can find it. We joked about performing an autopsy when we saw him lounging on the kitchen counter slab one night.

View from the north corner of our yard during my gorgeous 65 degree walk on Friday. I was so content to walk laps around our yard--it was secure from dogs and so quiet and peaceful.

The science fair scholar, hard at work!

Jay at the science fair! Students had to stay at the high school for 6 hours on Saturday while the science fair raged.

Jay came home with plans to redo his display board before the regional science fair in 2 weeks. Arts and crafts are so not Jay's thing, so I was impressed that his board looked as neat as it did, but Jay decided he needed to tidy up some of the corners. Again, who is this person? My son Jay, exercising his own volition to re-do a hands on papercraft? High school is intense!

Saturday afternoon: Jeff and Amber cleaned out our very dirty garage. Months of wet muddy car tires left chunks of dried dirt all over the garage floor. It looked like our house was smoking on fire when Jeff turned on the leaf blower!

Amber was proud of her work washing Jeff's car. It went a lot faster when we gave her a rag instead of the tiny fragments of dirty paper towels she was using.

Rose helped a little at the end in classic Rose fashion.

Saturdays are "fend for yourself" at dinnertime in our house. Amber labored to carefully make herself a beautifully folded, impressively toasted cheese omelet, and then after all that decided to put it on a sandwich.

After several hours of yard and barn work on Saturday, plus after my very tiring week of workouts, I was slightly desperately tired on Saturday night. I put my pajamas on under my dress because it got colder and I was too tired to change clothes completely. Then Rose and Amber gave me a foot rub because they are sweet. 

The wind is really howling now. I guess March will come in like a lion this year. While writing this post, I had to pause and go help Jeff stake down our trampoline in the backyard so the wind doesn't claim another one.