Career Opportunity

Penguin Girl volunteered with some girls from her Girl Scout troop to work at the annual spaghetti dinner fundraiser--all you can eat salad, spaghetti, and drink for $7. Her troop was signed up to clean and bus tables for about 2 hours. She told me that she received some compliments from the diners about what a good job she was doing. I saw her wiping tables very industriously and taking plates back to the kitchen. Afterwards, she reported that she had fun at the event. I told her I was glad to hear it because that meant she'd be able to get a job waiting tables and earn her own money.

WRAM

The video broadcasting system at Penguin Girl's school is called WRAM because the ram is their mascot. There is a video broadcast every morning for the day's announcements. All 4th and 5th graders may apply to be on the broadcast team. When they handed out the application forms a few weeks ago, Penguin Girl was soooo enthusiastic. She had a week to write her application essay. But during the week she had to think about it, she got so anxious about the whole school watching her that she chickened out. She said she didn't want to do it after all.

I asked her why she changed her mind and she was really inarticulate about her reasons. Really the only thing that she said was that she was nervous about having everyone watch her even though she would be in a room in the school media center with a few kids and a teacher. I gave her a big lecture about how she can't be afraid of trying to achieve her goals or she will never get anywhere. She happened to get a fortune cookie the night before when her grandparents took her out to dinner for her birthday that pertained to taking advantage of opportunity. Since she was being all wishy washy, I got all tiger mom on her and told her she had to write the essay. It turned out way better than I thought it would--she actually wrote about quite a few attributes that would be important to have for this activity and gave a relevant example to show that she possessed each quality. And only one misspelled word!

A week ago, she came home from school and said that she was chosen to do a screen test.  She read a script with a partner and the librarian videotaped her delivering the info.  She was very pleased to have been chosen.  I had no idea there was even going to be an audition in addition to the application.  Her reading partner said that 10 kids would be eliminated.

Today I picked her up, took her to the park so she could do homework, and then we went across the street for her swim practice. It wasn't until we'd gotten home and she'd showered up that she remembered to mention that SHE'S ON THE WRAM TEAM!!!!!!

Way to go, Penguin Girl! I'm so proud!

Happy Birthday

Penguin Girl followed her stomach and decided on birthday fondue. I picked up Penguin Girl and W after school and went to have frozen yogurt to kill some time. Then we headed off to pick up A whose school lets out a bit later. After that, it was off to the Melting Pot.

I made a reservation and told them it was for a birthday so they put us in a private room. I told them that the plan was to first have cheese fondue so they could report to their parents that they ate some real food. The cheese would be followed by dessert fondue. They could pick two flavors of each. The whole experience was beyond thrilling for them.

They chose cheddar and a spinach-artichoke for the cheese course. The girls were very captivated by the server's tabletop preparation of the cheese mixtures. The dippers consisted of fresh veggies, green apples, bread, and tortilla chips. Although they sort of balked at the idea of spinach-artichoke, that turned out to be the favorite. The cheddar was just too beer-y tasting for them.

After much deliberation, they decided on s'mores and cookies-n-cream. Again, the preparation was very impressive. It included the pouring of flaming liquid into each pot of chocolate. Once they saw the dippers, they all agreed that they were in heaven. There were pedestrian items like graham crackers, bananas, and strawberries. There were also brownies, cheesecake, rice krispie cubes, cinnamon dusted marshmallows, and chocolate crumb dusted marshmallows.

Towards the end, it was pretty obvious that we could not possibly finish. W asked if we could bring it home. Can you bring fondue home? Why, yes you can. The server brought some boxes and we took home a box of cheese with tortilla chips and a box of chocolate with a little bit of everything.

We were supposed to go to the movies but it turned out the only kids' movie available was Finding Nemo in 3D. The girls opted to watch videos at home. They basically had an all-nighter of Harry Potter movies. At 4:30 in the morning, I woke up to thumping around upstairs. I put the kibosh on that pretty quickly. They got up for the day at a decent hour. After pancakes for breakfast, they ran around outside until it was time to go.

Happy birthday, Penguin Girl! I can't believe you're 9!

Multiple Choice Question

If you were Penguin Girl and had a birthday coming up, which would you choose:

A) Party at an indoor rock climbing gym with 3 friends

B) An outing to a giant corn maze with assorted amusements including a cow train, corn cannon, and giant mountain of hay, with 3 friends.

C) Movie, dessert fondue at the Melting Pot, and sleepover with 2 friends.

A Tough Summer

It's been a really tough summer for all of us.  The day after school let out for the summer, I hit the road with Penguin Girl and Mr. Destructo to stay with my folks.  My mom was about to start hospice care and she had been looking forward to seeing Penguin Girl.  My mom's condition had seemed fairly stable for the past few months but within a week or so of our arrival, it was obvious that we were nearing the end.  As July started, the whole situation was very difficult.  We were all trying to get her to eat more but she just couldn't.  She looked so very thin and listless.  When she stopped eating, my mom slept all day but in the evening she would become very restless and cry out in pain and fear.  I couldn't tell if she even knew we were there.  It almost seemed like when a child has night terrors.  The hospice nurses called it terminal agitation and equated its appearance in the evenings with Alzheimers patients sundowning.

Penguin Girl has known for a long time that Po-po had cancer and that she was dying.  But seeing the terminal agitation made it very real for her.  The first night that Penguin Girl witnessed it, she dissolved into tears as she was getting ready for bed.  I gave her the choice of going back home since at that point Car Guy had taken Mr. Destructo home to take care of some things.  Penguin Girl said she'd think about it.  Ultimately, she decided to stay.  I'd often find her sitting quietly at Po-po's bedside while she slept, which was so sweet and heartbreaking to see.  

My mom left us on Thursday, July 12.  Her funeral was a week later.  Penguin Girl decided she wanted to stay with Po-po until the very end when she was cremated.  It was very hard to see Penguin Girl so sad but I'm proud of how much love and compassion she showed her grandmother in those last days.  A while ago, Penguin Girl gave Po-po an art project she made at school.  It looked like a tiny handwoven rug.  I tucked that into the pocket of my mom's purse, the one my dad chose to be cremated with her.  So she'd have something from Penguin Girl to hold onto in her next life.

Bye-Bye Brownies

Hello Juniors!  Penguin Girl and her Brownie troop bridged over to Juniors.

The girls had a very fun camp out. Penguin Girl toasted marshmallows for the first time over a campfire.  And she ate the most marshmallows of all the girls.  Ms. D was afraid she was going to make herself sick from eating so many.  But nothing bad happened except staying up late while all sugar-crazed.  Their leaders probably need a stiff drink and a long nap.  It was a busy year.  They visited the animal shelter, wrote their pen pal troop in California, participated in a food drive, sold cookies, and earned lots of patches.

As part of the bridging ceremony, the girls sang some goofy songs.  There was one about a shark attack with some amusing choreography and another that sort of made fun of Boy Scouts.  I asked Penguin Girl where they learned the songs.  She said that a troop of Juniors came to one of their meetings and taught them a bunch of songs.  Good role modeling.

Veggie Gardening

This year each student in Penguin Girl's class was given a cabbage seedling to grow at home.  The seedlings were provided by Bonnie Plants as part of a program to teach 3rd graders about the plant cycle.  The variety of cabbage meant that if you took care of your plant well, you would end up with a giant cabbage.  The program's promotional materials included photos of kids who had successfully grown their humongous cabbage.  Penguin Girl was very excited to get started.  Back in March, I let her take over one of my garden squares since she hoped her cabbage would grow as big as possible.

After a few weeks, it was obvious that bugs were chomping away at the cabbage plant.  The plant looked pretty sad when we got back from our trip to New York for spring break.  She asked how we could keep the bugs from eating the plant.  Car Guy told her we'd need to use pesticide.  She looked like she was going to cry and said, "But I really wanted to grow an organic cabbage!"  That's my Penguin Girl.  

I consulted someone at a local organic gardening center and got an organic pesticide.  It contains some sort of bacteria that you spray onto the cabbage.  When the bugs continue to eat the cabbage, the bacteria interferes with their digestion and they die.  It worked somewhat but did not completely kill off all the bugs.  

In the end, we harvested a 17-pound cabbage.  I geared up with a whole bunch of cabbage recipes in anticipation of having all that cabbage to prepare all at once.  But alas, the interior of the cabbage was full of slugs and millipedes.  I decided it was too gross to take inside to chop off the buggy bits to get at the nice parts so we composted it.  Well, we composted half of it and then had to stop because the compost bin was pretty full.  Then Mr. Destructo hacked away at what remained of the head of cabbage over the next few days.  Then we composted the rest.  Nevertheless, Penguin Girl was pretty pleased to have grown such a big cabbage.

Playing Hooky

We let Penguin Girl skip school again to spend the day at the Great Wolf Lodge.  This time, Mr. Destructo went on some of the tube rides.  And I did not get motion sick!

Reptile Day

Over the weekend, I took Penguin Girl and Mr. Destructo to the Reptile Day organized by the nearby college's herpetology department.  We saw lots of snakes, geckos, salamanders, lizards, turtles, and a frog that was shaped like a tennis ball.  Penguin Girl handled every single one of the critters that she was allowed to touch.  She held a few snakes and a spotted gecko.  She even draped a 7-foot black snake around her neck.  (Yet the day before, she insisted on using a stick rather than her fingers to move a few earthworms that were languishing on the driveway back to the lawn.  Go figure.)

Mr. Destructo held the same gecko but it started to move around and he almost let it go because he didn't like the feel of its claws on his hands.  Luckily, Penguin Girl rescued the gecko from him.  Mr. Destructo wanted to try draping the big snake around his neck but I convinced him it would be too heavy.  I actually just wanted to avoid having to touch the snake myself in case Mr. Destructo got freaked out and wanted it off him in a hurry.  But there were a number of very small snakes at one station and Mr. Destructo handled all of those.  He later commented that he thought all of those snakes were "so cute!"

Spring Break Road Trip

I drove both kids up to New York to visit my parents.  Popo has been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and she really wanted to see the kids.  While we were there, I went with my parents to my mom's first appointment with an oncologist.  My mom seemed to take the news as well as could be expected but she seemed like she did not want anymore medical intervention.  

The day after the oncologist appointment, my dad was really upset for most of the day, visibly crying as he went about his daily routine.  Of course Penguin Girl noticed so last night I had a talk with her about it all.  I ended up telling her that while we were at the hospital in Las Vegas the docs found that there was something unusual growing in Popo's body.  And the last time I was up here, a doc did a test to see what it was.  They found that it's cancer and that's what you call this illness where your body is growing cells that are not supposed to be there so it makes you really sick.  I told her it's very serious and Popo is having another test next week to see how much these cells have spread in her body.  If there is a lot of cancer, Popo may not live for a long time so she should appreciate this time we have here.  By this time the tears were just streaming down my poor Penguin Girl's face.  I told her it's ok to be sad but if she feels sad during the day and feels like she is going to cry, to just excuse herself so that my mom and dad won't see.  I said they love her a lot and they would not want to see her so sad because it will make them even more upset.  She was really quiet the whole time and I asked if she wanted to ask me anything but she said no.  This morning she seems a little quiet but otherwise ok.  She's already bugging me about when we're going over to her cousin's house.

In contrast, yesterday Mr. Destructo saw me crying when I was talking to my mom.  Hours later when I had my kids plus my nieces in my car, he picked that time to ask why I was crying.  I said I was sad that Popo is sick.  That seemed to satisfy him.

But soon after that, Aunt G took my oldest niece to a music lesson.  H is 10 years old.  When she was alone in the car with her mom, she asked why I would be crying.  SIL told her grandma has something wrong with her pancreas, that it's called cancer, and it's very serious.  A doc is going to do a test next week to see how big the cancer is.  If it's very big, grandma may not live for a long time.  My niece asked 1) can she catch cancer (no, not contagious); and 2) will grandma still be able to come to her graduation (we don't know).  No crying from my niece.

Other than the whole cancer thing being such a downer, it was a good trip.  All five kids had fun running wild together all week.

Cabbage Patch

Normally when Penguin Girl comes home from school and you ask her about her day, her response is a very predictable, "Fine."  Today she was giddy over having a cabbage seedling to plant as part of her science homework.

Some months ago, I came across a program sponsored by Bonnie Plants that provides 3rd grade students with free cabbage seedlings so they can learn about growing plants.  I let her teacher know about it and she is incorporating it into their unit about soil.  The cabbage is a variety that can grow very big.  The materials provided to the children say it's possible to grow a 40-pound head.  Penguin Girl is very, very keen on growing a giant cabbage.

Luckily, I cleared out my garden squares last week so we have a place to plant the cabbage.  The instructions say it needs a lot of space so I guess we won't be planting anything else there.  And we'll need some recipes for cabbage.

Moving on Up!

Penguin Girl has been swimming in a recreational league since the beginning of the school year.  At the end of this last session, her coach said she's ready to move up to the competitive league!  I was pretty surprised.  The kids need 3 legal strokes before they can move up.  Penguin Girl's freestyle and backstroke are already there but her breast and butterfly have been stuck.  But I suppose Penguin Girl has really been paying attention because she made some really great progress on her breast stroke during the last 2 months.

Penguin Girl is not the most competitive child so when I asked her if she was interested in moving up, she gave her usual answer, "Ummmmm . . . I'll think about it."  They had a mini-meet over the weekend and I told her coach that she was mulling it over.  Her coach laughed and said she noticed that Penguin Girl is a kid who always seems pretty content with where she is.  Yep, that's my girl.

Cookies for Sale

Penguin Girl is selling Girl Scout cookies.  This year she is going door to door on our street.  She's sold 26 boxes with Car Guy supervising.  The neighbors are very kind to buy so many cookies.  I hope it's warm when it's time to deliver them.