In All Different Directions!

As usual, our family is going 90 mph in all different directions these days.  Here's what we've been up to for the last 3 weeks...

Alyssa 

Alyssa has added more days to her work schedule at Milk + Honey. She's really enjoying her weekly Apprentice program - learning a lot and making a good impression.  This week, she has models coming in to get various styles, so she can be "checked off." When she completes all of this - probably in 3-4 months -  she anticipates being "given a chair" at the salon. Very exciting!!
We all had a lot of fun fishing and sailing at the end of last month at Lake Texoma - see more at A Long Line of Lake Lovers. And, then, a couple of weeks later, Alyssa had a wonderful trip to the beach with Josh's family. She LOVES the beach, so 4 days at a lovely condo in Corpus Christi was perfect! They caught quite a few fish, saw a few dolphins and maybe even a shark. It sounds like September, when the crowds have died down, is THE time to do a beach trip!
Alyssa's "Wedding Update" is that she found The Dress. Next stop...Invitations.
On a side note... Alyssa's fiancé, Josh, turned 21 since I last reported in.  After our fishing trip, we decided to get him a bow fishing kit.  With all the carp at the dock, I think he'll love using it there. He's already being practicing and is becoming quite good with the bow! He loves "outdoor stuff" so I'm glad we found something for him on his "Big Day."

Katie 

Katie finished her summer work at Cinemark. Luckily, she's been accumulating free passes (one of the perks of working there!) so I anticipate more movie watching for all of us!
We've been busy shopping for "L.A. Clothes" - since most of her NYC wardrobe is for much colder weather than she'll see in southern California. She is not sad to leave that New York weather!
She's been having a lot of fun with Zumba classes at the local 24 Hour Fitness.
We're working together on a cookbook, so she'll be able to make various dishes that she grew up enjoying.  She probably won't be home for Thanksgiving this year, so she wants to learn how to make all of our family specialties! :::sniff, sniff:::
Katie's been a huge help to me with getting Grandma to her multitude of dental appointments lately. (See below)
And... I just realized that the next time I "report in," I will probably be back from taking her to California. I'm going to miss her!!

Michael

Michael has been busy trekking across Nicaragua. He teaches in the eastern side of the country, but is often called back to Corazo area for Peace Corps training classes and workshops. It doesn't hurt that his girlfriend lives in La Paz and her family kindly allows him to stay there with them.  Considering his pay is about $100/month, and his food options are pretty bad where he lives, I'm happy that he has a family who feeds him whenever he's there!
Michael has had very little communication lately because his computer crashed. This is not an easy fix in a 3rd World country. Kathya thinks she knows someone that can fix it, but we'll see. In the meantime, she loaned him a computer from her family to take back to his house in Muelle de Los Bueyes (south central Nicaragua). Only problem was, he confused the 2 power cords and took the wrong one back. Considering mail is completely unreliable, he has to wait a couple of weeks to get back over there to get the right cord. All of these computer issues are troubling him because he and Kathya are trying to work on her Visa to come back to the USA with him for Alyssa's wedding next April.  Only about 10% of Nicaraguans who apply for visas are granted one, so we're a little worried. Cross your fingers!
On Wednesday, Michael experienced a 7.6 earthquake which occurred off the coast of Costa Rica but shook Nicaragua as well. He felt the tremor and said it lasted longer than any he remembered in Alaska or California. All day long, Nicaraguans anticipated a tsunami from the quake, but by the end of the day, the warning was lifted without any tsunami. He called to tell me about it, before I could hear about it from the computer or the news.  I'm glad because I would have been worried sick if I couldn't find out about him.

I found a different video and shared it at my earlier blogpost, "Mom! It's an Earthquake!" 
But here's CNN's report on this earthquake, with experts, maps and explanations:

Sue

After a couple of months of exercise (including weekly with Michelle, the trainer) and wishy washy dieting, I stuck with the Fuhrman Diet. And lost 7 lbs. in 2 weeks! For some reason, I fell off the wagon and ate all kinds of unhealthy stuff. So now I'm back on board. The diet is primarily plant-based. Crazy, seemingly excessive, amounts of leafy greens as well as 1 lb. of cooked veggies and 1 lb. of raw veggies, at least 4 fruit, and 1 cup of beans. That's the minimum! Really makes for a messy kitchen though. Oh well.
I offered to help my longtime friend, Linda Dobson, with her publication Parent at the Helm. The books she wrote really helped me tremendously when we first started homeschooling, so I am happy to help her out with PATH. I've written a few pieces and now I'm learning Wordpress, behind the scenes. I really like it so much better than Blogger, but I'm not sure about moving everything to a different blog. We'll see. If I can figure out the Wordpress "themes" down the road, I might do it.
And speaking of road... I'm looking forward to Katie and my road trip to California at the end of the month! Driving there, flying back.

Ron

Ron is still ordering parts and working on the motorcycle. Luckily, we have Grandma's Toyota Camry for him to drive to work.  He's had a couple of really great sailing weekends. He's doing different things with the sails, so he can control the speed and the ways the sails catch the wind. And, he bought the decal for the boat name change... O Susie Q.  We'll take a picture the next time we go up there (or he might go up while we're gone to California.)
I've never had a boat named after me! Kinda cool!

Grandma

I was sitting at my dining room table when my mom came up to me.
"Look at this," she said casually and placed a whitish almost plastic looking thing in my hand.
"What is it?" I asked.
"My tooth!"
Why this grossed me out, I have no idea. My kids have put far worse into my hands in years past. But this really bothered me.  Oh well.  I got over it.  Grandma's "chipped" tooth turned into 6 visits to the dentist and oral surgeon!  She needed a root canal, a crown lengthening, a post being added, a temporary tooth, and still a permanent one to go in there! Wow!
She's really enjoying all the activities that her apartment complex sets up. So, in spite of her forgetfulness and real need for a lot of help, I'd like her to stay there as long as possible. We're talking about how the next step is to move in with us - and she isn't resisting that. But, just like with the car, why resist until it actually comes to pass? Then, we'll see how she is with resistance. Hopefully, that's a little ways off.

"Mom! It's an Earthquake!"

Michael called at 9 a.m. to ask if I had been watching the news. I hadn't. I had barely poured my cup of coffee! He went on to tell me that he'd just felt an earthquake in Nicaragua and wanted to know what I could find out about it.  He said that reports were that it was 7.9 but some were coming in as only 7.6. He didn't have much more information than that. The strange thing, to him, was how long it lasted. How it just rolled and rolled. He said it was very odd to feel the earth move underfoot like that.  My friend Pam had just been telling me about a recent earthquake in southern California that actually made her nauseous. This was a new feeling for her too, and she's certainly felt her share of quakes. Michael said that no one near him, had been hurt. He was staying at Kathya's family's house in Carazo, on the Pacific side of Nicaragua. They were all acting fairly calm, but curious as to what information Michael could find out from me. I immediately began to comb the internet.

The earthquake was actually off the northern coast of Costa Rica, 87 miles west of their capital, San Jose. It was centered more than 282 miles deep. But you can see the close proximity between Carazo and Costa Rica! No wonder they felt it!

Tsunami warnings (meaning they are imminent) were in effect for the day. Michael was on higher ground - should I be reassured that he was on a side of a volcano?  Anyway, the tsunami warnings were eventually dropped with no occurrence striking any of the Central American coastline.

That night, my friend Lisa called to see if I had heard from Michael. She reminded me of the the earthquake that hit Nicaragua in the 1990's - 116 people killed, 68 missing, and 1350 homeless. I had forgotten! Luckily, this one wasn't nearly as devastating.

September 2, 1992 Masachapa Nicaragua earthquake

Considering the region is full of active and sleeping volcanoes, we'll see if this earthquake does anything to stir them up!

New York, New Sailboats, New Beginnings!

We're busy. And recording it here, helps with my memory issues. When I'm old and have my house by the sea, like Miss Rumphius, I'll use these blog posts to write my memoirs.  Maybe.

So, since last we talked, a few things happened....
We'll start with ME!

Sue
I did fib a little, when I posted the last family update. I had written most of it before I made the last-minute decision to go see Katie in New York. She finally confided in me that she hadn't given a lot of thought to the idea of my coming for her end-of-the-year stuff, because she thought the flights would be too expensive. But the more I heard about it, the more I realized it was a real graduation. And, since she had never graduated from anything before - I needed to be there! I got online on Friday, the 11th, booked a flight, and flew to NYC - La Guardia at 7 a.m. the next day. I was happy that I didn't have to use my seat extender that Michael picked up on one of our last flights. When I got to Charlotte, NC, I decided I should probably tell Katie, in case she made other plans. She was pretty excited to hear I was only a couple of hours away! I met her at her dorm, and we went to lunch at our traditional restaurant, The Barking Dog. It was the first place we went to eat when she first moved there. Mother's Day was far from typical, as I spent it in NYC.
Healthwise, I'm still working on it. While we did lots of walking in New York, we did lots of eating too! It was so good! But now I'm back on track. Kinda.

Katie
Katie finished up her year at NYFA and graduated on May 12th. She was so surprised that I flew in. She had a lot of fun with her friends in their last days in NYC. She has a couple of friends who are going to move in with her in an apartment in Los Angeles - which is where she'll do her second year with NYFA. She really didn't enjoy the NY winters, so I'm sure LA will be better in that regard. Several of her instructors told me that she could stay in NY and start working right away - and who knows, maybe she'll go back and do that. It's good to know they think she's good enough for it! Lots of compliments as to how driven and passionate she is about acting. I wish I could have seen her Scene Study that her group did the night before I got there. They all said she was incredible in that. Sean, one of the tech people, said he will upload it so we can see it. Here's more about Katie's graduation.
After I helped her pack up her dorm, she came back to my hotel to sleep in comfy bed. Dorm beds aren't that great. We ate breakfast and parted ways at the airport. She got the rest of her stuff organized, hung out with friends, and hopped on the plane for Austin on Thursday. The layover in Orlando was too short, evidently, because Jet Blue lost her huge suitcase. Actually, this worked in our favor - we didn't have to lug it in the Prius - with Alyssa, Grandma, Katie and me. They delivered it to our door the next day. Katie's enjoying open skies and lots of room in the house. She'll be looking for a job this summer.
Katie wrote her own blogpost about the highlights of this past semester in Birthday, Sick, Final Performances, and Home for the Time Being. 

Alyssa 
While I was in NYC, Alyssa got her call back on one of the interviews: Milk + Honey Salon in the Arboretum. They're working on an Apprentice program and are willing to start her as a Shampoo Tech/Salon Assistant.  She'll move into the Stylist role as soon as possible. For now, she's happy to have a job at a really pretty new salon. She gives a great head massage during a shampoo, so I expect she'll make great tips! Since she's only working 3 days/week right now, she's spending a lot of time fishing with Josh - and having great luck! This will be the first summer that she isn't booked solid with classes since 2008! She is definitely relieved to be done with all that!

The Magazine Cover!

Michael

Kathya's Graduation Festivities!

Michael has several new blogposts up at his blog, In the Nica Time. His Tumblr blog was too unwieldy for him - especially with his limited internet access. But the articles are still up there until he can get them all moved over to the new blog. So now he's at Blogger.  One of the really cool things that has happened is that he's been published in the Peace Corps Magazine for Nicaragua. His articles, Motorboats, Mansions, and Monkeys: las Islets de Granada as well as The Great Volcan Masaya, were both in the March issue. And one of his pictures of Muelle de los Bueyes was published on the cover of that issue! Glad that degree in Journalism is getting some use!
His girlfriend, Kathya, graduated from college with a degree in Engineering. He was able to get back to La Paz for the graduation and did a little more sightseeing. I'll keep you posted as he puts up more articles/pictures.



Ron

Ron's still motorcycling over to the train station and catching the train to work. Most of the time, he likes this little trek - reading his Kindle while people get on and off the train. He's looking forward to UT's Spring semester finishing up - much fewer people on the bus, no bicycles squeezed into aisles, etc.

Ron's big news, though, is the sailboat he purchased on Mother's Day Weekend. Here's the update on Ron's "New" Boat. He's taking lots of trips up to Lake Texoma, 4.5 hours away. The boat is actually 44 years old - something great about that!! I'm happy to say that the air conditioner he ordered from Amazon just arrived today, so I might be able to brave the Texas heat overnight on the boat. I expect the cabin will cool down quickly with that!


Grandma
Did I tell you that after taking her car from her last Fall, my mom went out with a friend and bought another? A clunker with 130, 000 miles on it! She barely drove it, but desperately hated the idea that I was preventing her from driving. Last weekend, she threw her back out, so I ended up with the car keys. I've decided that much of this depends on the "presentation" of the info. So, for now, we are "sharing" the car.  She takes it for Mass on Saturday night when the parking lots aren't so crowded.  Going cold turkey on the car issue was just too much for her.

Nicaragua...really? For HOW long?

What's a mom to do when their child grows up and wants to go somewhere a little....dangerous? Learn to meditate is one option. But I'll have to save that for another post. Accept that always talking about our lives in terms of "adventures," actually sunk in. And so Michael wanted an adventure when he graduated from college. He wanted to join the Peace Corps. And they wanted to send him to Nicaragua.

Initially I was going to write about how it's been for him over there. And I will. But I'm still a little wrapped up in MY experience of it all. Suffice it to say, it's hard. I'm coming into a Holiday season without my first baby.  For the last 21 years, I've celebrated Thanksgiving and Christmas and his birthday and Easter with him. Not this year. And not again until 2013.  So I try to breathe through it. Lean into it. Whatever other little phrase that helps me get through the moment.  It comes in waves.

I can distract myself, there's plenty going on. Three dogs in the house, a greenhouse going up, Alyssa's cosmetology school, Katie (who IS coming home for Thanksgiving and I am absolutely THRILLED about that!), Josh (Alyssa's boyfriend) starting full time at the fire department at the end of the month....there's lots going on here. But even as I'm typing, two little tears squeak out of the corners of my eyes.  There's an incomplete feeling. And I think I just have to face it.

Do I put up his stocking? Will it just make me cry more?  He's just gone for two years, why am I making this so hard? I'm really not the dramatic type.

He has been with a really loving family in La Paz. And I'm really not bothered by the fact that he calls her Mama. (Yes, I heard him say that to her when I was on the phone with him a few weeks ago.) I actually am reassured that someone is there to be a Mama to him.  I know he'll do fine.

I, on the other hand...