Fall is coming and some Kidney news

I just logged off the orientation for the homeschool co-op we just joined. I did not plan to join a co-op because I thought we would be traveling to amazing places all fall and winter (I've had my heart set on returning to St. Augustine for years). But after the craziness of this summer, we all thought it might be good to hit pause on the travel-schooling. When I submitted my application to the co-op, M was still on dialysis and even a weekend away seemed impossible. I am happy to report that his kidneys are doing great. He will have a lot of monitoring over the next few months to make sure he's fully recovered, but as for right now, dialysis is a thing of the past and he's free to put salt on his food again (thank goodness). He can even do some light exercising again (also thank goodness for that). Next up is to wean off all the prescription medications he was put on during his hospitalization. 

An Odyssey

Taking the kids to a play has been on my list for a long time, but the pandemic put a damper on this for the last year and a half. Last week, I saw an ad for a production of the Odyssey that was being performed outside. My kids are all very familiar with the story, so I decided to take a chance and bought tickets for all of us to go. It rained all week here, but the skies cleared on the afternoon of the play. We took a picnic dinner to the park and watched a beautiful sunset right before the play started. This version of the Odyssey was told from the perspective of the female characters, and Odysseus was not really portrayed as the hero he usually is. They performed on an ice skating rink and the audience sat on bleachers for a slightly elevated view. There was no intermission and it was almost two hours long, with the final scene involving the entire cast and audience leaving the rink and hiking up a hill to see Odysseus reunite with Penelope. It was amazing! The kids followed every word closely, leaning forward in their seats and laughing and clapping along with the audience. All three kids know the stories from the Iliad and Odyssey pretty well, as well as Greek Mythology in general, so they were well positioned to understand an alternative perspective on the story. I didn't really know anything about the company, Quantum Theatre, but they are known for their progressive story-telling and using unusual spaces for performances. 

To prepare for the play, we read the playbill, which was available as a digital copy before the performance. We looked at the photos of the cast and the characters they were playing, read some reviews of the play and discussed appropriate theater behavior. We did our best to round up some slightly fancier-than-usual clothes, and fixed our hair (helped tremendously by fresh haircuts from Julie). 

In terms of Covid safety, they did say that all cast members were all vaccinated and that unvaccinated people should wear masks. The seats were movable and we were encouraged to "pod" up our seats by moving them closer together and leaving space between parties. The whole thing was outside. 

I could not have asked for better circumstances for a first theater experience, and I'm truly looking forward to going again. 

And So We Walk

Our summer travel itinerary is usually defined by trail races, or training for trail races. Necessary features of a campground for us were always more about the proximity to a minimum of a few thousand acres of state forest than any type of amenity like hookups or cable! Running is life, must find trails. I rolled my eyes sometimes when M would nix a place I thought looked cool because it only had 10 miles of trail. But for the most part, this parameter took us to really beautiful places that had good hiking, fishing, wildlife viewing and less crowded places to camp. On our last road trip we opted to stay 25-50 miles off the freeway and even though this added slightly to the travel time, I would do it again. 

With the race schedule cleared for the foreseeable future, and also the lack of either a travel trailer or vehicle (ours are still parked in Nevada), we have taken to exploring surrounding neighborhoods on foot. Most evenings you can find us walking in the cemetery or up to Squirrel Hill for some Italian ice. A few months ago we bought the kids pedometer watches and they love to see how many steps they can get.

Solo Time With the Kiddos

Like most people, we spent a lot of time together over the past year or two. Some of that was by design, but we got a little more than we bargained for with the pandemic. I dropped Max and Laurel off at my parents' house yesterday and I think it was the first time Max and Marko had been apart in a really long time. They gave each other big hugs and a secret handshake, which I thought was pretty adorable. The reason I dropped those two off was so M and I could hang out with Marko, doing the second of three "solo" nights with the kids. M is cleared for light physical activity and italian ice is renal friendly, so we went for a walk to get some dessert. We also visited the used bookstore and the game shop. The people at the game shop taught Marko and M how to play a new game. We bought Wingspan to try. We played a lot of cards on our road trip, but didn't have any strategic board games with us. When we got back here, we realized with everybody being able to read and do basic math now, we had outgrown a lot of our board games. Luckily (or perhaps dangerously for our budget), we are within walking distance to a very cool game store.

We did a "soft opening" for homeschool this week. We are reading the Dart and Arrow books for this month but only discussing the Juicy Questions. Marko and Laurel started working on the next math course on Khan Academy. I downloaded their social studies and science textbooks and they started reading them and doing a few of the worksheets that come in the teachers guide. We are using the Core Knowledge Series and the entire curriculum is free to download, although we don't really follow it that closely. We are swimming, biking and hiking for exercise. We are doing the activities from Brave Learner's "One Thing," and the theme is simple machines. And of course, we are doing poetry teatime. 

Even if we weren't all recovering from the trauma of M's injury and our subsequent separation and sudden end to our road trip, I would still probably want to ease into homeschool. However, it is a particularly useful approach right now because we are taking a lot of time to rest and relax, cry, and talk about what happened. Alongside that very necessary process, we are slowly adding back in things that we truly enjoy doing for school and hobbies and life. 

I have to constantly remind myself to not rush, to keep the margins around activities empty, to avoid worrying that we aren't doing enough. It can be very hard for me to not compare myself to my friends and their kids, many of whom are doing really cool things with their careers or hobbies, have nicer houses or things, or are planning awesome adventures. JOMO over FOMO (Joy instead of Fear of Missing Out). It is possible to celebrate other people's choices and be really happy for them, without needing to keep up. It sounds a little ridiculous that I struggle with this, because this blog is a testament to all of the awesome in my own life. But for every single thing that I have chosen, I had to give up pursing something else. There are only so many hours in a week, your money only goes so far, your mind can only handle so many inputs.