Girl with a Curl

This week I started doing something a bit different. It involves driving to a large city. I normally drive through the back woods on highways and paved roads where I am more likely to see deer or a raccoon (lately a flat raccoon aka road kill) than I am to see another car. In fact, I frequently spot more deer than cars as I drive around.

But this week, I started driving in a different direction that goes south instead of north and a bit more east when I usually go west….

And I learned that there are places that have more than 4 stoplights. (Seriously, Houghton Lake has only four stop lights (if I counted right). One by the state police post, one by Chemical Bank, one by Pines Theater and one by the Hub — oh wait, they added one by Wal-mart so that makes five now…). Lake City has two. Grayling has three. And now I’m driving to a town where it is probably impossible for the average driver to tell you how many stop lights there are.

I get there early, and I haven’t really encountered in traffic jams, but I see the potential. I leave around lunch-time, and traffic is busy. So busy that I sometimes turn right in order to make a left turn when I encounter one of the few road crossings that doesn’t have a stop light. I do this because if I actually tried to make a left turn, I would be waiting forever.

I don’t think I have ever driven in a busy area this often. I should note I have only done it three times this week. This makes me an expert, right?

I am slower than the locals. They know where they are going, and they are comfortable. I am not as assured that the car that is supposed to stop really will stop, and I count to three before I pull out when my red light turns to green. The cars behind me really like this, and they are quick on the horn. It is only a count of three! And frankly, a few beeps of an annoyed driver is well worth me not being in a crash because a car that was supposed to stop decided that moment was the perfect time to run a red light.

In case you didn’t know it, there is a lot of construction US 10 near the Midland area. The two-lane highway is down to one lane for many miles, and it happens to be at a section where it is curvy. In their wisdom, MDOT poured a temporary strip on the edge of the existing roadway, so when you drive, you are actually driving on the new section and the existing curb rather than actual lanes. When their is a bridge, it is worse. The road narrows and feels so impossibly small that you feel like you are going to hit the bridge or the cement barriers any moment.

The worst part is when you are heading west and there is the exit that takes you into Midland OR going north to Clare. The exit into Midland happens to be located where the roadway curves ever so slightly to the right, and if you have to go to the right, you will immediately go on a bridge. Remember what I said about how the roads get really narrow? Combine the curve, the exit, the bridge and the construction, and it feels like you are about to squeeze into a bottleneck that is way too small.

The way this works, the cones and barriers actually force you to go so far into the exit that you feel like you are about to take the exit even if you don’t want to. You immediately have to curve to the right to avoid hitting the bridge barrier. The first time I did this, there was a vehicle right in front of me. I couldn’t see what was going on ahead of me, and I just hoped that there really was a road that would take me over the bridge. I was going slow, well below the posted speed, but it didn’t feel slow enough. Especially since the car behind me was so close that I couldn’t see the headlights on the vehicle. I was afraid I was going to have to hit the brakes and the car behind me was going to get close and personal real quick. I survived without a collision, but it made me wonder why in the heck I had agreed to this. When I signed up, I had forgotten that Michigan’s summer is really construction season…..

This drive to the big city is a temporary thing. I don’t plan to do this drive forever, which is a good thing since the gas price went up this week to $3.89 a gallon.

When I am not driving hither and yon or sitting at a Little League field, I have managed to do some home stuff. This is the first time in YEARS I have thought beyond just cleaning my house. I think I may just have time this summer (possibly) to actually install the trim that has been under our staircase for over a year just waiting for time. Maybe.

I was talking to a friend the other day who has spent the past ten years or so building a log home. She mentioned it still isn’t finished and noted that there is a lot of missing trim to illustrate her point. It is nice to know we aren’t the only ones…. She even said we were ahead of her because at least we had purchased the trim. She offered to show me how to install it.

Thanks for playing.

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Do you remember that we have a very tiny GIRL dog and a very BIG boy dog?

I think the girl dog (who isn’t even a year old yet) is in heat. I say this because the boy dog has gone NUTS. He will not leave her alone. He licks her and pushes her with his nose, practically lifting her up off all of her paws. He chases her around the house. He wants to be as close to her as possible.

And I have had to banish him to the outside.

This is only slightly less annoying. He is just outside the window looking in, and the girl dog is just inside the window looking out. He is whining, she just wonders why her friend can’t come in.

In case you forgot, I am sharing a photo of the two dogs. She is slightly larger now, but she is still smaller than his head. I am going to have to check into rates for getting him fixed….

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At least this sister-off doesn’t involve blood and hair-pulling.

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I am cleaning my office, and I am getting into all the cupboards and file that I haven’t looked at in years.

I found an entire stack of The Writing Parent newsletter, a ton of web site articles I printed off, old phone books and lots of stuff that I can’t believe I ever kept.

It is amazing the stuff that I am finding. And the amount of stuff I am letting go. I hope to trade in a bunch of my books to a used bookstore. They don’t pay cash just credit, but I can get more reading material. Woohoo!

Plus, we have the camper moved over to its summer location, and we have started “unwinterizing” it. I am looking forward to our first camping trip. I’m not sure when that is going to be.

***

It is FUNDRAISING time in our house. Just this week you could buy garbage bags, Krispy Kreme donuts or Hungry Howie’s pizza coupons ($10 for $45 value). Candy bars coming soon….

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I will be giving a writer workshop next Saturday, May 10, in Lansing. The workshop is Truth to Tell: Exploring Memoir

Go to www.peninsulawriters.com and click on the Spring Fling or click on the image to get all of the details.

pwspringflingwritingthing-4-web.pdf

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Specifically, I would like to address problems in parenting teenage girls. I have photographic evidence to one of the biggest problems:

In case you aren’t sure by the photograph, I will mention the problem is teenage boys.

In the picture, you will see my oldest daughter (who will be 14 in about 17 days) talking to not one but TWO teenage boys. She is in 8th grade. The boys she is talking to? 10th grade. And one of the boys (the one she is looking at) has been in pretty much constant conversation (through IM, text messages and phone calls) with my daughter. I have concluded that she has talked more to this one boy since last Friday (when the photo was taken) than I ever did to my first four boyfriends….

The boy is 15.

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The children are home today because of a “major” power outage in the Houghton Lake area. Power is supposed to be restored around 10 a.m. This messes with my plans for the day, which is to get the rest of my student papers graded. I also need to prepare syllabi for next week and get my online course ready to go too.

I hadn’t planned on it, but I already know that I will be spending a large portion of my time today answering the question, “Can we get on the computers?” I’ve already fielded this question about 10 times, and it isn’t even 9:30 a.m. yet. You would think they would figure out the answer by now. The answer is “no.”

This is Kirtland’s last week, and I start working for Davenport next week. I was looking at my summer schedule, and I realized I wasn’t going to have much of a summer break this summer.

The good news is that yesterday was the first day of May, which means it is the Momwriters’ anniversary celebration. It is a big one — 10 years. I’ve been a member since 1999. I have heard from my secret friend, and I’ve heard from the person who I am her secret friend.

And now I need to get to work. Later.

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I want to be able to express how I feel about parenting even a fraction as well as Kira does. You have to read her post to her teenage son, Tre. It’s title doesn’t give a clue to the depth and love it contains, “A note for Tre.” Sigh.

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I would have to say that I prefer free range, and I am pretty sure I am free range. Not sure what I’m talking about? Then you haven’t read this article in Newsweek: Are Modern Kids Coddled?

Helicopter parents hover over their children with the idea of fixing everything and smoothing everything before the child ever makes contact with it.

Free range parents is a newer term, one I never heard until I read the article above, but it means you let your kids have “free range.” There is even a blog about it.

With Little League, track and work, it can be difficult to arrange after school logistics. I can pick up Amanda and Autumn at 5 p.m. on the dot because the time I get out of work coincides with the time I have to pick them up (I could actually get them at 4:30, but I use that extra half hour to do some reading in the parking lot as I wait). If Maxine needs to go somewhere, I can ask her to wait for me in the library, which is right by the school. But if Justin has to go somewhere, I have to be there exactly when school gets out (3 p.m.), and I have to have sent a note with him to the school to say I would be picking him up. After I arrive, I have to wait in line to sign him out.

I don’t mind doing this because I understand it can be important for little kids, but if I think Justin is old enough to walk to the library by himself, or that his older sister should come and get him, it does bother me that the school says no. That isn’t possible. This means sometimes, I have to send Justin home on the bus to a home where no one waits for him because his sisters were all staying after school with various projects.

It isn’t that bad since Steve’s parents can meet Justin at our house and pick him up when the bus arrives there. It is just that they shouldn’t have to. I should be able to say, “my son is 9 and responsible enough to walk over to the library and wait for a half hour.”

The school has some weird ideas. For instance, it is “too dangerous” for my 12-year-old seventh grader to walk across the school parking lot between the middle school and the high school. Next fall, however, this same 12-year-old will be an eighth grader at the high school, and she will be expected to walk through that parking lot on a daily basis to get on the bus and/or go to her sports’ practices. She will still be 12, but somehow she will be magically transformed because the school says so.

In other words, I don’t think it is always the parents that are doing the coddling. I get pretty frustrated when the school interferes and forces coddling. When my kids were younger, they frequently forgot to take things like boots and gloves to school despite my reminders. I would get phone calls asking me to bring this or that. After a couple of times, I refused to bring them. I thought my kids could learn the natural consequences. It didn’t happen. Instead, the school supplied boots and gloves for my kids. What does that teach them?

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My mom has spent the last couple of weeks in Arizona. She even finally made it to the Grand Canyon (she was raised in Arizona, gave birth to two children there and yet she still had never been to the Grand Canyon).

Today, she is on an airplane whisking back to Indiana and eventually she’ll head home. I did not want to tell her yesterday that there was a fire raging within a mile or so of her home. I didn’t want to tell because I didn’t know a lot.

I first learned about it around 4 p.m. with an e-mail sent out to all the staff at Kirtland. I arrived home to see a newscast that was shot from the tire store on my mom’s road, about 1.7 miles away from her. The shot showed the Elks lodge, where I had my wedding reception, and behind it in the distance you could see the smoke and flames.

The fire burned 1100 acres and threatened a gas station and hotel right where you come into Grayling from I-75. More than 50 homes were evacuated from Karen Woods, and at least six homes were damaged if not destroyed. This came way too close to my mom’s house. From what I can tell, the fire started on the same side of 75 as my mom lives, and it went northwest. If it had gone north, my mom’s house would have been in the path.

I went to the web sites for TV 7&4 and TV 9&10 to see photos, but television web sites rarely keep information up for long.

I had photos on this blog from the tv stations, but I only put them here for my mom to see while she was gone. She is home now, so I removed the photos….

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