Back to Homeschool (Did We Ever Truly Leave?)

Meteorological Fall!!!!! Whoooooo hoooooo!!!

Welcome to my happy season. I'm not-not allergic to the outdoors this time of year, but I'm less allergic and over-it enough to leave a window or two open, and to go out and about without a mask. 

It's weird how different allergies can hit differently.

My autumn allergies are largely in my eyes with some dermatitis that marks the turn of the season. Which is a lot more tolerable than the more systemic allergies that involve throat swelling and hives and whatnot.

 At any rate, happy enough for the change of season. We've had rain. We've had turning leaves. And we've had a mild resurgence of the brown eyed susan plants.

Parts of each plant still looks like death, but we've got actual blooms going on!

I have missed the rain, is all I can say. It's so fresh. So breathable. And everything looks greener. 

The only thing that I have mixed feelings about is the return to full school year. Not that I don't welcome the routine and daily variety that a full schedule brings. The unstructured feel of summer can be a bit tiresome in its way. And I like that I can tell Wednesday from Thursday based on which classes are happening and where we need to drive. Every day has a little more distinct flavor in the school year. 

I also kind of love homeschool in some ways. Late elementary curriculum is learning wonderland! A veritable sampler platter of fun facts and interesting stories without anything too arduous or dry (at least not when I'm controlling it and how its presented). A little physics? A sampler of astronomy? A daub of history? Please, please, please. 

But the schedule fills up quickly, especially when trying to build in enough free time to be creative, run wild, and transition between all the above activities. 

 Ah well. We'll have a holiday break in no time at this rate. 

In the meantime, sally forth! Let's get fifth grade going!

Maybe???

It's been an exciting week on the sidelines of public-school action. The teacher's union and the district were in talks - with a strike looming - for the last several weeks. A little Deja Vu back to 2022. 

 Four years ago, the teachers actually did go on strike. We joined them on the line for a day, even. 

Amazing civics lesson in action aside, the experience was somewhat destabilizing. Every single day, they'd wait until the last possible minute to announce whether there would be school the next day or whether we remained in academic limbo.

 You had to be absolutely ready for a "FIRST DAY" every single day, even knowing it probably wouldn't really happen. The whole thing took long enough that nobody was ready to go back in when the strike ended! 

An omen for the year, perhaps. That teacher was not a good fit. 

We somewhat universally blame Ms. Meanie-Pants (alias but an apt one) for the series of events that led us to homeschooling. Although a heavily structured 7 hour day in a loud-as-fuck super bright box of endless stimulation was never 100% optimal, there might've been space to make it work before Ms. Meanie-Pants. But that didn't work out. Burn out is real.

Yadda yadda yadda... homeschool, homeschool, homeschool. Why do we even care about the teacher's striking or not?

Well, Allan is not totally separated from the public schools. Not only does she have an active IEP for services at the school, but she also attends art classes there.  

The way that the strike negotiations go can be a bit nerve wracking, as implied above. As usual, it went right up to the wire, with the union and the district trash talking each other extensively in the public arena and everyone in the community angrily taking sides. 

The teachers authorized a strike by 90% a few days before the first day of school. And the day before the first day of school, they negotiated until 11 p.m. at night. with hourly updates of "we'll let you know" from the district. Most of us woke up to the news - get your asses in gear, cuz school is happening!

Luckily Allan didn't have any art class scheduled on Wednesday (the putative first day of school) because I think that's kind of crappy for all the kids who went to bed unsure of whether they were starting school that day or not. I get some days get cancelled, but the first? From what I hear a lot of kids stayed home until next week based on all the shenanigans. 

We did eventually get in contact with the SpEd team and made a plan for the year, which will include a more gradual ramping up of services over the course of a few weeks. so things are still relatively chill at the moment.  

Chill. 

Which, of course, I'm deeply famous for being across the lands. 

They call me "The Fridge"! 

Obvi!

But honestly, it worked better with the way I've been gradually reintroducing a more structured school year, anyways. Part of me - just a little selfish part of me - was welcoming a strike. Because school started early this year! For Washington, that is. I know some schools start in August now, but we always have started the Wednesday after Labor Day. One of Allan's teachers last year speculated that they scheduled it this early because they knew contract negotiations might disrupt the start of school and they wanted to keep some space... Who knows, but plausible. 

The ramp up will continue with the addition of the Tall Mountain homeschool group on the Monday after next. And we're already working on our "core subjects" - math, ELA, and social studies. 

Math is math. We're doing ok with it. 

English I'm mostly outsourcing. For somebody who prides herself for her lexical prowess and compulsive textual verbosity, I'm not remotely equipped to actually teach writing. Especially not to somebody who is fairly averse to the whole experience. 

We do a lot of reading and discussion together, and Ms. Thing has always been fairly advanced in the reading comprehension. But things like actual writing assignments require a little external pressure. This year, at least so far, we've done well with an Outschool class. The teacher seems pretty dynamic, and the method involved a lot of graphical elements in the brainstorming and outlining category that I would love to get baked in early.

Social studies/history is the beginning of the endless school history churn with the Revolutionary War. Is it me, or did we just kind of restart American History every other year for several years between elementary school and high school, without ever actually getting much past the Civil War? 

Allan and I are reading a few grade appropriate books together, and I'm doing some additional reading to get a hold on it. Honestly, I am learning to dig it. 

While Colonial times and the Revolutionary War never particularly interested me, I'm making an effort of it with some additional reading and research. I did of course read a lot of the founding documents - Locke, the Federalist Papers, etc back in my Philosopher Queen days. But other than enjoying Hamilton back at its heyday, I haven't really looked into the history and all that super much since High School. And honestly in high school, my tutor had us reading A People's History of the United States, which doesn't focus a ton of on that part of the history. 

My Main Takeaways (feel free to quote):

* Probably biggest point: 

I'm assuming anyone over middle school age knows this to some extent, but I feel it doesn't get enough emphasis in the popular lore.

 After a gradual shift of power from the Monarchy to the Parliament (starting with the Magna Carta in 1215), England established a constitutional monarchy in 1690, roughly 80 years before the US was conceived.

 William and Mary had signed the English Bill of Rights in 1688 embracing aspects of Locke's philosophy. This drastically limited the powers of the monarchy in favor of Parliament, prohibited cruel and unusual punishment, granted freedom of speech within the Parliament, guaranteed free elections (though who could vote was still hugely limited), authorized the right to bear arms for self-defense, and... umm ok also prohibited Catholics from being Kings and listed a lot of ways they thought King James sucked balls. It was a work in progress!

Anyways, Parliament was notoriously corrupt and not particularly well representative of The People of England, but just to say The Founding Fathers weren't working in a vacuum, and boy was just about everything on the table at the end of the 18th Century for the US. Also, even during Revolutionary times, the wheels in Parliament were turning for additional reform and representation was vastly expanded throughout the 19th Century

 The Revolution itself was not really a war of ideas, and it definitely wasn't The People against The Monarchy! The Colonist's beef was that the Colonies weren't represented in Parliament. And also, they just wanted their damned rum (see next point).  

Also, even the Founding Fathers drank to the King a ton before shit got seriously ugly in 1776. The colonists largely considered themselves British citizens right up until Thomas Paine made himself a best seller and England burned a ton of bridges (figuratively and also literally) and killed maybe a few too many random collateral supporters. 

* Next point as promised: Really, it was pretty much about booze. I mean, not exactly, but also, why do you think they cared about "sugar" getting taxed or about enforcement getting improved on the extensive smuggling going on? The local economy in many colonies depended on rum and beer. 

* Everyone was drunk off their asses pretty much all the time. The average colonist drank 3 liters of rum a week by some estimates. And they also had a ton of beer, cider, imported wine...Which explains a lot about the early protests getting kinda ugly. Also, the war itself was really, really gruesome. Atrocities galore. And they were all still very drunk - alcohol was part of the rations, often an enticement in recruitment, and sometimes more plentiful than food. The officers were concerned about exessive drinking and punished drunkenness (sometimes) but also made alcohol plentifully available. Both armies seized alcohol from citizens and each other as well and many of the meetings of the Continental Congress involved imbibing on either ends to get the words flowing. 

* The Sons of Liberty (who organized a lot of the Stamp Act protests and the Boston Tea Party) would be called terrorists in modern times. They did some pretty violent destructive shit at pretty low levels of provocation. Tarring and feathering, massive property destruction, looting, some pretty close calls for straight up murder...Meanwhile similar protests carried out against the new US government in the 1780s was treated as insurrection by the same Fathers who had initially incited similar behavior pre-Revolution.  

* Anytime you say something about the Intention of the Founding Fathers... I assure you, aside from getting slog-ass drunk at the local pub and telling the Red Coats to bugger off, there was no particularly unified intent just about ever. The in-fighting and cross-party squabbles were vicious and highly differentiated. Everyone had opinions, they waivered and evolved, and it got bitter sometimes.  

* A sizeable percentage of the new United States hated the fuck out of the U.S. Constitution when it was first introduced. 

I find it really weird when people call it "WOKE" or somehow bad to describe how complicated and messy people were back then. I thought it was just, you know, actually making historical inquiry or wanting to give people their humanity.

 But regardless, yeah, the Founding Fathers and all their buddies were messy and had complicated motivations, but isn't that what makes it interesting? 

At any rate, this does not talk about the Revolutionary Time, but we're also watching Death by Lightning, which is a dramatic miniseries about the assassination of President Garfield by Charles Giteau, who probably maybe just kinda had some mental illness going on... maybe. Speaking of American history that was glossed over repeatedly in school! I had no idea! It's really good. And hugely fascinating. Allan stumbled onto some YouTube about Giteau so I looked this up. It's riveting stuff. Also, party conventions were way more exciting back in the day.  Garfield was not even seeking nomination when the Republican Convention decided to break up a deadlock by voting for him instead of the actual candidates (only took about 30 to 40 delegate votes before that happened). We just don't have that kind of fun these days. 

At any rate, it's on. Not raining again for a week or so, which is a shame, but I still accept the milder and gentler touch of autumn and its itchy itchy eyes. 

Happy September!!!

Summer Wind-down

Oh oh oh I don't want to speak too soon, but we might actually be making it through the quagmire of August. 

The days are noticeably shorter. We are just now getting some heavy rain! The HVAC people came and serviced all our units...

 And all the craziness previously described sprawls behind in a checked off checklist. 

Guest, check! 

Suffering weird cold brought by guest, check! 

DMV purgatory, check!

 Birthdays, check! 

Missing family visit due to weird cold brought by guest, check! 

Two other family visits held in the backyard to avoid passing on weird cold, check! 

Colonoscopy, check!

My prep required a week of the low fiber/residue diet. In my case, this becomes semi-fasting, since I don't necessarily have a lot of low fiber "safe foods". I made the best of it with skinned potatoes, boiled carrots and cheese sticks, and a side dose of Miralax to make the system work ok considering all that.

I suppose on the bright side, there really wasn't that much waste available for the giant purge, so that whole sordid affair was far less dramatic than a lot of people have described it. 

Yes, the purge. As we all know, the most prohibitive part of the entire experience involves chugging a shit ton (pun intended) of laxatives and then emptying one's bowels well into the wee hours so that your colon looks nice and clean and pink by the time you pull into the clinic rocking your adult diaper and clamoring for propofol!  

 I did the traditional split dose 4 liter prep, despite many horror stories of it being particularly emetic to folks. Honestly, it wasn't that bad for me. A bit like drinking dirty dish water, but without any mystery chunks of decaying food or anything like that. I am prone to dehydration and low blood pressure, so drinking salty water isn't exactly a novel experience for me. 

 It was admittedly a lot of liquid, even for me. But I managed the evening dose without any particular gagging or nausea in the prescribed two hours, and did the morning prep (got up at 3:30 for that one!) in just over an hour while sitting in the dark of my bed pretending that I was still fucking asleep because 3:30 a.m. is simultaneously too late and too early to be sane on either side. 

Undeterred by my 4 liters of ocean hydration, I also drank an additional 2 or 3 liters of Essentia water to get the dishwater taste out of my mouth. On the bright side, I'm pretty sure I did remain hydrated!

The whole thing was a bit nerve-racking. First just because i had no idea how gag-worthy it would be. And later because the laxatives took their sweet time kicking in. Five hours and change, in fact, even though I was promised to start THE PURGE within an hour of my first sip.

 I went from all prepared to spend a night upstairs in the master bath (comfy pillow, laptop, plenty of hard candies, a few drinks all set up for nought) to going about my usual evening routine and even trying to get some sleep once the on-call nurse told me to just carry on as normal and it would be fine.

 But in the end (har har), seems like things finally came together and came out. Not particularly dramatically, as I've been promised, but out nonetheless. I am so relieved no to have to do that again in a couple of weeks. Because it felt like this was a real possibility at about 10:15 p.m. the night before. 

The process itself was a bit nothing much. I changed into a gown and was shuffled from room to room where various nurses and doctors talked to me and made me sign things. Eventually they brought me into the actual room, had me part my gown for a glorious half-conscious moon, got me a little high on oxygen and then filled me up with propofol. Came to feeling quite relaxed and thirsty. 

I had a "diminutive" (yes this is a medical term, and I think it's cute so I'm saying that instead of 2mm) polyp that is now being tested to tell me when my next colonoscopy ought to be. 

Which means all good news: (1) the prep was adequate (excellent, apparently); and (2) there wasn't a gigantic mass of cancer OR small gremlins running around biting my colon from the inside (maybe I just flushed them out with the prep or they went to hide in the small intestine, but I'll take it).

 Either they caught a precancerous little butt-face mega early and saved my ass (har har) or shaved off a benign cosmetic lump. Either way, I feel ok with that result.  

Now I just have to wait for my body to get back to "normal". That whole brother-in-law bleeding story is still haunting me a bit. But so far, so good.

So, bring on autumn, I say! August is soooooo last month (almost)

Even the fairy garden is getting ready for fall. 

Allan decided the bees weren't getting quite enough noms in our garden as summer winds down. So, last weekend, we set about trying to make that right. 

We loaded up with a few brown-eyed susans, some echinacea and some lavender. The lavender is more of a mid-summer flowerer, but the other two seem to often go well into fall. And since both are common about our neighborhood, we definitely know the bees are fans. 

Sadly, the grand plant experiment seems to be failing a bit. 

The echinacea and brown eyed susans look dreadfully droopy. The lavender is looking pretty piqued as well, but it kind of always does, so it's harder to tell. 

Ah well. Hopefully not an omen for the coming season. On the bright side, while Allan was doing most of the arduous planting work, I got some clippers and deadheaded the fireweed. Yep, getting ready for spooky season with plenty of decapitations! But also, deadheading really just means cutting off flowers when they wilt to prompt plants to flower a second time instead of going to seed. 

I trimmed the fireweed down a good foot or so (it was getting seriously unruly). A lot of the plants had released a ton of cottony seeds already, so I thought it might be too late, but some of them actually are making more blooms now, so I'm feeling kind of good about that! I'll be more aggressive with the clippers next year!

 While I hope the echinacea et al. survive, I'm also pretty fine with letting the fireweed and some of our wild flowers spread into those areas. The flowering currant and the Oregon grape are doing pretty well, at any rate. 

So, cheers to summer 2026! It's a little premature to say that you didn't kill me, but I feel like we're heading in the right trajectory finally! 

May all the dead flowers make nummy seeds and the leaves get redder and redder! I'm so ready to do this fall thang!

Birthdaze Upon Us

Well, well well... I have an eleven year old...

It was a raucous celebration for a few hours followed by a near communal coma. Allan prepared by staying up until midnight, and then waking up again at 6 a.m. She actually held it together just fine, fall considered, so kudos. I personally, was a bit tired because part of the staying up was occasionally wandering into my room laughing (long story - there was a joke involved that was funny enough other than the lack of sleep). She got quite a great haul, we all got a lot of sweets. And things wound down fairly gently. We all even slept that night!

My birthday will probably just inherit some leftover cupcakes, but it's out there too! Yay for slightly older oldness!

In other ways, August continues with some steam

 Well. Probably more smoke than steam, but not too much of that on surface level this week.... but only this week. Who knows about the next week. 

Anyways, I mentioned our visitor last week had a cold by the end. It did not stay contained. Unshocking, considering the smoke thing and the "us all being on the same level for hours on end" thing. 

Andrew came down with it first and sounded like a good candidate for an operatic turberculosis in a brothel death scene. Allan had it by the next day. They each followed a pretty similar pattern of getting rapidly hit and then sniffling and coughing with decreasing fatigue on following days.

 I made it more fun by feeling maybe kind of tired and a little scratchy for one day, then better the next couple of days, and then kind of a little junky again the next day. Then having this lingering sore throat bullshit for a few more days plus a little extra stuffiness and the occasional, but all very subtle and within my normal stupid mast cells range but also... Like seriously, if a cold could edge... Damn!. Schrodinger's respiratory illness here!

Eventually it decided to manifest (I think) in a slightly stuffy nose, a slightly sore throat and a two or three day headache from hell. I have no idea. Andrew still sounds like he's about to keel over and Allan sounds 100% better. 

So yeah, August also continues with some snot... 

I sure hope that if I get identifiably sick, I get over it soon, because apparently you have to talk to the scheduler about rescheduling if you have any respiratory virus within two week of your scheduled colonoscopy. And mine is scheduled for the end of August. I am going to be annoyed if I have to reschedule this bitch. 

But Adella, you likely are saying because you follow me this closely, aren't you only going to be 44 this next birthday? Isn't the screening cut-off 45?

To which I say, I lost track of how old I was years ago, so how the hell do you know that?

Yeah, well, true I'm just a wee 43 going on 44 this Tuesday. Apparently different docs have different philosophies on when screening should start if a family member has had pre-cancerous polyps. My regular doctor was like "dude, don't rush this shit. You can have one next year. It's all good." Meanwhile, within minutes of saying hello, my new GI doc was like "oh you're over forty, I'm getting the scheduler in here." 

 Also, yeah, ongoing IBS symptoms and a generally wonky body plus being in a generation that seems to be coming down with this shit at disconcertingly young ages. So, yeah.

I was pretty ok with the colonoscopy idea after Andrew's relatively harmless one. But then my brother-in-law had one that resulted in ongoing bleeding. A few days later he had to redo colonoscopy prep in the hospital while bleeding out of his bum... and honestly that sounds miserable as all fuck. So I'm a little "meh" about this colonoscopy bullshit. 

Also, my magical laxative drink came premixed with lemon flavor in it, which no way won't cause heartburn and I'm not really sure what to do about this. 

 But hey... as somebody on social media would vehemently point out the second somebody suggest any particular screening process is less than a walk in the park with extra candy lollipops... beats having cancer. For the most part, that's a little disingenuous. It should be "beats any cancer progressing yet further before it gets caught and hopefully then treated, assuming your insurance isn't United Healthcare" which is a wee bit more nuanced.

 In fairness, colonoscopy actually can prevent a precancerous polyps from progressing to cancerous tumors, so it is one of the few screening tests that does - in fact - legitimately prevent cancer for a lot of people. And that's kind of cool. Nonetheless. I'm just saying, sure, staying up all night acting out the cyclospora summer vibe in order to have a thingie stuck up your bum definitely beats cancer, but seems like it's not always an either/or kind of thing. Also, many things beat cancer that are still not particularly fun in their own right. 

 Then again, I've had two endoscopies and the sedation for that shit is worth quite a lot of discomfort. Best lost-track-of-time blackout I've had in years!

Propofol, here I come baby!

**

Other exciting adventures in not-particularly-fun-things-to-do-in-August-around-my-birthday vein include trying like hell to get my license renewed. 

For all of my adult life, I have managed to renew my license online. This year, they now have a policy that you need to go in to renew it every other time you renew. I don't know if this is new, or if I've just managed to lose my license sufficiently often as to avoid ever actually renewing my license twice since I was a child. They are both quite possible. But anyways, the shoe finally dropped and clattered noisily on the floor. 

Surprise! They were tap shoes!!

Singin' in the DMV... What a miserable feeling... I'm...
Bored yet again... 

 By the time I went to make an appointment a few weeks ago (this being the moment that I discovered I couldn't renew online due to a postcard I received), appointments in every DMV within 100 miles of here were booked out until late September. I do hear Eastern Washington is lovely... when it isn't on fire. But well.  

Once I saw that, I figured I'd suck it up and try to just do a walk in. Turns out walk-ins are no longer a thing, exactly: I was informed - only after waiting forty-five minutes - in the West Seattle DMV line that this was a line to make an appointment, because the only people who could get same day service were people whose licenses were already expired or truly lost. Looking around at all the DMVs within reasonable distance, all had the disclaimer that "walk ins are extremely rare or unavailable" right on their web pages.

Reassured to discover the driving with an expired license is only a traffic violation with a $200 fine, I figured I'd just keep looking for last minute appointments, as some do seem to open up in the mid-morning on weekdays if you just kee reloading the scheduling page. They disappear just as quickly so you pretty much have to spend the hours of 8-10 reloading the scheduling page and clicking with abandon. 

BUT.... I did it!!!

As it turns out, the Kent DMV is only retro awful. Much more of a Purgatorial feel than a traffic hell. I snagged an appointment, got there ten minute early, and was fairly handily gotten in and out within about forty minutes. Which, honestly, feels like a miracle after my last experience. That I even got to the chairs part of the waiting experience felt like winning the jackpot. 

I am now the proud owner of a piece of paper that says my license is probably coming but if I don't get it in a month I should call another number that's probably extremely frustrating to deal with. Fingers crossed. 

...

So, seems like it's more fun to have birthdays when you're 11, given Allan spent the entire day receiving gifts, playing with gifts, and eating candy. But you know... little victories are still little victories. It was fun celebrating her birthday at any rate. 

And on we stumble, bellies full of cupcakes for just a little longer. 

Happy me-and-Allan's birthday week, everyone! Hope it's been magical for you!

Smoke Month Arrives

 If I didn't call it on this one.

Just a couple of weeks ago, my lovely PT Eric cursed us all by commenting on how the smoke hadn't been too bad this year...

NEVER ever say this heading into August. August is universally smoke month (and I will never get over the year that it continued through September right up to October, which is definitely possible this year) and the more confident and chipper you are about the smoke that hasn't yet materialized, the worse it will be. I didn't make the rules and I don't like them, but they are what they are. 

Anyways, yes, August arrived and Spokane - the largest city between Seattle and Minneapolis, by the way - got absolutely razed (well, apparently arsoned, which... what the actual fuck???).

 And damn, Eastern Washington is even more "on fire" than it typically is this time of year. Which is to say: really fucking on fire. I can't even wrap my head around what Eastern Washingtonians are going through right now but feels apocalyptic and relatively horrifying.  

My travails do not compare at all to that horror and devastation, but the smoke isn't exactly easy with my particular constellation of illnesses. 

And so it begins.... has begun... will begin anew... After a "smoke storm" we are gradually returning to an "on shore flow" pattern that clears most of it out. But it isn't clear-clear and it could change with the winds as long as Eastern Washington is doing its depths-of-hell thang. 

I'm a little worried this will just be the new normal until late September, but we can only pray for really favorable breezes and the odd monsoon, I guess. 

The chaos of August has actually been a mild bit muted in other areas. Zach, my brother-in-law, is a fairly chill guest and he and Andrew largely spent the days out mountain biking (smoke bomb permitting). 

Things got a bit more claustrophobic once the smoke set in, not gonna lie. 

There are really only two areas one can do much other than sleep in our house: the main floor and Andrew's office. Andrew's office is, well, Andrew's office. Leaving the rest of us to inhabit the main floor in tentative bonhomie that nonetheless wore down a tad with the constant toil of being-perceived by each other.

I personally perceived that our house guest had brought some kind of respiratory illness into the house, and while it didn't seem deathly, I'm still not enjoying that spreading around our household now... and I have some misophonia for coughing and sniffling that made me jump every time one of those events occurred... and then feel bad about visibly startling every time, because it's not his fault at all!

We all survived, and, yes, I need a she-shed with excellent HVAC in our backyard already. 

Otherwise, quite quiet. The playdates I thought were happening got cancelled. For Allan and for me. The meet up with a dear one of a dear one (dear one in law?) evaporated when they decided to go home a few days early. 

A few other things got cancelled due to smoke. And that darned office summer party has been taken off the schedule since Andrew needs to head back to California next week instead. I am not denying little twinges of relief there. 

We did have some excursions, just me and Allan, including a return to Seahurst to break in the new buckets

Allan had so much fun at her last Seahurst playdate making "potions" and "castles" with somebody else's buckets, we decided to make a thing of it. 

I took her out on Sunday, and Zach and Andrew took her to Alki on Tuesday morning when I was at a doctor's appointment. The buckets seem to be more than acceptable for sand salads, potions, and kitty palaces. So, all is well. 

I personally enjoyed a lot of up-close views of the crows and gulls squabbling over pilfered sandwich bread and playing in the water. 

It was a nice vibe. One of those "we could come to the beach every morning and just relax for the rest of the summer..." kind of feels. 

And then the smoke rolled in and that's enough of that.

So... kind of a mixed bag. I can't breathe and I'm exhausted but... 

Alive. So far. For a while longer. 

Cheers to the onshore winds. May they keep kicking around the area until the rainy season!

Incidentally, I decided that the Sony Alpha was my baby. And it will arrive at some point closer to my birthday. Just in time, as my Nikon no longer wants to connect to my computer for reasons unknown!

Hip hip hooray!

CoolPix but Are they Great Pix?

 We must be in August because my hair looks more like this...

... than the usual "full bodied straw" look. 

When the humidity gets about about 45% (which actually it doesn't here for most of the year), my "Irish curls" (which are really waves, as curls actually spiral while my hair is just kind of scrunchy) become significantly more noticeable. The camera always flattens it out, but in reality, I look like an 80s glam rocker once the humidity hits about 55%.

FETCH ME THE AQUANET!

According to beauty influencers on top of the movement (and hairstylists in other sources) Irish curls-really-waves are a type of hair that tends to texture unevenly. The under layers and lower parts of the hair are much wavier while the top of the hair is relatively straight. It waves up when there's moisture and flattens out when its dry. Also, at least in my experience, if you so much as look at it funny, the whole thing gets really really straight until you add moisture at which point it crinkles up again. 

If I actually wanted to style it, many stylists have told me I need a "curl activator" with some manual scrunching or adding in a sea salt spray and letting it get really beachy. 

I take the shortcut of "leaving it alone for as long as humanly possible and letting it become much much crazier than it looks in pictures." 

Anyways, most of the time I can't help it and flatten it back down one way or another. 

This is how it looks after I've either brushed it or dared to exist in 40% humidity. Still unruly for "straight" styles, but a lot more temperate. Nonetheless, a great barometer for the weather of the day. 

We're now truly into August and all that insanity! 

Bring on the parties and whatnot!

To warm up for the whole shebang, last Saturday I brought along the imp to a birthday party for some of the kids in Allan's homeschool group. It was listed at 1 - 3 pm.  A bit short for a birthday party, but brilliant in terms of wrapping up before anyone hit the overstimulated meltdown phase, so I supported it!

We made sure to be there in a timely fashion so as not to miss out on anything!

Spoiler alert, the party did not actually run from 1-3. We were, of course, the first people to arrive (surprisingly promptly at about 1:10 having apparently met very few of the typical transitional barriers that are typically encountered) and settled in just as the birthday family were bringing arm loads of activities and food for what appeared to be a bit more of a long-haul party than a two-hour quickie. 

There's a rhythm to most birthday parties. You have kind of a free play period in which food becomes increasingly available for the adults milling about and trying to balance granting independence and preventing mass casualties. About 30-45 minutes in, the grill yields fruit (or meat, really). Around an hour to 90 minutes in, there's some shenanigans with something sweet and frosted. A song or two. Maybe presents (depends on the family) and then people fairly rapidly start bailing after the first family gets up the gumption to leave. 

I knew we were in for it when the grill was still going after two hours!

In fairness, there was *a lot* for the roving gang of young 'uns to do. They started at the playground. Somehow ended up with balloon swords. Sat at the picnic table while adults loaded their plates with food. Ignored the food and ran off again waiving their balloon swords, splashing in the wading pond (no, no Allan didn't bring a bathing suit, despite many offers to help her pack it). Demanding a change of clothing and generally complaining about being wet. Complaining about the one kid (or kids) who won't stop splashing. 

General yelling... and later there were clay projects to be done and a pinata

I started suggesting we would want to go home "soon" at 3:30, as all of the kids were getting a bit wilder and closer to The Lord of the Flies making an appearance. But of course, there were many things that had to be done before we could leave. And it's just never ok to leave before the other kids leave. FOMO for realz!! 

Cupcakes did manifest while the children were splashing around in the wading pond. Then clay had to be played with. The clay didn't have blue and eventually the Steller's Jay sculpture got a little too smooshed, at which point I really thought maybe it was a good time to leave.  

Naturally, the pinata happened to get whacked open by somebody before the older kids got a turn. Allan had repeatedly begged to go earlier in the turn-taking because she was afraidshe wouldn't get a chance, so this was not received particularly well. 

Worse still, the candy was not exactly to her liking. I guess she likes Jolly Ranchers ok, but bazooka gum and tootsie rolls do not merit much esteem. The rest of the kids were pretty understanding, but sometimes you gotta take your losses and head out early. 

I would call it a generally successful party, but I will be kind of dead for the rest of the week. 

And of course we followed that up with a playdate with the same group on Monday. It was significantly ore chill. 

Apparently, we need buckets and shovels like ASAP because Allan has just discovered the joy of making "sand potions" and castles, so that's in the works... Anyways... 

Did I mention I mention the new camera rental? Yes, you're with me until the saga is fully completed at this point. 

This one is a bridge camera. It has some fancy schmancy technology that allows a much wider range of zoom, from very very zoomed out to very very zoomed in. And it's remarkably light compared to how it looks. Slightly lighter than the Sony Alpha. 

It does have quite the zoom. 

CoolPix

Compare and contrast with my Nikon... 

Nikon

In the first picture, the crow was perched on a light post many feet away, while in the second phoot, the crow was a few feet from me (waiting expectantly for me to offer peanuts). I probably could have zoomed in more on the Nikon and kept the full body in frame for preference, but the distance between the two is pretty impressive.

Here's another Nikon that got a little bit more of a zoom. This one was in a tree, but at a pretty near level to me and very definitely close by expecting to be fed. 

Nikon

Now the zoom part is impressive, but for me there's a way that the Nikon really brings the crows into focus that feels a little different.

I struggle to put a finger on it, but it's not a surprising thing, as the sensor of the CoolPix is smaller and I hear that can impact the crispness. 

The DSLR can give a lot of detail without it feeling over-processed. 

Nikon

I like how you can see the beads of moisture (it was a damp day). 

Nikon

And I appreciate the depth of field that really focuses the image on the crow itself. 

The Sony Alpha had a pretty similar quality to me... (I know I just shared these pictures, but I didn't have the camera very long!)

Sony Alpha

I took a series of these in mid-caw, ignoring my usual prohibition against auto-shutter. It navigated the movement really well, so that each picture was still pretty crisp. 

The Om meanwhile gave me some trouble figuring out the right settings, but undeniably caught a lushness pretty dramatically. 

Back to the CoolPix. There's nothing wrong with the images. They just feel a little different to me?

CoolPIx

 Another challenge with it is that when you are zoomed in, the small shakes involved in holding the camera are magnified enough that the autofocus can really struggle to keep hold on the image. I don't always love the Nikon as it can be fussy and have meltdowns, but the CoolPix is a whole 'nother level of constantly losing your image. Heaven forbid a bird actually moves! 

And it can grab some really "soft" looking photos.

CoolPix

For a slightly different comparison, I pulled the zoom back and bled out the color... 

Nikon DSLR

versus...

CoolPix

Maybe a bit more of a draw, although in larger size, I do like the Nikon DSLR picture better. 

But, also, there were more crows on the CoolPix visit so that never hurts... 

CoolPix

For contrast on the other side, this is with my Pixel 7a, which I have set on pretty low image size and resolution in order to save space. 

 I do give the CoolPix kudos for catching some level of flying better than I expected it to

CoolPix

Maybe a bit of a tie. I caught a little bit less with my Nikon a few weeks back, but I do like something about how the light bounces off the wings in both pictures. 

Nikon DSLR

So definitely not a terrible camera. It took some cool shots. It felt like more often than with the mirrorless or DSLRs the CoolPix was harder to keep focused and gave more fuzzy looking shots. But sometimes it took really "cool pix" and sometimes I take crappy photos with my DSLR, so definitely it's hard to landmark it. 

Still, the autofocus was by far the more annoying issue. It took a lot of work to get photos and - unlike the Sony and the Nikon - it just doesn't keep up with flying birds quite as easily. 

CoolPix

Caught a fairly cool finch, though, but again there was just a little squishy. I think I could tolerate that more if it wasn't so hard to luck into an actually focused picture!

And I do think this photo turned out pretty well

So perhaps it's more than sufficient for mid-zoom ranges and stationary objects. My bigger concern is that it doesn't seem to be exceptional at catching moving things and the focus definitely is less robust than the other cameras. 

At any rate, I wrapped up my test on the thing a few days ago and left it around for Andrew and Zach to investigate. Zach of course has been into photography for decades and has several specialized bodies and lenses of pretty much all type. So, I know Andrew was a bit curious what he would think. Zach held it for a few minutes, and proclaimed it "a toy" and that's about that. 

At any rate. August has come fast and furious and I've gotten very little sleep, so I'm just riding for the coffee to finish brewing to maybe, just maybe function.