Bees

This morning there were bees swarming in the back yard. They had been living in a hole in one of the trees and were now moving to another tree. Dave decided to domesticate them. So he and Lena put on long-sleeved shirts and bee hats and went after them. Lena blew smoke at them (which apparently calms them or knocks them out or something along those lines) and Dave put a pillow case over one bunch and Lena's bee hat over the other. TJ, Louie and I were watching from the screened in porch. TJ yelled at Lena to put her hat on. To which Lena replied "Dad has it." Dave eventually managed to get them into the boxes his first bees had come in. His bee instruction book said: if possible seperate the queen from the drones. All of us looked at the angrily buzzing boxes and said it's not possible. I think they've calmed down a little, but for now they are sitting on the porch while Dave figures out how to get them to stay in the hive. A very exciting morning.

Surprise, Surprise - I Got Lost Again.

So yesterday I went to work with TJ as usual. She had a meeting with a research patient, so she left. When it was time for me to leave for the tutoring, I realized she still had the car keys with her. She said I could come pick them up, so I left for the building (which I'd been to for the first time that morning). I was very proud of myself because I was able to walk straight to the building. I was imagining calling home: "Guess what dad, I didn't get lost!" What's that phrase...don't count your chickens before they hatch? Surely you've figured it out by now, but I did get lost. I found the building without any problems. Finding the room in the building proved much harder. None of the doors I saw looked like the one I'd gone in that morning. When I came to the last door, I followed two ladies in. It put me on a staircase, but since I remembered going up (or maybe it was down?...) the elevator I went ahead. They were going into a key access only door on level 3, saw me and asked if I was going in there too. I tried to explain where I wanted to go and they sent me in what they thought was the right direction. So I took the elevator down to level 1, found someone at a desk who looked like they worked there and asked them. They sent me to the basement. Once I was there I asked yet another person who took me to a different section of the basement. Someone else down there called the researcher in charge of the study to see if she could find out where TJ was. Eventually I gave up and went back to the office to wait for TJ. The sad thing is I knew it was in the Research building, I knew it was room 3211, I knew the kid was there for an overnight EEG sleep study, and I knew the name of the head researcher, but none of that helped! So that was my adventure yesterday.

TJ and I are getting ready to leave work. The twins have a lacrosse game this afternoon that's about a half hour away. We (TJ and I) are picking up Louie and snacks and meeting them at the game. After the game, the twins and I are going to go the the MBA...well I don't know what it's called, but they're performing several one act plays. (MBA is the boys school that is the sister school - so to speak - of Harpeth Hall which is the girls school the twins go to.) So that should be lots of fun.

The bees seem to be doing well. (I am relying on Dave's impression of them. I haven't actually been out to see them yet.) They have already eaten the queen out of her sugar encasing and are going through large amounts of sugar (apparently you have to stock them with sugar/sugar water for the first few days/weeks).

One of the ducks have disappeared. The prime suspect is the large coyote seen running through the field a couple days ago.

The fish are doing well, however we discovered that two of them need aerated water, so there is a straw stuck in the bowl and everyone blows bubbles into it whenever they walk by.

Dave has a large vase of pond...life. There are tadpoles, leeches, weird water bugs/spiders that swim around, and some dirt and algae. It really looks quite disgusting. Dave insists the leeches aren't leeches, but everyone else thinks they are (you can see the suckers). TJ suggested testing Dave's theory by having him stick his hand in the water and hold it still for several minutes; If they bite, they're leeches, if they don't, they're not. Dave didn't seem anxious to try it. I don't know if anyone had thought about swimming in the pond before now, but they definitely aren't anymore!

And this is a picture of me wearing the scarf from Rojbin's mom.

Kurds

This morning was a nice slow morning. I slept in a bit and read some of my book. (TJ had meetings to go to this morning, so I didn't go with her.) This afternoon TJ and I met with a Kurdish family. They have a daughter who might have Angelman Syndrome (AS) that is participating in TJ's research. We needed to ask them some questions about the girl, Rojbin (with the 'i' sounding like 'ee') They're a family of six; the uncle (who I didn't meet), the mother, a boy in 11th grade, a daughter in 9th grade, Rojbin (I don't know what grade she's in, but she's 9.), and a daughter who is probably in kindergarten. The mother's basic English is good, but she still needs a translator. The uncle usually translates, but he couldn't be there today, so the older daughter was going to translate. But she ended up mostly watching the two youngest and the boy translated. Both of them speak English well. They moved here six years ago from Turkey. Rojbin had a heart attack when she was 20 days old. Luckily she was in the hospital when it happened. But the doctors aren't very good and the hospitals are very prejudiced. The Turks won't let the Kurdish into the hospital unless they speak Turkish and if they don't have money they make them sleep outside. (And here 'have money' means in addition to the medical fees, e.g. a bribe.) They didn't do anything about Rojbin's heart for a year. They said she was too small to do the surgery immediately. They were hoping that Rojbin would grow and the heart would fix itself. She's been on a feeding tube for several years because she might have reflux. (They're not sure because every doctor they talked to - and they went to many - told them something different.) Now they're trying to get her to start eating food again, but because she wasn't allowed to for so long, she refuses to eat it now. But all in all she is doing very well. She can walk, she can say a lot of words (she loves to say 'okay'), and she has a lot of hand signs. She loves to give kisses. When I first came in she took my hand and kissed it and then gave me her hand so I could kiss it (she did that more than once). And she really loves to blow kisses. It was very cute. Before we left, Rojbin's mum gave TJ and I each a lovely Kurdish scarf. (I'll try to put a picture up later.) Mine is blue and TJ's is green.

CiCi's, Prom, & Louie

The last few days have been pretty much the same. I help TJ in the morning and then go to tutoring in the afternoon. The boys are much more open to help than the girls are when they're working in the workbooks, but they all ask for help when they're on the computers.

Friday night I went to the opera La Bohème with Rosie. Lena and Rosie got tickets from their choir teachers, but Lena had to go to lacrosse, so I got her ticket. It was really neat. The singing was incredible and the sets were beautiful and extremely elaborate. There wasn't much of a plot line and it was all in Italian (I think) but there was a little video screen at the top with subtitles.

Saturday the Girl's Club met at CiCi's. Only five girls came which was a bit of a disappointment. The other girls wanted to come, but their parents didn't bring them. There were two moms that were going to bring a bunch of the girls, but the moms never came to get them. They were all really bummed. So Donna and I decided we would transport the kids anytime we went out of the neighborhood. So now we have to get release forms.

Saturday evening was the twins prom. Their friends and dates all met at one person's house for dinner and then came here after the dance and spent the night. I slept with Louie so TJ and Dave could check on them periodically. (Someone always sleeps with Louie because he has seizures - or used to.) Louie kept flopping his arm out...on my face. He woke up around 2 AM because he heard other people. He didn't believe me when I told him it was still night-time, so he got up. TJ put him back to bed and we both stayed with him until 4 AM, but he wouldn't fall back asleep so I went back to my bed and TJ stayed with him.

Dave's bees arrived this afternoon. We are not quite sure what to do with them because you're not supposed to put them out in the rain and today has been raining on and off. We also don't want to leave them inside in case a curious animal (or Louie) accidentally set them free. The twins just brought home some little goldfish that were table decorations at prom. We have to find a cat safe place for them to stay.

Tutoring

Monday and Tuesday I went to the middle school tutoring program for the Burundian immigrants. Monday I helped one boy with his science. I don't know how much he actually understood. Science can be hard enough without trying to learn it in a foreign language. Then I helped two boys; one was working on multiplying decimals and the other was working on adding and subtracting fractions with different denominators and mixed fractions. They picked it up quickly. When they finished, I went into the computer lab for a few minutes and helped several kids. They get to play math oriented games on the computer. In one of the games the kids have to run around obstacles and avoid monsters while looking for the number to complete the equation. In the other game they have to shoot the meteors flying at them (it's set in space) and a number will appear at the top of the screen and they had to shoot the equations that equaled the number.

Tuesday I helped a couple girls for a few minutes (the girls and boys take turns on the computers since there's only a few computers) but the girls didn't really want help, so I went to the computer room and helped out there.

Today I went to work with TJ. I helped her catch up on paperwork and enter stuff into a database (just when I thought I'd escaped all that!). She was very thankful and surprised how much I got through. It was a pretty good day. And the weather finally warmed up! It's been cold and drizzly for the last couple of days.

Stolen Pictures!

The first is of me with my glasses (as promised) the rest are ones I stole from Jen. However, I do not feel guilty doing so because A.) I took about half of them and B.) I told her I would. So enjoy.




Vern (a volunteer from NC) and Jen.

It takes at least 4 North Carolinans and 1 Yankee to make a batch of cement.

Me and Jen out by the gate of Olive Tree

The best group of volunteers ever!

Me and Jen.

Jen saying goodbye to volunteers in the middle of the night in the rain. (I was up too! I took the picture.)

Jen and I were getting ready to play Nertz.

The saga of the locked pantry: First Jen tried picking the lock. When that failed...

She came in with a drill...

but decided to try a hammer and screw driver first.

Here is the lock in the various stages of destruction.

Here is Jen - victorious over the lock!

Me in the office, taking a brief moment to relax.



These are the results of sleep deprevation.

This is the volunteers driving her crazy.

(One of) Our flooded sidewalk(s).

The Purple Castle.

And this is the lovely dog Jen adopted.

Two Posts In One Day?!

The girls club was good. Donna wants it to be for at-risk girls to give them positive role models and ideas of what they can do. She wants to bring in mentors from the community to talk to the girls and take the girls on outings they don't usually get to have. At the next meeting we're taking them to CiCi's Pizza. Donna gives each of them a dollar at the end of the meeting and they're allowed to spend half of it, but they have to save the other half. Then they each pay Donna fifty cents (out of their dollar) for CiCi's so they learn that nothing is free. Donna also plans to take them to skating and to the mall, but wants to wait until she's a little more sure of their good behavior.

The girls are mostly good, but they've grown up in situations where good behavior is not enforced or expected. So we lay down some firm ground rules: no fighting, no stealing, no cussing, no boyfriends. The boyfriends part surprised me a bit (these are after all elementary school kids) but apparently it's a real problem. So if they break any of these rules, they're out of the club, but they can earn their way back in (I'm not sure of that process, but it likely includes being on best behavior for a period of time). Keeping the girl's attention was difficult and they liked to talk over Donna, but those are all things that I think can be changed fairly quickly. Donna said they are much more respectful to her than they are to their teachers at school. I suspect this is because Donna has clearly stated what she expects of them, that her expectations are because she cares, and that she doesn't have to (and won't) put up any misbehavior.

The girls were super excited with all the things Donna got them. She got each of them a cloth bag to keep their things in, a paper tiara to remind them they are beautiful princesses, notebooks and pencils, a mini easter egg with candy in it, and socks to wear to school the day before a meeting as a reminder.

So at the meeting, we set down the rules, handed out the goodies, stuffed plastic easter eggs (to be donated to a church for their Easter hunt) and ate some snacks. I think the girls had a good time and I suspect the club will benfit not only the girls, but their families (it will hopefull instill a little responsibility since they have to transport the girls to everything) and Donna and myself. I'm excited about it.

Team William

So I realize I've been neglecting the blog again and I apologize!

Monday we made a Sam's run and stopped by Pearlington and Tuesday we drove down to Houma. Jen wanted to see what some of the other camps look like since Olive Tree is different. We got a little lost in Houma (completely my fault!) but we got to meet the Houma managers. They took us to lunch at a chicken finger place. We also stopped by an animal shelter because Jen wanted to look at a dog there.

Wednesday we went to look at a different shelter, but couldn't find it. We tried again Thursday when we picked up our Sam's order and found it. The dog Jen had gone to see was a mama and the pup (about a year old) was more mellow than the mom so Jen took her home instead. Turns out the dog gets motion sick (not a good thing since we had a long drive home!) We got back, had a quick lunch and then headed for the airport. There must be an unbreakable law somewhere that says anytime Julia flies, something has to go wrong. The plane had no problem taking off, but landing was another story. It had been raining very hard (both in NO and TN). There was some turbulence on the flight (the captain had the flight attendants sit down and buckle up for most of the flight) and when we reached Nashville, they couldn't land immediately. They circled around a few times hoping to land, then announced we were going to fly north for a little while and circle back later. So we did. Coming back, we were flying through lightening. There wasn't really any rain (I guess we were too high up for that) but there were flashes of lightning going off around the plane. It was beautiful to watch, but also nerve wracking. Lightning is definitely more fun to watch from the ground. We finally landed but couldn't pull into the gate yet because another plane was in our gate. So we waited for about 10 min. and then they moved us to another gate. So the flight was twice the length it was supposed to be, but we made it safe and sound.

I slept in a little yesterday, ran a couple errands, and lazed around the house. Today I got up early (but not as early as I was in NO). TJ, Louie and I went on a walk to raise money to teach kids with Down Syndrome how to read. The girl who organized it has a brother named William so she called the walk Team William. This afternoon I'm going with Donna (who is Louie's aid at school). She started a club for at risk girls to get together once or twice a month. Today they're going to dye eggs and donate them to a church. So I'm going to help her out a little.