Birthday and Mother's Day

There were two holidays in the Artax household this weekend. Jonathan had a birthday. And, in the US, it was mothers day. (Ok. Is it mother's day? Or mothers' day? Or mothers day? Where does the apostrophe go? If anywhere? Is it my day? Or our day? Or just a day about mothers? Do you see how it makes a difference?)

For his birthday party, Jonathan invited a bunch of kids from school to go ice skating. For the mother's party (mothers' party? mothering party?), I spent a lot of time in bed. Because bed was snuggly-warm, and it has been cold here again the last two days, with a lot of rain. And because I didn't notice that Tim had turned off all the heat in the house until I was walking around freezing and glanced at the thermometer and found that it was barely over 60 degrees! So I totally feel justified in spending the whole day under the down comforter. What else is mother's day about if not snuggly-warm bed and chocolate? (If it's actually mothers' day, with the apostrophe shifted over, then it might be about something else, but I'm still claiming the bed and chocolate for myself.)

Saturday night, we went out to dinner to celebrate the two holidays. We couldn't decide on a restaurant, so I proposed buffet dining. Everyone eats whatever they want to eat.

I had to take a picture of what Jonathan wanted to eat:

A plate of pickles and cucumbers, a plate of applesauce, and a green slushy. That was dinner. He did go back later for a slice of meat and a pile of French fries, but he barely touched the meat and fries after eating all those pickles and applesauce. No wonder he is getting so tall so fast!

Meanwhile, on the house front, it has been nearly two weeks since we put our house on the market, and the house has not yet sold. But the drum set sold. And some Nintendo stuff sold from Tim's childhood (yes, Tim has been saving Nintendo stuff from his childhood for 30 years!). There is still much more to sell, especially the house. It makes me very very tired. In fact, it makes me so tired that I think I will crawl back in bed, where it is snuggly-warm. And maybe eat pickles.

Ice Skating

I told Jonathan he had to do something athletic every week. It could be running, it could be a team sport. But he had to do something. And he could choose his activity, unless he didn't choose, and then I would choose for him.

Jonathan chose ice skating lessons.

And since he chose ice skating lessons, and it sounded like fun, and there were adult lessons at the same time as the kids' lessons, I signed myself up for ice skating too. And Jonathan and I have been taking ice skating lessons since January.

Ice skating is fun!

I have learned how to stop, to glide, to glide on one foot, to skate backwards. To skate backwards on one foot (kind of). To turn from forwards to backwards while moving. To spin!

Today after my lesson ended, Jonathan's teacher came over to find me. She said that Jonathan is a super star in her basic level 3 class, and that he should be in private lessons, and competitions! Because he glides and spins and skates backwards and skates backwards on one foot. And turns from forwards to backwards while moving. He is a natural!

I feel like a proud parent, yes I do. But part of me is jealous for having been shown up by a 10 year old.

Adventures in moving part II

Our house went on the market today.

If you know of a nice family that wants to move to our house, then send them our way.

Until someone buys the home, you can see the house here: http://www.utahrealestate.com/1297909

I also shamelessly stole some of the pictures from that link, shown below.

Here it is, our house for the last eight years.

Our lovely kitchen, with the hickory cabinets.

Dining room.

Living room.

Garden path.

There are more pictures on the website, but the pictures are small. It's a lovely home, and will be lovelier still when all our stuff is gone. If you had any reason to move here, any reason at all, I am sure you would love to buy our home. And you would definitely be welcome to offer more than the list price. No problem.

Meanwhile, we get to keep our house clean and tidy for the next three months while we try to sell it.

Sigh.

So much to do.

Adventures in moving, part 1 of a gazillion

Because classes have ended, and because I was working all weekend at a conference, I took the day off today to do some cleaning and preparing for our move. 

How does one really prepare to move? You can clean, and you can sort, but can you really finish all that must be done? All the cleaning? All the sorting? Eventually your time is up and you just have to move. Ready or not! Here I come!

We're going to be ready.

Ha ha.

We are planning to put our house on the market next week. And we have called moving companies to give us cost estimates next week. That means we need everything clean, and we need to decide once and for all what stuff will stay and what will go. And where it will go. And when. And how? How in the world can it possibly go?

I started my day in the basement, in the yellow room, with the storage shelves. There was one shelf, I knew, with all the white picture frames. I don't want the white picture frames anymore. I would take out the photos, and box the picture frames for donation. And that job would be finished in less than an hour.

Only under the picture frames were several folders. And in the folders were three years of Jonathan's artwork and reports and pictures from preschool. And so I spent my first hour looking through photos, and thinking about how small Jonathan was. And how funny his artwork looked. And how life used to be back when he was two (there were instructions on potty training!) and we lived in Texas and his teacher was Miss Janie.

I eventually pulled myself away from the preschool folders, and did some yard work and other chores that needed to be done.


But later in the day I found myself sorting picture books. Over many years, our family has gathered many, many picture books. And these days, no one reads those picture books. It is time to donate them to a family who will love them as we loved them. Only as I started looking through the picture books, I remembered those evenings reading to Jonathan, or having him read to me. Here were the books he used to pick out over and over again. Many of them I had memorized at one point. And the pictures! The pictures were little slices of memories. That time won't come back again!

I couldn't donate them, Reader. I pulled out a few just for myself. And then a few more. Ok. I pulled aside a good third of them to read to myself when I am feeling nostalgic. Hello-Goodbye Window and Madeleine and Kitten's First Full Moon.

And then the toys. No one plays with those toys anymore. But each one of them has a memory. The jungle set we bought in England for Christmas. The stroller and shopping cart that were often roped together to make a train or subway. Remember how Jonathan used to run around the living room pulling them? And the wooden sword and shield from the castle in Wales.

Really, how do people get rid of stuff? We don't use it. We won't use it. We don't need it. But it represents happiness. It does. All those memories lie on the floor in the basement, and on the shelves, and they sit there year after year, waiting. Just waiting until the day I pull the stuff down again, to try to sort it, to dump it, to give it away! And then it jumps on me and attacks me! Nostalgia! How did those days get so far away? How did the world change so drastically?

I don't want those days back. I don't.

But the stuff! I want the stuff. The stuff is Jonathan, age three. Or age four. Or Miss Janie. If I give the stuff away, maybe I'll lose all those memories. I don't want it. I don't need it. I won't use it. But I'll cry if you make me give it away!

Boo hoo.

Spring and random events

Spring has come. The crocuses have bloomed, and the daffodils, and the popcorn tree. We have flowers on the nectarine tree, too. And one of the plum trees.

We have a lovely yard in the spring.

Of course, now that it is spring, the yard wants care. It wakes up and wants you to pull the grass out of the flowerbeds and the flowers off of the gravel path and the gravel out of the lawn. It doesn't do these things on its own. Why not? The lawn, the gravel path, and even the flower bed are carefully delineated. You would think they would know....

Even the old apple tree is growing leaves and new sprouts. This has been a very nice apple tree, pink apples, and someone will love them in September. Someone else.

***

Last night, over at the church, there was a dance party for families. It was a surprisingly fun event. I was not very keen on attending, and Tim was out of town, but Jonathan wanted to go because there were refreshments. (What? That's a reason to want to go?)

When we arrived, the DJ, a musician friend who lives up the street and around the corner, was playing a mix of old dance songs from every decade going back to the 1940s. Every decade. Somewhere in the middle, Jonathan learned to dance the Macarena -- after we older people remembered how to dance it from way back in our singles days in the 90s. For variety, we also learned to line dance to the Boot Scootin' Boogy. And we lined up for the Bunny Hop. And there was even a little polka to the Chicken Dance. Those who knew how also did some swing dancing, and some Latin dancing. Jonathan and I didn't know much. But we bounced around just as happily as the two-year-olds who were so glad to be free to run around the gym at last! Free at last!

It ended up being true fun for the truly uninhibited. And I was surprised at how much I loved it. What a great idea!

Families used to go dancing in these parts all the time -- at least every weekend. I know this, because I have great-great grandparents, and great grandparents, and then grandparents, who owned a resort out by the shallow freshwater lake just across the valley. In the summer months starting before the 1920s, they earned a great deal of money, in good years and slow years, by hiring a big band to come play at the lake. In 1928 they purchased a larger resort, with a famous indoor-outdoor dance floor. Buses left the nearest town at 9 pm on Saturday, so residents could come dance until 1 am. My grandparents grew up dancing, and it remained an important part of their business until a fire burned the dance pavilion in 1968.

I never got to dance at their resort.

***

This morning, Saturday, 8am, I had to be up early and on campus to judge student research talks at an annual college event. Because Tim is away, Jonathan came with me. He attends a math circle every Saturday anyway. He was willing to go early and hang out in my office while I did my judging, then take himself to his classroom an hour later. I had also given him the option of staying home alone. He is old enough to be ok for an hour or two. But he wanted to attend his math class.

When we were all done, Jonathan confessed that he probably would have had more fun staying home. He didn't learn much because the instructor covered material way over his head, without much explanation. Ouch.

I helped out with Jonathan's math group last week. I've been running these math circles for several years, taking Jonathan along. I've stayed with the younger children, though, as Jonathan has moved into older classes. I realized last week that the older classes have changed. A lot. The emphasis is less on "cool math stuff you can do for fun" and more on "hard competition problems you can do to impress your friends and others." The kids in the class seem more interested in tricky problems, and answering quickly, than exploring something new, or examining an old idea from a new angle.

I noticed too that a lot of the children who used to come have dropped out, even the children of other math professors. After seeing the emphasis of the class, and some of the interests of the other students, I'm kind of surprised that Jonathan wants to keep going. Being awesome in math competitions is fun and rewarding, I admit. But when the class is tailored to the interests of those who have more domineering personalities, and want to show their speed skills, and include students three years older, I am turned off myself.

Is it really possible to run extracurricular math events that don't devolve into tricky speedy problem-solving training grounds? For older children? Would anyone come?

***

While you think about that, here is another picture of spring.  A crooked one.

Reaching out

I've been doing outreach activities.

On Wednesday, I ran math games for the teenage young women in our church group.

Thursday, it was my turn to help out with after school math at Jonathan's school.

Friday, I agreed to be on a radio program talking about math and pi day.

And this morning, Saturday, I organized math activities for kids on campus.

Outreach is very important. We need to encourage kids to appreciate math, and to help the community realize math is fun and useful, and a skill that can be developed.

But four outreach activities in a row is a lot. I have used up my entire reservoir of enthusiasm. My smile muscles hurt. Ouch.

I'm going to write papers for a while instead. With adults.

And organize my house.

Next posts: how to organize an international move, parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, up to 70.

Announcement

I promised an announcement, but haven't posted one, because life has been busy. Life is always busy. There are always other things I should be doing first. And maybe there will be a better time to make an announcement.

But meanwhile, while I'm not making an announcement, it's hard to post other random stuff, because why post something random when there is a big Announcement to post instead?

So without further ado....

We are moving to Australia.

I've taken a job at a large public university in Australia, starting in August.

Starting in August, stopping in September for a four month leave while the family will be in New Jersey, and then starting again in January 2016.

Why?

Because Australia is a very nice place to live.

Because the job looks like a lot of fun, and completely different. And I needed something fun and completely different.

Because Tim and Jonathan wanted to go to Australia, if we were going to move.

Because if you're going to have a midlife crisis, why not move to Australia?

Because Australia!

So now what?

Organizing, cleaning, selling stuff, moving stuff, visas, paperwork.

Australia!