Prepping

15 May 2013

The last two days haven’t been very exciting.  Kaleb’s been studying for and taking a huge mid-term exam in Honors Algebra II, which is college level work, and on the one hand I want to be very proud of him but on the other hand I want to scream.  The amount of whining and moaning and complaining I’ve heard the last two days is enough for a lifetime. 

Yesterday I was home all day with him, trying to motivate him in the midst of “I don’t know any of this stuff” comments.  I tried to help him find ways to remember, to seek out definitions on the internet, to rewatch lectures from the class, but he just rolled on the couch in agony and got more than half the practice questions wrong.  When I checked his answers and he realized the error of his ways, tears and more screams ensued.  It was very emotionally draining for both of us.  Fortunately, the sun was shining for most of the day so I got a little walk in and didn’t feel like I’d wasted an otherwise perfectly beautiful day.  Ugh.

Today was nearly a repeat of yesterday as he took the test today, so I had to be inside monitoring it. I’d never believe a kid could sit for 9 hours straight doing math, but he did.  We won’t know the score until we get back from our road trip, but I’m just glad it’s over.  Then it took me another 3 hours to figure out how to scan the documents, change them to PDF form, merge them into one – only to find out the file was then too big to email anyway, so I had to send each page one at a time.  It was my own form of agony and I nearly ended up in tears.  It hasn’t been pleasant, these past few days.

Kory was working over at a friend’s house, putting trim on their remodel the last two days so at least he didn’t add to my frustrations.  He also got the front end aligned on our van, which should make the new tires we just bought last longer.  He’s been busy and away from home, which has been good, considering all the stress going on at home.

I’ve spent a good deal of time planning out our road trip.  We leave in the morning and I needed to be sure we had everything – especially food items since Kory’s diet is so restricted and grocery stores in this country are far from extensive in what they carry.  I’ve been to the store more than once these past few days, stocking up on things he can eat.  Today I made a pasta salad and a Mexican corn/bean salad we can bring along to supplement his meals.  It’s a lot of work to keep that many alive, I tell ya.

The car is about half packed up so we’ll be rising early tomorrow to take off.  It’s an eight hour drive to Oslo and we’re meeting friends from Bellingham for dinner there tomorrow night – staying at the same hotel and going to the parade together on Friday near the castle.  Norway’s big CONSTITUTION day is the 17^th of May (mall decorations above) and there’s been a lot of spiffing up around our place inside and out in order to have everything looking it’s best.  National pride really shines this time of year.  One of our neighbors was just livid that she planted a nice little hydrangea in the planter outside the front of our building and someone took it right out of the dirt and walked away with it.  She called the newspaper, not the police, to report it stolen.  I thought that was interesting.  I guess she feels stealing plants is news worthy.

I spent 2 ½ hours today washing floors and cleaning up our place because Kory called a guy that put an ad in the newspaper about needing a place to live.  It wasn’t the best timing to have him come look at the condo today, but he scheduled it nonetheless.  I could have cried for all the cleaning I had to do to make it presentable.  And now that it’s clean – we’re leaving town!  It’s just like when we get our lawn at home all looking good then we go away and don’t even get to enjoy it.  Oh well, we have guests staying here while we are gone so they will appreciate the lack of dust bunnies, I’m sure.