Flamingo Farming Update

I have received many inquiries over the past several weeks regarding the progress of our sunflower growing efforts at the Hope Springs Eternal Bamboo and Sunflower Farm.  And by "many inquiries" I of course mean the one time Shelya, in passing, said to me, "So something ate your sunflowers?" After the rabbits (my mom's theory) or the armadillos (Flamingo Joe's theory) nibbled their way through the sunflower plot, we pretty much ignored the garden until Joe finally had to mow it this weekend.
 

Note the utter dearth of sunflower plants.  Oh wait, here's one:

I think.  I'm really not sure, actually.  But there are three other plants identical to this one randomly placed where the rows of sunflowers were originally planted, so I'm assuming these are sunflower plants.  It is possible that the vicious roving gangs of pointy-teethed bunnies or armadillos who ate our original plants had eaten some other plants before getting to our plot and then, you know, pooped out some seeds from those other plants and now those plants have blossomed, but that scenario seems a smidge far-fetched even for me, the woman who thinks her children are going to grow up to be productive members of society.

Jamie and Jason also planted some baby's breath when the original garden went in.  It's possible that this is the only plant that survived:

But I'm leaning toward calling this one a weed.  I'll give it another week or so to see if it flowers and if it doesn't, I'll wait another month and let Flamingo Joe mow it down.

The picture above is just to prove to you that I can, in fact, grow flowers in my yard.  Ignore the weeds in the foreground.  I was going to take a picture of that bed from the front, but the weeds growing immediately in front prevented me from getting a clear shot.

But in other news of the flora at Casa Flamingo, our bamboo is flourishing due to the fact that bamboo is extremely difficult to kill and not a staple in the dietary needs of rabbits or armadillos.  And since we set our pandas free in the spring, the bamboo has no natural predators in our yard.  Do you remember this itsy bitsy stick of bamboo?

And this giant hole that we made our then-three year old dig (slave labor is actually encouraged when it's your own children you're enslaving)?

Well, here are the fruits of our three year old's labor, one year later:

Not bad, right?  That's about a year and three months' worth of growth.  Here's another clump that we planted the year or so before:

I really hope Flamingo Joe is remembering exactly what each of these varieties is called because that's probably key in running a successful bamboo farm.  Your customers rather expect you to know whether you are growing a faregesia denudata or a borinda albocerea, whatever those are.

Regardless, we have a few more years before we'll be able to quit our regular jobs and live off the earnings of our bamboo and sunflower farm.  That should give us enough time to figure out what we're actually growing.

Mr. Banks, Beast and the Duck

This blog post may or may not really be for general consumption.  If you are wondering whether this post is for you, ask yourself whether, even if the children are not your own, you enjoy seeing them shock the pants off their friends and family by doing things their parents could not fathom.  If yes, please proceed.  If no, check in with me next post.  I won't be offended.

First, the back story.  We signed Casey up for drama camp this summer, said camp to be held at the school he's been attending for the past three years.  Casey has attended drama camps for the two previous summers -- one at Berkeley Prep and one at the Straz Center downtown.  He was only 6 when he attended at Berkeley, and it was definitely a good program.  The summer he was 7, he attended the camp at the Straz Center -- we weren't that impressed with that program.  But this summer, Casey was very excited because he would be attending drama camp with several of his friends from school.

When he came home the first day, I learned that he had been given two parts (the children were doing selected scenes from several different Disney plays) -- Mr. Banks in Mary Poppins and Beast in Beauty and the Beast.  Now, I could certainly see him as Mr. Banks -- cranky and overbearing are character traits Casey can readily draw upon from personal experience:

But Beast . . .  I was a little nervous about Beast because being in love, tender, and reticent are definitely NOT character traits Casey can readily draw upon from personal experience.  As the the two weeks of camp wore on, I tried to weasel out of Casey exactly what he was going to be required of to do as Beast.  He refused to tell me.  Flat out refused.  At one point, I watched the video selection online that contained the song he was going to do and realized that the scene required dancing.  DANCING!  So I asked him if he was going to have to dance and he said no.  He told me he wanted to surprise me with everything he was doing.  I was forbidden by him to attend any rehearsals, so if I showed up early to pick him up and it was his turn on stage, I had to wait outside.

Now you need to note a couple of things about this video clip:

1)  I glued those horns on that wig.  It doesn't matter how straight you glue horns onto a wig if the wearer of the wig doesn't put the wig on straight.

2) Within the first 30 seconds of the video, Casey turned and glared at me.  I don't know why and he doesn't remember doing it.

Drama Camp was two weeks long, but at the end of the first week, Mace was recruited by the director to be Donald Duck.  So starting Friday of last week, Mace started Drama Camp.  Every day, the director bribed him with a car or a dinosaur to continue coming.  Mace was in the Mickey Mouse Club number, so he had to be on stage twice, at the very beginning and then again at the very end.  I felt pretty sure he'd be fine on stage the first time, but the second time was going to be at about 8:00 p.m., approximately 30 minutes past his normal bedtime.  The video clip below is from his second appearance on stage.  The first time on stage he was wearing white gloves, but he apparently lost them in the intervening hour and a half.

He was an adorable bill-less duck and I think he did everything he was supposed to do.  Thankfully, he did not get kicked in the head by the gymnast.

So this morning, we are all still basking in the glow of a successfully dramatic evening.  Casey cried before bed last night because he was sad drama camp was over -- apparently that's an inherent side-effect of drama camp.  It makes you even more dramatic.

Graduation Speeches

I attended a high school graduation ceremony Friday night for the first time since I myself graduated from high school, twenty-mumble-mumble years ago.  It was a large graduation -- 550+ students.  Several students were given the opportunity to make short speeches: senior class president, salutatorian, valedictorian and the class poet laureate (who read a longish poem written in annoying rhyming couplets).  Each of the student speakers naively told their fellow classmates that they had made the best friends of their lives in high school.  Such statements will be, in hindsight, regretful, but I guess it would be perceived as snotty if they said, "Fellow graduates, you have made the best friends of your lives -- so far."

Be honest -- before discovering Facebook, exactly how many of your high school "besties" were you in contact with?

After hearing three painfully shortsighted speeches and an excruciating poem Friday night, my newly-formed and now earnestly-held belief is that high school students should not be allowed to make any speeches whatsoever at their graduation ceremonies.  Given that they have spent the last twelve or more years filling (and subsequently emptying) their heads of facts and formulas that they may or may not need in the years to come, during which time they were given absolutely no practical information about how to live, there is just not enough time in the typical graduation ceremony for graduates to make speeches about going out into a world of which they know absolutely nothing.  If this is the moment these children must "commence" with their lives, time is of the essence -- there is no time for foolishness.

So I propose that only the following categories of people be allowed to speak at high school graduations (and preferably one from each) about their real world experiences:

1.  Individuals who graduated from high school and who are now on probation for drug and alcohol-related offenses.  It is fine if these people are still struggling with their addictions, so long as they can articulate how quickly you can destroy your future by making one or two idiotic choices.

2.  Individuals who worked fast food for three years after high school before deciding to go to college.

3.  Individuals who just knew that they had met their one and only in high school so either shacked up or got married, and four years, two kids, and a divorce later are struggling to pay the bills and/or child support.  (Even better might be the couple who made it, but who would speak honestly about their struggles in sending each other to college, juggling childcare, etc.)

4.  Dave Ramsey.

 

The Hope Springs Eternal Bamboo and Sunflower Farm

We have some friends who own a florist's shop on Memorial (The Family Flower Shoppe, if you're in Tampa and want to send Dad some baby's breath and tulips on Father's Day -- well tulips might not be in season, so you might want to stick with a more masculine flower like some pretty pink gerber daisies) and we found out that their son Jayson (who graduated from high school last night -- collective "whew!") was planting sunflowers in a little garden by their house for his mom to use in her shop.  Apparently one sunflower fetches $1 in the florist business.

Well, I love sunflowers -- any flowers really, so after discussing it with Flamingo Joe (by not actually saying anything to him about it at all), I told Jayson's parents that if Jayson wanted to plant sunflowers at our house and get more bang for his buck, he was welcome to.  [Now that I'm recalling how this happened, I am not altogether certain if that's how the conversation went -- it's completely possible that Joe offered our house for sunflower growing without discussing it with me but when I asked him just now if he remembered how it all went down, he got that look on his face that means he's not sure where I'm going with this and said, "Whatever."  So my version sticks.]

Pardon this short digression, but in addition to the many convoluted and possibly untruthful paths the above paragraph takes, I rashly declared a love for "any flowers." Not altogether true.  Several weeks ago Casey helped me pick out some flowers for some flower boxes on our porch and he chose these:

For some reason, these flowers make me think of sea monkeys, which doesn't really make sense because I don't think they look like sea monkeys, but they look like something else from the same era that you could grow underwater.  Does anyone remember what that was called?  

The real problem with those flowers is that they end up looking like this:

Or worse . . . this:

Ick.  As I recall, that's what always happened to the sea monkeys, too.

But back to my story.  Jayson and his dad, Jamie, liked the idea of growing sunflowers out here and promptly ordered sunflower seeds.  While waiting for the sunflowers to come in, Flamingo Joe and Jamie prepared the plot:

"Preparing the plot" meant Flamingo Joe dug soil up from one area of our property and moved it to another area with the tractor.  No one bothered to remove the weeds and grass (I use the term loosely) from underneath the area where the new garden was going, so weeding the area is going to be a problem that I will gladly allow Jayson to handle.

If you are familiar with our little piece of land, you will recall that there was once an oak tree here:

That oak tree died, so Flamingo Joe decided to cut it down a couple of weeks ago.  At the same time, though, he needed to cut down a smaller oak across the driveway.

This is where the smaller oak was:

 
And this is where it ended up after Flamingo Joe went after it with his chainsaw:

It suspended itself in the dead tree and refused to come down.

Joe kept trying to pull the smaller tree out of the dead tree by hooking it up to the tractor with the chain, but that little tree was desperate to stay upright and wouldn't let go.  Flamingo Joe kept having to cut sections off the bottom of the tree until he could get it down.

But this post is about the new sunflower division of the Hope Springs Eternal Bamboo Farm.  Two weekends ago, Jamie and Jayson came out and put the seeds in the ground.  Last weekend, I noticed quite a bit of squirrel activity in that general area.  Too much for our Anti-Squirrel Repellent System (Campbell) to handle.  I asked Joe if he thought the squirrels were digging up the sunflower seeds and eating them.  He said no.  I think he was mostly right.

When I went out to inspect the sunflowers that started sprouting up at the beginning of this week, I noticed that there were some sprouts with no leaves (just a little tiny stem sticking up out of the soil with nothing on it) and also some brand new sprouts that still had part of the shell on one of the leaves.  So I think that as soon as the sunflowers sprout, the squirrels are attracted to the part of the shells that are still on the leaves and nibble off the shell and inadvertently take off the leaves.

But it does appear that we may have some sunflowers that may make it past their first day from the soil:

The sunflower is the sprout in the middle.  My vision of an entire yard filled with sunflowers is probably not going to come to pass, unfortunately.  Most of my landscaping visions fall short in the actual execution of them, though.  In this case, at least, someone else is doing all the work.

Flamingo Joe has started making noises about a koi pond -- currently there is an oversized goldfish occupying our small aquarium, waiting for his new habitat to built out in the yard.  I don't hold out a lot of hope for the successful breeding of koi, but I'm supporting Flamingo Joe's newest dream.

I need a place to raise my sea monkeys.

The Homeschool Convention

Heidi and I attended the FPEA (Florida Parent Educator Association) Homeschooling Convention last weekend in Orlando and it was a rocking good time.  That could be overstating it a wee bit . . . but we did have fun.  I will be homeschooling Casey in the fall and Heidi's homeschooling future is still up in the air, but we both have been researching like crazy for the past four months or so.  Word to the wise: if you are ever considering homeschooling for the first time, do not let a visit to the annual FPEA Convention be your first glimpse of all the resources available to homeschoolers.  Because if it is, the sight of the Exhibit Hall alone may scare you off the whole thing altogether and you will beat a hasty retreat out into the hot parking lot of the Gaylord Palms Hotel from whence you just came, where you will have to catch the shuttle to take you all the way back to the ESPN Wide World of Sports overflow parking where the Gaylord's employees and others (like me, for example, who arrived a little late in the morning), had to park because there were thousands upon thousands of homeschoolers at the convention:

I took this photo from the very back of the vendor hall so there is no way for you to grasp how many people were at this convention, but it should give you an idea of the number of vendors.  It was very disconcerting to be surrounded by thousands of teenagers and children who walked around as if they had the sense to pull their pants all the way up and did not seem to mind being within five feet of their parents.  I only saw one inappropriately-dressed teenage girl with short shorts on and I assumed she just followed a nice homeschooled boy into the convention hall after he had held a door open for her somewhere else in the hotel.

So we checked out curriculum and I bought timelines and science kits and a Well-Planned Day planner (it took me two full days to get up the nerve to buy that planner -- to actually set myself up for "well-planned" days seemed like a bar under which I was destined to fall short).

There's Heidi buying a box full of Greek and Latin roots.  Wondering why it's relevant? Here's a sample:

Card 1:  Able -- Able means to be possible.

Card 2:  Edible 

Card 3: (cartoon picture of man eating a sandwich on front of card) Edible. Able means to be possible.  Edible means able to be eaten.

Card 4:  Potable 

Card 5: (cartoon picture of drink and lime halves on a tray on front of card) Potable. Able means to be possible.  Potable means able to drink.

Card 6:  Perishable

Card 7:  (cartoon picture of tray with fresh fish beside picture of fish skeleton) Perishable.  Able means to be possible.  Perishable means to be able to become rotten.

Card 8: Navigable

Card 9: (cartoon picture of sailboat on water) Navigable. Able means to be possible.  Navigable means able to navigate or find your way.

You get the idea? How helpful would those cards have been when you studied for the SAT?  If you would like a set of those cards for your very own, go to www.avenuesofthemind.com and I'm sure they'd be happy to send you a box for about $20.  I tried them out on Dez and Shelya the other night and they both stared at me like they were waiting for the punchline, but they're all grown up now and really can't feel the excitement lurking in Greek and Latin roots -- it's a forgivable (able to be forgiven) offense, really.

We also went to several helpful sessions at the convention.  We attended the Orientation to Homeschooling session and there did not appear to be any misspelled words in the Powerpoint presentation.  

Because of our extensive research, Heidi and I pretty much already knew everything presented in the orientation, but we were glad we did the class because then we knew we hadn't missed anything in our research.  And we got to look around the room and see about a hundred other skittish faces, so it was comforting.  

I also attended the "10 Things I Wish I Knew Before I Started Homeschooling" session.  You may be surprised to learn that "you still have to bathe your kids even though they're not going to school the next day" was not on the list.  I was.

During our downtime, we explored the hotel.  The Gaylord Palms is incredible (not able to be believed).

That's the atrium area.  It's ringed by restaurants and shops (and a large movie screen that showed family-friendly movies all weekend) and in the center is a miniature fort, complete with live alligators:

If you wander around long enough in there, you'll also find the Everglades:

(I'm going to stay in that room up in the tree next year -- if the tree is scalable [able to be climbed].)

You'll also wander into Key West if you're not careful and find yourself split in two. 

  

Heidi's divisible. 

Able to be divided.  

Help me, please, I can't stop myself.

Hello. My Name is Flamingo Joe and I'm a Car Addict

I am going to tell you the story of Flamingo Joe's new car in this post, not because I think it will make a better blog post than, say, for example, the story of a fellow coworker kissing Flamingo Joe at his goodbye happy hour a couple of weeks ago, but because I think the story of this car should be recorded in the Flamingo Family History, as I believe it may lead to either Flamingo Joe's utter ruination or his salvation (as it concerns his relationships with cars -- not as it concerns his relationship with Jesus, which is on solid footing).

So don't expect to be entertained -- this is merely a recitation of the facts -- it will by no means be carried off with the same wit as a post about Dez crashing a singer's gig at Whiskey Joe's, for example:

So don't get your hopes up.

Several weeks ago, Flamingo Joe's sister, Julie, called him up and asked him if wanted her husband, Jeff's, 1965 Triumph Spitfire.  Jeff and Julie moved from San Diego to Durango, Colorado last summer.  Two of their three kids are enrolled in college there now and Durango is beautiful, so they upped and moved.  (See, now, if in ten years I suggest to Flamingo Joe that we move to the same city where our kids are in college, I will be accused of babying my children.  Somehow Julie never gets faced with these accusations, but my husband likes to tell Casey that he will be homecolleged.) For some reason, Jeff did not want to take the car to Durango when they moved.  I say "for some reason" because the reason that Flamingo Joe stated to me was the reason, was almost undoubtedly not the actual reason.

Why am I so suspicious of my husband, do you ask?

Flamingo Joe has trouble telling the truth when it comes to cars.  Typically, his lack of truthfulness arises when he finds a car he really wants, but believes I will not let him purchase (or ship across the country).  A 1988 Toyota MR2 and 1979 Corvette come immediately to mind.  Because he believes that I will deny him the life-changing opportunity of owning completely useless cars, he resorts to omissions regarding the car's true mechanical condition and insists that he will be driving said car back and forth to work and save lots of gas money because the car is waaaay more economical.

So he almost always comes to me saying:
1)  he has a plan to unload his current (perfectly good) car or truck (usually by giving it to a family member -- we ended up with the corvette three or four years ago when Joe "needed" to give his truck to his father, who had recently moved in with us and was bugging Joe's mom to get him a car; the Department of Motor Vehicles should have suspended Grandpa Ray's license 15 years ago and everyone knew it; so Joe basically unloaded the truck without transferring title and leaving the car parked in our own driveway);
2) the new car he wants is not new, will cost less than $5,000 usually, and he will use whatever recent windfall we have received (tax return, work bonus, you get the idea) and should go to paying off our existing debt, to purchase this older model car that could almost be cool if it ran consistently and looked better;
3) the car he wants is drivable and will only need minor repairs; I don't even bother pretending to believe this one anymore.

I have learned to ask Flamingo Joe a very important question when he comes at me with a car scheme -- the conversation goes like this:

Flamingo Joe: "I have a proposition for you . . . "
Me: (not waiting for him to finish) "Does it have air conditioning?"

Because I have learned that NONE (count them . . . none) of the cars that Flamingo Joe purchases have a/c, and that all of his promises to drive said car back and forth to work are absolutely worthless when the temperature rises above 85 degrees.

We live in Florida -- the temperature rises above 85 degrees over 300 days a year.

It's not like there is no explanation for Joe's complete absence of morals when it comes to trying to get a car he really wants -- he loves cars.  He just loves them.  So it appears he cannot help himself when he is overcome with car desire.  Even if there were therapy for such a malady, I wouldn't really want him cured of it.  It's a neurosis I can deal with.

I could go on and on along these lines but I'd hate for my husband to feel attacked, so let's just say that when Flamingo Joe told me that Jeff and Julie wanted to give him the Spitfire if we would split the cost of shipping it across the country, I only sort of believed him.  For all I know, he agreed to exchange Mace for the car and is just waiting for an opportunity to pack the boy in bubble wrap and ship him off to Durango.

So a few weeks ago, a car transport truck pulled off the road at the end of our driveway and unloaded the Spitfire:

We had to tow it down the driveway to the house.  As we were towing it, I was thinking back to the conversation Flamingo Joe and I had when he told me about the car.

I distinctly recalled him saying that the car ran.

That evening, Joe put gas in the car and it started.  Oh well.

Then all the gas leaked out through the hole in the fuel line and it stopped running.

Then Flamingo Joe fixed it.

For the next couple of nights, Flamingo Joe took the kids and Grandma (and okay, I confess, me . . . but only once) for rides up and down the street.

Since then, I've had to rescue him twice.  Once right down the street and once about a mile away.

But it is a really cute car, can legitimately be called a classic, and due to the lack of a roof that fits over the after-market rollbar, completely air-cooled.

The good news is that Flamingo Joe quit the job he actually had to drive to and now works from home.

Three days ago, Joe said, "I have a proposition for you . . . "  Before I could ask him if it had air conditioning, he said he was thinking of giving his truck (which is actually not his truck at all, but is titled in Grandpa Ray's name and is the truck Grandma bought Grandpa Ray after Grandpa Ray drove Joe's MR2 into one of the supports holding up the back porch stairs) to a family member in Idaho.  Uh . . . I thought we got to skip this part of the new old car acquisition process?  Where on earth was he going with this?  A car is involved so there is definitely something deceptive going on -- I'm no dummy.  Maybe he's on to me -- he knows I cracked the code.  I must have looked very suspicious -- he had changed the game on me so I was having a hard time maintaining my calm "I'm-taking-you-seriously-and-don't-suspect-a-thing" face.

So he pulled out his new game-stopper, "I was thinking I would take a road trip to Idaho with Casey to get the truck out there.  We could stop in Durango and stay there a couple of days.  It would be fun for Casey and I."

Did you SEE that????  He pulled the father/son bonding play on me.  An ordinary mother couldn't resist such a play, but I've been deconstructing these schemes for almost 15 years.

I can only assume he agreed to trade Casey, and not Mace, for the Spitfire.

Help Wanted

You would think, that in a slow economy, entrepreneurs would be extremely cautious about opening up new businesses.  In Tampa, businesses are closing left and right and left again.  Entire strip malls are sitting empty.  Salons close in the middle of the night, leaving their poor highlighted customers high and dry.  And probably even more telling -- the Disney Store closed.

The Disney Store.

A few months ago, a bar down the street, The Airplane Hangar, shut its doors -- though in the last 6 years, I've never seen more than 3 cars in the parking lot at any one time.  Within a week, it seemed, a new set of bars took its place -- Glo and Crazy Horse.  Can you guess what kind of bars they are? 

Let me give you a hint:  

Yep -- we've got ourselves a couple of nudie bars now down the street. 

How convenient.

The rearing stallion was installed about three weeks after the bars opened -- probably because the same three cars that frequented The Airplane Hangar were still the same cars frequenting the new establishments.  I assume the new owners wanted to catch the busy travelers' eyes on Hillsborough Avenue. I can testify that the stallion is eye-catching -- I  nearly wrecked the first time I saw it.  

At first it was just the horse.

Same three cars.

Then red lights were installed in place of the stallion's original eyes.

Same three cars.

Then a paint roller cover made the stallion anatomically correct.

I screamed bloody murder in my car and scared my children.

The paint roller cover was removed.

Then the horse was draped with white twinkle lights.

Same three cars.

Then the owners apparently figured out that the people driving the three cars weren't inviting all their friends to join them because the real draw to the new bars was lacking in some way.

So now they are hiring.  The sign has been up for two weeks and it does not appear that all (any?) of the positions have been filled.

I guess the economy isn't so bad after all.