I signed on with a tutoring company last year but nothing came of it. This year I renewed my background checks just for the thrill of sending my fingerprints hither and yon. I wasn't surprised when I didn't get any reasonable assignments from them. Since they follow the school calendars, their year starts in September and by now most students would have received at least a month of tutoring. But on Sunday I got a request to tutor four kids in one family, which is quite a windfall--one trip, four students! I was their third assigned tutor. The first one got in a car accident before starting, the second one bailed for reasons I never learned, so I got the call.

This morning while I was working with Victoria I got a BREAKING NEWS flash via email: a shooting on a bus in Columbus--one block from the kids' house. Yikes. But everything was quiet by the time I got there, and it turned out I know the family to be tutored. How weird is that? I don't know anyone! The mom opened the door and the first thing she did was laugh, "Oh, you're the tutor?!" In a nice way, I mean. We like each other. The kids are all very cooperative, too, which is a treat.

After that, it was almost time for kung fu. While Victoria did whatever it is that they do in there, I was next door making an ocarina. It looks more like an empanada. The pottery book I was reading claims it will work, but as I was driving home it occurred to me that I should have put a hole on the side opposite the finger holes.

It is late and I still have a pretty long to-do list; however, I am also in the middle of Russell Brand's My Booky Wook. It is nothing but immensely entertaining. As I am awfully fond of being immensely entertained I believe I will go read some more of it.

I started to respond to lonebear's post but then realized I was not contributing anything of value to his thread in remarking that inasmuch as I am usually interested in both religion and education, I am surprised that what I find most striking in this article is the accompanying photograph. Lightmans, I love your bookcases! And your walls are my favorite shade of yellow!

For weeks I have attempted to find a primary care physician, given that my birthday was approaching. Someone on LJ had recommended a doctor, so I called their office but they don't take my insurance.

So I looked up doctors listed in my area on my insurance provider's website. Called the first one, but they were not in the network. Neither was the second one I called, so I decided to telephone the insurance company and ask for doctors. I was given three names. The first two are not practicing at the addresses listed by the insurance company, but I tried calling them anyway and one is not taking new patients. The other is not practicing at all. The third guy's office was closed at 3pm on Friday. The recorded messages advised me to call back Monday morning, which I did just to be thorough but I was not surprised to learn that the guy was not taking new patients.

Feeling annoyed--I really hate phoning, by the way--I called the insurance company back and explained what had happened. "Oh," the very nice voice explained, "you may have had trouble because you were looking for a general practitioner. Let's try to find an internist for you." Whatever you say, nice voice. I got three more names.

Success! The second doctor I called was happy to schedule an appointment for me. I went yesterday morning to meet with Dr. Ortega, who I will be delighted to visit any time I decide to develop an allergy. She is a peach of a gal but she is an ALLERGIST working in an ALLERGY CLINIC. First Health Network, I think I hate you.

The good doctor was kind enough to give me a quick evaluation and order bloodwork to save me a trip once I find my actual doctor. She noted that my blood pressure was on the high side. Oh, really?

When I got home I called the insurance company again, not to rail (the phone answerers are not the culprits here, I assume) but to find out which lab I should visit. I was happy to hear that a nearby lab was on their list, but just to be sure I called the lab next. Sure enough, the lab no longer accepts my insurance. Yeah. So I called back, got a list of labs and finally found one that has not dropped them ... yet. I will go ASAP, but that's looking like Monday.

Dr. Ortega also recommended her gynecologist, who no one will be surprised to discover does not accept my insurance, but that recommendation made me think that maybe I don't need another primary care physician if I find a gyn who can do the check-up things. I got another list of doctors and the very first one was willing to see me next month, so either this ordeal is drawing to a close or some fresh hell awaits me.

My church bought the land behind the main building with an eye toward expanding our facility. Then stuff happened and we have no means of expansion but we do have that nice expanse of flat ground. The guy who keeps our grounds looking awesome tore a patch out of it to re-sod bare areas up front, so Victoria and I planted pumpkins back there. I had just read Food Not Lawns, in which (among other things) the author advocates tossing squash seeds in vacant lots: guerrilla gardening.

We didn't tell the guy, though, and he dumped a big pile of brush on top of our pumpkin patch. That did not discourage the pumpkins. The vines rose through the sticks and produced big, fat pumpkins. We sold seven of them at the service auction today. My fillip of marketing genius was to name each one and have Victoria decorate the name tags. There are still a few out back that haven't turned orange yet. I think we'll have another five or so before the season's over.

The other exciting news is my new toy. It was supposed to be a birthday present, but it came in an Amazon box addressed to me and I was expecting an Amazon box anyway, but not one with a Kindle in it. So I opened it by mistake but of course I had to start using it right away. I am enjoying it immensely.

Winfield was lovely, better than ever. The weather was gorgeous, my sunscreen worked, Jennifer was a blast, Victoria was too, and the music was excellent all over the place. The trip did involve a lot of air travel time, though, so I got some reading done. I can recommend Harry Truman's Excellent Adventure as a fun history ramble written in mercifully large type (I need new glasses something fierce). Anne Lamott's Grace (Eventually), not so much. I had enjoyed Bird by Bird but this book was too whiny for me.

And I pretty much loved reading Holy Hullabaloos. Subtitled "a road trip to the battlegrounds of the church/state wars", it presents chapters based on Supreme Court decisions. I learned a lot, it was fascinating; however, the author set my expectations way too high in his prologue. He claimed to be inspired by Sarah Vowell's Assassination Vacation, which is a brilliant book marked by the deft application of devastating humor. This guy, Jay Wexler, is some kind of humorist as well--at the end of the book he advised that I check out his humorous writing online but I can't make myself look. Throughout what is otherwise a fine book he has inserted the clumsiest jokes and stories. Here and there I did smile (his imaginary conversations held by Supreme Court justices in particular are really funny) but for the most part it was just annoying.

So I winced my way through the book and found myself agreeing with Professor Wexler often. In the final chapter he discusses teaching evolution in schools. Since each chapter also includes a road trip of some sort, he visits the Creation Museum and gives a thorough description of what he sees there on the tour. In a paragraph analyzing his reaction to creationists he says, "...what I think we should do is treat creationists with some teasing that occasionally creeps over to snarkiness, work as hard as we can to stop creationism from influencing our public policy ... but ultimately recognize that those who reject evolution are citizens just like us who are entitled to our respect, even if we disagree fundamentally with what they believe." That sounded fine to me when I read it on Sunday.

But when I was standing in someone's kitchen on Tuesday, listening to a mom talk about her upcoming trip to take her kids to the very same museum I was unable to treat her with teasing that crept into snarkiness. The best I could do was stare with what I hoped was more indulgence than horror. "What would Jay Wexler say?" I thought frantically. It probably would have been something super corny. I just kept quiet. I think I would have been more vocal if it had been someone else talking, but in the year or so that I've known her this mom hasn't given me any reason to believe that sort of conversation would be productive.

Yep, it is time to head to Winfield again. Victoria and I will meet up with Jennifer there for a bunch of music and vitamin D. I spoke with Christopher tonight and he is pretty psyched about work, which started this week--next week they're sending him to Michigan. He was wondering when we (V, actually) would be coming to Maryland and I am guessing it will be around Christmas. Victoria is in a play again, so I'd rather stay in Ohio until that's done. I do want to see the terra cotta warriors while they're at the National Geographic museum. It's going to be weirder than usual, however, visiting. Both of the big kids are in the house so I am not sure where V and I will squeeze ourselves in. I guess we could stay with Brian's mom.

I love my lj friends.

The mechanic gave my car a look today. The catalytic converter and oxygen sensor cause a problem that is intermittent at present, so I am thinking about waiting until it's a real problem before replacing them. Everything I read says that these things rarely go bad, but I've already replaced them once. Maybe everything I've read only considers cars below a certain age. Maybe that age is seven.

It was car day. Once I got my car back, we drove to Marysville to pick up Brian's new car, an Accord. An Accord with a sunroof! The sunroof was about the most exciting feature, but it does seem like a nice car. He bought his old car from his employer and is driving it to Maryland next weekend to sell it to Christopher, who starts working in Baltimore the Monday after that. Brian says he's having bad dreams about wrecking the car before delivering it to Chris, which is my style of anxiety. Lovely to see I have some influence around here.

I was supposed to clean the house but I just can't get into it. Victoria started cleaning her bathroom at my request and after scrubbing for a half hour she emerged to note that I had done nothing at all. I haven't even looked in to check on her work. I'm sure it's fine. I don't really see myself vacuuming at 1am but I guess it could happen.

EDITED TO ADD: I almost forgot to mention the flavor of the month!

After all of the school stuff was done today, we went to a couple of libraries to pick up reserve items that had come in. I noticed a significant loss of power in the car and--maybe, or I could have imagined this--an extra rattle on acceleration. Yuck. I hope it's easy to fix.

Then it was our day to garden again. Now that the kids are back in school there is not as great a demand for volunteers, but Victoria and I found plenty of weeds to pull. You can read a little bit about the garden on their blog. One thing this community garden has really driven home for me is the weed-suppressing value of raised beds. I have raised beds and the weeds are manageable from the start. The community garden has mounds and they use straw as mulch. The people who know what they're doing say that the first couple of years will require aggressive weeding and then it will get easier. I prefer the kind that's easy right off the bat, at least for my little backyard garden.

A while ago my neighbor asked if we would host the fall party for the neighborhood this year. It's called a hog roast, but that is Ohioese for outdoor party. Sort of the way everyone says cornhole when they mean beanbag toss. Oh, these exotic cultures...

Since it's outdoors, how hard could it be to host? I explained that I had to say no since the date coincided with the music festival in Winfield. Too bad.

What fun is a party without Koralleen? They thought about that and wisely changed the date. The party now falls on my birthday and will be in my back yard. It should be fun. They've been having this event for years so really all I have to do is mow the lawn and arrange for nice weather. Easy!

Christopher took another part of the CPA exam (he passed the first one, yay!) and got a haircut. I know this because he called to tell me. Jennifer is doing an AIDS walk but the donation link in their auto-email is broken. Victoria read Sam the Minuteman, practiced multiplication and division facts, and played with an eyedropper for what seemed like hours. Brian walked around the yard talking on his phone. I gave the background check lady my fingerprints again. I telephoned a bunch of offices to verify numbers and addresses for the updated neighborhood directory.

I think I'm remembering why it is that I don't post daily.

It is so stupid of me not to write something every night. Now I have so much to write that it's pointless to begin: I would like to compare two memoirs, Kevin Roose's The Unlikely Disciple and Nathan Rabin's The Big Rewind; write about the community garden at the elementary school down the street; give the annoyed grown-ups' version of the Victoria Wants A Pet saga; tell car-shopping stories; express my disappointment in Lee Whittlesey's Deaths in Yellowstone; rave on and on about Dead Like Me; brag about my grill some more; and rejoice over the discovery of a sweet bike path.

What I will not talk about is Brian's big, secret project that he is "working on", meaning he sends imperious email after email with constantly changing specifications and ridiculous time strictures while I assemble the thing completely.

What I will talk about is digging a hole. I was reading a book about vegetable gardening, but there were a lot of extra u's in the words and the odd hedgehog here and there so I hope this trick works in the New World. The book recommended that I toss incompletely composted organic matter into a hole, fill it back in and use that patch for growing beans. Since I had two cans half-full of incompletely composted organic matter as well as a shovel, I thought I would try it.

The hole was square, four feet to a side, and eighteen inches deep. We had a nice rain two nights ago so the sod wasn't hard to break through but it took longer than I thought it would to make a nice Virginia Lee Burton-worthy hole. Plus--thanks to the project of which I will reveal nothing--a crummy song was stuck in my head the whole time. I started late in the afternoon, so I couldn't spend much time admiring the empty hole. I filled it back up, washed my hands, and made weird pizzas out of leftovers.

So. I dug a hole. Glad I got to tell you all about it.

This week has been a little harried. We were supposed to begin class on Monday, but Monday was also É's first day back from vacation. I mean, I'm mean but I'm not that mean. I managed to squeeze some things in, but it was not a great first day of school. Tuesday (and a few other days in the near future) I had agreed to keep another kid, M, since his camp was over and the neighborhood school hasn't started yet. Another sub-optimal schoolday, although we did get to go to the library for the Diary of a Wimpy Kid ice cream truck tour. I thought we'd meet the author and learn about the new book, but it was just "here's your ice cream, go play on the playground", which M and V found perfectly satisfactory.

Today was art. É joined us but that still only brought the class size up to three kids. After that V and I had errands to run. We were supposed to go to the community garden next; Wednesday is watering day, though, and the weather was taking care of that for us. We stayed home and started to watch a movie, but it was a poor choice on my part and we had to turn it off because the Chinese invasion in Seven Years in Tibet really freaked V. She was very worried about our relations with Canada and Mexico after that and insisted upon calling Brian. To my relief, she concentrated on the thunderstorm during that phone conversation so I didn't have to defend or even discuss the movie thing. I loved the book, but I really didn't pick up the DVD with V in mind.

So for bedtime reading we're in the middle of Robin Hood, which has a high body count itself but doesn't seem to bother V one bit.

Brian has been traveling even more than usual. Fortunately he was home over the weekend, so aramintamd and I could have a bit of kid-free time Sunday morning, but he's not going to make it to Winfield this year for the music festival. Jennifer has agreed to come with us, which sounds like even more fun to me. I'm looking forward to it. Christopher starts work that week, or I would have invited him, too.

Once everyone accrues some vacation time, maybe we can take a family vacation. That would be weird! I think the last time all three kids were camping together was in Tennessee. Cripes!

Reason, logic, and the like have not persuaded me to relinquish my omnivorous habits, but the wheels never stop turning on the PETA marketing machine. This time they came up with something brilliant--fragrant, at the very least. And what did the Capitol Square Review and Advisory Board do but quash the pièce de résistance of "Re-Creation of a Factory Farm"? Very sad, but I still like the headline:

PETA won't bring urine Downtown

Today by priority mail we received a little bundle of joy, a sack of 2,000 red wigglers. I thought they would be a little more impressive, but they are skinny things and seemed a bit travel-worn. At least two worm books have convinced me that they are crazy for melon rinds, so I made sure their first meal in their new home included plenty. I hope that cheers them up.

Grilling news: I have procured a flimsy screenish thing that sits atop the grill and makes grilling vegetables very simple. The packaging claimed it to be reusable and disposable, but I don't intend to dispose of it until squash season is well behind us.

I haven't made a to-do list all week and it shows. Very unproductive. I'll have to start doing something about that.

É and V have commandeered my bed and they are welcome to it, considering their first plan was to camp out in the back yard. In other progeny news we celebrate Jennifer's birthday today (woohoo!) and look forward to Christopher's completing the first section of the CPA exam on Monday.

When aramintamd and her crew blew through a couple of days ago, E draped my couch so fetchingly in fake fur that I am considering a jungle theme for the whole room. Stay tuned.

Here's a fun Book vs. Kindle video series from Green Apple Books in San Francisco:

http://www.youtube.com/user/greenapplebooks

They're on part three of ten now. It's just fun. Of course I love and covet the Kindle but I'm enjoying these things.

And here is a neat monthly feature from the New York Times about democracy or something:

http://kalman.blogs.nytimes.com/

That's all. This week went by so fast I didn't realize Friday was here until the trash truck went by.

We got back from vacation and dropped Brian off at the airport. He will be back in August, possibly--his return date keeps getting pushed back so who knows? snewgeese3 and her merry band came by this week to bask in some Columbus atmosphere. I hope they had fun, I know Victoria did.

I mentioned to a neighbor that I wanted a gas grill and she up and gave me one! So far I have just grilled corn and hot dogs but I will be sure to let you know all the exciting grill developments as they occur.

According to my plan, we shall enter the Southeast corner of the state and travel counter-clockwise to visit

• Cheyenne
• Casper
• Devils Tower National Monument
• Fort Phil Kearny State Historic Site
• Sheridan
• Flaming Gorge National Recreation Area
• Cody
• Yellowstone, Yellowstone, Yellowstone
• Grand Teton National Park
• Fossil Butte National Monument
• Bighorn Canyon National Recreation Area
• Laramie
• Cheyenne

There's a bunch of Denver days in front of this list and another day at the end, since that's where we're flying to and from. Now that I have the list recorded here it will be interesting to see how close we come to visiting all these spots.

It was by utter coincidence that last night's bedtime reading began with chapter XV of Part II in Padraic Colum's The Adventures of Odysseus and the Tale of Troy. I managed to keep from laughing because I know how seriously Victoria takes her vengeance. Those Proci had it coming to them and I didn't want to taint the battle with pettiness.

And my MiL's visit was not exactly epic. She came, she sat, she read O'Reilly. She loves to talk about controversial topics, but she doesn't really have the tools to debate them and no one here was about to challenge her anyway; she'd rather talk than not talk, so the topic turned to neighbors, her family, food, hair. I know a lot more about hair styling now than I did a week and a half ago.

Brian pulled a fast one to get her to fly back to Baltimore with him yesterday rather than have me drive her back today. He didn't reveal until Saturday night that he was flying out Sunday and that she could accompany him. So he presented her with the surprise choice of a one-hour flight with him or a 7-hour drive with V & me. Of course she hates flying, but she chose that option--I should have counseled her that she was reinforcing Brian's manipulative behavior but I only made sure she knew that we had intended to drive her back all along and would still be happy to do it. Now I have a free day to clean up and the house really needs it, so hooray. On the other hand, there is a bunch of stuff I wanted to bring from MD to OH on my return and now it will stay in MD for a long time, so bleh.

As soon as I returned from the airport, I dropped the O'Reilly books off at the library. The good news is she took a book with her from our shelf: Jay Parini's Promised Land: Thirteen Books that Changed America. She had just started reading it and wanted to keep going. I am very excited about this development. Here's some fun from Sunday morning:

"I've been reading about Thomas Jefferson here. Now, what exactly is a deist? And The Enlightenment--I've seen that lately, too, in something else I read--but what is it exactly?"

(Brian and Wikipedia provide acceptable descriptions for both terms.)

"That's very interesting*. You know, that word, enlightenment, it almost sounds like it should be a good thing, doesn't it? Enlightenment? Wouldn't you think that would be something, well, positive? Hmm."

It was nice to end the visit on a note so, well, positive!

---
*As we all know and do ourselves, "interesting" in polite conversation means "uninteresting" while "very interesting" means "disturbing".

Brian invited his mom out for a visit to Columbus and I KNOW she was going to refuse until Jennifer strategically informed her that the entire family was betting against her coming to Columbus. To prove them wrong, she accepted and has been staying with us since Thursday.

I was sure we would have to rent a TV since her days are built around her favorite programs, but a short-term TV rental is hard to arrange so she is taking a real vacation here. She's not much of a walker, so most of our favorite sites are not good choices for entertainment; however, it turns out Bill O'Reilly has written plenty of books she's been meaning to read. I found a couple of them for her and she has been regaling us with his wit and charm. If she plows through his works, there is always Pat Buchanan. We also got some movies to watch at night. You Can't Take It With You was a winner, so I picked up another Capra movie I'd heard of but not seen, Arsenic and Old Lace. It was not well received: too weird. Brian really wanted me to get Seven Brides for Seven Brothers but it must be very popular. All the system's copies were checked out.

She had Brian all to herself for part of the weekend because Victoria and I were camping with the Adventure Scouts. This is a group of girls who wanted a more cub-scouty experience as the girl scouts for little kids around here seem to be more crafts than camping--or so I'm told. I didn't really shop around. This group happened by and they are swell so we joined. Saturday night the leader asked a local astronomers' club to come by the campground. Four men showed up with three different telescopes: a refractor, a reflector, and a catadioptric. The reflector was a homemade deal, too. These guys were great and Saturn was very cooperative as well. That was the high point for me, but Victoria was happiest learning how to use her knife. If you need a stick sharpened, she will be delighted to help you out.