Adventure time by Papageno

Once I went to Dragon Island. I went with five soldiers and four knights. We saw lots of Dragons. They spit daring fire. One I called Will with the looks that could kill. All the dragons had extremely sharp teeth. There were even paintings of Indians. The island was in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. It also had lots of greenery. the dragons were HUUUGE!!!!!! But only two claws. Lines spread across the wings. Those lines are called membranes. We even had a campfire that night. We slept in the big tent under the big oak tree. The next morning we went hunting for breakfast. The soldiers let my and dad hold the guns and pull the trigger. We shot a nice big dragon. Well, big enough to last a whole day. the next day we all flew home in a B17.

The End.

content and tired

yes yes yes, I know that I always say I will post more often, well, guess what? I don't think I will. Its a fine thing to aspire to, but, you know me. Consistency is not my bag.

So lets see what to update. Since my last post we have had school, birthday parties, the xmas holidays, lost teeth, and a trip to the hospital.

Where to begin. I guess the hospital. I can't believe I didn't post about this. Talk about good times ...

Once upon a tuesday afternoon Papageno had 2 playdates. A friend came over after school (hugo) and when he left we had a dinner playdate, Susan and Sharkey. All went well, good times were had by all. Tuesdays are Dan's b/ball night, so he didnt come home untill about 11:00pm. Around 2:30 Papageno came into my room saying he didnt feel well. I pulled him into bed with me to try and help him get to sleep. I could here his chest was conjested and he was having trouble breathing, he also couldnt sleep, so eventually we both got up and watched some TV for a while. After a couple of hours I was able to get him back to the sleep. I figured he just had a chest cold, no big deal, but I took him to the doctor the next day anyway. Dan of course was screaming swine flu, I told him not to be ridiculous. The chances of him having the swine flu and getting seriously ill were slim-to-none. Oops. For once Dr. Dan's paranoid fantasies were correct. Papageno had the swine flu. He threw up the whole way to the Doctors office. When we got there, the doc confirmed it was the flu and said they assume any flu is the swine flu. The medicine needed, Tamiflu was currently only available in tablet form unless I went to this pharmacy in Beverly Hills that can make it themselves in liquid form. Papageno was so sick I took him home and then went back to BH to get the 'script filled. It took 2 hours. By the time I was on my way back Dan called and said that Papageno needed to go to the hospital. I dropped off Bug with Dan and took Papageno to the Cedars' Emergency Room. Our doctor had already phoned us in, I don't know if that mattered but they took one look at him, got him into a bed and started pumping oxygen into his chest. Anyway, 3 days, several machines and a few mario bro's video's games later he was able to come home.

Anyway, Papageno may or may not know this. But what he didn't know, was, I was fine throughout this whole process. I stayed at the hospital with him. Dan relieved me for a few hours at the end of the day so I could put Bug down, take a shower etc., then I would go back and spend the night with him. All was copesetic. Untill Papageno came home. I dropped him off than went to Trader Joes and had a bit of a breakdown. I wandered around with my sunglasses on crying. Then got into the car and called a friend, crying. Well I got over it, you know, breakdown once the crisis is over. Anyway, aside from a loss of weight, weeks later, you would never know he was sick. Thank god for that.

Anyway, since then we have had Papageno's birthday, Bug's Birthday, Dan's Birthday, the holidays etc. Good times at grandma's house. We got to see Lisa, Andre, Finn and Benjamin. That was fun they look great, bigger, etc.

So why the title. The kids just spent the weekend at Grandma's. Gabriella Charter School has taken me up on my idea to do tire planters. We have planted close to 40 tires over the last few weeks. Dan is stripping the hall, patching holes, etc. So life is calm and pretty good. Major decisions we need to make now are weather or not we want to sell the house. I am dreaming of a shipping container home. If I could just make that happen, life would be grand.

Dedicated Parent

Well, today I was informed I had become President of Papageno's school Parent Association. Lucky me. I thought it would be a good way to involve myself in the school and make the changes I want. Nothing like controlling your own destiny ... right? We will see. I have been getting a lot of "it's a hard, long and thankless job" comments. I am sure it is.

Having never done anything like this before I am a bit nervous. There are a lot of things I want to add to the school and I felt like the best way to do it was a president. I don't know what kind of parent participation there will be or how much I will be able to move my agenda forward, but, I guess here's to trying.

Re the kids. Life goes on. They both enjoy school. I have Bug's "back to school" night tomorrow. Boring! But, off I will go. I am room parent for his class, yea for me being involved. I am also the team parent for Papageno's soccer team (It doesn't really involve me doing anything). I signed Bug up for Karate, he is very excited. Papageno dropped Capoeira. He didn't like it and at the end of the day I felt he was over subscribed. If I do sign him up for another activity it is going to be a music class.

Bug pee'd in the bathtub today. He was in the bathroom while Papageno was "on the pot" and said he had to go and couldn't wait, so he pee'd in the tub. When I asked why he didn't go to the other bathroom he responded he was afraid of the black widows that live there. Thanks Papageno.

A day at the Aquarium

Today we went to The Aquarium of the Pacific. It was fun. We went a few weeks ago when Poppy was here. At that time I was under the impression we had purchased a membership. Poppy had bought us the four tickets and then I decided to upgrade the membership. Apparently the card was never processed so when we got there we were not members. After some haggling with the membership desk they let us pay the price of the upgrade and I have to bring proof of our previous entrance. It was a bit of a hassle but all in all they were pretty nice about it. We did our usual run around, the kids looking at the exhibits dragging Dan along so they could show him their favorite.

Before we left I told Papageno that we were not going to eat as soon as we get there. He has a habit of announcing he is hungry the moment we walk in. Wouldn't you know it, this time it was Dan. As we walked in he said he was hungry. Unfortunately he was the only one. So he had to wait. We ran around, starting with Papageno's pick of the spider crabs. My favorite is the Leafy Sea Dragon, but we didn't get there. Dan finally convinced us to get some food (and we convinced the kids).


On the way I mistakenly thought the scuba divers were going into one of the giant tanks. This is Bug's favorite thing about the aquarium, so of course, we had to stay. Unfortunately their projected arrival was 12:45, I asked Dan what time it was and thought he said 12:40, he in fact said 12:00. So we waited and waited. The good news was, in the process of waiting we discovered that they were giving out prizes, Papageno wanted one so we went to investigate how to enter the contest. It was a drawing contest. Now Papageno loves to draw, so the possibility of a prize was a bonus. He drew 4 pictures before we could drag him out and into the cafeteria.

While he was drawing Bug got to watch the scuba divers.

Since Papageno wasn't really that hungry we was finished early. So, were able to duck down and see the drawing for the prizes. He didn't win. Rather than get disappointed he headed straight to the drawing table and started drawing more pictures. When it came time to do the draw for the prize they rigged it for him. They said they felt persistence should count for something. He was so thrilled!!! Just to throw the whole experience into total awesomeness, they gave Bug a prize too.

Home to soccer for Papageno and nap for Bug. He did reasonably well on the soccer field. always good to hear.

All in all a pretty good day.

school's in

So it is now October. We have been in school for 3 weeks. All in all it's been pretty good. Papageno really enjoyed his first week of school. Of course as soon as you think life is settling down a wrench is thrown in. We were offered a spot in West Hollywood Elementary. I was tempted because I really hate the new campus at Gabriella (Papageno's school). Also, there has always been this small part of me that has wondered if Gabriella was a mistake and I was denying Papageno some sort of important social bonding. It's hard with the kids at Gabriella. I don't really have a way of meeting the other parents and it seems they don't do playdates and birthday parties the way we do. Other than that the school is great. Papageno is doing well and is happy.

Anyway, so after weeks of deliberating, changing my mind almost hourly we have decided to stay at Gabriella. I can always move him next year. He seems happy with that decision. I am also making more of an effort to be more involved. I am going to try and be president of the parent association.

Also, I have introduced Liza into the concept of tire planters. Hopefully that will help with "warming" up the campus in a not very expensive way. I also like the recycling angle.

Since the boys have started school the stress levels have been running a bit high. I think it is due to all of a sudden having a schedule, having to get up and out of the house and doing homework, etc. Papageno has been going a bit bonkers. I hope that things will settle down soon. Because of the lack of playdates and afterschool activities at the school I have scheduled him for a lot of our own activities. Swimming, soccer, and capoeira.
Hopefully he is not now oversubscribed.

Bug has also had a big month. Our first day at preschool did not go well. He did not want to be with Teacher Zhanna and was hysterical. She made it worse by yelling at him. I then picked him up, stalked out and complained to th e director, Ellen. I was very upset, threatened to leave, etc. In the end I realized that I wasn't really about to go looking for another school, assuming I could even get into one. We had to much history at the JCC and were too comfortable. Zhanna called and apologized and said I misunderstood her intentions. She mellowed out, I returned and it's all been good since then. I took it as a "teaching moment" moment for me. I know that throughout your childs educational history you are not going to like everything the teacher does. So it's best, and possible, to deal with it and hopefully change the bad into the good. It sounds simple but I havent always done that, so good for me!

camping in Zion Aug 2009 day 1

So we did it. We went camping in Zion National Park for 5 days. It was crazy hot.

We left here on Sunday afternoon and got to St. George UT about 7 hours later. Courtesy of The Lonely Planet we stayed at a funky little motel for $40/night. It was sufficient, clean etc. They actually had a little kitchen at the back of the room so we were able to eat there while Bug slept and open up some of our own food for breakfast the next day. They were the typical sole proprietors, cute, friendly, a bit goofy. They had been there for a few years, bought the hotel as a semi-retirement thing. They were thinking of selling and leaving. I don't know if they were loving St. George.

We stayed in St. George because it was less than an hour from Zion. On the way we stopped in a town called Hurricane. We wanted to pick up some things at the pharmacy, one was a prescription we had my doctor phone in for an asthma spray. Due to insurance issues that took waaaaay longer than expected. We finally were able to leave and arrived at our campsite at about 1:30. Everyone was excited to get out of the car.

Our first hurtle was the campsite. It was super hot and not a lot of shade. The people at the park entrance told us we could look at a different campsite that was first come first serve. We drove around it, but couldn't decide. the kids were screaming to get out and hungry so we went back to our site, unloaded the food and I left them with Dan to reevaluate whether or not we should move. I was tired and couldn't decide. The site we had was beautiful and near the visitor center. Which was good because that is where you picked up the shuttle to the trail heads. The other site was farther away. In the end I couldn't make a decision so we just stayed out campsite. In retrospect the pros' to moving would have been a shadier campsite and we would have been nearer to the river. The cons would have been it would be a bit of a hike to the visitor center which was a launching place for everything. So it didn't matter where we were, there were pro's and cons to both.

It took us some time to set up the camp site. The tent was a bit of a bear since we hadn't set it up before. I had my doubts about it because it didnt have very good reviews. It was nice and large with a lot windows but pretty unstable. We did attach some extra ropes to keep it standing and thank god we did. It was so windy at night we are sure the tent would have collapse if we hadn't tied it to the ground.

I don't remember why but Dan had something to do so left us to go into Springdale, so the boys and I decided to take a shuttle bus and see a bit of the park we went up to the lodge and ran around there for a while. It was fun. there was a big grassy area the boys could play on and a wild turkey running around which they thought was hysterical. We eventually went back to the campsite to meet Dan. After an exciting dinner of hot dogs Kellen and I decided to go on a small hike. The shuttle took us to the top of the Pa' rus trail, a 1.3 mile hike back to the camp site. It started out great. We detoured down a steep trail to wade in the river and cool off. We then continued on the trail. It was an easy paved trail, mostly flat. I unfortunatley time it well. It got darker a lot faster than I thought. That in itself wasn't scary, it's just that I wanted to get back. I knew Dan would be worried and realized and hadnt given him any indication of where we were going, just that we were going for a hike and would be back in an hour. Along the way Papageno had to look at every beetle and ant that came near the path. I felt bad hurrying him along, I mean half the fun is checking out the bugs. But we did need to move along. We eventually got back to the campsite and to a pissed off Dan. He didn't know where we were, what trail or where to even begin looking for us had something gone wrong. I understood. It wasn't the best laid plan.

The next day Papageno did the Jr. Ranger Program. He loved it. He went everyday. It was nice because we would wake up, get a quick breakfast, drop him a the ranger program and then relax with Bug for a few hours. We then would pick him up, eat and relax by a river or something. It was so hot, the only thing we could do was sit in a river in the shade. Needless to say the kids had no problem with that plan. The water was icy cold, so getting in was half the fun/challenge.

It did take a while to fall into a pattern. By Tuesday night I was so upset and the trip was so hard I was almost ready to pack it in and try to get a hotel. I figured I would give it one more day. Low and behold the next day we figured it out! Once we stopped trying to stay on the schedule we had at home and adjusted the way we did things it was fun. We did late afternoon hikes and had dinner when the sun was going down. That way we werent trying to cook in the heat of the day, or get the kids to sleep in full light. Also, it was much more fun to light the campfire and roast marshmallows after the sun went down.

We left on Friday to head for the Grand Canyon. It took us 3 hours to pack up the campsight. Fun in 105 degrees. We then went into town for supplies and a little apple picking and lunch. By the time we hit the road it was after 3. We got to our proposed destination, Jacob Lake, and started to look for a place to stay. The book we had, "the lonely planet", which has never let me down, said there were a few hotels there. They were wrong! There is one hotel and one gas station and that makes up the town of Jacob Lake. The next closest town was 80 miles back from where we came. Luckily there was one other option, a small lodge I had called earlier but rejected because it was more money than we were hoping to spend. Fortunatly the had a cabin available and we sucked it up and spent the money. The cabin was small and dingy but clean. It had a set up bunk beds and two full size beds. There was also a small restaurant. Now, I am sure under any other cirmcumstances this hotel would have been awful, but after camping for 5 days your perspective changes. The shower had hot running water, the beds were comfortable and the food ... not prepared by us, hence awesome! The kids loved it and it was in a beautiful location.

The rest of the Grand Canyon trip was anti-climactic. The scenery was beautiful but the kids were hiked out. So we did a half hour hike and headed for home. Stopped in Vegas to break up the trip and were home on Sunday.

In the end it was so much fun, I planned next years trip for Yosemit. There we are staying in a permanent tent :)

Papageno is on the rampage again. He is hostile and mean to everyone. I don't know if it's a stage or he is going through something.

I particularly makes me mad when he goes at Bug. Bug gets so excited to see him and share things with him and he is always shot down. Bug will run up to Papageno to greet him after camp and Papageno will just brush him off or if Bug tells him something he is excited about Papageno tells him its stupid. I know it normal sibling stuff, but it breaks my heart.

Other than that all is well. Camp ended today and we are heading to SF on Tuesday. We are going to stay with Alison and Troy and spend time with Sarah and Joe. Dan can't come. He has to cover TCA. He promises to work on my book while I am gone. We need to get it done by Aug. It's a bit of a slog.