What an unusual week. We started out with the remnants of Hurricane Ike blowing through the state and causing blackouts all over the place. We were without power all of Sunday night and part of the Monday morning. The power came back up when Mr. Pete got back with two big bags of ice! I later heard on the news that Ohio was behind Texas in the amount of hurricane damage! Did Ike just jump over all the other states to get to Ohio? Or is it because Ohio has more trees to snap, fall over and cause problems? I thought that was curious.
Mr. Pete’s business did not fare as well. He was without power until yesterday. he and his business partner eventually put their work benches outside and just worked in the sunshine. Costumers drove by and dropped off more instruments to fix. Anyone wanting a pick up had to wait until they found it with a flashlight in the dark warehouse.
The other pain in Mr. Pete’s neck this week has come from fixing my mom’s old Chevy Blazer. It stalled on Sunday night (just a few hours before Ike arrived!). We had it towed to our house and he changed the gas filter with no luck. Then he dropped the gas tank and put in a new gas pump, and the car worked great! But a few hours later he was pushing it out of the street again when it stalled out. After some diagnostic work Mr. Pete has determined that the new pump is working properly, but there is a glitch somewhere in the electrical system. That is his project for tomorrow. In the meantime Calvin and I are sharing a car – a prospect that neither of us really likes but we really have no other choice.
Other than that we had a good three days of school. Thursday was taken up with running to the auto part store, piano lessons and a cross country meet. Today we met with the rest of the homeschoolers for a hike. I am really going to buckle down and get caught up next week (although both Noah and Gabe already worked ahead in their math books.)
Other than that I’ve sort of had writer’s block. I find the way the liberal left is behaving in this election to be appalling for the most part and somewhat uninformed. But I am somewhat dumbstruck when I run across a Catholic friend or acquaintance who has an Obama sticker, pin or sign. Monday night Sam refereed his first soccer game for CYO (Catholic Youth Organization) and I sat next to a mom I knew casually. I didn’t see her Obama pin before I sat down next to her and once I did I couldn’t think of anything to say to her. Well, that’s not quite true. I had lots of things I wanted to say, but none of it was appropriate for the occasion and I didn’t think it would be fair to have Sam give his mom the first red card for disrupting the game!
But luckily I didn’t see any political buttons or signs at the cross country meet last night. Noah set a personal record. So did Izzy. They are both going to have to step it up if they want ribbons this year as there is a lot more competition.
Gabe finished second to last – and still set a personal record taking a huge chunk of time off. He is pretty proud of that today. I am so proud of him. It can’t be easy to be bringing up the rear every single week, yet he just digs in and does it, he keeps listening to his coach and he keeps improving. I think it’s awesome. There have been some pay offs. For one, Gabe has lost some of that baby fat. At 13 he is starting to get a manly waistline. He also has great endurance which really pays off on the soccer field. I think a lot of his opponents in soccer are surprised to see a big guy move as quickly as he does.
One thing I don’t think I have mentioned here is that this year Gabe is also singing with Sam in our adult parish choir. Because of the time of choir rehearsal and the end of the cross country meets, he is always about 15 to 20 minutes late. Nonetheless, I drop him off at church, and he goes up to the choir loft, gets his music, sits down and sings – and nobody but his brother and the choir direct know that he has done this after running a two mile race. I think that’s pretty impressive too!
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