All aboard the school bus

We are all back to school now, in our various ways. Jon, of course, has been working since June.  But classes have started at Geneseo, and at RIT (so I'm now on my full-time hours), and at Rush Henrietta Public Schools! We said goodbye to summer by saying goodbye to the sunflower farm on Calkins Road.  I wish we'd caught it in its prime, but it still looked extremely picturesque.   


We moved into our new house on August 31st.  I WILL have pictures of the inside.  I WILL.  I keep waiting for it to be all clean, attractive, pictures hung, and I just have to accept that with so little time between our move and the start of school and work, it's just not going to be where I want it before maybe next summer.  So I'll show imperfect pictures, soon.

And then, on the 4th of September,

Her backpack request.  She says she's a Ravenclaw.  

 
....it was time to board the bus! Adele was gleeful; she's never ridden a bus to school before.



Because both kids go to different schools, they start at different times. Adele boards her bus at 7:15. Miles? 8:43!
This is his face when he doesn't have to get up and get dressed at 6:00!

He's NOT a morning person, so this later bus is actually suiting him, even though it's been a bit inconvenient for us.  As a result of his late bus, for example, I had to ask to have shifts at work starting after 9:15.  Since I was starting the semester late and can't be a chooser, I ended up with quite a late schedule.  It's 12:30-9 Mondays and Tuesdays, 11-8 Wednesdays, 10-7 Thursdays, and 9:15-4:15 Fridays.  This has . . . its positives and negatives.  But we're making it work.

Anyways.  Miles strode confidently into his first day of school.

Look at how long legged he's getting!!

They continue to enjoy school, Miles in Miss Fish's 4th grade and Adele in Ms. Ingram's 1st grade classes.  They have made a few friends, though none who seem terribly important to them yet.  I suppose I'll have to wait for parent teacher conferences to know more, but all seems well.  Homework is getting done, and Miles goes on his first field trip this Thursday. 

Meanwhile, I'm working two jobs!  In the afternoons and events, I make those transcripts at RIT; in the early mornings, I teach Chinese kids through VIP kid!  I have yet to get the first paycheck; I expect it in early October.  But it's a legitimate and enjoyable side hustle for me.  Here's my crude classroom; I hope to make it better over time. 

We have been having fewer outings, but we did get to the Strong Museum again (can't let that membership go to waste!) a couple weeks ago.  This time, we went to the butterfly garden!  What a peaceful and transcendent experience that was.  

Even more transcendent (but decidedly less peaceful) was our date to see Eddie Izzard!  He actually came to Rochester, NY, in person!  Jon and I had a fabulous date, laughing and enjoying his and each other's company.
 
We saw some friends after the show, and later found out that several other people I know were there.  Rochester has provided some phenomenal opportunities to run into people I haven't seen in years, and to feel known and recognized, and to connect some lines from my childhood into adulthood in really lovely ways.  Last week, at the movies, I ran into a girl who was my best friend when I was 4-5 years old, back on Shadbush Way.  She recognized me immediately, though it's been since high school since I've seen her.  I found this so touching.  After being new in town over and over for so many years, it's deeply satisfying to be recognized on sight by people I have loved. 


There was a fall festival at Tinker Park a couple weeks ago.  Miles and Adele were a bit cranky, but they really enjoyed the opportunity to walk the labyrinth, hear their favorite babysitter's folk band play, drink cider, press apples (both got to try it!) and take a wagon ride behind two handsome horses 
I'm so thrilled to be up here in Western NY, having a proper Autumn again at last.

Summering

What follows is pretty much a summary of our summering.

I've just had no motivation to blog. I'm not sure if it's stress, or time management, or the fact that this just doesn't feel like an exiting adventure that everyone needs to know about, because so many of my readers live here! But I will perform the necessary acts of will to continue. This blog has become my time-keeper.

We've spent a lot of time at The Strong, after having secured our membership.



Adele celebrated this summer by learning to ride her big tall bike! She can even make it up the Great Big Hill at Spring Lake Park, as of YESTERDAY. In similar news, Adele no longer needs any help gaining height on a swing! I call it a productive summer.

I'm spending a lot of time in Dad's bedroom (where we're sleeping this summer) as that's the best place for me to concentrate on my training. I'm learning a new captioning language, Typewell, and training four hours a day to do it.
                                                             Dad is being forced to read the Harry Potter books, as the kids ask him to read it each night for bedtime reading. They've almost finished Chamber of Secrets!

                                                            We've been touring Episcopal churches in the area! We have several candidates for a home church (maybe St. Paul's, or possibly Christ Church), but we haven't visited the one in Henrietta yet.
                                                            There was a summer trip to Seabreeze with the cousins! and a follow-up one as our afternoon had gotten rained out and we got a rain check. So the kids had their yearly check-in with the rides they were big enough, and the rides they were brave enough, to ride.
 
Koopa celebrated being our dog for two years! And Boo for one.                             And, the family came together to remember my Grandmother Dorothy's life and to say goodbye to her together. The best part was probably the gallery walk we did at the pool party, by firelight, looking at all the art Grandma had created, all the beauty she made, with her life. We divvied up the paintings and laughed and caught up and enjoyed each other. If I couldn't have the blessing of visiting with Granny any more, I'm grateful to have been given that weekend in August to feel embraced by her memory.
                      Probably the single place we've visited the most has been Spring Lake Park, down the street from
Dad's house. It has the distinction of a dog park being located right next to a creek and some hiking trails in the woods. So, almost daily, I have taken the dog and the kids there, and the dog has been able to run in the off-leash area, chase dog friends, and paddle around in the creek. The kids go hiking in their secret hideouts in the woods (not very far in, but they feel very isolated), and I do laps. I'm pretty comfortable running, now! And we all get our wiggles out at once. It's a perfect arrangement that we will definitely miss.
 
This is my face when we were leaving for last weekend's trip to see BEYONCÉ!! (and Jay-Z):                                                        Jon has been wanting to go to a concert for many months, and it's been promised to him for his birthday and Father's Day, so he had a concert coming to him and now, we also have a babysitter. So off we went to Buffalo to catch the On the Run Tour II! Bey + JayZ and it was GLORIOUS.

We have also a great many acquirements this summer, including:
-A new job for me! I'm in training and will start doing it full time in mid to late September.
-A side hustle for me! As soon as we're settled in the new house, I'll start teaching for VIP Kid!
-NYS license and registration, and plates
-a new babysitter, a teen BOY that the kids are mad about
-library cards (obvs)
-registration in Henrietta schools because...

-We got a house! After having FINALLY closed on the Macnaughton house last week, we are slated to close in and move in next Thursday to 40 Amsden Drive! https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/40-Amsden-Dr-Rochester-NY-14623/30963155_zpid/
Fall is coming, and we will spend it living walking distance from Gro-Moore farms , and Henrietta Town Park, and a big fabulous Wegmans, and and and! This was my ideal neighborhood (though we hesitated a bit over the price and the size of the living areas), so I'm very satisfied with this. Miles starts at Sherman, and Adele at Winslow, in less than two weeks. This still seems so very unreal.

Take, take me home (cause I don’t remember)

These first weeks in Rochester represented an abrupt change from my last few weeks in Pueblo. Every hour seemed to be accounted for on the Pueblo end, my whole life funneled into the overwhelming project of uprooting, selling the house, packing, and moving. I found myself in possession of large amounts of unstructured time once we'd landed in Rochester. We're living at Dad's house, and we'd only been in Rochester for two days when Jon started going to work every day. So with some exceptions (4th of July, Miles' birthday, a couple of adventures with Leah, Macaroni and Cheese fest, a couple of outings with Allison and Sarah), it's mostly been me and the kids, mostly at home, and about half the time, without a car. So there's been a lot of time roosting at home. But we've done some things!

Early on, I took the kids to Mendon Ponds. This is one of my Rochester area holy sites, so it felt like making the homecoming a bit more real to bring my kids and my dog to the place I spent so much of my childhood and adolescence, wandering around with various important people in my life. It was a bit muggy and a bit buggy; I'd forgotten about these realities. We walked my favorite cross country trail through the woods, and the kids played near the pond for a while. They complained of the bugs. The dog met his first horse and was astonished.

We have visited the main branch of the public library, the one with the secret room. We'd already secured our cards from the Henrietta Branch.
                               We had a meal as a family at Dinosaur BBQ (excellent) and strolled around the city one day, stopping for a while to peer at the Rochester Subway and the attendant street art:                             We've also made two visits to the Highland Park Adventure Area, which I highly recommend to all families with children. They just repurposed some stumps and logs, bolted them together in various shapes, and kids can play in whatever way works for them! It's less clear what you're "supposed" to do with the various "equipment" which I love. I get tired of feeling like I need to tell me kids they're playing on the playground wrong. 

I got a new shirt for my birthday, btw.

Meanwhile, Miles has turned NINE! How is this allowed??
All he wanted was to celebrate with his cousins and, sometime in July, to go to Seabreeze! We managed to do both.

We've been to Dogtown, a local legend hot dog restaurant. They DO have a decent vegetarian menu, Melissa & Ann! But this is one of their plates, a kind of imitation of a garbage plate, and what Jon ordered. I thought it had a kind of ugly beauty:                                                                   I also did a 5K at the Seneca Park Zoo! I did better than I had any right to do, coming in under 30 minutes and feeling pretty good. We consumed the free Italian Ice and Miles participated in the 50 yard dash, and afterward, we took in the zoo:
 
This summer has more down time than I kind of expected. Sometimes I have trouble enjoying this, because I realized I've put a lot of my feelings of self worth onto feeling productive. A common mistake, I understand. But I have actually been quite productive with my time, securing not just one job but two! One main job at RIT (transcribing for deaf students again! I begin training in about a week) and one teaching English for VIPKid!

VIPKid is a company that uses contracting teachers to teaching pre-planned English language lessons to Chinese kids, online, in real time. It's pretty good per hour pay, but I'll have to see what it amounts to in real life. The nice thing is, I control my schedule; the downside is, I may not get bookings for when I want them. The most popular times are evening hours in Beijing, which translates to the early morning in New York, when I'm going to be putting my kids on busses and heading off to work. I'll be looking to teach in the evenings, so we'll see! I will also be trying hard to get my teaching certificate in NY, which promises to be both costly and time consuming!

There have been... other accomplishments. I hope the next post will contain more announcements- basically, as soon as Jon feels ready to share. Stay tuned!

I have lacked motivation to blog. Obviously. But I really want to keep it up, even though my audience may change. Probably I'll get fewer people from Rochester checking in, starving to see pictures of my kids. But I'm going to try to keep up, because the road goes ever on and on, and because I want to keep on living life twice!