The Last of the Lucky Sevens

Tomorrow The Princess turns eight years old.  She is an awesome, kickball playing, doll toting, chicken chasing, dancing, singing, awesome bundle of girly-girl.   

She still twists her hair into knots when she is tired.  She wakes up grumpy every school day.  The Princess is my gardening pal and she is always good for a laugh at my really bad jokes.    She still can't seem to keep her room straightened for more than 15 minutes at a time.  She pretty much refuses to ride her bike anywhere but I think she knows that it is easier to parade down the street on foot.  Makes it easier to visit with any neighbor who might have something interesting going on... 


I could not care less about my birthdays anymore.  Just another year on the clock from what I can tell.  Don't get me wrong, I am all for the presents but I would accept them ANY day.  The kid's birthdays are another thing entirely.  Lots of times I think I might be more excited about the day than they are.

Happy Birthday Princess.  I sure hope it is a great day.  'Cause I know you will be an awesome eight year old!

Might as well make my beauty work for me!

I have signed up to help raise money for St. Baldrick's, a charity that raises funds to help fight childhood cancer.  I hope to raise $500 pretty quickly.  And the team I am on has a goal to raise over $2000.  The catch?  On April 14 I will get my head shaved at the finale of the fund raising.

You guys may have already seen my beautiful, bald melon.  There are several good pictures and stories about the different times I have decided to shave my head.  But this time I get to collect more than a story and a snapshot.  I am going to collect some cash to help out lots of great kids.

Want to donate?  Here is a link to my St. Baldrick's fundraising page.  Donate a lot.  And often.

Or this guy might haunt your dreams.

 A preview from a few years ago, when I "fixed" my hair real good.

A whole new level of backyard chicken keeping

Fair warning.

This post and the accompanying links may not be for the squeamish...  It is all about our family taking a new step into keeping a backyard flock of chickens.

Chickens lay eggs and they are food too.  That is your last hint...



In the last few weeks I have become more convinced that one of our newest chicks was not a potential egg laying hen (which are really called pullets), but a potential noise maker and hen hassling roo (which are actually called cockerels).  In a backyard flock of 10 (now 9) birds, roosters aren't really desirable especially by the neighbors.

A few days ago The Boss Lady bought a magazine about different chicken breeds.  The suspected rooster was an Australorp and he had huge, long tail feathers.  The magazine all but confirmed my suspicions.  But conventional wisdom says that you don't know for sure until the bird gives you either a crow or an egg.

That noise I heard this morning when I was walking to the car?  Yeah, that was NOT an egg!

I posted an ad on our local chicken message board, but I knew that this guy needed a new home quickly if we were not going to make the neighbors mad. Yeah, their four barking chihuahuas?  That is another story...   No nibbles on the ad, AND Wednesday is trash day which would make it a lot easier to get the "leftovers" taken care of quickly.  It was looking like the rooster's fate was sealed.

This evening The Boss Lady and I decided to butcher the bird ourselves. So, like all good urban farmers, I hit up Google and found this link:

How to butcher a chicken in 20 minutes or less... 

After a few hours of reading up on how to best process and butcher chickens, I decided that this was the best method for us to try for our first time. We would skin the bird, instead of scalding and plucking all of the feathers and there was not even a small chance I would eat the livers and gizzards...

Cut to the chase.  We did the deed and it took less than an hour, including the times that we stopped to read the instructions I printed out.  Now the bird is in the freezer and we will cook up some chicken and dumplings later this week. 

When we started with backyard chickens, I promised the kids we would not be eating their pets.  But this seems like we are kind of coming full cycle with having chickens and growing our own food in the garden. The Boss and I decided that we will tell the kids about the roo and give them a choice when it come time to eat the chicken and dumplings.

Front yard re-do, Part 2

A follow up to my last post, Front yard re-do, part 1

I'll come back and write up a little more about the specifics of our yard makeover, but I think that the results are worth more than the $500 we dropped on this project.

 After two and a half days of work, we are almost done.

 The focal point pieces of our new flower beds.  Two horse water troughs.

Loving the new look!  No Asian Jasmine and a lot more water conscious!

We will get the planters filled next weekend (or during Spring Break). 

What we started with.  That is a big difference!

One of my goals for this project was to re-use as many plants as possible.  Everything that we had growing is water conscious and either native or adapted to Austin's climate.  Plus, the neighborhood deer leave all of this stuff alone!

Lots of the big shrubs were growing out near the street,  so they moved to a better spot in the new  beds, swapping places with much smaller plants.  Of course, that meant that I am now re-doing the flower beds  out by the street, but that project will not be photographed for a while.  

In the end, we only spent money on the planters, some mulch and a roll of weed block fabric.   I am thrilled with the results.  My yard  chairs are no longer facing the street.  We repositioned them, too, so that we  can admire all of our hard work.

Front yard re-do, Part 1

Our house is in need of some serious TLC.  When I was home full-time I kept a pretty close eye on repairs and maintenance needs around here.  In the last year and a half our 30 year old house has started showing her age.

Next month we are having some foundation work done and I have been really wanting to get the yard back in shape.  Today we started cleaning up and renovating a big flowerbed in our front yard.

The front flower bed.  A mix of 1982 fabulous and a 2005 re-work that is looking a little tired and boring.

After Day 1.  

Lots of clean up and digging out of 30 year old ground cover.

There may not be a lot of obvious progress in these pics, but I have the blisters on my hands to prove that The Boss Lady and I did A LOT of work out there today.   I dug out about a mile of Asian Jasmine ground cover that was here when we bought the house.  This stuff is notoriously hard to kill and even though it is brown and dead-looking in the top picture, I am sure we have not seen the last of it.  In fact, I didn't trash the jasmine, I moved it to the backyard to fill holes left by the dog, kids and chickens.  We have a retaining wall that is a pain to mow or weed-eat, so ground cover will be perfect up there.  

To keep the cost of the renovation down, I am going to move several plants to new locations in the landscape.  When we are done with the cleanup and new pea gravel ground cover, we are adding some large planters.  You'll have to wait for those details though.

I highly recommend

Taking a cruise back though your own blog.

I was heading to bed two hours ago.  Then I decided to find something really quick that I knew was posted here, back in 2006.  Or was it 2005?

Anyways, I have just gotten lost in stories about my children as babies, long dead pets and many of our great times at home.  It made for a good night and I am sure it will all be worth it when I am waaaaaaaaaaaaaay too tired in the morning.

I need a minute

Or maybe a few days.

This working for a living thing is highly overrated.  Especially the parts that involve rolling out of bed before 7am and back into bed after midnight.  I think I'll be burning a day off this week.  I'm not really sick, but I guarantee I could hack up a lung on command just to make sure that my request is taken seriously. 

I was thinking about taking off Monday, but I have evening meetings that I can't miss.  Might as well go in for the whole day.  Exact same thing for Tuesday.  Wednesday would work except that the students get out early on Wednesday, so that is the first day I can actually head for home at a decent hour.  Don't want to miss that!  Of course we have a meeting with The Princess' kickball team that night, so I won't ACTUALLY be at home very early...

Thursday isn't as good as Friday, but this coming Friday is Friday Fun Day.  On these days I let the students work on hardcore math like strategy games (checkers and chess are big hits) and online math games.  That is a day without a lesson plan.  And that is a good day.  Can't miss that one.

So Thursday it is. That is the soon to be (and much needed) scheduled day for my mental health break.



Please don't call.  I'll be very contagious and weak.  I won't be able to answer the phone.  Or email.  Or faxes.  Or text messages.  Or smoke signals.

If it isn't raining I will probably be found out in the garden.  If it is raining, I may still be found out in the garden.  Stop by and plant something for me.  'Cause I am sick, remember?

It is cold. Lettuce grow some veggies!

Yes!  Two posts in two days, smartass. Get over yourself.

Yesterday we out running some errands and stopped by Home Depot.  We were looking at flooring options for the kid's bedrooms but the kids and I got sidetracked almost immediately inside the store.  There were racks and racks of seed packets displayed just inside the front door.

I admit.  I am the worst kind of gardening junkie.  I don't eat that many veggies and I have never, ever been able to grow a cucumber or tomato that costs less than the grocery store variety.  I'll take The Boss Lady's word for it that they TASTE better.  What I really like is the planning, the prep and playing outside a lot in the Spring.  As my grandma said, after that it is just scratching dirt and petting the plants.

Last fall I kicked the addiction.  I was planning a big fall garden but my real world commitments won out.  There was no time left.  The chaos that is currently my backyard proves that is true. OK, I didn't KICK the addiction, but I didn't make my gardening addiction worserer.  That is a win, right?

Flash to yesterday, just inside the doors at Home Depot.  I tried to be a good, reformed junkie.  I glanced at the displays, but we were here to find floors dammit and not seeds.  Floors are made of made of hard stuff and colors and hardly ever make you sweat or give you skin cancer.

That is what veggie gardens are for.

The store didn't have what we wanted.  And we were headed out.  But I couldn't resist one more glance at the pretty seed packets.  Junkies will tell you, it is the second look that will get you in trouble.  When I first saw the garden displays my animal brain was like "Look, stuff in small envelopes with pictures. Interesting."  But when we went by the next time my inner garden junkie was all like "C'mon. You can pick up just one.  It is the perfect time to plant lettuce and snow peas.  No one will know.  Just be cool, dude.  I dare you!"  Damn.  A dare.


Thirty seed packets and $25 later, I was out the door with a Spring's worth of work ahead of me and just enough starter soil to get a few transplants ready to go in the kitchen windowsill.  After all, I was there already, right?  No need to waste time making another trip to a garden center to buy seeds.  I was saving time and money by getting my fix.  But right in front of the kids too?

Well, they sort of started it.  The girl was looking for packets of Blue bell flower seeds.  And The Talker?  He didn't help either.  He was checking out all of the cool colored veggies that neither of us will ever eat.  He started it by talking about those cool, purple carrots.

So blame them when I don't answer the phone on the weekends.  I'll be busy, out in the garden getting my fix.

Living life 52 minutes at a time

I have enjoyed lots of cool times in my short 41 years.  Every part of my life seems to have it's own pace, too.

A few years back, when I was home with the kids full time, one day seemed to melt into the next. We all just sort of cruised from weekend to weekend.  We had a lot of fun on Mondays through Fridays, but if you had asked me the day of the week on one of those, I likely wouldn't have had a clue.  But I always KNEW when it was Saturday.  Sometimes known as "Go play with your Mommy day!"

When I was previously working for the man, at the city owned recreation center, the days counted.  A lot.  I had a co-worker that I hoped would die in a fiery crash was not fond of.  Any day that I did not commit murder start a fiery crash drop some arsenic in her drink completed with only a little hassle was a good day.  There weren't many of those, so I cherished the few.

Now that I am fully into this new teaching career, I find that I live 52 minutes at a time.  Why 52?  'Cause that is how long our middle school class period is.  Every 57 minutes a new herd files in.  Then they go away 52 minutes later with the knowledge that I have masterfully imparted unto them. The 5 minute passing period usually gives me enough time to police my room for left-behind supplies and school work for other classes.  But sometimes I spend the 5 minutes sitting at my desk, pondering important questions about life.

I think about things like "How many 52 minute class periods are there between now and Spring Break? How many 52s between now and Summer?".  These are the eternal questions of a teaching mind. 

One of my many, varied jobs over the years was also my first foray into public education.  When I was 22 I worked at a public school Outdoor Education Center.  We had 5th grade students come to our center from Houston ISD elementary schools and stay on a 3 night, 4 day field trip.  They were learning about science, math and history while we incorporated environmental studies into all of the lessons.  Yes, Hippies were teaching your children.

One of the other cabin leaders (who still works at the Outdoor Education Center) was the master of "Camping 10 minutes at a time" as he named his sanity program.  When he had a particularly tough crown to work with for the week, I would hear his watch alarm chirp every 10 minutes, as an audible reminder that the weekend was a little bit closer than it used to be.

I have not gotten to the point where I need a 10 minute alarm several times each class period.  But that bell at the end of the class period does sometimes sound like angels singing to me!  And I MAY have been shopping for a new set of batteries for my nicest watch.  Time will tell.  Ba dum bump...

For the record, I dispensed with the usual "it sure has been a long time" blather.  I know it has been a long time since I actually wrote over here and you don't really care.  So we will deal with it.  I will also skip over the required "I promise to write again soon."  If you saw my schedule right now, you would know that I am not committing to anything else.


See you later.  Probably.

Forgot to mention

I am now fully and officially standardized and certified! I have a certificate that cost about $5500 to prove it, too.

After a couple of months of me waiting impatiently and begging the powers-that-be, my Standard Teacher's Certificate was posted online this week. This meant I could pay another $75 and get my specialty areas added to the cert (and that I could wait another few weeks to see the revised, final copy).

All of this was made even more exciting by the fact that the state waited to post my real certificate until my one year cert had been expired for about a week.

In the end, the final copy was posted in about 2 days. Before I even had a chance to call and hassle the state education office!

Sick days

I haven't taken two sick days in a row in more than 10 years I bet. That streak ends this week. I guess it would be the time I got my gall bladder taken out and I wasn't even 30 years old then.

I went to the doctor today and got a shot to help with my cedar allergies. Cedar trees are everywhere in Austin. So this time of year everybody within 50 miles is sniffling and snorting and rubbing eyes. January is always a great time to people watch around here.

Anyways, I always end up with a sinus infection on The Talker's birthday, which rolls around on Friday. This year I was a little ahead of schedule.

My old doc no longer takes our insurance. I have known this for more than a year but today was the first time I NEEDED to go to see a doctor. Of course I haven't done the leg work to find a new doc so I ended up at a walk-in clinic.

If it were not for the higher co-pay, I would just go here until the next insurance change. Online check-in, and new patient paperwork rules!

The insurance had changed our 'scrip coverage too. Thanks to The Boss Lady for calling around the HR office to get the info I needed. There are some great perks to having the wife work at the same place!

I feel better but these medicines always keep me awake for about 24 hours so hopefully I'll pretend like I am David Melin and I'll snooze the day away while the kids are at school tomorrow.

See this guy?

He survived his first year of teaching public middle school.

But evidently the Winter Break has not been long enough to get him back to the blog.

We will shoot for Spring Break I guess.

Christmas Break

The Fall semester ended last week. It has taken me 5 days to decompress. Now to enjoy the rest of our break time (except for the time I will surely spend at work, of course).

Spent yesterday catching up on the to-do list. New baseboards are in the hall an coming to the rest of the house soon. (I mean SOON on a historical, glacial scale, not SOON as in "soon".

The kids are ready for Christmas. The Princess already has her new American Girl doll an The Talker has a new basketball goal These gifts came from my parents but were impossible to keep as a surprise.

And as far as surprises go, I revisited a moment of SAHD-ness recently when I had to get cash from The Boss Lady for her gift. I cracked under the interrogation and the surprise is blown. too.

Spoken like a REAL teacher

5 days until Winter Break.

That is all

It was a good nine days off

I had to go searching for my briefcase this morning. Evidently I didn't do too much WORK during the Thanksgiving Break.

Thanksgiving update

Stopping by to give a quick update on Thanksgiving morning. 


Life is messy and chaotic, just like every other day around here.  The Boss has already been cooking for two days and we are not even eating a big meal here.  Last month we replaced our oven and now I am realizing that was money well-spent.  

 My extended family gathers here in Austin for a Thanksgiving luncheon/Family reunion every year.  This is a big deal, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins and all of the rest for several generations.  In 41 years, I have attended for all but one year that I remember.  The one year we skipped, The Boss Lady and I got stuck driving to Dallas in a snowstorm and spun out our car on the Interstate. After that, I never wanted to tempt fate again, so we stay in town each year to go to the reunion and then host the after-party for my parents, siblings and all the usual suspects.

If I never post again on this blog, you will know that we lost out on our second gamble of this life-time.  That is right!  We are skipping out on the family feed.  SOME people (Bro's family MIGHT fit this category...  Cough.  Cough.) go to extreme measures to miss a trip to this yearly event - Caribbean cruises being one example...  But we are not even leaving town.  We are just heading across town to hang out with some friends. 


If you had ever eaten anything prepared by this friend, you might sell your firstborn for a second invitation to the dinner table.  In the end I bet this dinner will be worth thumbing my nose at the ghosts of family, past and present.  And a shout out to the Queen Mother, I bet I get a dinner roll that isn't char-broiled...

Prophetic words

A couple of years back, when I was trying to decide if I really wanted to pursue the teaching gig, I was talking to one of my neighborhood buds, Law Talking Guy.  He is a lawyer, so I tend to tune out about 50% of what he says.  But one of his insights has certainly come true.

I don't remember if it was during the Spring or Fall, but I remember that he and I were hanging out in the backyard and I was telling him about my plans to expand the garden.  More space, more veggies, more self-sufficiency...  I bet I listed off all of those great reasons.

Law Talking Guy cautioned me not to make the garden too big.  "Once you take a new job, you won't have time to deal with any of your hobbies".  Boy, was he ever right!  My garden never did get any bigger and that is good.  Because since starting the teaching job (and suffering through the worst drought of my lifetime), the plot has received about 2 afternoons of attention.  I planted one Sunday last Spring.  I pulled out the failed, dry plants a few weeks ago.  And that was about the extent of my garden time this year.

Geocaching on weekends?  Yeah, I haven't even had a minute to maintain my own 'caches that are hidden only a few thousand feet from my couch.  One of them has needed a new log since July (maybe longer...)  I haven't even peeked at the main website in two or three months.  Heck, for all I know someone may have hidden a geocache in my classroom.

The Chickens?  Yeah, they are paying the price, too.  Still have them and they are doing OK, but there is never any time to sit and enjoy them.  I throw out feed in the morning and lock up the coop at night.  Actually, that is not always true, either.  Last week I forgot to close up the coop one night.  We now have one less bird thanks to a neighborhood raccoon/cat/Chupacabra. 


One of the neighbor dudes has bought a 1980's Toyota Land Cruiser.  It is a cool rig.  And watching him work on it every night is kicking me in the gut.  Marge, my 1968 Chevy truck hasn't seen the outside of our garage since Halloween night of last year and she hasn't been on the street since July of 2010.

Heck, this blog seems to get a little attention about once a month now.  And sitting on the couch and typing is something that I OUGHT to be able to handle in the evenings.  An example, I just realized that there was still a link to my old Geocaching blog on the sidebar.  I deleted that blog at least six months ago - maybe even a year ago.  Just got around to removing the dead link today.

There is a lot to like about the new teaching job.  And I am down to my FINAL requirement to complete my certifications.  I have one last state exam to pass and then I'll have my full teaching certificate.  For now I teach on a provisional/emergency certification.  Still, I find it ironic that for the first time in more than a decade, I have a little bit of $ to throw at some hobbies and I have absolutely not a single minute to spare for any of them.

The final Texas Two Step

As of about 16 minutes ago,  I am down to the last two requirements before I finish my full teaching certificate.  I had a stack  of electronic documents I have been needing to submit  since last  spring.  Today I sat down and finally finished all of them.  All that is left is a test review course and one, last state exam.  Hopefully I can knock out the review this week and get  scheduled for the exam by the end  of the month. 

I have  until the end of the semester and normally I WOULD wait  until  the bitter end.  But The Boss Lady wants to go on vacation in November.  And I assume  that  she   would like me to have a paying job  next January, too.  So I guess I better hit the review  books soon.

When I started  this teaching adventure the list of To-do’s did not look too bad.  After the lay off  last Spring, my motivation disappeared and I was not sure how hard I wanted to work on the whole thing.  When I re-hired I was committed to finishing my certification up but the start of this  school year has blown by a LOT quicker than I ever imagined  it might (as evidenced  by my abandoning this blog).  Last week I  had my intern supervisor sign off  that  I would indeed make a decent teacher and that I should receive my certificate. 

So all that is left  is the review and the test.  Bring ‘em on!

Football Season. Let's bounce!

Watching a high school football game with The Talker can tire a dad out.  I should start referring to him as The Bouncer.

No wonder my parent's called me Tigger when I was his age.   All of this came after he was the first Raider Rouser to cross the 50 yard line before kickoff.

It is all adding up to a busy year.

The new school year is off to a bang! I haven't felt this busy (or productive) in a long time. Hopefully the productive part will continue for a while.

I am teaching math to students in three different grades this year. But the reality of a Special Education teacher is that I have students who are able to perform simple 2 digit addition and then I have students who are almost ready for the challenges of a general education classroom with their grade-level peers. So I am actually prepping 5 or 6 different activities and lessons to teach concepts in various levels of detail to all my students.

I spend a pretty good chunk of time each day on paperwork. Like all good public employees, I generate a lot of paper every day. Then we have the usual planning meetings and departmental get-togethers a couple of times a week. Always productive times, especially the Wednesday morning 7:30 am meetings... Yeah, right!

If that wasn't enough, I also go into several grade-level math classes to support other students who may struggle with the math content, but do not need the close structure of a smaller Resource math class.

All of this from a guy who has really never loved math. Or even liked it, really.

My newest role? I will soon be in charge of D-Hall, after school detention. I ill be the teacher who sits in the back of the room who tells the regular scofflaws to "find something to keep yourself busy, or I WILL find something to keep you busy."

Now this is a class that I feel at home with. This feels like a throwback to many, many of my high school after school hours spent in the cafeteria trying to look busy so Mrs. Baumgardener would just leave me alone so serve out my sentence in solitude. With the other few dozen regulars in the room.

Even though it is going to be a busy school year, I am already settling into my new roles. More than anything, I am sure that all of this work is certainly worthwhile, just like the kids.



On the home front, The Princess has a "boy" teacher for her second grade class this year. She has already gotten used to the idea and she is back in the school groove. The Talker has always loved school. His teacher is a science specialist, so he is super-excited to learn everything about science this year.

The Boss Lady is working hard, as always, to keep high school kids IN school. Her team was decimated by budget cuts, but the few that remain have picked up the leftover parts and are getting back into the business of helping students graduate.

Around here we know a new school year is here when everybody is in bed and sacked out before 9:45pm. It is now 10:25 and this is the latest I have been awake in two weeks.

See? I managed to get through all of that and NOT complain about the 112 degree temperatures this week. But I do know that 112 degrees minus 9 degrees equals still-too-dang-hot-out-there!