Remtana: Stinkers

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This is part two of the Remembering Montana series. Feel free to read the intro from yesterday to see how we found ourselves ranch-sitting in Montana for three weeks last fall (2018).

Day 5, (September 24, 2018):

Uh oh! The electric fence that keeps the horses from roaming freely does not contain the donkeys and they have free reign over the property. Wish I’d gotten a picture of these “stinkers” yesterday. I keep laughing when I remember the image.

So, Jane keeps these apple snacks for her horses in her gooseneck trailer next to the fenced area where we feed the horses. She said we could give each of the horses up to one apple snack a day, so yesterday after the boy and I fed them their grain, we got out a snack for each and treated the horses. We then went about our day…

Hours later, the girl and I were out petting the horses and I looked around and realized I couldn’t see the donkeys anywhere. I knew they might be on the other side of the barn or the gooseneck out of my view. I ran around the barn to go find them, and I saw asses. Actual donkey butts as their heads were inside the gooseneck, buried in the bag of apple snacks. My email conversation with Jane:

Me: A little incident that I hope isn’t too serious. Adam and I gave the horses each a treat this morning and must not have made sure the door was engaged. We caught Joe and Eddy in the apple snacks. It’s actually been quite windy and the door had blown open. I can’t remember how full the bag was but it looks to be a little over half full now. If they ate too many will it make them sick?

Jane: No worries. It was a brand new 20 lb. bag, so if you weigh the remains, we’ll know how much the stinkers got!

Remembering Montana

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Okay. I’m cheating a bit. But not really…

Feeling a bit buried in the work of a new job yet I’m only on Day 37 of a 60 day blog challenge. The only rule of the challenge: publish every day. I added the rule of publishing in this here blog–not just willy nilly on different social media platforms.

So in the interest of keeping a promise to myself, I’m going to continue to publish every day, damnit. To be efficient, though, I am going to reshare some of my writing from last year.

My family and I had quite an adventure last September (2018) when we agreed to “ranch”sit for an elderly deaf woman in Montana. We were there three weeks while she traveled to visit her sons and their families in other states. I posted to Facebook nearly daily and I’ve compiled the first three posts for you today to introduce the experience.

Finally getting around to posting:

We arrived two days ago after a stunning 7 hour drive mostly through our home state of Idaho. Thursday evening and yesterday, we trained up in the chores we’ll need to attend to as we care for the small ranch and it’s inhabitants: 3 majestic horses (my kids have always wanted to have horses,) 2 affectionate donkeys (who knew donkeys were so sweet?) and 2 rescue dogs who require lots of love and attention. Our hostess, Jane, loves her sustainably built home as much as her animals and refers to it as a living thing. What an honor for my family to be trusted to care for her ranch while she’s away.

Day 3:

Kiki was rescued from a hoarding situation. She spent years of her life in a small crate before Jane took the traumatized pup into her home. When I first met Jane via Skype, she held Kiki like a baby the whole time. I mentioned how much love she gave the little dog, and Jane said, “Oh no, she gives ME love!” It took Jane a long time to teach Kiki to go to the bathroom outside, but Kiki has never developed the habit of asking to be let out. It’s up to a human to pay attention to the clock and take her out every 2.5 – 3 hours.

So, the whole family can leave the property for a maximum of 3 hours to make sure that Kiki gets the consistency she needs to feel safe and cared for. Yesterday, we made the 30 min drive to Missoula for supplies. We stopped by Costco and then checked out Lucky’s Market. We’d made a quick stop at Fresh Market after we dropped Jane at Missoula’s airport on Friday and were not impressed. We all much preferred Lucky’s and agreed it would be our go to for food supply runs. In addition to a few days worth of groceries, we each picked a special treat for ourselves to take back to the ranch: Hubby grabbed an Octoberfest beer, I chose a bottle of pinot noir, the girl’s treat was some delicious sharp chedder cheese, and the boy opted for some toasted cinnamon squares (the first box of cold cereal I’ve purchased since having children.)

Day 4:

I love the unusual layout of this home. Jane is definitely an out of the box thinker and laughed as she told me how difficult it was for her architect to grasp her design requests. For one, Jane is not too concerned with privacy so there aren’t really “rooms” except for her dressing room and a storage room downstairs. The two toilets each have a tiny room that just fits the facilities–bidets on both and fans on timers.

Her husband passed away shortly after they moved here from their Colorado ranch and construction was never finished. There is a downstairs shower that is built into the wall between the laundry facilities and large utility sinks but no walls separating from the rest of the downstairs. She just recently had her upstairs shower installed though because of some communication issues with her contractors, it wasn’t finished until yesterday when my hubby connected the drain to the pipe.

We’ve used some clothes pins to put up a sheet, and while showering downstairs was an adventure, it’s nice to not have to notify everyone to avoid the downstairs and the stairwell when one wants to shower. And the kids are clean now too…

Day 36 and Funky Taco

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We got home yesterday afternoon after driving the last 5 of our 14 hour drive home. I was exhausted and tried but failed to nap before freshening up to go to an afternoon meeting I’d committed to attending. I drank a beer on an empty stomach and relied on my passion for the topic of education to get me through the conversation about launching a new type of school.

After the meeting and some ripped up feet from parking too far away and wearing summer dress shoes for the first time this season, I came home, ate dinner (and drank a little more beer) with the family while we watched episode 5 of Stranger Things, then I crashed hard.  

This morning, a work meeting at 8:30 then a day full of catching up from being away for over a week. Not a single good night’s sleep while traveling made it challenging to resemble anything close to efficiency.  

Hadn’t seen the hubs in 8 days either, so the girl made her brother and herself a pizza so the adults could bike to Downtown’s Funky Taco to split a kimchi quesadilla (yum!) and drink happy hour IPAs.

Got home and realized I hadn’t published anything. Shit! So there you have it. Slightly buzzed blog update; forgive the incomplete sentences and lack of any real topic. But I still published. Even found a picture to accompany. Promise to self kept: day 36 of the 60 day blog challenge, check.

Road Money Part Two

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Day one, 5 minutes in, I was already worried.

If you haven’t read the set-up for today’s post, you can read Part One.  I pick up where I left off…

Just a few blocks from our house, I was filling up on gas, and the boy decided to hit the convenience store.  Blew nearly half his daily allowance on junk food. I reminded him this was a full travel day, and he still needed to cover his lunch and dinner.

In the past, he and I were collaborating on our spends because our budget was shared. This morning, I’d given each kiddo $20 for the day. I didn’t plan to hand them cash each morning of the trip, but I wanted them to have to handle the transactions at the register and watch the money disappear over the day. Plus I knew we’d probably split up for lunch. We’d planned to stop somewhere in the southern suburbs of Salt Lake City for this meal, and I knew we’d be able to find a mall area with a concentration of different chain restaurants.  

Shit! I could already see the plan falling apart with me having to cover his dinner and then having to dictate how he spent his food allowance for the remainder of the trip. This was supposed to be helpful not painful. Maybe it was a bad idea after all.

We did indeed find one of those restaurant concentrations, and each of us chose a different place to eat. The boy was down to just a few dollars and we still had to figure out dinner. Once we got to our day’s destination, after over 9 hours on the road, my mind was racing to find a way he could get enough to eat on just a couple bucks. I Googled nearby pizza places and suggested we each pitch in $5 which took him barely negative for the day. Whew! He was alright with that, and so was I.

I also modeled generosity by buying a big cookie from the hotel food counter and splitting it three ways for dessert.

The next day there was some definite collaborating with the kids pooling money for lunch and even sharing with me who chose not to spend anything at that stop. The girl has mostly eaten here at our friends’ house and grabbed some snacks when we stopped at the grocery store. The boy has had the option to get a take-out burger on those days he doesn’t like what’s available and it’s been so low stress!

We’re nearing the end of our visit, and after several fun outings including a train ride into Olvera Street in Los Angeles one day and a decadent adventure to Porto’s Cuban Bakery where we indulged in delightfully beautiful sweet treats (where I used some of my surplus to contribute a pastry to each of their collections of self-chosen goodies,) both kids are pretty happy with the surplus they’ve been able to amass—even as they shared their precious purchases. Mind you, generous friends shared meals, additional pastries from Porto’s, and even additional cash for the kids’ purses.

Talk about abundance!  

OMG, Yes!

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If you’re reading this on the day it was published, I am probably in a car driving many miles to get home to my life. I made a promise to myself to publish something every day for 60 days, so for your reading enjoyment:

please read this hilarious and painfully relevant article on how ridiculous our required math curriculum is. I would argue you could apply this to most school subjects and don’t agree with encouraging “more school” but I laughed my way through this persuasive article:

How Algebra Ruins Lives

Road Money, Part One

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It was risky. The budget.

I had used this approach with the boy before. Over the last year, he and I have done several road trips. I would give us a daily budget that was intended for food and any activities—these trips usually involved visiting family or friends so were pretty budget friendly to begin with, but it’s still easy to over indulge when you’re on the road and not being careful about monitoring your spending, am I right? Especially the boy who has a limited palate and takes every opportunity to eat out…

So I would give us a daily trip allowance that we always shared. If we had a less expensive day, that money could roll over into the next day. We could even go over, but that would subtract from the overall budget. The incentive to stay within set spending limit was that I would give any remaining balance from the total budget to the boy at the end of the trip. The daily was really just a way to keep us on track.

I would collect the receipts throughout the day and each night, we’d go over what we’d spent and calculate whether we’d gone over or would carry a surplus into the next day, planning the next day’s meals/activities accordingly. Our most successful trip was when I gave us $20/day combined allowance for a two week trip and we managed to visit the aquarium in Lincoln City, OR, spend time in the Redwoods in N. California, eat out at several fun restaurants, and the boy still got $7 in cash at the end.

I decided to use this approach on this current trip with both kids (15yo girl; 12yo boy.) I was going to give us a combined total of $30/day, but when I told hubby this, he thought that was ridiculously low. (Mind you, the boy and I have survived on $15/day combined.) So I made sure we could afford it, then upped it to $60/day; $20 each. When I explained it to the girl, she had difficulty wrapping her head around how it worked and kind of scoffed at the amount.

When I told the boy the budget, he was elated! Already scheming ways we could pool our money some days to save overall. He had more experience with doing this whole roadtrip budget thing with me and assured his sister that $20/day each was a very generous allowance!  

Why was it risky? I’ve noticed that we have created a lack mindset in our family, and I’m working hard to overcome that and help my children shift to a lens of abundance. It’s not easy—especially since we do struggle some financially. I can contrast us to people who have so much less or seemingly nothing and know we have way more than enough, but shifting these kids who’ve heard, “we can’t afford it” their whole lives is super challenging.

As siblings, they struggle to get along anyway, and I feared that throwing in an individual rather than a shared budget might contribute to an ego-centric attitude when choosing how to spend, and it could get ugly. I really wasn’t sure which would work better, but thought it might get even uglier if they had to collaborate on every purchase.  

How did it turn out? You’ll have to return for Part Two on Thursday…

Canasta and Good Omens

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I was crossing my fingers. It was pretty late, and I was standing outside one of the guest rooms at my friends’ house trying to eavesdrop on the conversation happening behind that closed door. My two children were in that room, and my friend had just come found me to let me know she thought she heard my son crying. It’s hot in the house, and there are lots of fans going so I can’t really hear anything—just quiet voices; I don’t really want to hear the words, I just want to know it’s going well…

Earlier in the evening, we’d been invited to “game night” with a larger group of friends. The boy was totally in with me to learn their usual card game, Canasta, but my teen girl’s never really been one for games. She opted out. After the first of three hands, she decided to hang out near me and whisper in my ear every once in a while how terribly bored she was. Her irritation grew over the next 90ish minutes and two remaining hands and as we were wrapping up the night to leave, her little brother got the brunt of her mood.

In the car on the way back to our accommodations, the three of us squished in the back seat, I asked her if she wanted to watch the next episode of Good Omens, just the three of us—it’s my “go to” on this trip when we three need to bond, and I thought this might improve her mood. She nodded eagerly.

What I hadn’t anticipated was just how far she’d pushed her brother this night. He was NOT interested. Said we could go ahead without him. It broke my heart to hear the pain he was feeling over how she’d treated him. When she left the room, his composure collapsed and he cried, exhausted and broken from her continuous abuse.

I asked her to follow me into the room where I was sleeping and did my best to communicate what I saw happening. This is a conversation we’ve had many times, but after the last big conflict she and I had (read about it here: Lying to Ourselves,) the two of us seemed to break through a bit and she’d shared some tender feelings she has for her brother and a genuine concern for his wellbeing. I delicately reminded her of that conversation and asked her to go talk with him. It was risky and had the potential to go really wrong, but I hoped…

I went out to the quiet living room and was there when my friend came to tell me she thought my boy was crying. I listened at the door for a few minutes then softly knocked and opened the door. My girl was sitting on the floor near his bed and his face was wet with tears, and I couldn’t tell if it was going well or not. I asked if all was okay and she knitted her eyebrows, pursed her lips, and nodded quickly. I asked if I should leave and she nodded again, same expression on her face. I gently closed the door and went back to the living room, fingers still crossed.

Several minutes later they both came out and plopped into chairs. The girl grabbed the remote and informed me we were watching Good Omens. The energy had cleared. I didn’t ask any questions but my heart was filled with relief and love.

The following day felt SO much better. My kids are pretty cool. 

Roadtrip Day Two

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The Next Morning…

Only the boy joined me for the free (and quite good) hotel breakfast, and he didn’t eat much. A bowl of cereal (we don’t buy cereal at home so he eats it whenever it’s available) along with a yogurt. When he opened the yogurt, the whey spilled out onto his shorts and he left me (and the offensive yogurt) to go back up to the room and change.

The girl preferred to sleep than to eat. Everyone knew I wanted to hit the road early so we could make this last five hours of the trip before the heat hit triple digits. Once I returned from breakfast with the luggage cart, we (I) packed quickly and loaded the cart. The kids were at each other again the moment I woke the teen, and again, my responses were more reactive than measured and calm. I hurriedly scanned the room to make sure we weren’t leaving anything behind, feeling helpless to enlist any quality assistance from my kids.

They waited at the hotel entrance with the luggage cart (her hissing at him through clenched teeth to “Stop!” playing his ukulele) while I went to get the car and pull it around to load. I popped the hatch to set something down and realized the girl was at my side having abandoned her uke-playing brother to guard the cart on his own. I hit the button on the hatch door to close it and just as it latched shut, I uttered a desperate, “Noooo!” and put both my hands on the window.

I peered in through the hatch window and just as I feared, spotted my keys sitting there amid the few stray items we’d left in the car overnight. I tried the handle, hoping I’d unlocked the whole car and just didn’t remember. I hadn’t. I checked all the doors just to confirm what I already knew. I could feel the temper tantrum boiling up and out of me, ready to curse and stomp my feet, and then I thought of my girl, standing there at my side, absorbing my energy, more than ready to tantrum with me and miraculously, I pulled it together.

Funny, as I write these posts sometimes, I try to assess myself as a parent from the reader’s point of view, and I’m often disgusted. I have to say, these last couple years of parenting have really done a number on my ego. I realize how much I judged other parents. I am someone who’s spent years consciously developing myself as a person, moving through growth philosophies, putting in the effort to adopt practices of gratitude and self-care, and consistently being able to shift my lens and reframe a situation. But I’m telling you, parenting wears a person down. It reduces me to my pre-growth self more often than I like to admit.

We hadn’t used our AAA membership in years, and I didn’t have a card in my wallet. I panicked on the inside briefly as I tried to remember if we still maintained that membership. I called my husband who assured me we were still covered and who texted me the needed info. I placed the call, then calmly, even pleasantly, let the kids know the wait would take “only” 45 minutes at the most. The boy went back up to the room, and the girl stayed in the lobby with me.

Feeling true relief at how easy it was to remedy what initially seemed like a disaster, I cheerfully acknowledged this out loud to my daughter while she sipped the glass of grapefruit juice I’d fetched for her from the breakfast buffet. Her energy shifted along with mine (albeit briefly) and she even helped her brother pick up the thirty or so round, bouncy ammo balls that spilled from his Nerf gun when he pulled it out of the recently unlocked hatch (Love AAA!!) to make room for the luggage. He didn’t think it was funny, but it was hard not to laugh as the little yellow balls bounced all over and in every direction of the covered entrance to the hotel. We eventually retrieved every ball.

Once in the car and on the road, when I held out my hand and demanded their earbuds, the cranky resistance returned. If you missed the back story, here’s Day One when I had resolved to “fight this battle.” This day I could reframe it as “hold this boundary.” I mean, really, are the war metaphors really helpful?! I offered several alternatives to isolated listening including all of us sharing a podcast of their choice, but the girl continued to resist for the first two hours. Her brother and I visited quietly while she tried to sleep. Eventually, after she finally decided to grab a bite to eat (Whew!), she suggested The Adventure Zone podcast.

Both the kids have been listening to this Dungeons & Dragons podcast on their own; she’s completely caught up on the latest campaign, but we jumped in where her brother is in the episode sequence, near the end of the first campaign. I had to be filled in on lots of back story and it took me almost two episodes to feel like I had a clue what was happening, but I did eventually find myself caught up in the plotline. So much so that we had to circle a bit after arriving to our ultimate destination so that we could finish a compelling story arc as we wrapped up this part of our road trip.  

Roadtrip Day One

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Earbuds. Are they evil? I don’t believe in evil, and I absolutely love the magic of earbuds, but damn if they don’t cause serious problems for me.

Traveling with my two teens—one is 15, the other 12. So I guess, technically a teen and a tween? Just the three of us; hubby is saving his time off for a vacay this fall. We three roadtripped from our home in Boise, ID to Southern California to spend some quality time with our good friends that my kids have always known.

Yes, it’s a ways, but not a new trip to us. Sometimes we do this trip several times a year, so the scenery, while beautiful, is not novel. I actually really love roadtrips because I am a huge consumer of auditory content and I currently have 4+ books I’m eager to get through. And I like the scenery, regardless of how many times I’ve driven the route.

The kids are not impressed with the scenery. They also like to plug into their own content on the road. So to an insect or an alien, it would look really quiet in the car for most of the trip. Three humans with little cords attached to buds shoved in their ears making occasional facial expressions, all in the same car, but each in her/his own world.

Usually, we stop, both directions, in Salt Lake City and spend the night with family I have there. This makes it an official road trip, right? I have two sisters and two brothers-in-law, and my kids have eight cousins just south of SLC; we stay well-connected because of their strategic placement on this oft traveled path of ours.

Sometimes this trip goes better than others. It definitely helps when I am proactive and arrange some limits on the solitary world approach—let’s figure out some things we can do in the car together, unplugged from our individual devices. I do try this time, but the kids are resisting. Even though I specifically chose some Audible books that I thought they could also enjoy, no one is playing along, and I don’t want to fight the battle.

This was a last minute trip, and I decided to use some hotel points to get us all the way to St. George on Day One, so we wouldn’t have to drive through the deep desert heat all day on our second day of driving. I recognize early on I should have fought the battle. I know the consequences, but I get lazy. And like I mentioned, I was excited about the opportunity to binge-listen. This is the real battle. Fighting my own desire to listen to what I want to listen to vs. finding something we can agree to consume together.

We were a wreck when we reached St. George after a 9-hour car ride of—hmm, what to call it—shared solitude? That sounds so lovely, but even as it was happening, I knew I’d pay for it later. I did thoroughly enjoy every moment I spent listening to a long segment of The Coddling of the American Mind and then the first 10 or so chapters of Where the Crawdads Sing.

The kids didn’t fight about who would sit where. In fact, my daughter stays up most the night before road trips so she can sleep in the car and she was perfectly happy with the back seat. The boy up front next to me—he and I do more roadtripping together and are pretty used to finding a rhythm with just the two of us. When his sister is in the car though, he’s less agreeable. I think he wants to impress her with his own rebelliousness, so on this trip, he shifts into his need to give me pointers on how to drive. He does this sometimes, and it’s not endearing.

Every time we had to emerge from our own worlds, there was tension. Why do they look for every reason to be mean to each other? I am lamely reminding them that assuming best intentions and treating others with kindness will help them be happier people, but who wants unsolicited advice?

I can feel myself becoming reactive and not having the will to shift into the kindness I want to model for them. I try a few times to get them to listen to the book with me; it’s not happening. I capitulate to the earbuds every time. I lack the energy to fight the battle, but even more, I lack interest in the content they’d be willing to share with me.

At the hotel, we are all beyond snippy with each other. We do all manage to agree on pizza, and I leave them in the room (for some real solitude?) to go pick it up. I don’t listen to my book on this short car trip, but instead strategize for how to shift the energy. When I get back to the hotel, I buy a rather large cookie at the food counter that I know they’ll both like. Upstairs, we eat pizza, and they express enthusiasm and appreciation for the cookie that we all split. We go over the receipts for the day to determine how we did with our trip budget then watch Episode 3 of Good Omens on my laptop—together. We laugh together, we pause and discuss scenes with each other. We enjoy the content together. We retire to bed in much better spirits than we arrived at the hotel.

Tomorrow’s another day. I remind myself of something I say often to my husband, “you’ll never regret the time you spend with your kids.” I resolve to fight the battle.

The trouble with being smart…

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Some of us thinkers were branded as smart when we were young. This is a devastating label for many of us. Here’s why…

I’m going to tell you a story to demonstrate. I was a second grade teacher for many years. I was lucky to have an amazing teaching partner who wanted to collaborate with me to find ways to transfer the ownership of our students’ learning away from us and onto them.

We created a rather brilliant approach to spelling that was really more about students learning how to use data to set and accomplish realistic goals than it was about learning spelling patterns. This was when I got a real sense of the damage done to those kids we laud praise upon for being smart.

The system worked like this:

We’d start each week with a pre-test of spelling words. All the words on the test contained a particular spelling pattern or 2-3 related patterns. We’d then correct the test together in class and the students would then use that information to create their own spelling list to study for the week. Any words missed on the pretest had to go on the student’s list, but beyond that they were free to pick from a curated list of words with the focus spelling pattern(s).

The words were presented in three columns, and I explained that the words in the first column were the simplest words and the easiest to master. As you moved across the columns, the words became more complex, likely becoming more difficult to remember. There was no additional guidance and the students had the freedom to pick whichever words they wanted (beyond those they’d missed on the pretest) to create their unique list.

They had several activities they could use to practice their words and at the end of the week, the students would pair up and test each other on their customized lists. We’d then graph the results of that test and analyze the data.

If you missed one or two words, you’d probably created a “just right” list for your level, with enough challenge to learn something but not so much that it was overwhelming and more than you could master. If you missed three or more words, you’d probably chosen words that were too difficult for you and next time you might consider choosing simpler words. If you consistently missed zero words then your list was probably too easy, and next time, you may want to challenge yourself with more difficult words.

(The graphs were also great to show trends over time, and we could use this data to adjust the student’s approach accordingly. Truly, this system was brilliant. I credit my teaching partner who was amazing to work with though she eventually wanted to move away from this because she felt it took too much focus away from spelling. I was more like, “fuck the spelling! This is real learning.”)

Now of course, there were always two to three smart kids in class that consistently chose the most difficult words and still aced the test every time. How to differentiate for these kids and make it more challenging? Well, they were encouraged to pull out the dictionary and find even more complex words that still contained the spelling pattern.

The first week these smart kids got to strut over to the bookshelf and pull out the dictionary, they were always so excited! They really had a great time finding longer, more challenging words and I loved seeing them so engaged rather than bored. Often, on this first go around, they would choose words that were too difficult and would be devastated when they missed several on their test. The following week, they’d use the guidance the whole class had received and look for words that were a bit simpler. If they missed one or two of these, they’d usually be done with the dictionary.

These smart kids would go back to the words they knew they could ace every time (usually because they already knew the words.) The dictionary would remain on the bookshelf during spelling because it challenged their very identities and made them feel less smart. These kids had fixed mindsets and when learning was too difficult, they gave up because it meant they were no longer elevated above effort due to their intelligence.  

What an eye-opener! And I couldn’t help but be reminded of all the activities I avoided as a child—and as an adult if I wasn’t sure I’d be good at it right out of the gate. How I spent years not allowing myself to be a beginner at anything, or if it was at all challenging, I’d abandon it quickly. Being labeled smart makes you risk-averse and gives you a fixed mindset.

Here’s a simple explanation of fixed mindset vs. growth mindset:

People with a fixed mindset avoid challenges, because it makes them feel like they’re not talented or smart. They lose interest when the work gets hard, and they give up easily.

Those with growth mindset seek and thrive on challenge. They want to stretch themselves, because they know that they will grow and learn. “This is hard. This is fun.”

https://medium.com/leadership-motivation-and-impact/fixed-v-growth-mindset-902e7d0081b3

So which are you? The risk-averse smart person or the person invigorated by challenge? Can you see how most classrooms create and reinforce this damaging identity?