Results tagged “Melody” from Debi's Journal

In our neighborhood we went through the 1990s thinking ice cream trucks had gone the way of the passenger pigeon (that means extinct, Melody). Back in the 80s there would maybe be one or two a week, and then the following decade, nothing.

Then the city built a community center/YMCA, then a baseball park with playground and multi-use field, and finally an environmental library. Nowadays you can't throw a rock without hitting at least one ice cream truck. Who would imagine ten years ago that I'd bemusedly watch three different trucks swerving around each other trying to get the most business during a busy sporting event? I've seen at least five or six different trucks at various times of the day or week. Apparently the city doesn't strictly regulate them, so it's like the Wild Wild West of ice cream trucks. It's pretty cool.

One day last year, I noticed one truck going around with the music volume turned down unusually low. When I mentioned it to Melody, she said one of our neighbors, Tom, had accosted the driver (a Hispanic woman) and screamed at and threatened her (probably with something stupid like deportation) because the music disturbed him or something. Tom can be a real jerk so this didn't surprise me.

On two occasions, when I stepped out to see the latest idiot blasting rap music at full bass and volume, it turned out to be a freaking brightly-colored (purple maybe?) ice cream truck/van thing. Thank goodness this doesn't seem to be the guy's regular route since I've only seen him the two times, wishing his stereo would blow up. Plus the second time, he pretty much sped down the street, which I didn't think would help him sell anything.

Mel's favorite ice cream truck driver is some kind of eastern European dude who gives her a discount. She usually gets the Neapolitan sandwiches, while my nephew likes Sponge Bob with the freaky black gumball eyes.

We have our least favorites as well, typically those who charge more for ice cream than the others.

The Santa Ana Winds have been howling for the past three or so days. Yesterday, I took the dog for her daily walk—which was Mel's job, but she had some important teen-angsty drama or something going on—and spotted this little guy. Mel said it was some sort of jumping spider, but I don't know. It posed for the camera and didn't jump on me.
The walk around the park was a little unusual for me, as I was simultaneously roasted by the sun thanks to my black sweater, and chilled by the blowing wind. After Molly and I finished our circuit, Mel and I pulled a couple of kites out of the garage.

I flew the kite above. It liked to lean to the left and then divebomb into the ground. It was fun (not) having my right hand yanked by the kite string while snapping photos with my left hand. Most of my shots came out blurry.

Mel had the much cooler dragon kite.

At the beginning of the day, Melody had around 50 boxes of cookies she still needed to sell. Today also happened to be Flag Football day, with the first games of the season going on in the park all morning and early afternoon. Melody got to work with the help of two of her cousins.
She sold almost 30 boxes, which means we still have another 20+ we need to sell by the end of the month. We have lots of Caramel deLites, if you happen to be craving any...

Later that afternoon, the two older girls and yet another cousin poked around the backyard and dug up a few live treasures. Now, this is what the back wall normally looks like towards the end of the day:
Boring, gray/brown lizards sunning themselves on the wall, scuttling away if you approach too closely. But when you (or a fearless teenager) flip one over, it becomes much more interesting.
Cool. Mel observed that this particular lizard had previously lost its tail; its current one was smaller than usual and appeared to be in the process of growing back. The kids eventually put the lizard back in its hiding place, but it wasn't long until Mel shouted, "I caught a frog!"
Rawr.

I don't see the point of eating minestrone soup if you're going to avoid the vegetables. I hate carrots and peas but I still eat them if they're part of a larger dish. The "starving kids in third-world countries" argument doesn't work with her. The way she acts, you'd think she'd die if she ate something that wasn't hot cheetos.

Still sick and dealing with a runny nose and possibly bronchitis.
On Saturday I was in Palm Springs for Mel's haircut appointment, and it happened to be perfectly timed with the city's annual Black History Parade down Palm Canyon Drive, just outside the salon's front door. I'll admit that I enjoy watching parades! This one was pretty typical of small-town parades, with high school bands, various drill team clubs, children's clubs, local churches, local law enforcement, and at least one celebrity, Super Model [sic] Beverly Johnson.
Melody was very happy with her haircut.

On Friday I left the keys in the ignition while getting gas at Costco, and the car locked itself as I was messing with the gas pump. I had left the window open about 1", enough to fit most of my hand through, but only at the top. Of course I left my phone in the car as well. I spent about a minute trying to figure out how I was going to deal with the situation; my initial thought was to go searching for my mom, who was buying pizza at the snack bar, because she had an extra car key. Then I decided that leaving would piss off everyone who was behind me waiting for a pump. With great determination I shoved my hand in the window opening, forced my wrist down the side of the window where the opening was barely more than a half inch wide (pretty much nearly crushing my poor wristy), and flipped the lock with my fingertips. My mom later said, "You should always keep your keys in your pocket," but nooo, I'm just going to make sure I keep the window all the way down from now on. I spent the rest of the day with a bright red line across my wrist. NO I'M NOT A CUTTER!
The tree is still loaded with grapefruit, even though we picked a couple of bags full and my sister gave them away to her coworkers. We even had a stranger come to the door today asking if she could pick a few. If you're in the local area and want a bag of grapefruit, let me know. They are around 99 cents each at the grocery store, or so I heard, so you're getting a nice deal here.

This is the part where I get to quickly review the past 366 days. I only have a few minutes before I nod off, the first time I can remember in a long time not being awake at the stroke of midnight of the new year. I will probably skip a plethora of interesting events. Oh well!

January: I have my final two weeks of student teaching for a 1st grade class; the teacher and the students are wonderful. I panic when I learn my next student teaching assignment will be with a 5th grade class.

February: Mel and I dine at our first all-Vegan restaurant (I love it, Mel hates it). We also go to the La Brea Tar Pits for the first time.

March: Utterly forgettable, and forgotten, except for the part where I teach math to a bunch of 5th graders and like it.

April: Grand Canyon at the beginning of the month. Camp WiWoCa at the end of the month.

May: I present my teaching portfolio. Mel and I clean out stables at a farm animal rescue haven. Ugh. Gross.

June: Melody survives the 7th grade with a 3.5 GPA for the final semester. Doesn't get a flipping bumper sticker from the school, however.

July: Fireworksbirthdaystravaganza, but this is the same every year. And Mel misses them all, but this is the same every year. CELDT (pronounced "selt") all month long.

August: Mel is home for her birthday for the first time in around six years, and only because the beginning of the school year was pushed up a week. She starts 8th grade. Dad goes on a square dancing cruise to Alaska.

September: A boring month, considering the biggest event was finding a couple of year-old grapefruits still in the tree. Oh wait, there was Mel and her insanity with food at Disneyland as well...

October: My grand plan of having an awesome Queen of Hearts costume ready for Mel by Halloween doesn't pan out.

November: Disneyland, part two. Dad passes away. The rest of the month is miserable.

December: Mel goes wild at her school dance and then marches in a parade the following night. Everyone else still mopey. First Mel, then my sister, then I get hit by a nasty stomach virus of some sort, with me the only one unable to recover in under two days. The family visits the cemetery on New Year's Eve because of a 49th day Buddhist tradition; technically it's still 48.75 days, but going on New Year's Day does not appeal to anyone.

Good night.

When you were little, or even last week, you probably sat and wondered how your life would be different if you had a different name. I remember going through a few years of school thinking Debbie was the stupidest name ever, and how it sucked that every class in school always had another Debbie in it. At one point I figured I could turn my middle name into a nickname, like Carrie or Carey or whatever, and go by that. Given that I rarely follow through with anything, that idea went *poof* quickly. However, I did manage to stick with changing the spelling of my nickname to Debi when I got my first personalized university email address (debi@...).

I was rather bemused when my own daughter began toying with the idea of changing her name back in 2nd grade. I think she has a pretty cool and unusual name, and most of the time she is in agreement with me, so when she announced that she needed a nickname that wasn't "Mel" or "Milopilo" or "Pilo" (and yes, she still answers to that last one), I asked her what other names she had in mind. "I want my nickname to be Caitlyn." "Huh? That's not even a nickname!" We squashed that idea that night. And by "we," I mean "I."

Fast forward to the 8th grade, where the name change spectre has raised its ugly head again. She wants to be called Dani now, which is a shortened version of her middle name, Danielle.

It's not unusual for people in our family to go by their middle names; I have two uncles and an aunt, plus Melody has a second cousin, who all go by their middle names. But I have to point out that every single one of them went by those names their entire lives. They didn't just decide in 8th grade that they would start doing so. Walter Eugene was always Gene. Delbert David was always Dave. Lauren Ashleigh was Ashleigh since before her actual birth. They didn't just change all of a sudden and expect everyone to respect their new identity.

I have faith that Mel has inherited my lack of follow-through and will abandon this idea by the time she returns from New York in January.

Dec. 23 Update: Gaaah. This appeared on Tiny Midget's Mel's MySpace page today:
 *TinY_MIdGEt<3 IM IN THE VERY SNOWY {1 foot} NEWYORK!!! I will post pics wen I get home they are very pretty X] well I AM SO BORED SO TEXT MEEEE!! [call me Danielle ;) <3 u

Melody's Girl Scout troop (7 out of 9 girls, 4 adults) met up at a picnic area called Thurman Flats in the San Bernardino National Forest for a little wilderness education. It rained a bit that day, but we hiked anyway for about an hour and crossed several creeks by stepping on rocks and logs. Our goal was to spot some wildlife and identify animals by the footprints and scat they left behind; the troop leader had a laminated chart with a variety of pictures to help with the identification. We saw no animals other than a few birds, but we didn't have any trouble finding plenty of scat.

Melody is in the center of the group of people in the background of the photo above, in the green raincoat. At first I was ticked that the camera focused on the leaves in the foreground, but then I thought it looked kind of cool after all. After the hike, we paused for a picnic lunch.

This is Mel's second year in her middle school marching band. This past October 19 they marched in the Loma Linda Community Parade. Loma Linda used to be populated by mostly Seventh-Day Adventists, who observe the Sabbath on Saturday (thus many shops are closed Saturdays). Their post office is open on Sunday, and they hold their big parade on a Sunday. The Grand Marshall this year was Brigadier General Loree K Sutton, MD, U.S. Army; her connection to the town was the fact that she received her graduate degree from Loma Linda University some two decades ago.

October 29 was Jury Duty Day for me. I took an antihistamine before I left home as a precaution. I dutifully arrived at the courthouse a few minutes shy of 8:00AM and zipped through the metal detector with a small bag I borrowed from Melody containing just my ID, car keys, jury duty paperwork, and a novel (at least, that's all that I thought I had at the time). I remember during my previous stint that camera phones were banned from the courthouse, but this time around everyone had their Blackberries/Tilts/whatever and phones were constantly ringing in the jury assembly room.

The room. It was packed full of people, and it stank. The antihistamine didn't seem to have any affect on my sinuses, and within the first half hour I was no longer able to breathe through my nose. The room reeked of smokers, heavy perfume, and body wash. Ugh.

The check-in staff didn't even finish processing everyone until around 9:20AM. I could have shown up an hour late to the courthouse and nobody would have cared. Once the last person was checked in, we all had to sit through a movie featuring jurors who had such a wonderful experience serving on a jury. Maybe 15 minutes after that, the assembly room staff posted four lists, and we all had to check to see which group we were in. I was in Group C. The staff announced that each judge would eventually call in and give instructions for their particular group. I assumed that this meant there were four cases and four judges for today.

About 9:50AM, the staff announced that one of the judges has called in! The defendant has plead guilty! Group C has been excused!

I was relieved, not because I didn't want to be on a jury, but because Mel had two appointments the next day, plus it was a minimum day at school, and I didn't want to be stuck in a courtroom for two days like the last two times I had jury duty. So it all worked out and I won't have to expect another summons for at least a year.

Oh yeah, about that bag I took with me... After I returned home and emptied it out, I noticed that the side pocket had a hole in the bottom. I found several items underneath the bag lining including lip gloss and a swiss army knife. Great job you're doing there, courthouse security. I'm glad I've never taken that bag to the airport. I fear what TSA would do to me.

Mel goes to school out of district, and so she gets her own family chauffeur service because there is no bus service between districts. When Mel and I arrived home yesterday after school, she stepped out of the car and let out a whiny "EEEWWWWWW!!!!! There's something dead here and I think I stepped on it!"
Not sure what it was--a ground squirrel or gopher, maybe? We have hawks in the area, so maybe one of them decided to bestow its leftovers upon our driveway, leaving it up to the ants to get busy with the headless carcass. I mentioned it to my dad, who promised to dispose of it. It was still there this morning. It finally went in the trash bin, but I was wondering, are dead animals like hazardous waste or anything like that? But then again it's not all that different from tossing your leftover hamburger or chicken wings, eh?

On the drive to Disneyland (you may have guessed where we were going in my last entry) the girls counted a total of six drivers talking with their cell phones held up to their ear (breakin' da law!), and two drivers chatting via their bluetooth earpiece (legal). The sad thing was that one of the naughty drivers was part of our caravan of three cars, and the girls in my car found that completely hysterical.

Disneyland was mostly fun, and it was the first weekend where all the Halloween decorations went up. We stayed overnight at the Anaheim Best Western which is practically across the street from the park entrance, and the hotel allowed us to keep our cars parked there (with a rear-view mirror hanging pass) for the entire day. For breakfast Mel constantly bitched and moaned over having to eat breakfast at Denny's across from the park entrance. Once in the park, Melody was her usual pain-in-the-arse self and refused to go on any of the roller coaster rides. She also refused to eat at the pizza place next to Space Mountain and so we trekked it over to the Gumbo place next to Pirates and back again so she could get her bread bowl soup. Food issues were going to plague us for the rest of the day and she was really looking like a total spoiled brat to the other parents who were in our group. Finally that evening Mel had a complete mental breakdown over our choice of dinner location, and I won't go into details over her behavior other than that other parents have said there would have been a severe punishment if it was their child. Suffice it to say that I will be taking her for a complete physical at Kaiser Permanente within the next month.

This morning I drove to a Farmer's Market in Riverside to get some of my favorite soap. Even though a law was enacted in California nearly three months ago banning drivers from talking on hand-held cell phones, I saw quite a few drivers happily chatting away with phone on ear on the freeway. Of course, there were 1000x as many drivers breaking the speed limit, but that's a whole other thing.

The Teen and I will be spending the weekend in Anaheim; for the drive there and back, I thought it would be a fun little project for her to photograph as many drivers talking on cell phones held up to their ears as she could. Now all I need is for her to actually go along with it, and hope nobody shoots us in the process. I will report back here after the weekend!

On a completely unrelated note, here are the Teen's grades so far, with two weeks left in the first quarter.
This is pretty astounding considering how bad her grades were in 6th and 7th grades. When she was pulling a D in Science last year, ooh yeah, not fun. She agrees that there is a correlation between this and having an organized notebook this year. And that I quit forcing her to take piano lessons and practice 5 hours a week.

Ha ha, Mello is what my mom has called Melody for the past 12 or so years. Mello also happens to be an androgynous male character from a Japanese manga/anime called Death Note who was supposedly cosplayed by Madonna in her recent "Jump" video. But that has nothing to do with this.

Back in mid-August, my sister forwarded a contest email from Ty (the Beanie Babies company) to Mel, who drew her entry and entered the contest, Make My Beanie! She emailed all her friends to vote for her entry. She lamented over the fact that some entries had hundreds of thousands of votes, but I tried to make her feel better by telling her that the people at Ty probably know that some people are going to go nuts with the voting, and take that into account when choosing a winner. Mel eventually passed 900 votes but I don't know what her final tally was.

Today, she received an email that she is one of the 50 finalists! Yay. As a finalist, she will be getting an autographed Make My Beanie! t-shirt. She totally squealed with happiness with the news. Here is the link to her entry. Update: Voting has been turned off for her entry, since she didn't make it to the "quarterfinals." It was fun while it lasted, though!

Late afternoon on Labor Day (Sept. 1), my sister, The Nephew, and Mel were lounging around in the yard when Mel spotted a second orange globe high in the grapefruit tree. She insisted we pick them both, brought over some sort of fruit picking implement that her grandmother uses, and couldn't reach either one of them. Oh boy, I get to do the dirty work. So I bring them down, and we notice that these grapefruit are much bigger than the green guys still growing all over the tree.
After this photo, they were tossed in a plastic bag (the grapefruit, not the kids) and sat in the kitchen for a couple of days. Today, I decided to slice one of them up. Well, the grapefruit looked kind of dry and funky inside. It had almost no flavor.

That's when my mom explained the problem: These two grapefruit were leftovers from last season that managed to hide from getting picked from the tree last spring. A-ha! I'll just wait until the greenies ripen up.

School started for Mel this past Wednesday. How'd she get to 8th grade so fast? Her first day of Kindergarten was like yesterday, and she was the smallest kid in class. Well, thanks to the different rates of growth between adolescent boys and girls, at 4'11" she's taller than a few boys in her grade, for now (but nearly all the 8th grade girls tower over her).

Today, she chose this shirt to wear to school, which she bought just last week:

She had worn similar "hug" shirts to elementary school before, and the predictable result was that she would often receive a hug or few from classmates.

But also today, her middle school had a "special" assembly. No hugs or expressions of affection are allowed in school! Apparently, the school had some sexual harrassment issues in the previous school year. Melody was so embarrassed because she was seated near the Principal and Vice Principal, and tried her best to cover her (now "subversive"?) shirt. After school, we were able to see the humor in the whole thing. Leave it to Mel to pick that day to wear that shirt!

I was going through some more of my photos from last Spring, and here is one that was meaningful to me. The destruction in the background is making way for hope and renewal in the foreground. That is Miss M on the left.

This past April, my daughter's girl scout troop did a service project up in the San Bernardino Mountains. Under the supervision of the local forest rangers, the girls planted 41 Sugar and Ponderosa pines in an area that was devastated by fire back in September 2007. One ranger mentioned that they had a boy scout troop up there the week before, and they only managed to plant around five trees. What can I say, our troop of eight girls truly dominated, and received a heap of praise from the rangers.


Below is a photo of part of the fire taken by my brother on his cell phone on September 16, 2007. I guess he was on the job at the time, working with emergency crews from the Big Bear area.

Living in the Los Angeles area provides many opportunities for regular people like me to catch a view of the occasional celebrity. For instance, when I was in the 6th grade my family went to Magic Mountain, a southern California amusement park (which is a Six Flags now, but wasn't at the time). I became carsick during the trip, and felt nauseous the whole day. When my family was in line for a rollercoaster ride, some people approached my dad and asked if they could put me in the front car, because they were filming some shots for a tv show. I was feeling like crap and basically told my dad, "I dun wanna." I found out later that not only would I have been seated in front of LeVar Burton, I would have been in the opening clip of the latest "Battle of the Network Stars." Some other couple of kids got the half-second glory of being televised across the nation instead. Stupid decisions would be the story of my life, but then I made up for this later in life by my half-second close-up on national television on "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition."

Anyway...

Melody is out in New York wishing she was back in California, so Mel, this one is for you.

A month ago we had just returned to our car after shopping at Kohl's. I was about to turn the key in the ignition when Mel started laughing and told me to look at the truck parked across from us. I glanced at it and didn't notice anything special about it.

Then Mel simply stated, "F*@$."

I looked at her. "Excuse me?!?"

"Um, that's what it says on the truck. Do you have your camera?"


I find it interesting that her reaction five years ago probably would have been, "Eww. Why would someone do that?" Now it's more like, "How stupid. Let's take a picture of it."

I shouldn't be blogging right now because my brain is in a quiet panic. But here I am. This is a little something from last month:

I found this on the bathroom door when I came home from a day of student teaching. Melody left for school about a half hour later than I did, so she probably put up the note right after I drove off that morning.

Melody had been doing well this quarter with getting her assignments turned in on time, up to this one. The stained-glass window assignment for her Social Studies class was listed as "missing" in her online grades. I love the fact that I can check her grades online. Ain't technology wonderful? She was sooo busted.

After two months of not blogging, I guess it's only fair to show you the finished hat.

Sorry, no photos today. I was hoping to get a nice shot of one of the Teenlet's kites flying in the air, but the wind really picked up after school so we opted to avoid the outdoors.

What has Debi been up to?
This week I am in between student teaching sessions. I finished up with a wonderful 1st grade class last week. I had been with this class since the end of October, so the last day was somewhat emotional with a little going-away party the class threw for me, and all the sad goodbyes. I think I enjoy lower elementary grades the most since most of my experience from the last six years has been with Kindergarten through 2nd grade.

My next assignment, however, is 5th grade at a different school. I'm really going to have to change gears!

How is the Kidlet doing?
I started referring to her as the Teenlet since she started the 7th grade this past fall. I guess she's not technically a teen yet, since she is 12, but she and her friends are definitely beyond the tween stage. She is still playing the bells in band, though she made the jump from beginning to advanced band over the summer. She's already plotting to drop band next year to take Journalism for her elective (or Exploratory period, as the school calls it).

And... she is still in Girl Scouts. She didn't really want to stick with it for another year, but as a Cadette she is taking more of a leadership role in her troop (e.g. planning activities, finding volunteering/service opportunities) and I feel she will continue to gain valuable experience and growth by staying involved in scouting.