Andy and the Delta Bits

So, when I was in Delta this last time I had some very interesting experiences. It was a great balance between being bored out of my skull and having the best time I've had in a lot of years. I really do love to reconnect with people from my past.

Saturday we visited my mother away from mother at my home away from home. Aleta was our next door neighbor all the time we lived in Delta, and she was like my other mother.


After visiting Aleta, we broke into our childhood home. We're technically criminals now, but it was worth it to see the inside of the house again.


On Saturday we also went to the Deltarado Days celebration in Cleland Park. It was a great thing to witness. I have memories of these or other similar celebrations in the past. While we were at the park I ran into someone I believe I went to school with. Actually, I'm sure I went to school with him, and I believe it was him. I'm going to have to do some research to be sure. His name is Joey Silva, and I never would have picked him out of a crowd as someone I knew for all those school years. Odd how those memories just fade sometimes.

Sunday Kelly and I made the best possible use of power-visiting. We started off the day with a visit to see my mother's best friend for many years, Bobby. She wasn't there, but I had the shocking surprise of seeing her son, Andy. Andy was there with his wife and two little girls.

Andy was my partner in crime when we were growing up. We were best friends for many years, and spent countless hours playing together. I goaded him into breaking his arm. I saw my very first dead deer in his shed. I had many firsts with him and in that house. It was such a wonderful flood of memories. I started remembering things I didn't even know were still in there. This was, by far, the highlight of my whole trip.



After visiting Bobby, Les and Andy and fam we drove north out of town to a tiny tiny town called Eckert. Here we visited my Aunt Atha, who is quite old now. We also go to visit with Max and Betty (her son and daughter in law), and their daughter Trish, who was absolutely a pleasure to meet.


After visiting Aunt Atha we went up to the north end of town to visit my cousin Jeremy. He hasn't been doing so well, due to his rare-genetic-blood-disorder-that-I-can-never-remember-the-name-of. We got in about 13 minutes with Jeremy. He's my favorite cousin, and I couldn't imagine being in Delta and not visiting him.


Once we flew out of Jeremy's house we high-tailed it over the "hill" (meaning rockies) to Denver. Our first stop in Denver was to see my maternal grandfather, who I've called Pa since as long as I can remember. When I was a little girl I was scared to death of this man. I was terrified simply to be in his presence. As an adult it's considerably different. I realize he's an incredibly intelligent and quick person with great people skills. Having a conversation with him is both entertaining and effortless. I believe when he retired from the Air Force he was a full colonel. He was stationed, I believe, at roswell for sometime. Kelly tried like hell to weasel information out of him about it while we were there, but to no avail. We spent about an hour there.


Once we left Pa's house we went to (maternal) Aunt D-Jo and Uncle Sue's house Our visit with them was fantastic, except for psycho hound from hell. The dog is actually on puppy prozac, and it's not nearly enough. I think he needs some puppy paxil in large doses. Perhaps some puppy Valium or Ativan to go along with the puppy paxil. While I was there I related my recent revelation about Aunt D-Jo to her. After hearing my mother reminisce about her childhood, and relate stories to me about how Aunt D-Jo would only play house with her if she could be the Father. My mother was fine with that because she always wanted to be the mother. It was then that I realized that I had named them backwards. They should instead be Uncle D-Jo and Aunt Sue.


We slept there at Uncle D-Jo's and Aunt Sue's.

We slept through my flight back, because it was actually earlier than we though it was. I flew stand-by on the way home, which worked out fine. I got on a flight just fine and got home. It was great to be home, but once I arrived back it took a month to process everything I experienced while i was there.

NOLA -> Houston -> Denver -> Delta

Woke up at 2:30 am to get to my flight in time. Flights were smooth and relatively painless, except the leg from Houston to Denver, during which I had been banking on a significant nap to hold me over for the estimated 4.5 hour (turned 6 hour) drive from Denver to Delta. Instead I spent the ENTIRE flight entertaining an exuberant and talkative 5 year old who was apparently fascinated with every small detail about me. We had lengthy discussions about who my favorite princess was, we spent upwards of 45 minutes tying a string on her pants, she spent a good deal of time making my hair prettier by braiding and twisting (and unintentionally teasing) my hair, and watching care bears. I introduced her to the concept of freckles, which her chocolate colored skin hadn't introduced her to before. Her parents got some good rest, though.

Tonight was absolutely great. We had a great time at the first night of Kelly's reunion, which was a bar-b-q at Confluence park. After the sun had gone down we all headed to a bar for some pool and shuffleboard.
It sure is strange being back here again. It's an odd combination of feeling like it just hasn't changed and it will always be home, and I just really don't fit in here. I'm conspicuously not "local". No matter where I go I'm conspicuously not local. It figures. All I wanna do is blend.

As I type this, I have been awake and going like mad for 25 hours.

Friday the 13th

Today was a day of death. Friday the 13th strikes fear into the bits of machinery everywhere.

8:50 am: A monitor suffers mysterious but sudden death. Efforts are made to return the computer to a functional state with a new head.
9:14 am: The computer attached to the new head suffers mysterious but sudden death. Efforts are made to replace the body.
9:30 am: The dead computer's replacement sounds like a lawnmower. Its eyes are replaced.

This misfortunate continued throughout the day, crowning at the moment when the fileserver assocated with the production server failed to come up following a mysterious but ultimately fatal power outtage in the city where our servers are stored.

Coincidence? I think not.

School

The school situation here in New Orleans is grim. It's really bad enough to be laughable...or rather it might be laughable if it weren't so unbelievably painful just to do the simplest things.

Take, for instance, my battle with home schooling Melissa. I had chosen to do so because schools as a rule did not accept incoming transfers (or even applications) so close to the end of the year. After countless hours of research and slogging my way through thousands of websites which claimed to help with home schooling, and some that offered help in the state of Louisiana, I realized that online was not going to be my best resource. I decided take to the phone and physical visits to the board of education office here in NOLA.
Phone calls to the Louisiana board of education resulted in a woman saying "You need to go visit the local board of education in your area."
A visit to the board of education for New Orleans yielded absolutely nothing in terms of help. I carefully explained our situation to the woman behind the desk at the office, that we had just moved from California to New Orleans and it being so late in the year schools would not accept a transfer, therefore I had to provide Melissa's schooling for her. I was looking for anything in the form of curriculum I could use to provide this education. The lady looked at me as though I was speaking out of context, or perhaps I was speaking penguin, and said "I'm sorry, I don't know what to tell you. You could try to see if there's any information online."
I finally felt a surge of hope when it occurred to me that I could just visit a local public school and request they share with me their curriculum. I could get a book list and outline or syllabus of some sort for the 8th grade classes. A visit to the public school went like this:
Me: "Yes, I'm trying to home school my daughter, and I'm having trouble getting my hands on any curriculum or book lists that I can use to guide me in age appropriate education. Is it possible I could just get copies of the syllabus for each class and the book used?"
Woman: "I'm sorry, ma'am, but we can't share the curriculum with you unless your daughter is attending this school."
Me: "OK! Can she go to this school?"
"No, I'm sorry but we aren't accepting new students."
I finally resorted to calling Melissa's school in California and begging them to share with me at least a book list, so I knew what texts would be grade appropriate. All this took me roughly 6 weeks to accomplish, plus another 2 weeks to get the texts and then another some bit of time to construct a curriculum from the books.

Here's the state of the schools here in New Orleans, more specifically the choices:

• Public schools: Violent and terribly unsafe, they typically turn out a 60% illiteracy rate .
• Charter schools: Very high quality education, safe environment, students must qualify to enter (must have at least 90th percentile in standardized tests, as well as greater than a 3.5 gpa
• Private schools: All manner of entrants are considered/accepted, however they run roughly $500 a month (some greater than 1k/mo).

If, by chance, you happen to be the parent of a well mannered/behaved child who shows great artistic potential, but gets B's and C's, you're SOL. That is, of course, unless you have plenty of money. But a single mom trying to take care of her kids on her own generally isn't in that sort of boat. That brings me to my tragic news.

Melissa won't be returning to me in August as planned, as there is no solution I can afford. Those of you who know me well know how hard this is for me, and those of you who don't know me so well...well this explains why I've been crying for two days.

I don't know if she'll forgive me.

4th of July

So, we had a fantastic 4th of July. First we lit fireworks in the park in Gretna (the town where they're legal near us), and htat was a screaming good time as you can well imagine. Afterward Nikolai wanted to see the big fireworks show, so we headed on down to the Vieux Carré for some loud fun. The show was good (though I kind of expected more of the fireworks themselves), but the ambiance was spectacular. Above is a picture of me and Nikolai on the riverwalk watching the fireworks.