Bear was away in Chicago this weekend, so my sister was home with the kids. I didn’t hear from her, so I decided she must have her hands full and I’d wait until Bear got back to check in with them. I talked with my dad and my brother on Saturday and felt like I had gotten caught up on family news.

This morning I receive an email from Jules. “Are you okay? Are you mad at me? I called you twice and you haven’t returned either or my calls.”

Wha?!?!

Um,…(quick check of my cell phone)…

“Jules. So sorry. I turned my phone off when I went to church on Sunday and never turned it back on.”

I.am.such.a.dork.

Sorry, Sis.

I spoke with animal behaviorists from the University of Pennsylvania. I spoke with a clinician at a vet clinic nearby. I spoke with a trainer I had worked with previously. I spoke with several dog owners and friends. I spoke with my dad and my sister and my brother.

I cried.

I got up Saturday morning and emailed the breeder and asked for her help. I told her I was concerned that this family would put Gabe down if they couldn’t find an immediate solution and as much as I wanted to be that immediate solution I wasn’t in a good position to be helpful. I would take him if we had no other option, but I needed to be the last resort. By Saturday evening she emailed me back and said she would gladly take him back and would retrain and re-home him. I passed along the contact information for this family and then sent an email to the family so they could contact her directly.

I cried.

I promised to keep in touch with the breeder in case our situation would change and Gabe were still available.

I know it was the right thing to do, but I can’t help but feel nothing but heartache for my dog. I feel like the worst kind of dog owner ever for not being able to provide him with what he needs. And for leaving him in a place where he is so clearly unhappy.

I didn’t realize that a quarter of my plate was apparently NOT filled, as God just handed me my latest challenge.

The family that took in Gabe just contacted me. He has been doing well, for the most part but has taken to nipping and biting dog owners who try to pet him. The family is going to be getting rid of Gabe (I had requested they contact me first), and may have to put him down if they can’t find him a home.

I NEVER not one time had a problem with Gabe nipping or biting anyone. We spent a couple days a week at the dog park where he was surrounded by other dogs and other dog owners (who would pet him all the time). Never did I suspect he would have responded in this manner.

Our environment has not changed since we gave him away, in that we still don’t have our own yard and would still be faced with leash issues, but I have to wonder if he is reacting this way because he became an outside dog, because he isn’t getting the attention he once had, because he’s unhappy with the change in his environment, or what. I have a call in to the dog trainer we had used to find out her thoughts on his behavior and I have a friend tracking down the number of a trainer she has worked with for further insight. I don’t want to take back a dog that is going to have a barrel of new problems, but I don’t want Gabe put down, either.

Any advice? Anything? HELP?!

Oh, my dear LM. What a week. We’ve been focusing for several weeks on making sure homework is a) complete and b) legible. I’ve tried various tactics to encourage him to double check his work before handing it over to me and none have been all that successful (even charging him a quarter just made him broke, but not reformed!) Wednesdays are rather crazy at our house as I have 20 minutes from the time I walk in the door until we need to leave for church, which leaves us little time to eat dinner, go over homework or make corrections until 9pm. Last Wednesday was no exception. I reminded LM before I arrived home to do homework before trumpet, just in case homework took longer than usual. When I arrived home, he hadn’t practiced trumpet at all, because he thought I said to skip it. When I looked over his homework it was sloppier than anything he’d done in the last month and wasn’t finished. He also had a project assignment handed out that was due in two weeks. Over dinner, I helped him map out a timeline for working on the project, showing him how to work backwards and give himself extra time. I wrote the time line, saving us a much heated battle and the opportunity to write and eat at the same time. Before we headed out the door, I had LM grab extra lined paper so he would have it handy whenever he worked on the project.

While I was practicing with the handbell choir, LM worked on re-writing and finishing his math homework and then was set to work on his project. At 7, when choir is done, LM heads off to church youth group and I usually run errands and then head home before picking him up at 8:30. When I arrived home and looked over his homework it was still unbelievably sloppy and he still hadn’t done the last question on the page. I looked to the project notes and saw that despite step one stating “On a separate piece of paper,” LM had written his notes on the copy that we needed for the final draft. Steam came out my ears. When he arrived back home, at nearly 9pm, I had him sit down and re-do the math and we talked AGAIN about the steps for the project, including using the separate paper that we had included.

Thursday LM forgot his trumpet at school, so instead of being able to practice extra for Wednesday, he was now two days of practice behind for the week.

On Friday I received an email from his teacher saying it had been a rough week with LM. He had been speaking out without raising his hand (something we’re working on) and had been disrespectful to her and to other students to the point where she had finally on Friday made him stay in at recess and write her an apology. I didn’t say anything to LM when I called to check in on him after school, but it was then that he informed me he had forgotten his trumpet at school AGAIN. With the weekend upon us, and the trumpet (which I already have $500 invested in) sitting outside his classroom, in the school hallway, I decided I’d better try to get my hands on it so that it might not be stolen over the weekend. I left work early to race to school before they closed the doors and picked up his trumpet.

I arrived home about ten minutes earlier than I normally do and heard a whole scurry of activity as I came up the stairs. LM met me at the top of the stairs, out of breath and looking surprised. He said, “You’re home early” with a tone that told me all a mother needed to know. I told him to have a seat and to skip over the “lying to Mom” part of the conversation and just cut to the truth. He sat down, dropped his head and said, “I’ve been watching TV.” Television is completely off limits after school. LM has homework, trumpet and one chore every night to keep him busy and responsible until I get home. He has never been allowed to watch much TV at all at my house, but NEVER has he been allowed to have it on after school. Not even when all his jobs are done. I calmly inquired, “How long has this been going on?” “About a week” was the reply.

I sat very still on the couch for a few minutes, thinking over the past few days. I realized that the reason his homework had been so sloppy was that he was either a) doing it in front of the television or b) rushing through it in the few minutes left before I got home. I remembered Thursday night when I had arrived home to find him still working on homework that should have taken only 10 minutes to complete. I must have commented four different times that I wasn’t sure why it had taken him well over an hour to get his homework done that night.

I waited a few minutes before I looked him in the eye and said, “and is there anything else you want to tell me about today?” hoping he’d talk about the troubles in class with his teacher. “None that I can think of,” he said. “Really. Would Mrs. B. have something to tell me about today?” His head sunk even lower. “I got in trouble in school today for talking back to Mrs. B.” I told LM he needed to go to his room and just sit (not read) because I was far too mad to discuss anything at the moment. He headed to his room in tears and I left him there for over an hour while I stewed.

I alerted his father through email what was going on, as he was to pick LM up at 7 for the night. When he arrived we all sat together and talked through the issues, discussed what changes needed to happen and made sure we emphasized that LM wasn’t a bad kid, he just wasn’t making good choices. He left with his dad and I breathed a huge sigh.

LM returned home on Sunday for church and all seemed to go well. He worked on his project and practiced his trumpet and tried to kiss up by doing extra chores around the house at every opportunity.

Monday came along and we had to re-do homework again because it was too sloppy to read. He hadn’t written down his assignments, so I had no idea what he was even supposed to do. I wanted to bang my head on the counter, but I tried to remain calm and yet stern when I talked with him about how this still seemed to be a problem. Tuesday night was a Dad night, so I didn’t see LM after school.

Wednesday night was crazy again. When I arrived home, LM informed me that he couldn’t find his math worksheet that he was supposed to do for homework. He must have left it at school. I was screaming inside, I swear. I told him that was his problem, he’d have to talk with his teacher in the morning and stay in at recess to get it done. We headed off to bells and youth group, having a discussion in the car about how he needs to behave at church, that he needs to avoid one particular child at youth group who gets LM caught up in bad behavior and how he needs to demonstrate respect for his teachers. We talked about HOW to demonstrate respect, including attitude, tone of voice, saying “Yes, Mr. S” etc.

When I picked LM up from church, he climbed in the car and said, “I should really learn to avoid K (the kid we had talked about before church).” With steam already forming in my head, I said, “What happened with you and K tonight?” Oh, as it turns out, they chose to SCREAM the songs instead of sing them, and they were running around the classroom like “crazy squirrels” instead of paying attention, etc. I just didn’t know what to say. I reminded him that we had talked about all of this Right.Before.Church. He said he knew, he just forgot. When we arrived home, I sent him to bed. I was too angry to even have a conversation with him.

We talked it over in the morning, discussing how he had already gotten himself grounded for disrespecting his teacher, how he had lost his TV privileges because he had lied to me for over a week (and it came out that it MIGHT have been more like two weeks) and that he was still not giving his best with his schoolwork. I told him that I didn’t know what else to DO to make the point clear to him. I had allowed him to go to youth group on Wednesday because I felt like he needed lessons from God even more so, but now I wasn’t ready to let him go next week if he’s going to give his VOLUNTEER teachers such a hard time. I told him he’d have to earn the right to go back.

Yesterday was Thursday. As LM was getting his coat and backpack on to head to the car before school, I debated about whether or not I was going to remind him that it was band day and he needed his trumpet. I decided I’d better remind him, I didn’t want to waste a trumpet lesson just because he wouldn’t remember on his own. “LM, don’t forget your trumpet this morning,” “Yes, Mom.” No less than 30 seconds later, LM was running down the stairs, slipping his shoes on as I stood at the top of the staircase just staring through the back of his head trying to see if he was actually going to go out the door without the trumpet. With his hand reaching for the doorknob, I said, “Um, TRUMPET?” “Oh, yeah.” Back up the stairs he came to grab his trumpet.

That evening, I had expected to have a rushed night so I could do some consulting work, but that was canceled, so we just had our usual routine. When I called home to let LM know that I wouldn’t be taking him to his dad’s office as planned (his dad would just pick him up as usual at 7), he informed me that he had FORGOTTEN HIS TRUMPET AT SCHOOL. I said, “it’s time you figured out a new place to leave it after band so that you might actually remember to bring it home.” If I had left my mouth open any longer I would have screamed for the gypsies to come right.that.minute. I told him to do his homework and chore, and that I wanted his chore to be cleaning his room because it was a disaster. When I arrived home, I was immediately overwhelmed by the smell of Pledge dusting spray. I tried to keep my mind from jumping to conclusions, hoping that he hadn’t ignored my statement to clean his room, and had chosen to dust the house instead. When I got into the kitchen I just stood for a moment trying to get a grip on how suffocating the smell of Pledge was. I hate the smell of dusting spray and have often had to comment to LM when he dusts the house that he only needs to spray the rag once or twice, he doesn’t need to spray every single surface that he dusts. Trying not to lose my cool, I said, “What chore did you do today?” He said, “I cleaned my room.” I said, “Why does it smell like Pledge in here?” He said, “I dusted my room.” I said, “This smell is just from the dusting spray you used to dust your room?!?” He replied, “No, I kinda sprayed it around the house to freshen it up a little.” It was at that moment that I lost it. The whole week just came down upon us and I said, with a bit of volume and tone, “Does it say AIR FRESHNER on the can?!” “No,” he said, dropping his head. I had him light some candles to try to help alleviate the smell and save us all.

Today is Friday again. I am hoping that somewhere between Dad’s house, school and my house, LM will FIND HIS MISSING BRAIN and will get it reattached before the weekend. If you happen to see a 10 year old boy’s brain lying about, could you send it over? Or if you happen to have an extra one, I’d love to borrow it until we can find his again.

Also, if you know where the gypsies have been, could you PLEASE send them my way? I’m afraid by the time they get here, LM won’t bring me much in way of a selling price.

Blast. I told Texas that I’d do this thing. And I forgot that I’d do this thing and now, I have to do this thing. So, yeah, just cause I don’t have anything else going on in my life at the moment, I’ll just do this thing.

(Okay, I can’t get the icon to load. It’s all about NaNoWriMo. If you don’t know visit, www.nanowrimo.org )

Blast.

Despite having been a single mother for nearly 6 years now, I am always on the lookout for new and innovative ways to cut expenses, simplify my life and use the resources I have. This morning I was thanking God that he put us in such close proximity so that I might glean ideas from you, the model of single parenting.

I was raised in a family that believed in alarm clocks and until this morning, I had never questioned their usefulness or necessity. I am ashamed now, to admit that I have been raising my son as a believer of alarm clocks, too. I did not know there was an alternative and it is with much shame that I admit it had never occurred to me that it was an unnecessary appliance.

When you first yelled for Kyle at 6:45 this morning I thought at first that it was just to get his attention. I know that sometimes children go through phases where they are temporarily hard of hearing and I thought that perhaps Kyle, at 14 was going through such a phase. It wasn’t until you yelled for him again, and again, saying “Kyle, GET UP!” that I was struck. Get up? Did I hear you correctly? No, I must have misunderstood. His alarm clock will tell him to get up, I must not have realized what you said, despite the volume coming through my floor.

At the fifth or perhaps sixth time the lightning bolt hit me. You were waking him up with your yelling!! It was as if I were seeing the light of day for the very first time! How could I have been so ignorant all this time? Here I was, buying $10 alarm clocks that have lasted us for well over 10 years, plugging them into the wall and sucking up valuable earth resources just to wake up my son each morning. It wasn’t until this morning, when I listened to you again and again yell, “KYLE!! GET UP!! NOW!!” that I realized I’ve been living a shameful existence. I have been wasting my own precious resources. God gave me a voice and he gave me lungs to create volume. I should have been using those all this time instead of the alarm clock.

Again, DN, you have taught me so much. I am reconsidering so many aspects of our daily life when I might use my voice instead of a more “mainstream” method. I could call LM to dinner with my vocal chords. We may only live in 1300 sq. ft. of space, but that doesn’t mean that an announcement before meals wouldn’t make it feel like more of an occasion! I think I might yell “I’m home!” upon my return from work, too. That would surely get LM’s attention and create a special moment each day at 5:30! Thank you so much for waking me this morning with this precious lesson. I cannot believe that I have been so ignorant and wasteful for all this time. Thank you for your creative approaches to guiding me in the ways of becoming a better single mom. You are a blessing to behold.

Best regards,

Eliza Jane

I could blog about spending half my day (and vacation time I don’t have) at the mechanic’s yesterday. I could. Or I could write about what it’s like to spend two hours at the police station (just to get fingerprinted). I could write about my latest adventures in parenting (think: grounding for the rest of his life). I could beg for sympathy as I await official word on an interview. I could even tell about my latest adventures in consulting for my previous employer.

But girl scout cookies arrived today and with only a few weeks left until the cruise I do believe I’ll go indulge in some thin mints. (They do make you thin, right?!?!)

I’m going to attempt to explain how to produce a black and white photo with areas of color (like this or this) for those who were interested. If you have trouble, email me and I’ll see if I can help. (Wendy, feel free to comment if I leave something out!)

I use Photoshop (5.0 Limited at home and Creative Suite 7.0 at work). I don’t think it matters for this task. In Photoshop, open up the color photograph that you would like to alter. Crop it to your liking and save the file. Then, under Image, select “mode” and then “greyscale” to turn the picture to black and white. Save the new black and white image with a new file name. With both the color and black and white versions open, use the “rectangular marquee tool” to select the whole black and white image. Then use the “move tool” to slide the image over on top of the color image. Move the black and white image as necessary to completely cover the color image. Under “window” select “layers”. When you click on the window that contains the color photo with the b&w overlay, you should see two layers appear in the “layers” tool bar. The black and white layer is “Layer 1” and the color layer is “background”. You may now close the window that contains the black and white photo that you copied from.

In the layers tool box, click on the color “background layer” and then select “create new fill or adjustment layer” at the bottom of that tool bar. It will give you a set of options, choose any of them (it doesn’t matter. I usually choose “levels”) and then click okay. Now you have three layers. The top one is the b&w image, called “Layer 1”, the middle one has two squares on it, one that shows the levels and one that is all white. The bottom one is still the “background” or color image.

Now, you need to join this new adjustment layer with the background layer. To do this, hold your cursor over the edge between the adjustment layer and the background layer (on the layer tool box). You should get a hand with a pointing finger. When you do, hold down the “alt” key and a new symbol will come up (linked circles) then click. Now your two images are linked together.

The next step is to fill the adjustment layer with all black fill. To do this, select the adjustment Layer (by clicking on it in the Layer box), make sure your color that is selected on your tool bar is black, select the bucket icon and “fill” the Layer with black by clicking on the image. (Note, the image itself will not change in appearance, only the layer icon on the layer box should change to all black).

Now you are ready to begin working.

Select Layer 1 (the black and white layer) from your layer box. I use the magnifying glass to zoom in on one corner of my black and white image. I try to zoom in until I can really see the pixels. Then select the eraser tool, but you want the eraser with the scissors over it (for background eraser. If you don’t have this icon, right click on the eraser icon and select the one that has the scissors over it, the “background eraser tool”.). Once you select this tool, you will have new options on the top tool bar, including the option to change the size of the diameter of the eraser. You want to make the diameter very small (5) when you are working around the edges. Working on Layer 1, hold the mouse button down and drag the cursor along the edges of your image that you want to have in color. As you move, the color will “bleed through” so you can see where you have painted. If you make a mistake, go to “edit” then “step backwards” to remove the last portion. Note: as you move along, let up on the mouse click from time to time (use small, shorter movements) to allow yourself to correct small mistakes without undoing a whole section.) You only need to outline the WHOLE of the image you want to turn color. For example, in the image I used with the apple and the leaf, I don’t need to outline the leaf where it overlaps the apple. Just the whole of the outline around both. When you get a good outline, you can change the diameter size of your eraser and just swipe it over the bigger areas to bring out the color. When you are done, you can zoom back out and view the piece with the parts in color that you just “painted” and the rest black and white!

There are two ways to save the image, depending on what you want to do with it. If you want to be able to go back and work on the individual layers again, do NOT flatten the image. Just save it as a PSD (Photoshop document) and leave it alone. If you are done with the image and you want to use it (and make it a smaller file!) go to “layer” on the top tool bar and then “flatten image” then save this as a jpg.

I tried to walk through this as I went to make sure I didn’t miss any steps, but if something is unclear or doesn’t work for you, please let me know! As I said before, Wendy was a tremendous help teaching me how to do this! I will try to post explanations when I learn something new!