Journal Friday

I am happy that today is the last day of the work week, Labor Day weekend too. I just got done listening to the Red Sox win another late season game they needed to keep in the running for a playoff spot. I liked baseball alright as a kid, had no use for it for a long time and now my interest is renewed by sharing it with the boy. Our Dad took us to Fenway when we were in elementary school and I remember sitting in the grandstand. A boisterous older guy bought me and my brother popcorn in cardboard bullhorn. When we finished the popcorn we poked the disk out of the small end and put it to our mouths to cheer.

This summer I took the boy and his two grandfathers to a game and sat in the grandstand again. The park seemed much more spacious than I remembered it, maybe because when you are short you feel surrounded and closed in. I feared that worlds would collide but the Grandpas got along well. The boy got board around the seventh inning as it looked like Boston might be no-hitted. Luckily in the ninth Youk hit a two-run homer and broke the no-hitter. They still lost but we got to cheer. Now I am looking forward to camping for the weekend and listening to the games on the AM radio.

Journal Thursday

I awoke to the drone of the tanker jet practicing at 04:30 hours and couldn't go back to sleep even though I needed to. So I spent the morning dazed drinking coffee until reaching a semblance of coherence. Good thing since the day's plans called for team operation of heavy equipment in a high traffic area. We planned to bring the drilling machine out to an old gas station to take soil borings down ten feet or so looking for contaminated soil. The word of the day flashed up in an email "chthonic". What a perfect word for the day, Greek word meaning dwelling underground or of the underworld. After lunch I felt better, like I just woke up but skipping those couple of hours of sleep was like losing the whole morning.

Journal Wednesday

First Day of fourth grade for the boy. I think we are more nervous about it than him. We got the letter from the principal saying that "your child in a classroom with a child that has severe allergies to nuts" so please don't pack nuts into your kid's snack. That makes us feel better but we usually have a meeting before the first day with the nurse and the teacher to work out who will stick him with the epi-pen if some protein sets his immune system into hyperdrive and his face and air swell up. The meeting is not until Friday and we find the new homeroom teacher has no idea yet of our kid's needs. We are helicopter parents but we have to be. I look forward to the day I can feel like the boy takes responsibility for his own allergy patrol. I guess we have to get through the teen years first where some allergy kids rebel and decide to eat that thing the've been denied and thinking themselves indestructable leave the epi-pen at home.

Journal Tuesday

Up and out early today and in the office to check in with folks. There is another case of a plumber replacing an ancient pump from a deep well and wanting to know if it was made with PCB's in the cooling oil. They date from the 1950's and into the 1970's and lucky for the well owner this one did not spin and labor until its outer casing failed puking the cooling oil into the well and giving the tap water a funny smell. So I dig out the paper copy of a 1992 the Wisconsin environmental department report listing the serial numbers of offending pumps. It took a while to find it so I scanned it in to email to the folks in the office. I got to the last page to find the business card of the author at the State of Wisconsin and decided not to bother scanning that since the guy is probably long retired, phone number given to some newly minted college graduate in charge of the department's blog or something.

Journal Monday

Up before anyone, out the door, at work by 7:00. Staff meeting, return phone calls, jump in the car and drive north. Today's not far only up to Howland where I get out and walk in past a locked gate to a site ready for inspection. I walk to the land of a contractor hired to treat some soil hauled away from around an old gasoline station's tanks. The site is idle as evidenced by the locked gate. Enough progress is made to satisfy and I make a note to test the treated soil in the next week or so. Walking back under the sun I feel my too-big lunch bloating my stomach and wish I could wear shorts to work. After a couple more stops I am done for the day and go home to pick up my son for a visit to the allergist.

There are a lot of things to do to get a kid ready for the first day of fourth grade. At least that's the way it is with our kid. Food allergies and asthma keep us worried that he'll accidently eat a walnut and plunge into anaphylactic shock or come up short on breath after rounding third at the recess kickball game. The real worry is we won't be there if it happens. We train those who watch over him while we are at work but who can really look out for your kid better than you.

The allergist reads the test results from the summer's blood testing. Still highly allergic to walnuts, almonds, cow's milk is still high, seseme seeds and wheat moderate. What about the Goat's Milk I ask, he's moderately allergic to that. Damn I was hoping to be able to feed him that. I guess we will stick to soymilk. They work wonders with soymilk anymore. Chocolate covered frozen soymilk on a stick, soycheese that really melts on the grill, Soy ice cream with wheat-free cookie dough, all rather amazing. Compare that to the story a friend at work told me. When she was a kid 30 some odd years ago in Caribou she and her brother were both highly allergic to milk. But Dad would sneek them over to the dairy bar, buy them an ice cream cone, and they'd have to right away throw it up before going home and not say a word about it to Mom. I guess eating the soy ice cream is better than that.

Journal Sunday

Opening the front door, hands full of backpacks and sleeping bags, I walk into the house for the first time in eight days. Following me with her overnight bag slung over shoulder is Jo-Jo as she's known to us so-named by our son, her grandson, several years ago. Jo-Jo will stay for a couple nights and watch grandson Ben while her daughter and I are away at work and before school starts later in the week. I hear some bad mother-in-law stories but Jo-Jo must be an exception.

After we are tucked in I scoot downstairs for a final drink of water and find Jo-Jo eating potato chips, reading the paper and sipping her one beer of the night. I say goodnight going up the stairs exhausted, thinking back many years when I had the energy and inclination to join her for a couple beers. Why is life so busy now?