Picture Books By Ramona

At the end of fourth grade, Bethke kids usually get to write a story and make a picture book for their book buddies. Since Ramona had two book buddies that year, she was tasked with a double picture book assignment. Despite feeling stressed about writing an extra story and getting the books "just right," she was able to produce two darling books for her first grade reading buddies. 

 

Refrigerator Saga

We purchased this Whirlpool fridge in Summer 2019 to go along with our kitchen remodel. Cabinetry was planned to fit its dimensions, and we put quite a bit of thought into its selection.

It has been trouble since day one.

As soon as it was installed, the water dispenser refused to work. Ice would dispense, but no water. We figured out that it could dispense water one time if you popped out the water filter, but then it would stop again. There were many tedious phone calls with Whirlpool and three different appliance repair companies out to look at it. We even had to contact our water company to get confirmation that water pressure in our neighborhood is within a normal range. Around October we finally got it fixed--four months after install.

The fridge worked fine for about a year after that. Then, the week after Thanksgiving 2020, it completely died. (The manufacturer's warranty had just barely expired, of course) We had the pleasure of making an appointment with a repair company once again. When the technician looked at it, he determined that either the control board or the compressor needed to be replaced. They wanted to start with the control board, since it was the cheaper part. Unfortunately, it was on backorder, so he wasn't back until several weeks later. When it finally came, he arrived to swap out the control board and announced that the compressor had responded favorably and that the fridge should be cool in a few hours.

Not the case.

We called the company again and they determined that the compressor must be the issue. The part was also on backorder. Several more weeks passed. This whole time, we had been blessed with a second fridge in the garage and it had been cold enough outside to store produce in coolers, also kept in the garage. So we still had the ability to chill our perishable groceries and only had a few issues with temperature fluctuations because of weather. But we were losing our patience with the situation, constantly going in and out of the garage for every refrigerated item, so we broke down and bought a mini fridge to put across from the washing machine at the end of February. 

In March, it had been a full three months since the fridge quit. Forest got on the phone with Whirlpool, and after being on the call for an eternity, got them to put us at the front of the line for a compressor, and they also mailed us a $150 prepaid visa card for our troubles. Eventually, the compressor showed up at our house and we booked an appointment with the appliance company. They had mentioned previously that we were responsible for the cost of labor, which would total about $800. However, when I scheduled the appointment, I was told the cost of labor appeared to be covered by Whirlpool. I was told this again over the phone when the appointment was confirmed. I asked them to look into this and get back to me. I was told the recent communications had been incorrect, and that we were in fact responsible for labor charges. When I asked for an estimate, the woman on the phone said she would have the technician contact me with that information. 

While I waited for his call, I grew uneasy about working with an appliance company that didn't seem to be able to communicate accurate information about billing, and my distrust of the technician was growing. He had come to look at our water dispenser in 2019 and failed to fix it. When the fridge completely quit, he had given me no diagnosis for the cause, and seemed to believe the problem was solved after replacing the control board. 

I decided to call a different appliance company and cut ties with the previous one. A woman named Abby with a reassuring voice and thick English accent listened to my story and helped me schedule a service call with one of their technicians. Last Friday, Paul the appliance technician came to take a look at our troublesome fridge and made no effort to sugarcoat the truth: this fridge was in bad shape. 

The original compressor was hot to the touch, which was an immediate warning sign. Either the compressor had seized independently, or a refrigerant leak could have triggered its failure. Regardless of which caused the problem, he did not have the appropriate tools to do any further investigation, because this fridge ran on an "oil-free" compressor, and required "virgin" tools that had not been used on standard compressors. An additional appointment would be needed to diagnose the exact cause, although he saw other indications that the refrigerant leak was probably the problem. After that appointment, a second appointment would be needed to do the actual repair. Replacing the compressor would not be enough to solve the problem--another control board would need to be installed so it could sync with the new compressor, and associated tubes and valves would need to be replaced. If a refrigerant leak had caused all of this, the evaporator would also need to be swapped out. Wait time on delivery of parts would cause a delay. This would all cost at least $800 even if Whirlpool covered the cost of parts.

I asked Paul if I should just get a new refrigerator. Perhaps not the most tactful question to ask an appliance repair professional. But can you blame me? He admitted that the repair we were looking at was like open-heart surgery. Often, problems can appear down the road as a result of such a big operation, even if life is temporarily extended. I asked him if he had ever done a repair like this before, and he told me honestly that he had never seen anything like it.

The Whirlpool refrigerator was beautiful. But it was quite obviously a piece of junk, and I was ready to say goodbye. Yesterday, Forest and I picked out a new LG fridge from Lowe's and it was installed this morning. The water dispenser worked right away and the air inside is already cooling. After four months without a working fridge in the kitchen, this will feel like such a luxury. The kids will be so excited to have ice cubes again.

The delivery men hauled away the old fridge and I don't miss it. 

We bought a protection plan for the LG. Hopefully this refrigerator saga has come to an end and we can turn our attention to other first-world problems.

Mika My Violist

Ever since Mika was pretty small, I had a feeling she was a viola player. She is always thinking outside the box and doing things in her own unique way. It didn't seem appropriate to give her a little instrument that mainly plays the melody in treble clef, or a larger instrument that likes to lay down a bass line in bass clef. This middle child was just begging to play in alto clef and the viola seemed perfect for her.

She started her journey with the viola in May 2019, at the end of 2nd grade. I didn't have a viola small enough for her on hand, so I turned Ramona's old half size violin into a a temporary viola by taking off the E string, moving the remaining strings over, and adding a C string to the bottom. (Ramona had upgraded to a nicer 3/4 size violin by then). She picked it up fairly quickly, and despite starting on the piano with treble and bass clef, she settled into alto clef quite nicely.

My favorite Mother's Day gift that year was hearing Ramona and Mika playing their instruments together and watching them pluck the strings in their pajamas.

Mika took her identity as a violist very seriously.

When the opportunity came for her to "Teach the Teacher" at school, she knew she wanted to teach Mrs. Haselby how to play the viola. She made a lesson plan, and that day we delivered both her little makeshift viola and my 15.5 inch viola to the school so she could make it happen.

Mrs. Haselby snapped this darling photo and sent it to me after their lesson:

Being a viola player isn't easy. It's tough playing the middle voice, and the viola jokes can be brutal. But if anyone can handle it, Mika can!

Nailed It! Sugar Rush

Our family occasionally enjoys watching a show called "Nailed It!" where amateur bakers are given various baking challenges and their completed projects look hilarious when compared with the professional confections they were striving to create. We also like a show called "Sugar Rush" where professional baking teams compete against each other to wow a panel of judges in three rounds of extremely rushed baking. We were watching a lot of these shows about the time Ramona turned 10, so I planned a cake decorating party for her. It finally happened in May after she got sick and we rescheduled.

What made this party especially interesting was that by the time we rescheduled, we had completely demo'ed the kitchen, and a huge tarp was hung between the family room and where the dining room used to be. I had frozen some cake rounds ahead of time, back when we still had an oven, so we used those and just set up a big table in the family room to host the party. 

Ramona's friends enjoyed pizza and strawberries while they watched some baking shows to get warmed up for their challenge.

Before the cake decorating, though, they had to decorate some aprons!

Pretty soon, there was a lot going on in our little family room. Girls were scooping batter into our mini-cupcake maker, and they were divided up into two teams for cake decorating.

Ramona, Mia, and Emersyn were assigned to decorate the "All-Star" cake. Ella and April were assigned to decorate the "Flower Power" cake.

Fondant was tricky, but with a little help they did a great job! And they loved snacking on the leftovers.

Ramona attaching the fondant stars, Mia making cupcakes, and Emersyn eating cupcakes:

All-Star Cake:

Flower Power Cake:

I think this cupcake has a unicorn horn made out of fondant?

Toward the end, all the girls had had so much sugar, they were at the top of their silliness game. At one point these girls stuffed balloons up their shirts and pretended to be very pregnant.

It was a sticky, messy, sugary party--with lots of leftovers sweets!

My kind of lemonade

It's been a lemon of a year, right? Have I made lemonade? Sometimes. Some days I feel like I was refereeing a lemon fight with my family (or just joining in), so by the end we were all cranky and covered with bruises and lemon juice. Not to mention--we had a huge mess to clean up. Other days, we remembered to add sugar and ice cubes, so things were sweet and chill. 

I will say this about this past year: life gives me quarantine, I make string players. Pretty dorky, I know. But fairly accurate. When everything shut down last April, I used a lot of the homebound time to double down on Ramona and Mika's string playing skills. I'm certain their hands were on their instruments more than they would have been if school and activities had all been in full swing. Instruction was far from perfect--sequencing of technique was not really a consideration, and we didn't weave much music theory in, either. The goal was just to keep them playing and find music that interested them. 

The result: 

1) I prevented them from quitting. That alone is sometimes a huge feat, especially when kids tell you they want to quit every week.

2) They found their sound. Bowing stringed instruments is hard, and there is no substitution for repetition. They played often enough that sound production was no longer a struggle. Their bows weren't constantly bumping into other strings and they could consistently avoid most extraneous screeches and squeaks. 

3) By playing familiar songs, they trained themselves to listen and adjust for intonation errors. Sometimes they are lazy and don't self-correct as they should. But when they are actually trying, the left hand fingers land in place pretty well, and usually slide to the right spot when the initial target is missed.

All that because we didn't leave the house much for a few months.

Now I am finding myself in another partial quarantine. Yesterday I got an email from the County Health Department with a specific quarantine order for Paula because a classmate of hers tested positive for COVID. She isn't allowed to leave the house for the next week as we monitor for symptoms, and we aren't permitted to have visitors in the house, so I have had to contact all my music students to make accommodations for that. Paula switched to remote school beginning yesterday, and this morning all the kids are at school except for her. It's just the two of us at home. 

So I taught her how to the play the violin.

I had an extra half-size violin sitting in the basement. It had previously been strung like a viola while Mika had been learning on it, and I tucked it away after I got her an actual 13-inch viola. Before that, it was Ramona's first violin. Paula watched me excitedly as I restrung the instrument, turning it back into a violin and teaching her the string names. I had her look at the first few pages of a beginner violin book to learn the parts of the instrument as I tuned it. Then we plucked a few strings before she had to start her class on the computer. 

While she did that, I dug up an old "Resonance" shoulder rest that had been replaced by some better "Kun" accessories. It had been fitted for a 3/4 size violin, so I tried taking it out to the garage and smacking it with a hammer until the grips were the right distance apart for a Paula's half-size violin. Next problem: curvature. "Kun" shoulder rests have a much more defined curve that, in my opinion, fits better on the shoulder and collar bone. "Resonance" rests are rather flat in comparison, and don't provide enough lift. I needed some material--something firm, but not too hard. I found an old shoe insole that I had ripped out of a brand new pair of shoes to make room for my orthotics. It was made out of foam and fabric and was never worn in a shoe so it didn't smell like foot. I grabbed some scissors and cut it up to see if I could create an attachment for that flat shoulder rest.

Is this really how I spent my free time today? Appalling, I know. But I wasn't planning to teach Paula the violin today, it just kind of happened. My actual long-term goal is to teach her how to play the cello, because I am pretty sure she is more of a cellist than I violinist, but I don't have an extra quarter-size cello sitting around my house, and her fingers are still so little . . .

Anyway . . . voila! A semi-suitable shoulder rest!

When Paula came down for her break from remote school, she told me she had a full hour until she needed to be back. So I taught her how to hold the violin, how to pluck the strings while it was up on her shoulder, and even how to play a couple of fingered notes on the D string. 

You can tell she is concentrating more on those fingered notes! It was a lot for just one "lesson," so we stopped and she read a book until it was time to go back to class. 

This is my kind of lemonade. 

Friday, February 19, 2021

Every once in a while the terrain flattens out for just a bit, and I get a moment to catch my breath and enjoy the view. Today that view is a disasterously messy kitchen (Wylie and I made a quadruple batch of banana chocolate chip muffins). Over in the family room my little guy is dancing away in front of the TV to the tune of "Just Dance." He seems happy and I think I have time to clean up our mess, so this afternoon seems doable. I even briefly exercised and showered this morning, after all three girls went to school. Ramona usually doesn't go to school in-person on Fridays but Monday was a holiday so today was kind of a make-up day for her attendance group. Most remote learning Fridays have been almost unbearable for both me and Ramona because of the 6th grade workload, general cabin fever, and relentless anxiety. Today is a welcome relief from that.

This week had some challenges. Paula caught a little cold from her Valentine festivities at school, and symptoms started popping up on Saturday. There was no school Monday, and I kept her home Tuesday and Wednesday because students have to be symptom-free for 48 hours before returning to school. This is for any ailment, regardless of fever, which she never had. I understand the need for caution during a pandemic, but it is exhausting to constantly feel alarmed about every sniffle and cough I hear out of my child. Paula shared her cold with Wylie, so he missed a bit of preschool. 

Mika had a crisis over which Colorado historical figure to research for her wax museum project. (She was deeply offended that her first choice, Owl Woman, does not have enough of her personal accomplishments documented. She pointed out that she only seems to be famous because both her father and husband were prominent men.) After throwing several objects around the house to display her frustration, she finally calmed down and committed to research Polly Pry, a nineteenth century reporter that Mrs. Drage recommended for her. I had already spent some time looking for Owl Woman resources she could use, but switched to requesting books about the reporter, and was able to pick up one volume from the library. 

Ramona had a huge work load on her two remote days this week, and she struggles to focus during the day so all of this results in some late nights. Last night I was up with her past 11pm working on math, and we didn't even finish everything. I didn't make it to bed until 12:30.

But today. Today I caught a break. And it's time to clean the kitchen.