While I had climbed in Pinnacles...

...kids and Hippo made a trip to Point Reyes.

I know there's a huge gap in the journals, but I can't keep up somehow. Since mid-October I've been working at an IT company and in the remaining two days I have noon yard duty at school. On Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays I pick up the kids right on my way from work and we continue through shopping, cooking, cleaning, washing and doing homework. On Wednesdays and Fridays I have up to two hours off in the morning, before the above takes over. I'm sure that, compared to a true progressive female worker, I actually slack off a lot, for I don't contribute to the community for whole eight hours behind a lathe or something, and thus I deprive my offspring of beneficial, collective upbringing (and I'm also failing to line up in queues for tropical fruits, and peruse a dishwasher and a dryer at home), but for me this has been a shocking change of my lifestyle.

If I'm currently not at one of my two workplaces, there's still my family and our house — and various hobbies. We try to create some interesting activities for the kids on the weekends, and while at it, we hope to find a change from stuffy offices and buildings; thus again there's not much time to write journals. We prefer to experience things, and reading or writing about them is secondary.

Many things happened in the last two months, and so I shall try to at least enumerate them:

Pinnacles
Pavel and I had managed to fit in one climbing day at Pinnacles. We started on with the classics on Discovery Wall, but then we moved into shade on under Monolith, climbing it from all sides. Pavel dared many relatively hard things, which was fine with me — I could top-rope in routes that I had not climbed in Pinnacles before. I was surprised how many there were. A less surprising was my total tiredness at the end of the day. I am simply not used to climb difficult outdoor stuff for many hours in a row.

Toma took fancy in archery.

So he wished to get a bow for his birthday.

Tom had Celebrated his Ninth Birthday
We had a little hard time with presents, but it had all sorted out at the beginning of October, when our kids attended a birthday party of Raphael and Joachim, which had the theme of Robin Hood. Peter and Iris (the boys' parents) come from Germany and had apparently grown up under the influence of summer camps where both kids and adults can have fun, and so one day we were, to much amusement of general public, running around a park in medieval costumes, letting the famous Robin rob us; we taught the kids how to shoot arrows and balance on a plank (symbolizing a narrow bridge). Tom had organized a subversive attack on Peter with water bombs, and then consistently focused on archery, which ended in his declaration that he wished to get a bow and arrows for his birthday.

When I tried to get him to tell me where he would like to have the celebrations, it turned out that he would prefer inviting friends for a sleep-over. I liked the idea, as it is much less challenging for organization and finances than anything else. Especially in the case of ninth birthday, when his friends are already quite big and reasonable, and the insidious puberty has not yet taken over their minds. I was nicely surprised that Tom had included in his friends even Raphael's younger brother Joachim, a first-grader. Since the boys had accepted Lisa, now they were able to co-opt a younger buddy, which made this unofficial group of school-mates into a relatively diverse pack.

Halloween.

The party was satisfactory and moderate, and included watching a movie, eating pizza, popcorn and chilled cream puffs. We had organized the sleeping so that all boys slept in the kids' room, Lisa joined me in our master bedroom, and Hippo went to our guest room; I hope this was fine with everybody.

Tom was Ill
On Saturday after the party Tom complained to me that he was "stiff"; we had attributed it to being tired, but on Monday he woke up with a capital laryngitis, thus earning a day out of school. My boss was taking easy my informing him that I would be working from home for a few days, which removed at least one big worry from me. Still Tom had not improved after a whole week, and thus we made the trip to the doctor — let a professional judge his ugly cough and check for any worse possibilities. It was nothing serious; only Tom remained completely weak for almost three weeks.

A Trip to the Desert
We had planned this expedition with Hippo's former colleagues since summer; we were only waiting for a better season when the desert loses its scorching temperatures, but still does not get rainy. On Friday I picked up the kids at the school early, and by nine o'clock we reached our hotel room in Ridgecrest — including a stop for a Vietnamese dinner in Tehachapi. We put the kids to bed and shuffled over to Dimitri's room for a chat. On Saturday, after a few false starts, we managed to converge on a dirt road outside Ridgecrest in the general direction of Trona, where the desert is open to a variety of activities — from off-road driving of ATVs to shooting.

This year's November brought more snow than last year's January.

Skiing is, of course, very tiring.

Some in our group came with ATVs, but everybody brought guns — and we located an abandoned part of the desert with a suitable slope, and proceeded in being noisy. Sid and I had expected that we would be taking turns in shooting, and one of us would take the kids on a hike somewhere, but our kids refused to leave. There's only one thing you can do — offspring gets a serious lecture, is issued ear plugs, and must obey all instructions. With a break for lunch in Ridgecrest, we lasted the whole day.

The company scattered in the evening; we climbed into a hot tub, went for a sushi dinner, and early to bed. On Sunday we split into ATV fanciers, who went to ride, and a shooting detail. Alas, the owner of the twenty-two (.22LR) that we were borrowing for the kids on the day before, was one of the ATV riders, and so Tom had to master a niner (9 mm Luger). The pistol is too strong for Lisa, and she pulled out a bow and arrows, and practised archery. I got loaned, half in joke, an AK (Kalashnikov 7.62 mm). Very soon I understand while it is a popular gun — for some reason it fit me well, and I was easily hitting Dima's tiny metal target tossed far into the desert.

First Skiing
Snow had fallen already in November this year, and we hope for a better season that the previous. We were able to go to Kirkwood on Thanksgiving and verify Lisa's claim that she had forgotten "her skiing talent". Indeed — Lisa screamed on top of the medium hard slope so much that we had to split up and let her practice slower runs with Hippo, while I ground the fast runs with Tom. But within one morning Lisa caught up, and later skied without difficulty. And when we got the opportunity to go with the Master Guru Pavel to the black diamond Sentinel Bowl, Lisa actually forgot to pretend being a helpless blonde, and skied at complete ease. It also became clear that she would not make as many scenes with Vendulka, being willing to learn things. In the end Lisa began to harass me for being a bad skier. I'm just not sure if at my age I'd be able to learn anything new — I'm afraid that the phase of an embarrassing, useless parent is approaching in giant leaps.