The Family

We did nothing this weekend. Nothing that had a deadline, anyway; nothing that was scheduled and had to be done.

We worked in the yard. Actually, we made some real progress (dug stuff up) on a particular project that’s been on hold for over a year. And we worked on the roses, which look a whole lot better now, and bought some new plants and even planted two of them.

We also went up into Austin for no reason whatsoever and went to our various favorite haunts and just enjoyed ourselves. It was so nice.

I don’t know how long it’s been since the last time we did this. Many months.

Well, the class at least ended on schedule.

Though it’s not necessarily over – it’s part of a 3-course cycle, and it’s kind of ambiguous whether I’ll be taking the other two courses (or which courses there will be – this was the general intro, then the material branches into three different tracks). However, that’s months in the future. Their next semester starts in two weeks, and I will be skipping that semester. But perhaps the one in three months time.

I remain unsatisfied and vexed by the whole experience. I tried to talk to the instructor about it today, but I couldn’t articulate what was bothering me. So it came out all wrong.

I am sure that I learned something – I certainly worked hard enough at it, and there were challenges. And if nothing else, I have a huge pile of resources. But now I have to put together a kind of recap presentation to my boss, and possibly a ‘share the knowledge’ kind of presentation to my coworkers, and I’m struggling with how to manage the positive framing that will be necessary.

And we are facing yet another postponement for the ranch. It is frustrating – I am requesting time off for this, and then resetting and resetting and resetting those requests. And of course, that’s just one part of the frustration. The big part is just not having this done with.

But hey! Another weekend that we could go do stuff and the ranch, if we so desired.

My brother, Nathan, and his wife, Buffye, visited this weekend.  They came in Sunday night and left Tuesday morning.

They had taken a timeshare company up on their offer to pay their expenses to tour, choosing a place in Tennessee.  They had no interest in buying, but timeshare places know that.  Nathan was betting he could resist the urge to buy and they were betting they could convince him to buy if he would come take the tour.  So Nathan and Buffye had a nice sightseeing trip there, then they explored the interesting places in Tennessee and drove to Pat’s for a few days, stopping in here on their way home.  They apologised for the short notice, saying they could not decide between Brad and me for the return stop, finally deciding on me the day before coming.

They left Pat’s at 5 in the morning, expecting to get here around 5 in the evening, but they ran into heavy traffic and several stops and slow-downs due to accidents so they didn’t get here till after 9.  That was one long day and they were tired so we didn’t visit much before going to bed.

We have a king size air mattress which we thought about setting up for them but clearing a space was more trouble than it was worth for a 2 night visit, so Luke gave up our bed and used those 2 futon mats stacked on the floor while I slept in the recliner.  He was comfortable enough that we will probably do it that way for future short visits, but he felt soooo good when he was able to sleep in the bed again.

We had a good visit.  Nathan hung around with Luke most of the time while Buffye and I visited in the house.  The guys hung chains for my hummingbird feeders in the back and Nathan helped Luke get the barrels out of the shed so they could be opened up and gone through.  I think there were 3 full sized barrels and 2 short ones.  Luke and I could not remember what was in them, but we thought they were full.  He has been dreading moving full barrels because of the weight, but, as it turned out, weight was not a problem.

He cleared a way to get them into the storage area of the shop, only to find that there was little that needs storing.  One had flower pots in it, put there for the move.  One had a little fabric, and one small one had memories in it.  The other 2 were empty.

The one with memories was the most interesting.  I found Luke’s letters to me from when we were dating.  I thought they had been burned when my dad got tired of all the kids storing their stuff at his house, and went on a burning rampage.  For so many years I thought they were gone but there they were.  I haven’t read any of them.  I may never read them, but it is nice to know they still exist.  Other than that, there was a huge pile of newspapers which I have not looked at and odds and ends from my youth and from when Ramona and Chris were little.  It will be interesting to go through everything, even though what was kept looks pretty random.

After they left I pondered something and finally figured it out.  I think it is interesting so I will share.

There are 2 styles of listening.  I will call them responsive listening and attentive listening.  My listening style is “responsive,” as is most of the people I know.  Responsive listening is listening with plenty of feedback both ways.  What one says, the other responds to, maybe with a short “hm,” maybe with a question, maybe with a story of something that they are reminded of, but there are plenty of words going in both directions.  Attentive listening is when one person is doing all the talking and the other is just listening, looking attentive and interested, but saying nothing or almost nothing in reply.

Buffye is an attentive listener.  Attentive listeners make me nervous.  I find myself talking too much, compelled to fill the silence.  I pause to give her opportunity to respond, and then nervously yammer on with anything I can think of when she continues to be silent.  Meanwhile, Buffye is waiting for me to stop long enough that she knows I am finished.

Now that I have figured that out, she and I will have better conversations because I will fight through my urge to fill the uncomfortable silence by continuing to talk even though I have said all I have to say.

Luke tends to be an attentive listener while I am a responsive listener.  He finds me rude because I constantly interrupt while I find him unresponsive because he is silent, so it is not like I don’t have experience with this problem.  But I didn’t recognise it in Buffye and myself till after this visit.  I  guess I didn’t recognise it before earlier because she does carry on a normal comfortable conversation until I tell a story or relate something that requires more than a couple of sentences.  Then she goes into listening mode.  I wonder if she is that way naturally or if it is something she learned.

Not that that small glitch in our communication took anything away from the enjoyment of the visit.  It was very good to see them.  I wish they had been here long enough to get all of us together.

We did plenty of stuff this weekend. It was a busy and productive set of days. And I have yet to do any coding on my project.

Let’s see …

We got Joseph’s glasses ordered. We got his exam & new prescription back in December, and we have been saying how this is our top and first priority ‘just as soon as the ranch stuff is done’. So it’s been a long time he’s been waiting for decent glasses, and it’s nice to finally have taken this next step. They should be in end of next week or early the week after that.

We took Eleanor to the doctor and went to the pharmacy and sat up fretting over our feverish child. She is absolutely fine now. It’s a little strange to think we have to give her antibiotics for the next nine days when she’s so evidently recovered. Was it just last night that I was up at 2am giving her Motrin for a spiking fever and wondering if I needed to bring in the ice packs?

We took Eleanor to the jumpy place and let her run around for at least an hour and a half, in those last fading hours before we considered that she might be sick instead of merely alternating sweet and cranky, probably tired, and picky about food. Because those preliminary symptoms could also have been any day of the last year and a half. To all the other parents taking their kids to the jumpy place for a final romp at the end of spring break: We are so sorry. We really didn’t have any idea she could be sick.

We spent the frivolous part of our tax refund (we split them, as one does, and do the sober responsible thing with the first portion and some agreed upon frivolity with the rest. It’s not always half and half.) We went to Wimberly Glass Works and special ordered a beautiful dust catcher. It’s been three years that we’ve been eying this particular pattern and this was the year. It will likewise be a couple of weeks before this one is ready. I am really, really, really looking forward to it.

We mowed the yard. This was complicated by the fact that the mower was buried under several layers of ‘just stuff it in the garage; we’ll sort it all out later’ deposits. So we excavated the mower, and then moved the yard. This was the first mow of the season, delayed (like everything else has been delayed) till ‘just as soon as the ranch stuff is done’. (a certain personality type would have made an acronym of that phrase by now)

We picked up. I shudder to think of how long it has been. We still haven’t had a day to really dig in and clean. But you know – just as soon as the ranch stuff is done.

Joseph went to a nursery and priced out the frames we’ll need for our growing, and possibly (given a critical eye) scraggly roses. There is so, so much that needs to be done in the lawn just as soon as the ranch stuff is done (don’t you wish I was the type of personality that made up acronyms?). Our roses never got trimmed this winter, so they all have a certain wild-grown look to them. AKA ‘scraggly’.

You see how much of this weekend was devoted to me finishing up this school work?

Well, I did get all of the regular homework done. And I finally keyed in on how to approach the project in the first place. You know how you can try all you’d like but when it’s just the wrong goal so you’ll never seriously get started? Yeah; I was there till late Saturday. But now that the goal finally clicked, I got the scaffolding all set up and have most of the concept detailed out. I just haven’t done a lick of coding. I have examples to follow. It will just fall into place, right?

It’s not like last time where I could keep working on it for a week and a half after the due date. The course ends for good on Wednesday.

Only some of us don’t know it yet.

Eleanor has strep throat.

Which means we all do; we just don’t know it. Incubation is 3-5 days. Joseph may be going down with it now. I give myself till about Tuesday to crash.

Still haven’t even started the project. But I’ve settled decisively on the book theme.

Sat around last night and played the clicker game.

I get it, in part. The rewards are timed such that, at least at first, the next one is just within reach. And there are several other game elements that make you want to stay. We played for 5 hours (well … the window was open). I was surprised. But I can see a little more what is engaging about the game. Though I still think it’s pointless.

And thank goodness for other students sharing their work. I’m lifting so much from their code I ought to feel guilty. But I don’t.

Insufficient guilt complex: early stage symptom of strep throat.

Well.

The ranch sale was supposed to be yesterday. (supposed to. That’s a hint) Lots of ‘oh wow this is the end’ feelings to process last weekend.

And then the title company, of all people, went out of their collective minds and it’s been a solid week of mind melting craziness, except that we stepped out of the game way early and handed it all over to the lawyer. Thank goodness for probate and the way it forces you to get a nice lawyer relationship going. And this is the guy who handled our wills, too. We like him. He’s great. He has a nice dog. And whatever he’s going to charge us for this last week is worth it.

The new closing date is next Thursday. We might go out to the ranch this weekend just because.

And I’m not really believing this “Thursday” date till it’s done.

So that leaves the class project. This is the last major project. I don’t really know the programming language. I certainly don’t understand the project. We have to write our own version of this incredibly inane game. I had to look it up on Wikipedia just to understand what was going on – which is nothing. But I couldn’t quite believe that it was this much ‘nothing’ going on, especially as the class assignment characterized this as a ‘popular’ and ‘super engaging’ game. But sure enough, Wikipedia explained the nothingness of it, and confirmed that it was popular and considered to be engaging.

I swear, there are times when I feel like a cultural anthropologist, trying to understand this bizarrely inexplicable culture.

There are lots of variations on this game. We are encouraged to make up our own variation. The basic mechanic is: you click on a thing. This gives you points. When you accrue enough points, you can turn points in for things that will give you points. The things will then require more points, so you have to continue getting points so you can turn them in for increasingly expensive things that will get you more points.

That’s it.

I still don’t quite believe that this could ever be ‘engaging’, but wikipedia has convinced me on the ‘popular’ count. But it can’t have been popular by being engaging. There must just be a lot of closet nihilists out there.

So this is the project I have to do this weekend. Wrap my head around the concept. And then program it.

I’m playing with the idea of clicking on a book to fill your bookshelf, and then getting to buy library cards or something to let you get more books. Because as endless loops go, this is one I understand.

I’m also considering a worm ouroboros thing, where you click on a section of a snake (that progresses, perhaps, but never ends) and there’s some countdown to ragnorok and you have to keep getting hammers and eventually maybe get to turn them into mjolnir. But you see, that would have an ending and have a point, so I guess that’s out.

And I’ve been toying with making something that seems just about as pointless as I can make it. Like … I don’t know. What could possibly be more pointless than clicking on a cookie? One classmate shared his nearly completed project. You click on a gold coin and can use the points to get diggers, miners, and excavators. So .. theme. But still pretty dang pointless. So .. you click on a dirty dish or a mound of laundry and there’s a counter that says “clean house” that is always set 25 points higher than where you currently are? You click on a cat and the clicker reads “cats herded”?

Click on one of the goth kids from Southpark and there’s a counter that says “Things that are pointless” and you can add the other goth kids as add-ons and the ‘things that are pointless’ counter goes higher the more goth kids you get in the club? (this kind of amuses me. maybe I will do this. ha!)

I have not started this project at all.

So. This weekend was supposed to mark the end of the ranch project and see the end of the class project. Neither is looking really likely right now.

And Eleanor is sick.

sigh

Web usability is that corner of the web that says that people use web pages and that perhaps web pages should therefore be written and structured for people.

You can bring just about anything under the umbrella of usability. One of the mantras is that it should be part of the planning and design process, and that the more work you put into planning your usability the fewer problems you’ll have to fix when it’s all in production.

Which is all well and good.

There are several usability planning tools. One of them is variously called user stories, user scenarios, user narratives … you get the idea. (18F: User Scenarios) As a usability specialist (so to speak), I am more or less contractually obligated to have endless enthusiasm for user stories and to advocate for them in all projects.

And as you can tell – I am telegraphing this so well – my enthusiasm is more measured.

There are some particular folks at my work place (at national and local levels) who do have this user-stories-are-mandatory attitude, and I’m not sure how much of my lukewarmness stems from limitations of user stories themselves, or from these specific particular people. I do wonder about this.

But assuming it’s all legitimate, here are my thoughts:

Pro: You get a group of well meaning people together who all know the users, and tell everyone to design for the user, and everyone will come up with the same thing, right? Of course right. When you go through the exercise of writing down these things that everyone knows, it’s inevitable that everyone knows something different. So done right, user stories get everyone talking, get everyone coordinated, and give everyone a common structure for framing all their future discussions. Even if you’re just a single person team, the exercise of taking what you know and writing it down focuses your thoughts.

I mean, what’s not to like?

Con: In order to break through that wall of ‘what do I do with a blank page??’, there are all kinds of templates for how to write a good user story. Think mad libs: “As a [type of user], I need a [feature] so I can [task].” This kind of suggested format is great. It’s also horrible. For one, it’s terribly stilted. But worse, it gives everyone this formula. Just fill this out – or better yet, make your team lead fill this out – and voila, you’ve done usability. And then you have these 10 sentences, you do those 10 things, and anything wrong with the design is the fault of the person who came up with the user stories.

In other words, this tool is being used as a cudgel and a crutch. The developer doesn’t have to understand the user at all, they just have to require someone else to write user stories before they’ll undertake the task. And I think that’s horrible, because user stories are a summary; they are lecture notes; not the book. They work beautifully when you do know the full story and just need to focus on the salient points. But if all you know are the salient points … well, fill in your own example.

***

It is odd, being the usability expert in the room, and trying to throw cold water on the user stories the other person is insisting on.

It is very likely that Joseph will go out to the ranch again. Maybe just once, but it’s likely there will be at least that once.

But I will never be out there again.

We wanted to walk the perimeter and to stop and visit some of the far-flung corners where I’ve only been once. We wanted to go rockhounding and do those things that we have enjoyed doing; to have a good last day. We wanted to clean up a bit in the house and clear out everything.

It did not go according to plan.

Friday Joseph walked to one of those far corners and encountered numerous wild hogs. We decided that a visit to those corners with Eleanor along would be too risky. We looked for rocks a bit, but overcast turned to raining – just enough rain to make walking around outside unpleasant. Joseph found two good ones; I found three little chips. And for the house and the rest, we just … left. The house is clear. Well, we left them the trash can and the dish soap and paper towels. And certain other obvious things that are of the house (like remotes to the air conditioners). The shop is 99% clear, and the new owners can just deal with the dead mouse on their own.

And then we picked up a few more of the large centerpiece sandstone rocks, since Mom expressed an interest, and we came home.

The door did not lock any differently. The land did not seem any different, the cows did not behave any differently, the gate lock did not snap shut nor the gate clang sonorously as we left. It was all tremendously anticlimactic.

I’ve had this feeling so many times before as I’ve left a place for the final time. As if I am longing for some ritual goodbye process that will clear accounts with the old place.

Like one should braid one black and two green strands (one for endings, two for beginnings) and bury the strand in front of the doorway. That one should stand in each room with some ceremonial drink (tea, perhaps), and say “Thank you for being a good bedroom”, leave a newly minted penny in the center of the room, and back out of the room. But then at the threshold of the house, say “Thank you for sheltering my family and for being a good house. May we each have joy in our new lives” and turn and walk out of the door, closing it behind you without looking back.

There used to be all these rituals for each transition in life. We have lost almost all of them. I want some of them back.

On the other hand, I am tired of moving rocks. I don’t need to move any more rocks again for a long, long time. Just to quantify what we’ve done, mostly all within the last month, I counted our rocks.

All of these totals have been rounded down. And this is limited to rocks that we’ve brought from the ranch in the last year; the boxes of petrified wood that we’ve collected prior to this are not included. For petrified wood, I’m not counting the little chips at all.

Final tally:
Sandstone: 90
Honeycomb limestone: 15
Petrified Wood: 20 (this is no doubt low – there are 40 large/large-ish pieces about, and I’m not certain which were before and which after. So I halved it.)
Other : 10 (there are several odd ones in the mix)

135 rocks. At least.

With a combined weight of let’s say 7592 pounds.

We are done with moving rocks.

We did not get everything today. And yet both trucks were completely full.

There is still a lot of large stuff in the shop. Trash, but bulky. But by ‘a lot’ I mean 20-30 items; not an entire shop worth of stuff. The work done to date has been extraordinary.

And in the house, it’s a vacuum and a stepladder and some odds & ends. That’s really it. You could fit it all in a car. Maybe not a small car, because it is a stepladder. But it is a nothing load from the truck’s perspective. So it’s as good as everything.

Sigh.

Tomorrow will be my last trip there. Everything about the ranch makes me sad and it has been a huge burden these last several months – and yet I am sad to be leaving it.

This is not my type of landscape. I have no emotional resonance with Texas scrub. Give me soaring pine trees and mountains, any day. But in the last several years that we’ve been here, it’s just been their home. Landscape doesn’t really matter for your home. And then, when it wasn’t their home, we were free-er somehow to walk about anywhere we wished, to take the bulldozer or tractor here or there just because, and that liberty made a connection. And as we walked, Joseph told me this story and that story and pointed out these nearly hidden features and outlined how they had once been.

I knew they both loved it out there. I knew his Dad in particular was truly in the place he wished to be. But seeing such numerous and tangible signs of that happiness – seeing the energy and planning and life that had been there – in so many ways the ranch and Happy are connected. And we are leaving the ranch.

And yet – what we are doing is exactly what he would have wished us to do; what he told Joseph to do. We are moving into the future; supported by instead of burdened by this legacy.

It is still hard. And tomorrow we will say goodbye.

Hehe. It finally happened – I have been discovered to be posting things.

Knowing how long this site has been unused – not a single post all of last year – and also knowing how I ~still~ routinely checked in all last year – I’ve been wondering how long it would be. A week? A month?

Will this change what or how I write? Do I have enough practice and momentum to not be swayed by the though of an actual reader (hi, mom!)? We shall see.

Next question: how long till Chris checks in?? 🙂

So …

This is the last weekend. If we don’t get it now, we’re leaving it behind forever.

And we have officially reached the point where we can’t stuff any more stuff (large stuff, anyway) into our garage. Even our remaining path is getting a little crowded.

But the end is in sight! And not just chronologically. Joseph & I think that we could probably get everything in the truck in one more trip. We almost went out there twice tonight to reach that threshold, but it would have been full dark when we got there and also it would have been stupid. But tomorrow Dad is coming with and that means two trucks – no problem at all with two trucks. We’ll be fully cleared out tomorrow.

And I am STILL finding pieces of petrified wood out there. We’re picking up all this gorgeous sandstone to use as a flowerbed border. Now, when the ranch was in its full glory they’d picked up so many pieces and used them as borders for their own flowerbeds and around trees and such. This is very convenient for us now. We’ve pulled up the known areas, but today I just poked the shovel down around all the trees and found two more caches. One of which included this new foot long piece of petrified wood.

Which, by the way, is so intriguing. There are hints of color shifts and some distinct crystallization and it may be a very, very interesting rock on the inside. The outside is pretty nondescript. So it’s excellent rock saw fodder. Usually, the big rocks escape the rock saw because their interest derives from their size. But this one … I want to see the insides more.

It’s also amusing because as I was cleaning it, parts kept flaking off. This rock was fully buried, and there’s a lot of sand stuffed in all the crevices, and some very enterprising tiny plants have been doing their best for the last decade or two or three. So we have 3-4 flakes about the size of a fingernail – your thumb, perhaps. They’re totally remaining as part of the collection; will take one to work too (where I have many of these rocks). Oh yes, I will say. This is petrified wood. I worked hard to find all the petrified wood before we sold the property. This piece was buried a few inches down, but I found it.

I’m probably going to look for more sandstone tomorrow. We’ll see if I find any more petrified wood. For the last month I’ve been saying ‘but we’ve gotten all the big stuff already’ and I’m wrong practically every day, so now I’ve decided to say ‘I know we left some big stuff behind but I just couldn’t find it all.’