The Second Walk

Last winter I decided to supplement my daily morning workouts. Nothing complicated, but in the evenings after dinner, once the dishes were washed and the table was cleared, I started going on hour-long walks instead of sitting on the couch watching television or reading a book. I mentally referred to it as The Second Walk.


Then this past January Timothy started going on these walks with me. To be honest, his original reason for accompanying me was to play Pokémon GO on my phone, but after a while he came so we could "just talk" (his words).


The Second Walk has now become our thing. We walk around the neighborhood, up and down Stevens Creek Road, down to the Pavilion and on the canal. We talk the entire time. Sometimes we have an adventure, such as earlier this week when we went on our Second Walk in the pouring rain (which is precisely why we went). We put on rain jackets and baseball hats, left umbrellas at home, and walked for an hour and a half on the canal. We got muddy, and very wet, but gosh we had a good time.


My favorite thing about this time together is the randomness of topics: how his legs won't fit under the tiny desks at school, the range of his new BB gun, the judge's picks on America's Got Talent, his Christmas wish list, the movie Dunkirk and can-he-go-see-it, the deer that crossed the road in front of us, and a step-by-step explanation of how he built a hovercraft with a computer fan and the box of Nicholas' leftover engineering wires and circuit boards. Incidentally, all these topics were from one walk.


And it never fails that every time we return from The Second Walk I think . . .


If I could just save time in a bottle.

The Twilight Zone (Mall episode)

There is a fifth dimension beyond that which is known to man. It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity ... and it lies between the pit of man's fears and the summit of his knowledge ... it is an area which we call the Twilight Zone the Mall.


So. I'm living in the Twilight Zone.


Since the beginning of summer each of the Novajosky boys has wanted to go the mall ... up to and including my husband who, just this past Friday, announced that it was too hot to do anything outdoors and suggested we go to the mall.


Now, I go to the mall maybe three times a year, and here I've been three times since the end of May. All because of my guys. Go figure.


But on Friday I should have known something was up when Joe pulled up to a Sears entrance -- not the main one, but a side entrance -- and parked the car as close as he could to the doors. Any closer and they would have called security.


We entered directly into the lawn mower section where my husband found a salesperson who told him everything about our lawn mower bag which needs replacing: Yes, we sell this type of bag; no, we don't carry it in the store; yes, you can order it online.


"Okay." Joe announced, turning to us.


"Okay, what?" I asked, although I was pretty sure I knew the answer to my own question.


"All done. That's all I needed." he replied glancing at the exit.


As my head was spinning to come up with a clever comeback, Timothy intervened.


"I want to go to GameStop."


That's my boy. Normally I try to discourage anything related to video games, but GameStop is precisely 45 feet from the entrance of Sears so we would actually have to go into the mall.


After GameStop someone suggested Barnes & Noble and all of a sudden we were MORE in! Like, we had to walk all the way down the upper level to the other end of the mall! Along the way I helpfully pointed out some of my favorite stores and offered some helpful advice:


Pandora is a great place for jewelry; and you know me, I like chunky bracelets.
Sephora is great for makeup; a gift certificate is the way to go.
Teavana has the cutest little teapots. You can also sample the teas.


In Barnes & Noble we headed for the magazine section where Joe saw this ...

and I saw this.

Then I found myself near the travel maps and, because everything was just a tad surreal, Timothy and I goofed around until Joe peeked around the aisle and asked what we were doing. Not behaving, was what we were doing, but it was fun.


(What wasn't fun was re-folding that nice map of Rome. Maps can be pesky like that.)

We then walked the length of the mall back to Sears and our getaway car. On the way we stayed on the upper lever, but since we were on the other side we had to walk past Victoria's Secret and all those pink, frilly, lacy things. I told Timothy to close his eyes.


Now, I know you're probably wondering, "What about the lower level?"


Well, there just wasn't enough time in this Twilight Zone episode. Thirty minutes, max. We'll do the lower level in the next episode . . .

Funny, Not So Funny

So I don't know what is more funny about the text below:


1- That Siri misunderstood my dictated text "carefully" and wrote "careful he"


or that ...


2- In his haste to get home for the summer, he-who-shall-not-be-named did, in fact, get a speeding ticket.

Bad Math Mojo

"I'm really worried about the math test I took today," Timothy says as he sits at the kitchen counter for his afternoon snack.


"Why?" I ask. "You got an 'A' on the last one."


"That's the problem!" he wails. "Here's what always happens: I do very bad on the first test of the quarter but then make an 'A' on the rest of them. That's what always works. But this time I started all wrong! THIS time I made an 'A' right away, which means I'm going to do badly on the rest!"


"What? You would have rather done poorly on last week's test?" I ask.


"Exactly!" he says.


My head is spinning because I'm trying to think like him.


"Oh, you're in trouble," I tell him as I hand him a glass of milk. "No doubt."


And if things couldn't get any worse, later that evening he checks RENWEB and discovers he made a 100% on the test. So now, in-the-world-according-to-Timothy, he's REALLY doomed.

Piano Lessons with Mr. Jeff

If children were not introduced to music at an early age,

I believe that something fundamental is actually being taken from them.

~Luciano Pavarotti

When Nicholas and Jonathan were in grade school they took piano lessons.


Their teacher -- Mr. Jeff -- recently moved to Augusta and was looking for piano students; truthfully, the only reason we decided to go with him was simply because he came to our house. This was huge for me. Timothy was less than a year old, so I cannot tell you what a blessing it was to not have to take the boys to a piano lesson but have the piano lesson come to them.


Mr. Jeff was the most untraditional piano teacher you can imagine. Prior to arriving in Augusta he had worked as the organist for the Atlanta Thrashers when Atlanta had a professional hockey team, so needless to say he was loud, fun, and had a dramatic flair. The boys loved him.


Once a week he arrived shortly after dinner and would spend the first half hour with Nicholas, and then Jonathan. He used a music theory book to go over basics, and even assigned a little homework, but he never taught the boys any of the silly songs in the book; instead, he took a music theory lesson and applied it to music by Billy Joel, or to theme song from Charlie Brown or Star Wars. He always assigned each boy a different song, so for that one hour while I loaded the dishwasher, and while Timothy crawled everywhere (including near the piano), and with Mr. Jeff sometimes improvising a duet, we had a virtual concert coming from our dining room. We enjoyed having him in our home, and he always left with some dinner leftovers or a plate of cookies I had baked that afternoon.


But then, sadly, Mr. Jeff moved to Florida and the piano lessons stopped. We tried two different piano teachers after he left, but neither one was Mr. Jeff so the boys lost interest.


Little did I know that those piano lessons with Mr. Jeff would one day come full circle.


Years later, when Nicholas was a junior in high school, he asked for an electric guitar for Christmas and taught himself how to play. He had music sheets everywhere. Before he went off to college he purchased an acoustic guitar and, again, he learned on his own, lugging the guitar on camping trips or beach outings with his college friends. During this, his last semester at Clemson, he needed to take an elective so he signed up for a piano class.


Jonathan was in 7th grade when he requested an electric keyboard for Christmas. I was thrilled because he always had a natural rhythm on the piano. In high school he purchased music books from 2nd & Charles, downloaded songs from the internet, and practiced constantly. This past December he upgraded to a better quality keyboard, one with more keys, and practices every day after and between classes. He occasionally sends me a text video of him playing a new song.


Finally, there is Timothy. Other than crawling around Mr. Jeff's ankles during those piano lessons, Timothy never experienced his unorthodox teaching style. We tried traditional piano lessons for one year (plus a summer), but abandoned them after they started to feel like a forced march. Like his brothers, however, Timothy came back to music on his own. Last week he came home from school and asked if he could play my guitar. A few days later he downloaded a Pokémon score from the internet (Littleroot Town Duet) and taught himself how to play the first two lines on the piano.


And I love that there is music in our house, that those early lessons were a springboard for learning later, when they wanted to return to it. Now, when all the boys are home, music is drifting from the rec room, down the stairs from their bedrooms, and even from the very same piano where they sat with Mr. Jeff so many years ago.

Jonathan, teaching Timothy

Novajosky News: Nicholas' Turn

As an English major/Spanish minor at the University of Georgia, I can say that for every time I stayed up late to finish a paper or research Faulkner’s stream of consciousness writing technique, there were just as many days when I sat under an oak tree discussing Shakespeare or attended a play in order to write a review for the paper; in other words, I remember those days as being pleasantly ensconced among writers and poets and totally devoid of undue stress.

Fast forward a few years and I find myself comparing my college experience with Nicholas’ as he pursues an engineering degree from Clemson University. Here’s what I’ve discovered: engineering is not for wimps and, most definitely, doesn’t include Shakespeare. For Nicholas, the past four years meant many late nights at the library, or marathon study sessions with friends, or working on group design projects. The past four years meant engineering internships every summer and during two Christmas breaks, and then afterwards sitting down with Joe and discussing what he could financially contribute to his tuition.

He’s a hard worker, is our son.

This is not to say that the past few years haven’t been fun. He will graduate this June with many wonderful memories:  the weekend trips to the beach or to Athens, GA to visit friends, the traditional bar crawl when he turned 21, the trivia contests at the pub and, of course, those Clemson football games and watching (on his birthday no less!) the Clemson Tigers win the National Championship. So he definitely had fun, but never at the expense of his studies.

And now here we are, his senior year. This past fall, in the midst of working on a senior design project and maintaining a 4.0 GPA, he diligently submitted resumes and interviewed at job fairs on campus. Then, between homework assignments, oral presentations and a hectic exam schedule, he had a few follow-up interviews which not only involved driving to Augusta (once) and Charlotte (twice), but also flying out to Denver, CO where he had his first “white board” interview which involved using the board to solve problems given to him during the interview. Right there, on the spot.

I broke out in a sweat just hearing about it.

He never wore a suit as often as he did this past semester, and he never called home as much as he did during those days before and after each interview. There were many things to consider, plan, and discuss: he could see himself working in Charlotte, he liked the people he would be working with in Augusta, and he really, really liked the company in Colorado. Also, he wondered in one phone call, would it be okay to fold his suit in a small carry-on?

By December he received two job offers, and earlier this month he signed a contract with the company out in Denver, Colorado. We couldn’t be more excited for him. This May he will find out where he will be located (we're hoping Nashville, TN, or it could be Washington D.C. or even Salt Lake City, Utah) and in June he will begin work after a two week training session at their headquarters in Denver.  And so far the company has been very good to him. A week after signing with them Nicholas received a beautiful, high end laptop backpack in the mail with a personal note welcoming him to the company and, just this past week, company recruiters visiting campus took him and a few students out to dinner.

As parents, nothing is more gratifying then seeing our son make his way in the world, and we are excited these doors of opportunity are being opened to him.  I have always referred to Nicholas as my “Renaissance Man” because his interests and talents are so varied: he’s very good at engineering and math, but he is also a voracious reader; he plays the guitar, follows politics and world affairs, goes to church every Sunday, and is teaching himself how to paint; he is presently taking a basic law class because he thought it would be interesting; and he’s very witty and adored by his baby brother.

It’s the bittersweet truth that children grow up in a heartbeat, and I could never have imagined, all those years ago when I sat under the oak tree discussing Shakespeare, that I would one day have a son who is poised to go off into the world as a young man. It’s exciting, gratifying, heartwarming.

It’s incredibly humbling.