Winter Update: Two Years on the Job

Ah, Pittsburgh: the museums, the shopper's 'Strip', the Cultural Center, the sports arenas—so much to see.

#1
Actually, I've seen little of it, although I did take young Alex to the National Aviary and a Pirates game.

When my Bishop invited me up here to western Pennsylvania, I thought to take about 6 months helping him develop some ministry documents and perhaps help out at Church Army headquarters. I've done a bit of both, but I'm still here two-plus years later.
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#2
I arrived in Ambridge on Christmas Eve 2007. Three days prior I had met a friend who was working as a long-haul trucker and living in the truck with her 8-year-old son Alex. Then on January 4, she called to ask if Alex could move in with me until the end of the school term.
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#3
By January 25, Alex had arrived in Ambridge as a small and insecure bundle. Before long I discovered that the "end of the school term" was not to be June 2008 but 2009.

Then the recession hit—and it did not spare the trucking business. I volunteered to keep Alex until the end of school 2010, which was a prescient move, because his mother ended up spending some three months in the fall of 2009 not only homeless but also unemployed.
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#4
So here I am, a substitute "single mom" at age 65-plus. I've been on the job 24/7 for two years, with four days off to make it to my daughter's wedding. I feel a need for vacation coming on.

Although some days seem to drag on while Xavier is at school, at other times I have to move the camera in my brain so fast to keep Alex in focus that the rest of the world seems like a blur.

Besides extra-curricular basketball (where his team won the championship last year), Alex has participated in football, martial arts, chorus, band (saxophone), and the summer programs of Ambridge Youth Ignite.
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#5
He's a head taller now than when he arrived, and headed for an eleventh birthday in March. He's also showing early signs of thirteen-year-old syndrome, wherein a boy begins to believe he can do a better job running his life than his adult supervisors.

Like control of the ball in basketball, he'd like to have more control over his own life.
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#6
Alex has adapted well to the winter weather, and has to be watched lest he go out in the cold under-dressed.

He lacks no friends to play with, and counts some 5o numbers of friends on his cell phone. His phone is our safety connection and my leash to draw him back in for dinner.
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#7
Alex's mom does not celebrate the Christmas season, and I take a dim view of its shopping binges and pagan accoutrements. Alex was having none of that attitude.

He came home from a friend's house with a fully decorated Christmas tree in tow, and set it up in his room. He was highly doubtful that he would see any presents under it come Christmas morning, and had convinced himself of this so securely that he had been up for an hour that day before he discovered them.
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#8
One of our pastimes during Christmas vacation was watching the Disney movie UP!. I think we saw it eighteen times.
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#9
The movie is about a crotchety old home-bound dude who dreams of going out adventuring in the high country. He achieves his dream, but it comes along with a young boy who he must reluctantly care for.
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#10
So here's the goal of the Old Dude in the animated flick: "Paradise Falls" in South America. But what he won through his friendship with the boy surpassed what he achieved by finding his wilderness dream spot.
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#11
I sent my last post in early fall, before the autumn colors reached their peak, so I'll share some photos showing the march of the seasons here in frigid Pennsylvania.

This red-orange tree is on a street in Ambridge. There was another tree that was even more brilliantly florescent red, but when I got back to it a week later with the camera, all the leaves had fallen.
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#12
These yellow-orange trees were blazing in all their glory on the hillside a block from my house in Ambridge.
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#13
Looking north from my porch in October, all I can see are maple leaves.
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#14
Looking north from my porch in December provides an unobstructed view of the neighbor's back yard.
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#15
Although we did have a nasty bout of freezing rain, the ice curtain hanging from my back fender continued to grow daily whether it snowed or not.

We had two weeks of weather when the temperature was never above freezing, even in the midst of sunny days. We're headed into another bout of the same right now.
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#16
I have a gym membership that comes with my health insurance, and I've been visiting the treadmill two or three times a week.

The view out these second-story windows overlooks the Ohio River.
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#17
And here is that Ohio River in December (behind the trees), clogged with ice floes. For a while there was even an ice jam downriver that was causing concerns for flooding.
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*18
While I walk the treadmill watching ice floes move down the river, folks in Australia are stretched out on the beach for a mid-summer tan.
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Watch for another posting soon: Kid's Alpha is coming up and we're going to need prayer support.


PHOTO NOTES:
1: Pittsburgh sits at the juncture of three rivers. This photo shows the point where the Allegheny river on the left joins the Monongahela on the right to become the Ohio river headed for the Mississippi.
2: Freddy is an adult male chimp in Africa that has taken over the care of baby Victor, who is motherless.
3: Alex already had computer skills when he arrived. Now that he has his own Playstation 2 and DVD player, we spend less time tussling over who gets control of the computer.
4: I was trying to follow Alex with the camera as he dribbled down the court during a fast-paced game and ended up with this.
5: The baskeball season is short: they practice during December, break for Christmas, and have their games during January and the playoffs for the championship in February.
6: We got about 4 inches of snow that night. It's been a long and bitter winter so far.
7: The tree came with lights and ornaments.
8: This is Angel falls, which served as the model for the falls in the movie UP!.
9: This is wilderness scenery in China, which may have inspired backdrops in the movie Avatar.
10: Combining #8 and #9 gets us Paradise Falls, the adventure goal of the old dude in UP!.
11: An Ambridge street in autumn.
12: A street near my house this autumn.
13: Looking north from my porch in October.
14: Looking north from my porch in November.
15: The snow melted off but the ice curtain stayed.
16: This is a rehab gym that also has programs for the elderly.
17: The view from the gym.
18: Sidney, Australia, January 25.