Author grimholtz

These are quotes from Karolina to me on WhatsApp.

Niagara Falls

“We are staying in a hotel right at the Niagara Falls. My plan for tomorrow is to drive as far as I possibly can. I just want to get home.”

You don’t understand- I am so tired and here it’s soo humid and hot!! I almost collapsed while caring Elliot. God what a tourist trap this place is !!! Don’t need to do this again! But little Elliot got on the boat a rain poncho for babies . He and Max loved it !!!!

I am really happy that we came here though- although I complain. It’s something I can check off the list now:) Max had a really good time!! He loved it , he loved it because he got really wet on the boat, I feel like that’s what we basically came for ! Elliot was the whole time pointing to the falls and saying :” see! See! See!” The wax museum was about the history of the Niagara Falls, which was nice but the figures were absolutely awful. – poorly made. And I am really, really happy that we had dinner at the rain forest cafe. I paid $80 for a questionable dinner , with a huge cake , but both of them really loved it! Max was so happy to be there !

Rainforest Cafe

Max got a Vulcano cake dessert meant for a family of four to share!!! They sang him a song!!

So, yes I am exhausted, my leg is hurting and I just want to drive 22 hours to get home. I have been driving too long and too much.

On Quinn Moving to Colorado

“Also, tell Quinn that max probably wants to see him every possibility he can get !!!”

“He already plans a trip for us and Quinn to go to Utah and visit the D&D world”

Karolina writes from Maine:

Elliot and Max are always playing in my bed before going to sleep and it’s the best thing I have seen in a long time. Elliot is always waiting and giggling till Max comes up the stairs.

Elliot licking the bowl of blueberry pie; Max building a pee-pee in the sand on the beach.

From Karolina:

I got this chair for Elliot’s future room – it’s really old and it has a hole in the middle so you can use it as a potty – it was $24

One night in Maine, I was reading:

I’d been telling him about the book in the previous days, and he was very interested in this man who’d abandoned society to live alone. Max was playin,g but saw me reading. He stopped and said, “I hope one day I can read like you.”

“What do you mean”, I asked.

“That I don’t have to … ” He didn’t know how to explain.

“Sound out the words?”

“Yes, that I can read without sounding out the words.”

He wants to be able to read to himself, not aloud all the time. It takes him minutes to read a page, if he can read all the words by himself. It must be agonizing. It must make him not want to read.

To encourage him, I told him that I don’t always understand everything I read, and that I must oftentimes read sentences to myself more than once.

I just feel so bad for him. He really wants to read. He sees the enjoyment it can bring.

I’m still not with them. I’m still in Littleton.

Karolina: “He insisted on a waffle with his bath.”

Sharing ice cream

Sharing ice cream

From Karolina, traveling cross-country to Maine:

Do you see this? There is a safe in our room. Elliot was playing with it, he punched in a number, took Max’s socks put it in there and closed it. And now we can’t open it.

Why Elliot is sitting naked on a hotel carpet — I’ll never know.

From Karolina:

Visiting an Amish farm. It is sooo beautiful.

…and…

We stopped at an Amish food store – I bought so much food, everything here is homegrown and made. They are the super Amish here, so everything is super organic and soo good . We are in Holmes County which has the biggest population of Amish world wide.

…and…

I love it here so much !!! Seriously!! I already want to come back here and stay in one of the tree houses – it is very “Amish” here, got stuck behind a buggy on the road several times today. We visited several Amish homes and farms – the Amish people/ farmers we met today were all so friendly and nice, they all loved Elliot. I explained to an older Amish farmers what my husband does for work – keep in mind this guy lives in a house that hasn’t been updated since 1866, he doesn’t even know what a computer is.
The cats and puppies in the photos are all for adoption 😃😃😀
I ate so much today – we all did , because everything they make is from scratch, out of homegrown ingredients from their own field, and you can taste it. Elliot ate two big bowls of soup for dinner, on top of everything else he ate today.

• We got Muffin for my 11th birthday!

• E.T. came out, and we were treated to seeing it on a weekday Summer night, at the last minute. I was outside in front of the house when we were told about the plan. And I was so excited; we never saw movies on weeknights.

• Journey’s Escape album was released. The girls played it in the schoolyard during recess on a portable boombox.
• Rush’s Moving Pictures was released. My brother bought it, maybe his first Rush album, I’m not sure. But he blared it all the time, and it got my attention. I listened to it on his record player when he wasn’t home I fell in love with Rush. Some of the love was due to my idol, my brother, liking them. But at some point after 1981, I grew to enjoy them on my own terms. But before that, I started buying their other albums and wearing t-shirts. There is a photo of me from 1981 wearing one of their shirts in 3-quarter black and white sleeves.
• Mr. Cwanger’s 6th grade class. I loved Mr. Cwanger. And I joined the gifted group with Matt Goldberg, David Gordon, and 1 or 2 other kids. We were pulled out of class regularly to do extra work.
• MTV started
• Foreigner 4 !
• Echelon roller skating rink (Gorgar pinball, birthday parties). Girls would slow dance with boys to songs that had just been release like “”Waiting for a Girl Like You” and “Urgent”. But not me.
• Mt. Misery: the Jersey Devil movie, vistiing the Pasedena Ghost Town in the Pine Barrens
• Summer camp at Na-Je-Wa in the Poconos. It was generally bad time with my bunk makes hating me and calling me a Nazi because of my last name (it was the first and last time I remember being picked on, or bullied, as it is called today). But the best parts were:
  • Making my first real circuit with blinky-lights. It is a purple heart with two flashing LEDs that I still have today. I gave it to my mom who wasn’t sure what to do with it. My father taught me how to solder before this, but it was always repair work. This was the first time I created something with electronics, and I remember the teacher well (an older man with gray hair who guided me in soldering the 505 timer chip).
  • Damn,  I forgot.
  • bad part: the counselor stabbing me with his electric razor after he found my playing with it (I was fascinated by the electric motor because I’d been playing with electric motors with 9-volt batteries before camp). I was bleeding and still have the scar under my chin,
• Dungeons & Dragons!
  • Another inspiration from my brother. I “dungeon mastered”  for Chuck Trobman, Scott Mazer, and (at times) Mark DeCheser. Jan Robbins was too silly to play. I played Rush’s “YYZ” and Journey’s “Who’s Crying Now” during play for ambience. Both of those songs have a certain mood that fit the milieu. It didn’t work so well because Scott asked that I turn the music down, but I had the right idea. Playing mood-specific music is what all the kids do now apparently.
• Heavy Metal the movie
  • I can’t underestimate the influence of this film. I saw it on HBO or Cinemax late at night. Both of those were new for us: we’d just gotten cable TV (with MTV) that same year. I’d never seen nudity let along animated nudity. And the soundtrack included Journey, Blue Oyster Cult, etc, bands I was already listening to or soon started listening to (and also saw in concert).

Max and I went last night. He sat on my lap for some of it because the booster seat was not comfortable. It was so special, even though he’s too heavy to be doing that. Afterwards, there was a Q&A session with two 11-year-old boys (max’s same age!) who played Charlie and an older girl who played Violet Beauregard.

It was raining at Elliot’s first Pow-Wow at The Fort in Morrison. Max said he didn’t bring a “barilla” (umbrella).

In April, he asked Karolina if she had seen “101 Donations.”

In June, Max was watching an Irish dance troup on TV. After a few moments he said, “You know what? I bet I could dance like the leprechaun people”

Early May, 2019

Max

Max cried when the “bad guy” in Game of Thrones died (final season). Karolina only let him watch that one episode.

Karolina got her hair lightened and it was down, not in a bun. She picked up Max and he said, “Can you put your hair back?” (He means into a bun)

Karolina: why?

Max: Because I know you better.

Elliot

Elliot laughs whenever I sing the “meow mix” song in falsetto, even if he’s in the middle of crying. He wants to copy things we do — drink from a regular glass, stir the pot, walk Chinle. He insisted on bringing a wooden spatula into the car.