Posts (page 2)

Streaming on!

I missed yesterday. Ah well.

This is Thanksgiving break for me. I have no school/work until Monday, December 1st. Needless to say, I've set some goals for myself. If it gives you any indication, we've actually rented a dumpster in anticipation of our cleaning frenzy. With my list below, I need to do 3 or 4 rooms/tasks per day (excluding Thursday since we'll be out of town) to get everything accomplished

• Redo Bunny Cage (2 bookshelves from Target, NIC tiles, zip ties, stick-on linoleum tiles)
• Lesson Planning/Paper Grading
• Clean out truck
• Bake Banana Bread
• Girlchild's Room:
• Throw away broken or unused toys
• get rid of old speakers, sound system
• dismantle shelving unit
• move bed against interior wall
• make bed
• move dresser against exterior wall
• reinstall doorknobs
• dust
• go through closet (clothes for Olivia)
• Boychild's Room:
• throw away broken or unused toys
• take box of books out to bring to used book store
• move bed against back wall
• make bed
• stack wearable clothes on bed
• move dresser into master bedroom
• clean out dog crate
• throw away cushion chair
• throw away unusable computer parts on desk
• make a space for new dresser
• put television where new dresser will sit
• dust
• Master Bedroom:
• clean out drawers of dresser (throw away my unworn clothing)
• throw away old videotapes
• throw away or break down and store boxes in attic
• clean out books, save only treasured volumes, take rest to used book store
• clean out closet (mass purge!!!)
• put black dresser back in bedroom (clean it out)
• clean out storage box and throw it away
• dust
• Dining Room
• clean off table
• clean out black dresser and put it back in the bedroom
• clean out china cabinets
• clean off bookshelves (piles for school/bookstore/garbage)
• clean off mantle
• dust
• Living Room
• clean off mantle
• move couch/chair to make room for Xmas tree?
• dust
• clean off desk
• Kitchen
• clean countertops
• clean out pantry (discard unused pots and pans)
• clean out cabinets (discard unused can goods)
• clean off storage unit
• clean out microwave
• take down old artwork/certificates
• dust
• Laundry Room
• clean out storage shelves
• put things in attic
• take Xmas things out of attic
• look for washer screws
• dust
• Hallway
• go through books--keep treasured volumes, the rest school/bookstore/garbage
• dust
• sweep
• Bathroom
• clean out storage baskets
• wash linens
• remove bench...it's time
• clean toilet/sink/tub/floor/mirrors
• dust
• Deck
• sweep off leaves
• Porch
• major purge!!!

Now there may be some of you saying, "How can you throw away all of those things???" Well, just so you know, with the amount of bums in our neighborhood during the winter months, anything salvageable will be right out of the dumpster and off to a pawn shop or being worn overnight. I'm just not going to worry about it. If I try to take the extra time for all of that, it just won't get done. I'm hem and haw and not do it. I just need my house to be livable again!!!

As of this morning, he is sitting at an A and the rest B's.

Yayyyy Boychild!

Connect_by_MissMinda

Have I mentioned lately how much I love this man?

Well...I do!

Back from the game. I'm not thinking I need to do that again any time soon. We left right before half time. The boys were bored, I was through with it as well. I just don't need to watch the game in person. Television offers an equally satisfying experience for me, in a more comfortable chair....with computer access while I'm watching. So, I guess I'm not an avid football fan. Or maybe I just like college football better. I know I get irate at the television when I'm watching my college team play.

I also have to consider the fact that I wasn't born and raised in this city. I didn't grow up with my father being a die hard fan of this team (which wasn't even a team when I was little). I don't have the ties to the team that some people are born and raised with. That probably affects how I look at and react to the game, as well.

Game over.

Kids cleaning the rabbit cage and then playing video games until the football game is actually done.

Then I'll take my son's friend home and help my son finish off his notebook (one chart left to go).

May your team win!

Minda

Today is the football game. We are eating right now and then will finish up printing off my son's science fair project notebook. Then we'll be headed to the game. We live about a mile and a half from the stadium (you can see the blimps and hear the fireworks from our house), so it won't take us too long to get there. The seats, however, are in the nosebleed section, so I anticipate a slow and tedious journey for me with my leg. I'm considering bringing a crutch or cane to help me out with all those stairs. My former coworker told me that there is an elevator for part of the way up. That will definitely help.

It's supposed to be cold today. They are predicting it to be 2 degrees cooler than when I first checked. So, we're going to stop off at a drug store to buy some gloves, blankets and chapstick. I'm pretty sure that the wind will make it 10 to 20 degrees cooler than what it actually is.

Different topic altogether...

I feel as though, if I didn't have children, I really wouldn't do Christmas this year. Of course, I'd still go see my relatives since I have time off of work. I may even give them something because it's expected. But, if the kids weren't around, I could do without the tree, decorations, presents, hoopla. I'm not in a shiny happy Christmas mood.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not in a bah humbug mood, either. I'm not turning my nose up at people who are in the spirit of things and going all out. Good for them!

I can't do it, though. Girlchild still desperately wants to believe in Santa Claus at 8 years old. It may just be the last year of awe and wonder for her. How can I take that away from her? Unfortunately, her age dictates that she wants more expensive items, so the tree will not be as "awesome" this Christmas. There will be fewer packages for each child. Even fewer for my husband and myself.

That's all for now. Time to help the boy.

Two in one day!!! Are you about to keel over from the shock? I know I am.

streaming on:

I forgot to mention in the last post that one of the punishments doled out to my son for not having good grades was a change in personal dress code. There isn't a strict dress code at the school he attends. I told him that when he entered middle school, I would let him have his hair as he liked for the 3 years that he attended. He can't get a job when he's that young (besides chores or doing things for the neighbors) so it's a perfect time to look like a bum. He started growing his hair out. Well, obviously dressing like a bum made him ACT like a bum. His grades started falling. That just won't do. F = Haircut. I gave him the option of two different styles, and he actually chose the shorter one.

Then we talked about his clothing. My son loves to wear shorts, even in the dead of winter. The weather here has turned chilly. It isn't the cold north, but with our thin blood, it affects us just as badly. Therefore, F = long pants. He has to wear them every day, even on weekends. He has to wear a belt. He has to wear his shirts tucked in.

Speaking of shirts, my son likes to wear them 50 sizes too big. The shoulder line is always halfway down his upper arm, at least! He likes big floppy t-shirts and would wear the same one to school every day if we would let him get away with it. He is incredibly picky about the texture of his shirts. If it's not soft enough, he doesn't want it against his skin. Therefore, F = collared shirts. He has to wear a button down collared shirt or a polo shirt, tucked into his pants, regardless of the texture.

Now, that he has brought his grades up, I'm allowing him to wear a few nice t-shirts, but they have to be tucked in, as well.

I don't know if it's the only thing making a difference, but if it is, I'm sticking with it.

Minda

Starting to blog again after a long absence is daunting. I sit here looking at the blank screen, thinking that I need to fill you in from the moment I left until the present day. I can't tell you how many times I've started a post, discovered that it seemed like too much of a chore to catch up to where I am now, and just navigated away to something more simple. I haven't even been reading other people's blogs, because it has just made me feel too guilty about the fact that I haven't updated my own in so long.

So, I'm not going to catch you up. Ha! I figure, I've been gone so long that there are few people following my blog anymore anyway. The blogging has to be for me or I won't do it. That's how I started, it's how I need to continue. My goal will be to blog in a stream of consciousness style for at least 10 minutes a day (so far I'm up to 2 minutes now). It may not make sense, it may not be interesting, but at least it will get me back into the blogging mood.

streaming begins...

My son won tickets to the local professional football team's game tomorrow. I have never been to a professional football game, so I was just as excited as he was about the tickets. Everything was against us going to this game, but he and I are going. He won 4 tickets, but the girlchild has been sick, so we don't really want her sitting up in the nosebleed section in the wind, bored out of her skull as she watches the game, teeth chattering, getting even more sick. So the boychild and I will go alone. Gotta say, I don't mind having 4 seats if it means I'm not sitting squashed up next to someone else. I'm not sure how these things work, but I've seen people in the stands with blankets, so I'm planning on getting some blankets to huddle under with the boychild to keep warm. It's actually not supposed to be too cold (65 degrees), but who knows what the wind will do to that temperature up in the stadium.

My daughter's teacher retired at the end of October. The new teacher has really just started, because she had trouble with her paperwork from the State DOE. I'm liking her as a person, and she seems on top of things as a teacher, as well. She's younger than I am, but I guess I'm starting to get used to that.

I'm not the oldest teacher on our grade level. One of the third grade teachers has taught for 27 years. It is her first year in our school, though. In my quest for staying out of the spotlight, I handed over the Grade Level Chair position to her. Basically, that gets me out of a ton of meetings I'd have to attend. Of course, it looks like I've been given the job, even though I don't have the title...according to the principal.

I submitted my first field trip packet yesterday. I've never taken the reigns on one of those, yet, although I'm always supportive of the person who does them. I did ask my daughter's new teacher to take over the grade level receipt book. I know I'm not good with the money aspect, and she said she would be willing to take on that responsibility for me.

The principal has a really odd sense of humor, and it's difficult to know when he's being serious about things. He came down to my classroom yesterday, while my students were in art class. I wasn't there, because I was talking with a teacher who HAS submitted a field trip packet successfully, to make sure I had all of my paperwork in order. I walked out of her room and he stopped me in the hallway on the way back from my room to ask about a problem student that he hasn't seen lately from my room. I told him that I'm in communication with his tutor at least twice a week (with his mother present), so there have been less problems, or I am handling them in-class. I never was a big referral writer. When he first approached me, I asked him to sign my field trip packet. He said no. Then at the end of the conversation, I asked him to sign it again. He said no. I completed the packet and sent it up with my daughter's new teacher at the end of the day. Maybe she got him to say yes and sign the thing. She worked with him for 3 years at a different school before being stationed in Germany with her husband for 2 years. I hope so, because I worked pretty hard on that thing!

My son is experiencing the seriousness of middle school. He blew off a lot of work in his first quarter. His grades were in the toilet except for physical education, and he barely squeaked out a 2.5 GPA. He has to have at least a 2.0 to stay in this school. This quarter, I've been doing my best to be the mean parent. I check his teachers' websites as often as possible. They have an online grading system that I try to keep up with to see if he's staying on top of things. A few weeks into the quarter when I checked his grades, his science grade had gone down to an F. He had FOUR missing assignments. This boy can be SO incredibly lazy! I absolutely blew up at him. The problem is, he had all the work DONE, he just didn't turn it in. His excuse was that he couldn't get to the front of the classroom to turn it into the teacher. When I emailed that excuse to his teacher, he basically laughed his head off, as he hadn't heard that excuse ever in the decades that he has taught.

Well, when he won the tickets to the professional football game, we told him his attendance would be contingent upon him turning in all of his late work. He also had a missing assignment in Social Studies. By the end of yesterday, he had brought his F in science up to a B. He brought his C in social studies up to an A. The rest of his classes are B's except for language arts, which is sitting at a C+, because he isn't reading enough and turning in the reports. We will definitely be changing that!

So, all classes A, Bs and a C... Then I get a phone call from his health teacher in the middle of giving my students a spelling test. My son has turned around and called another child an asshole. Oh   My   Gosh! What is he thinking???? It's a good thing I wasn't standing right there at that moment. Punishment was doled out when he returned home. I'm still thinking of other punishments that need to happen...

We're still going to the game though.

OK, I've posted for longer than 10 minutes. Yay me! I need to get moving and take the boy to the library to fnd some books for his science project. Hope you are all having a lovely weekend. :D

Minda 

So, I broke my leg last April. I walk Kirby, my large (very large) male boxer, by putting him on a 25 foot lead, and walking out on the porch of my house. He does his business in MY yard, and then comes back up. We haven't been on a real walk since April, because I'm just not up to it yet (not that you can tell from his skinny self), and I also haven't had the ability to take him to the dog park, because I haven't been able to walk around the grass well enough to closely monitor him. So, he obviously doesn't have much interaction with other dogs these days.

Tonight, just a few minutes ago, I walk out with Kirby, check to make sure no other dogs are coming up the sidewalk (normal reaction because we're a big dog-walking neighborhood around dusk), and when I see no one coming, I let him down. He wanders a bit, pees, and then perks up. He sees a woman walking a corgi and what I think is an American Bulldog, across the street on the sidewalk. The woman looks down my way, then she starts crossing the street on the opposite side. She then stops again, turns around and starts crossing the street heading my way.

I call Kirby, but instead of coming, he sits on our grass, wagging his tail furiously. I tug his collar, and he's still sitting there wagging away. This woman's two dogs, on those flimsy retractable leashes that don't go around your wrist, yank the leads out of her hands and lunge at Kirby...who immediately yelps and retreats up the stairs to my side. Of course, the woman is flat on the ground, looking p*ssed off.

The first thing I asked was, "Are you ok?"

Her annoyed-sounding response, "NO!"

So I asked if she needed help...no response... I couldn't go running down to help her. For one thing, I was holding Kirby's collar and her dogs were growling up at us from the bottom of the stairs, and for another thing, I didn't have my brace on and I haven't yet attempted stairs without my leg brace.

She sits there for a few minutes, calling her dogs, who are at the foot of my stairs growling at my dog.

I asked her why she crossed the street when she saw me there? ...no response...

She finally got up, brushed her bruised knees and wounded ego, grabbed her dogs and stomped away down the street.

ARGH!

Personally, I think Kirby acted wonderfully...but I'm hoping nothing comes of this nonsense.

Minda

10-4-08 114a

I spent the weekend with my sister and family. She seems to have been relegated to the position of leader of the pack (cubscouts, that is), but without the recognition of the position. She is doing all the work, and getting none of the credit. I came down and helped out this weekend by taking photos and printing names on certificates for the Raingutter Regatta. I had a good time, and got a sunburn on my arm in the process. My kids had fun, as well. I haven't been able to get down to see her enough lately, what with school taking up all of my time and the gas prices being prohibitive.

Hubby resubscribed to WoW (world of warcraft) this weekend. It's been a long time since online gaming has been a fixture in our household. I toy with the idea of getting back into it myself, but we really have only one computer that is suitable to game on, so there isn't much point in getting all involved in it if only one of us can play at a time. I don't know when I would have time to play anyway.

My plans/goals for this week...

• teach every day
• grade papers
• cook dinner
• restart the diet
• walk around the block once (carefully)

Maybe I'll be more ambitious next week.

Smooches, all!

Minda

Hello everyone! I just wanted to check in, say hello and let you know that I'm still alive. School has started, so I'm super busy getting everything up and running. I'll try to check in again soon!

Smooches!

Minda