W: I have run into a wall, trying to come up with dinner plans. And yet, people still insist on eating, and items must be hunted and gathered. Ideas? We are at the point where I have exhausted the array of regulars, and another Pasta Night holds zero interest for me. Help!
AW: Got back on that work albatross -- planned next steps, identified obstacles, multiple consultations, wrote some things. Not exactly worthy of fireworks, but we may be headed out of the Sinkhole of Doom.
AW: My husband send me a picture of a rescued momcat who needs a home, and she is a sweetie! W: But he might have just been teasing me. AW: But the rescuer at his work sent him the photo, so apparently they know this is not just a dog-oriented family. (Seriously, my beloved has Demented Dog Syndrome, causing him to use baby talk with "my sweet little precious baby girl" and display framed canine photos.)
Whining works: My local online newspaper switched last week to the most hideous, overly busy trainwreck of a multimedia circus. Apparently, I was not the only one to complain, because this morning, it is back to the old format. Yay!
What are the whines and antiwhines, big and small, out your way?
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59 comments:
Too many things to do, not enough hours.
Oy, Liz! When's the election?
November 3, 2015.
But I gotta raise $50,000 by Dec. 31 of this year (I'm nearly half-way there) and actually, like, help run a business and parent and stuff.
AW: My computer is back home! I missed y'all!
AW: Former church employee has left the state. Finally.
W: he left more unreasonable requests, misuse of funds, and disgruntled people in his wake. But he's gone.
I made something that the adults in the household enjoyed: saute onions, bell peppers, garlic. Add some black beans (rinsed) and corn and Rotel tomatoes (mild version). Add some chicken if someone in your house thinks they have to have meat. Season with chili powder and cumin. Cook it together for a bit, till the tomato juice has evaporated. We've eaten it in tortillas and as a nacho topping.
Esperanza, two good antiwhines! Glad he's gone.
I did something like that for burrito night last week. num.
My craziness has settled down enough to allow me to check in here....
My show I'm doing is killing me. We open Saturday night (only two performances, but still!) and we have yet to have even one rehearsal with all cast members in attendance. It's completely insane. Truly.
Offspring is safely packed off to school, and from the little I have heard from her, she seems to be enjoying it. She's participating in stuff, and looks like she made a couple of friends during orientation. She has signed up for the theatre company, and is working as their Outreach coordinator, advertising shows and promoting the company.
I miss her. It's very quiet here, but I suppose that's to be expected. On one hand, I hope that she misses us, too, and at the same time, I hope she doesn't. I don't want her to be prostrate with homesickness, but I would like her to call me once in a while. And, not just for, "Can you mail me a sketch pad and an umbrella?"
Knowwhatimean?!?
((( KLee ))) Not many calls probably means she is busy and happy. Ya done good!
Break a leg with the show!
Texting. That's what my sister does with her kiddos (21 and 18)
I text with away-at-college niece too. But no calls home is a very good sign that she is involved in campus life.
We're adopting that momcat! My sweetie made the rescue person at his office cry when he said we'd take her. Our 2 resident cats are so shy as to be almost invisible, and 3 does not a crazy cat lady make, does it?
Three isn't quite too many, kathy a. And that's so sweet that you can take momcat!
(((KLee))) I agree that texting is likely the way to maintain contact. When we were far away, we learned that was the only way to hear from Mr. Q and my younger siblings.
Esperanza: I'm going to make that meal next! Perfect.
W: so much stress right now. Friend with mental health issues is doing well. Admitted to the hospital today. It's the best and safest place for them, but we're all a little emotional right now.
AW: friend's kids are having a good time playing video games at my house right now, and I just received a text (via friend's spouse's phone), indicating that they were very pleased about cookies I sent. I'm happy to feel useful, because I spent part of the day stress cleaning.
Dangit! I mean to say that Friend is NOT doing well! Proofreading!
((( QWP ))) I'm sorry about your friend, but the hospital is a good, safe next step. xoxox
Also, you are a really good friend for helping them at this time.
We are texting, but not so much of that, either. A little is better than none, I suppose.
QWP - so sorry about your friend. Wish there was some way to magically FIX things....
Liz,if I had any money, I'd give it to you.
Kathy a. -- so glad to see you adopted the new kitty!
Got some more bad news....my grandmother (who will be 95 in November) was just diagnosed with lymphoma. My dad and uncle say there's no way she can do chemo or radiation -- it would kill her even faster. So, I am not sure how much longer she will be with us. Stopped through CityOfMyBirth to see her not long ago, and she was very disoriented. It really hurt to see her that way, not at all like herself; she's usually full of vim and vigor. Her mind is normally sharp, even if her body is slowing down.
((( KLee ))) I'm sorry to hear about your grandmother. Her life must have been amazing! Hope you can see her soon, and that her passing will be gentle and full of love. xoxoxo
After a family discussion, we agreed to call the cat Minerva! (or Minnie.) h/t to Sue, who made that suggestion -- daughter got the HP reference immediately.
(((Klee)))
Hi all,
I'm back home after my visit to the big city and appointment with magic needles. Still a bit bruised and sore but so grateful for a treatment that works, even for awhile.
There is no "easing back" to work this week so I'm in the fast lane today and tomorrow. I'm with Liz, not enough hours in the day.
I'll catch up when I can...in the meantime, hugs to everyone and head-scritchcies for Minerva!
Sue, glad you are back; glad you got the magic treatment!
I forget that it really takes time for a cat to get comfortable with a new place. I'm sure she won't spend all day under the big bed....
Yay new kitties and needles in the head. ((QWP)) ((KLee))
AW of epic proportions: I finished the upholstery project! Pictures on fb sometime today. Still have some dining room seats to recover, but that will be a snap in comparison.
W: Mini woke up, raring to go, at 4:45 this morning. It's a time. In the a.m. God is still sleeping--why can't a 4 year old?
Woot, I dub thee the Upholstery Queen!
All I can say about Mini is that this early rising problem won't be happening in 10 years. ;)
Stage IX of the window replacement saga -- now a guy is here to test for lead around the 60 year old windows we are replacing. My daughter's room is a huge disaster, complete with dead clothing strewn everywhere; and my husband's den also functions as a jumbo junk drawer. The cats are, I think, all secured in a safe room. The only up side is he says he'll test using "x-rays" instead of taking samples.
Wow. That took about 10 minutes, and we passed.
Esperanza: we has a small person awake at exactly the same time this morning! What is going on here? (She got a little more sleep after that. I don't know how much I slept after that.) I'm propping my eyelids open with toothpicks, Barney Rubble-style.
(((KLee))) I'm so sorry. So many hugs.
W: I need to get myself more alert. I need to drive around now, and all I want to do is curl up and sleep.
QWP, full moon? I don't know, but it needs to stop.
Geniuses at our school district decide Sept 11 is a good day to practice drills and emergency procedures.
Also, 4:45 a.m., I am tired of you. This time, Sweet, with a wheezy cough and a date with the nebulizer.
What? That's just cruel, Esperanza. The kids won't remember, but parents do.
It looks like my SIL will need an emergency psych admission again today. We got a call at 6 a.m. from her locked memory facility, where she has been for 16 months. She had 2 psych hospitalizations earlier last year.
The psychiatric symptoms are (mostly) because of her progressive brain deterioration. No cure or even treatment for her kind of dementia; they do try to treat those symptoms, but her meds are totally not working now. Trying to escape; manic and not sleeping and ranting bad thoughts; trying to hit elderly residents = not good.
Trying to arrange for her to go to the Big U Teaching Hospital (Big U studies her dementia) instead of the tiny community hospital near her facility. Cross fingers for us, ok?
oh, kathy a, so sorry she is unstable again.
Sending love and hope for the big teaching hospital.
(((kathy a))) I'm so sorry. I hope Teaching Hospital can take her.
Thanks, Pixies. Haven't heard back from the wonderful neurologist yet. Have left a message with the Big U psych unit, and sent info to the care facility on how to get someone admitted to Big U. So, think that's all I can do for now, but wait.
Times like this remind me that I'm not as patient as a person could be! At least the facility believes Big U would be the best option -- and it would be for us, too, because it's a great hospital, they know this disease, and they have most of her records.
Everyplace else, we have to assume nobody on staff knows anything about her special dementia. Seriously. I have entire protocols for educating new doctors, and would dearly like to not do that again.
W: Homework battles. In kindergarten. She "works nicely" at school, but whew. We are already not doing everything that is asked of us.
Still no word, so I'll tell you the backstory about Minerva the rescued cat. What I heard from my husband was that she and her kittens had been rescued from a basement, the kittens found a home, and she is a very friendly cat.
As it turns out, Minnie is a 100% lifetime feral -- the secretary who rescued her has talked to all kinds of people in the neighborhood. Minnie and her brother were abandoned as kittens when the owner's house was foreclosed. Before all that long, Minnie was pregnant with her first litter -- and those babies were adopted by neighbors -- but basically as soon as they were weaned, she was pregnant again. She sought refuge in the basement of a victorian house, which is a law office; the staff there knew Minnie. Some neighbors tried to help her; and at least one member of a halfway house was threatened with eviction for being mean to Minnie.
Enter the secretary / cat rescuer, who had met Minnie and was worried to hear of the second pregnancy. She took food daily. She talked to people at the law office. She heard that Minnie had to fight off a big cat, just to keep her babies safe. When the babies were about 8 weeks, she trapped Minnie -- then spent 2 days trapping the babies, who had never seen humans or light. The babies are good!! Very loving and friendly.
Our poor Minerva, though, has had a hard life and then spent the last few weeks in a cage. She let us pet her the first night, but has been pretty terrified about this new world. She's spent a lot of her time under the bed, or under my big desk. We're trying to keep food and litter boxes handy, be sure she doesn't get outside. Think this girl's just going to need a lot of time to adjust.
xoxo
Oy, Esperanza!
Esperanza: Mr.Q wants me to ask more about Sweet's homework and kindergarten (the whole State of Kindergarten in the US thing is something we read about here, but he's curious about what it looks like on an individual basis). Are they assigning more than the recommended 10 minutes of homework per night, per grade? Does she get recess at her school?
QWP & Mr Q, there are both national and state standards that the school has to follow. Our school district is not what I would call academically aggressive, in that they aren't pushing the kids nearly as hard as other districts do. We have a low college entrance rate compared to other districts. Many families live below the poverty line. Having said all that (which is to say that it gets much worse in other places).
Yes, they get recess every day. Gym two times a week.
Homework: The 10 minutes/grade level is a bit hard for me anyway, because what takes one kid 10 minutes will take another 3 and will take another 15. Anyway. She is supposed to review letters and sounds of all the ABC's (we just pick a few). Count to 100 (she needs help). Identify numbers up to 30 (this is hard for her). She gets 3-4 new "sight words" a week, words she is supposed to recognize without sounding them out. Start the week by just looking at them, then oral flash cards, then (the bugaboo last night) writing them 3 times (we just write them once). On an average day, this probably all can get done in 10 minutes, but when people are arguing about it, it takes longer.
In addition, we are strongly encouraged to read 30 minutes every day. At this point, it's mostly me reading to her.
Yesterday was a perfect storm of head cold, cough, not enough sleep, having done lots of work at school, and it being toward the end of the week. She was just tired of working.
You may now commence giving thanks for living in Canada :)
PS: Kindergarten was not like this 35 years ago when I was in kindergarten. I was also a weirdo who loved school and either got homework done there or enjoyed doing it right away when I got home. Sweet is, um, not like me.
Oh, we don't read 30 minutes a day. We do read some every day, but I'm sure it doesn't add up to 30 minutes.
And, as long as I'm on the subject, I'm a stay at home mom, and I still can't make the things happen that I think are important: homework, play, supper together, bedtime on time. How in the world do working parents manage any of those things, much less all?
We don't.
When MM was in Kindergarten (private, full-day, because our county only has half-day which is a whole 'nother discussion), he also stayed at their after-school program and...they did the homework THERE. Parents were supposed to go over that week's sight words with our kids once a day for a few minutes, and that was it.
When he started public school, he still went to after-school at the place he went to for kindergarten, and they did the homework THERE.
Liz, that would work way better, because she is SO MUCH more cooperative for other people than she is for me. Sigh. It is full day kindergarten here, 8:00-3:00
Hugs and love to everyone.
W: I had to buy new trousers for work. A summer of bbq dinners and too many yummy snacks, my wardrobe appears to belong to someone thinner than me. *sigh* I feel mushy.
AW: Regular work days, taking healthy lunches to work, and earlier bed time might help.
We do half-day kindergarten in this province (but our old province just switched to full-day a couple of years ago). The school where E is going to go does full days, but they don't go every day, and so it works out to the equivalent of half days.
Thanks for answering our questions, esperanza and Liz! We read a lot about the educational reforms there, and what that means for the teachers and kids, but we're always curious about what it really looks like. (Education is provincially mandated, and we avoid standardized testing in this province. In the province where we used to live, the province did a ton of top-down reforms, with the standards always changing, and based everything on testing. And now they're locked in a long strike. So, Canada is not this educational utopia, but things are pretty good where we now live.)
Esperanza, that sounds like a lot of intensive work for beginning of kindergarten! But it will get easier, as Sweet gains confidence with the letters, sounds, numbers, etc.
Hearty second to the thought that our kids perform better for others, and argue more with their own.
Cat: she is exploring more of the house now, getting bolder. Yay! Only light scattered hissing.
SIL: Things remain unsettled, but they put her on a stronger med yesterday that has at least calmed things down.
I'm awake!!! Thanks hot flash!
ugh, Liz. Hope you went back to sleep quickly.
Bleah, hot flashes.
No awards this week -- sorry. Things got away from me. Many thanks for your patience with all the hosty whining this week.
Fine to keep going, should the mood strike!
No problem at all kathy! Whining is why we're here - hosting or otherwise.
Boo to hot flashes!!!
Dear universe, you can keep the lemons because I'm sick of lemonade.
Sincerely,
Out of Sugar
oh no, Miranda. That does not sound good.
((( Miranda )))
(((Miranda)))
I was up for 2 hours, but it was ok. Hosts are allowed to have whiny weeks,too!!!
Thanks Friends. Things have been very bad and I wish I could get advice from all of you but I can't say anything right now. One because it is still developing and Two because I feel so broken inside over all of this.
((((Miranda))))
-Neighbor Lady
We're here when you're ready, Miranda.
Oh, Miranda. So sorry, and sending you warm hugs and good wishes.
Kindergarten here in my area is much like described by Esperanza. Our homework starts off easy in the early portion of the year -- writing your name appropriately on the lined paper, practicing writing letters and numbers, and some easy "worksheet"-type papers that usually involve coloring -- but then gets harder as we progress. We also do sight words, but we supplement in the classroom with videos of sight words songs and games. (Do a YouTube search on "sight words song videos" or "fry word song videos.". The kids like seeing these, and it makes the learning process a little less tedious. We are full-day, and have been since the 1970's. Our class this year has had very little experience with school so far and is testing very low, so we find ourselves scrambling a little to get them up to speed. Before they exit kindergarten, hey are expected to be able to read 300 sight words and count to 100 by ones, fives, and tens. Right now, our math unit consists of learning the difference between 2-D and 3-D shapes, what they all are, and how many faces, sides, angles, and vertices each has.
Kindergarten was much simpler when I was a kid, that's for sure.
I talked to Offspring on Friday. Turns out she's pretty homesick, but trying to "power through it.". She's excited about her campus job as she basically gets paid to sit and study. She auditioned for a show, but didn't get a part, so she is a bit bummed, but she said 40 people auditioned for 6 roles, so she's not all he surprised. She plans to come home at mid-term (mid October) and while it's a long drive for her, I want to see her too bad to tell her to stay on campus.
My grandmother is doing a bit better, but is still in a rehab facility due to her weakness and inability to get around as well as she once did. Her doctor plans to test her blood again in three weeks in hopes that he maybe jumped the gun in diagnosing lymphoma. I pray God he did.
My show went well. Despite the lackadaisical attendance at rehearsal, they managed to pull it together by show time. We even got almost all of a whole page in the local paper, which I will have to scan and post on the book of faces.
ooh, thanks for the youtube hints. She'll love it. They may do it in class already, I'm not sure.
Hugs for all the feels, KLee. You have a lot of things going on.
(((KLee ))) Sounds like the show was good! And offspring, too. Fingers crossed for your grandmother. xoxo
(((Klee)))
(((Miranda))) my church (UU) has a saying about sorrows unspoken, especially those too tender to be shared. We are here for you.
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