I have a lot of teacher friends and they say the same thing. I hear both the horror stories and the delight stories. Thankfully, my two are usually in the delight category (noisy at home but quiet in school). I know my kids have always enjoyed the classes where the teacher has a good balance.
First, thank you. I try my best with them. I’m just glad that they are great kids for the most part. Being in Tennessee… yeah, it’s scary sometimes. One of CtE’s favorite APs that they’ve known since 5th grade moved his family during winter break because he and his wife wanted to do the best for their kid. And Tennessee ain’t it!
When CtE first came out as nonbinary, we kept it to a small group. We told my Dad and my sister but have yet to tell my in-laws. They may suspect some I use "they/them " on Facebook. Having truly supportive family and friends can make coming out and/or transitioning so much easier.
I’m at the field trip for CtE. We’re at a place called Junior Achievers Financial Park and the field trip is part of their Personal Finance class. They’re learning about how to budget based on what possible job they may have. CtE said before we came that they didn’t see the point of coming when they don’t expect to ever own a home or any of the good things in life. I hope they’re learning that it’s about more than lodging. They had something like 22 categories that they needed to learn about in order to responsibly make their budget. I’ve been learning a lot of things too. I’m really glad I came. And I’m looking forward to coming back in 3 years When BtY has to take the class.
I will admit to feeling like kind of a shlub though. Hubby and I haven’t been the best role models for the kids when it comes to budgeting. In hoping that I can change that and I’ll feel better in 3 years.
Time for lunch! Have s great rest of your day/ night.
Oh yeah, and like. I’m not a member or anything, I’m as vanilla white as it gets. But it’s a cultural institution and it’s important that I participate in that culture when I am invited to do so!
So far nobody’s ever been anything other than entirely welcoming and eager to teach me things! I’ve learned a ton. Assuming I don’t get that other job, I’ll get to start taking Ojibwe language classes soon.
Carpet guys are here, helped them move some of the furniture and am now burrowed in my office as they do what they do. Once it is done and paid for, I’ll have my house back and can provide the paperwork to the insurance company.
Rain has stopped for the moment but is due back this afternoon.
Did a little Amazon browsing and mildly surprised that the cost isn’t much different that a normal rollsuck. May have to look into this.
Niner, we all blunder into a cultural faux pas now and then; I suspect those around you know it’s just an ‘oops’ moment and won’t hold it against you. Enjoy! (as it appears you are doing)
Herald, that is still a lot of greenery. Have fun come harvest time.
Hippy, you are good people, have I mentioned that recently?
Wheelie, fingers crossed that new gig pays off.
Real Fish, wish I had had a class like that back in the day; had to learn budgeting and keeping track of money and savings myself–fortunately both my parents were Depression-era kids, so while they were not misers they kept a tight and well-organized budget and I guess I picked up some of that.
OK, guess I should make an appearance and see how the work is going. Take care all.
It’s nap time and I’m enjoying the quiet. I managed to bake a pineapple upside down cake- pic in FB - but I need to decide what it will be the dessert for.
Speaking of FB, once again I will invite anyone who wants to friend me to message me and I will give you the link to my page. I keep it Friends Only which is why I don’t bother linking here.
Anyway, kinda hoping it will rain so we can skip the playground. Is that un-grandmotherly of me?
I’ve got the greenhouse unpacked. I showed Mrs. L.A. the instruction booklet and she said, ‘That’s thick. I hope it’s in more than one language.’ Nope. It’s got a lot of steps.
I’m going to take my Aldens to a cobbler in town to be cleaned and shined, and for new laces (one’s broken). They don’t open until 1100. I’ll start on the greenhouse this afternoon.
I have some adulting stuff that idonwanna do. Namely, scanning the documents for the next step in the Great Naturalization Project of { checks year } uh, of 2013.
You know what I do wanna do? Go to the diner up the street and stuff my facehole while starting my next cross-stitch hoop. Is that SO terrible?
Biggest conundrum now is: should I get a patty melt? or a meatloaf “stacker” sandwich?
The latter comes with mashed potatoes & gravy, plus onion rings, all ON it; the former comes with sauteed onions (yum) and I guess I could order mashed N.O.T. with gravy, on the side …
I’ll hafta put on a bra. Le Sigh. Such a bother. But I am hungry.
Well, I could put my documents in the car with me - perhaps I’ll stop by the UPS/FedEx/Kinko/Whatever these days afterwards.
Yeah. While in a food coma. Sure. Right.
Oooh. Speaking of next cross-stitch project, I was playing with my threads to figure out what will look good together. The next one is gonna be similar - a rainbow spiral - but on black fabric, with thin pinwheel arms so the black shows through. It’ll make the colors really stand out!
Here’s my batch of contenders. Final mess of threads will depend on how many “arms” I decide will look good.
8 will be simplest, geometry wise. I’ve chosen 10 colors, which would be a b!#ch to get nice and even, given my limited math skillz.
I could go nutz with 16 arms, but that may be a bit crowded looking.
As an update, I did not do anything dumb at the ceremony and I learned lots. My shrimp fried rice was a hit even though it got mushy from being in the crock pot. A bunch of people didn’t even know shrimp fried rice was a thing, and everyone talked about how spicy it was… Friends, I made it maybe 20% as spicy as I normally would. Midwesterners… Go figure.
metal mouse , I’m very glad they have the class because Hubby and I suck at budgeting. It depressed me a little hearing what we should do and what we don’t do.
CtE spent most of the time at the field trip teetering on the edge of a breakdown. They asked me if they could come out to the car after we were done so they could scream. Of course, I said yes. And when they got in the car, they started sobbing heavily. The teachers and other school professionals said I could drive them back to school, which I think was helpful. They said that looking at all of the things that they wanted them to budget for are things they’ll never have, like a home that they own. And a lot of the things they let the kids choose from weren’t bottom basement things (like $10 shoes from Walmart) which made it hard for them to have much hope for the future.
I was proud of the fact that they kept it together until they could be in a safe place to cry, then they used some of the calming techniques their therapist taught them. Finally, they actually went into the school and to their 7th period class, which happened to be Personal Finance. They finished their work for class and got our of school 30 minutes early. Since I was sitting outside, I had no problem with it. And it let me get to pick up BtY a bit further up in the line.
I decided I just wasn’t hungry enough for that much food.
As it is, I brought home 1/3 of my patty melt. (Would’ve been half, but I started in on the 2nd half while finishing my tea.)
It was my reward for actually doing the Adulting Thing and getting my docs scanned. So they’re all queued up in Teh Intertoobz, and awaiting the next step in the online submittal.
… however, I may need a nap first. That was a LOT of food for my lil’ tum-tum.
My only regret about that patty melt is not having gotten it sooner. Goddamn but that was tasty.
Done with wrangling for the week. And good news today - MIL’s apartment at the retirement community is now available. They’ll be going over tomorrow to do the paperwork and see the place. So yay! The big question now is what she’ll be charged to get out of the other lease. FCD is hoping that since his dad died, they’ll cut her some slack. He’s not going to mention that his dad died in January. Anyway, looks like it’s time to start packing again.
And while FCD is dealing with all that tomorrow, I’m going to clean the dining room floor and maybe the family room also. We shall see. At a minimum, everything will get a thorough rollsuck. Sorry - don’t mean to rub your noses in my exciting life…
Howdy Y’all! Spoke with insurance folks. If all goes according to plan (HAH!) twuck will go to the hospital early next week and I’ll get a rental. We shall see. Sloth, general overall uselessness, and nappage were achieved. Sup has been et. It’s raining heavily. Good to be inside and dry.
I ordered a mystery kit months ago. My threads arrived last week. Today I finally got the first patterns and happily started sorting and prepping so I could start.
Over the years, I have collected a big bin of stretcher bars for mounting canvas. I have long ones and short ones and thick ones and thin ones so assumed that I had the stretcher bars I needed. Everyone knows what happens when you assume, right? I know better, dangit.
This designer is pretty generous with fabric, so I was able to trim it to fit the closest frames I have, but dang.
may I ask if the no phone at school is personal or an actual rule? i know the schools here have given up trying to ban them and some classes have embraced using them as learning aides them since everyone was using tablets during the lockdown
also, seeing where I hang out online when not here I should know this but what does “enby” stand for ?
is there a reason for thinking this way or is it just part of the depression thing … because even for me that’s some awfully black void like thinking maybe the therapy can help?
The no phone at school is a personal one. It’s one of the few ways that work for the getting him to do something other than look at his phone constantly. He’s good about keeping it put away when he’s in school, but the second he jumps in the car and pulls it out to catch up on whatever’s happened in the Discord server he’s on. And then it’s close to impossible to get him to give it up without a fight. So we’ve found that making him leave the phone with us in the car and us bringing it in to hide it is the best way to get homework and chores done.
We’re very lucky in our school district that they have computers for every student that they can bring home to do school work on. All the kids are supposed to have them in school, charged, every day, so there really isn’t an educational need for phones. But there are a lot of kids that want to keep it on them incase of an emergency.
“Enby” stands for Non-Binary (NB). I only heard the phrase in a Mama Bears group I’m in and it’s a lot easier as a shortcut.
I think some of it is being 17 and seeing how much inflation is putting everything through the roof. They saw our rent in our apartment jump by $400/month, $6 eggs in the grocery store, and have watched us buy the least expensive things in terms of clothing and shoes for all of us because we really didn’t have the extra money to buy the pricier things, unless it was birthday or Christmas. We also haven’t had a vacation in about 4 years, and that was paid for by my in-laws. They’ve been growing up with all of this around them, plus being at a school where more of the kids have the name brand of everything because their parents are doctors, lawyers, city councilmen and actually bring in good money. So that’s a large part of where the void is coming from. “If it’s this hard for Mom and Dad, and the world is only getting worse regarding the difference between income and expense, why should I expect to own anything?”
But part of it is definitely the depression, some of which is brought on by having to think about what they want to do in the future. They want to get into voice acting or music of some stripe, but they know that’s a hard one. They have a fallback plan of eventually getting a degree in library science, but we know a lot of librarians that have said, “Don’t get in it for the money!” So they’re floundering regarding their future (no matter how much Hubby and I, as well as their Guidance Councilor, tell them they don’t have to make any decisions now), but being a Junior, they’re hearing from the college councilor, having to take ACTs and SATs, and attend talks about what schools to apply for based on what they want to do. It’s just piling on top of it, and because they don’t have a clear path, their afraid they’ll end up working a minimum wage job instead of something that will pay them enough to move up.
This isn’t the forum for it (there’s plenty of honest no-punches-pulled commentary in the Pit) but suffice it to say that - in my early 40s - I’m in the same spot.
American housing, medical care, and general cost of living (jeebus, friggin’ eggs lately, not to mention gasoline, etc.) are through the goddamn roof, and I dunno about you, but my wages ain’t keepin’ up with inflation.
So if a decrepit semi-old lady thinks things are bad, yeah, teens and early 20s are wholly excused from believing that they are well and truly fucked.
Follow me for more uplifting, optimistic cheerfulness!
