Thursday Again

It's Thursday again. I'm not sure how that happened.

So, this morning I was completely wiped out by the time we left the house. I've gotten Emma to take a shower every morning for a few weeks now. I wake her up and turn her light on when I go in to take my shower, then I get her towel and clothes in the dryer to warm them up. I stand outside the shower to make certain she washes her face, fetch her towel when she's done, and then stay in the bathroom to remind her to put lotion on her face and other places (she gets eczema easily). When we get downstairs I have a list --take my meds, get vitamins out for everyone, make Rob's lunch, make Emma's lunch, get my breakfast into my purse (a bagel I toast in my office), fix my hair and slap some make-up on. Remember a lanyard, my iTouch, my laptop if I need it that day. Emma has a list too, but I still have to remind her of most things --is your homework in its folder and in your backpack? Do you have your book for silent reading? Your water bottle? Finally, she gets her teeth brushed and we're out the door. Except that she almost always has to go back in for some critical thing she has forgotten. It's often a stuffed animal. I know she should probably be making her own lunch, but then we wouldn't leave the house until 10 a.m. The girl has a very fluid sense of time.

Emma has had two three-hour rehearsals the last two weekends, and this weekend are the two performances. Rob and I have tickets for the first one, on Saturday evening. The performance is at 7:30, with a 6 p.m. call time. Then she does it again, Sunday afternoon. She has a speaking part, but not one of the major parts. The dialog is very funny (I've helped her learn her lines) so I'm looking forward to seeing it.

Then Halloween, Monday night. That will be mostly Rob's responsibility --such a relief.

Next weekend we're finally going to go see my parents --we'll drive all day Friday (which reminds me, I need to find a sub and create an in-class assignment for my class that day), visit on Saturday, and then drive all day Sunday to get home. Why does the U.S. have to be so big? If we could just get rid of Chicago, or Lake Michigan, it would save us hours of driving!

This afternoon, as I was driving to pick Emma up from school, the sun was shining on so many bright yellow and red leaves, and I was thinking how lucky I am to live some place that can be so beautiful. It was a nice, peaceful few minutes of living in the moment.

Swimming along

I think Swimmy the goldfish may be on his last legs. (Ha ha) He's spending a lot of time floating around at the top of the water on his side. His last day will be a difficult one for Emma, whenever it comes.

Emma's school had Interest Groups this week. Three times a year, they stop all other work and divide the students into "interest groups". Possible topics are brainstormed by the kids early in the school year, then the curriculum is put together by various teachers and different topics are offered three times during the school year. The kids pick their top three of the choices offered; Emma has always ended up in her first choice, so I imagine that's true for all the kids. So she spent this week exploring World Religions. They had three field trips: a local mosque where they attended a service (and got to sit in the men's area) and shared a meal with the congregation, the large Unitarian-Universalist Church in Rockford (we belong to a smaller UU congregation in our town), and a Baha'i temple in the Chicago area. They also had a couple of visitors: a buddist who is the Chaplain of nearby Beloit College, and the pastor of a local Nazarene church; both men are fathers of students at the school. Our own UU congregation just happened to have a buddist from a Milwaukee UU congregation do the sermon last Sunday, too. She's had quite a full week of exploring various ideas about faith, and she's really enjoyed it. It has spawned some great conversations about different beliefs.

Emma and I enjoyed another wonderful hour of math-frustration. She was given math homework before the Interest Group week started, and told that it was long and she would need to spend about 1/2 hour each evening to complete it in a week.  Well, she conveniently ignored that instruction, and began it last night, two days before it's due. After she spent an hour working on it by herself, she asked me for help, but her frustration level was already so high that it was almost useless to continue to work on it. She threw the paper across the room, which was eerily similar to an incident (before Emma was born) when Rob threw student papers across the room in frustration at grading such poor work. She had a literary journal entry due this week as well, and had no problem finishing her book and writing it. I don't get why the math engenders such incredible frustration compared to other subjects.

On the work front, I agreed to be Chair of my department while the elected Chair is on maternity leave this semester. This has made me incredibly busy. It's been great, though, to have an opportunity to see what it's like to be Chair without making a 2-year commitment. The level of compensation is definitely not worth the amount of work. Between Outcomes Assessment stuff, meetings with the Associate Dean, and college-wide Chair meetings, I spend way too much time in meetings. And that doesn't include making time to sit in on all the adjuncts classes to observe them. It's hard to find time to do the teaching part of my job. Chair is definitely something I'll be happy to give up, until Emma is maybe in college. 

In startling news, I found two FedEx failed-delivery-attempt stickers on one of our house doors (one we don't go in and out often!) and I had no idea what they were for. First, they really should make some bright pink stickers for those of us who live in white houses --it was only luck that I found the stickers in the first place. Second, the really happy news was that I couldn't find anything I'd ordered in the last month that would need a signature and it finally occurred to me that it might be my long-lost espresso machine. And, yeah! it is! I got it today. I really was beginning to think I might never see it again.

Hopefully everyone's week is going along swimmingly.  :-)

Book Review

I recently finished the book What Alice Forgot, by Liane Moriarty.

I've forgotten where I read a recommendation for this book --this has been happening a lot. I read a recommendation on a blog or facebook page, download the book, and then forget where I read about it. So, sorry not to be able to pinpoint the recommendation.

I really enjoyed this book. It's a fairly easy, quick, read, but I liked the way it examined how we change as we react to things that happen in our lives.

Alice hits her head and loses 10 years of memories. As far as she remembers, it's 1998 and she's expecting her first child. But it's really 2008, and she has three children, the youngest already five years old. She's madly in love with her husband in 1998, but in 2008 they are on the verge of divorce. She is continually surprised at the kind of woman she has become, and doesn't understand how it happened. How did she go from a woman who enjoyed desserts to a woman who actually goes to the gym every day, has a personal trainer and a completely flat stomach? How did she go from being shy to organizing a huge fundraiser that involves baking the worlds largest lemon meringue pie?

I really enjoyed hearing Alice's thoughts as she spends her first few days with three children she doesn't remember at all. The Alice of 2008 has created lots of rules that the Alice of 1998 doesn't understand. Why can't the kids watch T.V. in the mornings? Why does her oldest daughter have to play soccer if she doesn't enjoy it? Why isn't there any chocolate allowed in her home?

I don't know if this book would be as interesting for younger people --part of it's charm is that I can completely understand how the 2008 Alice could have created rules in reaction to situations that the 1998 Alice hasn't experienced yet --and how sometimes our rules are sensible, but sometimes they are too extreme, but we don't have time to re-examine them once they've become just a part of our life. This book is very much about re-examining our lives and our personal relationships, and perhaps making sure we don't stay on a path we don't really want to travel.

My New Friend

This is my new friend. Forgive the mess behind it in the photo. This is our guest room, and without an imminent guest, it's turning into a storage room for blankets and the large wooden toys (barn, house, castle) that Emma has outgrown but won't let go of. (Of course, come to think of it, my whole house is becoming a storage facility for Emma-stuff.)

Anyway, my hip has gotten so bad over the last year, that even on Celebrex, I can't walk. I mean, I can walk around the house, and get from my car to my office, and even around the grocery store (although it's always nice to be able to use the cart like a walker), but walking as a form of exercise, or even for pleasure, is a thing of the past (until some future hip-replacement). So I needed something for some low-impact exercise.  I suggested a stationary recumbent bike, and the doctor thought that was a good idea. So, now I try to ride it at least 5 days a week. I have a little table next to it, where I can watch streaming Netflix shows --I'm on a roll with old sit-coms:  Wings, Cheers, and News Radio. I don't imagine it's going to help me lose weight, but I do feel a bit more muscle in my legs when I walk around, and that's got to be a good thing. Emma (who is, after all, glued to my side for the foreseeable future) is particularly enjoying Wings.

Bob the Blue Monkey

Bob has been hanging around our house lately. He's got magnetic hands (and a magnetic personality), and it all started here, when Bob realized he could hang out on my collection of fences:

Then he just started moving around the house. Each morning, when Emma and I got up, we'd find him in a new location. Each evening, when Rob came home --he'd changed up again! After the fences, he swung over to this lamp over the kitchen island and pretended to be holding up the ceiling.

Woo-hoo! One handed-swinging on the lamp over the kitchen table!

 

He looked a bit scared in the mudroom.  "Uh-oh --how'd I get so high?  And how is Emma gonna get me down?"

 

And he really startled me here, when I came home one afternoon:

This one looked kind of uncomfortable, poor Bob.

Then he climbed a tree (isn't that a great wall-hanging? Rob got it for me for Christmas two years ago, although at that time it did not include the little green caterpillar from Littlest Pet Shop land in the root area. Emma added that artistic touch later.)

Finally, Bob ended his journey back upstairs in our bedroom.

Bob has since been resting back in Emma's room, where he normally lives.

Yes, I really have lived here for 17 years.

The Upper Elementary class at Emma's school had a field trip over the last three days. Monday to Wednesday noon they spent at the Atwood Outdoor Education Center. It's basically a big building, with dorms, kitchen, and dining room, set in the middle of acres of woods next to a river.

For those of you with relatives nearby, your children probably have spent the night away from home fairly frequently. (I only wish.) Emma has spent the night at her best friends house three times over the last three years. Her preference is always for play dates at our house, especially if they involve an overnight.

But, she mustered up the courage to go on the Atwood field trip, and according to her report back today, only cried a little at night when she got homesick. That's so hard to hear, even though I know the experience of being away from home is probably more important for my anxious child than for the kids who were eager to spend the night anywhere that isn't home.

Anyway, at the last minute I volunteered to be a driver for the ride back from Atwood to the school today because they were short of drivers. I was supposed to be there at 12:15 p.m., so I set off from my office after teaching and got to the park around 12 p.m. Couldn't find any place in the park that looked like a dorm, or that had cars with other waiting parents. I finally ran across an old guy working on some outbuilding, and he told me quite nicely that I was in Aldeen Park, not Atwood.  Oh! I flashed --Atwood! That's the park with the horses, right? Yes, he agreed, on the other side of town. So, off I took, figuring that I could still get there around 12:30 p.m., which is when the cars were supposed to take off for the school. The traffic gods were smiling, and I drove into the park right at 12:30. This is a park where Emma has taken riding lessons, so I was somewhat familiar with it. Except the only building I knew was one right near the entrance where they meet to ride. I parked in front of it and went in to ask the office staff where I would pick up kids from an overnight field trip.

"Hi, I'm kind of late, and I'm supposed to pick some kids up from an overnight fieldtrip to Atwood."

After that sentence, the kind lady looked at me with some concern, and said "Oh."

"Oh? Is it hard to get to the building where they are?"

"Well, Atwood is way on the other side of town."

I was struck silent for a moment. "This isn't . . .  Atwood?"

"This is Lockwood Park."

Oh. My. God. Could I really be so stupid that I drove to two of the wrong parks? Oh, yes.

At this point I gave up. I was on the northwest edge of Rockford, and after asking I found out that Atwood Park is about 45 minutes south. So I drove back to Emma's school and waited for someone else to bring her back.

I've only lived here 17 years --you'd think I'd have figured some of these things out by now.