Odd Bits and Pieces

The past 2 months have been just a tiny bit short of being a complete disaster, so I thought I’d end the first relatively good week I’ve had in 2 months with something fun. Here are some bits and pieces of what’s been going on in my life lately, as well as some more random pieces.

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I feel massively horrible. Even though I’ve somehow managed to post most days, I did not manage to keep up with comments. There have been so many posts I wanted to comment on, but just lacked the time now that I only have 2 hours a day to prepare the next day’s preschool materials for my daughter and do all my blog related things. Then there are all the comments I’ve received that I’m so grateful to receive, but have been so short on time that responding to them has been difficult.

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The past 2 months have been absolutely horrible and nightmarish because of my son’s online school situation. I didn’t feel safe putting him in the classroom (I want him to be fully vaccinated and as safe as I can make him before then, and he’s just too young for what’s currently available), so chose our district’s online option. Biggest mistake ever! They were so overwhelmed by the demand that I’ve now learned the online program separated from the online program the district has always offered and put it into the hands of administrators at an actual school. How that works, I’m not quite sure.

After 6 weeks of a change in teachers, no tracking whatsoever for attendance and any work done, no answers from the school and district, and a teacher who received so little support from the school that she considered quitting, among other things, I finally gave up on the program and went looking for another online school. Two days after making that decision, I heard back from one and enrolled him just a few days after that. Now I’m so happy he’s finally being tracked, getting grades, and getting grade level appropriate assignments and assessments (previously, his former online program somehow decided to give him 3rd grade level work when he’s only at the beginning of 2nd grade). He’s been moaning and complaining about having so much work to do (computer AND paper based!), but I’m so happy he’s finally getting a decent education that’s TRACKED and GRADED. It’s been a week and a half now and he’s actually super excited for the coding class he got to sign up for that starts in an hour and a half. Things are definitely looking a lot better now!

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I don’t know about anywhere else, but, where I live in California, we have this commercial urging people to get vaccinated. It has a person in a hospital bed attached to a ventilator. All you hear are the breathing sounds through the ventilator. I swear it sounds just like Darth Vader. So that led to a family joke (because my son loves Darth Vader) that Darth Vader got COVID and that’s why he sounds like that – he’s hooked up to a ventilator. The scary part is, Star Wars takes place so far in the future. COVID still exists that far in the future.

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My husband came home on Tuesday saying the most wonderful and most confusing thing:

“You got a package.”

I got a what? I wasn’t expecting anything. Well, that’s not quite true. I was expecting a box of materials from my son’s new school. But, if that had arrived, my husband would have said our son’s materials had arrived.

Then my husband said: “Some kind of press.”

Um, WordPress? I couldn’t think of any press that would send me something, much less one I had ordered from (I haven’t ordered anything from a press, that I know of). But why would WordPress be sending me something?

Oh! It’s from St. Martin’s Press. Well, I did request a copy of Bad Luck Bridesmaid, but it seemed a little early to receive a book that doesn’t come out until January. Besides, I’ve made complete peace with not receiving that one since I snagged a copy on NetGalley. But, opening up the package, I realized the cover was a little too dark and a little too red to be that book.

Oh my gosh! Fan Fiction by Brent Spiner!

Considering it came out on Tuesday, I didn’t think I was going to get it. I’d heard nothing about it after sending in my email. But, there it was, in my hands. The most surprising gifted copy I’ve ever received.

It’s kind of a big deal to me because I love watching Star Trek: The Next Generation. I used to watch it with my mom and it’s one of the few shows my husband and I bonded over early on, so it holds a special place in my heart. We can’t wait until our kids are old enough to enjoy it.

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I think my 9 year old cat is telling me no, she does not want a kitty friend.

For the past couple of months, ever since my kids expressed an interest in getting a kitten sometime in the next couple of years, I’ve been asking my cat if she wants a kitty friend. At the beginning, she just glared, flicked an ear, and looked away. Of course, I kept asking her because my kids kept asking for a kitten. She must be tired of me asking because now she wants to spend part of every morning playing like she used to when she was a kitten.

Sorry, kids, your kitty sister does not want a kitty friend.

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Every Saturday I get allergy shots in an attempt to manage the asthma I developed 4 years ago. I experience an interesting side effect in that it makes me really sleepy for the next 22-24 hours (this happens after most shots I receive, as well as when I take Dayquil). Since I started them about 5 months ago, my kids are now used to me randomly lying down and falling asleep on Saturdays.

But I’m almost done! My last shot is in early November and I’m really looking forward to getting my Saturdays back. For a while, I just didn’t do anything blog-related. Or anything at all. Sometimes I tried reading, but I usually fell asleep. Recently, though, I decided it might be interesting to try doing a bit of writing in Sisters and some blog writing while half asleep on Saturday nights. I’m pretty sure the chapter I started writing is going to be weird. I haven’t actually read what I wrote yet.

Funnily enough, though, I wrote most of this past Tuesday’s post, Things I Love and Hate About My Kindle, on one of those half-awake Saturday nights. I just thought it would be fun and not many people would actually read it. I was so surprised to see the huge jump in views that day and by the number of comments! I really can’t express how grateful I am to everyone. And it sounds like the Kindle apps work better than the actual Kindles. Hmm…

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I don’t write much about my daughter. It’s not that she’s uninteresting (she’s actually the most amusing member of my family), but I kind of feel incredibly protective of her. She’s one of those little ones who’s spent much of her early formative years in the pandemic. She was 2.5 years old when everything shut down, and clearly not really aware of what was going on or why everyone was home all the time. Now that she’s 4 and more cognizant and understanding, I don’t know how she’ll adjust when Daddy isn’t working from home at least once a week and why Brother is no longer doing school at home. It’s bad enough that the first thing my son thinks about when it comes to keeping his community safe is to wear a mask. I don’t know what my little girl is going to think.

But I am having a lot of fun doing homeschool preschool with her. It’s so incredible to get to see her learn to write and to teach her to write the right way instead of the strange ways her brother developed. She’s kind of over school now that we’ve completed our 8th week, but I have so much fun planning and finding songs, books, and activities all centered around the theme of the week. She’s learned so much and her eyes just light up when she sees or hears something familiar. We do plan on sending her to an actual preschool program in January, so I’m going to miss teaching her, but she really could use the socialization.

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And I think that’s all for now. My life revolves around my kids’ education and convincing my cat to let us get a kitten, but it’s nice to get these weird bits and pieces out of my head.

Thanks for reading!

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