Monthly Archives: February 2009

>Almost a Normal Saturday

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>A “normal” Saturday:
I get up first, start coffee, start schoolwork, start laundry, stay in pajamas as long as I can.
Amigo sets his alarm for 8:00 so he can listen to his favorite shows on NPR while relaxing in bed in his pajamas.
Husband might actually get up and get dressed — or he might stretch out with the newspaper and listen to Public Radio with Amigo.

This week was different. Amigo’s high school music festival was today, and he was scheduled to sing at (gasp) 8:00 AM. A teenager! Singing! For a festival adjudicator! At the ghastly, uncivilized hour of 8! AM! So this morning:

6:30 – I got up, fed rabbit, cleaned up, got dressed, warmed up on piano because I was accompanying Amigo’s solo.
7:00 – Husband got up, got dressed, got himself looking human, joined us in the strange Saturday morning routine.
7:00 – Amigo dragged himself out of bed, got dressed, got a little juice to drink, then joined me at the piano to warm up his young cambiata tenor voice. Yes, this young tenor had to reach a high F at the peak of the song “Shenandoah” at 8 AM.
7:25 – Grandma arrived, we piled into the minivan, headed for the festival held on the other side of town at my very own alma mater.
7:40 – We got lucky for parking. Husband dropped us off on a plowed sidewalk (Yippee!) directly in front of the school and then backed up into the handicapped parking stall and placed Amigo’s parking permit on the mirror. This was a concern; the high school is in an old neighborhood, and there is very little parking near the school itself.
7:47 – We found the room in which Amigo was to open the day, warmed him up again, let him hear the room’s acoustics and the difference in pianos, and then took off in search of a water fountain for a quick wetting of the whistle before his actual performance.
8:00 – He sang well. I know I’m his mom, so I’m biased, but he sang well. Whatever he earns in a rating, he did himself proud.
8:10 – We were back in the minivan and headed for breakfast at a local pancake place, Blueberry Hill. Amigo’s excitement spilled over literally in the form of a little pineapple juice on his pants and a bit of syrup on the table, but he didn’t mind. He gave Grandma a hard time about ordering only one pancake and decaf coffee (“Come on, Grandma, it’s a special occasion!”) but the food was all good and we enjoyed the mini-celebration.
8:55 – We were back in the minivan and on our way home, a USA Today in my hands for a special treat. Yes, I like reading a print newspaper. It’s a simple pleasure that I’ll miss if print newspapers ever go away – and I don’t believe this particular media will ever completely disappear.

And now, with the exception of the usual pajama attire, we’re all back at home doing laundry, schoolwork, cleaning the bunny cage, and listening to a little public radio.

Normal can handle a few glitches once in a while, especially in the form of a special performance and breakfast out with family.

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>Random thoughts and Actual work emails

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>From the school secretary: “There is a package of peas in the ice pack freezer that has been there since Christmas, I am taking them home today if no one claims them and I’m going to cook them and I’m going to eat them – so there.”

Reply to all from the 4th grade teacher: “Ah, yes – visualize whirled peas. Peas on Earth.”

Reply to all from the ever-practical 6th grade teacher: “You can use that bag of peas when you run out of ice packs.”

This would have gotten way out of hand at my last school. Remember Mr. Thrifty the skeleton and the lost banana from the bulletin board? The emails went wild. I’m not sure if I miss that or if I’m relieved things are calmer here. I think I’ll reserve judgment.

Today is a school spirit day: Decades Day. We are to dress in our “favorite” duds from the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, or 90s. Help? I did what I had to do: I reached into Husband’s closet. Deep into Husband’s closet. I found a wrinkled but classic polo shirt with the logo from an old (old!) Packer show, complete with the logo from Husband’s old employer before they changed network affiliations. I am dressing from the 80s (1989, to be specific) in a shirt announcing The Majik Show, starring quarterback Don Majkowski. Anyone remember him? No, don’t answer that. Unless you’re a Bears fan still complaining about the instant replay loss that coined the phrase, “After further review….” Never mind.

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>Not exactly a slow news day

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>Several years ago I had a bad sinus and ear infection. I remember watching the fall of Baghdad on CNN. I couldn’t hear a thing, thanks to my fluid-filled head, but I saw the huge statue of Saddam come down and its head get dragged through the streets. Nothing that dramatic is happening today — or so I hope.

Morning news highlights:
Local street to be reconstructed with six, count ’em, 6 roundabouts. Excessive? Merchants on the street think so.
National news is more sobering. Chairman of the FDIC talks about how ‘nationalizing’ banks doesn’t necessarily mean the gov’t will take over and run them.
Reviews of the Miracle on the Hudson continue to repeat how lucky everyone was, how professionally the crew reacted, and how the people on the plane and on the ground and in the river did everything they could – and it worked.
North Korea is launching a rocket. They won’t say what’s on it, and that’s more cause for concern.
Mardi Gras goes on, and that’s a positive. People in the USA need opportunities to celebrate.

Watching this kind of thing doesn’t help me get healthier, even when I balance bad news with good. I’m glad the extent of our local news is the decisions on roundabouts and traffic lights. Stress and anxiety certainly must lower the power of my immune system.
I think I’ll flip the channel to the Food Network. Rachael Ray’s making chili and hash browns with grated cheddar cheese! Yum!

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>Leftover Salad

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>I found this on the Internet, probably on someone’s blog. It’s attached to the document for carrot cake, so it must have been intended as another use for grated carrots. But look at it closely:

Leftover Carrot Salad
Grated Carrots
Orange chunks (cut orange in half and scoopr sections out with a knife, like grapefruit)
Juice from scooped oranges
Raisins
Combine above. Refrigerate for an hour or a day, and serve as side dish or dessert.

I think this is the revenge I get for posting without amounts last week. Well, here’s what I did with it.

Leftover carrot/orange salad
3 cups grated carrots (we always have carrots; we have rabbits)
2 cups orange chunks (i wish I hadn’t added the juice; they were very juicy oranges)
1/4 cup raisins
1/4 cup craisins or dried cranberries
1 teaspoon sugar (the oranges were a little bland, getting old)

Combine all ingredients. Let sit in refrigerator overnight. Serve as a side salad. Mmm. Delicious and fresh tasting — Just right for a winter day.

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>Over the ground lies a mantle of white…

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>…but I’m thinking and reading green.

Mother Nature Network has updated news stories and blog entries.

President Obama (I still love saying that phrase!) and Canadian Prime Minister Harper discuss clean energy options.

In NYC, vehicles can only idle for 60 seconds or less in a school zone. I wonder if this would fly in my smaller city? Is there a need for this type of law in a smaller area with much less traffic?

Peanut butter or spinach, food poisoning is serious. Can locavores be more certain of safe food supplies, or not?

Leah Ingram’s suddenly Frugal is not just a blog, but will be a book in the fall! I like her idea for DIY laundry detergent: I already have Borax in the house.

And finally, believe it or not, I spotted these items side by side on my way back to the pharmacy: snow shovels and seeds. (Poor quality either from cell phone camera or from my laughter as I attempted taking a picture in the middle of the store) The shovels were on clearance; buy now, folks, it’s your last chance!

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>Not a pandemic, just a bother.

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>Evidence that I’m feeling under the weather:

  • There’s a beverage bar at my side: a cup of coffee, a half-full can of Fresca, and a just- started bottle of water.
  • I have two boxes of tissue within reach: one plain, one with lotion.
  • It’s 2:00 on a weekend afternoon and I haven’t logged onto Plurk yet. No energy.
  • The floor is a mess with stuffing from the footstool cushion (rascally rabbit), and I don’t care.
  • One hearing aid is out because the ear is so fluid-filled it hurts.
  • I’m curled up on the couch next to a vaporizer, and I actually watched a cooking show. Now I know some new tricks for cracking and separating eggs: if and when I get the energy to cook or bake.
  • I haven’t opened my schoolbag to take out the spelling tests or other goodies I have in it. If I rest enough today, maybe tomorrow.
  • It’s snowing heavily outside, and I don’t really care. As long as I don’t have to go out, all is well.

Evidence that Husband is a tolerant soul in the face of illness:

  • He cleaned the rascally rabbit’s litter box – without being asked.
  • He brought out the perfect blanket so I could make myself at home on the couch.
  • He bought me a box of tissue with lotion. He hates tissue with lotion. This is purely for me.
  • He carried all the laundry baskets down to the basement. He knows he’ll probably have to carry them back upstairs. With my complete lack of energy, folding is as far as I’ll go.
  • He is willing to go to a hockey game with Amigo and leave me home. It’s Teddy Bear Toss time, and they’ll have a blast, but it is more fun with all three of us. I’m sure they’ll come home with stories for me — if I’m awake, that is.

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>Random blatherings in the trenches of teaching

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>

  • When more weeks are “the rough ones” and “weeks from hell” than good weeks, maybe it’s time to look at the big picture.
  • When the paperwork piles up and makes the everyday work too heavy, maybe it’s time to rethink the way of things.
  • When the headache starts on the way in to work Monday and diminishes after 5:00 on Fridays, it’s a sign that something is amiss.

Part of the stress was waiting for the local referendum, designed to help maintain the status quo. It didn’t pass. Now it’s time to cut, and there’s nothing “Extra” left to cut. My job is secure, but my workload will again increase.Astronomically, I might add. Or multiply, to be more accurate.

This year has been one of an unprecedented and unequaled workload. Class size was acceptable for my grade level at the mid-twenties, but students coming from SAGE classrooms (class size reduction) are used to sharing their teacher with fifteen students maximum. Teaching them the independent coping skills they need to survive in a regular-sized class is a challenge, and their parents rarely “get it” unless they have older children who went through the same transition already. Last year I felt like the kids started to get the hang of being fourth graders in January. This year? They’re still struggling.

My math class numbers close to 30. It would matter less if the kiddos were accustomed to standard class sizes, but they’re not (See SAGE class size, above). They’ve never had to wait long for attention from the teacher because their classes were half the size of this one. This year, kids with poor self-control are taking hours upon hours of my time, time I’d rather spend helping students who struggle academically.

That’s the story of the year. Self control, or the lack thereof, has driven my days. Kiddos who find misbehavior funny and encourage others to get in trouble. Parent who dress their children in t-shirts that announce “Funny how you think I’m listening” and other negative sentiments.

This economy is not one for switching careers or even jobs. But seriously, people, if the stress level continues, children will not get the education they need. And teachers, good ones, are just doing their best and finding it wanting.

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>Give me your tired, your fur

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>Oh, wait, that’s not how the poem goes.

There’s a lot of fur in our house. I keep joking (but help me out if there’s really a way to do this) that if we could spin into yarn the rabbit fur that’s shedded all over the house, we’d never have to buy another blanket or sweater for as long as…well, as long as we have bunnies.
There’s Buttercup, the one who can run figure eights around our feet, even though she’s bigger than any of our shoes.

There are Peanut and Sadie, the bunnies who went to college with La Petite so she wouldn’t be lonely in her apartment.

They may have left our lives for that big warren in the sky, but we still have wonderful memories of Tiny and the incredible Beast.

Fur? We have plenty of it. On the fireplace hearth, on the loveseat (where the sunspot hits by day), and on the floor under the rocking chair. Toothmarks? Those empty boxes all over the living room aren’t clutter; they’re bunny toys. They help keep Buttercup from chewing on the furniture…some of the time.

But no matter how much shedding, how much gnawing goes on, nothing equals a hug from a snuggle bunny.

In honor of the love they give so freely, and the fur they shed just as freely, this post is for our little furry ones. Parent Bloggers Network is shedding, er, featuring more pet posts this weekend in a blog blast called Show Off Your Shedder with a sweepstakes sponsored by Pledge and their new Fabric Sweeper for Pet Hair. Don’t laugh; you might be the next one with rabbit hair stuck to your sweater.

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>A Phone for Amigo

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>Amigo is ready to have and use a cell phone. When La Petite and I got our first family plan, we had simple Panasonic phones with slightly raised buttons. Amigo learned to use mine, knowing which numbers in the phone book needed an up arrow and which needed down. Whenever we traveled, I put him in charge of answering and making calls while I drove.

Then phone technology got fancier, and the buttons became smoother, feeling like one with the phone. Cute, aren’t they? Not so much for Amigo, who is blind. He needs to be able to feel the buttons and find the right numbers to dial. He doesn’t need texting, games, or a camera in his phone. He would, however, enjoy a decent ring tone.

We looked into the Jitterbug. It has a nice handset, operator assistance, and other features that would be useful to him. No cool ring tones, though, a disadvantage for a teenager.

We took him to the AT&T store to check on adding him to our family plan. None of the phones were ideal, with an easy keypad for a tactile user. The clerks knew nothing about speech activation options, and they kept trying to point us toward phones with what they thought were “large” screens, even as we said, “He reads Braille. He can’t see this.”

This seemed to make our decision: the Jitterbug. Then we asked Amigo’s mobility teacher for his opinion, and things got much more complex. He sent us comments and suggestions from blind travelers. Consider the following:

  • “Owasys 22C, a screenless phone with audible caller ID” (and more) which might work with our current provider
  • A fairly ordinary Nokia with Mobile Speak screen reader from AT&T. Mobile Speak was $89 if ordered with the phone, a discount compared to buying the program on its own. The Nokia N75 is not difficult to use and it can be used with voice dial if you prefer.
  • Another visually impaired traveler suggested that a standard cell phone “…can now be set up so that the person wanting to call can push one button and say for example “call Joe Grow” or Call “444-4444” and a digital voice will respond “Did you say Joe Grow” or “did you say 444-4444. When you answer yes, the digital voice responds “calling Joe Grow” or “calling 444-4444″ and the number is dialed. No need to voice train the thing at all.”

Now what? We’ve been sitting on this information since August, hoping something would jump out at us in suggesting “This! This is the phone for your blind teenager!” No such luck; we’re still dithering.

Ideas, people? Links for us? Amigo is very articulate, a good communicator. I know he’ll use the phone and use it well, and he won’t text while driving!

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