29 March 2017

My Downstairs Bathroom.

See how tiny?  I have to stand outside the room so that you can see it.  To the right is enough wall space so that the shower door opens out.  Next to that is a small louvered door, behind which is my furnace/ hot water heater.  That's it.  That's the size of my bathroom.  I think it likely is actually a converted utility room as it's just in such an odd spot in the house and there are no windows.  If the door to the bathroom were not open, you would see the stairs going down to this floor ending right there.  So there is no way to expand this bathroom unless I were to re-plumb everything or make some hugely expensive home makeover/ redo (unlikely).

Oh well.  Now that my shampoos and whatnot are moved back in, it will do until the next paint job.  It was about the colour of the tiles before (and perhaps a bit lighter) which really worked, but it showed every possible scuff. 

Rose painted the little chickadee picture you see on the wall.  It's a paint by number set her Nana and Grandpa sent for her birthday. 

28 March 2017

My Kitchen Counter

Well, I'm repainting the bathroom and it's a very SMALL bathroom (about the size of a closet), so all my shampoos and assorted things are up here in the kitchen.  My, is my shampoo all gunky with hard water and not as clean as I thought.  I need to just pitch the over-shower sprayer caddy also.  Yeew.  Maybe I need to just pitch everything.  Aaand we've left the barbecue sauce on the countertop.

Ever do 500 things around the house all in one day and by the end of the day everything in your home is a jumbled mess?  That's my day today.

Also?  In retrospect I am almost finished painting the bathroom a hideous colour.  It looked nice on the tin but now it's on the wall I'm thinking, why, why did you do that?  Dark brown isn't a bad colour but it's bringing out all the little nicks and defects on the walls and making the teeny room look even smaller.

I had thought that a dark colour would just withstand the usual bumps and scuffs better.  Oh well.  We're sticking with this for at least a little while because I just don't want to do more work than I have to at this point.

26 March 2017

My 210 Pound Life

TV Food shows!  Why do I watch 'em?  I like to watch Gordon Ramsay creatively cuss his way toward helping folks run their restaurants well.  I also watch some crazy shows in which random foods are thrown on tables and people have to make gourmet meals out of things like candy canes, chicken and grapefruit.  And they have half an hour to make it presentable.

I'm not sure what the big appeal is because I'm absolutely convinced I have the exact same lifestyle, really.  How often have I looked into the cupboard and gone, ok, I have peanut butter, hamburger helper but no hamburger, five cans of green beans, a bag of flour, some Spanish rice and a loaf of bread?

Peanut butter sandwiches it is, then!

I'm also not kidding when I say the only difference between me and the 600-pound life folks is that my hypothyroidism is being treated and I haven't found an "enabler."

I mean it.  I'm not a martyr or trying to get attention or anything when I say that the people on the tv are exactly like me (and maybe you?) except things are just a bit more extreme.  Where I probably ate three too many slices of pizza the other day, some of the big TV folks may have had three more entire pizzas.  But then again, they're bigger people, ya know?  And you can't tell me at that weight that one pizza more or less is gonna make a huge difference.  And it's pretty depressing being that size.  If I suddenly got that big, I'd probably get a giant eating disorder just because I couldn't get out of bed or even travel unless I sat  unbelted in the back of a cargo van.

The only thing really weird about me which other people do NOT seem to do very often is, I can eat an entire stick of butter right out of the fridge just like that.  And as long as I only have that and my sugar-laced coffee, I'm pretty ok calorie-wise.  It's low in carbs, too, which means I can eat a handful of chocolate covered raisins with it, and on paper my fatsecret program says I did a great job on all my key target numbers for the day! 

Although I sort of doubt my doctor would think that a stick of butter as a meal is a grand idea, even if it is the super-organic kind I got spendy on.


25 March 2017

Bedtime Reading for Your Grade-Schooler

My ten-year-old Woodjie is really enjoying the Once Upon a Time Storybook Bible from Zondervan.  It's right at his reading level, which is hard-to-find in terms of Bibles and Bible stories.  Bibles themselves do have many harder words and concepts, and while they're not unreadable for my fourth-grader, they are a little difficult and usually not part of his casual reading.

This "story" book is more in line with what he wants to read during his free time.  It's a nice larger hardcover book with big print and colourful "cartoon" type pictures throughout.  It's a very short look at many of the Bible stories you'd expect in a compilation like this.  It's really perfect for reading at bedtime, and a non-threatening way to introduce children to Bible stories.

I'd recommend reading this to children as young as four or five, but it's more geared toward children ages six through ten or so.

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from the publisher through the BookLook Bloggers book review bloggers program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

23 March 2017

It's Convention Season!

Aaand I'm not going.  I might spend some time re-organising what I have or at most ordering like, $100 worth of stuff online from my fave people.  Not going to the local  homeschooling convention and laying down $500 on stuff that I didn't know I needed.

I mean, I love going to the conventions and all, but it's a rather expensive proposition at best.  You spend $50 for a membership that includes admission to the conference and you wind up spending far more than you meant to.  Not that the stuff there isn't nifty... but I'm just not up to battling crowds and overspending this year.

It seems odd but this year I think I should focus more on cleaning out my closets or something.  I feel like I have a bunch of STUFF I hardly use and I don't want to go out and get more STUFF even if I will use it.  Because that would mean the stuff I already have won't get used. 

Ahhh well.  I know eventually I'll need to get some STUFF for Woodjie just because he learns a bit differently, especially with writing/ English, but I'm putting it off a bit.

16 March 2017

Hello!

Woodjie cooking tacos.
Sorry I've been away so long from the blog.  I've missed reading what my friends are up to, but I've been in sort of a "downer" place for a bit here.  I'm ok... but just having a hard time saying hello to people and getting up and out and being CHEERFUL.  And I don't want to blog a big pity-party or anything like that.

No, I'm really ok!  Just having a bit of a hard time in my (pretty normal) life.  I think everyone goes there sometimes.

One thing I have realised from binge-watching a million shows while I've been away is that 1. I will never be a super-hero; and 2. oh my goodness, do I have a lot in common with the stars of My 600 Pound Life.  Only thing is the degree to which these people act stupid and let the cameras in, ya know?

So how are you?  No, I'd better go visit y'all and find out for myself.  I have missed you.  :)

04 March 2017

Washington Post on Homeschool "Monitoring."

Patrick has been accepted to college!  He'll be leaving this summer.  We're knee deep in FAFSA forms and all sorts of paperwork.  He has tests to take to determine placement in math classes and so on.  Over the next two months, he'll have to apply for individual classes and find a spot in one of the residence halls.  Yep, he's going away to school finally!

So I came across this article about adult children trying to leave home and I found it rather odd.  I just knew when I saw the homeschool "fortress" picture that this was gonna be a rilly rilly unbiased article (not).
 
Some of these stories do sound like abuse. But it's hardly fair to expect or require Mom and Dad to cash out their 401K and sell the house to pay for Missy's college if they don't think girls should have an education past grade 12.

The larger problem here has to do with colleges requiring parental income and so on to fill out a FAFSA?

What can these students do if parents say NO to college? So far as I understand it, there is nothing until the applicant is 25. That's not the parents' fault and they shouldn't be forced to pay for an education with which they disagree.
 
Unless and until college is taxpayer-funded (what Bernie Sanders calls "free") or financial aid's based solely on a student's income, parents will always decide where and if their adult child can attend.  We're not talking of a small amount of money here, but tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars that took parents decades to save.

03 March 2017

Snuffle Days on the Couch.

About a month ago, D got pretty sick.  Took almost a week off work.  He still isn't completely better!  Then Elf came down with it and had to go to the doctor to get the entire asthma regimen.  Poor guy was hopped up on albuterol and three other things and some antibiotics.

Now he's pretty well.  And Rose came down with stuff last week... off to the doctor, shots and antibiotics.


It's Woodjie who is most ill now.  This whole week has been mostly "sit on the couch and read a book" and not much academic has gotten done at all.  I don't know how we would have handled this were the children in school.  Woodjie doesn't have a fever but he's hacking something fierce and he's been sick for almost two weeks.  At first it started with the sniffles so I thought nothing of it for a while until it kept getting worse.  Doc gave him antibiotics also.

Patrick is snuffling, headache-y and feeling poorly.  And this morning I woke up with a little sniffle.  Oh no!  I hope this is not going to be a two-week long festival for me, culminating in yet another physician appointment.  I think those people are tired of seeing us.

I can't blame the weather either, as it is quite nice.  I do wish, though, if we had to get sick, that we all could have come down with the same thing all at once.  OR, we could all come down with things one after another, but please next time, does each person have to be all germ-y for three weeks at a time?  Just asking.

Bringing Garbage Home

Some people up the street were throwing this table away. It was in pretty bad shape and one of the legs was off. I've glued the leg back...