Category Archives: blog event

Share Your World 6/26/17

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What goal are you working on now?

Horribly embarrassing my children at least once a week.  This presents a greater challenge than usual in the summertime seeing as car rider lines provide ample daily opportunity to horrify them with riotous car dancing, but I’m doubling down.

What is one thing you’re glad you tried but would never do again?

Tennis.  We don’t speak of it.

Did you choose your profession or did it choose you?

My first profession chose me.  Teaching called me from a young age, though I don’t think I truly embraced it until my first year in college.  I’ve been choosing my professions since I left teaching.  It’s worked out pretty well so far.

Have you ever gotten lost?

Oh my, yes.  I have a particularly horrible sense of direction – none, really – and it’s gotten me into trouble more than once.  The most recent time was when I was driving T-man to a friend’s house on this tiny back country road, the kind where house numbers are hit or miss from the street.  We drove past his friend’s house three times before we managed to find the driveway.  Even my GPS couldn’t save me on that one.

Optional Bonus question:  What are you grateful for from last week, and what are you looking forward to in the week coming up?

Last week we went to my husband’s summer regional meeting in Myrtle.  I loved watching the kids reconnect with friends, make new ones, and enjoy the perks of being among the older kids.  Despite my health problems (stupid infection!) I think I laughed more at this regional than I have in years.  It was good times.

Bear’s at a camp that looks ah-maaa-zing this week – based at a nearby college, filled with cool learning opportunities, with a diverse group of kids.  T-man is enjoying basketball camp, so I’m grateful for quality dog time during the day and looking forward to traveling to someplace new this summer.

Cee’s Share Your World is a Monday treasure.

What’s happening in your world today?

SoCS – rain, rain, it’s okay

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"Well, I love a rainy night
I love a rainy night.
I love to hear the thunder
Watch the lightning 
when it lights up the sky.
You know it makes me feel good."

- Eddie Rabbitt

And I do.  I love the sound of rain on the windows, rain on the porch, rain bouncing off the roof as I stare at the water pouring down outside.

As I’ve gotten older I realize that I don’t even mind rain on vacation.  When I was younger it was cause for despair, enough to ruin an entire week if it didn’t let up.  But now?  Now rain brings permission to slow down and kick back.  Napping all afternoon suddenly becomes completely acceptable.  Reading books in the room is a respectable pastime.

The dogs often have a different perspective, depending on rain velocity (is that even a term?).

This one doesn’t mind the rain unless we’re talking torrential downpour.  Then I suppose whether Gracie goes outside has more to do with how urgently she needs to pee than with the wetness falling around her.

But this one?  Phoebe’s a bit prissy and is willing to cross her legs all darn day if it’s raining outside.  Because heaven forbid a dog get her paws damp in the backyard.  (Then again, I can’t say I’d really enjoy peeing while it rained on me, so I guess I don’t have room to talk.)

We’ve been at the beach during a pretty iffy forecast, and I’ve found the kids handle this much better now that they’re older.  Not that they want the rain, but they don’t get squirrelly and end up bouncing off the walls.  It’s a big improvement on the days when I’d take them to a hallway so they could sprint back and forth to their hearts’ content.

Well, it is for me, anyway.

 

Linda’s Stream of Consciousness post kicks off Saturdays with a bit of this and that.  This week’s prompt is rain/rein/reign.

Share Your World 6/19/17 (plus one)

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Running a day late this week, but better late than never! 

What is something that people are obsessed with but you just don’t get the point of?

Fidget spinners.  Lord help me, but I cannot understand how these things have become so freaking prevalent.  I get they’d be useful for kids dealing with hyperactivity, but these things are everywhere.  I know several kids who own three, four, or five of them.  Then there are those youngsters whipping out the stopwatch to time their spinners so they can post their results on social media.  I mean, everyone sees these are just things spinning in a circle, right?

What quirky things do people do where you are from?

The “driving in the neighborhood” wave: four fingers peeled off the steering wheel for a passing car, hand lifted in greeting for neighbors in a yard.

Make sweet tea with enough sugar to keep a kid spinning for days.

Monogram anything that stands still long enough to be tagged.  Hats, shirts, car decals, pet sweaters, organizers, tote bags, travel cups – if it can fit three letters, you’ll find that super flowery script on it around here.

What are some things you wish you could unlearn? 

That wolf spiders carry up to 100 babies on their back, and if you step on them the spiders will scatter everywhere.  That spiders and ticks can climb vertical surfaces.  And that dead skin cells make up some crazy percentage of the dust in my house.  Eww.

Who is someone that you miss having in your life?

My mom.

Optional Bonus question:  What are you grateful for from last week, and what are you looking forward to in the week coming up?

Last week Bear had a great time at basketball camp and T-man enjoyed kicking back for his first official week of summer.  We let them have friends over on Friday night, and I’m grateful for the sound of riotous laughter coming from the back of the car on the way to and from the movies.  Nothing beats that kind of laughter.

This week hasn’t had the smoothest start, but I’m hopeful this antibiotic will clear my infection without making me feel too puny in the meantime.  I’m looking forward to getting away with the family for a few days and seeing friends I don’t see nearly enough.

Visit Cee’s blog for her weekly Share Your World post.

What’s happening in your world today?

Share Your World 6/12/17

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What do you do when you’re not working? If you are retired, what do you do that is not part of your regular daytime routine?

Volunteer with elementary school students, snuggle up with the pups (okay, that might be routine), read novels, and take photographs.

What would you do if you won the lottery?

I’d pay off any outstanding loans, set up a local scholarship fund, and determine how best to donate to our K-12 schools.

What makes you laugh the most?

It’s usually something ridiculous, like a crazy joke one of us makes and then the giggles get contagious.  Before I know it the four of us are holding our stomachs, laughing madly.  Oh, and silly dog videos.

What is your biggest pet peeve with modern technology?

Glitches with the kids’ technology.  I’ve added two parental apps to their tech over the last six months – uKnowKids (for active monitoring) and Kidslox (for daily limits and lockdown hours).  One keeps causing iCloud to identify us as a security risk, forcing me to change passwords repeatedly.  The other keeps locking my kids out of wifi when they shouldn’t be.  We’re all a bit frustrated about this, especially considering these were supposed to make parenting a little easier.

Optional Bonus question:  What are you grateful for from last week, and what are you looking forward to in the week coming up?

Our weekend plans shifted at the last minute and we ended up taking the kids to Great Wolf Lodge.  It turned out to be a lot of fun – good family time, and the kids have a lot more freedom now that they’re older so there was even some relaxing in there.

We’re into our first official week of summer.  I hope Bear enjoys her time at the basketball camp and that T-man kicks back.  Considering how late he slept today I think he’ll benefit from the week of downtime.

Cee’s weekly Share Your World is a Monday blog event.

What’s happening in your world today?

SoCS – sin (lite) for a third grader

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I was raised extremely Catholic.  Not so much in a daily mass, weekly confession, don’t-you-want-to-become-a-nun sort of way.  More like a church on Sundays, memorize your prayers, receive the sacraments, and show up for holy days sort of extreme.   

I guess you’d call it more serious than extreme religion-ing.

At any rate, a major rite of passage for us was first communion, a sacrament we received in third grade.  If you know any Catholics then you know this one is a pretty big deal (okay, they all are), but speaking from someone who remembers what it was like to prepare for it at eight years old?  It was a big freaking deal.

Before you could receive holy communion, though, you had to receive the sacrament of reconciliation.  Most of you have probably heard of this one as confession.  As in, face the priest (who, I’ll admit, always made me nervous because they were, like, HOLY), remember the prayers, and confess your sins.

There’s nothing like waiting in line for confession to make an eight-year-old’s mind go completely blank.  My visit with the priest would be imminent.  I had to go in there and say something.  And I had nothing.  Nothing.  Suddenly I was Mother Teresa, love personified, instead of the girl who hid half her dinner under the bathroom sink and tormented her younger brother by hiding his stuffed bear.  Puh-lease.

But when push came to shove my brain would freeze.  So I’d find myself with the priest, supposedly examining my conscience, and admitting to things like I didn’t clean my room or I didn’t share my cookies.  The lamest sins ever, but still quaking in my proverbial boots because HOLY.  Looking back, I can’t begin to imagine how those priests sat through fifteen third graders admitting to sin (lite), without even cracking a smile.

Pretty impressive, when I think about it.

Linda’s Stream of Consciousness prompt is always a fun way to empty your brain onto the screen.  This week’s prompt is “admit.”

Share Your World 6/5/17

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What’s your strongest sense?

Smell.  This is both a blessing and a curse.  Beautiful or comforting smells are a thousand times more wonderful, but abrasive or horrific smells are close to painful.

Which of Snow White’s 7 dwarfs describes you best? (Doc, Happy, Bashful, Sleepy, Sneezy, Grumpy, Dopey)

These days?  Sneezy.  I’d probably have to change it to Sneezy/Stuffy/Sniffly to be most accurate.

If you could be one age for the rest of your life, what age would that be?

Oh my, this one is hard.  I have the feeling it shouldn’t be, that lots of people might say “___ was awesome, I’d love to live my life out at that age” but I can’t claim that.  I feel like I’m really coming into myself now, but who’s to say I’m not some sort of late bloomer who’ll love my 50s?  I respectfully plead the fifth.

List of Jobs You Think You Might Enjoy: Even if you aren’t thinking about a career change, it can be fun to think of other jobs you might enjoy.

  • Author.
  • Part time photographer.
  • Dog snuggler.
  • Dog sitter for lazy dogs who need napping buddies.
  • Publisher

Optional Bonus question:  What are you grateful for from last week, and what are you looking forward to in the week coming up?

The chance to visit with neighbors I haven’t seen in a while, family time at the lake with enough memories to last a lifetime, and celebrating T-man’s confirmation at church.  It was a pretty wonderful weekend all around.

This week is the last one of school.  I’m looking forward to the kids finishing their end of year testing so they can roll into summer stress free, and I suspect they will join me in a happy dance come Friday afternoon.

Cee’s weekly Share Your World is her Monday fun post.

What’s happening in your world today?

SoCS – the almighty weather app

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We are obsessed with the weather around here.  My kids are probably the only ones their age who religiously check the weather app before going to bed.  Try to get them to turn in for the night without their fix and there’s likely to be a riot on our hands.

What will the temperature be in the morning.  You wouldn’t think this would matter an awful lot since they’re going to be inside a building all day long, but it does.  Especially with T-man.  BrightSide gave him a cutoff (don’t ask me what it is, they keep changing it) for what the temperature needs to be for him to leave the house in shorts.  Lawdy, the uproar over shorts around here…it’s enough to drive a girl to drink mimosas espresso.

Whether it will be raining, and when, and for how long.  Bear rolls with this but T-man is an outdoors fella, so rain is a pretty big deal.  Rain ruins skateboarding plans.  And scooter time.  And basketball.  And whatever else those boys do when they’re hanging around in the driveway for hours at a time.  (No, they’re not drinking beer.)  Whether it’s gonna be a light shower that passes during school hours or a steady rain all day is the difference between a “YES!!” or a “awww, man” when the boy gets in my car after school.

T-man’s also oddly talented (well, I guess not oddly, it’s just a skill I don’t understand) at reading the skies.  Guess his fifth grade science teacher did an outstanding job because that kid can tell whether a storm is imminent or if it’s just a gloomy sky.  And he’s never wrong.  Never.  I have learned not to buck T-man’s predictions or I end up soaked in a shower.

Now that we’re heading into summer I suppose we’ll shift our obsession to temperature highs.  I’ve already seen my car heat to 100° as I sit in the car rider line.  (I’d like to say I delicately fan myself ala Scarlett O’Hara but in reality I’m mouth breathing as sweat soaks through my hair.)  I am particularly heat sensitive (as well as cold sensitive, ‘cuz I’m low maintenance like that) so I keep a close eye on summer weather.  Highs into the 90s or (ugh) 100 will land my butt firmly on our couch for the day, whether it pleases my kids or not.

When they get older they’re welcome to melt outside all they want.

Linda’s blog hosts a weekly Stream of Consciousness event.  This week’s prompt is “whether/weather.”

Share Your World 5/29/17

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What is the most famous landmark or building you have ever seen?

I’ve been blessed to see some pretty incredible things – the Vatican, the Louvre, the Eiffel Tower, and the White House.  I can’t possibly choose one of these as most famous.

Do you like long vacation or lots of mini-vacations?

I prefer long vacations.  A significant block of time lets me really get away, and I’m less tempted to take work with me.  A long time away means I can really focus on unwinding.

What is your favorite National or State Park?

Rocky Mountain National Park.  Although, to be fair, this is the only one I’ve visited so far.

What is your fantasy vacation?

One with tons of relaxation – sleeping in, reading to my heart’s content, leisurely meals – this all adds up to happy Laura.  Add a couple of days for exploring something new and that’s pretty much my fantasy vacation.

Optional Bonus question:  What are you grateful for from last week, and what are you looking forward to in the week coming up? 

Last week I enjoyed having the chance to relax with good friends, basked in blue skies, and watched the kids hanging out with friends.

This week I’ll be working to keep my wits about me as we finish the school year.  Hopefully I’ll be able to steal a few moments for myself along the way.

Cee’s weekly Share Your World is a Monday treat.

What’s happening in your world today?