My daughter made a book.

She used scrap leather and some paper we already had.   I'm impressed.

We're still here.

I'm not sure why I didn't post this, but 2 weeks ago, this happened.    This is my son's car.   He ran into the back of a truck with a furniture lift on it.  He's fine.  His car is not.   I'm not sure what we are going to do about that.

I'm working today and quite a few days for the next 6 weeks, but not full time and I'm grateful for that.  I'm at the point with this job that I am looking for anything to be grateful for.  I'm having a hard time with it right now and I do not want to go each day.  One reason is that my Sjogren's syndrome has flared badly because of working all those hours (I guess that's it because it happened last time too).   Sjogren's causes dry eyes, dry mouth and joint pain and I scored worse on my 4 week physical therapy evaluation than I did on my first day there, which basically never happens, according to my therapist.  I'm not feeling great, I'll tell you that.  Everything hurts, including my eyeballs.  :-/

We are still doing our board game group and we had a meeting last night.  At this point, there's usually more talking than gaming, but they enjoy it, so we're going to keep doing it.  We're planning a board game group party for the holidays in a couple of weeks.  Starting this group 3 years ago has been such a great thing.  I'm proud of it.  Some great friendships have been formed, that I hope will be with my kids forever.

We're getting ready for Thanksgiving.  I've given up on a lot of the house projects that I wanted to get done before Thanksgiving and we don't currently have our dining room table assembled and in the kitchen and there's an extra fridge in there that we need to haul away, but I'm just going to try and go with it.  :-P   I got the last of the shopping done yesterday for it, in 2 trips, because I forgot a bunch of stuff the first time.  In my defense, I hadn't had time to think through my list the first time and I was just kind of winging it.  I realized I was probably forgetting some stuff, and I was.  Oh well.  At least I don't have to go into the grocery today.    I hope.


I hope all my readers have a great Thanksgiving!!

College Issues.

My son was assigned to a group project in one of his college classes.   There were 4 people on the team.  Two dropped completely out of college before the project was due and the other one wrote, instead of the half of a 10-page paper she was supposed to write, wrote these 3 paragraphs.  My son said that when he saw this, he panicked and contacted the professor and said that they had a problem with their project.  The professor said "see me after class" and then said they would get no credit at all, even though my son had done his share of the work.  He's going to appeal it. 

This is what our school system is producing:

The sprint nextel corperation ti the forth largest telacomuneications provider in the unitedstates.this analyasis covers the history current progects finachals and challenges of the sprint nextel corperation in the united states in 2018. History of sprint Paragraph 1 Sprint is the Fourth largest wireless company in United States that sprint big around, the world in some areas in some case the long the wireless, is a long distance number three in the nations and telephone marked. Sprint have responsible for technological innovation in the 1980 and 1990s including installing the first coast to transmission, networking in the United states. Paragraph 2 The early 20th century sprint traces to the southern communication corporation. T- Mobile and sprint merger together but didn’t work out as plan so they both appeared in sprint doing there thing and T-Mobile doing there. Paragraph 3 Sprint corporation in private holding in the company for two publicly traded firms sprint Fon and sprint PCS. Sprint Fon wire-base telecommunications business providing lackluster and long-distance telephone directory publishing arm. The sprint PCS ( personal communication services) in 1988s and 1990s

A tiny update.

Life goes on.  The kids are coping with the store closing and getting together with friends for the most part.  One of the groups may not reform and one of them may lose a member, but it's fine.  I'm finally done with my 6 weeks of full time work and I don't know what hours I'm going to be working ongoing.  My boss wants to talk to me about that on Friday.  For now, I'm just going to try not to think about it and enjoy my 3 days off in a row!!!!!  Here are some pics from this week.

A drawing my daughter did with chalk pastels on suede.

It's hard to get a good picture of Cosmo, but this one is very good, getting those big brown eyes in focus.  My daughter-in-law has a theory that he's a person trapped in a dogs body because his eyes look so human. 

The prettiest little tree at the end of our driveway.

Enjoying my commute a bit more while the fall colors are blazing.  It seemed like it happened late this year and now that it rained all night last night it's probably over, but it was beautiful while it lasted.

Welcome to November!

Can't believe it's already here and I'm already seeing black Friday ads.   I finished my 6 weeks of full-time work and now we will see, I might get a couple of weeks of just working 2 days.  Maybe.  One of my co-workers broke her leg and might need surgery so I may be there nonstop until Christmas.  If that is the case, I don't know how we are going to get the rest of the remodeling done.  :-(   I'm not happy about that, but I guess I'll live.

The kids are working at maintaining their connections with friends now that the game store they always went to has closed.  They are seeing some people tonight.  I am happy about that.  Friendships are so important.  My husband and I need to get out and see friends more often.   We are still having our board game group at a restaurant and it's working out okay.  We only had about 8 last week, but that's plenty to play the games we have.  In fact, it's a challenge to find games that will accommodate our large group which sometimes gets as high as 13 people crammed into 1 large booth and playing the same game.  They never want to separate and sit at different tables and play separate games.  They want to play together  It's kind of cute.  So a couple of weeks ago, we got the game Bang the dice game, which has been really popular with them, but we needed a few extra cards.  So, we had some blank cards that we had gotten for something else and not used and my daughter drew some extra cards.

Speaking of artsy things, one of my contacts at work has a family business where my daughter may be able to sell some of her art, knitting, crocheting, etc.  It would be a good opportunity, kind of like a consignment situation.  She wouldn't have to pay for booth space or work in the store at all, just let them take a commission off the top of the sales.  Knowing my co-worker, they will be fair.  I think it sounds great.  My daughter is also pursuing another job where she can use her art skills designing things at home and I think that will be great for her.

Starting to look forward to the holidays!   We have to plan something to do for Christmas eve because I think it will just be the 4 of us.   My oldest and his wife won't be here until after Christmas.

School financial aid.

A few weeks ago, after we paid tuition, my son got a check for 193.00.Then today, he gets a bill for guess how much?  193.00.  Apparently, they refunded him when they shouldn't have and now they want it back PRONTO.  

So annoying.  Good thing he doesn't ever spend any money.  He hadn't even put it in the bank.  

A disappointment.

Our local friendly game store is closing, so the place that the kids and I have been going to weekly for a while (some of us 4 to 5 times a week) not going to be there.  We've temporarily moved the board game nights to a local restaurant and it's going well there, but we feel like we can't play any of the louder games.  We currently have plans to finish getting our home back in order and host some events here.  We have to find a home for the D&D game that my son is the dungeon master of and that will probably end up being here at our house too.  My son said a few weeks ago that the dream would be to have it here and have his friends here for several hours and eat taco soup (that I had made) and get to hang out as long as they want.  So that's probably going to happen.  They have found a home for their Friday night game and so the big question is what to do with the Thursday night game.  It is run by one of the store employees so it may just go away.  I'm not sure what will happen. 

I've told my young adults that they need to be proactive in contacting their friends and making sure that they get opportunities to get together because these are great people and they need these friendships in their lives. 

Now we just need to get this house in order.  Asap.

What's going on.

We're just progressing through our new normal, trying to get the house remodel done at a stopping place by Thanksgiving.  We're planning to have my brother and his fiance over that weekend and so that's an arbitrary goal to get the house done.  Of course, they've seen it in the glorious before state, so they aren't expecting anything.  Still, I'd like to have it looking good.  We also are going to invite the board game group kids over for some sort of holiday party this holiday season. When we see them tomorrow, we'll try and hammer out a time for that.

I'm working.  I'm still in the 6 weeks of full time and I guess I'm doing okay.  I think it makes my Sjogren's syndrome and my arthritis worse to not get as much rest as I need.  They both seem to be flaring and I am having a hard time with every task.  Not fun.   Only 9 more work days and I revert back to my twice a week schedule for 2 weeks and then I have to start subbing for people for the Christmas holidays.  That's the thing about being an as-needed employee.  You just never know and you do tend to get some of the days that no-one else wants.  At this hospital, it's the day after Thanksgiving and the day after Christmas and Christmas Eve.  I am used to having to work all the holidays for my last employer so to me, it's not that big of a deal.  However, some of those days I have to work the front desk and I really, truly hate that, so that part of it is a big deal.  I'll survive it.  The boss told me last week that they are thinking of making me a part-time employee instead of an as-needed employee so I will see if that will be a better deal for me.

The young adults that live with me, girl and youngest son, are still playing D&D and Pathfinder a lot and we're getting used to them not being here and my husband and I being home alone.  It's weird after 26 years of that almost never happening.  I figure they both will have moved out within 2 years.  That's going to be hard for us, but I guess we'll survive that too.  Probably.

Oldest son and daughter-in-law are in Mississippi and we keep in touch with face to face calls.  I miss them quite a bit.    They seem to be happy there and I figure they will stay so I'm trying to adjust to that.  I'll probably survive that too.

This early Monday morning, my focus seems to be on survival.   Hopefully, we will find ways to thrive despite the changes and challenges.

Hope your Monday is going well.

Sorry, there's nothing in this post about homeschooling.  We're done with it and I haven't wanted to change the name of the blog.  I will give homeschooling advice if you comment and ask me.  ;-)