Am I blue?

L has really wanted to paint her room for nearly a year.  The color has been a bright pink since it was Dej’s room and she painted it.  Dej and I still love that color (Dej painted her bedroom at her house the exact same color) and really didn’t want her to paint over it, but since it’s her room now, the beautiful color is gone.  It is now almost completely this light blue color.  It’s a beautiful color, and she’s very happy with it, but we still miss the pink.  Dej’s birthday present to L was that she would help prime and paint it.  My dad came and helped for a bit, too.  It will require one more coat, which they will finish soon, I hope.  When they paint, the rats get moved into my workout room, and it’s incredibly difficult and inconvenient to haul everything I need downstairs and set up.  L is very much enjoying having her sister to herself for the painting, and it’s been fun to hear them giggle and chatter through the closed door.

Sophie entered the room with me, just long enough for me to take a couple of pictures.  In that brief time period, she managed to get blue paint on her little face.

Second week of classes has finished, and that usually means I’ve reached the end of the add/drop chaos of the first two weeks.  I was not able to accommodate everyone on the waitlist this time, but I did get a few in.  I over-enrolled my classes again, being ever the optimist (realist?), that there is almost always some attrition throughout the semester—especially in these classes, which are required gen-eds for business majors.  Even without attrition, the odds are that there is at least one student absent per class.  Perfect attendance is rare (in non-major specific classes).

While I enjoy teaching all of my classes, I admit preference for my programming classes.  I love programming and talking about programming, and the students are much more invested and passionate about the material, too.  One of my Java class mornings, the roads were an absolute nightmare.  It took me 35 minutes to make my usual 10-12 minute trip to campus, so instead of arriving early as I usually do.  I walked in one minute after class was supposed to start.  As I was making the long, harrowing drive, I kept thinking I was going through all of this and would probably arrive to see a handful of students, if that many.  If it had been a different class, it would have gone that way, but not with Java.  All but one student was there, and when I walked in, they cheered.  They were so worried I wasn’t going to make it in and they wouldn’t have class.  How could I not love teaching such enthusiastic learners?!

I’m already behind on grading, due to an unexpected animal rescue situation that took up most of the day yesterday.  I’m hoping to get caught up tonight, but tonight is family night, so that doesn’t leave me too much time to grade.  This rescue situation didn’t go well and left me more depressed than usual (and I tend to be pretty bad after the rescues—seems counter intuitive, but regardless of how they turn out, it’s always emotionally traumatic to see the things that one has to see).  Even a ferocious workout didn’t burn off the emotional mess I hoped it would.  It’s hard to head into a Monday, knowing I have to be “up” and performing well for my Java class in the morning, when I’m so horribly despondent about being stuck living in this mess of a world.  Though I’ve maintained my caffeine-free status religiously for over ten days now, I’m reserving the right to have some before class if I can’t get in the right frame of mind by class time.  I cannot shortchange the students.

I finished reading Plastic Free and would be happy to loan out my Kindle version to anyone who is interested.  I don’t have a Kindle but can buy/borrow and read Kindle books on my laptop or phone.  I read a portion of it and got so bummed out about the gravity of the situation that I had to take a few weeks off.  The remainder of the book, however, was quite empowering with so many good resources and ideas for making changes in my own life, that I felt much more encouraged when I finished the book.  I wish I had just read straight through—I would have gotten to the “happier” parts quicker.  I appreciated the author’s reminder to make incremental changes as well as her honest depiction of her depression and struggles with despondency when learning the full scope of the problem.  I will be talking more about some of the specific changes we are working on in severely reducing our plastic consumption. 

One of the first things I did was track down a new source for coconut oil, which I use tons of  (cooking, body lotion, lip balm, hair smoother, eye makeup remover).  I love the Nutiva brand and have always used this, but I found that they only sell their coconut oil in plastic jars.  I ordered from a new company (fingers crossed that I like the product as well) that sells it in glass jars.  We go through a lot of it, so I can get one nice, large, bulk-sized glass jar of it and then distribute it to the various locations of usage in smaller jars.

The other item I rely on that I’m trying to track down in glass (or at least a refill-your-own-container system) is white vinegar.  We go through gallons of this, as I use it for cleaning almost everything (vinegar, baking soda, and tea tree oil or lavender take care of 95% of our cleaning needs, which are immense), and we have to do a lot of cleaning in this household.  There are smaller-sized glass bottles available, but it would take a LOT of those to match the quantities we use, and that isn’t a convenient or practical solution.  I’m working on tracking down a good solution to this.