End of summer sads

I've been working all day every day on getting the last of my courses prepped and loaded for our remote-learning format this semester. I think I'm done, though every time I say that, I remember some small thing in the middle of the night that I need to do. It's going to be an interesting semester. We start Wednesday. I'm much more prepared this semester for the remote learning aspect and had the luxury of being able to work on getting my materials and activities created specifically for remote learning this summer. I worked full time on it over the summer (unpaid), and I think the materials and plans are pretty solid and equivalent to the face-to-face learning experience. The big weak point is that it's hard to replicate the interactions and bonding that occurs in the classroom in an online environment. I will really miss the casual conversations and interactions that happen before and after class and randomly on campus. On the other hand, being home with the animals is a huge benefit, especially now that we have Silas who needs a lot of help and supervision (and diaper changes). 

We've had a rough couple of days with Silas, who has a monstrous case of diarrhea. It's the second day of massive diaper blowouts and having to clean the house, scrub floors, ourselves, our clothing, and he's had lots of baths. I switched him over to white rice only tonight, and we'll stick with that until it starts to clear up. He's acting fine and normal, still has an appetite, lots of energy, etc. We're not sure what triggered this nightmare, but I hope it clears up soon. 

He tipped the only uncovered trash bin (in the laundry room) in our house over  and came marching into the family room with his spoils--the empty bag of cat food that I use for the outdoor cats and raccoons.  He really enjoys shredding paper and cardboard and went to work on it.  He had a blast and was so proud of himself for turning the bag into confetti.  He's pretty cute.  He's also the best ball player in the house.  He "runs" so fast to catch any ball that I thrown and unlike the other dogs, he brings it back and lets go of it, so I can throw it again.

My mom turned 70, so we've gotten together two weekends in a row (outside at a distance). Her actual birthday was last weekend, so she and my dad came over and had chocolate peanut butter smoothies. It was pretty hot! This weekend the weather was perfect for an outdoor gathering, so I made brownie cookies, peanut butter chocolate chip oatmeal cookies, and snickerdoodle balls (all Vegan Richa recipes; I love all of her recipes!), and made ice cream sandwiches with the cookies. The ice cream melted too fast, but they were tasty. I'll definitely make the brownie cookies again--so good. 

 We've been enjoying garden goodies recently. I've roasted three huge batches of tomatoes from the garden. Most are now in the freezer, but I used one batch for a super delicious sauce in
tonight's dinner--a pasta dish that also included lots of eggplant and some red peppers from our garden. Our cantaloupes are not ready yet at all, but my friend, Orinda, had a ton, so Mark and I went out to her garden and got some last Monday. We've been eating delicious melon every night with dinner since then. She has always grown the biggest, juciest, sweetest cantaloupe but can't remember the variety. Last year I saved the seeds from her melons (and am doing so again this year), and planted them in our garden, so I hope we'll have our own delicious cantaloupe every year. 

I've fallen behind on weeding with my push to get everything ready for school in the last few weeks. I got a little done today before the rain hit. The zinnias are gorgeous enough to distract attention away from the weeds. They're such an easy, stunning flower. I'm so grateful for them. While everything else looks sad and past peak, the zinnias just keep bringing the beautiful color and shapes. The sunflowers and some roses are nice too, but there's certainly not as much variety as the glorious zinnias.

May Update - Prom

May was a really action-packed month for all of us.  It's one of the more intense months for both Mark and I, on the work front.  We tend to work long, hard hours and be pretty exhausted with little time or energy to spare.  

We noticed at the beginning of the month that we were suddenly hearing one of the names from L's circle of friends more often.  We were not prepared for her to start having "special friends" yet at all and had discouraged her from developing non-platonic relationships. These are the years she should be focused on herself--developing her brain, body, and good habits for her future, not her biological impulses.  Chemistry, being our biological imperative and all, will not be denied, and it made its appearance in their little group.  We were relieved and felt much better about the situation when we met her special friend, Nick. If she has to detour into the pointless world of romance, he's someone we feel comfortable with. He's kind, smart, mature, respectful--a very good choice and just what you would want for your daughter's first romantic endeavor.

While we were still trying to adjust to this new situation and work out policies and guidelines that we didn't expect to need in place quite so soon, they dropped another surprise on us.  He was graduating in May (a year early), and he wanted to go to prom. She did not want to go, and initially resisted, but then realized it was his only shot to go and didn't want to deprive him of that. They informed us the Monday before prom that they were going.  I had several levels of private meltdowns. I don't approve of prom for many reasons. It's a pointless, ridiculous waste of money for the students who go, and a slap in the face to the many students who can't afford such a pointless waste of money.  I did not think I would have children who would participate in something so frivolous.

I took small comfort in the fact that she wasn't really into going but wanted to make him happy.  I wrestled with not making this about me.  This is probably my biggest struggle with raising kids.  Morals and ethics are incredibly important to me, and I want them to be important to the girls as well.  However, I have to be very careful not to impose my own personal moral code on my teen/adult children and let them find their own in matters where their health/safety/future is not directly at risk.  The fact that I believe proms are ridiculous and shouldn't occur should have no bearing on whether my children attend, because it's not a big deal to anyone but me.  I also struggle through the rather selfish notion of not wanting them to do things that will reflect badly on me (If I let her go to prom, people will think I approve of such stupid, wasteful activities.), and that is absolutely not an appropriate reason to deny someone an experience.  I did a lot of private emotional struggling during the week that I spent doing the activity I loathe most--shopping, and last-minute prom dress shopping is a particular kind of hell.

We looked everywhere and tried on countless dresses. It was so not fun.  She was becoming discouraged and hateful toward her body, which is absolutely fine but not easy to fit right off the rack.  We finally found a dress she didn't hate that was close to fitting, so after purchasing the dress, we started the last-minute (and thus overpriced) alteration process.  We used the shop at the Janesville mall (K-Alterations), and I have to say they did a really good job and got it done earlier than they said they would.  I will use them again.

In the course of that nightmarish week (come home from work, get dinner in, spend the rest of the night shopping), I discovered a couple of her friends were unable to get appropriate clothing but had tickets and were all planning to go as a group, so we took them along to get clothes--even more shopping, yay.  That week in which I spent hours every night shopping with a group of teens will serve as paying back the entirety of my karmic debt for a lifetime of ugly deeds (and I've done some really bad things in my wild youth).  Really, that has to be a wash.  I'm still suffering a little PTSD from that week. ;)

Luce & N. let us take some pictures here (I was allotted ten minutes), and then they went to have more pics taken by N's mom, who did a fantastic job and generously shared the pics with us.  They had dinner, attended prom, and then returned to N's house where the kids and N's parents hung out and had snacks around the fire pit.  They had a very nice evening, but stayed less than two hours at the prom--all agreeing that that was the least fun part of the evening.  So I mentally calculated the amount of money spent and the hours spent preparing for that two-hour stay at prom, and wanted to weep at the hourly breakdown.  We have some great photos and the kids have great memories. I try to remind myself of that when the numbers start dancing around in my head. 


N's parents are lovely people, too.  His mom sent a pre-prom gift for Luce--a very nice scented shower gel, lotion, shimmer mist spray.  She also made and gave her a photo album with some of the pictures she took from the night.  All of the following shots were taken at Rotary Botanical Gardens by N's mom.

After surviving the prom experience and finishing up my semester, we moved on to our next big, exciting May event--the Froggie adoption.

April Update

Fiona, cute as always

Fergus, all better--no head tilt

April flew by.  I think all I did was work.  I have a few pictures from the spring egg hunt and of the animals, but that's about it.  No garden pictures at all--I completely missed photographing the spring bulbs for the first year ever.  If I don't blog things, I don't remember them, so the whole month is kind of a blur.

We did experience some major April showers.  In our basement.  Again.  First our hot water heater died. The first indication we had that anything was wrong was finding 40 gallons of water on our basement floor, because the bottom had a rust spot that gave out. I never thought to crawl under and check, but now I know to keep an eye on that kind of thing.  We got that replaced and got some clean up done, but hadn't returned everything back to normal when the valve on our washer gave out, and we came home to find that had flooded the basement.  UGH!  The plus side is that like our original floods in the winter of 2014, at least it was all clean water, so the stuff that wasn't ruined by getting wet ended up clean.  I'd like to think that everything that could flood in the basement has happened, and we should be set now for many years, but...  I'm still pretty paranoid about water in the house.

I never envisioned when we started the first egg hunt for Dej 23 years ago that I would still be doing them!  L isn't ready to let them go, so we continue to stuff the same collection of plastic eggs with cash and vegan chocolates and jelly beans.  L almost always "wins" with more eggs found, as she's much more aggressive than her sister.  We still have to help and give Dej hints.  Each girl & Russ also get their own basket (the girls have had the same baskets their whole lives), filled with money, candy, and sometimes other goodies (you can see Russ got some kind of manly liquor in his basket).

The animals are always quite certain that any family/holiday gatherings are thrown so that there are extra humans to rub/massage/pet them, so they insert themselves into every activity that detracts from their rightful attention.

We always have an assortment of boxes around the house. The cats love them.

Celebrations

Daisy 

Where do I even start? It's been a busy month--not exciting, but busy.  I'll make a very long story short. Due to scheduling conflicts, I have had to work full time plus over my break.  After I got semester grades entered, I spent a few days in the kitchen getting the holiday cooking done. We survived the holidays, and I did treat myself to two full days of reading mindless fiction right after the holidays.  Other than that, I've worked my ass off.  I developed all the materials for a 4-credit programming course to be taught online (distance ed.), and had to get 45 hours of lecture recorded over break.  I still have 18 hours to record next week, and then I return to my full time classes on 1/26.  I'm exhausted, burned out, frustrated (with some technology hold ups at central IT that have delayed me and made things extremely difficult), and will be starting a semester at a deficit. I struggled keeping up last semester, and my load this semester is significantly heavier. I can do it. I will do it, but I am a little nervous about what kind of shape I will be in by the end of the semester.

The recording has been challenging.  I've spent most of my life avoiding cameras--especially video cameras.  Only in the last few years have I started to relax and allow more still photos to be taken of me.  The video recording is quite traumatic.  I've discovered that I'm much more facially animated that I would have thought, and I'm not very happy about that.  That's just one of several things I've discovered in watching my videos, and I'm working on changing the over animation, as well as some verbal tics ("so", "okay") that occur too frequently.  It's hard to change things like that!  I hate the sound of my voice.  I hate it in person, and I hate in on recordings. It's rather strange, though, because I apparently have the same voice as my mom and daughters, because people very close to us can't distinguish who's who over the phone very easily.  Their voices sound just fine to my ears, but my own is horrifying.

More distressing than my personal angsty issues, is the pedagogical problems with this delivery method.  Of all the tools and methods available in teaching, the least effective, hands-down, is a long, blathering lecture.  I am required to provide a three-hour lecture every week.  Of course I have activities planned to go along with the lecture (reading, lab assignments, programming assignments, discussion boards, etc.), but nonetheless, that three hours of lecture about programming, doesn't lend itself to being exciting or compelling enough for a brain to listen to one person drone on for three hours. In a classroom, I'm constantly watching the students for feedback. I can tell by their faces and questions if they're with me, if I need to slow down, change directions, etc.  I have nothing to guide me on this.  I'm doing the best I can to make these lectures effective and interesting, but UGH!  there's only so much I can do with just me, a camera, and C++.  I've spent many hours brainstorming on how to make this better for the students.  This is my first DE class, so I'm looking forward to getting some student feedback that I can use to refine and improve things the next time around.

Petey

We continued our tradition of non-materialistic holidays, so there weren't many gifts to open Xmas morning.  We had a couple of items for each child, and then the girls had gifts from my in-laws to open. It became apparent, though, when I grabbed and distributed the first gift from under the tree, that Damon had been part of Xmas in his past life.  Each gift I pulled out, he tried to put is head in and/or grab. He was sure one of those gifts were his.  Each gift that was opened, he positioned himself as closely as possible, offering to "help" open from time to time. We gave him some dog treats and then let him throw, chew, and shred some boxes/containers. He really enjoys demolishing cardboard boxes!  He had a blast.

As always, we headed over to my parents' for Xmas dinner with my dad's brother (and wife) and my mom's sister (and partner).

Luciana turned 15 this month.  Her birthday was on a Saturday, and she was vehement about reserving the day for her own pleasure.  She got her Saturday chores done on Friday, so she didn't have to do any work on her sacred day. M & his brother Dan wanted to see The Hobbit in the afternoon.  L declined going, because she, Dej, Russ & M had just gone to see it the previous weekend. (I chose to stay home and cook while they went. I would choose to stay home and scrape the sewage pipes clean with my fingernails rather than sit through that movie!)  The guys went to their movie, and Dej & Luce camped out in the family room with dogs, cats, and snacks, and watched Korean dramas.  I spent the afternoon making pizza for everyone (along with some sliced fruit and homemade "nutella"). L did not want me to make a birthday dessert, as she and her sister had purchased a bunch of junk food to snack on for their Korean drama marathon (which continued after everyone left until 2 or 3 in the morning), and she didn't want to have any more temptation.  This was the first birthday where she really took control over her birthday (and the surrounding days) and celebrated how, when, and where she wanted to. Many of our birthday traditions were "broken", but that's part of the process. I'm glad to see her taking charge and making plans that make her happy, rather than just waiting around for others to make her day special and ending up disappointed.  Much to my dismay, she chose to go to Red Robin (!!) for her birthday dinner. Much money was spent, no REAL food was consumed.

We are thrilled that M's work situation should improve dramatically over the next month or so.  They have finally hired a co-director, so on 2/1, he will go back to doing one very taxing job instead of two.  Also, the person that they hired is awesome! She is perfect for the position and will bring a skill set and knowledge set to the position that will be very beneficial.  She and M work well together and mutually respect one another.  It's really unfortunate that she has to inherit the absolute mess that the last mistake of a director created.  Really, it's similar to poor Obama walking into the Whitehouse in 2008, inheriting Bush's unjust war, devastated economy, complete loss of world respect, a country more divided and angry than ever, etc.  I hate to see such a good person walk into such a mess, but on the other hand, there are few who could successfully resolve the mess and move on, but she can.  It's a new and happy era, and I'm looking forward to seeing my husband calmer, happier, and back to absolutely loving his job.  Maybe I'll even see him a bit more often.

Family fun week

My bastardy back continues to infuriate me by not cooperating with my wishes.  I have had two chiropractic adjustments and spent countless hours researching and then stretching and working with my ball to try to release the offending muscles.  I have had slight improvement, but walking is absolute torture.  Within about 20 steps the entire lower back starts into a series of spasms that don't let up until long after I've stopped walking.  I'm able to get through my workouts, carefully, at about 80% of my normal intensity. It's frustrating, but a "wussy" workout is better than none at all.  I tried to push through a dog walk with Mark last night, though, thinking if I just stuck with it the spasms would stop eventually, but they didn't. By the time we got home, the muscles had locked up so badly and so high that I was having a very hard time breathing.  This whole situation is making me beyond angry--it has interfered with my productivity as well as with my workouts and other fun family activities.

Wednesday we went to the Art Institute of Chicago--just the four of us, as Russ couldn't get off work on such short notice. We had a wonderful day, starting with a walk through Millennium Park and a picnic lunch in the park, then on to the Art Institute. They had an exhibit on impressionism and fashion, which was really enjoyable. Walking presented major problems for me, so I had to waddle around like an 80-year old, taking frequent breaks, so the spasms stopped long enough for me to catch a deep breath. It really cast an unpleasant shadow on an otherwise perfect day.  We stopped at Chicago Diner for dinner and had a fantastic meal.  The high point for me (as usual) was the desserts.  I had a mint-chocolate 'milkshake', and wished I could have eaten more than just a delectable bite of Dej's caramel crunch torte. 

Friday the three of us went canoeing on the Bark River.  My back also ruined that day, mostly because we couldn't take Dej, because the canoes seat three, and we would have needed two canoes for four of us. We couldn't count on my rowing ability, so we had to stick with one canoe.  I'll be going in a couple of weeks with Dej and another friend, so she will get a chance to enjoy it too. We had perfect weather, and it was a beautiful day.  I was able to row for the second half of our trip, and as it turned out rowing wasn't nearly as painful or detrimental as walking!

We went out through Two Rivers again, and they dropped us and the canoe at the starting point of the 12-mile trip, in a wildlife sanctuary. We saw hundreds of herons and egrets as well a many other birds, including a bald eagle which was probably the closest I've been to one.  I love canoeing in this location, because for about 80% of it, we are out in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by wildlife, and no other humans or signs of them.  It's very relaxing and recharging.  We stopped and had a picnic lunch at about the halfway point.  By the time we made it back to the dock where our journey ended, M & I were both ready to be done rowing!

She LOVES her kale chips!

We were very ready for a nap, but we had dinner plans with friends.  We went to Pig Minds and were really excited for our friends to try it for the first time.  It was a very disappointing night.  The company was fantastic and we very much enjoyed catching up with our old friends, but it was our first negative experience at Pig Minds.  I've been a little depressed about it since.  I know it's odd to be so bummed, but I really love that place, and it's VEGAN, and we've always had such great experiences there, and now I'm worried that they are slipping.  Fingers crossed that it was just a bad server on a bad night. :(

The food, in general, was just meh, which has never been the case there before.  I often get the reuben and love it, so I ordered that.  It was just not good.  It was bland and completely unenjoyable, and I realized after I ate the first half that there was no (vegan) Thousand Island dressing on it. That's the whole point of a reuben--at least for me.  I love my Thousand Island, and a reuben is just pointless without it.  Nobody at the table was blown away by the deliciousness, and that's very atypical for PM.

The rest of the negative experience--the part that was most upsetting to me--was due to a bad server experience. Service in general was slow, but it was busy, so I was willing to ignore that.  HOWEVER, my friend L, who is vegan-ish (long story, but that ambiguous descriptor will have to do for now) asked what the server recommended. She learned while traveling in Europe, that that's the best approach in a new restaurant and often results in great food and even better service.  Somehow, our ignorant server interpreted, "What would you recommend?" as, "We hate vegan food, so what would be the most meat-like food you have?"  She launched into a disgusting pitch that started with, "Well I'm a meat eater myself, so my favorite is blahblahblah, because it's just like real chicken.  She then continued through her disgusting menu tour listing the items that could most "pass" as animal flesh.  I go to vegan restaurants whenever possible partly for the amazing food choices, but also to avoid ignorant, anti-veg garbage like that. I find an approach like that highly despicable and insulting, and especially at a vegan restaurant.  I felt very violated.  I know it sounds dramatic, but I AM sensitive about things like that. When I go to non-veg places, I am expecting such things and am prepared with my defenses up and ready.  I was not remotely prepared for such an assault at one of my "safe" places.