5K in the Cold

On Saturday morning, I got up with some co-workers and ran/walked the SoleBurner 5K. It was an interesting 5K - not quite 50 degrees and raining. There was also a house fire at 9:04am (race at 9:00am) where the firetrucks had to go along the race route. It was like parting the seas of runners. But it was fun and a good cause - it's amazing how many people know someone who has or have themselves survived cancer.



Sunday the weather was better. We had a nice Mother's Day - I slept in a little, we went to lunch at one of my favorite restaurants that was closed and then reopened (albeit a little different menu), did a little shopping, and then Brian took the kids to the library while I read a book in the sunroom. The kids and I went to the park while Brian cooked dinner and then two very exhausted kids went to bed.

Not allergies

Well - Allison does not have allergies. For anyone who, over the years, has commented on her consistently runny nose - 'tis not due to allergies.

It was fun (insert sarcasm) to take a child to a nearly 2 hour doctor's appointment where they poked her repeatedly with little sticks (which she was no big fan of). She had a strong reaction to the control - which meant the test results should be informative. The doctor did mention seeing kids with sinus infections that lasted several years - so we're going forward with that theory - and she was diagnosed with a sinus infection yesterday. Fortunately, Allison likes the flavor of the antibiotics - unfortunately, this furthers her Dad's complaints that his penicillin allergy always kept him away from the "good" medicine as a kid.

I suppose it keeps him out of the army - though perhaps they're lowering their standards these days.

In economic news - I'm not getting the (2%, but really only 1% if even anything) raise that was supposed to go in effect last July but was postponed until this June and has now evaporated. Also, all state employees will be required to take 16 days unpaid leave over the next 2 years. Ok - so I'm thinking this fall semester will be my "Unpaid Leave Fridays." I get the need for budget cuts - I really do - but in this case I'm only paid to teach students so how will that work? Lucky for me my classes usually fill up because otherwise I might be out of a job completely.

On what planet?

So I caught a student cheating on Monday. The students do group lab reports and one group handed in their report and left. The second group went to hand in their report and asked where the pile was. Realizing report #1 was MIA - I went looking for it and found a student had snatched it, taken it back to her desk, and was copying the answers from it.

I grabbed it, shook my head, and put it back at the front. The student later came back with "well, they said it was OK," "I didn't think it was cheating, but I can see how YOU think it was," and "I wasn't going to hand in my paper, but we were going to hand in someone else's paper in their group." This is all from a 45 -yr old non-trad student. On what planet was that not cheating?? I could have and should have given their whole group a zero.

Today in lab we had course evals (students rate me). Student A was moping around, sighing that she didn't understand anything, and her group was moving too fast. She was muttering under her breath about how none it made any sense and they never get any explanations. Apparently - at least one of my evals will be GREAT!!

flowers and trees

To all in the neighborhood - keep your yards free of the fricking dandilions!!!

The kids and I took a bike ride on Sunday to the big hill park (not the one by the house) and on the way home we had to stop at every other house to pick dandilions. I guess it's better than picking daffodils or tulips like in our yard..... still, I find squished dandilions in every conceiveable place - from pockets to bike bags to hair and shoes.

I suppose I should learn to stop and smell the (kid-friendly) roses.

Home with Allison

Allison is home sick today. She's been congested (I thought allergies) but then it's moved to chest congestion and this morning a 101 fever. Fortunately, I've already canceled today's class for an all day meeting I wasn't too keen on attending anyway. So, what do you do with a kid who is too sick for school, but not sick enough to really want to veg on the couch? I most certainly want to veg on the couch.

Allison is actually up playing webkinz right now. She had a webkinz last year and wasn't too interested in it. She got another one for Easter and is enjoying it much more. She will load it up and login, but then forgets the password. I think it's because it just shows up as *** on the screen rather than the letters.

I would love to spend the day playing with my new recipes, but that would require a trip to the store and a girl who would want to help. That wouldn't be a great mechanism for spreading germs..... Instead, perhaps we will clean out old toys from the kids bedrooms. I think we can probably jettison the rattles and alphabet blocks now.

BTW - I was FLOORED on my last exam to have multiple students ask me the definitions of both "abundant" (many) and "inundated" (flooded). I might excuse the latter if it weren't in a sentence that said "The airport is in a floodplain that gets inundated during a 50-yr flood."

In order to avoid saying "The airport sits in a floodplain that gets flooded during a 50-yr flood" - what other choices did I have - "submerged"? They probably don't know what they means either. One poor kid (who is very nice) prefaced his questions with "I feel a little silly - being an English honors student and all - but what does this mean?"

Having never characterized myself as an "English" (the subject) person, I guess I assume that if I know a word than everyone else does too.

Lake Wobegon

I've been thinking lately - about how the internet lets us all live in Lake Wobegon. We can share the highlights, the funny things, and everything is pre-filtered or reworded to make it "just so." If we're all above average - if everything is going *super* - doesn't that then make the average also go up. Are we then trying to be more super and even better than before. Where does it stop?

We all cannot be the funniest, smartest, most photogenic, clever people ever. The internet is a great filter for allowing us to create people who are better than the real people who we are. I think one reason why I haven't written much on the blog this year, is that I feel like I don't have anything interesting to share. And that's not the real reason I started keeping this blog. It was started to give far away friends and family a glimpse into our lives and things we might share that we don't get to because we're far away. I also wanted to have a record of all those goofy things that happen that we so easily forget in our ever-more-hectic schedules. Anyone remember Allison and the flying poo??

I have also found that when we share those imperfect things about ourselves - we find that other people feel the same way, have had similar experiences, or can sympathize. For example, I was sitting at the lunch table a few weeks ago and learned that 2 of the 3 people there had kids with IEPs. By talking with one of my students with an autistic son, we learned that we actually shared a number of parenting strategies and were both relieved to hear that what we were doing wasn't that crazy. And by sharing somethings about my challenging students - I've collected a lot of good tips from other teachers.

So here it is - I'll say it - this blog is no longer in Lake Wobegon. Perhaps it'll become a bit more boring - hopefully posts will become a bit more frequent.

Wanna know what we did yesterday? After school we walked to the park with a trash bag because the kids have been "super save-the-Earth" kids following Earth Day and we picked up trash. (I have a strong suspicion that I'm going to be taking a trash bag on all our walks because the kids had a blast trash spotting). Then we played for a little while until Allison had to pee and came home.

Next week is the last week of class and I'm really looking forward to it. Perhaps not as much as my students, but maybe.

Cars and buttons

Finally, it's spring! Though I did get hit with several "is it winter again?" questions when it snowed earlier this week.

Allison has been enjoying riding her bike to school when possible. I've decided there is no energy advantage to pulling Jacob on the tag-a-long versus the actual bike trailer. I think he sits on the tag-a-long and peddles backward.....



The kids have also enjoyed being outside. Jacob loves to play Cars on the porch. He's getting quite a collection of them. Jacob would also like the world to know that he hates buttons. I suppose Allison went through her "only dresses" phase and Jacob is now boycotting all pants with buttons. He has about 7 pairs of pants without buttons, so we really have to stay on top of the laundry if we don't want an all out battle getting dressed in the morning.

Our other fun lately was going to Chicago and eating out at Charlie Trotters for our 10th anniversary. It was a really neat experience, and we had a good time. Thanks to grandma and grandpa for babysitting.