The musings of an average homeschooling mom http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/SlackerMom/ en-us Homeschool Blogger Sat, 21 Apr 2007 08:21:00 -0500 Sat, 21 Apr 2007 08:21:00 -0500 I'm not sure how long I've blogged at HSB but it's been a while.  I've so enjoyed the people I've met here and I've appreciated the opportunity to have free blog space.  All this is to say that I won't be updating my blog here anymore.  I have way too much trouble accessing the site and I just don't have the time to wait for the site to load (yesterday it took upwards of 30 minutes before I just closed it down).  I have two other blogs that I update regularly (with roughly the same content):  http://lorislightextemporanea.blogspot.com and http://www.xanga.com/immax3 .  The Blogspot blog has an rss feed (for those of you who like that feature) but the Xanga does not.  By the way, thank you to those of you who have published an rss feed on your blog.  When HSB did the last browser change and it cut off easy access to figuring out who'd updated their blogs, that rss feed (and Bloglines) was a godsend.  Please consider publishing an rss feed if you don't already so I can keep up with you. Blessings to you and yours as you do what the Lord commands! Lori aka SlackerMom http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/SlackerMom/317665/ Sat, 21 Apr 2007 08:21:00 -0500 http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/SlackerMom/317665/ Well. It's been quite a whirlwind couple of days.  Last night Friend Gina and I had our little knitting confab.  I've made the executive decision to call it Our Own Knitting Group (OOKG).  I'll let y'all know when Friend Gina comes up with a spiffier name.  It was too fun.  We met at a local Starbucks (first time I'd set a toe inside one), stayed there almost until closing, knitting, talking, and cackling.  Well, I cackled.  Gina, being a lady of fine distinction, even if she does hail from Michigan, does not cackle.  She did, however, laugh when she saw The Bag. Well, she wasn't laughing at The Bag.  I don't remember what she was laughing at but it made a good picture nonetheless. She also showed me the second sock, of the two she is currently knitting. She also showed me the utter cuteness of the swatch she's doing with her adorable sock yarn but I did not photograph it. So, last night, amongst the cackling and imbibing of caffeine which I truly needed, I finished The Bag.  This morning, I tucked in the ends and began the felting process. Now, the last time I felted a bag, I committed a Cardinal Sin.  I allowed the bag to go through the entire cycle.  Twice.  I was disabused of this idea through several discussions with Friend Gina this week and resigned myself to much sogginess of wool and other irritations.  As Friend Husband was leaving (late) for work this morning, I had a brainstorm!  If I put The Bag under the wheel of the car as he was pulling out, surely it would squeeze out more water than I was capable of doing manually, and would therefore dry The Bag more quickly!  I ran outside as he was about to pull out and said, "Wait!  Would you run over this bag for me?" I wish I'd brought the camera to record the look on his face. Being Friend Husband and accustomed as he is to my hairbrained schemes, he recovered quickly.  "Sure!" he said as I wrapped The Bag in a towel and placed it behind the back wheel of the car.  He ran over it, said, "I helped!" and scooted off to work. Sadly, Abby was not happy with the amount of shrinkage that had taken place in The Bag, so she asked me to felt it again.  Back into the hot wash, but this time, I figured a way to just turn the agitator on instead of the whole shebang and it took much less time.  Then I rewrapped it and ran over it with my car a few times.  Yes, I did take a bizarre delight in doing so. Oh, I have to relate this:  When I brought The Bag in for Abby to inspect, she held it up in delight, then said softly, "Oh.  This is sort of foul."  I had to roll on the floor with that one.  She comes up with the funniest things to say. Anyhoo, The Bag is now happily sitting out on the front porch swing, sunning itself in preparation for being Abby's penpal's birthday present.  Of course, me being me, I didn't finish it until the very last minute (we'll see them this afternoon) but at least it's finished. And for your viewing pleasure, a slideshow of the birth of The Bag.  Happy Weekend!   http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/SlackerMom/317318/ Fri, 20 Apr 2007 11:30:00 -0500 http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/SlackerMom/317318/ Currently Listening Bob Seger - Greatest Hits By Bob Seger & the Silver Bullet Band see related Thursday Thirteen may have to wait until tomorrow.  It's been a skanky day, probably because I started to crack down on the girls and they hate that. Anyway, look what came in the mail today! http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/SlackerMom/316895/ Thu, 19 Apr 2007 15:31:00 -0500 http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/SlackerMom/316895/ WordlessWednesday http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/SlackerMom/316117/ Wed, 18 Apr 2007 06:59:00 -0500 http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/SlackerMom/316117/   Although we did not get the storms that they did in the northeast yesterday, we had the wind.  Naturally, the children wanted to play outside.  So we bundled up and played out in the "fresh" wind.  I tried to knit but the turquoise thread was just determined to snarl up.  I spent hours untangling thread and speed knitting to try to knit in the thread that wasn't tangled. For those of you interested in felting, here is a link sort of describing it.  I'm sort of running out of time so I couldn't find a better one. And here is the bag last night: I'm sorry.  It's just the whole shooting thing again.  What's up with our society anyway?  Of course, you never know when it's going to be your time to go but when I kiss my husband goodbye in the morning, I don't expect him to be killed at his university. Does anyone else look for escape routes and plan for emergencies like the one that happened at VA Tech yesterday?  I do.  I think it's sick that I have to prepare to do something to help my children in such a situation.  Such a sad, selfish waste of life. Bleah. http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/SlackerMom/315611/ Tue, 17 Apr 2007 08:58:00 -0500 http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/SlackerMom/315611/ Well, now that I'm recovering from the hives (thank you, God!), let the race begin.  Not only the race to try to get my house back in order after 4 days of utter neglect but a race to get one of those cute little felted bags done for Abby by the end of the week.  She asked me to make her one but she needs it when she needs it.  I'm thinking it's doable, or I wouldn't have agreed.  I'll post a picture later on of what I did last night.  I've got to run now...y'all have an excellent Monday, if such a thing is possible. Edit:  here's the picture of what I finished last night.   http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/SlackerMom/315181/ Mon, 16 Apr 2007 12:12:00 -0500 http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/SlackerMom/315181/ Spring in Siberia, with Steroids This is April, isn't it?    Since it's too cold to garden and I've been so stinking hyper on these steroids, I power-knitted the Buttonhole Bag, and felted it yesterday.  Here are the pictures.  I'm just so proud!!!! David got his stitches out Friday.  Happily, my doctor called in a scrip for steroids that day too...I feel like writing her a formal thank-you note.  I was so so miserable and today is the first day that I've felt half-way human.  Better living through modern chemistry! David was being goofy tonight and I thought I'd take a picture, looking toward future extortion opportunities. http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/SlackerMom/314912/ Sun, 15 Apr 2007 20:20:00 -0500 http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/SlackerMom/314912/ Why didn't you people tell me that hives knock you out?  I depend on this information from you, you know. Man.  Ok, so I broke out in hives Tuesday (or sometime Monday night).  Went to the doctor.  She said, "Oh yeah, those are hives," and prescribed some antihistimine, followed by the ominous words, "If it's not better by Friday, call me." Yeah, ok. It wasn't better by Friday.  I tell you that I have not spent so much of the night awake since I was in graduate school and I sure wasn't scratching myself raw then.  This stuff is worse than poison ivy.  At least with poison ivy, you can use the blow dryer trick and make the itch stop for a time.  No heat treatment for hives, it makes them spread.  The pharmacist recommended a 1% lidocaine spray.  I asked him, "Does this really work or is this what you're recommending so I'll go away?"  He said that, no, it really works. Not. Neither did calamine lotion.  Nor did mad scratching.  ARGH!  I did, however, try varying combinations of calamine and lidocaine and benedryl (at night).  Nothing worked.  At last, Friday arrived and I called the doctor bright and early, even before taking the girls to play practice and David to the pediatrician to get his stitches out.  Did they call me back?  Of course not.  About 3 ½ hours later I got a call from the nurse saying that the doctor was going to call in something that I didn't catch.  Yeah, ok, whatever.  By that point, I was too sick to care what happened. Somehow I managed to get all the children home and fed.  Then I put the twins down for a nap and tried to sleep, to no avail.  I did finish one book that I was reading and get halfway through another.  Once I realized that the twins weren't going to go to sleep, I cast about for something to do until Friend Husband got home.  Something that wouldn't trash the house or make me work too hard, because I wasn't up for that at all.  I decided to take them outside and let them (all) run around in the warmth and sunlight.  Inspired choice.  I huddled in the shade and attempted to stay conscious.  Friend Husband, who was driving all around Cincinnati trying to find us a van to buy, called in on occasion and asked for more time to do so and I just said, "Yeah, whatever."  Sounds like my approach to most of the day.  At one point he asked me when I'd feel well enough to go to the pharmacy and get my prescription.  Um, let's see...packing up 5 children, including 2 hyperactive toddlers and driving to a grocery store to unload them and go inside to get medication.  How about in my next lifetime?  He got the picture and told me he'd pick up my meds and bring them by when his travels brought him near the house.  Yeah, whatever. The night proceeded:  dinner and a bath for the twins, attempting to stay conscious for me.  Friend Husband brought home my goodies, which turned out to be almost the exact steroids that David is on.  Fine and dandy.  He urged me to partake of the marvelous Chinese food he brought home and to take my pills.  By this point, I didn't even want to eat (and you know I have to be very very sick to not want to eat) but I ate something and took my pills like a good girl, feeling all the while that they wouldn't help anyway.  He went back out on the van search and I put the twins to bed, where they proceeded to dump stuff all over their floor and get to Abby's treasures on the top bunk.  If you're guessing I didn't care, you're right.  Because the plague was spreading. My saving grace before was that the hives didn't reach the bottoms of my feet or inside my mouth.  I had them on the tops of my feet and a few on my face.  Now they hit the bottom of my feet (and you know how lovely that was...to have something intensely itchy on the most ticklish part of your foot) and my lips.  The lips thing really scared me.  The doctor had said that if my tongue started swelling, I needed to call immediately and I wondered if it was the next thing to go.  I took the precaution of reminding Sarah what to do in an emergency (like Mom passing out, for instance), and attempted to breathe through the pain. Now I've said many times here that Lamaze breathing is no good for labor.  I had 3 9+ pounders and the last two I had without any drugs.  I've got amazing pain tolerance but to "breathe through the pain", pffft!  I have found it very useful for dealing with the children after they come out or dealing with other stressful situations.  But for labor pain relief, pffft.  It did help with the pain from the hives, though.  It was weird, the pain would come in waves (sort of like labor, actually) and I could stand there and breathe through it and it would go away for a while.  That was nasty.  I thought about it for a while and realized that I had not had enough compassion for people who have chronic pain.  I don't know how they do it and I understand now why it cripples your whole life.  I took the rest of my steroids for the day and went to bed. Glorious glorious sleep!  But first, amazing hyperness!  Steroids do that to some people, including me.  I couldn't go to sleep for the life of me, so I went into the living room and knitted a few hundred rounds on my buttonhole bag (not really, but it seemed like it).  I was finally able to go to sleep around 1 AM...but it was so very worth it.  I slept through the night.  No scratching, no mad rush to throw on more lidocaine for the 30 seconds of relief it provided.  Ahhhh...This morning I woke up in a much better frame of mind, and was much less itchy.  I'm very very tired and very very loopy but at least I'm not doing St. Vitus' dance. I still have Sean Astin's lips though.  If you find him, could you tell him to come get them.  I don't want them anymore. http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/SlackerMom/314369/ Sat, 14 Apr 2007 13:34:00 -0500 http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/SlackerMom/314369/ Thirteen Things about my manic Monday  I have tried and tried to come up with a jazzy, ironic, funny title for this post.  I am utterly unable to do so.  It was just that sort of a day.  Actually, it was a pretty low-keyed day until about 4:30 PM, when I discovered that the twins had gotten into the refrigerator and were having a party with raw eggs and yogurt in the middle of the kitchen floor.  Twins in tub! I washed them both down well and thankfully had rinsed them off.  They were playing in the clean water, swimming and doing cute things.  I was in the bathroom, reading (yes, quality time) but otherwise not paying attention.  David fell down a couple of times and got back up, fine and dandy.  I told him to "Be careful" and continued reading.  He fell again and this time started crying hard.  And thus the fun began. When he started crying hard, I looked up and said, "Awww...did you get a boo-boo?  Let Mommy see," and I pried his hand away from his face, preparing to kiss the boo-boo.  What I saw made me let out a blood-curdling scream, which led to a blood-curdling scream from each of the twins.  If it hadn't been so horrible at the time, it would have been a classic movie moment.  The girls ran upstairs to see what was going on.  What was going on was that David had gashed his nose open right between the eyes. When I say 'gash', I mean gash.  It was at least a quarter of an inch deep and it looked as though part of his nose was caved in.  Scared me half to death, as evidenced by the fact that I screamed at first.  I quickly grabbed my cell phone (also in the bathroom, quality time being what it is), wetted a wash cloth, grabbed David to apply the wash cloth and called the pediatrician's office.  I told the receptionist what had happened and she asked if I could bring him in at 5:15.  I said, "What time is it?"  "5:00"  "No, I can't make it by 5:15."  "How about 5:30?"  "Yes, thank you." Click. The orders started immediately:  "Rachel!  Take Zidy out of the tub and get her dressed.  Abby!  Get your shoes and coat on!  Sarah!  Help me get David dressed."  Meanwhile, I put Neosporin and a bandage on his nose as it continued seeping blood.  We got out of there, dressed to the shoes, in 5 minutes flat.  FlyLady would have been proud of us. The whole way there, I prayed for me to drive safely, for Dave's nose to be ok, and for us not to run into any traffic, as we were cutting it close.  As it happened, David stopped crying, took his bandage off, and babbled to Zidy.  There was not much traffic and we were scheduled to arrive on time....here's the part of the movie where the stressed music starts.  I got to the street where the office is-to find it closed because of construction.  The sign directed me to another street which I knew didn't go near the office.  I made a quick turn into a hotel parking lot to figure out what to do.  As I sat there thinking, I realized that I could see the office building from where I was parked.  It was across a large field that didn't look too overgrown.  So I ordered the girls out of the car and told them to start across the field while I got the twins out of their car seats.  We all booked it across this boggy field and made it only a couple of minutes late to the appointment.  Of course, it took them 30 minutes to get us to the back (WHY?), then 10 minutes to wait to see the doctor.  Who looked at him, told me to take him to Urgent Care to be stitched up.  For this we waited 40 minutes?  Why not tell us when we WALK IN, for Pete's sake! So we started out for Urgent Care, which was 20 minutes further along from our house.  Along the way, Sarah offered to make dinner for us when we got home.  I thought about that kind offer and was about to answer her when this thought popped into my head:  "Did I turn off the burner under the eggs when we left?"  I asked the girls, no one knew.  I thought madly for a while, all the while feeling the tension rising in my chest.  Will the house burn down?  Should I turn around?  Did I even turn on the burner?  I don't remember, I don't remember!"  Finally I told the girls they should pray that I didn't turn the burner on the stove.  When I said that, Sarah said, in a hesitant voice (don't kill the messenger, Mom), "I think you did, Mom." At this point, we were at the exit that we needed to take to get to Urgent Care.  I took the exit, whipped back around, and started back for home, about a 30 minute drive, castigating myself all the while for having left the stupid burner on under the eggs.  If I had any doubts about it, they were cast aside when I opened the door and the smoke billowed out.  Have you ever smelled eggs that are burnt?  Trust me, you don't want to.  The stench was acrid and sulphuric.  I turned off the burner and immediately started opening doors and windows and turning on the fans to air out the house.  Keziah had fallen asleep in the car so I carried her in, put her in bed, and told the girls to stay home and wait for either me or Friend Husband to come home (of course, he was working late that night, but fortunately for us, not very late). I made us pb&j, washed some grapes, and leaped back into the car with David.  He ate his supper while I called Friend Husband and aprised him of all that had happened in the past couple of hours.  He was amazed, to say the least.  I pack more living into 2 hours than some people pack into a week!  We eventually made it to Urgent Care, signed in, and waited. There are always such interesting people waiting at Urgent Care (yes, that's meant to be sarcastic).  There was a couple in the "well child waiting room" that I talked to for a while.  They had a 6-month-old baby and 12-year-old twins.  We talked about twindom while watching the various members of one family file in and out of the back room (what's going on?) and listening to some strident voice yell at his toddler in the sick child area.  After about 90 minutes of waiting, they called us back for the requisite weigh-in and questions...then they looked at his nose.  They decided (as our pediatrician had hours ago) that Dave needed stitches to close the wound and applied a topical numbing gel, a bandage, and sent us out to wait in the waiting room again. David was pretty much bouncing off the walls by this time.  One of my fears when he gets hurt is that someone is going to think I'm abusing him.  He spent last night running into walls, falling flat on his face, and generally being goofy.  The nurses laughed at him and said, "Yep, we see how he got hurt."  He also got to see lots of babies, which he loves.  It was amazing that, while he had this gaping hole in his face, he was smiling and talking to everyone.  He's such a trooper! He continued to be a trooper when they called us back to do the stitches.  We got Dave up on the table and the table lifted up so the doctor didn't have to bend over to do the work and waited and waited and waited for the doctor.  The nurse finally popped her head out and said, "We need Dr. Karen.  We've got a toddler in here that needs stitching."  Meanwhile, David was playing with the toys that Nurse Diane had given him.  We put the straight jacket things around his feet so he couldn't roll off as easily and then Nurse Diane asked me if I wanted to put the rest of him in the restraints.  Knowing how much David loves to be physically restrained, I asked if we could just hold him and see if that worked.  He did marvelously!  Both the nurse and the doctor said that they had never seen a child get stitches as easily as he did (hope that's not a harbinger of things to come!)  While Doctor Karen stitched him up, Nurse Diane held his head steady and I held his hands.  Once he said, "Mama, I stuck!"  I laughed and said, "I know you're stuck, honey.  We want you to be stuck for a while."  Once I asked him if he wanted me to sing him a sleepy song.  He and the doctor said yes, so I started singing "I Am A Poor Wayfaring Stranger", which is what I sing to the twins when they're going to sleep.  I got to the chorus of the first verse and he said, "No sing song!"  Everybody's a critic! We finally got home at 11PM and I put David to bed.  On the way to put myself to bed, I noticed a bump on my collarbone and thought, "Man, it's too early for mosquitoes!"  I went to bed and woke up to generalized itchiness which spread throughout the day.  Hives.  What could be the cause?  Stress, my doctor says.  Or spring allergies.  Or any number of other things that we may never be able to pinpoint.  So my whole body is a writhing red mass of itchiness (except for the inside of my mouth and the bottoms of my feet)...Lovely end to a lovely day. Links to other Thursday Thirteens! 1. (leave your link in comments, I’ll add you here!) Get the Thursday Thirteen code here! The purpose of the meme is to get to know everyone who participates a little bit better every Thursday. Visiting fellow Thirteeners is encouraged! If you participate, leave the link to your Thirteen in others comments. It’s easy, and fun! Be sure to update your Thirteen with links that are left for you, as well! I will link to everyone who participates and leaves a link to their 13 things. Trackbacks, pings, comment links accepted! View More Thursday Thirteen Participants http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/SlackerMom/313212/ Thu, 12 Apr 2007 06:53:00 -0500 http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/SlackerMom/313212/ http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/SlackerMom/312766/ Wed, 11 Apr 2007 12:24:00 -0500 http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/SlackerMom/312766/