The Queen's Rambles

Woke up with morning with a yucky cold and a world covered in ice. School has been cancelled, again. I know this is the same story in half the United States. Climate change, eh? The world is about to get really scary, really fast.

We’ve actually had more school than a lot of places, but we’ve used up all our snow days and will now be going extra. That doesn’t really matter to me since I don’t have any big plans. We had originally tried to book a camping trip to Jellystone right after school let out, but the timing didn’t work out so now I’m glad to not have a non-refundable trip on the books.

I really hope the Airborne does it’s magic and kicks this cold to the curb sooner rather than later. I am already feeling slightly better, but I think that’s just because I took a handful of Advil for my sore throat. By the way, you do know that Advil is great for a sore throat, right? It is a pain killer and anti-inflammatory, so works better than a Sucrets ever could. My mother still doesn’t know this even though I’ve told her at least 20 times. I learned this from my school nurse when I was in college. I wish my mom would have known because I always had sore throats as a kid. Life is just so much better these days–colds don’t drag on for days and noses don’t get sore. Thank you Airborne and Puffs Plus!

I went back to the gym for the first time in over a month yesterday. I am feeling it today! I had PT after the gym and didn’t think that would be a big deal, except they upped my PT workout so I was a little shaky. I did have to laugh, though. They wanted me to do 10 minutes on the bike and had it set at the lowest possible level. The guy kept coming over and asking if I was ok and if I would be able to do it for a full ten minutes. Ummmmm. . . yeah. I think I can handle 10 minutes on a bike since I regularly do an hour on the elliptical. I can’t even call the bike a cardio workout because the setting was so low that it didn’t raise my heart rate. The only part that hurt was my ass from sitting on that tiny little seat.

I do a lot of leg lifts during PT, which always makes me feel like I’m in a Jane Fonda video. Yesterday they added ankle weights to the leg lifts, so I really felt like I needed a braided sweat band and leg warmers.

My Read-a-Thon is wrapping up and it seems to be pretty successful from a financial standpoint. The money is due next week, but we’ve already gotten in about $1,000. I was worried we wouldn’t make anything, but the families who love the idea of the Read-a-Thon really love it. We had three families give $100 each. I’m so glad, because the PTA president and the principal thought it would be a total fail. I feel like saying “in yo face, yo.” I’ll just think it instead.

It’s funny–people either love the idea (and value reading) or completely don’t get it. The people who are contributing are the people who never buy random crap and the people who buy random crap and generally not the ones contributing to the read-a-thon. I suppose it’s just two completely different mindsets. I have learned that I will never understand that mindset of the majority of people, which is why I get so frustrated in life. Things that are so clear and self-evident to me are obviously not self-evident to many. Somehow this does nothing to convince me to change my viewpoint, despite being in the minority.

Just today on the Ask Moxie FB page, a page that is generally full of involved, thoughtful parents, there is a big thing about homework. I was shocked by the number of parents who said they don’t go over their young children’s homework. They were making some remarks about the homework is for the child; they’d been to school and don’t need to re-do 2nd grade homework; it’s the teacher’s job to check the work. I feel like they are missing a vital purpose of the homework. No one is suggesting you do the homework. Absolutely not. But how can you not check over your first grader’s homework and make sure s/he understands the basic concepts? There is really not a lot of individualized attention at school, so going over homework is a parent’s chance to make sure their child understands what’s going on. Heck, even with an older child I would check over the work if the child was struggling in school. As a former teacher, I can tell you that a parent’s involvement is often the key to a child’s success (or at least lack of failure. I think true success has to come from a deep desire within the child and a parent can only do so much to keep a child on track).