Mensa Won't Be Calling Me Anytime Soon

Feeling down?

Feeling not so smart?

Here is a smattering of things I've done lately. This should help.

Bread

The other day I decided to make four loaves of bread. Usually I only make two at a time - now I know why.  I put the dry ingredients into the mixer and started it. Poof! Flour everywhere. The counter, the floor, me (sans apron, of course). I stood there befuddled for a moment until I realized that I put the wrong attachment on. Instead of the bread hook, I had attached the wide flat paddle thing and it was just flinging ingredients around like a tiny hurricane. So that was fun.

The idiocy continued when I burned the bread. All four loaves. And just on the bottom.

So to try to salvage the bread I cut the bottoms off.

And then like a ninny left the burned bottoms on the counter so Toby could get them. Yup.

The ironic thing is that I was just thinking that I should write a blog post about baking bread because I am awesome at baking bread. 

Don't expect that post anytime soon.

Childproofing for Idiots

Noah is a master at opening and unlocking doors so we have those plastic things that go over the knobs so he can't open them. The one over the front door knob fell off so I had to figure out how to put it back together. There are little grooves and stuff that have to line up on both sides and it took me quite an embarrassingly long amount of time to do it but I finally got it. Then I realized that I had assembled it off the doorknob so I had to take it apart and reassemble it on the doorknob. Darn safety.

Triage

The triage component of our computer system at work has the same questions for every patient. Except that when you're interviewing a woman of childbearing age, you have to ask the date of her last period. It doesn't have that for a male patient, obviously. When you do something a lot, you just start anticipating the questions, you know?

So there I was, interviewing a 20-something-year-old guy. And I asked him when his last period was. Now there are several ways to fix this very awkward situation:

1. You can pretend like you didn't actually ask that and make him wonder if he hit his head when he sprained his ankle.

2. You can say something like "Well, you have a very feminine aura."

3. You can make a punctuation joke. But you really have to know your audience for that.

Rabbit Trails

This past week we took a break from homeschooling. I homeschool all year round, for a few reasons. I like the continuity - long breaks in the summer mean we have to review for the first month back or so and that's just a waste of time. It also allows us to take more frequent breaks throughout the year. A couple of us are sick - no big deal, let's break out some movies. At this point we homeschool for a couple hours in the morning. There's no stress over making sure we hit a certain number of days or making time for field trips and playdates. And lots and lots of outdoor play makes for happy kids.

                                               

                   
Sometimes we're running full tilt, blazing down this path of learning. Latin, history, science, math - we're right on target. Other times we take rabbit trails and see where they go. I love the full tilt, feel like we're productive, checking things off a list time. And I love the rabbit trails. No schedule, no plan. Children are innately curious. Sometimes it sticks with us as adults - the wonderers of society, the group that asks "what if?" Sometimes it dies out as we age or gets squashed when no one has time to figure out the answers. I want to have time to answer these questions together, to not rush around trying to become so educated that we miss learning all these beautiful things.

This past week the kids spent a lot of time outside, happily climbing trees and playing cops and digging. We went to Legoland for a day as a family and went about our usual routine of homeschool PE at the Y and dance lessons. Jack took a day and figured out which direction the world turns based on the sun's position. Kate spent hours and hours thumbing through my books, deciphering words. For no other reason than that they wanted to. Sometimes the rabbit trails are richer than the actual path.

A little bit of our jaunt down the rabbit trails:

CERN Now Certain It Has Discovered the Higgs Boson - Forbes

    We're almost positive we have. Definitely an absolute just about found it.

How Home Schooling Threatens Monopoly Education - USA today

     Not sure the numbers are big enough to threaten. But it should make the powers that be take notice. The money should follow the kid, not the other way around. As always, almost everything in life comes down to money, regardless of our ideals.

How "Fast" is the Speed of Light? - NASA

     Spinning off a discussion on how fast we would get to Legoland going at the speed of light. Check out the  wealth of stuff on the left side of the page.

Phil Robertson - Deciding to Follow Jesus

      One of the guys from Duck Dynasty. Simple, amazing testimony.

    Reading this aloud to the kids. One of my favorite childhood memories is of my older sister reading this
to me and my younger sister in the evenings. The Grand High Witch has a sort of Transylvanian accent and my sister doing the voice was the best part. My kids today get a kick out of it too and walk around saying "You may rrrremove your vigs."

Lots of morning spent giggling on the couch, all four of us snuggled under a blanket, perfecting our accents.

We run the path, we meander the trails and oh what lovely things we find all along the way.





               

Adoption Update

Oh my goodness you guys. We haven't actually even adopted yet. And yet the amount of ridiculous that's happening right now is...well...um, ridiculous.

The dossier got to my agency today. Warm, fuzzy, happy feelings. My caseworker sent an email saying that everything is in order and she just needs these three little things to get the dossier to China: passport photos (got 'em), photos of family with captions (no problem), and a copy of my and Matt's passport signature page (good feeling's gone). I remember, oh, 8 months ago or so, looking at the dossier checklist from the agency. I vaguely remember the word' passport' on the checklist. The word 'photos' is what stands out. Got the photos.  I got tiny little photos of our heads! Fantastic feeling of accomplishment! My brain filed away passport things until, oh, I don't know, maybe sometime in the spring.

Surprisingly, this system of arbitrarily cataloging dates in my brain has failed.

After I found out, I had to take a break before I called the caseworker and told her about me being a moron. Again. I hate calling the agency, even though it's their job to help us and, well, we're paying them. Even though I really like my agency and they're always very kind, I always imagine the eye-rolling when I call and say things like "Hi, it's Jess again. How are you? I'm sure you're still ok since I called five minutes ago and asked you the same question. At least I hope you're still ok. You sound fine. Anyhoo, just wanted to make sure that I sign my name where it says signature. Should I add my middle initial or it that too fancy?"

I don't envy them their jobs.

Today is my grocery shopping day so while the kids were at their homeschool PE class, I went to the store and contemplated my situation. What happened to Noah while we were at Wal-Mart? That's right, he had diarrhea. I'm not sure what it is about that store. The deli, perhaps?

What I really wanted to have tonight was a glass of wine and some chocolate. But I didn't get anything. Tomorrow morning, when Jillian Michaels says I'm doing a great job, I'm going to believe her.

So our adoption is pushed back again. Our passports were issued as teenagers and have since expired. So now we've got to hurry in and get these passports done and then sit and wait for them. 4-6 weeks, probably.

Our caseworker laughed with me and stated that she really believes that everything happens for a reason. Perhaps our little girl is just not quite "paper ready" yet.

Or perhaps I'm just a total doof.