So I was in this meeting earlier this week, where the phrase “data dump” got used about 839 times, and one of the attendees kept referring to themselves in the third person. IE: “well, this is just Jane Doe throwing out ideas but…”
But it’s a timely phrase I guess, since I’ve barely had time recently to throw out a few 140-character tweets, let alone actually write a blog post. I find that I really MISS the mental purge, and I actually write posts in my head but I am lacking direct transfer button from my brain to WordPress. Maybe they’ll make an app for that soon?
So to unburden and update as much as possible while I have a small slice of precious time, I’ll attempt to categorize:
Work
Well, it’s been an interesting semester so far. Very busy of course, but with the advent of our new “fourth guy”, a productive and positive start to the academic year, I think. Our organizational structure is stronger than ever, and leadership is more committed to us than ever, I feel. Personally, I have been able to spend more time doing stuff that I find to be extremely fun and meaningful – providing faculty development, training, and support on those topics where pedagogy and technology collide. I have lots of plans and dreams and hopes for ways to stretch further, learn more, and grow in this role. I just want to say here for the record that I am very lucky, and VERY thankful to be working directly with the coolest colleagues anyone could have ever asked for, and within a unit where everyone is valued, appreciated, and recognized. Our unit is putting on an open house for the rest of our college next week, and I will refrain from going into details other than it involves a TOGA PARTY. Jealous now, aren’tcha?
A fun and recent random development is something of a lunch philosophy club…ok, not really, but while my coworkers and I do lunch frequently, we are usually pretty rushed. As the semester gets into the eye of the storm, we have a little more even pacing and some breathing room. Which means the lunch hour can actually be, well, a lunch hour again. It’s been so nice to have interesting, thought-provoking conversations (with adults!) that have nothing to do with a) your kids/family life/broken cars, b) work, or c) H1N1 swine flu. Sorry RustyG, that you’ve actually BEEN out sick with H1N1 and haven’t been able to partake. Next week, dude.
Holy brain exercise, batman.
Grad School
Is the devil. ‘Nuff said.
To be serious though, I am struggling through a rough mid-degree slump. The cultural foundations class has actually turned out to be pretty interesting, once we got past the first few weeks of irrelevance. The other class is a challenge and a frustration because I am taking it too early in the ed-tech curriculum rotation but I did not receive proper guidance from the program administrators, and I am stuck now for reasons of logistics and financial aid. Oh well, at least the instructor is a real gem–she makes it tolerable.
The most exciting (or depressing, depending on how you look at it) thing is that I finally sat down and reworked my plan of study this week and I sort of have the “end in sight”. If things work out ideally, I may be able to graduate in December of 2010, but depending on a few unforseeables may actually be May 2011. Either way, just kind of having a date to think about has brightened my outlook considerably. Maybe I need to create a countdown calendar?
The New House
Well, yeah, it’s awesome. But to be honest, I am having a hard time wrapping my mind around the fact that we own it. It’s kind of like I’m too afraid to embrace it and feel excited about it yet. Which is strange I know, but I think after struggling for over 6 months to buy it, I’m still shellshocked. Unfortunately it is still a complete disaster area but each weekend we make a little bit more progress. Notable accomplishments include getting exactly one (1) picture hung on the wall, and the dining room table set up finally.
The back yard is a pit of despair badly needing weed killer and landscaping but we just haven’t had time, money, or energy to tackle the project yet. The yard full of weeds have HUGE thorns and you risk your life by walking across. They are so dry, big, and strong that they poked all the way thru my cushy crocs. That has to be at least a half centimeter of rubbery material. It took well over an hour to de-thorn all of our shoes after we got through the ferret burial process.
And the master bedroom really needs the long accent wall re-painted. We still sleep nightly under gang symbols painted in woolite, from the period when the house was in foreclosure and broken in to. We have the new paint (thanks again Aunt D – you rock!) but again, pretty much need to have the boxes unpacked and out of the way to have room to shift the furniture around. Sigh.
Oh and due to my craptacular (read: nonexistent) ability to park and/or depth perception, I have crunched the garage door down on the bumper of the mom-mobile a couple times. Now the opener mechanism is a bit funky and will need some repair, ASAP. I think we need a horde of home improvement elves. Does Home Depot sell those?
Misc Family Life
FF has managed to convert the simple cold that K brought home into a nasty bout of bronchitis. He saw the doc today and left with a sheaf of prescriptions, instructions, and an order for a chest x-ray to rule out pneumonia. Oh and he also got a shot in the ass of flu antiviral…just in case.
Due to this, the family dining agenda is all messed up. I barely cook and on those rare occasions that I do, sometimes I barely pull it off. I can cook a decent homemade mac n cheese, or turkey chili. Beyond that, it is sandwiches and canned soup as far as I’m concerned. Thank god I had the good sense to pick a man who is a great cook, except we don’t have much backup plan when he is taking a week off sick.
Anyway, the point of that rambling stream of consciousness was to relate that he did in fact try to cook dinner the other night, staggering around coughing and feverish. He is a dedicated spouse and father, people. This, combined with my amateurish attempts to help, sealed our fate with a rare and terrible ‘Dinner Fail’. How can you screw up pot roast in a slow cooker so bad that it’s practically inedible? I don’t know but we managed.
The cats have mostly reconciled. They play together a lot, and while they don’t sleep in a cuddly cat pile ALL the time, they do so with increasing frequency. Cookie is still a little too nutso for Juno’s taste, but she is teaching Juno the fine art of playful sneak attacks. Juno has firmly attached herself to FF, and you can be assured that no matter what time of day, she will be within about 3-5 feet of him at ALL times except when she absolutely must use the litter pan or eat. He accepts her dog-like devotion with aplomb and even pets her now and then, despite his avowed cat-hate.
Gmom is cooking up a crazy post-Christmas Vegas vacation so we are starting to get excited about that. Hopefully I’ll be able to sneak out of work for at least a week. Gotta spend that financial aid productively, you know?
The Evil Genius
Holy cow, the last couple months have been a wild ride.
The sleep chart kind of fizzled, as I thought it might. Even with short term goals (M&Ms) and a long term one (Chuck E Cheese) her interest waned rapidly. However, her sleep did improve significantly around that time, and we have finally achieved a major milestone: she actually will allow us to read to her, tuck her in, and leave her alone to go to sleep without a fuss. Halle-freaking-lujah. We thought we’d never see the day. Unfortunately though, with the cold she brought home last week, her sleep pattern has been blown up again but at least she is still going to bed readily. Score parents: 1, evil genius: 1. It’s a dead heat right now.
Behaviorally, she is trying out all kinds of new strategies. The most noticeable are a sudden affection for the word “NO” (she never really did a NO phase at 2 so I guess we are paying now), and that she is purposefully circumventing the rules if she really wants to do or have something. She is getting into places and things she NEVER has before (cough cough) like mommy’s bedside nightstand. She is experimenting with creative fibbing, hiding things behind her back, and generally exhibiting new levels of amazing stubbornness.
But at the same time, her sophistocation and understanding and language and thought processes are growing by leaps and bounds. She still doesn’t like writing letters and words with us at home (she gets mad that she can’t do it perfectly) but is having a great time talking about letters, words, sounds and rhymes. So I guess there is hope for her literacy yet.
She continues to pin us down for very detailed, complex explanations of random things. One night at approximately 4am, she wanted to know why all the dinosaurs died. Simplified reasoning was not acceptable and she kept badgering until I explained evolution, extinction, meteor strikes, etc. She remembers this information surprisingly well and discusses it regularly.
And of course, our favorite topic, The Human Body. See, Gmom gave us a kid-friendly anatomy book to help with the body talks. As if the whole PENIS thing weren’t stressful (for us, her parents) enough, while looking at the book she wanted a very detailed explanation on where babies come from and why they grow inside mommies………yeah, my THREE year old wanted the birds and bees lecture already. We are totally screwed.
Well, it made FF squirm uncomfortably (must be a dad thing) but we gamely carried on (with the book as an aid) and explained everything as simply as possible. K absorbed all the information, and wanted to see pictures of herself as a newborn so we did that. I had hoped perhaps that might be the end of it for the time being.
But oh, no…that would be TOO EASY.
In the next few days, she was carrying out a lot of pretend play about having babies and could be randomly heard walking around asking us, or the cats, or her toys to lend her some sperm so she could grow a baby. Whoa. Again, I hoped after a few days, she’d move on to something else.
But oh, no…that would be TOO EASY.
Last Thursday, FF picked her up from school (oh yes, here it comes) and was informed that our dear, darling, little evil-genius lectured the whole class of 3-5 year olds on The Facts of Life. I think I am equal parts proud, dismayed, and amused. Fortunately the teacher was very supportive and she was very impressed with K’s level of understanding and accuracy. She expressed approval for teaching K the proper words and concepts instead of passing her off on a stork tale (does anyone try that anymore?).
It is however, a day that will go down in our personal parenting book of infamy.
…into the semester, and already my head feels like this. I am really struggling this semester, with motivation and engagement. To be honest, if I didn’t “have” to finish this degree, I don’t know that I would even continue through this mid-point slump. There is just SO much to do in the next year, and so much of it is busy work. Part of the problem is my own, for choosing a program where most of my peers are in very different professional contexts, so there is little sustained camaraderie / connection. I’m clueless about a lot of things in life, but especially K-12 education, and that’s where most of my peers “live”. Hell, I can barely figure out the school thing for my own kid, let alone the thought of being actually involved with the process of teaching. 
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