We invited some friends over today to eat pancakes. Yep, that's how we roll. On a day off we eat pancakes and bacon, way too much bacon. And tomorrow we start it all over again. I have 5 books I need to scan for one client, and 7 yearbooks she wants me to scan, but I need to clarify what parts she wants scanned because if she wants me to scan ALL of those pages, her bill is going to be pretty steep. I will call her in the next couple of days to make sure I am clear. I also got an email from a possible client (or it was someone just fishing for info. I get those sometimes and I never hear from them again...).
Wednesday I will miss the first girl scout meeting I have ever missed in 5 years of being a leader. I am missing it because we will be in court on the bankruptcy hearing. It will be done then, no turning back, and hopefully we will catch our breath and see where we land. We are already doing better, trying to get the finances under control. It's not an easy thing to do, but at least I know we will make it through this, like other problems in the past, as a whole and happy family.
I had a long talk with my cousin the other day, a real wake up call, and I sure did appreciate that. I know I spread myself thin sometimes, all too thin, and I need to stop doing that. I won't be any good to anyone if I keep on taking on things because I am trying to be helpful. I do need to focus on work and making things better at home before I go off trying to change the world.
Thomas is doing better in school, I think. It has been a week since I heard from his teacher. We have him doing a writing prompt each morning in an attempt to get him up to speed on the skill of writing. His handwriting is bad... his printing is bad... and it slows him down so he doesn't write to his full potential. If we can build up his confidence in his writing I think things will start to fall in to place. He knows his multiplication tables to 12 now, which is what you need to get out of 5th grade. Good on him for that.
Glee will be selling girl scout cookies soon... and on another entirely separate note, she is going to apply for a $500 US Savings bond award, which she is hoping she will win. She has to write an essay and we have asked her 4th grade teacher to write a letter of recommendation for her. It's through an organization called CAG (California Association for GATE students). It's a state version of NACG or something like that.
So there you go... the update of what is happening here...
Monday, January 16, 2012
Wednesday, January 11, 2012
What to do with a boy...
As I mentioned, Thomas had a not so good report card. So, I am being proactive and asked his teacher to send home his journals so I could gauge what needs work. Seems like all of his work needs work. Oh, except math, he got an A, 92% on his math test. He got a C+ on his English test. His journals have notes all over them from the teacher asking for more details, to be more specific. He knows they say that. He knows what she is looking for. He just doesn't do it. She mentioned they had a conversation today about his work and she asked him why he didn't want to do better work. He told her he didn't like school. She asked if there was anything at all he did like about school and he said playing with his friends. She said he teared up a little when talking about it. That scares me. I asked him later tonight, while we were laying in bed talking about his new plan to write in a journal every day, I asked him if everything was okay at school. He said it was. I asked him why he told his teacher he didn't like school and he said he didn't know why he said that, but he really DOES like school. There is more to this story that I am going to have to suss out somehow.
I thought he might be bored. I thought he might feel like the questions that were being asked were just dumb. I have realized he is just like me. When I was a kid I did the bare minimum too. I never got satisfaction from doing more than what was required of me, so I didn't do it. He is exactly the same. If he finishes the work that is good enough for him. He doesn't have to do it great or more or bigger than anyone else, he just has to finish it. How do you teach someone to care more about something? Am I going to have to wait until college and he can study what he is actually interested in? Will he be able to write a paper then if he can't do it now in third grade?
I thought he might be bored. I thought he might feel like the questions that were being asked were just dumb. I have realized he is just like me. When I was a kid I did the bare minimum too. I never got satisfaction from doing more than what was required of me, so I didn't do it. He is exactly the same. If he finishes the work that is good enough for him. He doesn't have to do it great or more or bigger than anyone else, he just has to finish it. How do you teach someone to care more about something? Am I going to have to wait until college and he can study what he is actually interested in? Will he be able to write a paper then if he can't do it now in third grade?
Tuesday, January 10, 2012
2012 - The End of it All (?)
Okay, maybe not really... maybe only according to the Aztecs or the Incas or whomever it was whose calendar ended. This is really going to be a new beginning for me. I am going to try to right more here (and less on facebook).
So, we are in January, and Glee and Thomas have both been back in school for a few months, and we have had one report card and one parent/teacher conference. Glee is still on honor roll, on target for earning her Presidential Scholar award. She is still top of her class in almost everything. She struggles with spelling, and I am trying to help her with that before it becomes too contentious. Thomas, on the other hand, seems to be suffering from a lack of will power and self confidence. I am hoping it is a maturity thing, but in the meantime a report card with mostly c's is not good. He even got a b in reading. I almost choked when I saw that report card, and then I got sad. I felt bad for him because he did not expect it. When I had the conference with his teacher I saw why. His written work and projects ARE average. Not above average, but middle of the ground average. And she even said he is very engaged verbally, he understands what is going on and he is learning, it's just not coming out through his work. He is a very impatient kid, always rushing to the next thing, not really caring about the thing he is working on. That is my dilemma. How do you make someone care? How do you teach someone the value of the experience instead of allowing them to always move on because they are afraid they will miss out or be left behind?
I truly think he is smarter than Glee. That's not a bad thing. Glee knows what to do and does it all on her own, a very admirable quality in my opinion. I never have to sit and watch her do homework, and I only have to help her a little, and she knows when to ask for help. Thomas, I have to sit with him and remind him to focus and do the work and that writing counts, even in math. I don't know. I was a little relieved to hear only one kid in his whole class of 35 kids was on honor roll. Seemed to be a lot of kids from two of the four 3rd grade classes, and only one in his. It sucks because he is smarter than a lot of those kids, and he does have a harder teacher. I wish they all worked on the same system. Not that there is any excuse, and I have a lot of work to do with him on that.
In other news in our house, I have NOT had much work lately, and the work I have I have not been diligent about doing. I need to earn more money here, and I need to make myself do it. I need to get inspired somehow. I think this is a common theme in my life.
Also, the other big thing going on here right now is financial. We are in the process of declaring bankruptcy. We have a court date on January 18th. There is a fair bit if shame attached to this whole thing for me. I feel like I have taken advantage of someone, like I have done something really wrong, but what we did was live beyond our means. The hard part for me to reconcile is that we were not living extravagantly. We were living nicely. We did not want for anything. Now that's not to say we had new boats or a house we never should have owned, or that we were spending all willy nilly. I thought we were being pretty conscientious. I thought we were making pretty good choices. I shopped with coupons, never pay full price for anything, from electronics to groceries. Don't eat at fancy restaurants. The problem was were were buying electronics period. The problem was were/are eating out way too much. We spent too much money at Christmas, and didn't watch our spending as well as we should.
So the lesson here is this... first, I am working through the shame of this. I have to take some punches, I have to admit my financial defeat. Not to pass the buck here, but it wasn't like I didn't try. I called all the credit card companies and tried to negotiate. I don't know if I am a really bad negotiator or if they just had enough of consumers asking for a little leniency, but I was 0% successful and getting any of those companies to let me work with them. Our credit card payments were so high I couldn't do it. So I called with offers to pay less a month but for longer, well, forever if that's how long it took, just stop hitting me with late fees every month. Not a single company would budge. This bankruptcy truly is a last resort. The second lesson I learned is we have way more money that I thought, if I just do some work. I got our phone bill lowered, I got the cable bill lowered. I am working on the internet bill now. I cancelled one newspaper, and kept the cheaper one (for Wayne, he needs it). I have found money each month that we were blowing and shouldn't have been. So that is a lesson learned (and a slight regret for all that money we blew!). Even though I am not bringing money in, I am doing a pretty good job of stretching our dollar farther. And everyone should get a do over just once in life, just once, right? Learn from it, that is what I am doing, and making sure I learn and keep the lesson.
I have a couple of new year resolutions (sort of... more things I would like to do more often). 1. Keep working on the home finances and squeeze all I can out of this. 2. My family is ultimately important, and not matter what, no matter how hard things are, we have each other and we will persevere. 3. I need to use this blog as a tool to unload some of the junk I have been carrying. It was a stressful year last year and I can feel it in my shoulders. No need to carry the weigh when I can drop it here.
So, we are in January, and Glee and Thomas have both been back in school for a few months, and we have had one report card and one parent/teacher conference. Glee is still on honor roll, on target for earning her Presidential Scholar award. She is still top of her class in almost everything. She struggles with spelling, and I am trying to help her with that before it becomes too contentious. Thomas, on the other hand, seems to be suffering from a lack of will power and self confidence. I am hoping it is a maturity thing, but in the meantime a report card with mostly c's is not good. He even got a b in reading. I almost choked when I saw that report card, and then I got sad. I felt bad for him because he did not expect it. When I had the conference with his teacher I saw why. His written work and projects ARE average. Not above average, but middle of the ground average. And she even said he is very engaged verbally, he understands what is going on and he is learning, it's just not coming out through his work. He is a very impatient kid, always rushing to the next thing, not really caring about the thing he is working on. That is my dilemma. How do you make someone care? How do you teach someone the value of the experience instead of allowing them to always move on because they are afraid they will miss out or be left behind?
I truly think he is smarter than Glee. That's not a bad thing. Glee knows what to do and does it all on her own, a very admirable quality in my opinion. I never have to sit and watch her do homework, and I only have to help her a little, and she knows when to ask for help. Thomas, I have to sit with him and remind him to focus and do the work and that writing counts, even in math. I don't know. I was a little relieved to hear only one kid in his whole class of 35 kids was on honor roll. Seemed to be a lot of kids from two of the four 3rd grade classes, and only one in his. It sucks because he is smarter than a lot of those kids, and he does have a harder teacher. I wish they all worked on the same system. Not that there is any excuse, and I have a lot of work to do with him on that.
In other news in our house, I have NOT had much work lately, and the work I have I have not been diligent about doing. I need to earn more money here, and I need to make myself do it. I need to get inspired somehow. I think this is a common theme in my life.
Also, the other big thing going on here right now is financial. We are in the process of declaring bankruptcy. We have a court date on January 18th. There is a fair bit if shame attached to this whole thing for me. I feel like I have taken advantage of someone, like I have done something really wrong, but what we did was live beyond our means. The hard part for me to reconcile is that we were not living extravagantly. We were living nicely. We did not want for anything. Now that's not to say we had new boats or a house we never should have owned, or that we were spending all willy nilly. I thought we were being pretty conscientious. I thought we were making pretty good choices. I shopped with coupons, never pay full price for anything, from electronics to groceries. Don't eat at fancy restaurants. The problem was were were buying electronics period. The problem was were/are eating out way too much. We spent too much money at Christmas, and didn't watch our spending as well as we should.
So the lesson here is this... first, I am working through the shame of this. I have to take some punches, I have to admit my financial defeat. Not to pass the buck here, but it wasn't like I didn't try. I called all the credit card companies and tried to negotiate. I don't know if I am a really bad negotiator or if they just had enough of consumers asking for a little leniency, but I was 0% successful and getting any of those companies to let me work with them. Our credit card payments were so high I couldn't do it. So I called with offers to pay less a month but for longer, well, forever if that's how long it took, just stop hitting me with late fees every month. Not a single company would budge. This bankruptcy truly is a last resort. The second lesson I learned is we have way more money that I thought, if I just do some work. I got our phone bill lowered, I got the cable bill lowered. I am working on the internet bill now. I cancelled one newspaper, and kept the cheaper one (for Wayne, he needs it). I have found money each month that we were blowing and shouldn't have been. So that is a lesson learned (and a slight regret for all that money we blew!). Even though I am not bringing money in, I am doing a pretty good job of stretching our dollar farther. And everyone should get a do over just once in life, just once, right? Learn from it, that is what I am doing, and making sure I learn and keep the lesson.
I have a couple of new year resolutions (sort of... more things I would like to do more often). 1. Keep working on the home finances and squeeze all I can out of this. 2. My family is ultimately important, and not matter what, no matter how hard things are, we have each other and we will persevere. 3. I need to use this blog as a tool to unload some of the junk I have been carrying. It was a stressful year last year and I can feel it in my shoulders. No need to carry the weigh when I can drop it here.
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