Weekly Review October 25 '19

Well, here we are--another week gone by and it's almost the end of October. I don't know where this year has gone! It definitely feels and looks like fall now. All the trees around here starting changing colors in the last week and now there's just beautiful reds, yellows, oranges, and golds all over! Most days have been really pleasant temperatures, too. Yesterday was sunny which was especially nice; today it's cloudy and cooler so not quite as nice. But still I can't complain! Fall is my favorite season.

We had a pretty busy week; here's the details:

Friday, October 18th:  I mentioned last week that we were going to a Fall Festival at Seth's school. They had a Harry Potter theme and there were lots of activities like pumpkin painting, cake walk, etc. Seth helped run an activity called "Harry Potter, Junior" which was for younger kids. I didn't participate in that (since I'm not a little kid!) so I'm not sure exactly what they did other than they had crafts and other activities based on the Harry Potter world. Frank and I helped for an hour with the cake walk--we collected tickets and made sure no one sneaked in (since the area they were doing the cake walk was not roped off or anything). I was actually amazed at how many people just walked right through the area when we were in the middle of a cake walk, adults included! Anyway, it went okay. Seth got done with his stuff at 8:00 and he and I had signed up to attend another event called "House of Potter" which the 8th graders had put together. They did it inside the school, which was mostly dark (we had to carry battery operated candles) and we moved from room to room where there were different activities / displays related to each of the Harry Potter books. I thought the decorating was pretty impressive, but I wasn't as impressed with the actual activities and most of the kids who were guides or who were presenting things seemed to be not very well prepared or comfortable with what they were doing. But that's okay--Seth thought it was awesome, so I guess that's the important thing. Right before we left to go to the festival, Frank gave Snickers his insulin shot and he poked himself with the needle when he was putting the protective cap back on. He got himself in the finger, right in the inside fold of one of his knuckles. His finger got numb and it's been hurting all week so he's going to the doctor to have it looked at today. I actually poked myself a few days later--on Tuesday--doing the same thing (putting the cap back on). The problem is that the needle is sometimes crooked, and it pokes right through the side of the cap, so if your finger happens to be holding that part of the cap, you get poked. I got myself right in the soft part of the thumb, near the tip of my thumb, and it hurt off and on for a few days but it's not really bothering me now.

 Saturday, October 19th: Frank had to do some work for his client that is over an hour away. I did the usual chores, helped Seth do some homework, and also helped with the practice for the Primary program. Since we couldn't practice in the chapel on Sundays at all, they had a practice in the chapel on Saturday afternoon. My kids were incredibly wiggly and inattentive; I was really hoping that they would do better on Sunday. Thankfully, they did!

Sunday, October 20th: The Primary program went great and my class was much less wiggly and they paid attention a lot better. I wouldn't say they weren't wiggly at all, but they were a lot better! For the second hour, the Sunday School president led a teacher's council for all the Primary teachers. (The Primary presidency and the bishopric met with all the kids in the Primary room during that time). The council was good and I think we had a worthwhile discussion and I picked up some helpful ideas. After church I took a nap, we had family night, and I prepared my Primary lesson for this Sunday (we're finally having class again!!) I was also trying to work out some things for my music calling and emailing our bishop about that but it ended up bringing back a lot of the stress I've been feeling for the last month and the result was that I lay awake for most of the night worrying about stuff and the few hours that I did sleep, I was having stressful dreams about it!

Monday, October 21st: So with that kind of start, I wasn't a very happy camper on Monday morning. But I tried to focus on getting stuff done and after a heartfelt tearful prayer about midday, I started to feel a little bit better. In the end, it was a remarkably productive day--not only did I get all the regular chores done, but I also made a batch of pumpkin chocolate chip muffins for our family night treat, got some work done on one of the Christmas projects, called the vet, and visited my friend Wanda and got five pairs of pants cut off for her (so that they would be shorts). That evening we ate the muffins and had family night activity (we played Aggravation, which is basically the same as Sorry, and I won because I got lucky and no one ever landed on me and sent me back to my base). Afterwards, Frank went to the monthly HOA meeting. He's been doing that for probably 6 months, trying to get them to make some repairs to our parking spaces (which are sinking) and his persistence finally paid off because they told him someone was scheduled to come out and fix them in early November. As far as the music stuff goes, it's still not totally resolved but hopefully it will be soon. To put it briefly, the main problem is that our choir director had to be released recently and there really isn't anyone to take her place--everyone who has the capability to do that already has a pretty hefty calling and it wouldn't be a good time for them to be released. Or they have other circumstances in their lives that make it impossible for them to serve right now. So we've been trying to figure out some creative solutions to this problem (because we don't want to give up on having a choir at all), but all of those solutions mean that my workload as ward music chair is pretty much going to double and I'm going to have to do some things that are hard for me to do. And with all the other stressful things going on in my life right now, it's just been feeling like too much. But as I said, I'm feeling a little bit better about it now. Hopefully I will keep feeling that way; I feel like I've been on a bit of an emotional roller coaster lately.

Tuesday, October 22nd: It rained almost all day, which is great since we still need rain. I mostly got the usual chores done, but I also emailed Seth's Spanish teacher because he's not doing very well in that class so I wanted to find out what I could do to help him with that. (And she responded with some good feedback.) That evening there was an RS meeting--we talked about "polishing our testimonies" and then we polished our fingernails. I was one of two people who were asked to speak about how I polish my testimony, so I've been thinking about that for the last 3 - 4 weeks and jotting down all my ideas on an index card. Last week, I sat down and organized it all so on Tuesday I was just going to review it to make sure I remembered everything. But when I went to get the index card, it had disappeared!! Perfect! It still hasn't turned up. So instead of reviewing, I had to start all over, although mostly I was just trying to remember everything I had already thought of. It turned out okay.  There weren't a lot of people at the meeting (I guess the rain scared a lot of people off) but it was fun anyway. I gave another sister in the ward a ride to the meeting because her car had got a flat tire that day. She lives near me and is fairly new in the ward; I hadn't met her before now since I'm serving in Primary, so it was nice to meet her. I got to talk to Tanner for a while that evening--he called mainly because of a problem he had with our flex card when he tried to buy some medicine, but we talked about some other things too. (And don't get me started on all the issues we are having with our health spending account--such a pain!!) Anyway, Tanner sounds good, and it was nice to talk to him. He is doing much better at UVU and he's a lot less stressed.

Wednesday, October 23rd: Seth had a crazy school schedule for the rest of the week because there were parent teacher conferences. (His Spanish teacher wasn't holding conferences, though, so that's why I had to email her). On Wednesday and Thursday he went to school 4 hours late, which means he was in school from 1:00 pm to 3:30 pm those days. In the morning I worked on some homework with him since he had a big project due today and of course he hadn't been working on it as much as he should have. I also got the chores done (except for shopping) and worked a little bit on one of the Christmas projects. After I got Seth home from school, Frank and I drove down to a hospital in Washington, DC to visit a lady in our ward who had triple bypass surgery last week. She doesn't have a lot of family nearby so a lot of ward members have been trying to visit her. Frank went with me as a big favor because I really wanted to see her but I am too scared to drive down there by myself. The roads and traffic in DC are just crazy!! I suppose I should buck up and learn to drive down there, since I live so close, but I have never become comfortable with driving there, and as I get older I get worse. I sometimes get really disoriented, especially in unfamiliar places and even more especially in the dark. Anyway, I think Frank enjoyed the visit too, of course, but he mostly did it for me. And it was a big sacrifice because he had stuff going on with clients and stuff from work that he needed to deal with that evening too. But he got it all done and we had a nice visit with this sister, and we enjoyed talking to each other on the drive down and back.

Thursday, October 24th: Thursday morning was a lot the same as Wednesday morning--I got chores done and helped Seth work on homework. After I took him to school, I baked a bunch of potatoes for a potato bar they were having for all the teachers and I took Snickers on a short walk. And I kept the laundry moving and folded some of it, too. I had signed up to help set up the potato bar too, so I left early to go do that. I had signed up for parent teacher conferences right after school, so I had asked Frank to pick Seth up at dismissal and take him home so that I could set up the potato bar and then just hang around for a few minutes until it was time for conferences. (If I had needed to take Seth home and come back, it would have been a really tight time table.) That worked out well. I had conferences with three of his teachers--math, science and English language arts. (He also has PE, music, and Spanish, but I wasn't worried about PE or music since he has 100% in those classes.) He is actually doing really well in the other classes too; but I wanted to get an idea of how he is adjusting to middle school and what his behavior has been like from the teachers he spends the most time with. All three of his teachers had good things to report--they think he is adjusting really well; he's turning things in on time and doing well on everything, he participates well in classes and asks questions when he needs help. One teacher also mentioned how kind and thoughtful he is, with one classmate in particular (who has special needs). They also mentioned seeing him make progress--like at first, he had a hard time with moving on to the next thing when the time was up instead of finishing it, but he has learned to adapt and doesn't have a problem with that anymore. So I think the greater structure has been good for him and he has actually not had much problems with the change in teaching methods, which was one of the things I was really worried about. And apparently his behavior has been really good too. So lots of good news!! It made me wonder if I am just imagining things and he's really completely normal and I overreact to him. But then I came home and he was really just awful most of the evening! (Mainly because he didn't like what I made for dinner, and I wouldn't let him eat anything else until he ate a few bites of everything I made for dinner, but there were other things too.) We've been working a lot harder lately on expecting more from him and being consistent and so forth, and he doesn't like it but hopefully when we get over the hump, things will improve. I still don't believe all of the issues he has are related to how we discipline him, but I think things will be a lot more manageable if we are better with discipline. And seeing how he has adapted to Middle School gives me hope that he can be successful, in spite of the issues he is dealing with. When I was meeting with his teachers, they also were very specific about the things they are working on and where they expect he will be, academically, by the end of the year and I really liked what they had to say about that. I am really impressed with his teachers--I think they are excellent and that they are going to teach him skills that will be helpful all through high school and into college. I'm really grateful that he has the chance to go to this school, where he gets a lot more individual attention than he would at a regular middle school. His teachers only have about 50 kids to keep track of, instead of hundreds! Seth had YM that evening and on the way home he told me that he had just been called to be the Deacon's Quorum president. He just needs to decide about counselors.

Friday, October 25th: That's today, of course. Today school started at the regular time (9:00), but gets out 3 1/2 hours early, so actually I have to go pick him up in a few minutes. I exercised before I took him to school and then I showered and have been writing this post. The morning has flown by.

I mentioned about 3 or 4 weeks ago that I noticed I wasn't hearing much out of my right ear. Now that Frank has a new CPAP so there isn't a lot of noise at night, I decided to try to get my ear cleaned out. Starting on Monday, I put hydrogen peroxide in it each evening and after several minutes flushed it out with water. At first it didn't seem to be helping at all--as a matter of fact, I felt like I had a lot of water in my ear as well as ear wax--but last night I finally got results and got a lot of wax out of it and now I can hear in that ear again! And it's amazing how many little things you can hear that you don't notice until you haven't been hearing them in a while and suddenly you can hear them again. Anyway, I'm glad I can hear again and now I'm going to clean the left ear too because even though I can hear out of it, I think I will hear better if I clean it.

Just one more thing before I go...I think it is worth mentioning that I DID NOT have to take Snickers to the vet this week!!! He will need his blood sugar tested again in another week or two, but other than that we seem to have finally hit some smooth sailing. He acts more like himself and seems happier, although I know being blind is still stressful for him. His tail is between his legs less, though, and he is barking to ask to go out again (I mean, I didn't really miss that, but it's a sign that he's feeling more energy...) and often meeting me at the door with a wagging tail when I come home, instead of staying in his bed and whining at me. So it's nice to see that he is feeling better. And it's also nice that I didn't spend any money on him this week!

And on that happy note, I'd better end this post and go pick up Seth from school.