Mardi Gras!

[MysteryWoman]

Good afternoon! Need to get out the BGS. DH is "working" from home today; I'm not sure when he last checked his e-mail. DC's classes were cancelled; they got up a little bit ago and are shoveling the drive in hope of getting out to buy some paczki (Polish doughnuts for Fat Tuesday). I was hoping to make some, though I forgot to order any filling on this recent shopping run -- I wonder if I could make some with juice and cornstarch? But I must admit, the ones from the bakery are better.

DD is like LadyM's kids in that her classes are online, so no snow day for her. DH said, well, maybe her profs won't be able to get in to teach, but she says they've been working from home already. Although power and internet aren't really threatened anywhere around here that I know of. The email to LadyM almost reminds me of "if you didn't get this, let me know."

Oh, blessed! I've had ankle surgery, and it's no fun. Are you weight-bearing at all?

Well, time to apply that BGS! Start a load of wash, then have some lunch and make room in the kitchen to work.

[lucylee]

I am not a fan of LadyM’s dd’s teacher, either.
This makes me think of a book from the 60s — Up the Down Staircase. Look it up on Amazon.

[DeeClutter]

Can't imagine this pandemic happening when we were in school -no internet at all back then. How would schools have survived?

Blessed, hope you have a quick recovery! Remember when I broke my ankle/leg that I had absolutely no weight bearing on either leg. (My right ankle/foot were completely torn apart but not broken & thus couldn't bear weight on that one either.) It was a fun (NOT) time. So glad you have the ramp built, etc. Keep us abreast of how you're doing as you can. Gentle ((((Hugs)))).

Dh has gone to the grocery store. I had a list for him then remembered my printer isn't working. For some reason it won't detect two of the inks I just put in. DD and I have tried all sorts of things. Have a feeling it might be 'new printer' time. I did search on my devices & found a printer I didn't recognize. Wallah! Went wireless to her printer in her art room. Only thing was it printed both sides on blue card stock. I could have written a list for dh but I had copied/pasted pictures of some items I wanted that were on sale. I'm sure he'll buy way more than I had on the list.

I keep checking the website for our vaccine registrations. Friday they were on doing calls for people who registered on January 17th. In checking, they're still on the 17th (we're the 19th). I was able to check how many people registered the 17, 18, and 19 of January. Each day has around 5,000 people registering in our county. Have a feeling it won't be in time for dh to get his.

[LadyMaverick]

Lunch Break!

(((Blessed))) Thank you for CI and for letting us know the surgery went okay. Is your computer working now?

I hand-picked DD9 teacher because I've known generations of her family and known her all her life (she is younger than me). She has a kind heart and a joyful personality. We have butted heads a couple of times this year but overall I'm very pleased with her. The guidelines she issues come from the Charter school admin. This charter school stays under intense scrutiny because many want that public school to fail. This charter school is a public school but it is treated like a red-headed stepchild by many because it is so successful. It had 60K students enroll this last year which means that many students left the B&M school....which means the $$ is moved away from B&M school to the charter school. Many see this charter school as threatening the existence of many B&M schools.
Personally, I wish B&M schools would take the good part of the charter school and implement it. In small B&M schools, there are no options. You have the same teacher for 3 years of a subject. If the student/teacher doesn't mesh well, it can be hard for a student to recover after 3 years of struggling. One of my favorite things about virtual school is being able to pick the curriculum to match the student learning styles. I much prefer for the student/parent to decide what style works best for the student. The teacher should ABSOLUTELY have a say in it but ultimately the decision is up to the parent/student. In virtual school, each student's learning needs come first over the teacher's teaching style preference.

[Nancy]

Ty LM for that info.

No mail came for me. I shoveled slush off the driveway, no d-icer needed.
False alarm processed the mail.
Laundry is in the dryer.
Ddog is outside playing.
I had my lunch.
Snowing again now. 30* out feels like a heat wave.
Snowing but melts when it hits the ground. 32* outside here now.
Time to pay attn. to the laundry.

[Harmony]

Blessed, so good to hear your update. If both your daughters are helping, does that mean your younger daughter came up to be with you? I hope you have swift recovery. If you're not weight bearing, a knee roller works great. DH borrowed one. He put his non-weight bearing leg up on the roller and rolled around everywhere, sort of like if he was using a scooter. We had to keep telling him to slow down. So good that you have a ramp to use now too.

LadyM, it does seem like that teacher is very strict. I'm wondering how many people without electric are even getting her emails? It's sad that your B&M schools are struggling so.

If we were a mardis gras state, I would hang beads in all my palm trees out front!

If we'd had this pandemic before computers, we'd be doing a lot of stuff by mail or picking up / dropping off pages. It wouldn't be very efficient.

RRose, the horses I had heard about are the Assateague Island ponies. There are 2 groups, 1 run by the park or govt and other owned/ran by local fire dept. The last week of July they swim the one group to Chincoteague Island where some are adopted. They're all registered and those adopted find homes. These islands are on the MA / VA border. They came from either colonial settlers or off Spanish shipwrecks and were once domesticated but now considered feral, too short to be horses, now considered ponies. I looked them up, there's a lot of info online. One pony is famous, with a series of books written about her, Misty of Chincoteague by Marguerite Henry. Are your horses the Salt River Horses? See, I went down a rabbit hole the other night looking these up....

I've answered a letter today; cleaned up my sewing room, done my dailies, 1 LOL hanging up.

[Elizabeth]

Hi everyone! I got the majority of those blasted animal org minutes done last night! That is a load off my mind. There is still another set to do, but it was a very short meeting and should not take long. This set was so long I ran out of time for exercising if I wanted to maintain my very new (2 days old) resolve to get to bed before midnight. The sauerbraten came out well, the gravy was too sharp tasting. I probably won't make it again, but I don't have to throw it out in disgust! I accidentally made green beans before finishing the black eyed peas, so I have to eat lots of vegetables for a few days.

Today at payroll has been a meeting, reload failed data, easy database assignment, meeting writeups (2), and return to query optimization.

Tonight's priority is a banking form! Somehow two auto withdrawal car payments were set up. Fortunately, I discovered the duplicate payment before overdrawing the account. Less fortunately, I cannot get the money back. I can stop it from happening again. Second priority is the second set of animal org minutes.

Mobile, AL is also doing Yardi Gras where people decorate their houses and yards. Some have employed actual float builders. There are official tours. Probably another case of New Orleans copying a Mobile thing and advertising it better. My brother has skeletons in his yard wearing his previous years' maskers costumes.

We are supposed to get three more days of snow. Unlike LadyMaverick's charter school, DD19's charter school does get snow days. When most of your kids lose internet with the weather, it just can't happen.

Anyone interested in doing anti-procrastination for Lent? I know I could find 40 projects to do!

[lucylee]

I am not nearly so productive today as I was yesterday. I have a tiny bit of an urge to vacuum, but dgs is spending the night, and the house always needs vacuuming after he leaves so I'm kinda squelching that urge, I guess, with that excuse. (He still chews things and leaves pieces of Nerf balls all around, plus he is one of the messiest eaters in the world, so there are crumbs from one side of the kitchen to the other after he has been here.)
I am counting some "quality time" because I straightened up dgrands' room just now. Just a quick PUPA and re-make the bed, but there was a lot of stuff on the floor -- toys and papers, etc.
DH is napping, so that also makes me less inclined to run a noisy vacuum cleaner. DH's foot is bothering him sooo much. Probably just arthritis, but he says it feels like it is broken. (He hasn't had any sort of injury or anything that would cause it to hurt, either.)

Blessed! So good to hear you are recovering! (((HUGS))) for you!

DGS is spending the night b/c dgd has an 8:00 a.m. appt in Big City with her rheumatologist. They will have to leave by 6:00 a.m.
Also -- no school tomorrow. Roads around here, between our house and town and maybe a 5-mile radius, look clear as can be. BUT, we are at the foot of a mountain, and I have seen FB pics that show those roads are pretty much covered in ice and snow. And the more rural areas in the northern part of the county have a lot more ice and snow also, so bus travel would be dangerous tomorrow.
No garbage pick-up so far this week... health dept still closed... banks and post office closed...
BUT -- I am NOT complaining!!! We have not lost heat for one minute, and it IS beautiful to look at. When the sun was shining on the trees earlier, they were just glittering -- like in a fairy tale, or maybe a scene from Dr. Zhivago.
I apologize if I've already said all this. It's just so unusual for us.

And LadyM -- I do understand what you are saying about the teacher, and I will try not to be so critical! It is wonderful that you do know her so well and can talk with her about the parts of the schedule and curriculum that are troublesome.
And I can understand what you are saying about the charter schools being in competition with the public B&M schools. We have not had much of that around here, but I think it is beginning.
When I was a student in high school, my 7th grade English teacher taught 7th, 8th, and 9th grades. * whew * Fortunately, I only had her that one year, and I had EXCELLENT teachers the next two years. 10th and 11th grade teachers were not The Best, but certainly not the worst, either, and my 12th grade English teacher was amazing. She was my number one mentor and I just tried to soak up every word she said, from the time I was in her class until the day she retired, after we had taught together ten years or more. She, along with the 8th and 9th grade teachers, became a life-long friend.
Saying all that to say, my dmom often remarked that she felt sorry for "those poor kids who got stuck in (Mrs. 7th grade teacher's) class for three years!"
Teaching has to do sooo much with personalities and as you said, just whether or not a student and a teacher "mesh." My 3rd grade teacher was pretty old when I had her, (she had actually been one of my DMIL's teachers in HIGH SCHOOL!) and my dmom had heard some stories about how strict she was. After I had cried all the way through 1st and 2nd grades, (to the point that my 2nd grade teacher would hold me in her lap and rub my tummy ) my dmom said she was terrified of what 3rd grade would be like, but she didn't feel comfortable asking for a change of teacher before I even spent one day in Mrs. H's class. It turned out that she was one of my all-time favorite teachers, and I still remember her fondly.

Well, at any rate, I am glad I am not having to do virtual teaching at this point.

We have long icicles too, Nancy!

If I had a Mardi Gras decoration, hmmmm... I guess we'd have to do some sort of bluegrass theme around here. OR something for College Town football. That would be dh's choice. I might just wrap the house in a super big patchwork quilt and a sleep mask, LOL!

I finished another e-book last night. Florence Adler Swims Forever. It was sooo good. It was based on a true story, set in the pre-WWII days of Atlantic City. Florence wants to swim the English Channel. Meanwhile her family has taken in a teenage girl from Germany and a sub-plot is the struggle to get her parents out of Germany and into the US also. There are some surprising quick plot twists early in the book, and it just really drew me in.

40 days anti-procrastination, Elizabeth? I might be willing to give it a try...

[Nancy]

Long ice cicles are a sign you need more insulation in your roof.

I got the deck steps & patio cleared off more slushy snow.
It is so much better now.

Sun is peeking out.
Snow has stopped. 30* outside here.
Walked the dog around the block the kids are all outside building snow forts, sledding, snow ball fights,
Playing on 4 wheelers. I made a tiny snow man and a snow angel and did trails around the yard found the teer tracks too.
Waved at the neighbors.

[LadyMaverick]

Plagiarism
DD9 is learning the perils of plagiarism. Hopefully, this will be a quickly learned lesson. I told her that it would get her a zero IRL school if she copied a story from online and submitted it as her own. She has deleted her 5 paragraph writing assignment and is starting again. Big clue that immediately tipped me off was words I've never heard her say as well as the spelling and punctuation were perfect.

School is over except for DD9 practicing guitar. She is doing that now.