Monday at the start of 2014

[Harriet]

In a way, the first of a new year, since it's the first of a week away from holiday doin's.
Also the first day back to school for households who celebrate.

In our village, it's the first day of FOCUS cleaning (extra attention to rooms on a week by week schedule), so there may be more of us than usual out on the Porch sweeping today, or spiffing our doorways, or Entry, foyers. If you'd like to join in with Focus rounds, here's a slide to the Focus subforum, which is located in the Organization and Simplification Forum.

For me, declutter this week is in bedroom(s), following that mini-schedule in The Decluttered Home, getting ready for next week's Focus cleaning there. Hopefully, that will mean smart use of my time to get clearer surfaces now for easier spiffing then. Cant' always stick with that, but sometimes it helps. (Sometimes the house just needs a marathon declutter!)

Dove, so glad you did not lose your footing much yesterday and knew how to use the snow to your advantage. Hope you and dh continue to improve.

Sunny, I'm very impressed with how you and dh are continuing right along with worship while temporarily at home only. I hope his back feels better and better.

Elizabeth, I think, may hardly be back from all her holiday visiting with family, Harmony. But yes, we're missing her. Hope she can check in soon.

[Emptynester]

Good Morning, All.

I'm up early getting my desk duties done while it is quiet. Had to print off forms for new Dr. for DH. I tried him out last year. We have both achieved the point that we cannot cut our own toenails and now have a foot Dr. to do that for us. TMI?? Just wait you will get there, too.

Tomorrow we will go to downtown Phoenix for DH's new stent. I have made reservations at a motel near by so I don't have to drive the 70+ miles overnight. They give a good rate for family of hospital patients. His procedure is at about 2pm so I know they will keep him overnight.

Yesterday, after church and between football games, I painted the trim for the new floor. I think I told you I have 14 boxes of flooring in the garage. I am so eager to see it down.

Most of the rest of the week will be nursing DH and getting the MH ready to travel. Dry and frozen food already in, bed washed and remade, and kitchen cleaned. Still need to clean bathroom and stock, vacuum, stock fresh foods from house fridge and stock clothes. If possible, I would like to go to church before we head to Q. But won't be able to unless the MH is ready.

Log of BS and BP shows both going down. Have been within 6 points of 100 on BS since 1st of the year. Not sure what they want my BP by it is in the 130/50 range so I think it is getting better. We won't talk about the weight for a while. The Christmas cookies really got me.

Off for the paperwork.

[OKay]

Good Morning!

Yesterday was wonderful time spent with DSon and family. DSon cooked two amazing meals for us (homemade chili for lunch, grilled steaks/sweet potato/brussel sprout salad for dinner). DH & DSon watched a college bowl game (recorded) that DH missed a few days ago. I alternated between playing with DGD3 and DGS7 the entire afternoon. DGD3 is really into using her imagination with doll & playhouses. DGS7 current fascination is using metal detector to find treasure. It was too cold to stay outdoor very long so that limited our treasure hunts.

It's back to school day for LO. Time to slid back into that routine. LO returns to school with a new last name which matter because his class lines up alphabetically to do most everything. LO has been in line next to the his "best" friend for 1.5 years and now he moves to the other end of the line. This is big event if you are 5 years old.

[Harriet]

Emptynester, good job on the numbers. Woo Hoo! Weight can wait. Were you painting the trim on a surface easy to work on, or were you crawling around on the floor?

OKay, what fun to enjoy dollhouse homemaking with a little girl. We may end up giving dd15's old one to my niece, but I'm not sure her parents want it. It's actually such a sturdy and attractive cabinet (front opening doors account for the two halves of the facade of the "house") that it's tempting to use it as storage and consider it a novelty. Will have to think on this. I don't believe any child could encounter it and leave it unopened.. ... women might have trouble.

Have been researching some options for dd's remaining high school years. In our state we have "cooperative innovative high schools", public schools that physically exist on our technical college campuses. There are 2 in our county and a new one opening, and the reputation is that they seem to get very serious students. I'm not really looking for a longer drive, but want to know what options are available.

They go to "grade 13", a new concept which I would need to try to understand. It's a different way of looking at the problem of the senior year, which some states are omitting, giving money for college instead. With "grade 13", the students continue seamlessly from high school courses to first-year college courses on the same campus, and finally leave the umbrella of the public school for universities after they have college credits to take with them. The hope is that student debt potential is lessened, so they are more likely to consider graduate degrees, etc. The criticism is that online courses in tandem with existing local high schools might be a smarter option taxation-wise.

[Twins' Mom]

Good morning, I think a good time was had by all at dinner here last night. By starting at 5 p.m., all were heading home by 8:30 or so and we did some clean up and got to bed on the early side. More clean up to happen today, of course.

Today is the funeral for the 23 y/o who was killed in an accident last week in Europe. I am planning to go and wanting to get to the synagogue an hour or so before the services start, as they will be very, very well attended. I need to get moving then, for the 11 a.m. funeral.

[Nancy]

I am feeling a bit rough today. Some issues from a cold woke me up in the night & I was a bit out of sorts last night.

The baby has had this and will be here later on. Not sure about gdson.

K in C sorry about the channel outages.

Wet weather for the rest of the week here.

[BookSaver]

Good morning, villagers ~

Today so far ...

* Struggled some more with trying to get sewing group meeting cancellation posted on tv station websites. I think they clear the listings every evening so I will need to go through the whole process again tonight.

* Current temp -17F. A couple hours ago when I opened the door to see if DH's car was gone so I could lock up behind him, the metal screen door was so cold that it made my fingertips hurt just touching it for those few seconds. Makes me have new appreciation for Ice Road Truckers, I don't know how they do it!

* Dishes are washed, drying in the rack. Folded a load of Tshirts straight from the dryer, so nice and warm on my hands. Put another load of laundry in the washer to soak.

* Replied to Emails.
* Received Email saying the Lego order has been shipped and should be here by Saturday.

* Cooked & ate a small tuna melt for breakfast, weird I know but I wanted protein to start the day. Will have leftover veggie soup for lunch.
* I will put scalloped potatoes & ham in the crock pot in a couple of hours. DH isn't sure how late he has to work tonight.

* Thanks to Harriet for getting all of us off to a good start this week with this thread and the new FOCUS one. I see that Nancy posted a link in the Cardfile thread that looks like an interesting video about decluttering sessions, I will watch that now.

I didn't get to bed until after 1:00, then we all got up at 5:30, so I will need a nap with the cats. Will probably go up after I watch the declutter video.

[CathyS]

Hi everybody!

Had a very rough time getting to sleep last night. Had a weird dream and woke up early. Maybe I'm just not ready to go back to work...

We have things we need to get done today, but there is a lot of snow here and lots of accidents. There was a flash freeze.

I might do laundry today.

[helia]

Glad the dinner went well, Twins!

We are pretty well dug out here, thanks to dh's work first thing this morning while I was finishing my shower. I think we got maybe another foot of snow?? We have more than I've seen since we've been here - 12 years. The wind is now picking up and temps are supposed to plummet today into tomorrow. We still need to dig out the hens who will not come outside if they see snow on their ladder - or a thick layer on the ground. We will close them up inside later today and probably keep them closed up until Wed. I'll put some food and water inside for them, though the water will freeze quickly. I might give them water a couple times. Their outside waterer has a heater.

Kids had good dental check ups, no cavities, though dd15 has the start of one, apparently. At least a spot to watch. And she is the best brusher and flosser of the three; the dentist did say her teeth care looks really good.

Sorry -- ended up kind of long and rambling. Maybe TMI - but wanted to share the little knowledge and experience we have with other high school programs. I think Twins might have some experience/knowledge too. . . Harriet and anyone else interested, our community college and the other local (lesser) University both have programs for high school students, starting in 10th grade, to finish their high school education on their campuses. The one at the community college is entitled "______________ Technical Middle College." I think they do attract more serious students. We asked our kids if they were interested - and they were not, mainly b/c they did not offer some of the things our kids were interested in, like Latin courses, strong chess club (for ds), high quality music programs. We have lots of friends at our church, though, who send their kids to these programs, and they seem very happy with them. They say they graduate with an associate's degree and LOTS of college credit; however, not all Universities accept all the credit, including the big University here in town. I've heard it will accept only about 1/2 of their credits, which comes out to about the same number that ds was able to earn at the public high school and transfer to the big Univ. through AP and other tests. I think dd18, depending on how she does on her exams this spring, will have fewer credit hours than ds did. For our situation in this town, in terms of college credits earned, it is a wash whether one does the community college/other University program or the public high schools. That depends mostly on each individual kid. Also, if one cares about such things, the number of national merit scholars from the public schools is far far greater than from these programs. I'd have to look at numbers and take into account % of student population too. But in terms of semifinalists this year, it was 67 from standard public high schools and 3 from these alternative programs. And from what the newspaper publishes yearly re: top scholars at each school and word of mouth from kids at different schooling options, most of the kids going to the Ivies and higher ranked schools are coming from the public schools here. In fact, the kids doing one of the other school options tend to go to schools that are not as competitive. . . . That is a mystery, maybe a quirk of high school education in our specific community. Maybe b/c the higher ranked schools are very particular re: college credit they'll accept, those doing the alternative high school option are less interested in them b/c they want all their credits to transfer. As a side note, we've learned that some Universities don't accept AP tests either. They just test all their incoming students w/ their own tests. . .

The downside of entering University with a lot of college credit, is that some Universities, including the main one here in town, charge higher tuition for their Jrs. and Srs. Ds technically entered as a sophomore, so we are paying the higher rate for 3 years rather than 4 years - and he will still need 4 years to graduate b/c of class sequencing. And also, b/c he will take a minor. However, b/c we pre-paid his entire tuition 6 years ago, we actually aren't paying for it at all right now, so it works out great.

--OK, ds is antsy to get his jeans-shopping out of the way.

[Kathryn-in-Canada]

(((Hugs for those of you dealing with weather))) Back home school is canceled due to ice. After a week in extreme cold, it got over freezing for temperature but brought along freezing rain. We got out on the best day for travel, despite the delays we had due to the planes being extremely cold. Yesterday, there were delays all over the place. Dh is so happy I allowed 55 hours to travel here, instead of just 31 because it would have been stressful to say the least. It was just luck we hit the one good travel day and that yesterday was 'hot' for Long Beach at this time of the year. It was actually hot, too, getting over 80 according to the car, when we were inland a bit and most of the day was mid-to-high 70's.

I'm up but not moving fast. Must speed up or I'll miss breakfast.

Today's the big day. We'll pack up over the morning. Desperately use up the last of our free internet (on-board it costs 25 cents a minute and is dial-up speed) and then take a taxi to the port. We are within walking distance of the Long Beach Cruise Terminal but Silversea uses the Los Angeles Cruise terminal which is actually at San Pedro (farther from LA than Long Beach).

We bought a whole small suitcase worth of things yesterday so I'll have to ditch packaging and pull out the folding suitcase as well. Enough dark chocolate and decaf tea for 31 days (actually, there's enough for the full trip but I suspect it will be confiscated when we arrive in Australia), panty liners come in packages of 30 or 60 so I had to buy 60, and the large size bottles of sunscreen and body lotion. I also bought a sample package of age-defying hair products from L'Oreal and some hair smoothing cream with argan (and a whole pile of other chemicals) since my little tube of Straight by Bumble and Bumble is too hard to squeeze the last out of and, I believe, no longer made, or at least not easily obtained. That's the downside to buying my product from my high-end stylist - he changes brands quite often and then I can't get the products he's introduced me to that I love.

BTW: I'm loving the hint of colour that I got from the henna and will be doing it again when I get home (can't henna when I'm on the road - it is too messy.) It is nice not to be hit with the grey when I look in the mirror but at the same time, it isn't all brown, just golden-brown, blonde streaks and some grey. It didn't do as much for the feel of my hair or controlling the unruly grey as I had hoped, though, so that's why all these new hair products to try.

The folding suitcase full of stuff should be almost empty by the time we get to Sydney since we'll have drunk the tea (dh and mine), eaten chocolate (mine, all mine!), used up half the panty liners and read the books (leaving them behind on the shared library shelf in the observation lounge.) Then ds will fill up at least part of it with things he's accumulated in Australia and wants us to take home. That's part of my Christmas gift to him - shipping things home.