First of all, happy 81st birthday to my mom. We were out celebrating her birthday when I snapped this gem of her and IL.

This has been a pretty good week. D got her standardized test scores from 3rd grade back. She scored 95th percentile in reading and 92nd percentile in math. The more I see scores like that, the more I believe that she has dysgraphia. Why else would writing be so very difficult for her compared to her reading and math? And now that we know it’s not a fine motor skills issue, either, I am more determined to get her diagnosed.

M has generally been managing his depression well while on the happy lamp. So yay! Though he didn’t eat a thing for dinner tonight and complains that he didn’t eat over the weekend (at his biological mom’s) either. He says he no longer likes even McDonald’s! That’s so frustrating, since we frequently use McDonald’s as a reward. Our next step is occupational therapy to see if his pickiness is a sensory issue.

Despite his one unaided step, IL has not yet taken multiple steps. But he does walk quite well with a toy walker. It’s coming soon!

I had a lovely recharge weekend. I spent Saturday walking and reading. (And reading audiobooks while walking.) I finished:

Crash, by Ellen Hopkins

The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big Round Things, by Carolyn Mackler

Both books are banned teen books, which I read in honor of Banned Book Week.

Today, I decided to mix it up a little. Aaron continued to watch all three kids while I listened to Furiously Happy and cleaned the whole house (sans basement). It felt even better than walking! We have both decided a full recharge weekend is not necessary, but we can take the second day to focus entirely on our own to-do list instead of juggling between who watches the baby and who does stuff (which can get ineffective since we never really get to rest that way. We’re always either rushing through to-do lists or watching the baby (and fending off the kids’ complaints of boredom). I always read when I was bored and waisn’t allowed to watch TV!

Hi Everyone!

This was a good week! IL took his first unsupported step (just one so far)! Plus M and D went to the climate strike Friday. After 1.5 hours on the bus each way, I expected both of them to droop, but they enjoyed themselves, learned about the importance of standing up for their rights, and learned more about climate change.

Aaron and I were going to top that off by doing a walking half marathon (pushing a stroller) on Saturday. We had been hoping to do it all year, but we had the kids this weekend, and couldn’t figure out logistics until today – only to find out that they don’t do same-day registration. 😭 I guess there’s always next year.

Aaron and I have agreed upon recharge weekends. I will take the last weekend of every month to do a Friday – Sunday readathon (there’s one hosted on Litsy called #24B4Monday ) and happily Dewey’s falls on my recharge weekend in October. In exchange, Aaron gets a recharge weekend on the 3rd weekend of each month in which he gets to play Minecraft to his heart’s content.

So I’m really looking forward to next weekend.

I’m currently finishing up Good Omens on audio, and making progress on The Gene: An Intimate History on hard copy.

Baby steps! I got one book read (Radium Girls). I’m losing weight VERY slowly, but surely. I’m eating a little better and started walking.

Last weekend, while I was having a meetup with fellow readers from LibraryThing, Aaron, D, and M painted M’s room bright red. (I did my part by keeping IL out from under feet.) I’m taking progression pictures, but will post them once the vinyl is in and the stuff is back in his room. Then we’ll start on D’s room.

Also last weekend, we had a murder mystery (steampunk time travel) party for my (and my friend’s) 40th birthdays. It was so much fun! Here’s a picture of me and Merry Monroe.

My Labor Day readathon was a success in that I got plenty read, but I was cleaning at the same time. 🤣😂 I was thinking of having a #grumpybabyreadathon today, since IL has a virus and just wants to be held. But he took a 4 hour nap! I got other things done (taking an axe to our budget). So it was a success anyway. And now IL is awake and perky, so reading probably isn’t going to happen unless it’s audio.

Summary: During WWII, many teenaged girls worked in watch dial painting shops, dipping their brushes into radium and pointing the brush with their lips. When they started presenting horrible side effects of the radium poisoning, such as necrosis of the jaw (to the point of the jaw falling out), cancer, and other horrible diseases, they realized that the firm they worked for had been lying about how dangerous radium was. They sued, they failed. They sued, they failed. They sued, they failed. As they died, the remaining girls sued and sued, until finally a few girls finally won a suit. This is a book about the injustice of the system – and the development of laws regarding work-related poison.

Thoughts: This book was fascinating in itself, though it took me a long time to finish. I enjoyed it, but not as much as I had anticipated. The information was intriguing and I loved learning more about history. But I felt that the book lacked excitement as the suits dragged on and on and nothing seemed to happen.

Hi all! This week started out rough with a trip to the ER for my mom. She had a minor seizure in church, and her neurologist wanted us to get her Keppra (anti-seizure medication) blood levels checked. I drove her there, and we spent a few hours hanging in the ER. She was fine by the time we got there, of course.

My second week at work went great. I remembered pretty quickly how to do the job, and thus had a good first week of on-the-job training. I’m glad to be out of those orientations, they were really difficult for me to sit still in.

I’m also going to re-start trying to lose weight, both by counting calories and walking. I’ve decided this time to try a 1,700 calorie a day (average for a week) budget. Last week, I lost 14oz! (In theory.) And I downloaded the Walk to Mordor App on my phone, and will start logging my steps on my way to Mordor. 🙂 Right now, I am just stepping out of my door. I know I tried this earlier in the year, but if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again?

I didn’t get as much reading done as I would like, but I’ve decided to start my Labor Day Readathon already. I started Saturday night at 7:00pm (after work):

Saturday: 1 hour of Radium Girls

Sunday: (so far) 2.5 hours Radium Girls (finished), followed by Good Omens.

Hello all! Despite my claims that we would get a bunch of work done on M’s room last week, we did not. Aaron and I were sick. Now the painting will have to wait until the next time M is home on a weekend.

My reading was also a bust this week, but I started a new job in dialysis. That’s going as well as a first week goes. I’ve also been hanging on to those PCA jobs, as my clients are having difficulty replacing me. Hopefully they’ll both find someone soon! I can’t keep this up for long.

IL had his first week of daycare EVER. He seemed to handle it better than I.

That’s him at daycare. Taken by the teachers while I was gone and missing him. 🤣😂

Aaron, the kids, and baby have just landed in Oregon. I will miss them, as I couldn’t go on vacation this year. New jobs and vacation don’t mesh well. They will have fun, and I will get the house sparkling clean while they’re gone. Either that, or I’ll read a lot. 😁

Bryan from Still an Unfinished Person is having his own personal readathon this Sunday, and I was tempted to do the same. But maybe I’ll wait until Labor Day weekend, as I’ll have a better idea of how much I’ve accomplished in housework by then. Anyway, I’d like to be able to dedicate a whole day to it. Maybe I should make a goal of finishing Radium Girls and reading the entirety of Beloved, by Toni Morrison by Labor Day’s end? That’s a good goal.

PS: here’s my family on a trip without me:

And me, without them:

Hi all! This has been a hectic week. Due to some extreme naughtiness which will remain unnamed, we had to clean a very messy bedroom, throw out a bunch of contaminated toys, rip out the carpet and underpad, and scrub the walls. M picked out some new paint (red for the walls and green for the dresser) and some vinyl for the floors (no carpet for now). It will take about 5 weeks to schedule new floors, but we hope to paint the walls this coming weekend.

D spent several days at summer camp, and really enjoyed herself.

She really wants to go back next year. 🙂

She will be going to a backyard-in-a-tent overnight tonight with her girl scout troop.

As for reading, I’ve made some progress on Radium Girls and Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.

Real Life

Hey everyone! I bet you thought I wasn’t going to come back so quickly. This week has gone pretty well. Saturday, my friend Liz came over and she, Aaron, and I played Episode 1 of Earth Break. It is an escape-room-like puzzle that comes in 5 episodes. You order the set, and they send you one box of clues per month. Episode 1 was fun – there was a lot of detail in the world. However, the puzzle was rather easy to solve, and probably not worth $26. We’re hoping the rest of the puzzles get harder as the game progresses.

Sunday, my dad came over to sit with the kids while Aaron and I did some housework/yardwork. It was so nice to get stuff done. If he keeps doing that regularly, I may have more time for reading and blogging. 🙂 Even better, I paid M $3 to keep IL occupied on Monday while D an I got even more cleaning done. So much so, that if she asks to earn more cash through jobs today, I won’t have much to tell her to do. (There’s always her room.)

Wednesday I had an appointment with mom’s cardiologist. She’s in the position now where she should be on a blood thinner because of her atrial fibrillation (or she risks stroke), but she needs to be off blood thinners because of her amyloid angiopathy (or she risks brain bleed). So she’s going to get a procedure to put in a Watchman Device, which will stop risk of stroke due to atrial fibrillation. Yay for solutions.

D is high anxiety lately. 😐 Plus, she’s taking a writing class online right now, and I have had another opportunity to compare her writing to others her age. She is undoubtedly way behind. Despite what the teacher said last year about “she just needs to practice more” I still think she has dysgraphia. We worked so hard to advocate for an IEP and met so much resistance from the school last year. My new job has a free special education advocacy consultation, so I will call them up and see what kinds of help they can give.

I tried feeding IL a pickle, and he liked it:

And here’s a good one of M slaying a dragon:

I didn’t get any attractive pictures of D this week. But here’s one from May. She’s weeding with energy:

Currently Reading

I am trying to locate my copy of Beloved, by Toni Morrison.

So, it’s been a while. I’ve discovered that taking care of a now-mobile baby makes working on the computer very difficult. He pulls on the computer cord, wants to be held so he can slam his hand down on the keyboard, and is otherwise distracting. So, sorry for the long delay in posting.

And see? Now he’s crying. that’s the end of my update.

…

Alright, bottle in left hand, baby in lap, typing with right hand on phone. Back to update.

These are my most recent photos of IL (almost 8mo), D (9) and M (7). They are growing, no?

Over the past month, I have been applying to daytime jobs. I’m switching from my evening job. I’ll be putting IL in daycare and working days in order to get better benefits. It’s a lot of work researching jobs AND daycare at the same time! I got a job offer to start on the 20th, so now I need to fill out the daycare paperwork and get IL registered by Tuesday at the latest.

Currently Reading

Completed This Week

Summary: In this Historical Christian Romance, Lily Haswell struggles with choosing between the high-society life of her mother’s family and the less glamorous life of her father’s apothecary shop in the village she grew up in.

Thoughts: This was an engaging and well-written book. I had a little difficulty sorting through my thoughts about the many suitors that Lily had, though. They all seemed so nice in their own way, and it got a bit emotionally exhausting. I’ve never been a fan of love triangles. However, that was the only downside of this light, sweet read.