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 �what is Man? a miserable little pile of secrets.� - andr� malraux "i desire to live in peace and to continue the life i have begun under the motto, to live well you must live unseen." - rene descartes note random entry image credit design by : ilazarn ikmal powered by : diaryland |
little A, trying to improve, and the storm.
2012-11-07 @ 9:53 a.m.
it's snowing! i still get excited like a little kid every single time it snows. i just think it's so beautiful, even though it's hell to drive in, especially down here in my small town. the county has like, NO resources for road cleanup so we get salted once and the rest of the time is fend for yourself. what a blessing in disguise that boy is unemployed and working locally for now, because his commute is 75% shorter to this job. i worry about him so much in any inclement weather. he's an unbelievably bad driver. i wonder a lot why kids are so dumb. was i like this when i was a kid? little A has bad asthma, and anytime he catches a cold, it turns immediately into bronchitis, and his lungs fill up with infected mucus. this exact thing has happened to me my entire life, so i know how absolutely horrible it feels. so like, he refuses to spit out the shit when he coughs it up, IF he even coughs it up, because most of the time, he won't even cough. so last night i'm cooking dinner and he's sitting there on the couch, shivering violently, saying his stomach hurts (but in the same exact breath - "sooooo do i still have to go to school tomorrow?"), etc. so boy is like, are you blowing your nose? are you coughing that stuff up? did you take your allergy pill today? no. no. no. then what the fuck? do you want to die? do you LIKE the way it feels to be sick? i mean what kid does want to take pills and all that shit, but bronchitis + sinus infection or flu or whatever has always made me feel like i'm actually going to die. so i just can't understand sitting there, feeling terrible, and just being like, hey whatever. i'll keep swallowing this absolutely disgusting looking and tasting poisonous chunky shit that my body is clearly trying to get rid of. wtf? speaking of this kid, boy and i have made the executive decision that he needs some kind of educational intervention. we're going to a teacher store this weekend to pick up some handwriting, reading, math, and pretty much everything books. boy and i both had to admit last night that psycho really really messed this kid up. he's been here 6 months now, and it's become painfully obvious that he's behind in every way. as someone who knows the "system," i know that they just aren't teaching the same stuff in elementary school that they used to be. they don't teach or reinforce handwriting anymore, so his print is atrocious and he can't write in or even READ cursive. he's up to multiplication in school, but that's pretty hard to do when you can't even add or subtract. he can barely read, which is an incredible pity, and makes everything else so much harder for him because how can you understand the directions on your paper? how can you do science or social studies homework when you have no idea what half of the simple words in the textbook mean? and math especially - coupled with the inability to solve simple math problems without counting on your fingers, how can you comprehend multi-step word problems? last week he went up to his mom's for the weekend and took a piece of homework with him to finish. he took it to school and handed it in and we saw it after it came home, and when boy asked him a few questions about it, little A got really frustrated and finally burst out that he had no idea about any of it, he said he "didn't get it" so his mom just did it for him. that's great. 5 years of doing that for him have left him with the skills of a first or second grader. thanks. (ps - is anyone here or who may casually pass through in or familiar with elementary education? we need some solid, specific suggestions for reading, writing, and math foundations programs or workbooks. please email me or note me if you can help in any way. everyone i know in real life is secondary certified so they have no advice for me.) it's all so frustrating, so now we have to try to clean up her mess, and get this kid up to an appropriate level. in 5th grade, they start writing essays. essays! he can barely draft a fully coherent sentence. there's no way. i wonder if his complete fail of a mother is the reason that he has no ability to self-care. do you have to teach a person self-preservation? do you have to teach a person that when you feel bad, you should try to feel better? all of this is so foreign to me. now, it's really coming down outside. i have been so low lately, so often and so many days, that i've really been trying hard to be optimistic and focus on things that i do well and that make me happy. two big things that i have been paying a lot more attention to are my business, and my cooking. on the business front, i have started joining a lot more etsy teams, trying to be more social. it's SO HARD for me to be social, even on the internet. the anxiety has spread so insidiously into every area of my life that this one thing that i used to be so good at (i was never good with people in person) is even a struggle for me now. the thing that is so tragic about it, for me, is that i KNOW my stuff is great, because despite being one of many little shops, i always have sales and i always have happy customers, even if they are few and far between. if i just did some more promoting, if i could just get myself to do a few shows, i know i could do well. i'm just so scared. i think boy realizes this because recently he offered to do a show with me, out of the blue. we talk at length every day about everything going on with us, and i guess he's way more perceptive/observant/attentive than he lets on, because he's said and done a number of things lately that show me he really understands what's going on with me. either that, or my mom talked to my brother who talked to boy, and they're all keeping an eye on me. i don't know, but i appreciate the support. back on the topic of business though, i've been retaking a lot of my shop photos, too. it's like, DUH that good pictures lead to better business, but there are good pictures and then there are front page of etsy pictures. i've been featured on the front page ONCE, and i want it again, bad. so since this requires no social interaction at all on my part, it is something i know i can do that will help. luckily, my main products fit into a fairly narrow niche, and are considered a supply, so hopefully my much more beautiful photography will attract ... well, everybody. as far as cooking goes, i know i talk about fine cooking all the time, but it has helped me to become such a better cook. in so many ways! but particularly, in the technique department. i made this dinner last night that was something i've made 100 times before, but my hand felt so much more skilled making it this time. the flavors just seemed deeper and way more developed. the seasoning was spot on. the texture was perfect, and not to toot my own horn or anything, but i've had this particular dish at many, MANY a restaurant and have paid big bucks for a meal that wasn't half as good as my own. boy even said, "this is why we don't go out to get [this particular ethnic] food anymore, because you're doing this." i felt really proud of myself. woo. now i'm totally starving. let me tell you something delicious before i go. this bread is amazing. when i make a tuna sandwich with this bread i feel full for hours afterward. it's one of those meals that i eat when i know i won't be having dinner until really late. but when it's the morning and i don't feel like a tuna sandwich, i instead slather two slices with butter, toast them on both sides (in a skillet, i never really needed a toaster so i never bought one!), then spread a layer of something delicious on each. last time, i did strawberry preserves on one and pumpkin butter on the other. omfg the pumpkin butter. so i'm going to do that right now. haha, boy just texted me, "wtf snow!?" yeah. according to the weather channel, 4 inches. all i can say is that i desperately hope that all of those people who lost so much along the shore, and all of those people who STILL don't have power here will be okay. we were super lucky and never lost power or had any complications whatsoever during sandy. but it breaks my heart to see things like this, before & after photos of the jersey shore, and then on top of all of that, rain, ice, snow. when i visited best friend the other day, her best friend from high school was there too, and he was telling me that there are mile-long lines at the gas pumps up there. i just can't believe it. and for most of these poor people, life must go on. it makes me so sad. i am forever thankful for what we have. my car is kinda broken, so when boy gets home i'm going to make sure that we don't forget to go to one of the donation centers to donate all of these old clothes and coats that we have. any little thing helps. |