Nighttime wakefulness

Jupiter was up last night. I wonder how she always pulls that off when I fell asleep late to begin with. She knows.

So anyway, she was up (for a reason she would prefer I not post in the blog, but it doesn't happen often anymore) and we got her changed and she got into bed with me. She didn't take too long to fall asleep.

Me on the other hand, then couldn't get back to sleep. Then I was awake early to keep the alarm from waking her up. If I had a dime for everytime I yawned at work today, I could probably pay for the new session of therapeutic riding which starts Saturday. (Invoice came in the mail today, but I am afraid to open it). Though the odds are good I would have yawned a lot anyway from sheer repetitiveness. In addition to repetitive, it is also demoralizing when I work very hard to clear over and above the required number of alerts each day, and then receive an team email stating that we are no where near reaching our goal. Believe me, I know. Fortunately they hired me, who will work as fast as humanely possible for absolutely no reward whatsover, just because I have an inborn work ethic which I can't override no matter how hard I try. When I die, is the fact I cleared 42 alerts in one day going to make any headlines? Will Jupiter care that I did that? Nope.

Well, let's just watch this post go off on a tangent. (See title. Here are the results). And I didn't really have any good post ideas anyway.

Jupiter had an excellent day at school again. Two in a row...tomorrow is a Wednesday half day so I'm optimistic about it too. She got lots of positive reinforcement for the completed and NEATLY done homework. WHOOHOOOO!

Weather notes: same as yesterday, less windy, more cloudy.

Homemade yogurt

I received my long longed for yogurt maker for Christmas. I know it's possible to make homemade yogurt without an actual yogurt maker. However, I need something simple and easy.

This year I discovered Greek yogurt. They were a dollar a cup though. When the store had them in stock. And all the store yogurt seems to have lots of extra ingredients. Jam should have pectin. Yogurt should not. Yogurt should have milk.

So anyway, I got the yogurt maker on Saturday. On Sunday, we went to the store basically so I could buy milk to play with my new yogurt toy.

It's not as easy as dumping the milk in the machine and plugging it in though. (which you would think it would be, for what the machine retails for). So I heated up the milk til it was frothy (there was a thermometer in the box? Really?), let it cool down til it felt lukewarm, added two packets of freeze dried yogurt starter to one cup of warm milk, added that to the rest of the milk, poured it into the yogurt machine. THEN I plugged it in and waited 8 hours.

It actually made yogurt. It was thinner than the greek yogurt because I didn't get around to draining out the whey for three more days. And being accustomed to store bought yogurt, it was quite tangy. But pure intense yogurt flavor. But I spent the week eating it at work with various toppings/sweetners.

Still experimenting. So far I've tried diced peaches and sugar (good), honey (nice contrast) and a jar of baby food pears (not good).

Saturday I tried to make a new batch of yogurt using some of the previous batch as starter. Not successful. Not sure why.

Sunday I bought more milk (hopefully I will break even from the yogurt making before too long) and went back to the freeze dried starter. I also pawed through the recycling until I found the yogurt machine box and the thermometer still in the box. Then I had to stay up til 10:30 waiting for the yogurt machine to incubate for 8 hours.

Currently I am draining the whey out of the latest batch. Did I mention how purely white the strained homeade yogurt is? Love it. My co-workers are all intrigued by the great yogurt making project. I suggested getting a department yogurt machine.

Tomorrow I can have yogurt for morning snack again.


Jupiter had a great day at school today. She had a great night at home tonight (there was no money counting homework). She did Wii obstacle coursing for 15 minutes, ate a cucumber and dip, declined to eat her soup and peanut butter toast, and sat down to her homework. She did all four assignments and took the time to do quality work. She helped pack her lunch for tomorrow. We read for a half an hour. While we were reading she ate two yogurt tubes (unfortunately she is not interested in converting to homeade yogurt) and a banana. She's listening to her music but not asleep yet. Whoohoo!!


Maine almanac: 01/03

Sunrise: 7:15

Sunset: 4:16. (we've gained five minutes since the solstice).

Temperature at 4pm: about 30.

Weather: dusting of snow overnight, sunny and windy during the day

Monopoly

Jupiter has a thing about money counting.

She's supposed to be learning how to count pennies, nickels and dimes at school. She hates it. Every time I open the homework folder and there's a money counting exercise in there, I cringe. And yet say brightly, "Oh look! We get to count change! How cool is that?". And then I dodge the flying pencils.

Anyway, yesterday we played Monopoly for the first time. It turns out I've had a brand new Monopoly game downstairs in my house probably since I moved in 9 years ago. So we opened it up.

Boy, did Jupiter like that game. I beat her, but only by a few hundred dollars (Elmo came in a distant third, having spent much of the game landing in jail). She may not be able to count change, but her dollar counting showed great promise. She owned three out of four trains. I honestly didn't expect her to take to the game that quickly. I want another monopoly game specifically designed for pennies, dimes, and nickels. Because if she can do it with tens, fives, and ones to collect and pay theoretical rent, she should be able to do it with pennies, dimes, and nickels. I think we played for about two hours...at any rate I looked at the clock and said "It's 8pm!!).

She wanted to play again this morning. She ended up owning three trains again. We quit early though....and she did beat me.

School starts again in the morning. Flying pencils coming soon...

New Years Resolutions

So, ok, this is yesteday's post. I belive Wordpress (where I do not have a blog, but why split hairs?) is beginning a blog a day challenge this year. (Thanks, Mama C! http://mamacandtheboys.com/2011/01/01/postaday-2011/) 365 days in row......which I think should be a challenge considering I've posted 3 times in the last four months and one of those posts really doesn't count. And techinically, I did NOT post yesterday, so I've already failed that challenge. But why split hairs? If I post twice today, we'll call it even. And see if I make it through the first two weeks.

Okay, so that's resolution number one.

2. Set the alarm 15 minutes earlier for work mornings. Rushing in the morning is bad. I know this. 15 minutes makes a difference.

3. Actually GET UP 15 minutes earlier on work mornings. Extra time not to be used for snooze alarming. Must split that hair.

4. Spend more quality time with Jupiter.

5. Spend less quality time arguing with Jupiter.

6. Bring the pile of stuff meant for Goodwill TO Goodwill.

8. Follow the meal plan again. Plan meals in advance and buy the food I need for those meals. If I'm going to be a food snob, I have to plan ahead so I can afford to be a food snob.

9. Exercise, even if it's only Wii Exercising. Lose some of the weight I've gained in the last five years.

10. Get a new couch/futon. Seriously. I have the worst looking couch ever, with very little upholstry left because the cat has destroyed it (which in fact was why the last people sent her to the animal shelter in the first place) and big gold balls for feet. Currently very attractively covered in pink flannel king size sheets. I'm thinking futon because it will be more difficult for the cat to destroy. But honestly, a couch would be less expensive.

11.????? More later on this one.



Well, that's it. Nothing terribly original.

See you later today for today's post....

Goodbye 2010

Wow! What a year that was.

She wanted to stay up til midnight....but fell asleep just after 8pm.

New Years Resolution 2011

Blog more.


When did it get to be two days from the new year? Did I blink?

Dear School Administrator:

I do not know what posessed you to rearrange the lunch schedule this year so that first graders eat lunch at 12:55 pm. If I thought you even HAD a reason other than the crazy control thing you seem to have going on. And we know lots about control games at our house. Just sayin.

You couldn't have designed a day more difficult for my child. If you had been purposely making scheduling decisions to make her life more difficult, I don't think you could have done it. And I have it on good authority, it is exceedingly difficult for MOST first graders to live this schedule. Not just mine.

You expect my six year old to function in a classroom setting between 8:20 and 12:30. Do you know how LONG that is to a first grader? To focus on work most of that time? The kids are fried way before recess hits.

Recess. Recess is before lunch. This does not work. Jupiter finally gets to run about freely, but by then she needs it so badly she can't control it. And by then she is also hungry. Hunger is not something that ecourages in any way Jupiter making a good decision. She can't. She's spinning and can't stop to make a decision period. Good or bad. Impulse takes over.

So next week, your new plan is to have Jupiter STOP playing twice during the recess time, to check in with the recess teacher to make sure she's making good choices. This is not a good plan. First of all, Jupiter will have no concept of how much time is passing. She won't know how much of recess has passed until the whistle blows to end it. So I don't see her being able to think "Well, 10 minutes of recess have gone by. I should go check with the teacher now." And furthermore, you want her to transition from playing to not playing to playing to not playing to playing. HAHAHA. If she were that able to handle transitions, I would spend a lot less time trying to MINIMIZE transitions.

So after recess, you want her to transition to lunch. See above about transitions. She is supposed to stop playing, walk calmly into the lunch room, sit down calmly and eat. In a big, noisy smelly room which has already been decimated by three previous grades having lunch. Jupiter says she chose her lunchroom seat at the table by the fact that she could put her feet on the bar part of the table leg so she won't have to put her feet on the dirty floor. She can't eat then. She's still mentally at recess. Please note, last year she had lunch at 10:55 and recess after lunch. She didn't have as many problems at lunch OR recess all of last year as she has had so far this year.

So, after completing 16 days of school, my child has actually EATEN lunch three times. One time was last week, after her punishment for fooling around at lunch was eating in the classroom alone with her teacher. One other time, she actually ate her lunch at snack time. So, I guess she's eaten lunch once this whole year.

Then after lunch. An hour and a half left of school, and the kids are so drained from the first three quarters of it that they have no interest being back in the classroom. At all.

So, Mr. Control Freak Administrator, was that what you were going for?