Year 6, March 15th-18th, 2020: When Mom's Head Hurts

 We had an awesome Monday! It helps when Mommy is in a great mood. We all got up a little later than normal thanks to Daylight Stupid Time. But we still managed to get it all done. Abishai didn't fuss too much with school, although I did let him do it while he was wearing scuba gear (homeschooling at it's finest!). We got back into our main history curriculum and learned about Mexico's last Emperor and Empress, Maximilian and Carlota. We started Richard Maybury's book called, "Liberal? Conservative? Or Confused?" which talks about not just party labels, but the left, the right, terminology for both, and everything in between, but of course from a 1990's perspective, so today's terminology could mean something even more different. Should be fun to compare and contrast. I took a shower, and laundry and dishes were put away. I had an online counseling session and then cooked fish and oven roasted veggies, sheet pan style, carrots, gold beets, broccoli, with fresh parsley, salt and pepper. Everybody ate some of the veggies! I don't have to eat them all myself! Yeah! I can make another batch tomorrow before the new box of veggies arrives.

 I didn't have the greatest day with my stomach of my head, but I survived. I made an appointment to see the optometrist next week because I was due for my annual exam anyway. I think it's time to update my glasses. We've checked every year and there has been slight changes to my prescription, but I had a hard time seeing the screen clearly yesterday. And I'm wondering if my eyes are working too hard and I'm getting headaches because of it. I hate to give up my current glasses because they have served me well for 7 years I think now. No scratches on the lens. The frames are solid. I like the color, etc. And I just don't want to pay $400 for new ones. Blech. I could go online and get the ones from the cheap place we tried awhile ago, but we didn't have the best of luck with them. And I don't know if they would do the blue filter thing or not. I've seen this same optometrist every year that we've lived in Indiana, so we have a long history with them, and Gary and Leah have an even longer history with them. And they are very close by. So, I don't mind supporting a local business like this. I don't have insurance that covers this, so I'm self pay anyway. Oh well. We'll see next week!

And then, Jared took Abishai on an errand to the "orange working store" aka Home Depot and the other two and I started the Gettysburg movie on my computer from 1993. Ah, the epic music scores of the 90's! And the REAL pyrotechnics! And NO green screen or CGI! It's glorious! And the mention of God in a positive way on BOTH sides of the fight. Remarkable! My kids impression? Well, they are tired of talking about the Civil War, so they sat and squirmed and talked and hemmed and hawed for the two hours we spent on tonight. Good grief. Would you like me to lecture you for 8 hours? Sure there is a ton of dialogue, but that's the point of this kind of movie and the literature that we've been reading. They are all commentary on what actually happened and not just the blow by blow action sequence. You get to hear the hearts of the people involved. Real people. Real history. Ok, we all know the dialogue is made up for the most part. And each movie and book has their own depth of research and some are better than others, but that's not the point. These things aren't just words on a page. This is real history. This is why we have the country we do today. This is why we still have racism. You can understand today without undrestanding yesterday.

At least Jared gets it. He walked over for a minute and said, "I remember that scene! I love that scene!" And then he laughed. One of the corporals was getting so mad talking to General Lee about what the other general did. It was a funny moment. I told him, at least I try to teach your kids more than just names, dates, and places. At least he and I understand and love this stuff in our own ways. Although, he refuses to watch Poldark with me. But that's another story. He even made a fire for us while we watched! I'm watching the last bit of flames work itself out as I type. Feels weird not to be at my desk, but hey, he made the effort, I'll take it! And praise God he can do that again! I told him last night that I'm glad we are back to almost our normal. He can drive the kids to activities. He can chop wood and do other light household things. He can cook again. And the flip table is finally back in the garage. He goes on Friday to see the spine surgeon again. I was going to go but I have an appointment at noon I can't miss, too. So, I'm debating about it. 

Yes, it's been a good day, but it's already late and I went to bed late last night. I have to back up the photos, too. Man, there was something I should have written down from today so I would remember and I didn't. Oh well. I'm sure it was something Abishai said or did. He's such a hoot!

Have you ever tried to teach a child wearing scuba gear before? Well, today, I did! Bwahahahahaha! Not sure how or why he got into the swimming stuff, but hey, if he wants to play pretend, go ahead! Cracks me up!

Yes, he was sounding out words and they came out the snorkel. Hilarious and fun! He did a great job and got through his school work quickly, so I'm going to make him take it off. Although, he didn't want to do his memory work today and refused to open his mouth. Well, buddy, you can't actually breathe with a diving mask on if you don't open your mouth. Goofball.

I think Justin is loving his new desk! The story goes is that it belonged to this woman's aunt who had down syndrome I think. The aunt used the desk to draw and color in her notebooks on. The aunt passed away a couple of years ago. So, it has sentimental value. It's a simple desk, and we got it for free, but it's more than that. It's about sharing instead of tossing it into the garbage or to someone who doesn't appreciate it, you know? It's perfect for our needs!

A rare moment of getting along for a few minutes, until Abishai lost. I'm glad Abishai is old enough to play these kinds of games now. And he's quite good at it when he catches on. I live for these moments when they are getting along despite their age differences. I just can't imagine them going to school and not having these opportunities to really know their siblings. Even though Benaiah went to a private high school, he did have some time to develop relationships with them. He'll come back around. He just needs his young adult space now. We did, too, at that age. Although, we didn't go very far. Oh my babies, all 4 of them, getting so mature, and so smart, and so big. And oh so very different and fascinating to watch their personalities grow. Oh my heart.

Gametime! Without arguing! Well, until Abishai lost.

Abishai heard Daddy's car in the driveway and quickly grabbed his guns so he could hide around the corner and be a sniper. The dog didn't like that much, lol. Oh, this was what I was going to write down! When Jared and Abishai left to go to Home Depot, Socks was getting all crazy and he and Jared played around for a few minutes. I'm so grateful for medication that makes both of them feel much better and that they could play like that again. It was heart warming to see that. Jared is in a much better mood more often because he's in less pain. Praise the Lord. We are back to OUR normal!

Nothing says torture for a 12 and 15 yr old to be forced to watch Gettysburg by a real fire! Good grief they were complaining a lot! But man, 90's epic dramas and action movies were some of the best! The music! The real animals and blank shots and pyrotechnics! The acting! Ah! Come on, guys! You have no idea how awesome this is! I made them sit through Gods and Generals, the prequel that was made after this one, which was made in 1993. Yes that's nearly 30 years ago! We are OLD. And after this, I'm making them sit through Roots with me. Another great classic! Dude, I don't care if you are tired of hearing about the Civil War. We are going to drill real history into your heads and not the revisionist stuff they teach in schools. Would you rather that I lecture you for 8 hrs? Good grief!

Trying to enjoy this wonderful fire Jared made for us. It's weird being on my computer like this, and I don't have my handy mints or water or pen or whatever nearby, but I'll live. Because Jared made a fire! That's a miracle! When you've gone through most of the winter months without enjoying your real fireplace because the husband's back hurts so bad, you learn to appreciate it when you do have a few more colder days to enjoy it. Having a real fireplace is probably one of our favorite parts of this house. This room, this fireplace, this place where I educate my children, and share their heritage with them, ah. My favorite!

It's dying down a bit, but produced a ton of heat. Yeah!

Oh, Daylight Savings Time, I still don't like you. Later start again today for everyone. My internal clock is NOT like this time change at all, never mind the kids. But alas, we are pushing forward and did a great day of school again. Nothing much to report there. It was still cool and damp out so we didn't play outside. That left Abishai plenty of energy for his extra karate class this evening. I took him because Jared had Bible study. Jared's Bible study night is changing, but we aren't sure to what night yet. We'll see. 

Yup, nothing notable today. Abishai wanted to play piano again, so we worked on it tonight after karate while we waited for Daddy to get home. You'll see a video of it below. And I had a random phone call from a friend today, which was very encouraging. Thanks Renae Schielfenbein. And then I had a online health appointment with the new lady psychiatrist, although, she was a Nurse Practitioner, so I'm not sure who that all goes clinically. She was nice enough but again, not much to talk about. Are the meds working, yes, then keep them. I didn't expect much anyway. But I hope that Friday's appointment with the endocrinologist goes vastly different. I've got so many questions. I wish it had been in person but there's no in person appointments for several months and I needed to get the ball rolling. So, fingers crossed we get some progress there. I was too tired to put much together for supper, but Justin helped make salad and I did come home to everything being cleaned up. Thank goodness I've trained the kids to help. That's still my biggest insight of the last couple of weeks. We run like a well oiled machine most days. That's why our days are so routine and mundane and we accomplish enough.  Training and routines go so very far. And it's great to see the fruit of those labors. 

But I'm tired. I'm staying up too late. I need more sleep. So off I go to do that.

Michael W. Smith and the band are back! They are recording "new" music they said. Well, I told Mr. Danaker, that ahem, hopefully his boss is actually making new music and not rehashing his or others' music. I know some find it fun to listen to different versions, and I KNOW these artists aren't out to make tons of money, but they also have had to turn to other means to make a living, like recutting a song 5 times over with different artists. Or rereleasing albums with a couple of songs that didn't make it on the album the first time. Stuff like that. It's a marketing gimmick across the board in all genres. Unfortunately, though, what I heard in this video on Instagram was the guitar parts to a song from 1992. Trust me. It's the one album I've listened to the most. I know those riffs by heart. So, we'll see.

So, as I was going to bed last night, I was reminded to look at the poor puppy's nose, which I had noticed was bleeding the day before. I had put some antibiotic ointment on it, per suggestion via Google, that didn't have hydrocortisone in it. Well, I noticed it was worse last night. So I put ointment on it again. I had noticed this change on top of his nose last summer. And I figured it's mostly dry from being older and from the winter. When I've looked it up, it could either be nothing or could be major. So, I'm watching it closely, and documenting it, so I can make a decision soon about what to do. If the discharge is clear, it's probably allergies, which, yes, I totally understand that and have heard about it in dogs before. The bleeding is coming form the nose itself because I can see the irritation. But why is it irritated? Is he scratching it because something else is itchy or bothering him? That's when you start thinking it could be a tumor somewhere, which is the worst case scenario. I really don't want to be spending money on the dog right now, but I don't like this injury either.

It's spring fog! Yippee!

Hey, there's new irises popping up! Iris bulb populate very quickly. They are such a hardy flower and I have yet to kill them either at the Beech Grove house or here. Cool!

And the daffodils, the first flowers to pop up, are coming up nicely.

Like Mr. Luke Green said, a new season of Fortnite has dropped! So, before school, and really without permission but who cares, Justin started the download. And like the geeks we are, all four of us sat there and watched the intro trailer. Because, we are geeks. That's why. Whatever. I understand enough so I can be interested in his hobby. Justin has spent way too much lately on it, so he's not getting the battle pass to get the extra skins this time. It's not that interesting this time around. But the trailer was interesting. And then he had to play a bit to get to the first main screen of the season. Alrighty then. It's a good thing we homeschool and we can wait a bit to get started.

When Mr. Luke said that on Sunday to the high schoolers' parents, he had to backtrack and remind himself that he was talking to high schoolers, not middle schoolers. High schoolers generally move on from video games because school gets more intense and so do sports and choir and all that. Well, not my high schooler. So I shared this picture with Luke. Justin LOVES Luke. Probably one of his all time favorite minister I bet. And poor Luke has had to take over so much in this transition of the current high school/youth minister to a different part of ministry within the church. Luke is the "minister of all trades." And he technically is the middle school minister. So, he's doing his best he can with the most incredible volunteer team. And all through the last few months and the pandemic. Anyway, we love Luke. Sweetest guy. He loves Fortnite, and other video games, a few different ball teams, and pizza. He is, after all, the PizzaKing or whatever on video games. And he's a first time Daddy to an almost 1 year old Penny. So adorable! And in his word, "Peace!"

We all agreed that Chickman, with an eggshell as his underwear/pants, and the other half of the eggshell as his helmet was ugly.

Fortnite #1

Fortnite #2 

Fortnite #3

Fortnite #4

Socks' nose looked much better this afternoon, but I put more ointment on. And we'll be looking to see if he continues to scratch or if it gets better in the next few weeks. I won't wait too long, though.

I did take a few photos tonight at Karate because I know our friends do and she posts them. I tried my best to crop out the other kids. Abishai was playing tic-tac-toe with another young guy before class started. We were super early and got to see our friend Marcus doing his thing in his class. So Abishai observed the big guys doing bigger moves!

A new game of staying of in downward dog and one person crawling under everyone. He didn't understand that he had to get back into downward dog at the end of the row after he crawled through.

Not the best angle, lol, but he get the point. Abisahi is crawling through the tunnel.

A different game that his teacher was trying out on this class to see if it would work in a bigger class. He had to choose to do a punch, block, or kick, and then she would tell a student who wasn't looking at the others to say one of those words. Whoever did that action didn't get a point, but if they did the other actions, they got a point. The first one to get 5 points wins. A little tricky because the moves are similar, or rather you land in similar positions. We need to work on how Abishai does his moves, but we'll get there. The other teacher said that she'd love to see him in a regular class when he's old enough. We'll see! This kid can learn anything! He was following along and concentrating the whole time.

Ready to do his kicks!

Abishai! I told you get my phone. I didn't tell you you could open it up to take a photo! Give it to me you goof!

We finally opened these and they smelled like vanilla frosting. Oh yummy! They tasted pretty much like regular peeps though. We got them many months ago or something. But fun!

Abishai pretended to be asleep because Daddy was taking so long at Bible study. I actually thought at one point that he would fall sleep because he said he was tired.

And finally, the big moment! Abishai asked if I could help him with some songs so I did. And yes, he's ready. He is following directions and knows the numbers and which hand is the right hand and which one is the left, etc. And he tries to count out the 4 beats of the whole note. It's so adorable! Oh my goodness I could cry. It's the best thing! We did finally have another piano lesson for the other kids, so they are slowly making progress. At this point, Keturah has even gotten far enough that I'm too worried about it. I do need her to memorize the note names rather than finger numbers and where everything is on the staff, so I gave her the flashcards I have. Unfortunately, I have two decks and they are both incomplete. But, the basics are there for now. But our little guy, wow, he's a sponge!

I didn't get a chance to write anything on Wednesday because I was determined to go to bed "early." "Early" was 11:30pm. I had many little things to wrap up, even after I had shut off my computer. And yes, my head hurt, again. It hurts again today, Thursday. I'll try to back up to what happened on Wednesday, but it was probably just the usual stuff. I've been having trouble putting together meals and having the desire to check homework because of my constant headache. Now that I think about it, it kind of scares me and I wonder if I should get a head scan. You never know when a brain tumor is going to show up, am I right? Ok, let me think that one through though. We don't need expensive scans if we can help it. But the tax refund came in, so that's good. I can try to go through and pay off bills.

See, I know I have time for all these things, but now my head hurts and it's hard to concentrate with my ADD. I'm severely annoyed by this and wanted to cry when I woke up with ear aches and vertigo this morning. I embraced it as best as I can and said how grateful I am that today we had nothing on the schedule and we could get by. I'm still kind of at a loss about school work because I could have tried to do more but didn't want to. I did sleep a lot this afternoon. I had to put on my audio Bible to drown out Justin's noises from his video game. I got through 8 chapters of Judges, all 4 chapters of Ruth and about another 13 chapters of 1 Samuel. I heard only bits and pieces of it, so I know I slept some. Now I need buckle down and make a plan and follow the plan over the next few days. Thank goodness Gary decided to not to do yard work tomorrow and I have a few extra hours with Justin. I mean I could push everything off until next week, but then I can't do other things on my spring break. Yup, I'm pushing through his school work tomorrow and Keturah's on Saturday at the latest. I just need to shower and do my 12pm very important online appointment first. 

Dinner was late because I asked Jared to get pizza from Kroger to bake and the kids got off late from electronics. Keturah made salad and Justin put bacon on trays to put on the pizza. But he spread them out too much and used three trays instead of two and then they all didn't fit in the oven and then when I fixed it, some were cooked more than others. And I had to get vegetables out for Keturah. So much for staying out of the kitchen today. I did take a dramimine so I could somewhat cope. 

Oh, that's what I did yesterday. We made Mt. Carmel and bird nests. The women at Bible study liked them. I can't or won't eat either of them, so yeah for me making something and then not eating it! I did eat the chocolate and peanut butter out of the bowl though. And I have done school with Abishai both days. The others are just needing more instruction on their math and writing and I can't do it right now. I need to take a chill pill because they are actually ahead on both of those. 

It was a beautiful day yesterday so I got the kids out for a bit, but it was extremely wet today, with huge pondfuls of water in the backyard today. Jared insisted they pick up sticks that were supposed to be done on Monday, and through a series of texts between the 4 of us, it finally got done. Yuppers. That's it.

New music coming soon....as long as it's not just rehashing old songs, please and thank you.

I LOVE most UK actors, Irish actors, anyone from there. They just seem to have much more versatile skills than actors over here.

Aww, he had to wear the silly hat I guess, lol. I found this on Instragram.

The real St. Patrick wrote this.

What on earth is beer doing next to my veggies?! Ahem. I guess it's for St. Patrick's day, but still. I didn't buy this fridge to make it into a fridge for drinks. Ahem. If only I was well enough to cook these veggies. I will, hopefully tomorrow.

Sharing some snuggle time.

Grogu likes his green milk for St. Patrick's Day.

I didn't drink it, Jared did. Irish beer for St. Patrick's Day.

This hooligan thinks he can climb the fridge. Um, no.

The stool was my suggestion, but he still couldn't get all the way up, thank goodness! Yes, I know it could tumble down on top of him. No, sir! Get down!

Unwrapping caramels for Mt. Carmel.

Bird nests!

Chocolate and peanut butter melted in the microwave and poured over chow mein noodles. That's it. Then top with the eggs. We didn't make them perfect, but they are cute enough!

I can't eat the chow mein because of gluten nor the eggs because of malt (which is barley), but I certainly can like the dish I melted the peanut butter and chocolate in!

Keturah arranged the eggs.

We are finally at Mr. Carmel in our women's Bible study on Elijah, so I just had to make a craft I did back at a VBS in elementary school. Use caramels to make Mt. Carmel of course! A little awkward because I couldn't mind the squares of caramel, but a little bit of ingenuity and it worked! I didn't have an ox for the altar, so a chicken was the sacrifice. Jafar was the prophets of Baal and the other Lego guy is Elijah of course. The ladies thought it was cool at least!

Peek a boo! Ding dong ditch! Abishai rang the doorbell and then hid. No one came. I finally knocked and a tired Benaiah appeared. He said he was busy. Oh well. We tried. At least we got to walk in the nicer weather!

Cute stuff!

Agreed.

I need this! Like serious! I know exactly where I could put it, too. We have such lovely mugs, from places we've been, or events we've attended. How perfect would this be? I want it!

When you have vertigo, you get extra snuggles from this guy.

You can't see a lot, but we've got our usual spring flooding back there. Yuck!

I took this through the kitchen and sunroom windows. Tons of water back there.

Abishai requested a two kinds of jelly sandwich, which is a normal thing for him, and then dill pickles in the middle. Yuck!

But he ate the whole thing!

And then a whole bowl of popcorn. That was his lunch. This is what happens when Mommy is ill.

Oh, I should have taken a zoomed out photo. Jared laid with Abishai on his middle bunk bed! He took the railing off temporarily so he could get in. I'm so glad he took the time to make it removable.

Abishai was in complete heaven snuggling next to Daddy like they used to do in our bed. He couldn't stop smiling.

Oh, Cornwall, England, sometimes so similar to PEI. So gorgeous!

 

The End