Taking the Scenic Route

TV today is bring back memories of childhood.  The same time as the superbowl is a Little House on the Prarie Marathon.  Reminicent of Monday Night Football vs Little House.  Only this time, nobody is arguing for the football game. 

We are actually planning to do a Star Wars Marathon today, but we will see how we feel.  Zach is working on a client-server program today and I have knitting and cleaning to do.  We might go shopping this afternoon since the stores won’t be as crowded.

Zane is feeling better.  He never really did get sick, just had a fever.  Odd, but I’m not complaining.

Zane is sick.  He has been dragging all day.  Even when we were outside playing he kept coming up to me to snuggle for a few minutes several times, which is fairly unusual, but I just thought he was tired or bored.  I should have known better because usually walking around campus is a pretty good workout to keep up with him.  He didn’t want to get up from his nap and felt warm then, but we chalked it up to him being overdressed.  When he was still warm an hour later at his diaper change, we took his temp.  101.3.  Just took his temp again and it is 101.9.  We decided to go ahead and give him some tylenol since he seems to want to sleep but can’t get comfortable.  Poor sweetie.

Today we went by the college for Zach to pick up a stack of papers to grade.  He ended up spending almost 2 hours talking to the prof.   It is good though, because every conversation he has with him is worth the time…from talking about programming, to theory, to university politics.  Fortunately, the weather was nice enough that I could take Zane outside to explore when it became obvious he was going to talk more than five minutes. 

Then we went to the yarn shop.  They did not have a bright yellow yarn in wool or cotton, so I ended up having to get acrylic for Kaz’s hat.  At least it is a better acrylic than Red Heart. It is called Paton Canadiana and I got it in School Bus Yellow, Black, Cardinal, and Really Green.  She wants a big hat in Rasta colors.  I was originally going to make it with a hand dyed wool, but am concerned that she would have problems caring for it without felting it accidently.  Cotton doesn’t stretch well enough and bleeds, expecially since I am wanting to use red and black.  When I went to the shop I was hoping to find a washable wool, but the only yellow colors were really pale baby yellows.  For about 3 seconds I thought about getting it and overdying it, but I know that would be a bad idea because it is likely to just sit in my stash for a while before I get to doing it. So, acrylic it is.  Now I just have to get a hold of her to get her headband measurements and I can cast on.  I never did find a pattern I liked, so I will just be winging it.

Dori gave me a bag of pink wool yarn and would like some soakers for it.  I am thinking about trying out Pam’s Everlasting Wonder Soaker pattern.  I signed up to take the class but wasn’t able to make it to a lot of the online sessions, but I think I still have the pattern around here.  Dori’s babe is just out of small dipes, so I think the wonder soaker would be a good investment at this point.  She has been making a bunch of prototype slings and diapers that she is thinking about selling.  She has been struggling with the diaper pattern and materials (she is wanting to make AIOs…the waterproof layer is giving her fits) but the sling is really coming along well.  She is doing more of a carrier type thing than a maya wrap type thing.  It is pretty cool and fits both her (who I would guess is a size 9-12ish) and me (who is…well…considerably bigger. lol)  She is still going to be doing some refining, but I like the design she has.  Zach has been helping her dh with the website.  (her dh does website optimization, so he knows what he is doing and has made a number of personal websites, Zach just helped with some of the finer points and the graphics when they hang out together here)

Zach just came back from the video store with some more movies.  We have an account at the local video store where we pay $12/month and can rent all the movies we want, but just 3 at a time.  Great deal for us sinec they are almost within walking distance…ok, they are in walking distance, but it would mean crossing a very busy highway, so we drive.

Last night was a wonderful first.  For the first time, Zane turned to me, held his arms out and cried “Mama!”  It sounds a little more like Mamoh, but he called me directly by name for the first time.  I know that is supposed to be one of their first words, and he has said it to other people, but he has never addressed me directly by name before.  I was trying to get him to go to sleep and he looked up outstretched his arms and said it and I forgot entirely what I was doing and picked him up and hugged him.  It took a minute for me to realize I should probably lay him back down because I was trying to get him to sleep, not wake up.  lol.

I haven’t heard how Joy did on her tests today and it is too late to call my mom now, so it will have to wait until tomorrow.  (unless she sees this and calls me, but I think she is asleep). 

I cut Zane’s hair today.  He might still look like a girl to the people around here who think the only appropriate boy haircut is a buzz cut,   but at least he won’t look like a girl with psycho hair.  I wish he would hold still for a ‘real’ haircut, but there is no way I am paying money when he won’t sit still enough.  I can give him a bad haircut for free.  There is no way I am giving that child a super short cut in the middle of winter when his head is used to 5 or 6 inches of hair covering it either, which is what I am sure the stylists in this area would try to push me into.  I did cut off several inches though.  I still need to even the bangs out a bit, but it isn’t too bad.

Zach came home from school tonight saying that halfway through his evening class, he seriously thought about dropping the class because he was so lost.  He didn’t take the prerequisite for the class and he really began to question whether or not that was a good idea.  As of an hour ago, he figured it out and can’t believe how easy it is.  He is so much smarter than he gives himself credit for sometimes.  I know it isn’t normal to take an 800 level class without the prereqs, but I knew he could do it anyway.

Filling out the food stamp paperwork tonight and realized that this month we are making $3 less than our basic expenses (rent & basic utilities)  There is money in the bank from student loans, but that is how much he is getting paid.  It is going to be a lean semester.  We did our taxes too.  I am not going to say what our income is, but I have no doubt that our net income for the year is probably about what my FIL gets paid in a week.  I know that our gross is less than my brother makes in a month.  No wonder we feel poor…we are.   To say we have no tax liability is an understatement….we could make about $13K more and still not have any tax liability.     I am guessing we shouldn’t have any problems getting food stamps back again…unless they mess up the paperwork again.  I hope they let Zach be counted as a person in the household…it is iffy…we had one caseworker count time in class as “work” hours (since he can’t work during those hours) since he is an adult student/parent, and a different one say he can’t be counted since he isn’t working enough hours.  Hopefully, they will combine his hours as a GTA and a student which will allow him be a member of the household so we qualify for FS for 3 people instead of just 2 people.  I do not get the ’system’ very well.  I seriously beleive that the only people that say it is too easy to ‘milk the system’ have never had to use the system.  It is a big pain in the butt and seems to be almost a full time job to keep your benefits some times. 

My *big* excitement today was that my middle toenail on my left foot finally came off enough that I could cut most of it off.   Now there is a little ridge of grabby toenail leftovers, but the whole thing won’t grab on to everything and feel like I am ripping my toe apart all day long.  I might actually be able to wear some socks and some shoes other than clogs by the end of the week.  (I have the hard plastic birki clogs with toe room…only thing I have been able to wear for about 2 weeks.)  Needless to say, I haven’t been working out for a few weeks due to this…I even called to ask, but they won’t let me wear birkis on the treadmill or the track.

Lo Mein

He worked for a while and did actually get some noodles into his mouth with the chopsticks.  He did eventually go back to a fork, but I was impressed that he tried so hard.

Ruh-Rohw!  Zane figured out that he can open the fridge door all by himself and doesn’t need mom or dad to open it for him.  He has been capable of doing this for some time, but we weren’t going to let him know that.  Mama is gonna have to be much more careful about leaving leftovers in the fridge and how she stacks things now. 

On another subject, it is really strange to understand what Zane is saying.  We realize now that part of the problem is that he wasn’t saying words, he was saying sentances, but he was stringing them together, trying to talk too fast, so much that it was/is garbled sounding.  Hmmm, wonder where he gets that from.    He is also talking well enough now that we are wondering if he has a lisp.  If he does, I guess we will need to look into some speech therapy after all, but that is sometime in the future.

Zach is doing well in school.  He actually had two students come up to him wondering when he was going to start teaching real classes so they could take them from him next semester.  The prof he teaches under was shocked to see a website for the lab up already (and that it looked as nice as it did) and was impressed that Zach was able to answer a problem she was having with blackboard (a communication tool common in colleges, and some high schools now — she needed to add him as a teacher assistant and had been emailing the people who are supposed to know the system really well to do that.  They had sent a bunch of emails back and forth a couple of times with no luck.  Zach got tired of waiting and looked it up himself, emailed her and voila! problem solved)  He is really thriving as a teacher and really likes it.  His classes as a student range from one that is insanely easy for him at this point (his first assignment is to design a website…lol), to a bit intimidating (first assingment is to design client-server programs that talk to each other using some languages he is not as familiar with…I don’t really get it either, before you ask)