PMS

Do you know how I know I’m having PMS when I have no period? It’s when I feel like this:

ARRRRRGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!

BOOOOOOOOOOooooooooooooooooooooo.

HIIISSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS.

FOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOD!

 

I have no desire to do anything productive. I can’t think of anything to write or say about anyone else’s writing. I hate noise and my headaches are worse. I feel fat. I am constantly hungry, but nothing sounds good. I feel depressed and like I want to cry, but I don’t know why. I want to be alone, but I’m lonely.

I guess I should be thankful that I won’t be on my period – no pads, tampons or ick. But gosh, I hate PMS.

If you “Like” this blog post, you’ll get a free trip to Disney World!!!!!

Sometimes I read a post on Facebook that says all I have to do is click “Like” and something wonderful will happen. Like I’ll get $100 gift cards to my favorite restaurants, free tickets to various airlines, a brand new puppy… And I think, “Oooh, this will be so easy! It’s almost too good to be true!” And sometimes I’ll move my mouse over the word “Like,” and then, I’m about to pull the trigger, so to speak, when this little voice (it sounds a lot like Tom, oddly) whispers for me to verify that it’s not a scam. Do you know that every single time it’s been a scam? I mean, come on, I thought for sure the puppy was the real thing.

 

Oscar the Grouch

I loved watching Sesame Street as I was growing up. That was before they introduced Elmo and he took over the neighborhood with his insanely annoying optimism and stupidity. In fact, I can remember when all the adult people thought Snuffy was Big Bird’s imaginary friend – Big Bird would tell the person that Snuffy was just around the corner but Snuffy would shuffle away before anyone saw him. Check it out. I actually had a crush on Snuffy. That raspy low voice got me every time. But he was only my second favorite Sesame Street character. My first was Oscar the Grouch.

Sure, he was mean and grouchy. Sure, he lived in a trash can. And he lived with an elephant – that had to stink. Despite all that, I knew that there had to be a reason he was so unhappy. Monsters don’t just flip and become cruel overnight. Maybe his mom didn’t read books to him when he was little. Maybe the other monsters at school teased him because he had green fur and his only defense was to put walls up so they couldn’t hurt him anymore. Maybe he was manic-depressive and his doctor didn’t recognize that he needed help.

Whatever made him so awful, I felt sorry for him. I just knew that if I could get to Sesame Street, I would have been able to coax him into trusting me – much the way I got the kitten that some jerk kids had thrown onto my grandpa’s barn roof to trust me when she wouldn’t let anyone else touch her. It might have taken time, but I was certain that I could make Oscar like me.

I’m not known for my patience. In fact, I coined the phrase “I’ve been asking God for patience and I can’t figure out what’s taking Him so long to give it to me.” But somehow, when it came to lost souls, I didn’t mind taking all the time in the world to reach them. Of course, I’m only referring to lost fuzzy or feathered souls. Mean people be damned, I thought. (Well, I didn’t know the word “damned”…) Send me a dog that growled and cowered when I came near and I was willing to risk life and limb to make it trust me. I often succeeded, too. Animals that hated everyone else came to me – albeit cautiously – letting me pet them and coo at them that everything would be alright.

Somewhere along the line, I realized that Oscar was a puppet. That someone wrote words in a script for someone else to read and that the reason he was cruel was because of the writer, not because he was hurt as a small monster. I was bitterly disappointed. All those hours writing letters to 123 Sesame Street asking for them to let me come and heal Oscar… wasted.

At some point, I also stopped rescuing small animals, though I still wish to. I think I realized that I couldn’t save them all and it was too painful to rescue one and while others still suffered. It makes me grumpy, though, thinking of all those abused and frighted critters that just need some patient love. We got our cat, Tuco, from the Humane Society and there were dozens more cats who were abandoned for one reason or another. It shed too much. It ate too much. It clawed me when I smacked it.

It’s enough, sometimes, to make me want to go live in a trash can with an elephant shouting insults at passers-by.

How to homeschool three small children and only end up in a minor mental institution

Well, we’ve officially decided to homeschool our kids past this year and it’s spurred me into coming up with a plan to teach the kids all they need to know without losing what little sanity I have left. I read about a system called workboxes and found it to be a little extreme – 12 boxes for each kid? Where am I supposed to keep them? Not to mention the cost of buying a box they won’t destroy. Besides, she said her goal is to make kids not talk as much. WHAT? But what I liked was the idea of the kids having a finite number of tasks to do during the day and being able to see that they are almost done, etc. So our modified system works like this:

Using Lesson Pathways I have set up a learning path for each kid. It’s an amazing site, really – it has links to free resources and lessons for each subject. All the work is done for you, other than printing out lessons and finding supplies. So at the beginning of each week, I go through their pathways and print out everything I need for the week and put it in a labeled manila envelope. I also make sure I have all the supplies I need for the activities I want to do corresponding to each subject – manipulatives for math, construction paper, magazines, foods, whatever. I’ve used up January’s budget for homeschooling, but in Feburary, I’ll get a small cabinet to keep everything in so it’s not cluttered everywhere and it’s also easy to keep organized. Honestly, with that site (which is FREE!), it’s really simple to get everything ready for a whole week.

Now for the part that makes the day to day stuff a little easier. I have a storage thingy (that’s the official term for it, in case you wondered) that has three drawers and each kid has a drawer:

Inside each drawer is the kids' folders, supplies for the day and their cards.

We bought folders for each kid and I put any papers they will need for the day in them – art papers, worksheets, coloring sheets, etc. Also in the drawers are materials they need for the day are in there, too: manipulatives, playdough, play money, etc. I also put a snack in, if I remember. The most important thing that goes in is their “task cards.” Each kid gets twelve tasks to complete each day – and they have a chart to stick the completed task card to so they know how many they have finished and how many they have to go before they are done for the day.

Now before you go saying “Twelve tasks?? That’s too many subjects for one day!”, keep reading. Some of the tasks are actual school subjects – music, reading, math, science, history (social studies), etc. And other tasks are fun: Read a book with mommy, get a hug, play a game together, time to dance, free time, snack time, and so on. It’s lunch time today and the kids’ charts look like this:

Notice the fun things, too!

If Ethan pulls out a science card and there’s nothing in his drawer to tell him what to do, he comes to me and I give him the task. We’re talking about classifying things, so he got to sort coins today in as many different ways as he could think of. Monday, he’ll classify animals from a magazine by gluing them onto different kinds of papers. I got those ideas from the Lesson Pathways site I was talking about, I’m not that creative! Sometimes, though – like on the first day they learn something, they might have to sit with me and I’ll have a lesson paper that tells me how to introduce the topic to them. Once they complete the task, they put the sticker (using velcro) to their chart and go on to the next one. When all twelve things are done, they are finished with school for the day.

This is only our first day with this method, and the biggest issue is that they keep interrupting me to say they are ready for the next thing and what should they do? To solve that, I told them they can look around and see what toys, books, supplies can be put away while they wait for me to find a good place to pause whatever I’m working on (teaching another kid something) so I can help them.

I’m excited about this new system. I think once we get into a routine, it will make life much less complicated. And it’s flexible enough that I can give them lots of “small tasks” on days when we have places to go, or other things to get done. I have 48 total cards – many of them have repeats so each kid can do the same subjects on the same day.

As for my sanity? Well, today is a little chaotic because we’re still figuring out how to make it run as smoothly as possible. But I’m happy and really getting time with each kid individually which makes me feel like I’m doing something that really matters. And that’s a good thing.

All that just to see a MOUSE???

I want to take my family to Disney World. I want to see Sienna’s face light up and watch her chew her cheek because she is shy and happy at the same time when she sees the “princesses” in person. I want to hear Kaylee squeal with delight when she sees Tinkerbell and watch her hug the “fairy” and say “I love you!” to her. I want to see Ethan’s face when we get on a plane and take off down the runway at break-neck speeds, to see what he says when the wheels leave the ground.

But do you know how flippin’ expensive taking a family to Disney World is? I’ve been pricing it out and I’ve come to the conclusion that no one in their right minds would ever pay that much money for a vacation. If we used a value resort (we can’t get a standard room because we have too many people in our family; the world is made for families of four) and tried to get by with the “cheapest” tickets, etc. it would be around $2500 for four days (I’m sure there are ways to make that lower, I’m just saying that’s what I’ve found in my small bits of research). That’s not counting airfare or gas money/hotel if we drove.

There are days when I think I’d pay a million dollars to make my kids happy. But there are two things I have to remember:

1. Money doesn’t buy happiness. It might buy a trip to Disney, and that trip might make my kids happy, but so would a trip to the ice cream place down the street. As long as kids aren’t programmed to expect something huge, small things will make them happy.

2. $2500 could feed a whole lotta people in a country like Haiti or India. There are people out there who feed their families on an income of a dollar a day. $365 a year. How can I justify spending that much money on anything so frivolous as a vacation?

Don’t get me wrong; going on a trip with your family isn’t wrong. I think it’s perfectly appropriate to get away and spend quality time with your kids. I’m just angry that it costs so much for something that I want so much. I’d say we should all boycott Disney until they bring their prices down, but I really don’t see that happening considering how we’d have to get everyone in the whole world who’s thinking of going to boycott as well. I kinda don’t think we’ll be taking our kids there – at least not anytime real soon. Because as much as I’d love to see their faces on a Disney trip, I can find lots of ways to bring wonder to their lives that are pretty cheap in comparison. It’ll be my own personal boycott on a place that, regardless of the saying, isn’t really the happiest place on Earth. Anyone care to join me?