sick
This is my second round with this virus and I hope it gets the Do Not Want message clearly this time. I stayed home yesterday and probably will today as well. This is a slow week at work, trying to set up new projects, thinking long term-- things I do extremely poorly with a head full of...stuff.
Had various meltdowns yesterday, possibly indicating abdication of grown-up brain in favor of six-year-old brain. Or simply not enough active, working neurons to deal with life. Run-ins with #2's teacher, book fair volunteers, dance school admin, grocery store checkers...these are normal things, minor irritations, not usually ending in tears.
The school thing has me flummoxed. The teacher did a section on habitats in science. #2 was to do a poster about the desert. A visual poster was the instruction, with two animals and two plants. Apparently she stressed in class there were to be no words, just a visual representation of the habitat. #2 doesn't transmit her oral instructions to us very well. What we did was research various deserts, pick out animals and plants, learn facts about them for the oral presentation, and make a poster with pictures of these animals and plants, and a map with the deserts indicated.
She sent it back. Apparently she wanted a shoebox full of sand with a plastic palm tree shoved in. Or a drawing of sand dunes with stick animals pencilled in? I'm about done with her. We had no idea what was wanted for this project and it was all our fault for a) not having a son who can communicate her directives b) not understanding the directives she sent home, and c) not spending even more time tracking her down to ask for clarification. It is indeed, all our fault.
#2 learned a great deal about different desert habitats, but she'll never know it. And he'll probably never want to do it again. My inner six-year-old wants to stuff the project, and tell her to go ahead and fail him. It's a sick feeling of power in a way. Teachers are evaluated on the basis of how well the kids do. If I abdicate my responsibilities she'll be the one punished. And of course #2 will be too, which is why it won't happen that way. It makes me feel even more ill knowing she is the teacher already targeted for termination next year. And she's a good teacher, by and large. She and I don't mesh well on a personal level, but that is truly beside the point. Guilt, guilt, guilt.
So poster it is. Maybe he can do the Gobi desert and draw the Mongolian death worm. He'll like that. And we'll have to re-do the presentation as well. *sigh* By Friday.
I was not fit for human company yesterday, so I slept and edited and watched tv until forced out to pick up children. The DVR is filling up with Sanctuary, Doctor Who, and Criminal Minds, so older stuff has to be consumed and deleted.
So I finally got to the rest of Being Human S2. What a bummer. And yet compelling. I liked the 'no one is a hero, no one is a villain' complexity of this season in particular. I never did buy completely into the Mitchell/Annie affair. And I wish they'd gone a bit more into Nina's reasons for initially favoring abortion, and not fallen back on the abused child makes a bad mother trope. She had perfectly good medical reasons for having qualms, and she is a nurse who would know. Still think it could end very badly, werewolf baby that is. If I was here, I'd schedule an early C-section and get that thing out of there at a time other than a full moon. Lia by the end was very interesting. Plus a shout-out to Gilbert which is always good.
Couldn't write with stuffed head, but did get some editing done. Found some weird things in Heart's Desire...I think LibreOffice (Open Office that was) did some substitutions either during a spell check or during a file recovery. I know I didn't write them originally. Like 'Manilla' for 'Anla'Shok', and 'Hazel toe' for 'Mazel tov'. I certainly don't remember approving the changes, and I keep my finger on the 'ignore' button when I spell-check to allow all the out-of-dictionary words. Weird. That story is almost dead to me. It doesn't gel anymore; the emotions seem disjointed, like they don't flow one to another, and I feel like I simply can't read it through again. Maybe it will end up in the 'never posted' file. On the other hand, Enfold has gotten way better after languishing there for a while, then getting some harsh editing. The ending still doesn't sing to me, quite. It surprised me that it seems to have come together; that one seemed a lost cause. Rose is ready although I'm in the 'omg this sux' phase with it. I try to ignore that feeling at this point. It generally fades after a while, moving to the 'not so bad' phase. I did catch a plot failure while editing Rose yesterday. In connection with that, what the hell would you call Minbari underwear? Underwear? Underclothes? Panties? Bloomers? Lingerie? Underthings? Unmentionables? Language is my downfall with even the slightly risque.
Almost time for kids to start getting up. I woke up at 4, so it's been a long morning already. If I doped myself up with cold medicine I could go in today...god I don't want to. I want to sleep. I am going to sleep.
If I wake up in time, I'll post some links I've accumulated.
This entry was originally posted at http://vjs2259.dreamwidth.org/211671.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
Had various meltdowns yesterday, possibly indicating abdication of grown-up brain in favor of six-year-old brain. Or simply not enough active, working neurons to deal with life. Run-ins with #2's teacher, book fair volunteers, dance school admin, grocery store checkers...these are normal things, minor irritations, not usually ending in tears.
The school thing has me flummoxed. The teacher did a section on habitats in science. #2 was to do a poster about the desert. A visual poster was the instruction, with two animals and two plants. Apparently she stressed in class there were to be no words, just a visual representation of the habitat. #2 doesn't transmit her oral instructions to us very well. What we did was research various deserts, pick out animals and plants, learn facts about them for the oral presentation, and make a poster with pictures of these animals and plants, and a map with the deserts indicated.
She sent it back. Apparently she wanted a shoebox full of sand with a plastic palm tree shoved in. Or a drawing of sand dunes with stick animals pencilled in? I'm about done with her. We had no idea what was wanted for this project and it was all our fault for a) not having a son who can communicate her directives b) not understanding the directives she sent home, and c) not spending even more time tracking her down to ask for clarification. It is indeed, all our fault.
#2 learned a great deal about different desert habitats, but she'll never know it. And he'll probably never want to do it again. My inner six-year-old wants to stuff the project, and tell her to go ahead and fail him. It's a sick feeling of power in a way. Teachers are evaluated on the basis of how well the kids do. If I abdicate my responsibilities she'll be the one punished. And of course #2 will be too, which is why it won't happen that way. It makes me feel even more ill knowing she is the teacher already targeted for termination next year. And she's a good teacher, by and large. She and I don't mesh well on a personal level, but that is truly beside the point. Guilt, guilt, guilt.
So poster it is. Maybe he can do the Gobi desert and draw the Mongolian death worm. He'll like that. And we'll have to re-do the presentation as well. *sigh* By Friday.
I was not fit for human company yesterday, so I slept and edited and watched tv until forced out to pick up children. The DVR is filling up with Sanctuary, Doctor Who, and Criminal Minds, so older stuff has to be consumed and deleted.
So I finally got to the rest of Being Human S2. What a bummer. And yet compelling. I liked the 'no one is a hero, no one is a villain' complexity of this season in particular. I never did buy completely into the Mitchell/Annie affair. And I wish they'd gone a bit more into Nina's reasons for initially favoring abortion, and not fallen back on the abused child makes a bad mother trope. She had perfectly good medical reasons for having qualms, and she is a nurse who would know. Still think it could end very badly, werewolf baby that is. If I was here, I'd schedule an early C-section and get that thing out of there at a time other than a full moon. Lia by the end was very interesting. Plus a shout-out to Gilbert which is always good.
Couldn't write with stuffed head, but did get some editing done. Found some weird things in Heart's Desire...I think LibreOffice (Open Office that was) did some substitutions either during a spell check or during a file recovery. I know I didn't write them originally. Like 'Manilla' for 'Anla'Shok', and 'Hazel toe' for 'Mazel tov'. I certainly don't remember approving the changes, and I keep my finger on the 'ignore' button when I spell-check to allow all the out-of-dictionary words. Weird. That story is almost dead to me. It doesn't gel anymore; the emotions seem disjointed, like they don't flow one to another, and I feel like I simply can't read it through again. Maybe it will end up in the 'never posted' file. On the other hand, Enfold has gotten way better after languishing there for a while, then getting some harsh editing. The ending still doesn't sing to me, quite. It surprised me that it seems to have come together; that one seemed a lost cause. Rose is ready although I'm in the 'omg this sux' phase with it. I try to ignore that feeling at this point. It generally fades after a while, moving to the 'not so bad' phase. I did catch a plot failure while editing Rose yesterday. In connection with that, what the hell would you call Minbari underwear? Underwear? Underclothes? Panties? Bloomers? Lingerie? Underthings? Unmentionables? Language is my downfall with even the slightly risque.
Almost time for kids to start getting up. I woke up at 4, so it's been a long morning already. If I doped myself up with cold medicine I could go in today...god I don't want to. I want to sleep. I am going to sleep.
If I wake up in time, I'll post some links I've accumulated.
This entry was originally posted at http://vjs2259.dreamwidth.org/211671.html. Please comment there using OpenID.