JOY

Happy Monday. Of course it's an inchie Monday

This week's word is "Joy"

I can't think of Joy without thinking of our cat, Joy.

She's an unusual cat, not the brightest cat in the litter and she's fallen on her head a couple of times. Forget the rule of a cat always landing on their feet. Joy is the exception to that rule.

She may not land on her feet, but she kills something everyday. Gophers seem to be her favorite catch. I always have a blood stain by my front door. Have to watch where you step when you leave my house. My sister thinks a CSI team would have me in cuffs before I could explain. And seriously who's going to believe the cat did it???????

Happy Monday 

Spring Break

Finally, Spring break.........I'm old enough to think of it as Easter break. When I was a kid we were allowed to celebrate Easter, Christmas etc. So I should say, finally, Easter break. Seems as though our school district was the last to decide to have a break.Our Easter was nice, spent with family.
Now we have a week that will fly by. Need to get the homework finished early or it will be forgotten till Sunday night. I think half is finished already. I'm thinking Grace will finally be caught up when we return. May have a couple of tests in English to take, but other than that she should be good. Only four weeks left after we return until this school year is finished. I think I'm the mom that looks foreward to school being out as much as the kids do

Monday again.........

Happy Monday
This weeks Inchie challenge's focus is  "friends". Don't know why, but friends made me think of my many years teaching preschool. I was wondering when making and keeping friends gets difficult. Preschoolers make friends with just about anyone. They'll pick out the same friends to play with everyday, but they also consider everyone else in their class friends too. I don't know when we start getting so picky about who our friends can be. I think it should be more like those preschool days. As long as someone will share their play dough with you everything is good. Grace is still friends with her best preschool friend. They aren't alike at all, but as opposite as they've become they still find time to talk and would do anything for each  other. I am still friends with my best friend from elementary school, we met in first grade and at times were inseparable. Maybe we should just share our play dough again, life would be simpler.



getting my soap box polished for this

Hello. Oh just one moment while I drag my soap box over..................OK I hope I don't fall off, sure feel tall up here.
To all the bureaucrats that decided our kids need state testing to see if they've learned the state standards that the teachers aren't supposed to teach to. You suck!!!   It amazes me that every year since 3rd grade the students have been tested to check what they've learned. Of course their grades aren't effected. but the school's "grade" is. Numbers get thrown around for months. Did everyone perform better than the previous year? Did the school's rating improve? Will they continue to get their money? Are we worried about numbers or people?
It's crazy to me that the students spend at least a week before testing to  review for the tests, then about a week is spent taking the tests. the clincher is...........not all the materials have been taught yet. They still have 5 or 6 weeks of school left! So the standards that are so precious that they have to be tested on haven't been presented to the people taking the tests.
And to top things off NO minimum days, used to get to go home early after the pressure of " Do your best! set a goal higher than last year!" Geesh at least when Grace was younger she at least got tasty snacks on testing days. No more.
I don't know how many times she's had administrators tell her this week that they "need" her scores. She's starting to feel as if she's just a score to them.
Don't even get me started on the other number to worry about; SATs..........Ok I'm climbing off my box now. Will gladly pass it along to the next person. just don't take it too far. It's only Wednesday, we still have a couple of days of testing left I may need another climb on that box. :)

Peace

It's Monday so that means it's inchie time. This week it's peace. I thought of one of the most peaceful places I know. The beach at sunset. I used a picture I took a couple of years ago. Remember to check out all the fabulous inchies using the Every Inchie Monday link on my page.

Teen Moms??????

Friday, after school Grace's friend, Kayla, showed up at our van ready to spend the weekend. That's not unusual, I knew she was coming. What I wasn't expecting this weekend was a baby.

Kayla has a life skills class and she's been threatening to bring the baby to our house when she has it for a weekend, but I didn't think she'd actually follow through. She "claims" the teacher switched weekends on them and she didn't know until Friday afternoon.

Anyway, there she was with a 7 pound baby doll that cried whenever it wanted to, just waitig for Kayla to insert the right key into its back. Didn't take long before the girls had him named Carlos and we were on our way to do a little shopping. As I shopped Grace & Kayla stayed in the car with Carlos. I got an excited text informing me "he cried". They were enjoying this, but it was still the middle of the day.
The first sign of trouble came when Kayla was playing PS2. She was busy saving the world from some evil, when Carlos wailed, no sooner had she keyed him and got back to her game when he wailed again! HaHa pretty realistic  (except for the weird key thing.)
That night Carlos was nestled right next to Kayla for easy access. I heard him around 2:30 a.m.  Kayla took care of him and went back to sleep. I on the other hand was having trouble sleeping, maybe it was the nervous, new grandma jitters. Around 5 :00a.m. Carlos started crying, after a couple minutes I went in the room and told Kayla her baby was crying. She groaned, shifted through keys and he was quiet again. Suddenly I heard the  horrible rip of velcro, I turned around and there was Kayla with Carlos' little computer ripped out of his back!!! Apparently she'd had enough. The tamper light started blinking and that was the end of poor carlos. 
Kayla always says she'll be a horrible mom. Guess she meant it.

R.I.P. Carlos

Some things only take 5 months

A week before Thanksgiving, Grace insisted I make an appointment to have her wheelchair's joystick looked at for some repairs. It was starting to malfunction and she knew it would die, since she had the same thing happen the year before. So we made the appointment and the sales rep said he knew what the problem was, and if we could bring in her old joystick ( from the previous years' repair) he'd call in a favor and get it fixed  NO problem( famous last words). So we did as asked and waited, and waited, and waited.
About a month later I called to see where things stood. The report I got was that he was still waiting for us to bring the old joystick. It took a couple of days to get that problem fixed. And, we waited , waited waited some more.
During this time her chair did some interesting things, it would surge and send her flying across the room, it would just stop and not move, (seemed to pick rainy days for the stopping because I'm a stubborn mule routine) . And our favorite trick, going on its own across the room. look ma no hands!!!!
Anyway, I digress I would make routine calls and get the run around, I'm generally a patient non-aggressive person when dealing with people on the phone as I recognize someone is just trying to do their job and probably has no clue what or who I'm talking about. But I really was getting fed up. I was hearing from Grace almost daily about her "stupid chair."
At last, I was told that the company wasn't doing the favor we were told about and they were waiting for authorization for the repair. Well, that was closer that 3 months previous excuse. And yet again we waited, and waited, and waited.............. Finally!!! yesterday Grace got her chair fixed. She's a speed demon once again. Don't stand too close and watch your toes if you do. It's almost like she has to relearn what the chair is capable of.  They say patience is a virtue.........I don't know that I'm convinced.

Singing Inchie

Happy Monday All. This Monday we're focusing on the word "sing."  It's a perfect word for us where I live, it's definitely spring and the birds sing non-stop. While I thought I know what sing meant I looked up it's definition just to see, and was surprised at all the definitions. One of them was  be happy: to rejoice or be extremely happy:
Crazy as this sounds I thought of my sister's chickens. Now most people probably don't think of chickens as singing birds  more like cluckers. My sister lives next door to me our homes are very close we share a backyard area. She has turned the space into her backyard chicken farm. Now I have to tell you that those girls of her are quite proud and happy at egg laying time. You always know when one has produced a prize as she will let the others know she's laid the golden egg. Funny she lays it every day, but that doesn't deter her at all.
So, this is my attempt to represent those singing chickens. By the way, I have also discovered that chickens aren't as easy to draw as I expected. Doesn't look much like any of her chickens: but we'll call it "art" anyway. Good Day everyone!!



Ideas needed

I was talking w/ Grace the other day and was just wondering what to do with this blog during the summer. It's not far from us, YAY!!!!!!!! We don't have summer school, but we're still around. Our family hasn't taken a real vacation for years, just a day or two is usually all we manage. So there wouldn't be any exciting summer vacations to talk about. Plus we're saving to buy a better van, and gas prices are crazy enough to go too far.
So, we were thinking of some type of photo project to keep us busy. Trying to decide if we want to do a summer challenge where we get a photo every day or if we want some kind of treasure hunt for the summer. Either way we'll need help coming up with topics and your help would be appreciated.
The only thing that you have to know is that Grace can't get in swimming pools, lakes etc. The drowning risk with a tracheotomy make it too dangerous. And she refuses boating for the same fear. So peeps  any ideas???