Friday bullets, August 21, 2020

I'll dive right in tonight.

• There was no post yesterday because I was too exhausted. It was my one free day with absolutely nothing on the calendar, and I was looking forward to spending some time at home taking care of all the odds and ends that slip through the cracks. And then I remembered that I needed to renew my driver's license because it expired in early June and I was coming up on the end of the three month grace period. I knew I didn't want to try to add that errand into my schedule once school had started, so instead of getting to spend a quiet and productive day at home, I got to stand in this line instead.

Look carefully and you'll see the line continuing along that sidewalk.

There were definitely people in the line who were making their second or third attempt, having run out of their available time and had to leave. These were the people who brought chairs and umbrellas and drinks. I brought a book. I brought a book in which I still had one hundred pages left. I thought for sure that would be enough. It was not enough. This was more than a 100 page line. My book got me about 2/3 of the way through. Eventually, three hours later, I had my new driver's license. Standing for three hours in the sun can really take it out of you though.

• We had take-out for dinner. Instead of working on preparing food after tea time, I took an hour nap. I don't nap as a rule.
• J. brought home and hooked up our new (to us) washing machine last Sunday. It is working well and I am almost caught up with the laundry.

• R. had a better day today and seems to be getting back to normalcy. 
• I took G. shoe shopping today because she only had flip flops and muck boots to wear on her feet. She now has new sneakers and new dress-up shoes. My baby girl also now wears a women's size 7. 
• K. earned $30 dollars earlier this week. We still had some of the garden box soil left that had been sitting on a tarp in the yard killing the grass underneath. It needed to be moved but no one seemed terribly excited to do it. So I asked K. what he would charge me if he were willing to move the soil. He thought $30 sounded fair. At first I thought that seemed high, so we bartered to $10. K. worked for hours moving this soil. Long about hour two, when I realized exactly how long it was going to take him, I told him I would honor his first request of $30. Eight hours later, K. had the entire mound moved. He did a very good job and worked tirelessly. I was so proud of him and so happy to have the dirt moved. I had his money waiting for him when he was finished. K. was so tired that evening that he could barely stay awake during dinner. This is unusual for him. 
• Personally, I think heavy manual labor is an excellent activity for 14 year old boys.
• L. has a new pet. It is a frog. It lives outside. Earlier this week L. told me she really, really wanted to have a pet frog. I told her that there was a whole pond-full of frogs outside and that she should make one of them her pet. It was one of those brush-off parenting comments to avoid having to say no. I never thought anything would come of it. So L. troops outside to make a pet of one of the ten frogs living in the pond-formerly-known-as-a-hot-tub. Her first attempt at making one of the frogs her pet was Steve. Steve the frog was favored for a couple of hours until Steve tried to bite L, at which moment he was rejected from the honor of being L.'s pet. That afternoon L. moved onto Martin. It seems that Martin allows L. to hold him in her hand, to pet him, and whatever else L. wants without hopping away. (This has been corroborated by a neutral third party.)  Part of me thinks this is a remarkable example of frog-taming; the other part of me is shouting inside my head, "Don't name the frog!"
• My Wednesday horse classes have started and have gone well. (I think.) My Saturday classes begin tomorrow morning.
• Emmy earned star horse status around here earlier this week when she let R. lead her around. R. is unpredictable in her ability to follow directions or walk where directed, but Emmy just followed her along. 
• Y. is really, really ready for school to start again. She is done having to entertain herself and wants a schedule. Today she got out her math book and did a lesson. One thing about starting after Labor Day is that usually everyone is more than ready for some structure to our days and the whole transition to school goes better.
• We could really use some rain.
• I am still not ready for school to start. Not even close. But, I am learning a lot of chemistry thanks to the middle school chemistry program I found. It's not that difficult. I don't know why concepts couldn't have been presented better in my high school chemistry class. I have even taught myself how to balance equations now, which is something high school chemistry had convinced me beyond my capabilities.

And with that, I'm going to bed, because I just had to delete two lines of the letter 'k' that I evidently pushed down on when I dozed off for a moment. Good night all!