Friday bullets - Jan. 8, 2021

It's been a week, huh?

• First an update on R. Yesterday J. took her to the follow-up appointment with the oral surgeon. I was not sad to miss that appointment, but was very anxious about it. The good news is that her tooth is still looking good. It was a painless appointment and R. was proud of herself for managing it. (Though in full disclosure, we had made sure she had the appropriate amount of anti-anxiety medicine in her system.) She was one more follow-up and then we are done at that particular office. Dr. Dearest did not endear himself to J., though. If you know J. in real life, then you know that he is pretty unflappable and has an amazing ability to remain calm and polite and cool-headed. To say that Dr. Dearest managed to annoy even my husband is to say how extraordinarily irritating he (the doctor) is. What made my teeth grind afterwards (because I am not unflappable and am easily irritated) was that when J. explained about R.'s past medical trauma and genetic disorder, Dr. Dearest had the nerve to say that he didn't know and no one told him. LIE! I told him both these things more than once. He just chose not to listen to me. We will not be seeing him again ever once the second follow-up appointment is done, and I got the sense that the feeling of relief was mutual. 
• So, if you feel led to pray, I would request that everyone pray that R.'s tooth remains healthy and the nerve does not die so that she does not require a root canal in it. Just writing that makes me want to hyperventilate a bit.
• Since we are on the subject of teeth, Nefertiti went to get her teeth cleaned yesterday. She was not a happy cat, though she did fine and everything looks good.
• We have survived our first week back at school since Christmas break. The first couple of days were a little difficult, but then things evened out as they always do. 
• A while ago (six+ years) Carl, the Little Red Pencil Sharpener came to live at our house. Carl worked very, very hard day after day. Eventually, about two years ago, we noticed that Carl wasn't sharpening pencils quite as well as he used to. This past year, he was barely sharpening him at all, so spent a good bit of time on the shelf while children used less friendly pencil sharpeners to sharpen their pencils. Finally, I managed to get around to ordering a new blade for Carl. It arrived yesterday and there was much joy! Carl can sharpen pencils again!! Once more children line up to make their pencils into the very pointy, lethal weapons they had grown used to. So, you could say that Carl had some dental work done as well.
• In slightly more serious terms, Carl has been well worth the investment. It was about five years of near constant use before we felt the need to replace the blade. The blade was about half what I originally paid for the sharpener, and I expect that we're good for at least another five years now. I love being able to replace parts and not throw something away when it stops working.
• I have signed up with our county to be notified when the Covid vaccine becomes available. B. has already has his first dose since he is an EMT. I cannot wait until life can return to normal!
• D. has nearly finished applying to colleges. Now we wait.
• We have been studying some of Van Gogh's paintings this year, and today we looked at The Starry Night. K. loved it and decided to draw a Lego version. He drew Lego blocks and then superimposed The Starry Night on them. I would take a picture, but my phone has informed me that it no longer has enough available memory to take pictures. Yes, that's correct, I will no longer be taking pictures with this phone. It means that I need to get someone else to take a picture of K.'s painting in order to share it with you.
• The toilet in the children's bathroom has completely stopped working. It was never fantastic to begin with, so if probably not worth trying to fix. That means we need to replace it. J. is not excited to add toilet-replacement to his list of home improvement skills.
• Oh, back to Van Gogh. I saw that there was going to be a cook interactive Van Gogh exhibit coming to Chicago this spring. I thought it would be perfect for us to go to. (Plus, it would help mitigate the fact that some of us missed out on seeing the Van Gogh Museum when we were in Amsterdam.) Well... I'm pretty sure we won't be going. Even buying tickets for the cheapest times, for those of us still at home, it would be at least $300 for everyone to go. I don't know about you, but that's not really feasible.
• H. has hit another milestone. This week we started learning how to carry in addition. It is not her favorite thing, but with support, she is doing it. When she was struggling so much with remembering numbers past 5 about five years ago, there was no way I would have ever imagined that learning to carry was something she would do.
• H. has also started to play Settlers of Catan with K. and Y. (who play it pretty constantly). She had never really tried to play it before now. After she got over her annoyance at having to give back half her cards when she held more than seven when the robber was rolled, she has really been enjoying it. I like watching the three of them play games together.
• Do you want to know the time when I like having horses the least? It is first thing in the morning in winter before I have gotten out of bed and I think about bundling up to go to the barn. Once I'm there it's fine. In fact, it feels kind of good to have gotten outside and done things. It's just the thought that makes me want to dig deep back under the covers. Is spring here yet?
• I was able to do a couple of errands today for the first time in a week. I happened to find Christmas candles on sale for 80% off. We are now set for Christmas next year. It will be a nice surprise to find them because I know for a fact by the time Christmas rolls around again, I will have completely forgotten I purchased them.
• This evening, there were many of us who expressed the deep desire to be able to travel somewhere... anywhere!
• This could be why I realized that out of my most recent batch of library books, four of them of travel writing.
• The week wasn't entirely dire with R. During school the other day, she looked at a number and said, "Mommy, that a 1." And you know what? She was correct. This is the first symbol she has been able to remember and identify.
• This whole memorize the periodic table project we've been working on based on the idea of the memory palace? I can tell you it works extremely well. We are not adding new elements as fast as I had initially thought, but what we do know, we know quite well. (We're up to Zinc - 30.) I know this because last week we had an activity in our chemistry program designed to help orient students to the periodic table. The first 20 elements were used and cards for them were set around the room. Then students were handed other cards which had things such as, "This element has 3 more electrons than helium" written on them. I was amazed when everyone could figure out what the answer was without referring to the periodic table. (The answer to the example is Boron - 5, by the way.) To humor me they wandered around putting the correct card in the correct place, but after a while, they finally asked if they could be done. I agreed since it was clearly an activity that didn't have any real value for them.
• Yes, I do think the President should be impeached before the 20th. I'm pretty sure that doesn't surprise any of you, at least I hope it doesn't.

And with that, I'll say good-night to everyone. Maybe this next week can not be quite as eventful.