Weekly updates - Nov. 4, 2022

I'm pretty sure I'm not ready for November, yet here it is. At least the weather has been (bizarrely) warm.

• I have used my new treadmill every day this week except for Thursday when we are dashing out of the house for co-op. So far, the lure of getting to watch a Great Courses lecture while I walk has proven effective and makes the forty minutes feel a lot less tedious. I think my body is still adjusting to the extra exercise, though, because I have fallen asleep on the couch after teatime more than once this week.
• The dishwasher still does not work. I am thankful that everyone has spent some time washing dishes over the past several weeks.
• Olive is our house guest for this week while A. is out of town. This is pretty much what she does all day.

Well, that and every time a car drive down our driveway she wait hopefully by the back door looking for A. She definitely misses her person.

• Here was my surprise when I went out to feed the horses one day this week.

That would be a shed snakeskin sitting on the medicine box in the tack room. I was very confused. It seemed an odd place for a snake to molt, so I texted J. to see if he put it there. He didn't know anything about it. Later I was in the barn with G. and mentioned the snake skin. It turns out G. was the one who put it on the medicine box when she found it in a corner of Java's stall. It all made a lot more sense then. Evidently our barn snake is a live and well... and a little bigger. The underside is in the photo down below.

• Look at the fog that appeared on the evening of Halloween. It was very, very cool looking.

• I'm pretty loose about people keeping their bedrooms clean. That's why God created doors, right? But every so often, things get bad enough that I feel I must wade in and insist something must be done about it. Depending on the child, though, this is precisely what they cannot do. The whole process is overwhelming. My method in this case (and has been for years) is to sit in their room with them, often doing some hand work (today was spinning on a spindle) offering guidance and an external brain for keeping on track. ("This would be easier if you first picked up all the garbage and threw it away.") While older children definitely need this kind of help, so do teens. I've seen so many posts of angry and/or frustrated parents who are convinced that there is something wrong with their child because they don't know how to clean-up a room. It is a learned skill, and one that often needs some external support. Sometimes a lot of external support.
• One of the benefits of spending your entire day watching your child clean their room, is the opportunities for conversation it provides, especially if they are listening to their preferred music. Evidently it is vaguely annoying to have your mother commenting on the erroneous logic behind (most of) the lyrics and what mistaken viewpoints are being made. If done long enough, the child will then put on something that they know I like, no doubt because of the annoying comments. I feel it is a win-win. I end up getting to listen to music I enjoy and I got to point out why some lyrics are concerning. 
• I have already started buying the extra Thanksgiving groceries I know I'll need.
• I love it when the bills are all paid and there is enough money to make it to the next pay period. I spend the rest of the day so relaxed and peaceful.
• Anyone else dreading the returns from the election next week? I am so very concerned that the lunatic fringe is far less fringe than I want to believe. Please vote. More specifically, please vote for rational people who do not buy into conspiracy theories and who see all people as fully human.
• All this past week at the barn where I take lessons (and where P. works), they were having first responder training. Essentially, the emergency workers in our town were learning how to handle horses, to move them to safety,  and to rescue them from accidents. The area where we live has a lot of horses so this is incredibly important. And since I live here and have horses, it makes me very pleased to know this type of training happens.
• At her group this morning, H. learned how to finger spell her name in ASL. (Some of the participants in the group communicate through ASL.) But what was really impressive, is that she was figuring out how to spell other words that used the letters she learned from spelling her name. How far this child has come!

And with that I'll call it a day. Don't forget to change your clocks this weekend.