Spring Break
It’s the last week of the term and what are the top 2 things that our students are looking forward to the most??
- Spring Break
- Turning in that last KGA
KGA’s and presentations typically make up the last week of the term. The students and the faculty breathe a sigh of relief once everything has been turned in, presented, and graded.
No More WCO — Until the 14th.
It’s official; the 1st term is over and the works that I wrote for two classes are mine to pick and choose and post to my heart’s content.
I survived the 1st term and maintained an A average. Pretty good for a gal who was in Special Education for ADHD and had to take Adult Ed to receive her High School Diploma. Don’t you think? The 2nd term begins on the 14th and I’m in for a loop. The three classes I have aren’t fly-bys like the first three were. I’m enrolled to attend “Critical Thinking”, the next English Class, Computer Applications, learning how to use MSOffice 2010, and Computer Hardware, learning how and what to do to build and fix one. I’m actually looking forward to it. I have my books, looked ‘em over, and put them back in their box, because of the imminent move.
As for Eshon, he’s 1 now and quite a handful. He won’t stay still for anything anymore; not even a movie or cartoon! He’s very smart, sneaking out of his play area and getting into things quicker than I can blink. He’s growing and teething, big time. Four new teeth on the top in front and the two on the bottom. Should I start “training” him to brush his teeth when neither of us do it? We’ve tried giving him a sippy cup with Graduates juice in it, but he just plays with it. We even try to teach him to feed himself with the spoon, but he plays with the spoon and throws the bowl (full of food) on the floor. He’s whining and squealing more for attention, which gets on my nerves. Lately, he’s even had baby-nightmares, which he awakes with a siren-sounding whine. At those times, I just pick him up, no matter how tired I am from my night meds, and rock him. He’s back to sleep in moments that way. During the day, it’s hard for him to nap. Reason? Because I’m in the room with him. We’re still in the dilapidated double-wide trailer, awaiting word from Montague Apartments on our 1-bedroom. Eshon will get the bedroom and we’ll be in the living room as our bedroom. Since Becky will be moving to AR (or so she says), she’s only going to take what’s in her room, and what fits. That means, we’ll get the furniture, which is a good thing. When and if we move, Eshon, the four cats (Shadow, Panther, Onyx, and BabyGirl) will be last.
In the meantime, I’m playing the waiting game for school and the apartments, mostly staying in our heated room with Li’l Man Eshon and trying to keep my head in the game, if you know what I mean. I have a lot to think about and do, prepare and write, but it all has to wait. Not to mention, I need to get a hold of our welfare worker and tell her that we have an apartment in mind. Once we do get into one, we need to get a hold of her again and tell her how much the security and 1st month’s rent is so she can write out a voucher (or whatever she has to do for the “once in a lifetime deal”) for the amount and send us on our way.
I also need to get a hold of 3 doctors for 3 reasons. Reason number 1: Me and my meds — a checkup and review, if you will. Number 2, asking Eshon’s Dr about his puking spells whenever I give him the milk-based formula. Could he be allergic to cow’s milk? Last, number 3, Drake’s meds that cause him to act aggressively and snap at everything and everyone. We’ve tried calling on that one, but the Doc hasn’t called back to speak to him about it.
On a lighter note, what should I do with my time between now and the 14th? Read? Write? Collections? Music/Books/Movies/Program DL? I know one thing: as soon as I figure it out, my assignment papers that I wrote for English and Personal Development are going to be posted. They’re mine, so why not? I may even create a new page for WCO Papers. I haven’t decided, yet.
For now, it’s getting late, and I’m bored of this already. So I say Sayonara and Namaste, Bon Noit and Bon Chance, thanks for listening and reading, and hope you enjoy the rest of your day.
I’m a Busy Little “B”…
Take that anyway you want, but I’ve been uber-busy lately. Hence, the real reason I don’t blog often anymore. It’s been a long time, I know, more than a month, but I’ve been juggling Eshon, Schoolwork and Home life.
- In school, we’re almost done with 1st Term. I can’t believe I made it this far. I never have before, and enjoyed it. I wait up each week, Sunday’s around 11pm PST/12am MST, to get the new week’s task lists for all three classes. What I do is basically copy/paste the task list and each subheading so I know offline what I need to do. I then write the assignments, in short, in the Student Planner. Math Mondays, English Tuesdays, and PDEV (Strategic Strategies, also known as Personal DEVelopment) on Wednesdays. We have to write an initial post in the discussion board by Wednesday, with 3 replies done by Sunday, both 11pm my time (PST)/12am their time (MST). All assignments are due by Sunday, same time as well, but I always manage to get them done on the day I assign them. If I don’t, like if it’s a paper that’s due that week, and I hadn’t had time to finish, I write in the Student Planner what needs to be caught up. Easy-peasy, right? This makes school a lot easier when I have to deal with Eshon as well. The only obstacles, besides the ones I told you about in the last post, are the research papers that I had to do in PDEV (Career Plan — done) and ENGL121 Process Essay as well as the Presentation using PowerPoint for my Informative Essay. I may have to rewrite it, no big deal, because the presentation is better than the original.
- Next topic: Eshon Draconis Dratianos-DeRose’s 1st birthday is coming up, and he is getting big. He’s more of a monkey, climbing on everything and everyone, pulling hair, slapping faces and pushing away and making monkey noises. It’s tough to feed him when he fights me every step of the way. I can’t even give him a bottle without him kicking or hitting me with his free hand (one is behind my back so it don’t get squished. I know I should let him feed himself, but all he does with the bottle or spoon is play with them. He’s quite intelligent for his age, too. We had a small wooden chair we use to feed him. When he’s not eating, that chair acts as a barrier between his little play area on my side of the bed and the rest of the room, where he can get into big trouble. More often than not, he’ll either climb over the chair, crawl under it, or just push it out of the way to get what he wants. He has this little thing about him, too, when it comes to toys and what we call ‘no-no’ spots, like the cat’s water dish (splash-splash) and food dish (nummies? Yes, he eats cat food. ew.) What he’ll do is take a toy with him and quickly race-crawl over to the no-no area. When I catch him, he looks at me and shows me the toy, as if to say “I’m just getting my toy, Momma.” Of course, I know better. He’s not in the talking with real words stage yet, but that doesn’t stop him from chirping, babbling to his stuffed animals and squeaking when he’s excited. He sounds and looks like an ADHD-boy by nearly-hyperventilating himself and shaking his body with big brown eyes when he’s excited. His current favorite colors are red and green. Not for Xmas, mind you, for Coca-Cola and Mountain Dew. Go fig, huh? He’ll num-num and scrape his bottom teeth on the caps of 1 liter bottles of each as he plays with them, throwing them across the room and watching the roll. He’s so big now, he’s wearing 12 month pant and 18 month top. Like his father, he’s broad-shouldered. He’s got my blonde hair (dishwater, as my mom calls it), Drake’s brown eyes with my chameleon-like color-change in them. Eshon’s not quite walking on his own yet, but I do work with him on it by holding both his hands. He’s getting the hang of it, as he can put himself in a standing position to scoot himself, using the bed as support, to whatever he wants before plopping down on his butt or standing by me beside the chair as I sit in it. It’s cute, really.
- What’s not-so cute has nothing to do with Eshon. It has to do with our current slum-lord. This place we’re in now is falling apart at the seams, quite literally. It’s a double-wide trailer that is sinking to the ground below it, forcing the two halves of the trailer to bow in opposite directions, kinda like a carot (^). Other things wrong with it is the plumbing — in the kitchen, the hot water faucet is cold and vice versa. In our bathroom, the tub leaks under the house and we’ve no hot water faucet holder, so we have to use pliers to turn it on and off. The electricity is shocking — in Becky’s bathroom, the lights shock her. In the kitchen, it blows a breaker if you use two appliances at the same time. Not only that, but the light switch is screwy — up means off and down means on. As for water, we have to share with the neighbors, for we don’t have our own. So they can turn it off on us whenever they feel like it, forcing us to call them about it. The well itself is in such bad shape, it bursts often, forcing neither of us to have water until Drake fixes it. Speaking of, he and Becky have done so much work around the property — putting in grass where there was only dirt, planting a veggie garden in virgin soil, cleaning up the crap left by Drake’s g’ma Ina and tenants before her — basically turning into a livable place, inside and out. I wanted to help when we first moved in, as I had nothing else to do, but I was pregnant and no one would let me lift anything. Did I mention the window’s leak, letting out precious heat that we have to buy to keep it warm-ish in here? I didn’t. Well, yeah, they do, and we do have to pay up the wahoo for gas that heats the house. There’s a huge tank behind it that gets filled, or somewhat-filled anyway. Another bad thing about this house is that the cooking is done with propane, so when we run out because we can’t afford it, we have to use a hot-plate and microwave. Fine with me, I know how to use both, but I hate to cook.
- On a good note, we finally used our ace card against our slum-lord. He refuses to fix anything that’s broken, saying it comes out of the money we give him for rent — 680/month now — so Becky called Housing Authority, who referred her to a lawyer who took the case. He’s goin’ down! We’re supposed to be out of here by the 6th of March, which isn’t far, so we applied for an apartment closer to town (Yreka). Unfortunately, the apartment complex we want to get in — however convenient for us: Doc’s offices next door, hospital across the street and walking distance to anything we need in town — is having trouble, so the lady that owns it told us about the ones in Montague, which are clean and safe(r) than Yreka. She owns them, too and told Drake and Becky we’d be able to get into a 1 Bedroom for now until a 2 opens up. Becky would have her separate apartment, of course, but we’d be neighbors so we’d be able to take care of each other and help each other out still. Just not live together. Thank the Gods.
- Anyway, we’d be allowed our pets — Sugerbear for Becky bc the dog’s her service dog, and our 4 cats because they’re mine for my depression — as long as we give them Dr notes or whatnot saying we need them. Becky already has papers for Sugarbear so that would mean I’d have to get one for Shadow, Onyx, BabyGirl and maybe Panther/Fur-Fur. After all, they do help me and I do take care of them. Anyway, besides all that, the apartment complex can get us in by the 6th. A good thing would be a one-time-only move-in-costs paid by Welfare — move-in, security, and 1st month, as long as it doesn’t go over a certain amount. You see, the complexes I’m talking about are low-income and usually have a waiting list of 6 months. Becky the sweet-talker talked to them, and so did Drake, telling them our situation and how bad it is and sealed the deal. We’ll get bumped up because I’m in school and Eshon is a baby. Not to mention Eshon and I will finally get out of the house and country-side. The Country-side is good for visiting, but not living for so long. Especially with no transportation and 30 or more miles to the nearest towns of Yreka (to the North) and Weed (to the South). It sucks.
- I’m always being left behind, taking care of Eshon of course, when Becky and Drake go to town. The only things I’m able to get out for is the mail when I walk with him to the box, and when we have appointments. WIC has been understaffed so we get 3 months worth at the same time to save time and gas. Good for them, bad for me. I don’t even get to go then, either. Becky and Drake are on the WIC account, too (meaning they can pick them up and sign when they shop), so where does that leave me? At home with Wee-Man. Alone, with nothing to do but the computer and taking care of him. When Wee-Man’s asleep, I’m on the net or reading, writing, whatever I can do on my laptop to take my mind off where I am and how sucky this place is. That’s one reason why I love school. It gives me something to do, and I learn a thing or two when I’m doing it.
- Week 8′s coming up, and so are Finals and preparation for Finals. As far as I know, 2 papers are due: PDEV’s Reflective paper, which reflects on what we learned and how we can use it in the workforce, and ENGL Informative Essay. You know what? I will rewrite it to match the Presentation. It sounds better that way. After Week 8 is the last week, 9. After that is one week of freedom before 2nd Term begins. This one ought to be fun. I found I have 2 Computer classes (one for applications like PowerPoint, Word and Excell, and another for the tinkerer in me, Desktop. The 3rd is a continuation of ENGL121 and PDEV111 put together, I think. Critical Thinking, I believe it’s called.
- Not only that, but the move will be interesting. Lugging 5 cats, 1 dog, 1 child, 1 exhausted mom *me*, and the two of them, Becky and Drake, from here to Montague. Drake says his boss/friend Tim will help, and Becky will talk to her brother Henry to help. The last ones to go will be the cats, child and me. I guess we’ll have to put the cats in a carrier together. A lot of good that’ll do, though. Shadow’s pretty mellow. He won’t mind being held. The boys, Onyx and Panther are mellow only with each other. Garfield, Onyx and Panther’s “Dad-Uncle” is a stickler with a ‘tude to match and BabyGirl is weird-wild. She’ll go in, maybe, but it’ll have to be without the boys. As for the kid and I? We’ll have to wait and see.
To Summarize: I’m a busy “B”, Eshon’s turning 1 on Wednesday the 22nd, We’re moving on the 6th and I’m almost done with 1st Term of School, with Week 8 out of 9 coming up on Monday.
What I Did While I Was Offline
By
LadyAdellandra
I was offline from Friday to Wednesday, and here’s why. There was a severe weather watch that turned into severe weather; winds akin to a typhoon, rains that drenched everything in its path, and such chilling temperatures in our part of Montague, CA that everyone stayed warm inside with heaters blasting.
The combination of wind and rain blowing in such fierceness of a typhoon knocked down the satellite that belongs to our internet company, as well as our internet. Saturday morning, called them and told them about it. We were scheduled to be fixed on Wednesday, which leaves me with the rest of Wednesday to copy my Week 4 assignments for my three classes, and post the initial posts to the discussion boards. I’ll have a lot of reading and catching up to do once we get back online.
As for what I did with my time, I did maintenance on both Drake’s and my laptops and Drake’s desktop. I tried to get his CD-Rom Drive to work with software, by opening the Device Manager, but it didn’t work. I don’t remember anything like that about XP, so I wasn’t able to do anything for it Saturday night when it went out. His desktop computer wouldn’t read it. All the drives that the Computer saw were C (main HDD), E (which belongs to DTLite), and F (which belongs to MagicISO). When my 2Gig Flash Drive was in it, it saw G. “D” is supposed to be his CD-Rom Drive, but it’s not seeing it. Either that, or it was somehow deleted by the System. I tried getting into seeing the list of partitions so I could do to it as I do to mine, but XP is harder to crack for me. I’d have to tinker with it to remember. Even searching through the “Help” doesn’t and won’t come up with anything. I used a can of air on the drive inside the computer shell and it worked like a charm. Now, it’s only a couple of the games he plays that won’t read. Not my problem. His desktop sees “D” as the CDRom drive, finally.
Sunday, I had to stay in the room with the baby too keep warm. We watched movies while I worked on the computer(s). Eshon’s not napping more than a few minutes at a time, and I’m wondering why. He’s been strange lately. I know he’s growing and teething at the same time, but it’s getting to be a pain in the toosh. We put him down at night at a reasonable hour, but he’s cranky and wakes up an hour or two later. He won’t go back to sleep unless I rock him and sing to him.
Other than that, I’m fairing with not having the net. I’m used to it. When we first moved here almost 2 years ago, we weren’t able to get net until April last year (2011). Until we did have it installed, I was writing up a storm, but not on my own laptop, for at the time, it needed a new cooling fan. Instead of mine, I was using Drake’s Toshiba laptop and fiddling with our old (and I mean old) IBM Thinkpad. While I was feeding and taking care of a very young infant Eshon, I would either read, write, or watch movies from my external hard drive. At the time, the Toshiba’s fan was heating up and forcing the laptop to shut itself off. So, that left the Thinkpad for me to use. Drake was now using his 2 TB hard drive on his desktop, once I had him put XP on it (we figured it out how with a couple of disks we had from my old, now nonexistent Dell Latitude laptop). Until we could afford it, with help from Aide, that’s what we used. Once we had the money, I was able to get my new fan for my Compaq laptop. I refreshed everything and tah-dah! Perfect!
As for schoolwork, I’m finished with Week 3, ready for Week 4, and worried about the rest of my schooling. Becky’s moving to Arkansas, leaving us stranded here, in the middle of nowhere, with no food, no transportation and no way of getting into town for anything. I’m running out of minutes on my cell phone. I did leave a message with Kelly, my Westwood Student Advisor about the weather knocking out our internet and not getting it fixed until at least Wednesday. I’m worried we’ll have to move (what other choice do we have?) and I’ll fall so far behind that I’ll have to quit or start over again. I actually want to finish something for once. I’m on a roll with Westwood now, and got a great team working with me on my studies and keeping me on my feet. I don’t want to quit. It’ll seem as I’m a failure. I want to learn about Computer IT; not only for myself and my own knowledge, but for my family’s sake. Since Drake can’t work right now, or perhaps never again, I’ll have to be the breadwinner. I want to make good money and be financially secure, instead of poorer than a medieval peasant.
Where are we going to go, anyway? We can’t stay here; everything is hell. The cold water comes from the hot faucet in the kitchen. There’s no faucet handle for the hot water in our bathroom. The electricity is shorting out, so the power bill is high. There’s no heat, and the landlord won’t do anything about it. We tried working with him, but he won’t put in a fire place. Fuel for heat is expensive and doesn’t last long. We have to use propane to cook, diesel to heat the place. The list goes on and on of what’s wrong with this place. Not to mention we have to share water with the neighbors, if we don’t have power, we don’t have hot water, the house is falling apart, and so on. Did I mention this double-wide trailer is coming off the foundation?
On a lighter note that has nothing to do with this dilapidated house, my writing is on hold because I have so much other stuff on my mind, I’ve completely forgotten what I wanted to do with it. Go fig, right? In the meantime, I’ve started collecting ebooks again, and am figuring out how to use Calibre (Portable version is much easier to handle.) so I can organize it all. So far, I have 21k books. I’m collecting movies as well. I found a list of movies that Drake and I had and pawned for money. Once I start reading those books in my genre, Science and Fantasy Fiction, I’ll be able to describe things better. I watch those movies I already have that are in my genre and pay attention to “How” they do things and keep notes in my mind.
Here it is, Wednesday and we were woken up at 0857 to someone knocking on the door. I’d just finished feeding Eshon his breakfast bottle and put him back in bed, him whining and myself half-asleep from medication when I heard it. It was the tech from the net company! Drake woke up and told me to go back to sleep. When they were outside putting the satellite back on the roof, they made so much noise I couldn’t sleep. Eshon slept through most of it, until the net guy started banging on the roof. Me, I went about my day and routines, from Eshon’s breakfast baby food, four-ounce bottle and 1ml of medicine with fluoride for his teeth to getting myself ready for the day. I made silver-dollar cinnamon pancakes and cinnamon scrambled eggs for myself while Eshon played on his mat.
Once he was down for his first nap of the day, I was online and trying to catch up. I called my student advisor to let her know I was back. Drake was called in to work a few hours so I was off and running getting the Week 4 stuff written down and started.
Boy, do I have a lot of work to catch up on. All this week’s stuff is due on Sunday.
Wish me luck!
A Sense of Accomplishment
I owe you, my readers, a lot of catch-up posts. This will have to do.
It’s Saturday 14th January 2012. I finished my schoolwork on time, and early. Say, on Thursday night?! I have a sense of accomplishment going on. I’m taking this student-parent thing one day at a time by focusing my attention on one subject at a time. Seems pretty easy, right?
At first, it wasn’t. I was going bonkers, trying to figure out how to do it, and take care of Eshon, as well as doing my house-chores like dishes, sweeping, feeding the cats and dog, changing the cats’ litterbox every-other day since there are five of them in the house. That kind of thing. I even got to the point I was going to drop a class, and my Student Adviser, Kelly, dropped English 121 from my schedule. After a hot bath and some serious thinking time, I figured it out and told her to put it back on. I could handle it. I had to. I am not a quitter.
Time to introduce the animals. Felines, we have a four-year-old ginger named Garfield. (Yes, he does eat lasagna; and just about everything else he can find on the property, such as rats, gophers, birds, mice, lizards that are under the house…) For those who knew me a few years ago, Garfield was the oldest of the now-lost or deceased Stormy. His sister, Sister, is the mother of Onyx and Panther. Onyx is a black cat and my familiar. Panther looks like a small, fuzzy version of Stormy and her father Merlyn, a part-lynx, part tiger housecat. We named him Panther because he looks like one, especially now that he’s been exiled as an in-out cat. Last, but not least, is the ‘baby,’ a light-colored calico named “Baby Girl”. Onyx and she are our lover-kits. While Becky’s gone to Arkansas for a couple of weeks, we’re watching her long-haired black Pomeranian named “Sugar Bear.”
As for Eshon, the Mini-Monkey-Man, he’s growing by leaps and bounds. Of course, they all do. He’s almost to the point he can stand on his own. I’m working with him on that. He crawls everywhere like Speedy Gonzales, the Mexican mouse from the Looney Tunes cartoons. One of his tricks is to drag or push one of his toys with him into what we call no-no places: cat’s water dish, kitchen, kitchen table, living room. We’d spank him and throw the toy toward his play mat. Just like a puppy-dog, he’ll fetch it and do it again. We also have a brown table with a shelf toward the floor. Eshon has learned how to climb on it and nearly-somersault over it. Since finding out how to do it, we’ve put a thin, medium-sized box behind it. Now all he does is bring his toys to the shelf and hide them behind the box. He also takes his shoes off and hides them. He’s a cheeky little devil, but we love him.
Ok, so I’ve introduced the animals and updated my readers to this day. What else is there to say?
It’s great having things finished. I just hope I can continue for the rest of term.
Brainstorming: Thunder and Lighting of the Mind
Bonnie “Adella” Pfeiffer,
8Jan2012
English121: Pre-Writing Exercise
Topics for Consideration
or, When it Rains Words, We All Get Wet
Each of us has thoughts and opinions on numerous subjects, based on what we live day by day. Our main problem, at least in my opinion, is our cluelessness on how we can organize those many thoughts and opinions of the world.
Say we need to write a paper for school. We gather our materials, narrow down the subjects and chose our prospective audience. It’s easy to say what you’ll write about, but what about actually sitting down at your computer/typewriter/pen-pencil-paper to actually write? We stare at a blank computer screen or empty notebook page for hours in hopes that it’ll magically come to us: the Perfect Paper. Question is: what will this “Perfect Paper” be about? In what perspective do we want to portray to our audience? Will it be a light subject, full of humor and satire, yet informative enough to make you think? Or will it be like the many news programs and elder-adult magazines like Time or National Geographic and be serious enough to bore your audience into a word-induced coma? There are as many ways to convey a message as there are subjects and topics to write about.
Between brainstorming to the many other methods of pre-writing that could lead you either everywhere, off the subject or nowhere entirely, it’s hard to begin. Here’s a thought: just write! Whatever comes to mind, it doesn’t matter, just do it. Just write. It’ll come to you, I promise, but you have to begin somewhere. Don’t just dribble thoughts, let them pour! Sure, it’s not always easy to do as opposed to saying. After all, we all know the saying: “Actions speak louder than words.” In our cases, just writing from the top of your head – commentary of your day, what you’re doing now as opposed to what you will be doing later or anything at all – leads to better thoughts while writing. Take some time away from the daily hassles and stress to just put that pen or keyboard to the test and let that river flow.
It’s now my turn to take my own advice. Which topic to choose, and what perspective or point of view to write in? From the top of my head usually works, but I always end up rewriting and editing many times and never being satisfied with the end result. (Just look at the many books I’ve written and rewritten hundreds of times. I’m still not happy with the first one, let alone the second through the seventh.) Should I go for the usual topics where the old adage “write what you know” comes to mind? Or should I start anew and see where it leads me? Take from what I write about, which is Young Adult Mystery and Fantasy, or begin with something a little more challenging? I know I want humor, so I can keep my audience enthralled, or at least a tiny-bit interested in reading on. I know it must be straight-forward and to-the-point, optimistic and politically correct. Can’t have people hitting me over the head with a blunt object should I happen to insult them now, can I?
I know – why don’t I write a paper on the process of writing a paper! Seems logical, maybe a bit nonsensical, but it should work.
You just read it; what do you think?
Indecision Brings Inspiration?
There’s a lot I’m undecided about. I just wish I knew what I was doing.
Juggling schoolwork and a family is the easy part. One subject a day, no problem. It’s the rest of my life that I”m undecided about. I’ve gotten lazy because of it, too. Don’t ask me how or why, I just have and am.
I know I have schoolwork to do. I know I have a baby to take care of. I also know I have house chores like dishes, but I’ve been too lazy and mopey to do them. Not because I have other stuff to do, and not because I’ll get to them when I’m tired of seeing them sitting there and piling up. I guess it’s because I’m suffering from a mixture of depression from not being able to go anywhere and of massive train-wreck-like thoughts running through my mind.
I’m ultra-distracted a lot lately. Either from thoughts of what must be done, which I may or may not forget the next morning, or whether I’m doing the right thing by continuing my education. I get one problem wrong in Math and I’m not-so-confident in it anymore. I’m psyching out and, instead of sticking to the “One Subject a Day” plan, I go back and concentrate, or try to concentrate on Math instead. I guess I’m down-determined to show myself I can do it.
What I’m mostly anxious and undecided about is my topic for English121′s 1st Project paper. I just reread and actually took in the fact it was supposed to be DESCRIPTIVE. So not my area or expertise. I’ve been working on describing things in my stories since I learned to write. I can see it in my mind, but can never find the appropriate words to bring it to life on paper. The topic is due on Sunday, 15Jan 2012. What shall I write about?
For one, I’ve started by doing my-kind of brainstorming. Just sitting at the computer, hands on the right keys and typing whatever comes to mind. Being a writer, you’d think it would be easy for me to choose a topic to describe to my audience.
*gulp* Yeah….right.
And monkeys fly out the hole in my butt and do the cha-cha.
My main problem with this whole Project thing is what topic would be good enough to show my true talent? What do I know a lot about, besides a whole lotta nuttin? Taking care of a baby? Ten months experience. Writing? 28 years experience.
If writing, than what about it?
Looks like I have a lot of work ahead of me. If you’ll excuse me…
Am I Procrastinating Again?
Or am I just overwhelmed by all the stuff I have to do for school and home?
I looked at all the assignments my three classes want me to do (most due 15Jan for Wk1 and Wk2) and wrote them down. A lot of reading for two classes and fifty pages of math review along with WebAssign (online math problems) for Pre-Algebra. I felt like a total blond today when I missed one math problem and couldn’t figure out what I was doing wrong. The answer? I wasn’t following PEMS.
For those who don’t know, PEMS is an acronym for the Order of Operations. Parenthesis, Exponents, Multiplication/division and Subtraction/addition. Sounds easy, right? For one who hasn’t kept up with Algebra in twelve years or so, I remembered the PEMS but forgot exactly how to do it.
The problem was something like this:
A=5, B=3, C=-2
2A – (-3B – C)exponent of 2.
I had to have an online tutor tell me where I went wrong. I wrote my solution (the wrong answered wrong) step by step, to which they pointed out what I did. As soon as they told me, I had a Homer Simpson moment — D’OH! Yeah, seems like I forgot to do the P part of the PEMS before the E. Other than that, I did awesome on that first assignment. 24/25 points.
I also turned in a .doc version of what the English teacher called “Writing Assessment.” She hasn’t read it yet, so I wouldn’t know what she thinks about it until she does, and ‘grades’ it. The other things I did today was post to all three classes’ discussion boards as well as reply to two people’s introductions. Looks like I have a new friend with a fellow-writer.
The “Home” part of the day is definitely a procrastination thing. I only did a couple chores today, besides taking care of Eshon. I didn’t even want to do that; instead, watching a movie or doing my homework while he napped. He ended up having a late lunch, sucky snack and icky-act at dinner. He even had a late bath, whiny and cranky as he was. I didn’t let him play with toys, instead getting him cleaned up, dressed, fed a 6oz bottle of formula and set to bed. He did pretty good for an hour or two, until he was woken up and I had to feed him the rest of his bottle and rock him to sleep.
Yeah, right, that so didn’t work. Drake took him out of his crib as he was babbling to his ‘friends’ (stuffed animals) and set him to play out on his mat for a bit. After another hour, his whines subsided and he was ready to succumb to sleep.
As for the house chores; dishes, sweeping, mopping, taking out the trash, et al; I find myself much too lazy. I don’t like doing dishes all the time, nor do I like doing laundry all the time. I know they have to be done, as well as the cat-boxes changed when the smell gets too bad, scooped when there’s too much poop, diaper trash gathered in the same bag and time as a kitty-box scoop, picking up after Drake, Eshon and the felines when they make messes. It’s a lot of hard work for one woman to do.
So, I’ve figured something out. School-wise, do one subject a day, as much as possible before the deadlines. Sure, there’s only three classes, but there’s also a lot of reading, exercises, research (for the first paper we have to do for English), commenting on replies in the Discussion Board we call “Classroom”, acting — such as the math problems in the physical text, or WebAssign’s assignments — writing, and turning in.
As for the chores, just one at a time, so I’m not so overwhelmed.
It’s easier said than done, I’ll give you that. What have I got to lose, besides the remains of my sanity?
Apologies are in Order
I apologize for not writing yesterday; I was getting my schoolwork figured out. To show how sorry I am, I’ll post my first Discussion Post for my College Writing Class. Hope it’s not a bit too much!
Sulheya and Greetings, All!
My intended area of study is Computer IT. I’m unsure where I want to go with it at this time, and hope to learn on my path to my Associates. I have learned computers from the time I turned 14. My dad gave me an old computer (TRS80 CoCo II. Now that’s old!) for my birthday, stating I’d “get bored soon enough.” To this day, I have yet to “get bored.” On the contrary, I’ve learned more and showed him a thing or two! I love learning about computers, programs, fixing, tweaking, building, etc, etc.
I could bring a smile, or a helping hand to this class. I may be a published author, but I’m always ready to learn more. For years, I’ve written, edited, rewritten and reedited many of my stories, poems, novels and novellas. I’m not always sure where colons and semicolons should go and small stuff like that, but I always have my dog-eared and much-loved copy of Strunk’s Elements of Style by my side. This tiny book has answered many a query about the correct English-writing style.
As for accomplishments, by the time this course has ended, I hope to have refreshed myself on a lot of points and tricks of the trade. I also hope to gain the confidence in my future writings, instead of putting it off because I see the work as “not worth the trouble.” I love to read, write, and learn anything I can get my hands on.
However, my biggest challenge is the dual-role of Mom-Student. I’m the mother of an almost-one-year-old who is growing fast. He’s more active by the day, so I have to keep close eyes on him so he doesn’t hurt himself. I’m not super-overprotective or anything like that. I let him make his mistakes so he can learn from them. I help him with his milestones like standing and walking. The student-part of the challenge is focusing on one subject or assignment at a time, not overwhelming myself with more than I can handle. I have Adult ADHD so that’s a challenge in itself.
Sorry for the lengthy answer, but, as I said, I’m a writer. I love to write!
Anyway, thanks for reading and hopefully, I can become friends with a few of you!
Sayonara and Blessings!
–Adella
*my preferred name.
There you have it: is it a bit too much for a first-time?
I Can’t Let Anxiety Get the Better of Me
In a last-ditch effort to make up for forgetting yesterday’s entry, here I am, hurrying to think of something to say.
Fear not, there’s always something on my mind. Right now, it’s getting enough room BACK on my hard drive for my schoolwork and software. That’s what I’m anxious about, really. It looks like I’ve got everything under control and then, BAM. I NEED MORE SPACE!
I go through the motions of running CCleaner, TuneUp Utilities 2012, and any other program I can run (one at a time, of course) to free up hard drive space. Then, I look at where the space is going by using TreeSize Free. Should that not work, there’s always cleaning out my Videos folder, passing the movies from my hard drive to my external hard drive and giving them to Drake for HIS computer for awhile.
That’s the only thing I can think of at the moment.
That, and how I’m going to attend my online classes while taking care of Eshon and not totally screwing Drake out of his turn on the Net. Not only all that, but how I’ll do. Sure, English is an easy course; I just might learn something new while being reviewed and reminded of what’s what and who goes where. Math, actually Intermediate Algebra, is not my strong suit. I mean, once upon a time, I used to be so good at it. As with everything you don’t use everyday, you lose it. The other class I have is a Success In College type of class.
Some good news, though. Eshon is 10 months old and pulling himself up to a standing position with help. We *coughSantacough* got him a toy that grows with him. He pulls himself to stand from sitting, to kneeling, and finally standing, just to get to the musical toy. I swear I hear him sing and even dance (by bouncing)! It’s so cool! We have to watch him closely, though. One moment, he’s on his play mat and the next, he’s in the living room, chasing a kitty. In the mornings, he wakes me up, babbling to himself. While my mind is adjusting to wakefulness, clearing the cobwebs from the eyeballs and the fuzziness from my head, he’s standing in his crib, watching me. He babbles, giggles, plays, bounces, and smiles as he watches me.
