Jessie and Julia

I tried to truss a bird today. Here's how it turned out.

The Learning

I took a couple of online PD courses this weekend. I'm working to meet some state requirements so I can renew my teaching license. For one course, offered through my former district, I had to watch a video, write a response to a few questions, and reflect. I shared what I learned and moved on.

For the other course, I needed to pay $30 to read some materials and answer multiple choice questions. It wasn't hard, but it did require some close reading. Not of the information in the text, per se, but of the answer options themselves. Here's a sample: 

RTI stands for:

a. Route to Intervention

b. React to Interruption

c. Response to Intervention

d. Response to Interaction

The answer: This is the dumbest test I've ever taken. 

It had no relationship with my actual knowledge of intervention strategies in the classroom or my ability to draw upon them in effective and meaningful ways. 

But I passed. So I guess I'm qualified to teach children in this fine state?

Hiatus

I've decided to give up Facebook (for a month, to start). It's rare that I post anything there, but I do look at it a handful of times each day, usually at moments when I should be doing something else. But that's not even the main reason I'm giving it up.

Mostly, I'd like to be more selective about the things that I read. Not having so many stories at my disposal every day may be a place to start. There's only so much I can fill my head with. And I plan to be more thoughtful about what those things are. Too often they are determined by a Facebook prompted rabbit-hole that, while wildly interesting and often important, just isn't what I meant to be spending my brain energy on.

Instead, I'm going back to books. And magazines. And the Sunday paper.

They seem like enough for now.

The Week In Review

Dave continues to be sick and miserable. He's gone to work every day despite that and crashes on the couch every night.

Sam is sick, too. It's remarkable how much snot can come out of someone so small.

Eloise refuses to eat in her high chair. She throws her food on the floor until I let her eat on my lap. She's also feeling under-the-weather due to this same cold, her 15-month shots, teething, or all three and, subsequently, cannot sleep.

I feel rundown from attending to all of the above while trying to keep things together on the work front as well.

Weekend, it's good to see you've almost arrived.

A Witch's Hat Day

My favorite part of this picture is Sam licking the snot running down his face as he runs down the hill. You might want to zoom in for it. 

In Sickness

Dave is sick. Like really sick. Fever. Aches. Sore throat. Coughing. Can't speak. And seems to have some sort of limp?

Anyway, whenever I ask him about the illness and try to get a sense of its progression, he only responds with nonspecific and dramatic statements such as, "I have death," or "I can barely survive." This. From a doctor.

And in those moments, I'm reminded of all of the times that I have been sick in similar ways, and Dave, who shows me immense support and love in so many other ways, has given me a nonplussed, "huh," or a dull, "interesting," when I describe my pain.

Or I think about that time I had mastitis in my breast and needed to back out of a concert we had planned on attending, and he asked incredulously, "What do you mean you're not going?"

So I'm trying really hard to feel appropriately sorry for Dave while he blows his nose next to me on the couch, but mostly I'm keeping my distance so that, if I'm lucky, I won't have to be on the other end of this in a day or two.

Late Night Update

I finished and submitted one of two papers. I did my part on the other one and am just waiting for a co-writer to do her part. The whole house is asleep save me. I should go to bed, but I'm clicking around the Internet instead. And there's nothing good out there, from what I can tell.

Meal Time Madness

This one. If it's not on her face, it's on the floor.