At least we’re not going from one crisis to another.

Mr. A+ is not recovering well.  This last round of surgery and ICU treatment set us back nearly one year.  His spirits are crushed, but he never stays down long.  Right now it’s my turn to remind him that he’s got to give himself some slack.  Biggest trouble of being a type A person?  You’ve got very little ability to just be, you’ve always got to be doing.  Right now he needs to just slack.

Short list of school work:

Science: A Fishy Story –  Why have the numbers of cod in Canadian waters dropped so sharply?  Breeding.  Trawlers.  Moratorium.  Overfished.  Sonar.  Satellite images.  Food chain.

Copywork: Continuing with Narration and Dictation from ‘The Borrowers’ by Mary Norton.

Grammar: More Writing with Adverbs.

‘The Seventeenth Swap’ is now finished.  ‘Heidi’ is nearly done.  ‘A Horse and His Boy’ is on deck.

‘Shades of Gray’ is about 3/4 finished.  We did a review and test on that today.

We are now reading from ‘The Landmark History of the American People’ by Daniel J. Boorstin.  This is to supplement all the historical fiction Mr. Brilliant is reading.

Writing Skills: Fact or Opinion?  Writing directions.  Writing a sequence of events.

Reading Comprehension: Recognizing Details: Hurricanes.

Spanish: Computer lessons.

Math: Singpore Math Lesson 3 with workbook pages.

Been away for a while

Mr. A+ has been ill, he leg re-clotted.  I’ve spent the last two weeks dealing with that.  We are all home again and school is beginning in earnest for Mr. Brilliant tomorrow.

 

A few words about Miss Bliss:

Miss Bliss was awarded the leading role in her school’s next dance/drama production.  It is nearly unheard of for a leading role in a high school production to go to a 7th grade student.  I was told this has only been done once before in the last 20 years or so of the school’s history.

Miss Bliss received her report card today.

She made the Honor Roll and missed the Head of School List by 0.1 of a grade point.  She earned an A in Art, Classics, Latin, Dance, Drama, English, French, Geography and Pre-Algebra.  She earned a B in Life Science.  She is active in the Dance Club, the French Club and the Culture Club.  She doesn’t know it yet, but she has been tapped to represent her school during her sophomore year as a foreign in exchange student.  She has also been tapped to go to Italy either next year or the year after, as part of her summer program for Latin Studies (again, another honor rarely offered to lower class-men).    Her art work is being show-cased on campus.  Because of her mature attitude and friendly nature she was moved up to the 8th grade study hall.  She is expected to advance through part of the 8th grade curriculum during her 7th grade year.  The head of upper school has already requested Miss Bliss sit her classes as she wishes to have a guiding hand in her studies.  If Miss Bliss continues on this well through her lower grades in high school, she will be sitting honors classes in 9th grade and will be sitting classes with the head of school by her sophomore year.

Wow!

Comments on Miss Bliss’ report card include; ‘…creative with wonderful sense of originality’  ‘…enjoy her enthusiasm and her can-do attitude’  ‘…absolute joy to have in class’  ‘…dedicated, consistent’  ‘Optime!’  ‘I admire her forthright personality and her unique way of looking at the world.’  ‘…knows how to analyze literature and express herself well’  ‘…bright and creative young lady, demonstrates real motivation.’  ‘…is able to make sophisticated connections throughout the curriculum.’  ‘…prepared well of assignments and confident in her results.’  ‘…focused and attentive, reflective and comfortable with the material.’

I hope my daughter is please with herself and her hard work.  She has surely earned the right to be called an honor student.

Not much to see here

Mr. Brilliant departed for SoCal this morning.  He was cool as a cucumber but I was a bit of a mess.  Not that I let him see that.

Miss Bliss will enjoy a extra long weekend of sleep overs with a number of her school mates, events include a volleyball playoff, a horse show, a trip to a farm and a trip to the dog park.

I’ll be headed to Philly Friday morning.  Mr. A+ checked into the hospital today, he has tests tomorrow and surgery on Friday.

Distance learning, or, to Grandma’s house we go

Mr. Brilliant will go to his grandma’s to stay for 10 days while I get my husband sorted.

Mr. A+ will spend the weekend in the hospital in Cleveland, then a friend will collect him and drive him to Pittsburgh.  Perhaps this friend will drive Mr. A+ to his surgeon in Delaware, or perhaps I will fly to Pittsburgh.  Either way, Mr. A+ will have someone drive him, in stages, from Cleveland to Delaware.

Next Friday he will have surgery to fix the clot in his leg.

I’m still scrambling to manage care for Miss Bliss, but it is much easier now.  I reached out to her classmates’ parents and there is one family that will take Miss B for two days, another family that will drive her to and from school twice, another family that will take her for a night and two teachers who offered to take her for a night each.  With the help of our neighbor and our babysitter, I think we have it covered.

So I will delay booking air travel until Mr. A+ has his travel all locked and loaded.  In the mean time I will farm out the pets and pack and prepare Mr. B’s school work so his grandma can take over instruction for 10 days.

I still haven’t made the Prune Cake from Pioneer Woman’s cookbook, that will just have to wait.  Today Miss Bliss plans on making cookies and Mr. B has asked to make ice cream.  He has also been asking to make potato chips for weeks now.  Today may be a good day to do that.

Not much more than Spanish done today.

Tuesday we did school, but Mr. Brilliant decided to see how hard he could push his dad, so school was more about pushing boundaries than getting work done.

Yesterday we did school, but we halted early to take Mr. A+ to the airport.

Today Miss Bliss was home ill and Mr. Brilliant decided that if his sister didn’t have school, than neither did he.  I was too wrapped up in my grief about the friends lost in Seal Beach to make a stand with Mr. Brilliant.  So long as he worked his 2 hours on Spanish I was ok.  He did.

Tomorrow Mr. A+ is having unexpected surgery.  I don’t care if Miss Bliss goes to school or not, Mr. B. will be doing a full day, and then some, of school work.

Most of what was planned for this week has been achieved, it just wasn’t done with much grace.

I am so thankful no one in my family was injured yesterday.  We did lose three friends, no one close to us, but people close to my family in Seal Beach.  My father-in-law just called, I spoke with my mother-in-law earlier today.  Such grief, so much sadness.

Today at A+

Copy Work.  

We have nearly finished ‘Writing with Ease’ Level 1.  Yes, it’s aimed at a 1st grader and Mr. Brilliant is in 4th grade and doing 5th grade work, however, he has issuing with his handwriting and listening skills.  This work addresses both.  Additionally I am examining where he may have gaps in his grammar.

Spelling:

Plurals.  I have trouble getting Mr. B to slow down enough to do this right.  He knows it is fox/foxes but he keeps writing foxs.  *shrugs*

Writing & Research:

Research and write 4 facts about 2 breeds of cats, from the Stuart Little unit.  At this moment he’s sitting and looking at wiki and yelling at me that there no facts there.  *facepalm*

Math:

Rounding, place value

Science:

Short discussion and then writing paragraph on electricity.

Native American names of local mammals:

Deer:

Catawba: wideboye (wee-duh-boy-yay)

Cherokee: ahawi (ah-wee)

Racoon:

Catawba: ciqene (chee-kuh-nay)

Cherokee: kvtli (cutt-lee)

Fox:

Catawba: depeyamuye (duh-puh-yah-moo-yay)

Cherokee: tsutia (joot-lah)

Rabbit:

Catawba pv(n)wa(n) (pun-wahn)

Cherokee: tsisdu (jesse-doo)

History & Art:

Continue work on Landscape.  Make list of items needed to build model of Native American – LowCountry home.  (LowCountry is spelled correctly, I didn’t forget the space between words nor capitalize the C in error).

Social Studies and Reading:

‘Liberty for All’ by Joy Hakim – completed chapter 6

‘Indian Legends’ an Oak Meadow Collection – completed chapter 13

‘Who Was Helen Keller?’ by Gare Thompson – completed chapter 2

‘All Sail Set’ by Armstrong Sperry – working on chapter 2 (despite Mr. B loving ‘Call it Courage’ he’s struggling with ‘All Sail Set’.  Ironically, Mr. A+ has spirited away this book and read it himself).

Read-aloud:

‘Turn Homeward Hannalee’ by Patricia Beatty

It’s Thursday. It’s Flooding.

Common here in Chucktown, a heavy rain to start the morning, with wellies required to walk around downtown.  Miss Bliss has to wade to class, her school often being an island when there is a downpour.

So it goes…

Mr. Brilliant is still ill.  We are going to call today a school day.  I’d not send him to class if he were in public school, but he’s getting cabin fever just sitting at home watching TV and playing video games.  He’s healthy enough to do school work cuddled on the couch with me or Mr. A+.  Speaking of my husband, he went into A-Fib again last night.  I slept in my clothes with my phone on and under my pillow, just in case.  Thankfully we had a mostly peaceful night and Mr. A+ converted overnight.

Today is our 20th wedding anniversary.   I am so lucky we are celebrating our 20th anniversary, we nearly didn’t make it.   Mr. A+ suffered deep vein thrombosis last year and that resulted in 4 pulmonary embolisms and a cardiac thrombosis.  He also suffered a small stroke.  The cardiac thrombosis resulted in him suffering now from arterial fibrillation.

 

School items for today include:

• Writing: Putting Ideas Together.  Using Fewer Words.  Nouns, common nouns and proper nouns.  Review outlines using ‘Sing Down the Moon’.
• Vocabulary: Synonyms.  Unscrambling words.  Abbreviations of months.
• Animals that Swim — From the’ Stuart Little’ unit
• Placing Countries on the Map from the South America unit
• Subtracting 2 digits from 3 digits (with renaming)
• Copy-work
• Reading Comprehension: Stories from Kipling, related to fables and creation stories
• Read ‘Indian Fables’
• Read ‘All Sails Set’
• Read History text
• Spanish lesson with Ms. Naomi
• Review ‘The Great Turkey Walk’
• Continue building Catboat – from ‘Stuart Littl’e unit, with research of ship terms from ‘By the Great Horn Spoon’ unit.

Difficult?

It’s not too difficult to keep a blog, but it becomes challenging to keep up with daily posts, especially when I am hoping to keep with a theme each day and have at least one day where-in I show my book-marks and such.   The number one priority of this blog is to documents Mr. Brilliant’s work, posting daily and making the blog entertaining will come along, sooner or later.

This weekend was kinda busted.  Screw that, this weekend was totally a bust.  Friday night hubby was feeling icky so date night was just a quick dinner out.  I’m not complaining, or at least, I didn’t until Saturday morning, when the less than fresh salmon returned to haunt me.  I slept nearly the entire day getting over the agony of the early morning hours.

Sunday Mr. A+ had an episode of rebound tachycardia, pulse was 170+ for over 10 minutes while he was lying down, he was grey, sweating and shaking.  That required a 911 call.  Our local First Responders popped over and we ran some EKG’s and generally socialized.  Due to my husband’s medical conditions we have the First Responders over about twice a month, so we’re all real friendly.  They’re a great group of men and women.

Monday saw Mr. A+ having been in A-Fib for over 24 hours, so we’re off to the ER.  Ironically, he converts moments after we walk into the hospital.  The poor man is being looked at askance by the ER nurses and he’s reduced to pulling out his tapes from the last 24 hours saying, “See, see, I was in A-Fib, really, I was.”  (No, the nurses did not give my husband a hard time, I’m just adding that for dramatic effect).

Today the remains of Tropical Storm Lee are over-head.  It’s 87F and about 98% humidity.  Gross.  Windy.  Driving the bridges to get off the island is a daunting task.

Thankful Thursday

1. We don’t have to evacuate.
2. Mr. B made a fairly complicated recipe all by himself.
3. Miss Bliss is enjoying 7th grade.
4. Mr. A+ continues to leave stomach issues behind him.
5. My father-in-law had a quick and easy surgery on his heart and now feels much better.

Introducing Mr. A+

You do not want to piss off this man.  He will fuck you up.

Ironically, he’s really a teddy-bear. Additionally, it is extremely difficult to piss him off.