frozen pipes part 2

There will be no pictures of Dad doing dishes. About 2 o'clock today the pipes thawed and so that thar new fangales thang called a dishwasher is doing the dishes. Amazing!!!!

Boring day. That's all folks.

frozen pipes

Day three in Vail. Dad and I both stayed in all day yesterday with temps ranging from 22 below in the morning to a burning high of minus 7 later in the day, it was just toooo dang cold to go out. And our hot water in the kitchen is frozen so we had the pleasure of entertaining two plumbers and our landlords for most of the day. We had a heater pointed toward the pipes all night to no avail. Pipes still frozen today. Landlord coming around two today. It really isn't his responsibility. The Simba Run maintenance people should fix this problem!! Dad left about an hour ago to go skiing by himself. It is still below zero so I don't expect he will be too long. In the mean time I now have 3 days of dirty dishes to contend with. Tried to clean two days worth in the dishwasher last night but with no hot water going to it either that didn't work!! Yuck!! At least I dint' run the drying cycle so the food is only partially caked on. Double Yuck!! Dad said he will haul hot water from the bathroom when he gets back so we can do the dishes in the sink. Oh yeah! Oh yeah! He will have to wash cause it is really hard to do with only one hand! Actually impossible. Plan to go run on the treadmill when I get done with this. Please don't judge my grammar, spelling etc. or i will never blog again. I promise I won't judge yours. This is stressful.

Oh, other than this water problem, the place is much better than the east vail place. Locaation is great. Much bigger and the view is great. Also get alot more TV stations.

Omg. This whole thing just disappeared. Don't know what I pushed but it was just gone. Okay, found it along the bottom of the screen in whatever you call the place where things go when you make them little. I thought this was all for naught. As I said above this is stressful!!!! xo

snack stress

Apparently the stereotype that Jewish people are frugal does not apply to snack time at preschool. Not that it is ACTUALLY stressful bringing snack to school, it IS more intensive than it should be these days. First the school rules are clear, no sugary snacks or home-baked snacks, no peanuts, nothing that is not pre-packaged (in other words can't be from a restaurant, deli, etc. more on the later). Then there are the unwritten rules one gathers from the examples of the elaborate and expensive snacks previously brought in. Varieties of organic fruits and crackers, cereal bars and granola bars. Not store brand either and certainly not the usual Ritz or Quaker Oat! In fact when a mom brought basically a Ritz Cracker in a plain brown recycled paper box "Back to Nature" brand, she made it clear "these are Ritz Crackers without all the junk." okay, fine. I already shop at Whole Foods anyway because I like the store (small, friendly, close to home) and I like the salt-free soups and grass-fed beef (confession). Some parents already were scolded for breaking the actual written rules-one mom brought cupcakes for Halloween, and another Matzo Balls from a bakery or where ever the heck you buy fresh Matzo Balls (not approved because of possible contamination being that they were prepared by whoever??!). So i was on high alert not to break those rules AND because moms actually quip about choking hazards (I brought raisins(organic) and overheard that comment!) and things being too hard to eat (another mom brought Clif Bar crunch, it was the crunch that got her), I was scouring labels and thinking about whether ALL kids could eat things. It was stupid. I was annoyed, I settled on Clif Kid organic Z Bar (soft and chewy) at $3.69 a box times two. And since everyone brings a fruit and cracker, bar, whatever, I also got Bare Fruit Organic dried apples on sale 2 for $4. Yes, that's basically $12 for snack AND keep in mind that Thurs class celebrates Sabbath on Thurs since they won't be at school Fri, so the school provides Challah bread at snack time so it is a totally unnecessary amount of food. This does not deter moms from bringing two snacks every time and sometimes a drink on top of it! Even though the school provides milk!

I told the cashier and bagger how I spent a ridiculous amount of time determining what to bring and they mocked the situation saying "do you like my organic, vegan, gluten-free, creme brulee I brought?" and the other said, "imported from France." then I said, "no way, it's got to be LOCAL" to which he replied, "oh yes, all the ingredients came from my own garden!"

I also might add that a friend of mine whose daughter goes to the same school writes a Christmas Letter every year from the point of view of her daughter. In the part where the "daughter" talks about school one line said, "and dad tries to get mom not to chince on the snacks for my school!" LOL TOO MUCH!!

Really....??

Two things....
1. Yesterday a elementary school student in my district went home and told his parents that the substitute (who has been there for several days) hit him. The parents calmly walked into the office,and asked to see the substitute concerning an issue with their son. When the sub came to the office, he put out his hand to shake the father's hand and the father decked the sub in the face....knocking him out. He had to be taken to the hospital. The father stood fuming in the office stating "Go ahead and call the fucking police!" He was taken to jail where he later posted bail. The kicker.... the child later confessed that he had lied. Grand! It is no wonder the kids I teach fly off the handle at every obstacle or affront to their personal wishes. They have learned to act/react out of their emotions like their parents. sigh....

2. Today, a collegue of mine was walking a beligerent student to the office when a fight broke out at the opposite end of the hall. As is the custom with fights students...including the one being taken to the office....tried to swarm toward the fight. My friend was telling the student to stand back when our principal stepped out from her office to ask my friend if she was "okay" and if she "could handle" the girl. My friend stated that she "could handle her in her sleep" but that the real focus should be on the fight (and growing swarm) down the hall. My principal's response....? She turned around and went back into her office. sigh....

Mile high life

Back from preschool and it was a great day since negative mom didn't show up. Her nanny was there and her child actually seemed a lot more relaxed too.I didn't hear any complaining proving that she starts it every time! Also I could talk about the downtown school planning committee without fear that she will get involved! It's already hard enough to agree on a concept with the great group we have. It seems we are running into the problem every school has and that is if you ask a group of people what they want a school to look like, operate like, etc you will get as many different answers as there are people in your survey! I think the climate now is so against public education that the feeling is that a new school has to look as far removed from a regular public school as possible and that's just crazy to me. We don't need to reinvent the wheel in my humble opinion. We just need to have a model with high standards and STICK with it! Consistancy I am finding is so important. I think that is why this whole montessorri trend is sooooooooo popular Montessori is Montessori, you get what you get and you don't throw a fit because the standards are clear and consistent. Another thing that parents are loving about Montessori is the life skills and etiquette portiion of the curriculum. Remember home ec? I never had it. How about learning how to answer the phone, take a message, greet people and make small talk? That's what they do and they learn how to set a table, they have high tea... A waste? I think not, some kids just won't go to college or even high school and if they learn those things at a young age I would think they would conduct themselves with more confidence and just be better citizens period. Remember getting graded for citizenship? We get so caught up in creating baby geniuses and super scienctists that we forget how important it is to learn about"REAL LIFE"! Like this group, they are on the right track about a lot of things, but they are so caught up in "personalizing" education, like it's a restaurant where you can just order the type of education you want for your kid from one school, that they are forgetting that public school used to be the only option and kids graduated from said public schools, went to college and did some fabulous things for society. We really need to get back to basics, stop trying to be so fancy and frilly and gimmicky. RJ is currently on the waitlist of a catholic school near us where students perform at least two grade levels above average on tests and has a high graduation rate and high college attendance (what they can track-admittedly it is difficult because students move out of
state etc) even though most students go from private k-8 to public high school. And guess what, it looks just like a school, doesn't do
anything whacky, they sit at desks and learn consistent basic material and are taught how to treat people as you would like to be treated.
I'm just sayin'.... PS. If they don't learn it before high school forget about, add the baggage they collected and a teenage attitude to a kid who hasn't learned the basics, really? You think you can uncover that mess!? Maybe one or two but a whole school full? Yikes!

Counting down the days...

The task: Write a five page paper in response to this question: In light of Iran's continued defiance of Security Council Resolution, how should the United Nations respond from the perspective of the Japanese UN delegate.

After taking 13 weeks of an Introduction to International Relations class, it does not seem likely that a student would be able to come up with a solution to an issue that has been long going. There are people in the world that are experts on Iran and they can not come up with a solution.

Also, no one in our class will work for the Japanese government, due to the fact that we are all Americans. Wouldn't it make more sense to study the perspectives of the American government since that will be the government that some of my classmates will work for.

And last, I do not care at all about this class or this assignment. That is why at 10 o'clock the night before it is due, I have exactly one page finished. It is going to be a long night of bs-ing my way through yet another paper.

I can't wait til May 2011 when I am finally done with college.

The man cave remodel photos. Picture 1) Matt chiseling out the toilet.
Matt putting in the new concrete floor which the tile will be put on.
The concrete drying.
The new tile.
The old man cave floor. YUCK!