Just dropping in to say HELLO to everyone! I have about 160 pages I need to catch up on, but I've been working my buns off making jewelry for a couple of shows I'm going to ... need cash for holiday shopping!
I was a bad chicken mommy today - it has been squalling non-stop here since Monday afternoon (snowing up till then), so heavy all the snow is gone except for a 3 foot diameter snowball that the kids made and parked under the eaves to keep it out of the rain. I need to get that thing back out on the lawn; they rolled it in the up from the part of the yard the chickens liked to hang out in, so there is almost as much chicken poop as there is snow in that snowball! At least the lawn is poop free now -hmm, maybe I can get them to make a snowball in the dog yard? Ewwwww
Anyway, I forgot to open the pop doors this morning. I opened them at noon. The chickens were MAD! Even Penny cussed me out in chicken language. None of the chickens bothered to go out in the yard, they just hung out in the runs and inside the coop. They give me dirty looks like I can control the weather too.
Speaking of cussing out, that is what I felt like doing to both my kids after parent-teacher conferences yesterday and today. Both kids got good grades in school only because the grades are very heavily weighted toward test scores and not HW. They did far better than I was expecting with both having better than 3.0 averages, but they are both missing massive amounts of homework and classwork. all their teachers told me that neither of my kids bother to do any assignments during class time and rarely turn in their homework. Olivia scored an average of 94% on all her math quizes and tests, and nothing lower than 85%, but of the 40 math homework assignments, she only turned in 17!!!and even worse, 13 of the 17 were turned in late, after she had already taken the tests! I went through her desk and found about 60 assignments that she had not completed (often not even started). I know how she will be spending her Thanksgiving break. I don't care if the trimester is over. There is no reward for being lazy.
I don't think they score things the same as they did when we were kids. Olivia's spelling is atrocious, and her penmanship so sloppy that it is very hard to read, but because of the prevalence of word processors, they no longer teach and correct these at school. Olivia is in 5th grade and they say she is at grade level for spelling and grammar and at a 12th grade level for comprehension. I think that is a bunch of B.S. I don't see it; and if that is true, then maybe she is not doing the work because she's bored with the busy work and they need to put her in more challenging classes. Or maybe I need to homeschool her. Neither of the kids should have had decent grades in some of their classes with the amount of work they had missing. It's like an award for being mediocre, like celebrating kindergarten graduation.
Or maybe it is all just me and menopause and I'm cynnical. I'll never be satisfied with anything for the next few years.
