Sure is QUIET

James apparently willed himself through hockey (he was moved up from the rookie team to the senior team) and then completely crashed. Luckily, today there are/were 3 hockey games on. As soon as he got home from hockey, he lay down on the couch and has not moved since. He fell asleep at 6pm and just woke at 9pm. He's barely eaten anything all day. He had cereal for breakfast, half a sandwich and an apple for lunch and another bowl of cereal for dinner. This is not his normal intake. Hopefully, the sleeping helps him.
I managed to finish off my marking and make that turkey soup and Michelle's cornbread recipe to go with it.

Happy Birthday!

Happy birthday bro- hope you have a great day!

James is off at swimming now and he has hockey at noon. He's not 100% but he's not bad- we'll see how swimming treats him.

I have my last pile of marking to do and am making turkey soup today.

The sloth

My cousin Tammy entitled this move on beam 'the sloth'.

James almost puked this morning. One of my students almost puked this morning. Will it stop already?

James was feeling better in the afternoon and went to the Fronts game tonight. I hope he really *is* better! I'm going to try to get some marking done while they are out!

upside down

I got tied up too long with my class and Myron needed me home early so he could go to a small group dinner so I ended up not going to RMC. I'll have to apply myself more seriously there starting Mon.!

There is snow in the forecast every day for the next 5 days. I seriously have no place for all this snow! Tonight there wasn't too much snow so it was fairly easy to shovel off. The snow is not too bad on it's own- it's the stuff that the snow plow leaves in the driveway that is so heavy!

The kids were wired on the school bus today- all excited about the PA day, I guess. James stayed up late watching a hockey video, totally loving the PA day early. I am loving that I don't have to make a lunch tomorrow.

Too much

The pictures above are from James' gym class where he earned his first badge - a red one :)

Today we got heaps of snow. The school buses didn't run so Myron drove James to school in the morning and I picked him up and we walked home after school when the going was a bit more difficult for cars. I shoveled from 3:30-4:30 but it was still snowing heavily so I went out again at 8 and shoveled more. The snow had stopped by then, so I think I've got things under control. The snow bank is pretty much as high as I am now. I have no more places to put the snow! A wandering group with a snow blower (turned on) came by and asked if I wanted them to snowblow, but I was almost done by then. I thought of my mom as in my area this happens all the time- people offering to shovel or blow your snow (for a fee) but she doesn't seem to have that in her neighbourhood. She needs more enterprising teens in her area!

Tomorrow I have a class in the morning, then am heading over to RMC in the aft.

Friday is a PA day for James.

Fire prevention

Bob's hand preventing fire
Bob N. tried to reduce the fire risk from candles at Rustle by moving the candles off the gauze (above picture). Shortly after this picture was taken and Bob had left the now "safer" table, I saw a child come up and play with the now- near- the- edge- of- the- teble- candles. Rustle didn't burn down though! (or even catch fire!) The fire marshall can breathe a sigh of relief for another week.

My mother tells me that the flowers from the previous post will stop blooming soon, so I won't fret too much and think it's me.

Breakfast at Rustle

Flowers not to kill

Before she went away, Michelle gave me these flowers NOT TO KILL. With the idea that if they spent time with me, they would be better off than if she just left them at home. Ha ha. We'll see about that. I told her my mother was good with flowers. She said I could ask her for help. But she's a bit far away to take a peek at my flowers and tell me what to do! So, anyway, any advice to keep them alive would be appreciated.

James watched the super skills hockey thing last night. He kissed the TV when the guys he liked came out. Tonight is the all-star game. Can we colour him excited?

At 3pm, James decided he wanted to go out 'tobogganing'. By this he meant we take out the plastic sled and walk around the kingscourt neighbourhood for over an hour. Grannie called shortly after we got back and he told her what we had done and she asked him wasn't it COLD? NO! he responded IT WAS HOT! -10 weather, my child snubs his nose at you!

Elvis

I just saw Eija's last blog post was also entitled Wow. Ha ha.

I have a ginourmous stack of marking that I am so far avoiding, by trying to deal with all the chores that need to be done around the house.

I got all the chemistry videos loaded on the webpage, I'm just waiting until I get the ok from the computer guy that I am actually allowed to post them before they go 'public'.

This morning, the boys went to James' swimming lesson. They also got their skates sharpened and James got a hockey coaches whiteboard for drawing plays for his teams. He seems to thing as a 'coach' for his teams, I will be able to make the plays on the whiteboard. I didn't even know they HAD plays in hockey. I thought they just skated after the puck and tried to score. But I can draw pretty pictures on the board. I'll plan some pretty complicated stuff.

I saw Michelle and Brian before they are heading to see Elvis. It was a nice break :) Have a good trip you guys too!

Wow

Apparently, when I get busy, my blog gets really boring!
It was a crazy week. I probably can't begin to describe it - so I won't. It was difficult, indeed.
Also, one of my TAs is stuck in England waiting on his VISA, so I am doing his work as well!
This evening, I have spent gobs of time getting some 80s chemistry videos online for my students but can't decide if I want to make a joke like "Watch these videos before the 80s call and want them back" because my students were born in 1990! (They have to watch the videos as prelab for their chemistry experiment)

I hope the Bob & Carolyn & Tara safely arrived in Korea. I bet Bob just went so he doesn't have to heat his house. lol. I think they'll have a great time with Ben and Kim and get home in time to welcome Tigerlily into the world :)

James came home with a note from school saying there is a lot of sickness going around and all of the schools are having a higher than average drop in attendance. So there's some bug going around, but they didn't tell us what it was! It was only a month ago that the last bug went around. I'm not too keen on the bugs.

The weather here was around 0 when I got home from work, so I tried to shovel away some of the sloppy snow, but there's a big speed bump at the bottom of the driveway that I didn't really make any headway with. It's supposed to go down to -17 tonight and stay that way tomorrow. Nice. I echo Lesley in being ready for spring. And Joanna with her pictures in some warm spring in Australia- just cruel!

Sled

Oh. My. This past week and weekend have been very busy! My mother noted the lack of blog entries this week- shows how busy I am.
I am done marking all the papers, though the last stack (due to hand back on Wed.) I haven't assigned marks to because I was racing through them just to see if anyone had copied- as I have to know this before I start giving the papers back first thing tomorrow! (the penalties for copying on the first worksheet are minor compared to copying on formal reports- which (for Lorna) the penalty is to repeat the course)
I haven't posted the marks yet either. Nor have I done up the schedules which I'll need to have done in a couple of days. Nor have I done up my presentation for TOMORROW MORNING. (Well, I have it mostly in my head, but I need to have it written down to give to my TAs)
That's enough about my work.

Today, as if had snowed about a foot before we were heading off to Church decided to haul out the sled so I could cart my heavy pot of soup on the way TO church and my heavy lump of a child on the way BACK. The child liked the idea and wanted to be carts along to start. He is heavier than a pot of soup. So I had to carry a pot of soup and pull the boy. Luckily, this only lasted a few blocks and he became inspired that he could pull the sled and it could be a train. So he pulled the pot of soup to Church, making many 'stops' along the way. And then we took a circuit-y route home again with all the stops. It was pretty fun :)

A week of less than -20

The temps this week have been mainly lower than -20. We are starting to come out of that now.
This week, I have been swamped with work, but hopefully will be coming out of that soon. I have marked 1/4 of the papers due back on Monday, so the weekend will be full of marking.
I have some copying issues to start the term off with, but also the news of the copying issues from last term is rippling through the students so some are more concerned. Second term is normally worse for copying than the first as the students all know each other now!
Back to marking...

How do you do this?

The Whig-Standard had an article today on precautions for extreme weather and they advise

Drivers are urged to move the vehicle out of the garage before starting it...

which cracked me up.

From deny,deny,deny to admission

I feel like I have lived through 2 weeks in 2 days. I had so many classes, tutorials and meetings. The meetings were for students accused of academic dishonesty. Yesterday, all the students who came were deny, deny, deny- it must be a coincidence that 1415 of my words match this other person, but today we had more meetings (different students) and they all admitted guilt but asked for mercy. Two different approaches, all the same endings.

Preparing for Doom

Tomorrow, my class begins in earnest 8:30-10:30 start. From 10:30-12:30 we are dealing with students from last term accused of academic dishonesty. From 12:30-2:30 I have a tutorial. At 2:30 Julia is trying to schedule another meeting. From 3:30-5:30, I have another class. After that I have 360 worksheets to mark. So, we start of with a bang, don't you think? I have been referring to tomorrow as the Day of Doom. Really, what do you WEAR on that day? I should aim for the black-with-a-scythe look.
Though after what Bob N. wore at Church today, maybe I should just drag him in to work with me. (He was pretending to be John the baptist and when he first walked in I didn't RECOGNIZE him- I just saw this guy with weird clothes and a GIANT stick and Al referred to him as SIR and I was trying to figure out what on earth we were going to do with the weirdo. But then when he talked, I realized it was Bob dressed up as John the Baptist and I really wished I had my camera!)
I also wished I had my camera at the lunch after Church. (We had the most amazing tacos!) When I looked around, it was like I was at a family dinner, like it was a really special time.

James would like you to know that his team lost his hockey game today "only by two points". The score was 22-20, so really 2 points IS a small percentage. He is doing much better with the sportsmanship thing. He didn't cry today when the Fronts lost, or yesterday when the Leafs lost. Maybe he is just getting used to his teams losing, since it happens often enough. Thank to my bro for the explanation about the hockey usions- that makes sense. (see the comment on my previous post)

James also is doing much better with his sentences now that I have him speak them out before he writes them. That way he thinks it through before he writes it, and they are less disjointed.

Rogers - 43

James had a successful swimming lesson in the morning. Apparently, both of his new teachers are called "Lorne". At least he doesn't have to remember many names. And he has a friend from school in his class. He was quite pleased that he was able to tell Lorne (when he was asking about pool rules) that there was no running by the pool. He came home quite pleased with his participation.

James allowed me to be a player in his paper game of hockey. He made me my own paper piece entitled 'Rogers 43' and I got to play with all the other players. I am quite pleased to say that I got a hat trick and it was quite fun. When I was working on the dinner, I got to play on Anaheim. Such multitasking.

Tonight, James is watching hockey and he was even ok with the Leafs losing. I guess he's used to it. But during one of the intermissions, I heard them talk about a hockey union, and that perplexed me. Aren't unions to stand up for the little guy, who could not stand up for himself. Don't these guys all have agents that could stand up for them? It seems to be more beneficial for the union (lots of hockey money)- what is the benefit to the player?

Jesus wins the stanley cup

Tonight, James picked out 3 books to read before bed:
Christmas (Dick Bruna)
Pop up trains (a super excellent informative fun book present from Nat and Karrie)
Mighty machines (another pop up book, again from Nat and Karrie)

You will be able to tell that my son has hockey on the brain, in spite of the book selections.

In reading the Christmas book, we get to the page that has the picture of the wise man bringing the cup of myhrr- James thought he was bringing the Stanley cup to Jesus.

In reading the mighty machines book, it talks about how you can be a helicopter pilot, or a captain of a boat, etc. The last page says something like - you can be anything. James says "I want to be a hockey player."

Earlier in the evening, we had been reading the newsletter from his school. At one point it asked for volunteers to help with their art project. I asked James if he wanted me to volunteer. As first he was for it, but then he decided against it, with this explanation "No, I want you to go to work and earn money"

Relative (In)sanity

I left you last on Tuesday with 3 hours of sleep and heaps of work to do.
Clint asked why only 3 hours of sleep? I wish I knew! lol.

Wednesday was touted as a bad weather day, so I had organized my schedule to work from home. Then the buses were cancelled. So I was working, while also trying to entertain a 6 year old.
We did his reading and worked on his printing, then he played hockey games while I worked. When we needed a break, I hauled him outside to shovel snow. Back inside, I did a bit more work, made pizza. Then went to a board meeting.

Thursday, I had a parent teacher meeting with James' teachers. It was only a 10 minute meeting because the parents before me talked for 30 minutes.
I brought up, on Monday that James had been very frustrated with his printing work saying he was 'ranked 19 out of 19 kids in his class'. I didn't really think the teachers were ranking the kids, so I asked them about it. They had no idea where it was coming from- they didn't even DO printing on Monday! (What I am speculating, in retrospect that Monday was a very difficult day for James, having had 2 weeks off of the French and he was frustrated and this is how it was coming out) They also said that James was one of the better printers in the class.
I asked how James was doing socially. They said he was very quiet. That he does interact with the other children, but he holds back a lot.
James always tells me how much he loves recess. And that he plays sports. It surprised me, when one of his teachers said that during recess, James seems to stick by her a lot. I think he likes having an authority figure around. It comforts him.
They told me on the Friday before the end of school (when he was sent home because he was sick) that he did not tell the teacher he was sick, but another child had to come and tell the teacher that James was lying on the playground crying. (What I surmise after THIS is that James fights the unwell feeling as long as he can, but then it overwhelms him and he just can't cope anymore)
What they want James to work on is writing full sentences. One of the teachers gave an example of what James' sentences are like: Kingston 10 Peterborough 0 hockey! What she wants him to do it write some thing like: My dad and I went to a hockey game. It was fun!
We also talked about James' perfectionistic tendencies. Though the teacher said it was strange, because when she explained the sentence thing to him, his sentences didn't change. Well, he wants to be perfect, but he doesn't want to WORK at it! lol.

After all that I went in to work. I got a lot accomplished and am prepared for my Monday class. I still have to find some more articles for the short contract I am doing (then I will be done that!) and I need to sort out all the 1,500 emails from last term to clean up my inbox!

Last night, James didn't fall asleep until 10pm. He was up at 3am (for a short time) Thankfully, I also fell back asleep. Then he got up before 7am. I think he'll be pretty tired today! (I am!)

Balls in the air

Yesterday was my 12 hour day. Today I was at RMC and trying to sort out the (many) TA problems in my course. I'm not quite done wrapping last term and I have heaps of things to do for this term. To top it off, I only slept 3 hours last night. If I knew I wasn't going to get back to sleep, I would have gotten up and tackled some of this workload! Also, a board meeting tomorrow night and a parent teacher meeting Thurs AM. There's supposed to be a storm rolling in tonight. We'll see if the storm is bigger than my workload. HA!

Body fur

Al's sermon today was very,very, very good.(really, you should have been there) Once you got past the body fur part. And if you were not the fire marshall, who I'm sure would not appreciate the fact that at least the candles are not bonfires.
His first point was that we are responsible for our own actions and choices. We eat our own sour grapes, as it were. Maybe we should just buy a new bunch of grapes?

In the afternoon, I made heaps of ham casserole. For some reason also James thinks I should 'coach' his hockey teams. Yes, someone who knows nothing about it, smart idea. The role mainly involves my meeting the players at the start. For the New Jersey team, I had to ask each member what they did in the summer. Then James would answer for the players. Some of the players were on soccer teams, some were on basketball teams, and some traveled to Scotland (by train). When he said the player went to Scotland by train, I said "from here?" and he was "NO, from NEW JERSEY". How silly of me. He was really quite creative with the summer plans.
The next team (which I happen to forget which it was), I met each player and kissed each one (they are pieces of paper). Surprising after having such an intimate relationship, I forget what team it was.

Tonight, I'm going with James to the Church down the road, then coming home to make a heap of cookies! Then, tomorrow, a 12 hour work day.

One day of freedom left

Monday, I begin work with a 12 hour day. Nothing like being off and coming back with a bang!
Tomorrow, after Church, I have plans to make ham casseroles and cookies so we will be well supplied during the first week of work and I won't have to worry about food so much.
Right now, James wants me to shoot pucks on him so I can't write longer. (am I really free? lol.)

The return

The train finally arriving:

When I took this photo, I had not yet spotted him, but he had spotted me. He is making a beeline for me, with such a sweet smile.

His new coat that he got for Christmas.

In his new pjs. He wanted to be taken in front of the hockey game. He is posing.

The 11:45 train was also late. I suspected it would be so I called at 2. I was on hold for 12 minutes (which is pretty quick for via around this time). They tell me that the wait time (for someone to answer the phone) will be long due to 'exceptional circumstances'. They have been telling me this since I started calling their phone line on Dec 22. It's not exceptional circumstances, it's a holiday. Maybe it's a time you should consider having more staff on the phones? Hmm.
So I finally get a lady to talk to and I ask her if the train is on time (2:20). She says yes, it is on time, it is due in at 2:51. That's not really 'on time'. So, I ask her what time I should go to the station. She says for 2:20. I explain that I'm picking someone up, not taking the train. She says, well, 2:35 at the latest because they might make up time. Make up time? Has she ever TAKEN the train during the holidays? They didn't make up time. The staff said 3pm when I got there at 2:30. It was very slow at disembarking because there was no baggage car on this later train, so all the people who had come in from the East all had heaps of their bags with them, which made the getting off the train slower than normal.
When James got home, the first thing he did was open Nat and Karrie's presents. He noted immediately that the 'from' on the tags had been scratched out and replaced with 'love'. (very cute guys!) His favorite present was by far the school bus. You scored whoever picked that one out. We also read the 'hockey tree' book and listened to the puff the magic dragon CD. Though James sings it "Puff the mighty dragon", which makes much more sense to a boy, don't you think.
I unpacked all the clothes and presents and things, quickly squirreling away the nerf dart guns in his toy box. I'm thinking when I get the the chance, they will be further squirreled away in the shed outside. It's not really an inside toy anyway, I don't think.
When he was in the bathroom, I could hear him singing and interesting medley of songs in sequence line by line of different songs,something like this:
Sing to the Lord
Puff the mighty dragon
Politicans, morticians...
It's not quiet here anymore!

Connectionless

I just called via and the boys missed their connection in Montreal. They were supposed to be on the the 9:40 out of Montreal, but their train didn't make it in until 10:30, so they will instead be on the 11:45 out of Montreal, due in Kingston at 2:20. So I have a few extra hours of freedom!
Unfortunately, it has started SNOWING, so the delay of 2 hours is not too good for my driving. I had planned on driving my most 'difficult' route yet- up Princess St. (past Kelly's place!) over the train bridge. I'm not keen on the bridge, but the advantage to this route is that it is all right turns. If I go the back way via Kirkpatrick, it is all left turns. I'll wait and see how the weather is at 2 and then decide.
I bought the above new winter jacket for $75 (50% off )at Marks work wearhouse. It is very warm.