maju

I woke up at 3:30 this morning but I went to bed at 8:30 pm last night so I had had almost enough sleep, and of course it was already actually 4:30 am.

In my old house there were several clocks which had to be reset - stove, microwave, two or three small alarm clocks - but here I am only responsible for two (or three if you count my car, if I ever get around to changing that). However, when I came up for breakfast this morning I found that the stove and the microwave had not been reset so I went ahead and changed them.

It was very mild and foggy this morning, well above freezing and with high humidity. I went out for a walk and added in some running. I might be stiff tomorrow but it felt good to be getting back to my former activity level (from before we had so many weeks of frigid weather). According to the NWS it reached 52°F/11°C today and will be in the 60s tomorrow and Tuesday and the high 50s for a couple of days after that. (Around 17°C down to 14°C.)

My granddaughters always keep me entertained. This morning Violet was having me time her to see how fast she could put on 5 t-shirts one after the other (on top of each other) because she wants to set a record for the Guiness Book of Records. Her first time was 35 seconds but she got it down to just under 20 seconds after a few rounds of practice.

The girls weren't too demanding yesterday afternoon. They are mostly quite happy to sit quietly with me watching videos or playing games on my tablet or phone, and I was feeling somewhat better by then anyway, although still tired.

In fact, I was so tired that I went to bed at 8:30 pm and fell asleep fairly quickly. Normally if I go to bed before my normal bedtime I lie awake until the normal time I would fall asleep, but not last night. (I did take some Melatonin, which obviously helped.)

We did have freezing rain yesterday afternoon and the roads were still messy this morning, so there was a two hour delay of school today. However, the temperature is now well above freezing and it feels almost spring-like outside. I went for a walk earlier, and noticed that I'm starting to hear birds chirping when I'm out walking. I'm a bit disappointed that the snow is finally melting, because without snow the winter landscape is rather ugly. I've enjoyed having everything covered with snow for more than a month now.

It was -9°C/15°F this morning, a bit of a shock to the system after the milder temperatures over the weekend. I'm so glad I have my rebounder. It's really had a lot of use this winter.

I forgot to mention that my tax preparer finished my tax return last week but we're holding off on filing it until the end of March, in case my Social Security 1099 turns up by then. This is the earliest I can ever remember it being done, because when S was in charge it was always done at the very last minute because she had such a huge mental block about the whole thing. Mind you, there was one source of income she had (from a family trust) which never sent the required tax statement until sometime in March I think, so that didn't help. I will have to pay about $12000 (including both Federal and two states) because I don't have any tax withheld from either SS or investments (apart from a couple of small amounts of state tax) but that's less than I was expecting.

It's a beautiful sunny day today and feels almost spring-like outside. However, I guess winter isn't quite over - the forecast says it will possibly snow tomorrow. I enjoyed a decent walk outside this morning (6 km/4 miles) but I'm not confident that I'll be able to repeat it tomorrow.

I've decided to try leaving my current puzzle out so I can work on it in short spurts whenever I feel like it. I'm a bit nervous about the girls wanting to get involved and pieces getting lost but hoping they will want to help without pieces going missing. Or that they will just ignore it since it's beyond their current skill level I think. Maybe not Violet's or even Eden's, but definitely Aria's. Anyway, we'll see.

My son in law has taken the girls to a roller skating event this afternoon. I believe it's with Violet's scout group, but all the girls have gone so it's a quieter than usual Saturday afternoon.

The girls went back to school today for a very short 2-day school week.

It's a beautiful mild day, about 5°C/41°F, clear and sunny. If it wasn't for the twelve inches of snow covering everything it would look positively spring-like outside. I did enjoy going for a walk this morning, and I'm hoping walks will become more frequent now that we're getting into March. (I can't believe we're already two months into the year.)

I managed to get my puzzle finished this morning and send my daughter a photo. The other puzzle she gave me is 1000 pieces and I'm feeling a bit daunted about getting it started. I lashed out and bought myself some more 500 piece puzzles so I think I'll start one of those next. Before I can start on a bigger puzzle I need to ask my daughter to save some small plastic fruit boxes for me because those are great for sorting pieces into.

I've been watching a most excellent show on Britbox, "Twenty Twelve", a satirical mockumentary about a team of bureaucrats headed by Hugh Bonneville (of Downton Abbey) organising the 2012 Olympic Games in London. Sadly, I finished it today (it's a very short series) but I found another show with the same cast of characters in a show called "W1A", where they're now in charge of values at the BBC.

I'm getting really tired (literally and figuratively) from not sleeping well, or more accurately, not being able to sleep enough. I usually sleep well while I'm sleeping, but then I wake up too early or have trouble falling asleep in the first place. It seems to have been happening a lot more in the last few weeks and I have no idea why, since I'm not particularly stressed about anything and have almost zero responsibilities. This morning I woke up not much after 2 am and couldn't get back to sleep. I went to sleep last night a bit after 9 pm so I did get about 5 hours sleep, but it doesn't feel like enough. I've told myself that if I feel like it during the day I'll try to nap, but I hardly ever feel that tired during the day. Plus the girls are off school again so my chances of being woken up if I do fall asleep are good.

=========

A little while after I wrote the previous paragraph (but still before breakfast) I did almost fall asleep for a few seconds. Even that brief nap revived me, strangely, and I haven't felt tired for the rest of the day (so far).

After lunch I shovelled my car out; son in law had shovelled the rest of the drive and their two cars and I think he would have done mine eventually, but I feel bad leaving it to him so I got it done myself. I could tell that it had been windy because there was quite a lot of snow actually under the car.

I always write these LJ/DW entries in my Google Drive account before posting. Violet has been borrowing my computer to write things in my Drive account because she doesn't have one of her own, so now I have documents with intriguing names like "DESERT RUNNING", and "LAMMA PAGAMA MYSTETRYS" (her spelling isn't great yet), and "MYTHICAL CREATURES: nessie". (All titles verbatim.) The only one I've read is the one about Nessie, because she told me not to read the others, but I'm tempted. This morning Eden decided she wanted to write something, so now there's a document with her name on it, but I know there's nothing written in it yet because she sat there for ages waiting for inspiration to strike - and it didn't.

The girls have another snow day today, so their father took them to the mall for a while after lunch while their mother was having a meeting.

Great excitement in the house this morning because my daughter came back from her conference in NYC. She was planning to come back later today but decided she'd better travel before the forecast blizzard strikes.

It started snowing about an hour or so ago. At first the flakes were tiny and almost invisible, but now they're bigger and it's looking more blizzard-like although nothing seems to be sticking on the road yet.

=========

Now, a few hours later, the snow is starting to stick, but we've still only had a very small amount especially considering it started falling about 4 hours ago and considering the NWS is giving us a blizzard warning.

Yesterday was generally a very calm day with the girls. They seem to behave better when only one of their parents is around, and it doesn't matter which parent it is. This morning was also calm although everybody slept slightly later than yesterday and it was a bit of a rush to get out the door to the school bus.

The weather all week has been grey and gloomy, and today it's raining. I think we've had some rain on other days too (I can't always tell from down in my basement) but when I went up to get lunch earlier I saw that the roads were wet and now I can hear it raining, which tells me it's fairly heavy. I don't think I've left the house since last weekend, but the forecast for tomorrow is slightly warmer and clear, so I'm hoping for a walk.

Apparently when I moved to Connecticut I should have unregistered from the voting roll in Maryland as well as enrolling here in Connecticut. Silly me, I thought enrolling in Connecticut would unenroll me in Maryland, but a few days ago I received a card in the mail which I have to return to the Board of Elections in my old county to let them know officially that I've left the state. If I'd realised that I had to do this *before* I surrendered my MD driver's licence I could have done it online, but now I have no record of my MD licence number so that's not possible. So I'm waiting for a day of good enough weather to walk to the post office to send off this card. (I'm also waiting until the snow on the footpath up to the shops melts enough that I don't have to walk on the road to get to the post office.)

An interesting set of questions I've seen in a couple of different places.

Adults responsible for your care actively helped facilitate your early learning. (Reading at bedtime, playing educational games, going to child-friendly museums...) My mother read to us and there were plenty of books in our home. We even had a three-volume set of encyclopaedias which we referred to for some school projects. We didn't go to museums because there weren't any where we lived. We played board games but nothing specifically educational. (I'm not sure whether such a thing even existed when I was growing up in the 1950s.)

You had a library card. Yes, and I made good use of it.

Adults in your life involved you in tasks that involved mathematic skills. My father had my sisters and me work on farm-related maths problems, mainly adding and subtracting.

If you started falling behind in school, you received help from a private tutor. I never fell behind in school until I was in my second last year of high school when I struggled with maths, and at that time I did not receive any tutoring.

You went to a well-funded school. I have no idea. I went to public schools in Australia, and I believe they were better funded in the 1950s and 60s than they are now.

You typically attended school adequately clothed and fed. I was always adequately fed and almost always adequately clothed, but there was one year when my sisters and I had to go to school barefoot. This was really only shocking because we were girls; it was fairly common at that time and in that place for boys to go to school barefooted.

Adults responsible for your care were able to help you make decisions when it came time to pursue higher education. No, they were completely out of their depth because my father had to leave school when he was about 12 and my mother when she was about 14.

If you were disabled and/or neurodivergent, you were classified by your school and received support through the education system. Not applicable to me, but as far as I'm aware, such resources weren't available in my town at that time.

You generally felt physically and emotionally safe at school. Yes, much more so than I did at home in fact.

You were in relatively good physical and mental health. Yes.

For the most part, you were able to study and complete assignments without any struggle. Yes, all the way through primary school and the first three years of high school. Living away from home to finish the final two years of high school, I struggled, especially with maths. English was never a problem.
Test-taking came easily to you. Yes.

You seldom faced difficulty understanding assignments. True.

You read at grade level or above. I think I was reading a couple of grades ahead all through primary school. The teacher used to give me advanced reading materials to read when I had finished my work ahead of most of the rest of the class.

Your mathematics skills were at grade level or above. I don't think so, but I certainly wasn't behind.

Adults responsible for your care supported your academic journey for the better and for the worse. Not really. My mother encouraged us to get further education after primary and secondary school, but our father was against it.