Sickness

Blargh. I hate being sick. I was sick pretty much non-stop in Rochester, except for the months of July and August. I assumed that I was probably allergic to something which is what started my colds. I have a 'sickness routine': first I sneeze, or get a shock of chill somehow. Sometimes this is 'sudden change in the weather' related. Then my throat hurts, I start to get the sinus gross, then it morphs into a nasty head cold. It drains into my lungs, and around the time I start not being able to breathe at night I also start to lose my voice. That's the sequence of 'the cold'. From there it becomes bronchitis, probably 99% of the time, and maybe 50% of the time proceeds into pneumonia. In NY this happened a minimum of three times a year, but maxed out at six during the 2005-2006 school year. Yes, I was diagnosed with pneumonia three times in ten months (the other three just stopped at bronchitis).

So far, in the year and a third we've lived in SC, I've only been sick once.... until now. The morning after the parking lot flood wading my sore throat kicked in; I managed to get almost entirely better before going to visit Kaylee, who was also drippy... but then after that trip it got a lot worse, and my mom and Kaylee's mom both got really sick with the same thing too. We're also having nighttime lows in the 20s, which came on suddenly and is very odd for this time of year here. As of tomorrow, we will have been home from there for two weeks, and I'm just now reaching the 'not breathing at night/lost voice' stage. I don't know if I've been sick then better then sick, or if it all counts as one big cold... if the latter, I've now been sick for almost a month.

It's around 1:30 in the afternoon, and I'm just now finishing up my morning breakfast and internet routine. I feel bad, I was supposed to assist with the preschool Sunday School and we slept through it. I need to find a way to contact the lead teacher for when this happens. But I'm gonna be curled up here with tea and cat and a paper to write, crack out my inhaler device, drug up and moan a lot. *heh* Maybe it'll help.

Feline Interlopers

Our neighborhood has a lot of stray cats, and through the first few months of us living here, they all wanted to stop by and check out the New Blood, ie: our cats. They would saunter into the yard, and our boys would spring into a huge territorial hissy fit, knocking over lamps and things running from window to window, and it all tends to end in Spook attacking the closest cat he can find who's usually Colin. Of course, the minute I started a photo record of kitten interlopers, they stopped coming through during the day (when I could photograph them).

Earlier this afternoon Kira and Spook were on the screen porch when I heard Spook starting in on his low throated territory yowl. I go out to see a beautiful Siamese standing just short of the porch steps... and another big fat cat on the fence on the other side of the yard. I can't get out the door to run them off since Spook is sitting right there. Kira was on the chair just above Spook's head, and apparently had been silent up to that point. Then she suddenly yowled at the Siamese, Spook went 'CLOSE CAT!' and full on attacked her.

I've never been that close to a fully-armed screaming cat fight. It was pretty intense! Lanse came out (being stronger and having longer arms) and brought them in; Spook had cornered Kira under the chaise lounge, but when I inspected them later, she had more of his fur in her claws than he had hers. *heh* No harm done, apparently, just freaked me right the heck out. We sequestered them in their own rooms until they calmed down, and then I kept them inside for about an hour.

After that hour passed, I scanned the yard, didn't see any cats, so I let them out. As I walked out with them I looked out to the play set to see this:

And in they came again. Lanse went out (being tall) and chased this one off. In case you've not been keeping track, that was three neighbor cats causing a riot at our house in one afternoon. I think a little later on one of us should probably go out there and sprinkle used cat litter around the yard so as to claim the territory.

I do wish I'd gotten a picture of the Siamese. It was so pretty.

Aside from feline negotiations, I've also done a load and a half of laundry and am working on a project to print or save all the resource files from class for my teaching resources binder that I don't have yet.

Scholastic honesty

I had part two of a paper due in Philosophies of Ed last week. Part of the assignment was, "At this stage in your journey, what questions should you ask about Child Development and learning and how could you go about answering them?" I procrastinated like crazy because in all honesty, I really don't know. I'm the type of person to recognize a need (my degree), gather as much information as possible (what I'm taught in class), head to the situation (a classroom) and test it out in action, and then ask questions with things that don't work. So I will absorb as much information on education as I can, go to the classroom and apply it, see where it doesn't work, and then gather more information based on the differences in environment and the individual children who don't fit with what I've learned.

I do the same thing with job interviews. Basic things like pay and job requirements are usually covered in the initial stuff, so I really don't ever have questions for them. I don't know enough about the job environment yet to know what else to ask.

So back to the paper; I decided that since I honestly couldn't answer the question, my overall grade was strong enough to just take a risk and say so. I wrote about how I have questions about my own education, but not really any about Child Development yet. It was four pages of lovely BS.

Here's the comment I received from my instructor on my paper:

"80/80! Why I enjoy reading your papers, Jess, is because you are not afraid to show you still have some learning to go. This paper truly says it well…that you still have work to go as far as developing a philosophy. In spite of not knowing exactly which area your career will be concentrated, you are taking the information from your classes and processing it into what you want to do in the future."

So basically, I just aced this assignment by extensively writing "I don't know".

I am so incredibly amused.

Persistence

Early this afternoon I heard someone outside our house singing really loudly. Through the window I saw a black guy came up onto the porch and rang the bell, still singing. I asked Lanse to please get it this time since I was still in my pajamas. On the way to the bathroom, I heard him open the door, then "HEEEEEEEEEEEEY, BIG GUY!" Lanse said, "We're not interested," and shut the door while the guy was mid-sentence.

I came out and asked, "What was he selling?"

"It was the cleanser guy. He had a bottle of something pink."


Scary thought #1: He was excited, but mostly quiet and well-mannered yesterday. He was (from audio only) very loud and exuberant today. I'm becoming quite confident that I don't ever want to drink that cleanser.

Scary thought #2: He was here yesterday. I sent him away. He came back.

Scary thought #3: He was here yesterday, and thought I was alone in the house. He came back.

Maybe it's time to get a peep hole in the door.