Ayn's Multiple World

A pretty gosh darn Sunday ... cuz

Good morning! This is us. Missy decided we should be up at least 15 minutes ago.

It’s a few minutes to 5 am now. I suppose in her manner of thinking that was about right. We’ll see if we can manage it on a Sunday morning or if we are going to need going back to sleep. Where Chief sleeps with us all night long – between our feet, Missy joins us when we go back to bed, but she sleeps on our tummy. Maybe that’s what she is going for. Sneaky Missy. But, of course, the primary reason for waking us is that that is the time she wants to be fed. Well, that and she knows it’s the time we like to get up for work? Maybe … we are giving her that much credit though. Good Missy.

So how goes all? Hmm, is it too early to tell? I’m not sure … I’m feeling pretty good. We want to get up and at him. Not sure I know what I should be writing about or even if I can be writing. Am I on the right time schedule? We’ll have to check … I think we ran into a time conflict yesterday. BRB.

Ahh, we have a random quote from our goal manager connected to our site … This first one is from Ayn Rand. She says, “Happiness is that state of consciousness which proceeds from the achievement of one's values.”

I like that. I never know quite what my values are, but I’m pretty sure they have something to do with being in a good mood. I strive for that even if we’re hurting.

AHA! 6 am to 10 am blogging. And, now it is 5 am, so I think we squeeze in an extra hour. We need to keep in mind this schedule thiough is a suggestion and not made in concrete. Let’s try to figure out the complication we ran into yesterday with the walking. First this is obviously a three day schedule, or for when we are home for the day. Thing is on these days ideally, we should be doing the walking … We have to add in 15 minutes to get there and 15 minutes to get back, yesterday we didn’t get as far as seeing animals because we ran out of time and we had to rush by getting back up every 5 minutes. We were backed up a little by the phone call too, though the phone call was perfect. Basically, the walk took an hour, where the budget of an extra hour would be nice. So, let’s call this adventure something that requires 2 ½ hours, and 1 ½ if we want to get it in under the acknowledgement that we’ll be rushed. How does that look?

Hmm, better plan ideally that … oh yeah on weekdays I think the park is only open til 5 … better check that out too. Wow! I didn’t know that … from Memorial Day to September 3 the zoo is open until 6 pm. That allows some opportunities … Then on September 4th through October 29th the zoo is open on weekends til 6 pm, but on weekdays only until 5 pm. Then on October 29th until Memorial Day she stays open all nights only to 5 pm, but we have to remember by then its getting dark earlier.

PLUS, it says from May 27 to September 2, on Sundays the zoo is open until 7:30 pm.

I’m going to make sure honey bunny knows that. We’d have to arrange for an earlier dinner, but we could really take a nice Victorian type walk afterward at the zoo.

BUT, for now lets schedule that the zoo is going to close at 6 pm those 3 days to keep things uniform, and then come September we will adapt our hours.

So, that being said … we can plan that we need to be at the zoo by at least 4 pm – maybe shoot for a goal of 3:45 and leave the house at 3:30.

This Missy cat is going crazy for petting. She needs to calm down and stop whacking me with that tail. Ok ok … good girl. Maybe she’ll lay down now for a little bit – she’s across our arms. It’s ok for typing, but rough if I need to scratch my nose. That always happen when she starts with the tail slapping.

Ok, back to scheduling the part of reading from 7-10 pm will work out … we were home and writing about 6:15 last night that was good, so accordingly.

Up before 6 am – Free time, but usually blog … keep in mind that on those days … we might want to blog only until 9 am and then have 1 ½ hours for a project

6-10 am blog or other project such as book, camera, etc.

10-10:30 am Assure house is picked up

10:30-2:30 pm Saturday/Monday Write paper, Sundays read

2:30-3:30 Read

3:30-6 pm Zoo

6-7 pm dinner and free-time

7-10 pm Reading

Then of course, if Sweetie or the kids want to schedule time, they automatically bounce whatever was scheduled for that time. We need to keep people priority, though realize that most the time we spend alone. That’s ok with me. So … if this then would be the case … how are the hours adding up? 12 hours of weekend blogging should literally be enough, but then what is our schedule on weekdays? I think we have to wake up earlier, or appreciate not much blogging is going to get done Tuesday through Friday unless we do it while working. And, then we should hold ourselves to just ½ hour unless we are writing and thinking through a work project.

Otherwise

Up before 6 am free blogging time

6-7 am time to be getting ready and share time with Sweetie

7-7:30 am and 5:30-6 pm driving; 3 days – 1 day budged with Dr. M.

7:30-5:30 pm work; 7:30-3:30 pm on Thursdays

3:30-6 pm Dr. Marvin on Thursdays

6 -7 pm dinner and free-time

7-10 pm Reading

Ok, good … that looks pretty balanced. We allowed 1 ½ hours overtime for the nights that Rich isn’t in or when we have doctor Marvin, But, realistically Dr. Marvin is over at 5:30 pm, so we’re not unreasonable altering our scheduled hour for dinner and relaxation.

So the next thing … we can now add up our hours. Let’s not plan waking up before 6 am … we usually do, but we don’t want to force a budget of getting up earlier if we are staying up until 10 pm.

12 hours blogging – plus throughout work time if necessary

1 ½ hours for cleaning

8 hours for formal writing

7 .5 hours for the zoo

4 dedicated hours to getting ready with Sweetie

3.5 hours for driving

38 hours for working

2.5 hours for Dr. Marvin

7 hours for formal dinner and free-time

28 hours for reading

56 hours sleeping

Hmm, it seems good, but then we are only averaging 200 pages a week. Shoot, we really liked the 300 schedule. Better figure the hours again.

Woo Hoo … we altered the schedule so that it comes out perfect … 168 hours in a week!!! Underline once more Sweetie and kids can have whatever time they want. IF I want extra blogging time … SLEEP LESS! But, for now 8 hours is downright generous at my age. Hehehe AND, AND, AND … 28 times average of 11 pages = 308 pages per week!!! That will hit my star number.

I think what we have been doing is spending more time on the blogging AND more time on the messing around so that we are consuming hours with reading information on starlets and such … we have to cut that down to just the hour we are eating dinner and what not.

I feel really good about this schedule. I feel sort of bad about not working more directly on Monday, but she’s got to take into consideration that I’m spending 28 hours a week reading and an additional 8 hours of formal writing. So that’s 36 hours a week that are going to improving our work mind, so we figure that 8 hours on Monday should be part of the deal … that’s a contribution of 22% toward the cause.

The reading and formal writing are like having an almost full-time job. That’s 36 hours not going to school and still focused on learning work orientated skills. I think maybe what we should do is to start to pull together a resume of books that we will be reading … and we could focus the formal papers with at least an element – paragraph toward how it affects the work at St. Rose Center. That way … even more directly St. Rose Center is benefitting another 8 hours more directly. We could start a new folder called “Reading Papers.” I like that idea a lot … there is some worry though that 4 hours will not be enough time to write one paper. That’s the part that we’re going to need correcting. First we need to consider the paper should only be 5 pages. And, that will be 5 pages double spaced. That means that we should stick to a goal of the paper being 2500-3000 words

AHA! Found a friend to talk to in IM for a few minutes  This is all I gotta say about that!

Nananananana!

OKKKKKK, being more serious. Hmm, those whiskers kind of even looks like my
friend. Shhh. We’re not supposed to say … Shhhhhhh….

Ok, back to the grind stone … so, we’re figuring 2500-3000 words. Not sure if that’s right though because double spaced what we typed here is only 1640 and we’re on our sixth page. Let’s change that to 2000 words then. I know we had a picture and a couple lists … so that affects our word count, but the idea is to condense the writing. 2000-2500 then. I see us now approaching 1700 within a few keystrokes and that’s making me nervous. There that is done 1700 since the 1640 mark. Maybe that will help us prioritize and I like to think that if we were writing for a newspaper or magazine or grant source that we could condense it properly and still get our point across.

I think that we should also start working from outlines. I know that when we were doing it in the multi-cultural class we felt pretty good about it. Ahh. Just turned off the air … we should have done that earlier. We watered the plants too and the next time up … we need to remember and take the medicine. It’s already 7:30 am. Ok … Outlines … remember?

Let’s take a dry run … given the five chapters that we’ve read already, what would we write a paper about?

I. Understanding mental retardation: a functional model

II. Curriculum decision making and educational supports

III. Conceptualizing access to the general curriculum

IV. Achieving access to the general curriculum

V. Person-centered and student-directed planning

Ok, that would be utilizing the outline from the text. BUT, we will not want to write all that? Now at least in this book there are chapter objectives and a summary for each chapter. So, how important is that to me this round. First question? Discuss the functional model of mental retardation. Next and next?
Describe the role of sociocultural and environmental contexts in understanding mental retardation. Define and describe a supports model of service provision.
Discuss the role of definition and categorization in education. Identify how expectations and perceptions of mental retardation and disability affect education.

Ok, staring at those for about 5 seconds … I’m like not tuning into the words they are using. And, then when I focus in on a term, I’m not necessarily understanding the nature of the question of statement. Man … this is where the tough part comes in … we understood it as we were reading it, but now … a different part later … we’re trying to figure it out and am having trouble.

I know he put a lot of meaning into the term “functional model,” but I think mostly he was trying to say is that we want to be looking at the individual with MR functioning within the environment more than malfunctioning – without the environment having an impact. Ok, we’re getting this … we don’t have to answer their questions … what we have to answer is our questions … like what did we get out of reading AND at that we should be using our notes in this section. Maybe what we could do is tie it to us as being significant “because…” Oh yeah … we were going to check out that other model used in the foundation course … let me go check. I remember now … it was considered being a “Reflective Practitioner.” Let’s look at the model … this was the work of May, 2005.

Well, we could try it I suppose and see how it goes … and then maybe open up the trial for the month to see how it goes. I am a little concerned about the papers becoming to formula driven, so that I’d have to consider losing my or the audience interest. I am also concerned about the personal factors driving the outline more than the empirical part. The model is really about how I felt toward the experience, or basically my experience of having been impacted by whatever it was that I just read. I’m not sure if I want to be writing papers where the discussion of how I am feeling takes precedent over the material itself.

Ahh … we’d drifted off to dreamland there … we were considering something we read … and then a snoozy moment later, we were startled up by the 8 am alarm on our phone.

Ok, coming to attention we are thinking we need something less than just a summary, but more than pinpointing out one very small idea. How do we get it so we can hold the whole thing in our head? Maybe we are going to need summarizing each of the subsections that are about one or two pages long. Can we do that from our markings? We’re going to try that out.

I. Curriculum decision making and educational supports

A. Theories driving curriculum design: The day training environment can be a support to the individuals served by changing its curriculum design to being person-focused, which occurs by empowering the various supporting parties with the capacity to make decisions.

Ok, I think we could do something here, but it is slow. It means doing a lot of re-reading of the notes, but then that is what I believe we should be doing … just that its slow … we took a total of 4 statements and we worked with them, until we were able to make the single sentence you see under outline I.A. The thing is that it became very valuable as a concept, but took some time. It would seem that the time might speed up slightly as we get used to the process, but in most parts the concepts are new so they will take some time in comprehending as a whole. Most chapters are 4-5 sections long, but some are up to 9-11 sections long. Maybe what we could do is concentrate the first four hours on summarizing the sections, and then during the last section complete the summarization and tie it all together. I would like to think that we can simplify our processes by applying it all along to the center or centers of day training in general than by emphasizing it be a school process. That is in general how we are thinking of it all along.

Ok, you take break fill up coffee and take medicine … you’re an hour and a half late! Go!

Aha! We found a grapefruit in there maybe that will give the medicine a chance of working. We’re feeling a little gaspy of mental strain at this very second. We were just thinking how it is that we haven’t had a cold for a long time. Might sound kind of silly, but we take vitamins with our medicine every morning, eat at least 3 citrus fruits out of the 5 we take in daily along with eating vegetables, and we use hand sanitizer guaranteed to kill 99.99% of the germs … along with taking frequent showers and now getting out to exercise. My gosh! it’s going to take a pretty hefty size cold germ to surpass all that. The flu doesn’t have it any easier, especially since we get a shot for that. I’m thinking reading outside as much as we can - will also be a help.

Time check. We only have 1 ¼ hours before we move on to the next part of our schedule, which is cleaning the house. There is nothing to say though we can’t start that early so in general we have a little longer to write … especially, then it gives us something to write about hehehe and it gives us better time to focus on it with our 8-10 minutes up and 15 minutes down. Ok, looking around let’s start with our desk and then move through the living room, k? Ahh … ok that’s done … beside vacuuming and dusting the living room is done … I guess we could say at least picked up. We also stopped to hang up a few things in our bedroom.

I was just thinking … we could use some of our time writing blogs to be putting together sentences? Naw … but, maybe we could use better being a reflective practitioner at the end of the paper writing process. It would be easier in that case to write just one paper … so we could outline and summarize better, and then the second writing effort be the reflective part … about what we read and wrote.

Hmm, I like that idea. But, here’s the thing we gotta keep reading all along, even if the paper doesn’t fall on perfect days for the reading. K? It’s gotta be a deal, because I don’t want to not write just because we’re two chapters from finishing the book. Deal? K. Thanks!

We could write something of an outline/summary “outummary” after each 3 hour block, but by then I’m pretty sure we want to be going to bed and its better if we do many in a row to build up speed. Good? K. Thanks.

Any more ideas? Oh, set the timer, I see. Well that doesn’t have anything to do with writing, but I see your point. Hold on. Next cleaning task. Did we do that yet? Nope? Next then, let’s stop in the bathroom, and then responsively do our bedroom and make Rich’s bed. He always leaves on these trips so quick it doesn’t always get done. Bedrooms and bath are easy … just a couple of tasks for each. I’d like to see though if we have an extra roll of paper towel to keep in the bathroom for you know bathroom cleaning stuff. We might skip the balcony door for a Saturday cleaning, or maybe tomorrow … better make sure to have the hard line stuff done today. Sure be nice to surprise Rich with the floors being cleaned. It’s possible. Bath/2 brs. And then kitchen … better save two up periods for that … one for dishes and one for general. Maybe then we could add another for sweeping and another for floors, plus then one more for the center floor in the living room? Is that too much? We have an hour and ½ for cleaning what can we get done? Only 3 more up periods … better skip the floors today, maybe tomorrow. K? It will take another hour. We just made the schedule and I don’t want to interrupt the flow of the reading. Best to get out there soon while the weather is so nice. Just two more minutes, k? I know.

We turned Rich’s calendar to be facing the picture of his friend Bob out on the boat toward twilight. It’s got the beautiful glistening water, and him silhouetted with his fishing pole, cigar, and cap. He’s pretty cool actually. It’s a full page of him in this shot at Lake Vermilion. Ok you … enough silly stuff I know the fishing guy is coming home tonight WOOHOOO!!!!

Ahh … that was a hard one and didn’t make it into our friend’s room for the bed.

Just back br and bath. But, I got the bath completely including stool, sink, counter, and mirror. That should get me extra points somewhere. There … set the timer too. Next up is make bed and empty dishwasher. We can do it. WooHOOO. Nice to have a nice place for fishyman to return to. We should talk to him some time this afternoon, but I don’t expect him in before 6 pm. Shouldn’t be too much later than that … maybe an hour, cuz he’s got to go pick up his car. But, I think it’s only about a half an hour away. Should be in good shape if we’re coming home from the zoo as he get’s home. He’d like that a lot. We’ve been warned too. The boys will be taking Rich out on Father’s Day next Sunday night. I sure hope that means that Jon is in town. I know Rich likes to see him. BUT, it might be the weekend he is moving too? I’m not sure. I think I heard Rich say something about moving and him and Chris helping out. That be real good for Jon. Maybe that is coming up though in July … I’m thinking now I heard something about the weekend before my birthday. By then the big Canada trip will be over, and I think they are going back out the weekend after my birthday for more fishing. Jeese … these guys have a full schedule. This year a bunch of them – maybe 10 are going to go to Canada. Not all the club though … some have friends. It’s a pretty big deal. For Rich the best week of the year. I’d like to tap into that, but we’ll settle for that we give him some pretty nice evenings.

Rich didn’t get a chance to see his mother last weekend, so I think that he might try that tomorrow. We’ll need to see … I know she likes seeing him too. And, it’s been forever since he’s seen his brother. I think it was going to be like a two month shot without him coming in due to his schedule. He’s a truck driver who drives fully cross-country. Hmm, though I don’t think that has much to do with whether or not his brother is getting his bed made by lovely company! Hehehe … good fisherman.

Ok, next trip up … we need to use that nicely cleaned bathroom, ok? Well, just since we’re noting that kind of thing.

Anything else?

This is the part on becoming a reflective practitioner …

Becoming a Reflective Practitioner
Chillin' | Brian Eno - An Ending

Found while searching for "Model for Reflective Practice." The following is verbatim from the resource listed on the bottom of the page.

"Reflection can be viewed as a critical social process moving through stages of enlightenment, empowerment and emancipation (Fay, 1987, see Box 3.1)

Enlightenment (understanding) - understanding why things have come to be as they are in terms of frustrating self's realization of desirable practice.

Empowerment - focusing the sense of purpose, felt conflict and fear of negative consequences as necessary to take appropriate action towards changing self and the way things are in order to realise desirable practice.

Emancipation (transformation) - the realization of self's best interests as a consequence of taking appropriate action. (pp. 35).

Model for structured reflection

Looking in

Find a space to focus on self.
Pay attention to your thoughts and emotions.
Write down those thoughts and emotions that seem significant in realizing desirable work.

Looking out

Write a description of the situation surrounding your thoughts and feelings.
What issues seem significant?

Aesthetics

What was I trying to achieve?
Why did I respond as I did?
What were the consequences of that for the patient/others/myself?
How were others feeling?
How did I know this?

Personal

Why did I feel the way I did within this situation?

Ethics

Did I act for the best? (ethical mapping)
What factors (either embodied within me or embedded within the environment) were influencing me?

Empirics

What knowledge did or could have informed me?

Reflexivity

Does this situation connect with previous experiences?
How could I handle this situation better?
What would be the consequences of alternative actions for the patient/others/myself?
How do I now feel about this experience?
Can I support myself and others better as a consequence?
How 'available' am I to work with patients/families and staff to help them meet their needs?" (pp. 47).

"Description - What happened?

Feelings - What were you thinking and feeling?
Evaluation - What was good and bad about the experience?
Analysis - What sense can you make of the situation?
Conclusion - What else could you have done?
Action plan - If it arose again what would you do?" (pp. 49).

Resource

Johns, C. (2000). Becoming a reflective practitioner: A reflective and holistic approach to clinical nursing, practice development and clinical supervision. Oxford, England: Blackwell Science.

OK. BACK!

I’m thinking of this part of the work as the journal writing that they were asking us to do for some of the earlier courses. They liked to throw in a little extra something just to spice up the joint. I’m excited to start the real writing, but a little scared too. Same with the reading – I don’t want to overwhelm us … Maybe we should make it a point that if we have trouble we can come back to blog about it, but let’s try not to be blogging everyday stuff instead of the reading or formal writing, k? Need to keep our priorities straight. Ok, for now … it’s time to go back to cleaning. BRB.

Oh man … that’s tough … I got the dishes and kitchen done and made Sweeties bed, but by then we’re near doubled up. I think we are going to end the cleaning for the day, because we don’t want to strain ourselves for this afternoon. BUT, we would really like to do something with the floors. Just lightly, ok? We’ll run the vacuum down the middle, skip the sweeping and just wet mop with the Swiffer. We spilled coffee in the hallway this morning and we’d like to take care of that before Sweetie gets home. He said something yesterday about maybe being in an amorous mood hehehe. He was also complaining about needing a back rub. See, see that’s what happens when you go stay out with the guys four days in a row. Something has got to give!

Ok, two more runs then … one with vacuum and the other with the Swiffer. We also set up the fan in Sweeties room because it’s a good idea to air it out. He be such a good boy! All weekend we’ve been looking at a card he left for us reminding us to wake him up at 5 am and there was a little smiley face with that … Just seeing his hand writing is making us feel good. Can’t hardly wait by now to get him back.

It’s almost 10 am now so he still has a couple more hours of fishing left. I just know he’s going to want to uphold that first place from yesterday.

You know as things go. I know it is rough for him to be handling the divorce issues particularly as they are coming across his desk from his attorney, but I think he is doing very well with it. I think the fishing has helped the most in keeping him stable and level-headed. He knows to make all these fishing dates, he’s got to keep up with the paperwork from home and work. Besides the groceries, we’ve been trying hard to lay off him so that he has enough time to figure things out without our hassles. Even the decision with the school … it was made away from his real concerns. We’re still working on processes with the work for him. But, right now he’s only paying for about 5 hours a week … hmm, that has to be added into the costs. I think that one of the things that I’m going to ask him is to pay for three books concerning money. One is for fundraising and the other two are on grants. I think two I can get at Amazon, but the third is a special custom package through the school. These are the books … better get a price on this.

Course Materials used in: HS7501 Fundraising Strategies

Conducting Successful Fundraising Program : A Comprehensive Guide and Resource

Edition: 01 • Dove, Kent E.
$78.00 Amazon $66.30 new; $62.52 used.

Course Materials used in: HS7502 Grant Proposal Developmen

How to Write a Grant Proposal - With CD

Edition: 03 • New, Cheryl Carter / Quick, James Aaron
$45.00 Amazon $34.02

Grant Proposal Writing and Administration (Custom Package)

Edition: 05 • Wiley Staff
$58.75 Can only be purchased from school.

Total cost to Rich would be $165.00 That’s not too bad a deal. We added on $5.00 for delivery that we’ll be charged from the Capella … the other books are free due to quantity cost from Amazon. I could throw in with the deal that I read these books next. I sort of don’t like being put off my other schedule, because we’ve got the annuals coming up, but we’ll figure it out. If I can find books directly assisting that cause, otherwise we’ll go to the grantwriting books. The fundraiser will have to wait. Hmm, in that case maybe he can give us just the $100 we need for the two grant writing books. The other can wait unless he wants to read it for himself. He doesn’t pick up too much toward text, but this might be an exception?

Not sure.

Whoops buzzer rang … hold on.

Pshwoo that was a fast one. We worked hard, but didn’t take too much time to fool around. The little spots came up easily so we’ve done good in buying ourselves another week before Rich might want to try cleaning the floor again. It’s going to be father’s day though, so I’m not sure if he’s going to want to be doing it next weekend either. But, after that I think we’re getting pretty close to that Canada trip. I think he leaves on Saturday June 30, and gets back on Saturday, July 7th.

And, then he should be going on the weekend of helping Jon, and then I think the next weekend is his fishing trip. So, I think what we’ll do is try to schedule Sunday, June 24th for a house cleaning day. If I’m keeping up with the general then it shouldn’t be too much trouble for him. It’s just that he’s got so many dates booked. I don’t think asking for a couple of hours once every couple of months is too bad. We’ll help him too so hopefully, he’ll just take care of the floors and we’ll take care of the lighter stuff. Hmm, dusting? Nooo, we’ll do that that day that Rich might help out. Today, lets just do one more sweep in 10 minutes of the vacuuming and then we can get to the reading. I think we figured out that the sun starts to warm up the balcony around 3:15, so taking a break for the zoo at that time is a good idea. The one last thing we gotta figure out is when we are going to shower. We’d like to leave that open, but in general, it’s just 15 minutes time taken out of blogging and reading. SOOO, let’s not wait too long on that, k? So … thinking of that now … do we shower after vacuuming and before reading … or somewhere in between say about 2 pm. Hmm, I like the idea of going to the walk fresh. I know it seems silly in that you want to be cleaner after you sweat, but I think we are going to be pretty warm after sitting outdoors too. AND, it would help me in not needing to rush through things now. We’ve done an extra good job in getting so much of the house clean while we’ve been blogging, I don’t feel so bad about putting the shower off until after some reading gets done. K?

Pswhoo. Ok, breath now girls. Man-o-man … does everybody try to organize their days to this extent?

Yeeks checked the email. The Chicago Trib reported a shooting in Southern Wisconsin – Delevan where 6 people were killed and a toddler critically wounded. I don’t think we would have read the article, but Rich is in Southern Wisconsin today. Just too close for comfort. Ok, let’s not settle here. Time to do the vacuuming, k?

Hmm, ok. We’re not going to do that. We blew a fuse. I think it’s ok in that I figured out – clicked all the buttons in the fuse box and pushed the thing in the bathroom, so at least we have bathroom lights again, but the fan isn’t going. I had thought it easier to plug the vacuum into the fan extension cord, but maybe that wasn’t such a good deal. I’m not willing to try that again, because I don’t know what I did. I will wait for Sweetie to give me a lesson on safe vacuuming  I’m afraid though that what I really did was to trip the circuit breaker and in the process killed the electrical cord to the fan – it was a cheap Christmas cord. I’m thinking that if I were real good, I would stop by the drugstore and buy another cord. I also need new shampoo and deodorant. Not a good idea to run out of either. Hmm, anything else? Let’s get tooth paste too while we’re at it, k? Oh and two more bottles of hand sanitizer and Kleenex for work. ACK what are you doing to me? Batteries too! ACK! This is a hefty list … shouldn’t we check the bank?

I think we have enough to cover it … should cost about … extention cord 10, shampoo & conditioner 8, deodorant 4, tooth paste 4, hand sanitizer 2 -8, Kleenex 4, batteries 12 … Yeeks its going to be a $50 trip. BUT, on the other hand, Sweetie is going to need a fan in his room tonight AND those other things are all necessary.

Ok, We’ll try it out, but try keeping to the budget, k? I hope I’ll be able to do the walking after the zoo. How about we go before? Nothing will waste away, but … always worried about making it. I guess we’ll have to see how it goes when I get to that corner.

OK … YOU NOW … it’s almost 11 pm and we’re not reading? AND, there is the matter of lunch. How about we grab a quick sandwich and eat it outside. I think one of the water’s would have cooled by now … we put them in the fridge early this morning. AND, you could brush your hair? Shheesh … picky, picky. Ok, next … Save the blog … post at dinner time, brush hair, make sandwich, grab water, grab book, pen, and phone. We’re trying to get into the grab phone routine. Ok, ok … you know what you gotta do. It’s time!

Whew. Taking a little break here. It’s almost 2 pm. We’ve got one more chapter to read this afternoon and about 1 ½ hours to do it. We’ve also just taken our shower and got mostly dressed. I don’t like to wear shoes on the couch. Yes, we’ve had to alter our path this much. We’d been prepared for a beautiful time out on the balcony, but the cicadas won out. There were much to much of them zig-zagging in-front of us for us to pay close attention to what we were reading. The cats too had trouble concentrating … no one wants to be pulling bugs from their hair or skirt.

YEEKS! I’m not scared of them as much as I know they are clumsy oafs! And, for that reason … I finally took rich’s advise and closed the screen door with or without our cats ability to go out and rustle themselves a cicadas snack. Ugh!

We decided too that we should wait until after the zoo to go to the drug store. I don’t want to mess up our zoo hours. It can be done afterward … and if we’re too tired, we’ll just have to do less shopping. The critical items are deodorant and extension cord. The rest of the items we should have for the week, but we can go back for them. I think we are going to have a little break now as far as a snack.

We’ve got two more grapefruit and one orange, so I think we’re going for the multitude item of the grapefruit. They are though only the size of oranges and the orange is even smaller … YEEKS. Maybe we’ll have that going out the door and the last grapefruit tonight. Maybe Sweetie Pie will be in for dinner? Hmm?? Could be … Let me get that fruit.

Sigh that was good … I’d like something else now just a little heavier. Hmm, I know a little luncheon meat, but after that back to the studying you go … you hear? Yes Maam. AHA! He thought of me … there were vegetables and lite salad dressing dip in there … that’s my guy!

Ok. About ready to get going. It’s 3:37 pm now and we’ve got shoes and all to be going … Just a bold moment now of stepping out doors. We can do this, right? BRB
We’re back from the zoo dear! It’s about 6:11 pm and we’re expecting any … woohoo HE’S HERE!!!

posted by Ann Marie @ 6/11/2007 04:40:00 AM Comments: 0