January 2017 - Old Fashion Mom

1/27/17 pins and plates and answering machines…

Everyone is OK at the end of this post. About ten years ago William was hit by a pick-up truck. He was riding his bike to the book store to find some books and sit and read for a while. He rode his bike out into an intersection. He was young and young kids feel invincible. He said that he never thought that anything would happen to him. The truck rolled onto his foot. The driver jumped out of the truck to see if he was OK and William started yelling move the truck, you are on my leg, move the truck. The driver had thought that William was by the truck not under it. He moved the truck. William had a broken leg. It could have been so much worse. The leg was broken at an angle and wouldn’t stay together in a cast so they put a plate and pins in the leg to keep it together. It healed so well. William doesn’t have a limp or any other side effects. He has a scar. He did quit bike riding for years.

Now that William is working the leg is starting to hurt. He said he wanted to go to the doctor to have his leg looked at. When I started to make the appointment he said maybe we should wait, it didn’t hurt that much. I said that if it was normal from standing the doctor would tell him, bit if it is the metal rubbing on the bone he needed to get it looked at before the metal rubbed the bone away. He said OK we could make the appointment. The x-ray showed that two pins were up against the bone. The doctor said that we should take the two pins out. It is outpatient surgery. He said the pins will slip out easily and the bone will fill in the holes. William can go back to work the next day.

After the doctor appointment William and I went to the library. We had rented movies last week and needed to take them back,and get more movies. We thought we had rented one movie and it didn’t have a CD in it. So last week I took the case to the library and explained that it didn’t have a CD in it when we got it home. The next day we found the CD. But it was Saturday night and our branch wasn’t open on Sunday. So today we took the CD in. Maggie had filled out applications before she went to her grandmas. When I went inside our house to get the movies I saw the answering machine blinking but didn’t think about it until we were almost to the library. I needed to go back home and listen to the messages and call Maggie if any of the messages were for her. If I went home and got the message now and called her she would still have time to call today before all of the businesses closed for the day. If I waited until we were done at the library, all of the businesses would be closed. So I dropped William at the library and went back to the house and listened to the messages,none of them were for Maggie, and then went back to the library to get William and the new movies. I was tired.

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1/26/17 going to grandmas…

Maggie went to her grand mothers today. She is staying there until Tuesday. Grandma is sick and needs someone to stay with her. Beth is also going to stay with grandma. Beth didn’t know that Maggie was going to go over when she set this up. I hope that it works out having both of the girls there. At this house now the people are outnumbered by the cats.

William and I came home this evening and watched the movie Chef.

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1/25/17 applications and packing…

Maggie tried to fill out applications but the internet kept shutting off. She did put a lot of effort into it, but it kept shutting down. She wants to try again tomorrow. If she goes to her grandmothers tomorrow she won’t have time to fill out applications. I know that going to her grandmothers will be fun and it is appreciated, but she doesn’t have a gap on her resume right now. She ended school last semester in December. If she starts working now she doesn’t have a gap, I don’t want her to have a gap that she will need to explain forever. She could work part-time and be at grandmas the rest of the day.

I asked Maggie to make a list of what to pack. Maggie can pack a suitcase. I asked her to make a list of what she thinks of first, then add to the list what she uses each day, start at the morning with the comb and picture what you use all day. Then think of what you will need to interview. We have taken weekend trips before, but nothing longer like this will be. She will be close enough that we can take her things if she has forgotten them

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1/24/17 Maggie is going to Grandmas…

The kids grandma is sick. Not my mom, their other grandma. She went to the doctor and he wanted her to go to the hospital. She said no. She is ninety years old and still gets around good, except for the cold. She asked if Maggie could come live with her for a while. Maggie said yes right away. I thought that she would think about it for a while. Maggie has dropped out of college and has put an application in at the pet store but they haven’t called her. She will need to put in a lot of applications before she leaves because Grandma doesn’t have internet. When she said yes I felt so sad. I know that she will be a good help and she is ready to go, but I miss her already. It is suddenly so empty here. All my years of thinking about what hobbies I would like after they are gone doesn’t fill up the quiet, and she hasn’t even left yet. I asked Maggie to start filling out applications. She looked at her e-mail first to see if the pet store had emailed. They hadn’t. She is filling out applications now. She needs a phone so that we can keep in touch with her.

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1/23/17 college and Christmas trees…

Maggie has dropped out of college.I asked her what she wanted to do now. She said she wanted to get a job. I said that would be good and asked her if she wanted to work at Menards, I think they are hiring and since she doesn’t drive it is close for me or her grandma to take her to. She didn’t look thrilled but said that this would be OK.

We need to take the Christmas tree down soon.We usually take it down some time in January, unless we are really busy with the kids school activities, then it is later. If we can’t take it down in January, we do take the Christmas wreath off of the front porch and put the regular wreath back up. The cats have taken off the ornaments from the bottom foot of the tree. I wanted to turn the lights on the other day but couldn’t find the extension cord. Maggie said that she had taken it. We must have borrowed it from her and she thought we were done. The tree needs its own cord. It is sitting there not lit up with the ornaments from the bottom foot missing. Its just so sad.

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1/22/17 the last driving lesson before the test…

Beth went in to take her driving test. I wanted her to take her test before it snowed again The day before we were going in for the test I realized that there was a maneuverability portion that we had not practiced for. I called the testing place and asked if there was parallel parking on the test too. They said no just the maneuverability part. They were still open so William and I went over to get a driving book. I am always hoping that if William goes to the License Bureau with me, he will start to feel comfortable there and want to take the driving test too. It hasn’t happened yet. While we were there they had the maneuverability test set up outside. That was good so that we could see how to set it up for Beth to practice on. We had set up to leave the house about three hours before the test. This would give her some driving time before the test.

We went to a parking lot the day of the test to practice the maneuverability. In the test they have five big orange cones and sticks sticking out the top of them. The drivers can see the sticks. I told Beth that I didn’t have any cones. In the trunk we had some sticks that were each about a foot long. I said we could put these on the ground and she could get the idea of what needed to be done. She said OK. We looked at the book to see what was required. She had to pull up between the cones, go around the last one and be parallel to the first cones. That isn’t a very good explanation. I set up the sticks and Beth tried it. We had the sticks too close together. She ended up running some of the sticks over and the car was crooked. She looked so upset and so young and so small. All of her hopes for driving had just ended. The driving test was today, and she had run over the sticks. We adjusted the sticks to a more correct distance and she tried again. It wasn’t any better. I explained to her that she had always been my child that was good at everything that she tried on the first try. And if she wasn’t good at it on the first try she simply chose not to do it again.

She smiled and said yes. I explained that some things take work and some things that she works at she will really love. Not everything is easy. So she tried again..The problem was that she could only see the sticks for a second then the car was in the way since the sticks were laying on the ground and not standing upright in a cone. I went over and stood by the stick that she needed to be aware of, but not close enough that I would get hit. She practiced going forward and backward and to the left and the right. Eventually she got the car straight. She felt confident again. We picked up the sticks and drove over to the neighborhood that the drivers test was in. We were early so we found another parking lot and practiced again. Then we went to the test. I was confident. I trust her driving. We signed her in and sat for about a minute before they called her. Away she went. I said a prayer for her. They came back. I looked at her, sort of like how did it go. She shrugged like they haven’t said yet. We went up to the desk and the officer gave the paperwork to the clerk, she handed it to Beth and said that we could take it to the other table. I asked if she had passed and the lady said yes. We did a quiet woo-hoo!!! I wanted to take a picture but Beth said I had to wait until we got outside. We got her license and had her picture taken. It was exciting. My first child with a drivers license. After we went outside I took a picture of her, actually I took a lot, she makes all sorts of faces in every picture so I need to take a lot to get one I can frame. Then she took a lot of selfies.

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1/21/17 driving lessons…

Beth and I went driving last weekend. She needed to learn to drive backwards. A friend of mine said that they had taken their kids to an empty parking lot and had them drive in backwards figure eights for two hours. It sounded like a good idea to me. So…Beth and I stopped at a McDonald’s and got a Coke and went to a parking lot. There is a vacant parking lot by us that doesn’t have the parking spaces drawn on it any more but it is still in good shape and it only has one light which is by the curb on one end, not in the middle of the lot. We got there and Beth asked what the driving directions were today. I said she needed to do backward figure eights for two hours. She said OK and started. First she drove making the figure eight really short. I asked her to use more of the parking lot. She made bigger ones. Then she stopped and did the figure eights going the other direction. After about twenty minutes she asked if we were done. I said no. She needed to do this for a full two hours. I said she still seemed shaky and unsure how the car would react when she made different turns. So many times when the girls are driving and they try to back out of a parking space they can’t figure out which way to turn the wheel to get the car to go the way that they want. We were now out of Coke and she was not ready for another hour and forty minutes off backing up, so I suggested that we go back to McDonald’s and get another Coke and come back to the parking lot. After we got the Coke we went back to the parking lot and she asked how much time she had left. I said an hour and forty minutes, I think she was hoping that the driving time to McDonald’s would count towards the backing up time. We do need to do the whole two hours. So she started driving. Beth did figure out how to do small enough circles that it turned my stomach. She didn’t do that all of the time, just when she could catch me off guard, then she would look at me out of he corner of her eye to see if I would react. She made big figure eights, and small ones and many too close to the light pole, just to watch me squirm. In the end she said that this had been a good idea. She felt a lot more confident. She was driving better too. We had spent so much time having her learn to drive forward it was good to have some time learning to back up.

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1/20/17 hats and cats…

Maggie and I went to Menard’s and tried on hats. She also wanted batteries and she had a toy for the cats. It shines a laser light in different directions for the cats to chase. We found the batteries We went to Meijer and looked for hats there. Maggie also had some of her own money and wanted to look at movies. These are Maggie’s greatest loves, the cats and movies. We found a hat for her and one for William. We went to the movie area and she found a movie. I think it was an Avenger movie.

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1/4/17 ACT admission ticket…

The ACT web site has been down for at least a week. Beth is taking her ACT test this Saturday and we still need to print her admission ticket. I disconnected my printer from my computer a while ago by mistake and can’t get it reconnected so I have been going to the library every day to print the page. I have gone into total panic. If we can’t print this she can’t test. I should have gone to the library the day she signed up, but I didn’t. Today the web site came up, I was so excited.

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1/3/17 volunteering and friends…

Maggie is volunteering with one of her classes clearing burdock in a local neighborhood. They go every other Sunday for a few hours and get extra credit points for going. The burdock was brought to the neighborhood as an ornamental plant and took over the neighborhood. They have been clearing a field. Maggie is another one of my quiet kids. I am hoping that she will make a friend when she volunteers. She says that they cut the burdock down separately and don’t have conversations while they are there. When I drop her off at the school to go, we get there early and she does go over and talk to the other students that are waiting. It is OK with me if she and William are quieter ones, but they will miss a lot of life if they don’t ever talk to anyone. I had asked Maggie to join a club this semester. College isn’t just about the classes but about making a friend and about going to the games or a play or out for pizza or to a party or to something. She said that this semester she couldn’t join a club because she has too many classes.

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