OK, so I've been giving Lilly those Calm Child tablets for a couple of days now. I think they might be working. Right now, it's 10:00 at night, and Lilly is happily, calmly, and busily organizing all the stuff in the kitchen cabinets.
:O
August 22, 2013
I'm So Embarrassed! :/
Actually, I'm over it now, but when it happened earlier this afternoon, I was mortally embarrassed. Here's what happened:
Whenever the school system has a mass communication for all of the students' parents, they record it, and then their system automatically calls all of the parents so that everyone can just answer their phones and hear the recorded announcement. For example, a day or so ago, they had called all the students' parents with a recording to inform them of the road work going on around the square in town, and advise everyone that if they went a certain way to take their kids to school the following morning, that they may want to take a detour around the construction.
Anyway. I always got sick of answering the phone with the normal "Hello?" as if the recording was an actual person, so silly me began answering the phone by sticking my tongue out and blowing the biggest raspberry I could possibly muster into the phone every time the automatic school recording would call. You see, I don't believe that the school recording will even start to play until it thinks that someone is actually on the line. So you have to say "Hello" or make some kind of noise, or something.
So this afternoon, I was sitting at the bus stop waiting for Lilly, when my cell phone rings. I look at who's calling, see it's the school, and answer the phone with an ultra-robust "PPPPFFFFFFFFFFHHHHHHHHTTTTTTTT"!!!
To my absolute horror, the recording that I expected did not begin to play; instead, the Assistant Principal personally said "Hello?!?", to which I snapped out of it, of course pretended like nothing had happened, and replied in my best 'Perfect Mother' voice with a proper "Hello" fit for the Queen.
I was MORTIFIED. But thankfully, the Assistant Principal didn't mention it, so I guess I got away with it. WHEW.
Needless to say, immediately after I hung up, I changed the contact information on my cell phone for the school to say "Recording" whenever I'm sure it's actually the recording, and "School" whenever it's an actual human being school employee calling. Sheesh! :/
Anyway, the reason that the Assistant Principal was calling me in the first place was to let me know that Lilly's school bus driver had complained to them about Lilly's behavior on the bus the day before. Apparently Lilly was changing seats way too much and being "rowdy". Lilly's explanation for changing seats too much was because she was only helping a friend who had accidentally dropped and scattered all over the bus floor a whole bunch of little polished rocks that she'd gotten from a gift shop as souvenirs from her trip to the beach, and Lilly was going around all over the bus floor (along with several other little girls) helping to find them and pick them all back up for her. Lilly told this to the Assistant Principal, and the Principal basically told Lilly that if something like that happens, don't worry about the rocks; just stay in your seat to be safe. The Assistant Principal also told Lilly that if the bus was in an accident, and Lilly wasn't sitting upright in her seat, that she could go crashing through the window. (Yeah, right, but whatever).
I can understand their concern for safety (or secret motive not to get sued), but crap like this makes me kind of hate the way school is nowadays. School has only been in session for 12 days now, and already, Lilly has had four notes from the teacher sent home (two for not paying attention in math --which she hates because she has tremendous difficulty with-- one for not doing her homework and "not being honest" about it, and one from a substitute teacher because Lilly didn't ask permission before going to the restroom --which is something that Lilly says that her regular teacher allows the students to do), one verbal threat from the teacher to have a parent-teacher conference with me about her doing so badly in math, and now I get this call from the Assistant Principal that Lilly's being "rowdy" on the bus. Really?!? I can understand why many more parents are choosing to home-school their kids than ever before. Not that I would necessarily ever do that, but I can see why it's becoming a more popular choice. Sheesh. Dealing with school BS is the worst.
Anyway, Lilly does happen to be a complete hellion at home, so I'm starting to wonder if her hellion-like ways are finally beginning to extend to school. Before, she was always awful at home, but an angel at school. Whenever I'd tell anybody about it, they'd just tell me to be glad; that it's better for your kid to misbehave at home than at school. But then I got to figuring that if a kid was great at school, but awful at home, then it had to be because the parenting skills of the parents were cruddy. Not to mention that I've never actually been around other kids Lilly's age long enough to actually observe them and know what's normal kid behavior, and what's not, so I don't really know how a kid her age is supposed to act. But it seems to me that most kids do act better than Lilly.
I'd been starting to kick around the idea of maybe taking Lilly to her pediatrician and talking about the behavior problems, but I just have a feeling that her doctor wouldn't believe me, or would tell me all she needs is extra rest and a freaky diet, or refer me to some scary psychiatrist 100 miles away for a million tests or something, only to be told that Lilly is fine; it's just your parenting skills that suck.
So today I just so happened to go to lunch with some friends from my old workplace, and they asked me how Lilly was doing. I told them about her notes home from school, her trouble in math, and her misbehavior, and then we got on the subject that maybe she needed medication. Then one of my friends remembered that years ago, a lady she knew had a son who had troubles like that, and tried all kinds of different prescription medications, only to eventually discover that the best thing that helped him was a simple herbal supplement called Calm Child from the vitamin/herb/supplement store.
Intrigued about this, I went to the herb store later, and they had some. They had it in liquid form, or tablets to swallow. I opted for tablets, because even though the liquid form claimed "great taste", you know that's always hit or miss, and kids usually think that any kind of "medicine" is "yucky" anyway, no matter how secretly OK and candy-ish it actually tastes.
Here's a picture of the bottle:
It says that it "Supports Calm Focused Attention", and contains jujube seed, hawthorn berry, chamomile flower extract, catnip, lemon balm, long pepper fruit, licorice root, magnesium chelate, chamomile flower, taurine, amla fruit, calcium citrate, gotu kola, anise fruit, clove fruit, and cassia bark. Hmm. Weird. I just picture some hippie-witch in a darkened back-room somewhere with a mortar and pestle concocting this weird brew, and then pressing it into tablet forms with their bony, claw-like fingers. Heh.
Anyway, when we got home from Lilly's gymnastics class a little while ago, I made Lilly take the tablets, so we'll see what happens. Fingers crossed that it'll work!
Whenever the school system has a mass communication for all of the students' parents, they record it, and then their system automatically calls all of the parents so that everyone can just answer their phones and hear the recorded announcement. For example, a day or so ago, they had called all the students' parents with a recording to inform them of the road work going on around the square in town, and advise everyone that if they went a certain way to take their kids to school the following morning, that they may want to take a detour around the construction.
Anyway. I always got sick of answering the phone with the normal "Hello?" as if the recording was an actual person, so silly me began answering the phone by sticking my tongue out and blowing the biggest raspberry I could possibly muster into the phone every time the automatic school recording would call. You see, I don't believe that the school recording will even start to play until it thinks that someone is actually on the line. So you have to say "Hello" or make some kind of noise, or something.
So this afternoon, I was sitting at the bus stop waiting for Lilly, when my cell phone rings. I look at who's calling, see it's the school, and answer the phone with an ultra-robust "PPPPFFFFFFFFFFHHHHHHHHTTTTTTTT"!!!
To my absolute horror, the recording that I expected did not begin to play; instead, the Assistant Principal personally said "Hello?!?", to which I snapped out of it, of course pretended like nothing had happened, and replied in my best 'Perfect Mother' voice with a proper "Hello" fit for the Queen.
I was MORTIFIED. But thankfully, the Assistant Principal didn't mention it, so I guess I got away with it. WHEW.
Needless to say, immediately after I hung up, I changed the contact information on my cell phone for the school to say "Recording" whenever I'm sure it's actually the recording, and "School" whenever it's an actual human being school employee calling. Sheesh! :/
Anyway, the reason that the Assistant Principal was calling me in the first place was to let me know that Lilly's school bus driver had complained to them about Lilly's behavior on the bus the day before. Apparently Lilly was changing seats way too much and being "rowdy". Lilly's explanation for changing seats too much was because she was only helping a friend who had accidentally dropped and scattered all over the bus floor a whole bunch of little polished rocks that she'd gotten from a gift shop as souvenirs from her trip to the beach, and Lilly was going around all over the bus floor (along with several other little girls) helping to find them and pick them all back up for her. Lilly told this to the Assistant Principal, and the Principal basically told Lilly that if something like that happens, don't worry about the rocks; just stay in your seat to be safe. The Assistant Principal also told Lilly that if the bus was in an accident, and Lilly wasn't sitting upright in her seat, that she could go crashing through the window. (Yeah, right, but whatever).
I can understand their concern for safety (or secret motive not to get sued), but crap like this makes me kind of hate the way school is nowadays. School has only been in session for 12 days now, and already, Lilly has had four notes from the teacher sent home (two for not paying attention in math --which she hates because she has tremendous difficulty with-- one for not doing her homework and "not being honest" about it, and one from a substitute teacher because Lilly didn't ask permission before going to the restroom --which is something that Lilly says that her regular teacher allows the students to do), one verbal threat from the teacher to have a parent-teacher conference with me about her doing so badly in math, and now I get this call from the Assistant Principal that Lilly's being "rowdy" on the bus. Really?!? I can understand why many more parents are choosing to home-school their kids than ever before. Not that I would necessarily ever do that, but I can see why it's becoming a more popular choice. Sheesh. Dealing with school BS is the worst.
Anyway, Lilly does happen to be a complete hellion at home, so I'm starting to wonder if her hellion-like ways are finally beginning to extend to school. Before, she was always awful at home, but an angel at school. Whenever I'd tell anybody about it, they'd just tell me to be glad; that it's better for your kid to misbehave at home than at school. But then I got to figuring that if a kid was great at school, but awful at home, then it had to be because the parenting skills of the parents were cruddy. Not to mention that I've never actually been around other kids Lilly's age long enough to actually observe them and know what's normal kid behavior, and what's not, so I don't really know how a kid her age is supposed to act. But it seems to me that most kids do act better than Lilly.
I'd been starting to kick around the idea of maybe taking Lilly to her pediatrician and talking about the behavior problems, but I just have a feeling that her doctor wouldn't believe me, or would tell me all she needs is extra rest and a freaky diet, or refer me to some scary psychiatrist 100 miles away for a million tests or something, only to be told that Lilly is fine; it's just your parenting skills that suck.
So today I just so happened to go to lunch with some friends from my old workplace, and they asked me how Lilly was doing. I told them about her notes home from school, her trouble in math, and her misbehavior, and then we got on the subject that maybe she needed medication. Then one of my friends remembered that years ago, a lady she knew had a son who had troubles like that, and tried all kinds of different prescription medications, only to eventually discover that the best thing that helped him was a simple herbal supplement called Calm Child from the vitamin/herb/supplement store.
Intrigued about this, I went to the herb store later, and they had some. They had it in liquid form, or tablets to swallow. I opted for tablets, because even though the liquid form claimed "great taste", you know that's always hit or miss, and kids usually think that any kind of "medicine" is "yucky" anyway, no matter how secretly OK and candy-ish it actually tastes.
Here's a picture of the bottle:
Anyway, when we got home from Lilly's gymnastics class a little while ago, I made Lilly take the tablets, so we'll see what happens. Fingers crossed that it'll work!
August 20, 2013
OMG. BIGGEST. SPIDER. EVER. :O
So we finally broke down and called the heating & air repairman to come out to the house, figure out what was wrong with our heat pump, and fix it for us. He arrived this morning, and after tinkering around with the unit that sits outside the house for a little while, he discovered that the only reason it wasn't working was because a mouse had chewed one little orange wire in two inside of the electrical panel. He fixed it, and that was that (whew)! He also needed to go in the crawlspace under the house to check out the big 'thingie' (my technical term) that's under there that all of the ductwork connects to. (A large portion of our crawlspace is actually large enough to stand up in, though, so it's not bad at all). Anyway, I was underneath the house along with the repairman (just in case he needed anything) and while he was doing his thing, I was sitting on top of a plastic storage bin just looking around, biding my time until he got done tinkering, when something caught my eye:
THE BIGGEST FREAKING SPIDER I'VE EVER SEEN IN MY LIFE (not counting the ones I've seen on TV or in zoos).
OMGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Now, I do fairly OK with large spiders & snakes & bees and creepy, yucky stuff like that -- as long as they don't surprise me in any way. This spider was maybe about 15 feet away from me when I spotted it, so I didn't freak out. I just quietly made a mental note of it until the repairman was gone, and then I went back under the house to make pictures and video of it. *shudder*
I had texted Jamie about the spider while he was still at work, telling him he was going to have to get it out of there when he got home, and he replied back "OK". He's (kinda foolishly) not scared of spiders, snakes, bees, or anything; you name it. Well, when got home, I of course wanted him to get rid of the spider immediately. He calmly said "I know that spider. It's about *this big*, isn't it?" (holding up both his hands to form a giant circle). I said "WHAT?!? WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU KNOW THAT SPIDER?!?" And Jamie, of course taking up for the spider (like a butthole), says "Yeah, I saw it under there before. That thing eats TONS of crickets".
And then he walked away, casually removed his work clothes, and began taking a leisurely shower. And when he got out of the shower, then he began his long, arduous beauty regimen on his stupid freakin' hair. And when he got done with that, he fixed himself some food and began mouth-breathing while watching some damn TV show about freakin' giant snakes and burping & farting loudly with the cat snuggled up in his lap for an eternity. And when the giant snake show went off, then a damn show about Bigfoot came on, and he watched it for about 15 minutes before falling asleep sitting on the couch (instead of quickly removing the spider like I wanted him to). Needless to say, I was PISSED.
Spider 1, Scared Wife 0
I didn't say anything (because I was too mad about it), but eventually he got up, dumped the cat out of his lap, and finally announced that he would remove the spider now if I wanted him to. Sheesh. Like almost 2 hours after I originally wanted him to. When we went under the house to look for the spider, I didn't see it at first, so I figured it had already moved and hid itself, and he wouldn't be able to get it out. Boy, that really made me mad. But fortunately I spotted it lower down on that stack of cinder blocks it had been on earlier, and he was able to get it. WHEW.
Here's the video of the spider removal. ***WARNING -- I was so freaked out that I said OMG too much (I wish there was some way to "bleep" it)! LOL! :/
Back when I was a teenager, I remember going to get the mail out of the mailbox one sunny summer day. I yanked open the mailbox, and a big spider came flying out. In a matter of literally one second, it had jumped onto my hand, and crawled all the way up my arm to the shoulder. I don't know where it ended up, because in the one second that all of this happened, I had ripped my t-shirt completely off and slung it into next week, screaming, all while standing right there at the end of the driveway. I can still remember what that big ol' spider running up my arm at 90 miles an hour felt like, and it still gives me the creeps all these years later. Yep, sudden unexpected spider surprise = not cool.
I think the only other spider I've seen around the house that may actually be even worse than the one pictured above was one I saw in the garage one night several years ago. That one gave me severe chill bumps. The reason why was because its @$$ was larger around than a quarter, and its @$$ was also absolutely teeming with trillions of teeny, tiny little bitty baby spiders. *SUPER-shudder*!!! Ugh!!! :P
That's the only thing I hate about summer -- the freakin' bugs. Bleh! :P
Now I've got the willies. I hope I don't have nightmares tonight! :/
THE BIGGEST FREAKING SPIDER I'VE EVER SEEN IN MY LIFE (not counting the ones I've seen on TV or in zoos).
OMGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I didn't say anything (because I was too mad about it), but eventually he got up, dumped the cat out of his lap, and finally announced that he would remove the spider now if I wanted him to. Sheesh. Like almost 2 hours after I originally wanted him to. When we went under the house to look for the spider, I didn't see it at first, so I figured it had already moved and hid itself, and he wouldn't be able to get it out. Boy, that really made me mad. But fortunately I spotted it lower down on that stack of cinder blocks it had been on earlier, and he was able to get it. WHEW.
Here's the video of the spider removal. ***WARNING -- I was so freaked out that I said OMG too much (I wish there was some way to "bleep" it)! LOL! :/
I think the only other spider I've seen around the house that may actually be even worse than the one pictured above was one I saw in the garage one night several years ago. That one gave me severe chill bumps. The reason why was because its @$$ was larger around than a quarter, and its @$$ was also absolutely teeming with trillions of teeny, tiny little bitty baby spiders. *SUPER-shudder*!!! Ugh!!! :P
That's the only thing I hate about summer -- the freakin' bugs. Bleh! :P
Now I've got the willies. I hope I don't have nightmares tonight! :/
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