acupuncture

so i have been going to see an acupuncturist for about a year and a half, every two weeks or so. i never thought that i'd be someone who could get needles stuck in them, but i have found it extremely helpful! seriously. back pain, anxiety, pms, insomnia, it helps all of it. and i have all of that. plus, my therapist, kathi drake is really awesome and lovely. it is my favorite thing. it is the closest to meditation that i've ever been able to do- kathi puts the needles in and then leaves the room for 40 minutes. i lay there, still and QUIET for all of that time and think thoughts and breathe and don't move. sometimes i fall asleep, but more often, i just lay there. when was the last time you did that? it is amazing. i highly recommend it!!!

introducing chester the worldly kitten!!

my enormous grown up girl

is at sleepaway camp. right now. holy crap.

p.s. thanks, mom, for going with me!

i love that you get to be a part of these little yet enormous things!!!!

i want to go to here.

norway...

new zealand

thailand

hawaii

maybe because it is so hot right now...i'm all about the cliffs and beaches...yummy.

hipster doofus

http://www.ubergizmo.com/2011/03/the-typescreen-ipad-typewriter/

i want to buy an ipad so that i can buy this...

i've decided that i would be a hipster except that i don't have the "i'm so over that" attitude. i'm too sincere to be hip.

grades

just a few minutes before i have to leave for work...one thing that has struck me about this job is that i am rated (monitored, graded, evaluated) every single shift. i haven't been graded for twenty years and it hasn't gotten any more fun. of course, i understand that it is the only way for them to maintain any kind of quality across all of the hundreds of us on calls, but it is still tough. so far, i've done really well- i've been told that anything over 90 is good and i've always been over 90 (almost. once i got an 84. ), but when it is in the lower 90s, i always get the discussion. what i'm doing wrong, what i should be doing instead, etc. it totally affects my entire day. i am so thankful that one aspect of the school that we have chosen for lu is that she isn't graded. of course, she is still evaluated and she is told when she gets things wrong and all, but the numeric value isn't there. she is allowed to just be herself and do her thing with out being compared to her peers and rated on a scale. i think that if adults were subjected to the kind of monitoring that i am at work every day, we as a society, would have a much bigger problem with grades.

thats all.

lu at the pool

this is my first post and i don't really know what i am wanting to say here. i just felt the urge to start up a blog and so here i am. i am 39, female, married, mother to one 8 year old, keeper of the household, feeder of the pets, doer of the laundry. i did just start a new job about two months ago, working as a captionist for a company that makes captioned telephones for the deaf and hard of hearing. i can't really talk about all of that, though, because it is all very privacy confidentiality FCC rules ish. i decided to try working there after taking a couple of sign language classes this spring, something i did years ago and always planned on returning to. now i am working a job that is pretty much as far away from sign language as you can get! i do feel like i am contributing to the deaf community a bit, so that is something, at least. i would like to continue with sign language at some point. my mom is retiring this winter and i'm trying to talk her into taking a class with me. we'll see!

lets see. it is summer and that means that lu and i have been going to the pool every freakin' day. i guess that i can't really complain about that...there are worse things than sitting and watching your daughter play tennis and swim better than i ever have! she really is getting good at these things and is at an age where she is very in between. she isn't one of the little ones anymore, she is in the most advanced swim class- yet she isn't one of the big kids, either. she still looks so small next to the teenagers in their bikinis...she is fully and absolutely herself, however, and as stubborn as her daddy. during lessons i get to sit in the sun and read...i'll have to put up my reading list as my next post. or can i do an ongoing list in the sidebar part? i dunno. i'm new to all of this stuff. my reading has improved with this job- i can read in between calls, and i can't have my phone on. so the facebook/internet/scrabble stuff that often keeps me from opening a book is out of bounds. and i've been catching up to my pre-Iphone levels!

i'm going to work on that list thing.