As a Taco

Halloween was different this year.  Parents wore masks, as did many of the children, depending on if their costume already included a mask, which included both of my children’s outfits, and their personal preferences given that a good bit of social distancing was easily maintained out of doors on the crisp fall evening we had.  

Candy was given out in a far different manner than I’ve ever experienced it before—all due to COVID-19.  Tables were put out towards the street and candy was placed on top in either prepared single-serving bags or just spread out on the table.   In most cases, the tables weren’t even manned by an adult.

The tradition of saying, “trick or treat” was entirely absent as there wasn’t much to do other than collect available candy and move on to the next house.  And while this was quite different, it didn’t dampen the children’s enthusiasm or energy. 

My son left on his own and circled back to catch up with us a few times but eventually left us behind.  My daughter had a twisted ankle she hadn’t told us about so we curtailed the trick-or-treating and came back home after a long loop of the closest streets. 

My in-laws came over and manned the table of candy in the front of the yard while my husband and I walked with my daughter.   We put the fire pit in the driveway with chairs, making it a nice evening outside at a safe distance from everyone else. 

We didn’t get or carve a pumpkin and put up much less in the way of decorations this year.  Halloween was different this year, but it was still a lot of fun for the children. 

The Big Boy Update:  My son got a white unisuit with a strange looking black wraith character on it including long, creepy fingers.  He put orange short over it and was, “an unknown monster in shorts”—a costume created and named by him.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter wore the space ship costume she made from one KiwiCo kit and the unicorn head from another kit and was the head unicorn in the alien unicorn invasion fleet.  I was dressed as a large taco (something I found at Target) and was the head unicorn alien’s assistant, holding her candy bag.   

Slept Confusingly Late

I just woke up and was confused in that way where you don’t know what time it is, but you know you must be very late to something indeed because of how groggy you feel.   I wasn’t feeling well before dinner.  My back was screaming at me.   I got in a hot tub of water, hoping it would help and my daughter, wanting to help me, went upstairs and wrote me a note on a sheet of braille paper in print to help. 

She cane downstairs and asked me if I could read what she wrote.   The page was completely blank.  There wasn’t a mark on it.   I told her I thought maybe she’d picked up the wrong sheet after going to get the string she was holding.   She looked confused, went back upstairs and came down ten minutes later with a second sheet, this time with writing on it.   

She had written the sign over again.   I think, well, we both think, the pen she was using was completely dry of ink and it made no marks on the page.   The sign said I wanted some privacy.   She had gotten a string from the craft room so I could hang it around the door on the knob.   She had found string somewhere, I don’t know how she knew where to look, but she always knows, always remembers after learning where something is once. 

The writing was hard to read, but it was legible.   She is getting better over time at writing, which is a lot about not writing on top of what you’ve already written both vertically and horizontally.   I got out of the tub and lay down on the bed and just woke up now, very confused at what time it was and was I late for school, only to find out it was almost midnight.

The Big Boy Update:  My son did his student-led conference with us today.   He’s been doing a huge amount of work at school and he seeing him deliver his conference let me see him in a more mature light than we typically do at home.  He was proud about telling us of all the work he’s done/ 

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  More on this later, but tonight while my daughter was giving that sign to me she said, “I really want to see.”  She’s never said this before.  She uncharacteristically talked to me about it for a few minutes before changing the subject off her vision. 

The Favorite Tool

I wrote about our friend Keaton and his family a few days ago.   I’m happy to report that a good portion of the funds for Keaton’s top surgery has been raised, which is good, because the surgery is in less than two weeks.   Tonight, with my daughter in the bath, I decided to tell her a little bit more about what “top surgery” meant. 

I had multiple reasons for bringing this up, one of which was what happens to a female when she reaches puberty.   When I asked her if she knew what top surgery meant, she said, “something to do with the heart?”  So I explained.   

I told her about what happened to girls when they hit puberty and how breasts were a good thing to have, because when I had her, they produced the milk she ate.   I had to do a physical, and yes, this means tactile, comparison.  She actually didn’t know that boys have flat chests and girls have breasts that stick out.   So I showed her. 

And I know, I know, this was a necessary thing and was very important to helping my daughter understand female growth in comparison to male growth, but having your child grope your breasts in great detail is a bit odd.   It was funny when she said, “eww”. I told her I knew that it was different, but some day she might come to appreciate the breasts she would grow into.   

I talked about how visually, women’s breasts stick out and men have flat chests.   I said that for someone who already doesn’t feel like they’re the right gender that having them stick out, advertising themselves, was very hard to bear.   And that, was what Keaton was going to have surgery on: he was going to have the parts of his breasts removed that he didn’t need, so he could have the chest any other male would have. 

She got it in the way a child gets something complicated by looking at it as a whole.   So, two birds killed with one stone as the saying goes: now she knows about the breasts she’ll have and also why Keaton needs to have the ones he has, removed.  

She got out of the tub, hair now washed, and I got out the BandAids to put one over a scrape on her ankle. She accidentally kicked and knocked over my tin of bandages because she was lying face down on the bath mat so I could get to the spot easily.   Without getting up, she started hunting for and picking up the spilled bandages with her toes to hand them to me.  I said, “good job with the toes,” and she said, “they’re my favorite tool."

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  Tomorrow, my daughter will have a tour of her school with Mr. Adam, her Orientation and Mobility teacher, before returning to campus on Monday.   She hasn’t seen him since March.   She hasn’t even met her third-grade teacher before and will get to see her for the first time on Monday as well as her favorite VI teachers, with the exception of Mrs. B., who is staying home so she can keep growing her baby which will be born in a few months.

The Big Boy Update:  My son did his Mystery History presentation today as Chris Archer, a baseball pitcher from North Carolina.   He did the presentation, as did all his fellow classmates, while standing in the doorway of his classroom so that he could have his mask off.  The weather outside was blustery with hurricane edges passing by, but the rain held off and the students were well-lit in the overcast and yet strangely bright day.  He had a baseball cap and jersey on and I swear, he did the whole presentation with a swagger I’ve never seen before.   I don’t think he realized it looked like an affectation of a ball player, but it did to me.   He seemed relaxed and wasn’t worried about forgetting parts because he had his notes on the table with the computer in case he needed to refer to them.   In comparison to last year when he did this same presentation at the end of October, it was much easier for him I think.  He didn’t even do any work at home like the rehearsal after rehearsals from last year. 

Misunderstood

There are very few things Alexa can’t understand.  Initially, when the Amazon Echo technology was new and my husband had an early release model, she couldn’t understand my small daughter at all and my son only some of the time.   Now, she seems to be able to understand the most garbled of words in a room with other people talking even when the person saying the command immediately continues talking to someone else after giving the command.  I mean seriously folks, it’s impressive. 

I found out there is a word she doesn’t understand though.   My daughter told me she wanted another audiobook and I asked if she’d finished The Dragon Squisher yet.  She said she hadn’t, because she couldn’t get it to play.  

Being the know-it-all parent I thought she was doing something wrong but five minutes later after saying the word, “Squisher” in the most clear and overly enunciated of ways, I gave in and went an alternate route.   The only way we could get her to pick up and play the book was to have her display a list of Audible books on the Echo Show.   We could then pick the book (it was second in the list) and playback would begin.  

My daughter can do all of that except selecting the book in the list—or even knowing if the book is listed in the list.   Once I had that done, that particular book was the active book and my daughter could stop and start it without trouble.   

She was up in her bed past bedtime listening tonight.   

The Big Boy Update:  My son has his Mystery History presentation tomorrow.   We will be watching remotely from home.   He did zero practicing this year because they did all the work at school.   He is Chris Archer, a professional baseball player.   

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  While my husband was preparing dinner my daughter was listening to, and giggling at, “The Dragon Squisher.”  We usually get on the children for shushing us when we have to talk and they’re listening to a book but tonight I was the one shushing my husband—he was talking right over some important and yet funny parts of the story 

Because It Makes Me Happy

I just left the hottest room in our house.   It’s not so much a room as that closet I wrote about the other day that I “found” to store the 3D printing supplies.   It is hot in the room because there is a dehumidifier that, in its mission to keep humidity low for the filaments, also increases the temperature as it pulls moisture from the air. 

Instead of a collection of bins with desiccant at the bottom of each, positioned in different spots around the mechanical, I mean 3D printing room, all the filaments are in one glorious spot.   I can walk into this little closet under the stairs, turn on the light, shut the door behind me and look at the filaments.   And that makes me happy. 

Because there is just so much potential in those spools of plastic.   I can print almost anything.   I stand in the filament room (for I have now named it that) and think about what I want to print next.   Or, maybe I already have a project in mind and I’m deciding what filament would be best for the job.   Either way, it’s good times in that little, cramped, hot, dry room. 

Sometimes I’m not sure what to print next.   I’m looking for something to print that’s useful or interesting or that someone might like.   I was happy therefore, when my mother-in-law suggested napkin holders when she brought the children back from an overnight visit on Sunday.   

She always sets her table to match the season or time of year or event, making her tables festive and fun.   She has a collection of napkin holders and lately, the children go around and collect everyone’s napkin holder before the meal starts, divide them up and then play with them.  My mother-in-law’s suggestion was to print napkin holders for Halloween. 

She and I looked online and today I’ve been printing pumpkin, owl and cauldron napkin holders.  I’m moving on to other options the children will have fun with when there isn’t a specific holiday.   I was standing in the filament room picking out the best color for a unicorn napkin ring just before writing this post.   Next I’m going to try and figure out what filament I have that closest matches narwals.  

I like a good project.  And I love the new filament room.  

The Big Boy Update:  My son has been late to leave in the morning.   My husband and I had a bit of a heated discussion about it because he just has no natural consequence if he’s not on time.   We’re trying to figure out what a good consequence would be that he would care about that would motivate him to stay focused and not get distracted in the mornings.   He could easily be on time, he just gets distracted on the way.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter has been wearing her mask this week during the Google Meets in preparation for going to school next week.   She hates it.   I told her we all did at first and even now, we don’t like it.   But it gets easier and you don’t hate it as much. 

$102

We have good friends who have a nineteen-year-old son who, up until three years ago, was a she.  Much went behind that decision being made and much more needed to be done to move forward with his life-changing choice.   As Keaton, he was accepted and supported by family and friends we were happy knowing he was who he believed he was ever since Kindergarten. 

Our friends no longer live here but we keep in touch from time to time.  This past week they put up a Go Fund Me page with a message:  Keaton was scheduled to have his top surgery, a decision supported by his doctors, and they had scheduled for some time.   The family of five, supported by a single working parent, had unfortunately had been hit with COVID-19 cutbacks with the father losing his job.  They had saved up for the costly surgery, a non-trivial cost for them, and they wanted everyone to know they were going through with the surgery regardless, but spending their savings now, while on unemployment and with an unknown future, was a scary thing. 

My husband and I were talking about how much to contribute when my daughter walked in.   I decided to ask her if she wanted to help Keaton out.   I said it was a surgery he needed to have to help him continue to live life as a male.   She thought about it and said she wanted to donate $25 dollars.  

I went upstairs to talk to my son and told him the same, very short, story.   My son didn’t ask why.   He didn’t ask how.   He only asked how much money he had saved.   I looked on the app that lists how much each child has to spend and told my son he had $102 dollars.   He thought very briefly and then said, “then I want to give Keaton a hundred dollars.” 

I burst into tears.   My son hugged me and told me not to cry.   I told him I knew he hated it when I said I was proud of him but I really was so very proud of him for wanting to spend all his saved money to help Keaton.   He said, “it’s important to Keaton and I want to help.”  

My husband and I discussed it and we decided to let me son donate that hundred dollars but that we were only going to take fifty out of his savings and we would match the rest.   We wanted to be sure the children got credit for helping their friend out too, so we have three donations on Keaton’s page: one for each child and one for my husband and me.   

Sometimes children make you want to pull your hair out and scream.   And then other times they go and do something so wonderful—spending their saved money they hoard and count and want to spend on things for themselves—that it reminds you why you wanted to be a parent in the first place. 

The Big Boy Update:  Tonight on the school board meeting call we talked at length about equity.   We talked about so many different facets of what equity means to the school and how we hope to implement it.   At the end of the call after the executive committee session was over I asked if I could close with a story about equity.   I said that as much as it was important for us to believe in equity, define it, implement initiatives to achieve it and espouse it, we also wanted to pass on those beliefs to the children at the school.   Then I told the story about my son.   I said I wasn’t going to cry, but I couldn’t manage it and did so at the end of the story.   I hope we have raised our children to believe that people are equal.   We try to emulate those beliefs and I know the teachers and staff share those values.   My crying aside, they said it was a powerful a story to end the board meeting on.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter now has a yellow cast.   It is an uncommon color to pick, but my daughter is an uncommon little lady.   She wore her new pink heart glasses and her pink hearts mask and only said ouch a few times when the doctor had to squeeze the cast tightly so it would harden up around the break area.   The bones have knitted very well so far.   Four weeks in a cast and she’ll be back to swinging on the swings at full tilt again.  

Thunder Clan

My daughter has been obsessed with a series of book series for months now.   I found a book about cats on Audible and their adventures as clan Thunder Cats.   Then, after she devoured the first book, I found out it was a series of five or six books.   Then—and this part I tried to hide—I found out there were a whole slew of series after the first batch, all about Thunder Clan and their adventures.   

I tried to hide this from my daughter because I wanted her to select other things to listen to, to broaden, and vary the type of books she was consuming.   Alexa was my downfall here because she gladly told my daughter about the next books available. 

My daughter is playing imaginary games about the Thunder Clan cats and is trying to type some of the information up on her braillewriter.   What she wants to type up (and what she was doing prior to breaking her arm) is names of initiates to the clan.   They are all names like Strongwing, Braveheart, Bravewillow, etc.   She is having difficulty doing this because it hurts to use her broken arm fingers.

Typing on a braillewriter isn't like typing on a standard keyboard where you can use one hand and just type more slowly.   To type a braille cell you need to press down one to six keys at the same time.   There are only six keys and those keys each represent one of the six dots in a braille cell.   The six keys are separated by a space key with three left-hand keys on the left and three right-hand keys on right.   

Even an adult's hand would be hard-pressed to use a braillewriter with one hand because even if you managed to get your hand positioned over the right keys, you have to strike down with enough force to press the dots into the cardstock paper.   There is even one word that uses all six dots and not many people have six fingers.   That word is 'for' and that's a heavily used word.  

There is a very specialized braillewriter for people who can only type with one hand should a permanent need arise.   I really hope a permanent need does not arise.   

My daughter did manage to type a few things up over the weekend, enumerating all the names of the kits and initiates she was thinking of for her game of Thunder Clan.   She had me read them out to her tonight in preparation for the initiation ceremony game she wants to have tomorrow where the initiates she's come up with become full members of Thunder Clan.  

If we didn't have multiple people allergic to cats in this family, I would bet my daughter would be lobbying for a cat to join our family. 

The Big Boy Update:  My son got up from his computer this afternoon and told us his 'cult" key was missing.   We had no idea what he was talking about until he showed us.    He said a key had popped off and had fallen on the floor.   When we looked to where he was pointing my husband said, "ah, that's the 'control' key."

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter was having a bath tonight and keeping her arm out of the water while I washed her hair.   She said, "I just can't get my head around that I actually have a broken arm."  She gets the splint off tomorrow and the cast on.   Her brother had the most difficult time with itching involving unwrapping and rewrapping the bandages.   My daughter hasn't had a single issue with her bandages.   I think her arm has been hurting her more than her brother's though.   She's still quite careful with it.

Quiet

If it was quiet when COVID-19 shelter in home began around here, it's nothing to the total lack of sound that comes with the children being at Nana and Papa's for a night with the dog in tow.   There aren't any arguments between the children and the word, "mommy" hasn't been heard in hours.   The ding of the dog's bell at the front door hasn't even sounded.   

I'm not sure this is even my house, it's so quiet.   But dang if it isn't nice.   Tomorrow, we will be invaded by two children who are more interested in going to find their friends to continue whatever it was they were doing outside than they are at saying hello to their father or me.   Then there will be the dog, who will be overcome with joy to see me to the point that I have to calm her down after a few minutes by hugging her tightly for a few seconds. 

But for now, I'm enjoying the silence.  

The Big Boy Tiny Girl Tiny Tesla Update:  I went outside to see what the children needed to clean up before leaving for Nana and Papa's and found my daughter's little Tesla electric car with sticks stuck to the sides of it, pointing forward well beyond where the car ends, stuck to the side of the car with painters tape.   I went around front and saw Keira and my daughter and asked what was up with her car.   My daughter said, "Oh, the boys are weaponizing the car."  

Trying not to think of the cost of blue tape currently on and around the little car and focusing on positivity and support, I went to the front porch where my son and Rayan were and said, "nice work on the car.  It looks pretty deadly."  As I headed back to the garage my daughter told me, "he wanted to use duct tape but I told him he couldn't use it on my car."  Thank goodness for that, I thought.   Then she told me, "he was also going to use Gorilla Glue but I said he couldn't."   

The Gorilla Glue my son had come into the house earlier, brandishing it and saying it was the most powerful glue on the planet.   I told him he was in no way allowed to use it on accounts of how powerful it was and, more importantly, it was messy and whatever it got on was going to be stuck on there.   I was going to ask for him to hand it over but he left out the back door and I made a mental note to get it in a bit.   Before they left I asked my daughter about it again and she said it was in his pocket.   For a blind child, she knows a lot about all sorts of things.   I sure hope my son hasn't glued anything at Nana and Papa's house.  

Note to self: hide all Gorilla Glue before my son gets home.

Mysterious Disappearance

You know how you don't realize how much you need something until it's gone?  At this point as an adult this has happened to me many times, just like it likely has to most adults.   It's always the same though: that strange sense that something is gone and you don't know what to do to get it back.   Maybe it's not possible to get it back, such as when someone or a pet dies.   Then, other times, it could be something as simple as a favorite ring that got lost.

This morning I lost something.   I've been working on getting it back—and I will get it back—but in the meantime, things just don't seem right.   Many people have increased their online shopping with COVID-19 keeping us all at home more than we typically would be.  I've always been an avid online shopper.   I've been training for years for the Online Shopping Olympics and I would have been a clear shoo-in for Team America if COVID-19 hadn't come along, giving so many other shoppers time to train up.

I need to buy some pajamas for my daughter.  She is always cold it seems, so they need to be long pants.   She has a broken arm, so they also need to be short-sleeved.   Her current pajamas are getting messy because she sneaks outside in them and then invariably meets with dirt, rocks, wood splinters, and grass, not to mention the holes she introduces during the dirtying process.

I went to Amazon, found a few options, put them in my cart, and then went to check out.  Instead of letting me complete my order, Amazon wanted to know what address to ship to.   Then, and this is when I got suspicious, Amazon asked me what method of payment I'd like to use.  

My credit card was gone.   It just wasn't there.   I could go back to purchase history, including two orders I'd placed yesterday, and they were paid for by my card.   I checked my credit card transaction history and sure enough, charges had been made yesterday.   I closed the browser.   I checked the website on my phone and then on my iPad, hoping my Mac or Safari was to blame, but I was doubtful it was that. 

Nothing worked, the card was just gone.   Two other strange things were that I couldn't pull up the invoice details for my prior transactions, throwing an error message from Amazon.   I knew I hadn't deleted the card but just in case, I tried to add it again.   I got a message saying an error had occurred and maybe I should try again or perhaps use a different method of payment. 

I wasn't entering the card information wrong because it was being auto-filled.   It was like the card was still there and I couldn't add it again, only Amazon wasn't sure what to say about that.  I started the text help option for problems that couldn't be solved by their FAQ.   The first person realized pretty quickly he had no idea what to do with this anomaly, so he passed me to the next person. 

That person wasn't sure so they were going to call me.   I got my earbuds on and then had the nicest conversation with a gentleman that looked into what was going on.   The card was in fact still in my account.   He could see it so what was happening that made it invisible to me.  My one-click payments were disabled without an active card as was my default mailing address.   Chriouser and curiouser. 

He put me on hold and came back, saying he was escalating the issue and transferring me to someone who had seen this before.  I bid him thanks and then talked to another delightful lady for a good twenty minutes.   She hadn't seen this exact thing before, but she agreed with me that it seemed like a software "glitch" as she called it.  

She escalated the problem again and after waiting for a bit, she said that it should be resolved and it would just start working again (the solution both she and I were hoping for) or Amazon would call me with an update.   But for now, I can't shop on Amazon.   Which feels very strange.   I have several things (including pajamas) that I need to order for next week.   I may have to actually be patient and wait.   

The Big Boy Update:  My son and daughter are going to go to Nana and Papa's separately because the last time my son and daughter got into some bad fights.   We asked them if they could keep from fighting and my son said he'd rather stay home.  His sister annoys him (while she thinks he annoys her) and he said he just couldn't trust himself not to get into a fight with her.  

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter doesn't see that she bothers her brother as much as she really does.   She asks for it a lot of the time and then plays the victim.   She doesn't want to go with her brother because he's mean to her.    The children's visit is still up in the air for the weekend, hopefully, they can go together and actually get along for the entire time.  

Squished Dragons

I finished listening to, "The Dragon Squisher," the book I wrote about a while back that was an Audible original production.  I liked the way they addressed how one of the main characters was gay.  The two main characters became best friends and it didn't matter at all that one of them, "liked boys 'romantically'" to the other character.   

At the end of the book, after the dragons had been squished, the land had been saved and peace ruled again, Nate, who had been given the power to transport people anywhere via a magical amulet, asked Lance if he wanted him to take him home to his parents.   He figured now that Lance was a hero, surely his parents would be accepting of their son.  

Lance, with a sad shake of his head, said it wasn't that simple.   Nate didn't understand, but he believed his friend and, knowing nothing else he could do to help, hugged his friend.  Lance, surprised by his friend's caring, had a tear in the corner of his eye and said to Nate he didn't know he was a hugger.   

And that was it.   It covered the situation in a way I think a young child could understand, I hope.   The two ended the book as staunch best friends.   My children wanted to know if there were more books in the series and, after checking just now, I note the book is listed as the first in the series—only there aren't any additional books out yet.   I loved the book.  I'm listening to the sequel myself when it comes out. 

The Big Boy Update:  My son has been working with shop tools in the back yard, driveway, and a bit in the garage with his friends over the past few days.   He just came downstairs and proudly "introduced me to" Killarang.   This deadly piece of handiwork is a boomerang-shaped piece of pressed plywood he clearly spent some time hacking away at until it was just right.   He showed me the motion he would use to either throw it or use it to attack directly.  He was not specific on this point other than making sure I knew the sound he would make when this happened, that being a tick-tick-tick sound.   Then, he told me, "Now I feel safe at night."

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter has been completely nonplussed by her broken arm as well as the splint, which is wrapped up with sturdy ACE bandage-type wrappings.   I covered her arm with a white stocking-like material so that when it got dirty with food or other things I could either wash it or replace it.   She has been more diligent at keeping her arm clean than she normally is and has been not bothered at all, it would seem, by having a lot less use of her arm and hand.

I Found a Room

I found a room in our house two days ago.  I know, you're thinking, "how big can this house be that entire rooms get lost?"  It's not that spectacular an answer though.   Let me start by explaining the room in which I do the 3D printing in to start.   The room is in our basement and when we were building the house it was called the mechanical room.   It was to house the HVAC system water main shutoff, water filtration system, alarm system parts of the house itself, and then the additional things we'd move in with like the network server, switch, and wiring hub for all network cable around the house.  

All those things are still in the room to this day.  There is no ceiling other than some rafters with water pipes, ventilation ducts, and electrical wiring that, in other areas,  would be covered up by drywall, trim, and paint.  We didn't have much in the mechanical room when we first moved in beyond the abovesaid items, but as is common when you live somewhere for a long time, the space filled up.

When we realized we wanted to make the room more useful, we painted the concrete walls (the room is mostly underground), added sealant and color to the floor, got a funky rug that is blacklight sensitive, and then added a few pinball machines. 

We had my old standup arcade machine alongside the pinball machines and then on the other wall, we added a nice workbench for my husband to do work upon.   The room looked very snappy at that point, especially after we covered the one studded wall in black felt.  My husband would do projects from time to time and during his off-project seasons, he would pile things on top of the workbench. 

Then I got interested in 3D printing and things have gotten busy in the mechanical room over the past few months.   Busy and full.   There wasn't much room to store things and I was starting to store filament under the pinball machines in bins with desiccant.   I was in and out of the bins I had all over the room, again and again, some days.   It was the only solution though because there just wasn't any other room in the room. 

Two nights ago I was cleaning up in the basement and I opened the closet under the stairs to shove the purple and red yoga balls my daughter pulled out on occasion.   I stood there and blinked at the room.   This was a large, walk-in closet under a flight of stairs, complete with as many shelves as I could get Wayne, our trim carpenter, to cram in.   We barely used the closet, mostly shoving things in there that needed to have a home found later. 

I looked around at the mess on the floor and the sparsely filled shelves and I had a solution—a better solution than the collection of crammed bins in the mechanical room—I was going to put the 3D printer filaments, resins and other supplies in this closet. 

There was more good news about this location, too.   I'd been keeping things in bins because filament needs to be kept reasonably dry.   I moved the dehumidifier that had been constantly running in the mechanical room into the closet, plugged it in and when I shut the door, I couldn't hear it anymore.   This was only getting better as I thought it through. 

Tonight, not only can I look at all the filament and resins at the same time and make a decision which one I want to use, the room is at a dry 35% relative humidity when the door is closed.   It's so much easier and better and I can't believe I didn't think of it earlier. 

The Big Boy Update:  My son came home to find me standing in a taco Halloween costume.   I had gotten it and said if he wanted it, he could wear it this year, otherwise, it was my costume.   I thought it was hilarious.   He thought it was silly.   He will not be dressing up as a taco. 

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter is fine today, like the break never happened.   She has to manage having the cane, but it's not stopping her from doing what she wants to do.   She may not be indestructible, but she's definitely unstopable.

Another Injury

Two days ago my son came into the house and yelled through Alexa, "HELP!" after falling from the swingset and landing on his back.  Today, my daughter came into the house shortly after school screaming this cry-scream that just from the sound, meant something serious had happened.  Blake went running downstairs and I went to catch up with him.   

When I got to the basement where she'd come in from the back yard, I saw her sitting on the sofa with one hand protecting her other wrist in a position I knew all too well.   There was a bump on her wrist that couldn't have appeared that fast from swelling.   Blake came back with a bag of ice and a cloth to cover my daughter's arm while I went to get the 128-Hz tuning fork to test on my daughter's arm. 

That particular frequency will vibrate broken bones.   If you don't have a break, it doesn't hurt at all, if there is a break, it hurts quite badly.   It's a simple, quick test.   It hurt and a lot at that when I touched the tuning fork lightly to her arm so I didn't do it more than twice; I had enough information.   I told Blake and my daughter I was taking her to the orthopedic urgent care.   My daughter wailed.   

To be fair, she was already wailing, she just wailed more.  Anything made her wail more at that point, and I couldn't blame her, she was in a lot of pain.   I stepped into the next room, shut the door, called my husband who was picking my son up from school, and told him to get off speakerphone.    I told him she had likely broken her arm and I was taking her to get it looked at and casted if so.   

Getting her into the car was helped by Blake's good idea to sling her arm.   Her brother had broken his arm last year and I knew right where the sling was.   With that on, she could move a little easier while protecting her arm.   Once we started the four-mile drive to the office I told her she needed to be prepared to hear she had a broken arm.   She was very upset about it but I talked her through a lot of it, including getting people to sign your cast and her terror was slightly less by the time we arrived.  

There were issues getting us in relating to insurance and while they figured out what to do with us my daughter tried to curl up in a ball on the floor.   The nurse brought out a blanket so her face wouldn't be on the floor and I gave my daughter a dose of the hydrocodone prescription pain medication she had from one of her eye surgeries.   I'm ever so glad I'd saved it, because she needed it an hour later. 

They took an X-ray and the nurse gave me the, "oh that's definitely broken" nod before we even got to the X-ray room.   She had a buckle fracture in her radius.   They prepared the splint, which is cast-like in firmness, but allows for the limb to recover from inflammation and swelling before the final cast is put on in a week. 

They had to set the break.   I knew they were going to have to, they said as much without letting on to her what that meant.   When it was time, they just did it.   The nurse held down at her elbow and the doctor pulled and rotated upwards until the bone was back in place.   I had told the doctor I'd given her some medication an hour prior in the waiting room (her medication at the dosage recommended by her doctor) and we both agreed it wasn't a bad call, because she screamed.   And screamed.  Setting broken bones hurts.

They took a second set of X-rays to confirm her bone was back in place and then we went to get a milkshake for her and pick up dinner for the family.   That pain medication helped so much that before we left she told Dr. John she was not only not mad at him, she wanted him to pick the color of her cast next week and was sad he wouldn't be the one putting it on for her. 

The Big Boy Update:  My son very sweetly helped his sister when she got home tonight.   He had a broken arm once, he remembers what it was like. 

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  I got to talk to my daughter today about how I had broken bones when I was little and why setting them was so important, so they would heal correctly.   I don't like to talk about being in pain, but both children know I'm in pain a lot.  I told her when I was young at some unknown point during one tumble or fall or something, I broke my neck and it went undiagnosed.  Mimi and Gramps didn't know and I didn't either.  My neck didn't heal correctly and it caused degeneration over time and eventually, it was so bad I had to have two spinal fusions.  And even that didn't solve the problem and I will always deal with pain.   I told her any time anything happened to her or her brother I wanted to make sure the situation was addressed medically so they would heal as best as their body could.   She asked a few questions and then she wanted to play the Genii game.   Today, I got to be the genii and cast magic spells.   I'm just glad she was in less pain than when she originally fell.   It's hard to know your child is hurt. 

In Need of Width

I had a much longer blog post planned in my head for today but it is now 1136 p.m. and I've run out of time in the day so I'll go with this much shorter one instead.   

I have five desktops.  Macs have an easy way to create virtual desktops.  You can put whatever windows you want on one desktop and then, with the swipe of four fingers, move left or right to the next desktop. I am not one of those people who relishes in having as many windows open as possible; on the contrary, I like to keep things to a minimum.   I am working in several different areas and need more than one window open for each of these tasks. 

This was something that was becoming tedious even before the 3D printing started, but now I need two additional desktops to manage the printing and the creating side of all of the 3D action.  Or, in my case, the slow and laborious plodding away at trying to create something.  But that's neither here nor there.   The thing is, I need more dimensional screen space. 

Five desktops is nice, but when I spend upwards of a quarter of my time paging back and forth, it gets frustrating.  My husband has two large monitors and I've been looking at his screen real estate with envy recently.   Prices of monitors continue to drop even as monitor sizes get larger. 

So I bought a monitor.   Which was minorly back-ordered for a week.   Then the backorder got extended.   It'll arrive by the end of the month, which will be good because the more I know that monitor is coming, the more paging back and forth makes me want to grumble. 

The nice thing about the new monitor is it's wider, not bigger.   It'll be like having multiple desktops all at a glance.   And it's going to be, grrr, I want to say 'awesome' but that's a superlative I try not to use because it's so overused.   It's going to be something better than great but less than awesome.   Somewhere in there.

Only a few years ago I was thrilled about having multiple desktops I could easily page through.  Now, it seems like old tech.  Although...with the new monitor I'll still have multiple desktops, they'll just be super-wide desktops.   I may have to open some extra windows just to fill up the space.

The Big Boy Update:  My son fell off the playset today and came in, asking Alexa to call me, saying "help!"   He was in the chair in the basement and crying like he hasn't in years.   He got the breath knocked out of him and he was dizzy for a minute.   I asked if he wanted to go to the chiropractor and he said yes.  Chiropractors are great at assessing situations like this.   They won't treat you if there's a chance you have a broken bone, but they can reposition bones that have been knocked out of alignment from a fall.   My son had several ribs subluxated right where he landed.  He was in a lot of distress before we arrived, a scant half-hour after he fell.   An hour later with some ice on the ribs and his neck and he is much better.  

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter's first day back in school was today.  Not back in school, but back in virtual school.   Two weeks from now she will have four days in school with heavy protocols in place.   With the rising numbers, I'm not sure how things will go, but my son's school has been doing well so far.  We shall see. 

Just A Nice Day

It's that time of year again.   It's something I look forward to every year.   It always seems to happen at the same time and this year is no exception, except that it is an exception.   I love the change in weather which seems to coincide with the annual State Fair that's only a few miles down the road from where we live. 

This week the weather has grown colder during the nights but warms up during the bright, sunny days.  This week we would be making unhealthy food choices and riding rides that test our ability to endure higher g-forces.   Only we aren't.   Because the fair didn't happen this year. 

And as sad as I am about that, as I look outside and see my children swinging and laughing, I don't mind that much.   

The mosquitos have ceased to be a nuisance letting us keep doors and windows open during the day.   At night, for the first time last night, the heat came on in the master.   I hadn't realized how cold it was until I realized the room was warming up, not cooling down.   My fingers stopped feeling chilled and I fell to sleep in comfort.  

Today I put on fuzzy socks because the floors were cold, and now, mid-afternoon, I'm wishing I was in shorts.   It's just that kind of weather.   Every fall I remember how much I like the beginning of fall as the leaves start to change and the weather becomes crisp cool.

It's a good time of year, even if the fair didn't happen. 

The Big Boy Update:  My son was given an hour of screen time after lunch before he had to go back to work on his Mystery History project.   I just gave him a ten-minute warning and he wailed, saying, "that's not how time works!"  He was upset because it didn't seem like he'd been on the computer that long.   I told him the saying, "time flies when you're having fun" was true.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter asked if she could turn off the lights the other day.  My husband replied, "well, I'm eating and I would have trouble seeing my food."  She asked back, "why do you need to see your food?"  He said, "I suppose you're right, I can do it without seeing—you eat just fine without seeing your food.  Why do you want to turn off the lights, though?"  She told him, "It's easier to see the Echo Dot lights when there isn't much light and I want to play a game with them."   We've heard from her a lot recently that she can see more when things are dim.   These are bright, large buttons so I'm not surprised she can see them.   I wonder how well or if she can tell the colors apart, though?

Failures

I have mentioned that there are a lot of failures in 3D printing.   Initially, I thought this was me and my inexperience but the more I read and videos and live streams I watch and I realize it's not me, it's part of the process.  Or maybe I mean part of the experience.   Either way, it happens a lot. 

There are so many variables in play and while it is completely possible to get perfectly consistent high-quality prints, but it requires tuning for material, model, machine and environment and even that won't be failure-free, it increases the success rate percentage.  

I know it sounds negative about 3D printing, but it's really not that way.  I have loads of prints that are great, some of which came out perfect the first try.   Then, there are others I've been trying to get to print for some time and no matter what I do, I can't seem to get them to be successful. 

Last night I started a print on a donut-shaped vase in a miniature size, to see how it would looks in a particular material.   It was two hours in and looking fantastic in the Wizard's Voodoo glittery purple filament.   This morning, I awoke to this: 

I decided to upgrade to the larger extruder nozzle anyways and try for the full-sized model.   Things were going really well until about a third into the print when I noticed what appeared to be either cooling problems or extruder motor overheating.   I went to the attic and got the mega fan and pointed it directly at the printer and things improved.   I may have a cooling fan shroud issue, but that would have to wait until after the print.   The large version wasn't as pristine as the lower-half of the small one, but it was printed with one-tenth the level of fineness.  

It can happen with anything, including something small and simple.  I went to dinner after ensuring the Calicat color swatch model was printing without any problem (I didn't expect it to given the stock settings and filament) but then I came back to this after dinner:

The good news is I can start again.   And every time I learn something.

The Big Boy Update:  My son has his Mystery History presentation coming up at the end of the month this year again.   We're not nearly as involved this year as we were last year but he's much more confident  about his ability to do the project well. 

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter impressed everyone with her rock wall climbing skills at the Y-Guides event she and her father went to yesterday.   She met a lady who also was blind in one eye who had lost her sight as a child.   

The Flower Alternative

When we started sending the children to school we were introduced to a tradition for teacher's birthdays.   Each child would bring a single flower to school on the morning of their teacher's birthday, the room parent or other parent collects the flowers at drop-off, puts them in a vase and the teacher has a lovely bouquet of flowers to look at to remind her of her students on their birthday. 

We followed along with the tradition for many years, because it is a lovely thought, the collection of flowers.   The variety was always fun to see.  But I had one problem with it, and that was getting the flower for our contribution. 

We don't have stemmed flowers in our yard or flowers at all that would be suitable to add to a vase.  The only option I had was to buy a flower.   Except the grocery store didn't sell just one flower unless you wanted a fully decked out single rose at fully decked out single rose prices.   The best alternative was to get one of those packaged sets of flowers and extract a single flower for the teacher. 

Neither of these options was economical and since we're not big flower bouquet people here, the remainder of the flowers wasn't something we would have otherwise bought.  I looked for options and alternatives and on a few occasions, I found an easier way—like the time we were biking the children to school and picked wildflowers on the side of the road. 

Because I think we weren't the only family in this situation, the tradition has waned, but today we had a request to bring a flower to celebrate both our head of school's birthday and first year at the school.   I wasn't going to send in a flower since I suspected there would be plenty coming from other students but my husband had an idea: give her one of those vases I'd been printing instead.  

This, was an idea I could get behind.   I brought some good options to my son and he picked out one in a shimmery dark purple color that had an interestingly complex pattern.   Purple is the school's main color and the vase was one of my favorites.   My son write a sweet note in her birthday card, saying, "we didn't have any flowers in our yard, so we made you this vase instead."

The Big Boy Update:  My son and I are home alone tonight.   He and I are having a "Free Friday" night where we do whatever we want to do.   I already know what he's going to do: Minecraft.   He's behind me working on his current world right now.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter and her father are off to one of the last Y Guides things they will be doing.  Most of this year's events were cancelled and I'm not sure what's to come, but this is an outdoor event where they'll be camping at a site close to us.   My daughter wasn't that excited about going until we mentioned the magic word: 's'mores'.

The Uncomfortable Pants

My daughter does and doesn't care about what clothing she wears.   Things she cares about are texture and how a material feels as well as how comfortable it is on her body.   She also doesn't want to be too cold or too hot.   Other than that, she has no interest in fashion.   Or shoes.   Getting her to wear shoes is another topic but I'll digress because I had a realization the other day.

She needs information.   We gain the majority of our information about our surroundings through sight.  That little bit of additional information she gets from feeling her surroundings with her feet is important enough to her that she's willing to take the bumps and bruises she gets from running into things without shoes on.   We require her to wear shoes sometimes, but I'm trying to be flexible if we can for most situations. 

My daughter came downstairs today with some "pants" on.   They were a thin dark green legging kind of material that I didn't remember her having before.   Blake was in the living room with me when my daughter came in, plopped onto the chair, and laid back in one of those comfortable positions with her legs hanging in the air that are only comfortable to her and no one else. 

It was then that we both realized she had been outside (dressed, as required) changing swings out in the back yard on the swing set—in tights.   Blake and I both immediately said, "you need to put some pants on," Blake with a little more uncomfortable intensity than I did, which made my daughter mildly upset in an embarrassed way.   

I quickly corrected our tone with some positivity, saying what she had on were tights, just like Nora wore every day, and that Nora also wore a dress with them so that the dress was longer and went down to cover more up.   I told my daughter she could wear the tights ("because that color green looks very nice on you") and that putting underwear under tights was typically what you did since the tights were see-through. 

My daughter was interested in the dress comment.   She didn't know Nora wore dresses—how would she? She had no idea Nora wore tights and dressy shoes every day.   She doesn't know what any of her friends wear, save that Keira "hates dresses" she had told me.   

My daughter asked me if we could go get the dresses from the closet in her old room (now solely her brother's room) and could we bring the dresses to her closet?   We went through all the dresses with me telling her she couldn't take three of them to her room because they were reserved for special occasions.   She had been feeling them all as I described the features of each dress.

The next thing I knew, she was in the back yard with a dress on, climbing back up to the top of the A-frame to change another swing.   It wasn't until later in the day when she came in that I noticed she was still not wearing underwear.   I don't know how she didn't get splinters in a few very uncomfortable areas, but I'm going to require underwear going forward. 

The Big Boy Update:  My son was picked up from school by Blake today so they could go to the grocery store to get ingredients to make tacos together tonight.   Knowing Blake was on the job, they didn't just make traditional tacos.  There was pork with pineapple, sauteed hot peppers, and sliced steak.   My son wrote the ingredients and instructions down on a sheet he'll be taking to school tomorrow to tell his class what he did for his cooking assignment.  

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter was in a reasonable mood today and told me some things about what she could and couldn't see.  She can see more if it's darker/dim/low light and said she can see forms like trees and walls.   Then she told me, "I think I have a sixth sense.  Sometimes I just know something is there, even though I can't see it at all."   She couldn't explain what gave her that extra bit of information, but we both agreed it was good she had her sixth sense.

I Have a Problem

I think it's time I admitted it.   I've been accused by my husband, children, and even Blake, who is staying with us until his family are well and truly beyond any possible suspicion of having any remains of COVID-19.    I thought I had it under control but after this past week, I'm afraid it's not something I can hide anymore. 

I'm addicted to filament.   Specifically the filament of the 1.75mm variety that prints in today's 3D printers.   my 3D printer and printing addiction is another topic altogether and I'll have to address that as well, but for today, I need to talk about filament. 

There are just so many colors, textures, and materials.   You can get copper and gold filament or filament that's silky that transitions through multiple colors in a single print.   There are translucent filaments, deeply pigmented filaments, and pastels.   Would you have thought you can get filaments that have small particles of wood in them so the resulting print has a wood-like appearance and feel?   Or marble.  You can get filaments that have—and get this—teeny tiny cut up bits of artificial hair.   Those bits of black, grey, or brown hair make the resulting print have a marble-like appearance. 

Then there are the types of filament.  By this, I mean the material the filament is made of itself.  What plastic polymers are combined to make them.   There is ABS, which is the same thing LEGOs are made out of, but that's only one of many types and each type has different properties.   You can even print with flexible materials that, when complete, might squish down like a tire or rubber duck.  

And lastly, there is quality.   I've learned over the course of the time since getting the first 3D printer that filaments are not all made alike.   There are lots of factors that can make a filament a dream to print with or a frustrating mass of stringing blobs that doesn't even remotely look like what you were trying to print. 

And I love them all.   Or, rather, I love having the option to print with just the right filament for the model, project, part, or toy.  Whether it's useful or whimsical, downloaded from another creator or designed by me; I want to have choices when I go to print it. 

My husband has, I think, done the proverbial, "throwing up of his hands" and doesn't even protest when another filament arrives in the mail.   I've told him several times, "I think I have everything I need now" only to find something else the very next day.   

It's fun though, having lots of choices. 

The Big Boy Update: On the way to school today I talked to my son all about Minecraft.   He really knows a lot about the game.   I think he like answering all my questions and knowing I was interested.   He would say to me when I got quiet, "do you have any more questions, mom?"  So, of course I did. 

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter loves a big box.   I got a kitchen trash can but didn't make the connection when a massive box arrived from Amazon today.   It must have been the best size to fit the trash can, even though half of the box was empty.   My daughter has had Blake and me shutting her in and pretending to get various packages in the mail and then be surprised when she jumps out.   She never tires of this type of game.

The Dragon Squisher

From time to time Audible has original titles for children that are free to download for members.   This book by Scott McCormick from the title alone sounded like the perfect book for my children.  It's the grand adventures of a boy and his "frenemy" who get sent to military school for bad behavior.  The story is well-read and entails a lot of humor from the author, but it had an unexpected message worked in that I was pleasantly surprised to read in a story written for pre-teen children. 

My children are eight and nine, but this story of acceptance is one I would like them to hear.   They might be younger than the heroes (for they do become the heroes of the story), Nigel and Lance, but they enjoy many other books in this age range such as the Harry Potter and Percy Jackson series and I expected they would listen with as much enthusiasm as they had to the other stories in the same class. 

Nigel has been stuck doing latrine digging duty with Lance, whom he despised at first because Lance had it all: adoring girls, good looks, wit, and charm.   Lance had appeared Nigel's village with no history and had turned himself in so he would be sent to military school with Nigel and it didn't make sense—until Lance told Nigel the secret he had never told anyone before: he liked boys.   Nigel, in a moment of spectacular denseness, didn't understand, but when Lance explained he liked boys, "romantically" Nigel finally got it.   

Then Nigel got mad.   He was so mad because how could Lance have all those girls hanging off his arm when he wasn't interested in any one of them?   It just wasn't fair.   When Lance asked and Nigel said that no, he wasn't upset or bothered at all that he preferred boys (even though girls didn't look twice at him when Lance was around) something connected between them and they became best friends.   

Military unacceptance of homosexuality was also brought up as in this land, the case was the same and Nigel realized how much trust Lance had put in him.   It was written beautifully, covering just enough so that children would grasp the importance of the topics.   It was done in a very touching way too both at that point and several other times too.   The reason Lance had appeared in Nigel's village was there was a bounty on his head.  When Nigel asked who would do such a thing, he couldn't believe when Lance told him it was his parents and he'd been on the run for some time, turning himself in the day they were carted off to military school for an innocent prank gone horribly wrong, because he saw the bounty hunter arriving town. 

I like the book.  It's quite good.   My children haven't finished it yet and I'm fairly confident the topics of acceptance won't even be brought up by them because they already feel this way.   It's nice to have it in an age-appropriate story for them though.

The Big Boy Update:  My son is creating the most interesting things in Minecraft.   He showed me a cactus farm tonight.   It looked very orderly but it had another function.   It was a cactus factory in fact.   As the cactus grew, they would fall over and land in the water surrounding each plant, flow to a drain, go underground and run into a chest to be collected.   He can come back tomorrow to find a large collection of cactus that he can use in recipes to create other things in the game. 

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter is decorating some rocks for teachers this week.   She wanted to gold leaf one for a favorite teacher.   This sounds easy but gold leaf is a nightmare to get to stick.   Blake and I are both on the job because we need to get it to the staff member at my son's school (who always was kind to her when she used to go there and to this day loves to say hello to her when she comes to school to drop-off my son).   I hope we can get the gold leaf to stick by tomorrow,

Curly Hair

I have curly hair.   Or, more accurately, I'd say I have frizzy hair with a splash of curl.   My hair is long right now so perhaps the frizz is less than normal on account of the weight of the hair, but I'm not so certain about that.  The frizz seems to have a strength that defies any amount of hair weight. 

I've been having keratin treatments on my hair for years.   This magical process makes it possible for me to have non-frizzy hair—which is something I've wanted my entire life.   I wash and dry my hair and then (and this is the part that might seem counter-intuitive) I curl my hair.   I don't curl it so much as flat iron it and add a bit of curl to the ends in the process.   It takes a while to get from clean, wet hair to the final product of smooth, soft hair with a bit of curl, but it is so worth it.  

I can easily go for four days with my hair done in this fashion and barring rain or humid weather, my hair looks mostly the same throughout this time.   In the last two weeks though, I've tried letting my hair dry as is.   This normally ends up with an undesirable product but I discovered something that made letting my hair dry naturally a solution that looks good: I go to sleep with my hair wet. 

I hate getting my pillow or bedding wet, but if I sleep with a folded over towel something happens overnight that lets the hair dry with some curls but doesn't let the frizz completely take over.   It's a change without doing much different, save for taking less time to do my hair.   

I don't like it as much as the soft, smooth, and straight hair, but it's good to have options. 

The Big Boy Update:  My son and I were talking about Halloween in the car this morning and I think he summed it up when he said, "Halloween seems very half-hearted this year."   People, parents, still aren't sure what to do.   We aren't decided on what we'll be doing ourselves. 

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  Blake was on the phone with his sister, Shane, earlier today.   Shane got on speakerphone and asked my daughter how Blake had been while staying at our house.   She told Shane, "he's annoying and hilarious and mean and reasonable."

The 3D Latest

What's been going on with the 3D printing?  I know you've been dying to ask.   I've been restraining myself from winging on every day about 3D printing this and 3D printing that, because—as my children love pointing out—I'm obsessed with 3D printing. 

I made a bubble gum ball container out of some clear filament that I keep in the mechanical room beside the printer:

You can see the individual levels of the print easily in the bubblegum vase.   I've been using a large nozzle and pushing lots of filament through with a layer height of .5mm.  It intentionally shows the layers, which I really like on some models. 

I'm still a big fan of vases and have even designed one of my own (that is less than spectacular, but it's mine).  Here are two more impressive vases as well as a tiling gecko puzzle I'm printing using progressive color filament.  Blake likes the "shark's tooth" vase on the left.   I wasn't sure if I would like it, but it's grown on me.

There's a creator who created one cup design per week for an entire year.   I love the variety and creativity in them.   And yes, there is an ear in that one cup in the middle.   There isn't a matching ear on the other side.   That's the most unusual cup of the bunch.    The materials I'm printing them with are food safe so one day, after COVID-19 is over and we can have other children in our house again, maybe I'll let them pick which cup they prefer.   I wonder if anyone would pick the ear cup?

As I write this, my husband is working through a 3D design instructional video on his computer.   Blake even got into the game and created his own first 3D designed and printed model yesterday.   I know my children are saying I'm obsessed with 3D printing, but I'm not the only enthusiast in this house.

The Big Boy Tiny Girl Bite and Scratch Report:  My children were at Nana and Papa's overnight and all was going well until today when my daughter annoyed my son so much that biting (him) and pinching (her and possibly him) happened.   Discussions are being had.  They are eight and nine, they should know better.    Maybe I bit and scratched other children when I was younger, but I don't remember that I did.   I was an only child though and this behavior seems confined only to their relationship and not with any of their friends. 

sdfsdf

Night Off

My in-laws picked up the children before dinner tonight and are keeping them until tomorrow.   I have thus declared a night off.   I'm going to bed—to watch YouTube videos about 3D printing, what else.   I'm even giving the 3D printer the night off.   The power is off and the light isn't lighting up the print bed.   It's all quiet in the mechanical room where the printer lives.

The Big Boy Update:  My son was reasonably impressed today with the LEGO-shaped part I had created from scratch in a CAD tool (I'm taking the step to start learning 3D modeling, but it's slow.)  He told me he was impressed, but I should be more impressed with the spectacular world he had created in Minecraft. Two nights ago my husband and I looked over to see him working inside what was the perfect rendering of a modern architecture house.   It was very impressive.   I thought it was a world he'd loaded, but he had created it all himself.   We told him to save it.  He likes to create and destroy things.   He said with pride mixed with a bit of annoyance, "I've already saved it."

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter was outside in her pajamas today.   I don't like that she does this but she had an exception granted by Blake, who didn't realize she'd extend the exception to the entire day, thinking she would only be out until after breakfast.   She came in and asked me for a ladder—to climb a tree with branches she couldn't reach—and had nearly destroyed her pajamas from hugging the large trunk and trying to climb it.   No more pajamas outside.   

Carefully

My daughter has been outside most of the day lately.  This morning my husband left early to go to a golf tournament so my daughter had to ride with us as I took my son to school.   We returned at 8:45 and instead of coming in, she opened a garage door and headed outside.   When I asked her what she was going to do she said, "I'm going to be outside, mom" as if that answered everything. 

She is spending more time than anything else at the playset when no one else is around.   She's done so much swinging she has not only calluses but locations where calluses were that have subsequently torn off.   So this morning, down she went to the swingset and waited until her friends showed up. 

She's very much enjoying having friends to play with again—even though it's only a few in comparison to pre-COVID-19.  She has a new friend next door, Nora, who also has a toddler-aged brother, Leo.   My daughter likes playing with Nora and Keira equally much I'd say at this point.   She is in the middle with Nora a few years younger and Keira just starting middle school. 

The thing they've had a lot of fun playing with lately is the American Girl doll things sent down from Coco, my daughter's cousin.   I wouldn't consider letting the items go outside as I don't want anything to happen to them, but these days, if it can't go outside, it doesn't get played with friends. 

After two days of the girls playing with things under the deck on the patio, we changed plans and gave them free run of the porch for American Girl "land."   I spoke with my daughter in private about the importance of taking care of her things because if they were taken good care of, someday perhaps we could give them back to Coco if she has a daughter.

This afternoon I looked out on the porch as my daughter was inside getting an ice pack for Keira, who had hurt her leg on the playground.   My daughter hadn't been on the porch but I saw Nora and a younger boy in a mask (who turned out to be her cousin stopping in for an outdoor visit.)  They had separated, my daughter letting Nora have the space with her cousin and she had gone back to the playset with Keira.   I thought it was both polite as well as a good measure that they took that social distancing step themselves.

I asked my daughter if she thought Nora would take care of the American Girl things on the porch while my daughter was elsewhere with Keira.   My daughter said very matter-of-factly, "if I know Nora, she will."   That was enough reassurance for me. 

The Big Boy Update:  My son hasn't been eating a lot of his lunch lately at school and what he does eat has been the more preferred items, skipping the things he should eat first.   I mentioned it to his teacher when I dropped him off this morning after he had entered the building and couldn't hear me and I got some unexpected insight.   His teacher said, "he's not alone.   What's been happening is a group of the students hurries through lunch so they can go play, giving them more playtime."   There are some, like my son, who would rather play than eat.   Then there is the social eating group.  I'm not surprised my son would rather play than eat.   

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  The swings on our swingset are in constant fluctuation.   I would say they change at least once per day.   I'll look out to see my daughter straddled and hugging the top of the A-frame chain in hand, preparing to swap one swing for another.   This isn't a simple feat because while disconnecting the existing chain and dropping it to the ground is fairly straightforward, getting out to the hooking in spot with the new chain in hand involves planning as well as a good dose of daredevil.   My daughter is such a daredevil.   I try to not limit her life any more than I have to so yes, she could fall and break an arm or worse.   Trust me, I think of that possibility all the time.   She is probably far more careful than most children because of her lack of sight.   So, I just tell the panic in my chest to calm down.   I was a child and my parents let me make my own mistakes.

The Deck Sleepover

My daughter and her friend, Keira, decided to have a sleepover tonight.   Keira is one of our "backyard neighbors" because while their house isn't next door directly, our back yards connect, and it since most of the playing takes place in the back yard, it seems like we're next door to them.    Given the state of the infectious world right now, the only playing that's being done is outside at social distancing range, which means our back yard is the location our children usually go when they're sick of being inside and want to spend time with children their ages. 

Keira and my daughter came up with an idea that they could have a sleepover if they did so outside.   They thought it through and had a few options.   They didn't want to be outside where they would be exposed which narrowed down their choices to two locations: Keira's screened-in back deck or our deck that has no access other than through the house. 

They would have gone for the better choice of Keira's deck but painters had come today to do some work on and there was wet paint.   That left our deck.   Keira and my daughter met in our back yard after dark and my husband set up the fire pit for s'mores.   Afterward, the ladies hung around the fire pit for a while and then retired to the deck. 

Once they were settled in on opposite sides of the small deck, I went to wash my hair.   As I was about to head downstairs to write this post I heard Keira leaving to go home.   We're going to put my daughter up to bed in a little bit in case it starts to rain.   I'm sure there will be many more sleepovers in the future.   I'm proud of the girls for coming up with a safe way to have one while also maintaining social distances.

The Big Boy Update:  My son has been making his own lunches, but his motivation has been to get through the process as quickly as possible and hasn't been making the best of choices and then isn't eating the better parts of his lunch at school.   Today, I took over his lunch making and am going to supervise him for the next while so he can both make his lunch quickly and make good food choices. 

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  Keira went home from the sleepover a bit ago but my daughter is out cold on the deck.   She is so very independent in some ways and this is one of them.   Nothing stops her if it's something she really wants. 

Unknown Title

There was something I was going to write about tonight.   But I forgot to write it down at the time.   That is the most assuredly the best and highest chance of killing a great blog post topic for me—not immediately writing it down.   I don't need to write down much, usually one to three words as a mental trigger for when I sit down to write later in the day (because I rarely get to write earlier in the day).   Unfortunately for today,  I have no idea what I was going to write about. 

Oh, wait, yes I do!  The title of this post was going to be, "Ridiculous!" and the story was going to be all about the trip to get my daughter a pedicure today.   I was trying to come up with something we could do and while there are interactions with other people, the salon had a whole list of things you had to do and couldn't do while you were there. 

Everyone had to wash their hands for twenty seconds upon arrival.   Then we had to hand sanitize.   We weren't allowed to take off. our masks at all.   We couldn't use our cell phones.   We had to wash our hands a second time while we were there.   They wore masks, shields, and gloves.   They were risking their health to serve us, even though I looked at it from the other way around before I got to the door and read aloud their requirements to my daughter. 

She loved it.   She's been there before, but it's been a long time.  I told her she had been to the salon several times while I was pregnant with her too, which she thought was funny.   I asked her if she remembered the time we came to that salon several years back and I wasn't paying attention and she accidentally sat down in the water foot bath, thinking that was where the seat was and she was supposed to sit. 

She wasn't happy at the time and I wouldn't have let it happen if I'd been more experienced as a parent of a blind child.   Today, on remembering the event, she surprised me by being positive about the memory, saying, "Oh, I remember that.   That was ridiculous!"   She was outgoing and funny to the people in the salon (we were the only two there aside from the staff when until close to the end.)  She was in a good mood, was easy going about the colors, saying she wanted Halloween colors and could the lady pick?

She didn't mind when they asked her seeing questions like, "Did you see the red moon last night?"  She was regulated, happy, and friendly.   We had such a good time.   Now, if she can just wear some shoes from time to time, maybe the pedicure will last for a bit. 

The Big Boy Update:  My son has been reading by his own choice lately.   He's read to and from school, at school during reading time and when he came home today he even read for a while until he got to the end of the chapter.   Then, he did Spanish work.   All without being asked.    Who stole my son and replaced him with this replicant?

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter washed her car for the first time today.   This is the, "Little Red Car" Santa got for her that was a free Tesla child's electric car toy from the referral program some time back.   She came and asked me if I knew where the porcupine scrubber was that used to be outside.   I told her where a scrubber was and she and her father cleaned her car in the complete and thorough way he cleans his own car.   It wasn't until later after dinner when I was cleaning up that I realized what she meant by porcupine scrubber.   It was a scrub brush that had spikey things around the edge.   She knows porcupines are spikey.   It wasn't a bad comparison now that I see the scrubber in that light. 

In Violation

I was going through my email today—I know, right, hard to believe I'm catching up on email?   I've been delinquent for so long the emails have gotten out of hand.   I like to have an empty inbox and all of my emails are overflowing.   What happens is I'm on top of things until I'm not and when that happens I go into task avoidance mode and things only get worse.   

My mother taught me to be honest with myself and as such, saying the words, "I didn't have time to..." doesn't actually mean I didn't have time if I'm honest with myself.   What it means is other things had a higher priority than the thing I "didn't have time for" which is why I'm behind on email.    Some of the things I had to do were important, like sleeping, eating, and taking care of my children.   Otherwise know as I was 3D printing and all the entrapments associated with my new hobby, or obsession as my children like to call it. 

Today was the day to get caught back up.   I could do it.   I would get on top of all the things I'd let slide in email land.   I made it through two of my email accounts without much fuss and was starting to tackle one of the bigger accounts when I got to an email from YouTube, telling me they'd taken down one of my videos.   It had been flagged for review and upon subsequent review, had been taken down.   

What in the world had I posted that could violate YouTube's guidelines?   First off, I hadn't posted a single video in years and the only things I had posted back in time were cute videos of my children doing cute little tyke things for the grandparents, relatives, and friends to see.

The video was titled, "Potty Songs".   I would have reviewed it myself but I don't know when it was posted so I can't go back and easily find it in my own personal videos.   If I remember correctly, it's a video of my daughter sitting on the toilet singing songs.   The video is completely modest and doesn't show my tiny daughter in an inappropriate light.  Maybe the name was the flag?

It didn't matter though, because YouTube said there was an appeal process if I was interested with a link attached to the email.   I wasn't upset about the video being removed but decided to click the link and fill out the form anyways, thanking the folks at YouTube for keeping content on their site under control (there are bad things some people would otherwise post.)

Alas, YouTube told me when I clicked the link they provided in their email a window opened with the message, "Appealing this violation is not available."  Alas.   Regardless, I'm glad YouTube is working to keep content under control.  I know from things I've seen from creators on YouTube that sometimes videos get marked in error and it can be a hassle to get the video reposted.   In this case, I think the world can manage without the video of my tiny daughter singing on the toilet some years ago. 

The Big Boy Update:  My son loves to play with the things I've printed on the 3D printer.   I'm glad he's somewhat interested (his interest waxes and wanes) but sometimes he takes things and accidentally breaks them.   I don't mind overly much unless it was a model that took hours to print that had only been off the printer for a short while.   I told him to just ask before taking something.   Asking makes all the difference, I told him, because I can let him know if it's delicate or if he can play with it.   

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter is currently reading a book on her Mantis refreshable braille display.   It's been a rough day with it involving conflict with my husband and me first of all and then my daughter with her father, Blake, and me.   She can easily download books from Bookshare and read them, but they're not at the level of braille she needs to be reading at.   Getting books to that specific level, copying them to the Mantis, and then having her find them in the file area and then get to the beginning of the first chapter.  Then, she decided she didn't like the first book.   She read for an hour though and now has audiobook listening privileges.   

In The Closet

My daughter has moved again.   Perhaps it's just temporary—I hope it is.   Every time I go to find her lately, she's in her closet.   She doesn't have a large closet, but it is of the walk-in variety.   The total space is reduced by hanging clothes and shelves on the left and right side and a column of shelves.   

In the center of the shelves and hanging things there is a small amount of room.   My daughter brought in the watermelon pool float which is more like a flat, round bean bag than a pool float as well as pillows, blankets and anything else she needs to make a little bed for herself. 

To get to her closet you must first go into her bathroom.   In order to get more storage in the closet, we elected for a pocket door.  My daughter likes to go into the closet, lie on the blankets and watermelon float, slide the door closed, and fall asleep.  

She also unplugged the Amazon Echo Dot that's normally beside her bed and relocated it to the plug on the vanity in the bathroom.  If she wants to listen to music or her audiobook she keeps the door to the closet cracked so she can listen.  

I don't know why she likes the closet, but it makes her feel snugly confined.   I remember having hours and hours of fun in my closet as a child.   It brings back memories, seeing my daughter do the same in her closet now. 

The Big Boy Update:  My husband and I were talking about a political form I'd gotten.  I asked him if he wanted to fill it out for us.  My son piped up, saying "Papa likes filling out bills."   We laughed and told him this wasn't a bill, it was asking our thoughts on the upcoming election.   My son, nonplussed by this new information, forged on, saying, "actually, Papa likes filling out bills but he doesn't like paying them."

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  I found a sheet of typed braille by the front door this afternoon.   I asked my daughter what it was as she was coming in the door and she casually said, "oh, that's a prophesy I was working on.   It's heavily influenced by the books she's been listening to lately but all her own:

Hunters Books

3 half bloods shall feel the dark

to live or die the sky must fall

the sun will blaze on a hot afternoon

and to feel the sun afar away

and will have a life of pease but all brings death in the life of pife

The Funeral(s)

My daughter has been so happy Nora, our new neighbor who is a few years younger, has been wanting to play outside.   Yesterday they spent a good bit of time in the back yard at the playset.   They asked me if I knew where the doctors kit was and while I like for my daughter to find things own her own, sometimes it's just harder when you have to look with your hands and can't take a quick glance around the closet to see if it's there.  

She had looked but had been unsuccessful so I went around the house and ended up back in the basement, finding it in the closet right by the door to the back yard.   It was quite frankly adorable seeing the girls with the blue mesh hats the doctors and patients wear to keep their hair out of the way for surgical procedures on both of their heads.   They were doing all sorts of things and I think had forgotten about the hair coverings for at least an hour. 

My daughter wanted to bring out Coco's American Girl doll things she had been given recently and after promising to be careful, did indeed take good care of all the items and had a lot of fun playing with them all afternoon. 

The moved the entire collection of medical and American Girl Doll things to the front yard and were doing things on the front porch and sidewalk when I came out to find my daughter digging in the grass, hands all dirty, right at the edge of the sidewalk. 

Nora had a large, smooth, river rock and was gently placing it over a small patch devoid of grass a little further away.   I asked my daughter what they were doing and she told me, "we're giving the centipedes a burial."

I'm not sure what they were burying were technically centipedes.   They're larger than any I've seen before and have loads of legs.   They remind me of the things large centipede-like things the meerkats ate when I watched that show years ago.   Whatever they are, we have a lot of them.   An infestation from the number of deceased alone.   I think in years past I'd see a few but this year there must be a hundred all around the yard.   

Nora was using a large stick to pick them up and deposit them into the hole my daughter was digging.   Neither girl wanted to touch them.   I said it would be good if they could not dig up the whole front yard and that any burials they wanted to do in the natural area would be okay, but to please limit the grass burials because the lawn man might not realize and his mower would hit the rocks. 

Then I went upstairs and got something I'd gotten at the dollar store: three nesting paper coffins.    I asked if they'd like to use them to bury the centipedes.   Here are two of their burials:

The Big Boy Update:  My son went with Blake and his father to do some fishing locally today.    They went to a creek that had some spots they could wade into...or rather my son waded into in his shoes and pants.  They caught some carp and bluegill and said they could take them home for bait for the next time.   My son thought about it and then said, "can I let one live?" 

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter has been outside all day...and I mean all day.   She came in and got her lunch and had that on the deck even.