It's a Mess

My life is a mess.  Something I never would have thought would be that I would be so overwhelmed with things to do that I just give up and don't get some things done.   The house has been those things of late.   Which I find really strange.   Something I loved that would give me joy was going to sleep at night knowing everything in the house was tidied, all the dishes were up, things were prepared for the morning and my papers were in order.   

Of late, even my desk is a wreck.   I'm trying to adjust to the new life I'm leading, but it's taking some getting used to.   I don't think I like it as much as the orderly, tidy all the time me of the past.  

Maybe the me of the past is still in there, in here.  I don't like the me of the now.  I want to have everything spit spot like Mary Poppins said.   For now, it is my hope. 

The Big Boy Update: my son has sold a good number of luminaries for his Passion Project.   He is very happy.   

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter told her VI teacher that she really didn't know what she could see. The doctors said she can't see much at all.   She said she doesn't really use her vision much though because she has such a great imagination.  That's so my girl. 

Passion Project

My husband and I are very worried about my son's "Passion Project" that he's doing for his final year at school.   It's a luminary project but things about it seem all wrong.   It doesn't seem well-thought out.   He didn't seem to know what was going on, including that he was supposed to be at school early this morning for his own project to sell luminaries at drop-off.

We helped him understand how the luminaries work this weekend and I got him to record a video to tell his classmates how to set them up.   They were planning on preparing things in advance (which would have ruined the luminary bags and the whole thing would have been a big mess).   

We hurried around and I went in to talk to his teacher.   She said my son had talked to the head of school three times, did I know this?  No, we didn't, because he doesn't like to tell us anything.  At any rate, she said it's okay if the selling doesn't work out because there were added days in the scheduled to look at a second option for selling them,  

She said it was intentional that they weren't involved, because it was okay to have setbacks and learn from them.   So I hope it will all be okay and my son will be happy.   He thought we were messing up his day.   Before I left he ran back that they'd sold one.  One luminary.  He wanted to sell three hundred.   I think they sold a few today.  But he was excited he sold the one.   Which was all I needed to hear.   I need to let him figure it out.    

I just don't want to fail as a parent by not being there for what he needs.   Hopefully we're doing enough.  And not too much.  

The First Random Item

We are using a post office to have people mail things to Filament Stories.   We have that address posted on the website in case people want to mail something with information saying there is no guarantee anything sent will be used on our social media or used at all for that matter.  

Companies for the most part want to negotiate a contract with us which means we don't receive much to our P.O. Box that is unexpected.   

I got something today that I had heard was coming.  I didn't know what it was for, and it didn't seem to make much sense, but it was magnets and I love magnets.   What it was was a fidget using some strong magnets, for my daughter.   It's very nice to move around with the little clicks a magnet does.   And it's a solid little fidget. 

My daughter likes it.   Although she was confused as to why someone would have mailed something to her that we didn't know.    

They Understand

Some days I feel like a terrible, horrible, lazy person.   I get up and work pretty much every day of the week, because that's what I do.  I do love the 3D printing and Filament Stories parts of my life.   I take time to do things with the children and a good chunk of the day making sure the guinea pigs aren't living in filth and that they have enrichment in their lives.   

It's a lot of time at the computer, something I would never have been able to do without the spinal fusions.   But despite the help that brought, I am still dealing with pain and degeneration.   So I go and lie down every day. I feel like the biggest loser, having to lie down.  But it helps the pain and I can get other things done like responding to messages from people or catching up on other videos from peers or that people have sent me.   Or I can just take a break.  

Do the children understand that I'm not a complete slob and I choose looking at videos over them?  Do they understand that when their father takes a break it's in a chair downstairs in front of the television or at his computer.   He doesn't lie down and sometimes fall asleep. 

I asked my son today about this very thing.  He said, "Mom, we know.  We understand."   He nearly made me cry.   

Every Night This Happens

I say I'm going to finish things early so I can go to bed.   We are going to get that content produced early and be done and I can go lie down and my back won't hurt so badly or I'll have time to get to the eleventy twelve other things on my to do list. 

Tonight it's 11:40 and we're just finishing principal filming on the video, which means we're far away from betting the video completed.  Sigh, we try every day.  I started printing as soon as I got up.   The prints were done but we went to dinner with the children and had games with them and then when they went to bed we started work, but I had to get it all organized first, so that pushed things out a bit longer because I have to have more than just some prints slapped down on the workbench.   I need to be completely prepared and we have to get the information ready for the posts as well because people want that information. 

Damnit, I did it again.  I came here and whined.   I hate that I'm whining.  My husband doesn't beat himself up for not getting more done.  He's so good about being level-headed and reasonable about everything.   I am always trying to be better, and maybe that's actually making things worse. 

The Big Boy Tiny Girl No Contact Dinner:  We went to dinner with the children to a sushi restaurant they like that we hadn't been to in a long time.   We kept them far apart at diagonals of the table so they wouldn't get into the touching thing where they pester each other.   We are working on kindness.   Is it so much to ask for kindness?  The dinner went well and we had a good time playing cards afterwards/.  Ot was a gapped day with them. 

Family In Town

We got to see Aunt Kelly and Uncle Eric tonight.  As well as their dog, Daisy.   We had dinner with my in-laws and caught up and the children were pests because they were bored when they weren't being involved but then wanted to be in the middle of things and tried to force their way into the conversation.  

I was young once, I remember what it was like when the adults did that "boring talking thing".

The Children Fighting:  After everyone had left, we went upstairs to play card games as a family.   The first game went fairly well, although my son and daughter were bugging each other.   We dealt the second hand out and the children were just rolling around, trying to bother the other one more and then it got physical where they were trying to hurt each other.   My husband lost his temper and we both decided we were done.   My daughter was upset.   It makes no sense.   Why do they do this?  I can't understand.   I never had a sibling. 

The Sidetracking Marathon

Some days I feel like I can't get anything done.  There are so many ways to communicate: email, Discord, text message, voicemail, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, Twitter, FilamentStories website, Patreon.com, Any of the model repository sites we download models from, and I'm sure I missed some others that I'm on regularly.   Keeping up with it all is a maze of being sidetracked.  Here's a very reasonable scenario of a typical morning's start:  

It's the start of the day and I've gotten home from dropping the children off at school and procuring coffee.  I need to find things that have come in and handle them.  But if it’s not slapping me in the face, banging on my forehead, or sounding a gong, I’ll miss it when it arrives.  I feel like I'm bombarded all day.  For example, I start by going to Instagram to respond to someone when I see a post in the Instagram feed that I had been meaning to comment on.  I comment and then see the next post which is amazing and I want to consider printing it for an upcoming video.  I go to Cults3D.com to download the model I notice on the front page, a model is being featured—a model I’ve already printed for an upcoming video—so I click in to get the information I'll need when we record the video.  "Now where was I," I think, "Ah, yes, responding to that person on Instagram."  I go to Instagram messages and there are some messages I can handle very quickly, so respond with a heart or smiley face.  Then I see a message that's concerning so I click in.   I need to look a few things up to confirm the facts before responding.  I grab a sticky pad to write down some numbers and there is something on the top page that I was supposed to have done two days ago, so I go check to see if I have an email about it.  When I open email I see I  didn’t respond to Reese’s teacher about the upcoming IEP proposed meeting date.  I need to respond so they can coordinate with the other eight attendees.   I open my calendar to add the meeting to it and see that today, "Hm, I was supposed to do that today?  Gah! I’ll add it to the to-do list for today, which includes yesterday's list of incompleted items.    I'm now how many sidetracks in?  I can't even remember where I started.  I'd better write down what I remember.

There are just TOO MANY ways to communicate and too many ways to try and organize everything but since I’m using multiple, because Protopasta uses this, and Asylum uses that, and Chris isn’t Mac, so we coordinate.  Looking at my text messages I think, "Oh no, I didn’t see the message from the dog groomer: she was waiting for me all weekend to let her know if she could come to groom the dog.  I see a prescription is ready to be picked up.  So I don't forget, I write "Prescription" on a sticky note and stick it on my purse to get it on the way to get my daughter.  At this point I think, "where was I?   Sigh, I got lost in sidetracks...again.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter's first video has not only had a lot of views on all of the platforms, but people are also commenting and saying the nicest things to her.  There are only a few outliers like the one person who said how did we really know if she was blind she could have been looking.   People jumped all over him about that.  Another person said if she was blind, why was she wearing glasses.  My husband responded that they aren't corrective, they're for protection.  People also jumped on that commenter saying there were "Legally Blind" people who had glassed which in no way changes the fact that they're blind.   But forget those people.  Thank you so much to everyone who has been so supportive and kind!

The Big Boy Update:  My son had a very bad day yesterday, he said.   He has very sweetly apologized for the things he said in the car yesterday morning.  He wasn't even hoping for a change in my decision.  He is upset it's a three-day weekend.   I don't know what to do to get the children to understand that flat out insulting a person is not okay.  My husband and I talked and wondered if they were getting this behavior from us.   We don't think so, we don't resort to insulting someone if we're angry at them or if we don't get what we want or any number of things along those lines.  We never talk about the person as a whole, we talk about the specific action.   At least we hope it's not behavior they've learned from us. 

First Solo Video

My daughter wanted to do the Filament Stories video of the day.   She stood there at the table and did the entire video in one take.   Can I do a video in one take?  No, I cannot.   She was so relaxed looking too.   

I am really proud of her. 

The Big Boy Update:  My son cannot be kind.  He can't say positive things about people and when he doesn't like something you say, he insults you in a way that caused him to lose screens for the whole weekend.   And I'm not backing down from it.   I don't know where we went wrong. 

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  I discovered today that my daughter hasn't been taking her antidepressant.   She has always known she can stop whenever she's ready.   I just told her to let us know because you don't want to just stop taking it.    I need to contact her doctor, but first, I need to find out how much she has been skipping first.    She said she's fine without it.   That's a good thing, I just don't want her to have a backlash. 

HotMakes Firetruck!

This morning I told Clockspring I'd forgotten to tell him I was going to be on the HotMakes podcast/stream tonight.   I was also going to ask if he'd possibly consider making a model I could unveil on the stream that was specifically for them, with HotMakes on the model somewhere. 

Somehow, we made something work.  There were two things that made this impossible thing possible.  First, Clockspring is amazing.  He designed a model from the ground up in less than four hours—including prints that took over an hour each, during which we had to wait to see how they worked before he could make changes for the next iteration with three test prints in all.

The second thing was the Bambu printers.  They are so fast that it was possible to get the model printed in time to iterate.   Without those two things, the HotMakes Firetruck (with ladder kickstand!) would not have been possible.  Clockspring is so nice to make this model especially for us and then to release it free to download to everyone.   Here's a link to the model:

https://www.printables.com/model/488109-flippy-ladder-firetruck-filament-stories-and-hotma

The Big Boy Update:  My son doesn't want to watch "good" things, usually preferring to watch YouTubers playing video games so he can learn strategies and "glitches".  Today he asked if he could watch the Lemony Snickets: A Series of Unfortunate Events series.   We gave him permission.   I wished I'd had time to watch them with him. 

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  Last night my daughter came into the stream with a guinea pig in her arms.  We were going to have her say hello.  I told her to put the stuffed guinea pig on her head and come into the area where I was.  We'd wait until she was in view and I'd say, "nooo!" and then she should tip her head over and we'd see the guinea pig drop.    She totally got me with this trick and it scared me almost to death.   It worked perfectly, only she and I couldn't keep a straight face.  But people agreed it was quite the trick to play on someone.

First Livestream

I have back-to-back livestreams over the next two days.  I've been invited to be the guest on both.  The one for today is a lovely lady who had me sign her husband's shirt since he couldn't make the RMRRF show we were at a month ago.  

She wanted to ask a few questions about what was okay to ask.   I said anything was fine.   She wanted to make sure.   Like was it okay if she asked what my favorite filament was.   Why that wouldn't be okay to ask confused me.   She said she didn't know if I had exclusivity deals with any companies.   Oh no, we can't do that, I told her, that would defeat the purpose of showing you all kinds of filaments if I had to show only certain ones. 

She had other questions about what was and wasn't okay.  I said it was all okay and I think she eventually was comfortable with the stream coming up at the end of the day.   We had a very fun time chatting (this was TikTok only) and towards the end we had more people join the stream with us as participants.  

Three hours was how much fun we had talking.   People are really so nice in the 3D printing community is what I've said countless times.  Everyone on the stream agreed.

The Children Understand:  I've done this long enough now that my children know what, "mom will be on a livestream starting at seven" for instance.   They are so very understanding.  

So Touching

I haven't been reading the comments, or looking at how many likes the videos have gotten.  I've tried to do very little to see how they've been received other than checking view numbers across platforms.   I'm just too scared.  

Why am I scared?  I have no idea.   People are nice.  In this case, they're being incredibly nice.   My husband, producer, and Clockspring have told me how really positive everything has been.  And I know there are some comments I need to answer specifically, but I can't right yet.  

It is something to do with how heavy a topic it is in my brain.  How important it is to me, perhaps.   It's such a relief and a feeling of success that I got the project finished that I need to take a break from it for a while.   That, coupled with me not wanting to know if people didn't find it as important as I did.  

But bottom line, I can't explain why I want to run and hide as soon as we put out a heavy hitting video.

The Big Boy Update:  My son is off on an overnight trip to the lake with four other boys for a birthday party, staying at the lake house of one the birthday child.  My son was very happy to get out of here and go off with friends.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter has been at Busch Gardens all day long. ALL day long, since six in the morning.   They were in a choir competition and then they spent the day at Busch Gardens, with the day ending with an awards ceremony.   Their group got a trophy for winning something.  My daughter told me everyone won something.   It was a nice way to end the season.   She loved the rides, of course.

So Close

I've had a video I've wanted to get out since I started Filament Stories: the introduction of my daughter and the story of how I got into 3D pricing, which was because of her. 

I'm tired, she was amazing.  I can't wait for the videos to come out.  There will be more than one, which was unexpected, but she was so cute and great with the camera. 

The Big Boy Update:  My son sneaks up on us and says hello.  His voice is light ad quiet.  When his voice changes it is going to be a big difference in how he presents himself, just from the lower register alone.   I think it's going to be great.  

Lumbar!

What in the heck did I do to my lumbar back region?  It is so bad I can barely think straight from all the pain right now.   Nothing is touching it.   I went to the chiropractor's office today and felt much better when I left, which isn't usually the case; usually, it's after I leave that I start noticing things improving. 

I need to go to bed.   The children are cute and sweet and my daughter does what she wants to do even if you're standing over her saying, "do not touch that button!"   You know she's going to push that button.   My son agrees to restrictions or punishments as he likes to think of our consequences.   He's starting to catch on and may well moderate his behavior.  But he may also be about to double down and get worse by rebelling more.   And to think they're almost teenagers!

My Own Deadline

I've forced a deadline on myself that is going to be tough to meet.   I did it intentionally because I'm going to be on not one, but two live stream shows and I have to have the video out before them.  They expect it will be out, I said it would be done.  Now I just have to do it.  It's been too easy to put off. 

The Children Aren't Babies Anymore:  My children put themselves to bed, and both want to stay up much later than I want them to.    They seem to be fine with less sleep.   It was going to happen in this direction.   It's not like the days when they slept twelve hours out of the day.  

Holding My Email Breath

I have decided to pick my battle.   Or rather my next battle.   I am going to try and get all of my inboxes under control.   For the majority of my email account owning years, I have had a tidy and under control inbox, but this is not the case currently and hasn't been so for two years or so now.  And I hate it. 

There are lots of things I need to do, but I am just tired of it being a black hole of emails coming in.   I have been yelled at by my husband because I didn't know when something had come in via email. The thing he yelled at me about was almost exactly one year ago.   He doesn't yell often, but this time he did.   Why didn't I just read the emails and handle them?   It's not that hard.  

It isn't that hard.   None of the things I need to do are that hard.  There are good reasons I haven't put email as a higher priority and not-so-good ones.   But I'm fed up.   I want zero-count inboxes again.   I've made progress over the last few days.   I hope I can keep up the pace. 

The Son That Doesn't Learn:  He snuck the Switch tonight.   He is so not even clever about it.   I took it and said that was fine, he had traded Monday for Friday.  I'd let him have it back on Saturday.   He wanted to make it up.   He wanted a do-over.  He wanted to swap time (for time he would be out of town with a friend on Sunday) but none of it happened because he had already made the decision.  I told him I'd keep the Switch so he wouldn't make another bad decision and lose the rest of the weekend. 

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  Choir practice for the year is over.  They have a national anthem to sing at the local baseball game and another performance on the way up to Busch Gardens this weekend.   My daughter said she wants to keep doing Choir.  I'm so glad she wants to stay after her other VI friend decided to leave. 

My Mother's Day Song

My daughter's teacher sent out to the parents this morning a Happy Mother's Day message with a hint that there was something our children had made for us coming later.   Here's what my daughter gave me when I got in from getting coffee and biscuits: 

This says "I love you mom" in the small cream area.  She's blowing hearts to me.

The Big Boy Update:  My son cracked his iPad screen quite badly this morning.   I have to say, for all the time he carries it around with him, it's impressive it's gone this long without breaking or being dropped.  He knows he'll have to pay to repair the screen.  He's okay with that.   He didn't even grumble.

Why Do I Apologize?

I don't know why I apologize so much.   I remember when I was working one of the very first jobs I had, present wrapping at Hudson Belk's, and how apologizing was brought to my attention there.  

There were lots of ladies I worked with, typically there would be three or four of us working in a row, with a line of people waiting to have their presents wrapped free of charge (for the basic wraps, there was a charge for the more exotic papers).   I would move behind the other ladies to pull off a section of paper from the huge rolls hanging on a vertical wall rack. 

In the course of moving back and forth or anything that might have happened in that small space, I would apologize.   They said I didn't have to apologize every time, that was just the working conditions and everyone understood as well as didn't mind.   I had a very hard time not apologizing for every little encounter though. 

I still apologize for everything.   I don't know other parents, including my own, who say they're sorry for not being there in the afternoon to do things with them, or lots of things I think I say to my children, mostly because I think I'm not being the parent I want to be.  I should be there more, be nicer, be firmer, be in less pain, be better. 

It's not something I should saddle them with but I also want them to know I'm trying.   I don't know if any of this is a good thing or a bad thing.   I figure something must be wrong with me if I'm the only one I know who does this.   Maybe I'm not alone.   My husband does a job good enough for the both of us, he really is a wonderful father. 

The Tiny Girl Chronicles: My daughter went to a birthday party for her next-door-neighbor.  She had other girls there who apparently didn't like my daughter.   That did not stop my daughter from going.   She found another person to be friends with and stayed late.   I talked to her about how those other girls wanted to be mature and grown up as opposed to being silly.   I told her that may be what middle school is like next year.  She said she's mature at school a lot.  I just don't want her hurt too much emotionally with this big school change where none of her friends are the same and no one understands her blindness.   She's tough, I hope she's tough enough.

The Big Boy Update:  My son got mad and didn't want to eat dinner with me because I told him he had to stop chewing on the metal tabs of the seltzer water cans.   It will tear up his teeth.   He doesn't care.  I was there once, I do understand not caring what your parents tell you.

A Teen Party In the Backyard?

I was lying down after while it was still light outside. Someone turned on the music outside, turned up the volume to a very loud point and put some sort of very dance music, heavy beat song.   The next thing I noticed was what sounded like twenty or thirty people at a dance club bouncing around my back yard.   Girls were laughing, boys were I assume doing what boys do at these club sort of events and in general there was a lot of loud, happy children that I suddenly realized were...teenagers.

But are they?   I have a twelve and eleven-year-old which makes them more tween than teens.   But there are friends they do things with that are teens and those friends have friends come over.   And we have the back yard everyone seems to want to come to. 

My son stormed in after a while saying, "the girls are being inconsiderate and rude.   They aren't sharing the trampoline at all!"   He was stopping the music and getting cross at the girls, who were not being bothered one bit by him.   

My son went back inside to play the new Zelda game after the lights went off and the girls went home.   It's not even summer yet, I wonder what fun we'll have in the backyard this year now that the pandemic seems to have abated for the most part. 

Fourteen Hours and Still Tired. Maybe

After I brought my daughter home from school yesterday I lay down because I was not feeling that great.   And by that I mean I was in pain and needed to lie down to calm down some of the things that were hurting. My intention was to get up in a few hours and do some work but I woke up at nine-thirty and still felt bad.  Possibly worse.   

So I went back to sleep, didn't write this blog post and didn't wake up until it was light outside.   I slept for fourteen hours and this morning I still felt pretty crummy.   But I got up, and I got moving around and I felt pretty good once I was up and taking the children to school. 

The Big Boy Update:  My son was so excited today because it's the release day for the newest Zelda game: The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.  He is such a Zelda fan

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter was excited to go to school on Friday because it was Ottercise day in which they spent over half the day outside doing games with her friends.  

Interesting Appointment

Today was an interesting appointment.  The message keeps being that I'm being referred to another provider that happens to do the same thing they do.  I get different information from different people, and ultimately I don't want to be at a practice that doesn't want to have me as a patient.   

When I was walked back today by the tech, she took my weight and got me into the room to take my blood pressure, temperature and heart rate.   She said, "so I see you're going to be transferring to another clinic?"   Again, another person saying that information that is so surprising to me, because I haven't asked to be transferred.   I said that to my knowledge, I wasn't, but I am continually concerned because I've been told this on multiple occasions and I don't understand why they would be trying to terminate my care there.   

She backed down immediately and said she didn't know what was going on and that maybe that wasn't what was happening and she would let me talk to the doctor.   Then she told me my heart rate was high.  I said I wasn't surprised it was, because coming in her has been extremely stressful recently because I keep getting information about other clinics your office wants to refer me to for transfer.   She left hurriedly.  

I had a nice conversation with the doctor and he is saying they aren't trying to "get rid of me" there are some things in play though.   And I understand all of those things from a position other than looking at it from my own personal healthcare situation.   We will figure it out.   The good part is at this point the insurance company is working with them now so more people will be looking at it.   I hope that's a good thing. 

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter today wanted to play with the guinea pigs while we had them outside eating grass in the back yard.   She was not being kind to them. She wasn't intentionally being unkind to them, she was just wanting to interact with them in a way that I found not safe.  Jumping (even gently) on the trampoline with Cheerio, even though he is very understanding, is not okay.   I just worry about them.  They are so little and can get injured easily.   She would be devastated if she hurt one too, which also worries me. 

The Big Boy Update:  As of tonight, my son is now an orange belt at Code Ninjas.   That's a decent accomplishment.  He's been working on building his code writing skills for several years now.  He started with visual code builders but he's getting into the more complex things now.   I'm proud of him.  

Not Looking Forward to Tomorrow

I have an appointment with a physician tomorrow who is trying to get rid of me.   That might sound dramatic, but it's pretty much what is happening.  They tried to refer me out for something without telling me beforehand.  Fortunately when I balked, the PA called and explained what was happening—perhaps explained too much.  

I asked the following month for more clarity and explained my confusion.   I had gotten a call at that point from the other physician's office and had talked to someone very understanding with a lot of knowledge.   Unfortunately, they didn't take my insurance.   I could come self-pay, which given that they're a specialist, was high.   She said it didn't mean my insurance wasn't covered, they just didn't file with them. 

My doctor's office followed back up and I explained the lack of medical coverage at the other office.   I got another phone call later saying there were two other offices they could refer me to in that case, and they both took my insurance.    "For what am I being referred?" I asked.    For the same thing as I was seeing them, which I said.   I asked if they were trying to discharge me?  Oh no, they assured me.  

So then I asked if my doctor had had a specific conversation with the doctor at these other two locations to confirm that they would be able to help me, or, was this just two other clinics that my insurance took?   She didn't know.   "I think I'd better ask the doctor about this in that case.  Let's make sure I have an upcoming appointment."   She didn't even want to do that.  

I haven't done anything wrong.  There is nothing wrong with me that's outside the scope of their practice.   They aren't even admitting they want to transfer me to another clinic that does the exact same thing as they do, for the same reason I'm seeing them.   "Oh no, you would still come to us."  For what? I asked, because you're referring me to them for the reason I see you here.   What would I see you for?  "procedures" was the answer.   "And do these other offices also perform those same procedures?"  yes, they do.   Hm, so what exactly makes this look like you're trying to discharge me through finding another medical provider to take me?

I called my insurance to discuss it.  Unfortunately, I can't even self file with this other doctor they originally were referring me to, which would have been a good option, I had to agree.   The insurance person said, "They can't just do that.  We need to open a grievance and investigate."   I am supposed to go tomorrow and say we're working on things from the insurance side of things.   

I don't want to be seen by an office who doesn't want to see me.   But I'm not going to just be handed off to another doctor without understanding why and making sure where I go won't have the same issues. 

The Big Boy Tiny Girl Wrestling Late Night:  It was 10:45PM when I went upstairs to check on the guinea pigs and found my son and daughter doing some sort of wrestling on the floor in the bonus room—whilst holding a guinea pig.   I sent my son to bed, told my daughter to kiss the guinea pig goodnight and then get to bed herself.   We are getting to the age where they just do not want to go to bed early, but then are tired in the morning.  

What's The Point?

My daughter had choir practice tonight.   She was not excited about it, citing it as, "boring."   This is a word that is black listed in our house.   It gets used, we just give them pushback.   There are plenty of things that will keep a bored person not bored for the foreseeable future.  What I think my daughter meant was she'd had enough of choir for the week. 

She had dress rehearsal on Saturday, concert on Sunday and now another rehearsal on Monday—but this time it's to prepare for their trip to Busch Gardens, and that's a place my daughter wants to go, because there are roller coasters!

And that sparked a conversation with her: what does she go to choir for?  Is it the practices where they're learning the songs?  Or is she looking forward to the performances?  Or something inbetween.   It's hard to say practices are boring if you don't like to rehearse for the concerts.   But if you aren't going to go to the concerts, are the practices just boring anyway?

She came around to the conclusion that all of the parts are good, just too many days and too much in a row is not good. 

The Big Boy Update:  For Five Minutes—my son lost screens with his friends for the entire week.  We heard him dash across the carpet to find the iPad and take it upstairs.   He fell asleep almost immediately after getting it.   But that didn't decrease the punishment.   He still is unable to weigh the impact of one decision against the result that will happen if he gets caught—and he's caught a lot. 

Trees: Save or Remove?

We went over to the lot today to look at the current placement of the long driveway that will get to the house will be.  My husband and I walked through the entire driveway path and around the marked perimeter of the house  (spray paint on the ground and bright ties on the trees or branches.   

There are a lot of old growth trees.   I didn't want to take any down at first, but we'd need to build a tree-house to avoid tree removal altogether.  We talked about what we can shift a bit here or there to save a large tree.  But that brought up other questions. 

If a ninety-foot tree is saved but his peers around him are gone, hoe does that affect it?   What about if the elevation of the land changes there?  If it's three or five feet lower the tree can't drop down with the surrounding land. If it's a higher space then the ground around the tree would have to be raised up.  The additional weight to the roots may cause a problem.  

The trauma underground of losing peers for an elderly table has consequences I wouldn't have thought about until they explained it.  Now, it makes complete sense.  

The Tiny Girl Chorus:  My daughter performed in the spring concert today and they all sounded beautiful.  There are three levels of the chorus, going all the way through high school.  Her friend, Grace, decided she didn't want to go anymore, but my daughter says she wants to come back next year. 

The Convenient Childcare:  My son does get very angry if he has to get off screen when he thinks he is entitled to them (every single hour of the weekend, including dinner and walking around with it.).  This is not the case, but my son is trying hard to push back on anything and everything that involves a break in screen time.   We're trying, but we're also busy and they're in their rooms doing things or getting food or even spending time down here with us.   It's not a terrible thing.   He just needs to learn what moderation is. 

So Rude!

Something was up with my daughter today.  She was happy to go to the choir rehearsal today which was long but included lunch and dessert.   Tomorrow is the concert where they will do a song that has sign language in it that she absolutely did not want to do, but she decided she did and she's learned it although that's been hard from the start. 

Today after the rehearsal, I picked her up and then we went to pick up her friend Grace who is also blind.   I don't know what was happening because she was very self-centered and self-focused.   She loves the guinea pigs and feeding them but for some reason she left and went to her room, saying she was bored and she didn't know it was going to be so looooong Grace would be feeding them vegetables. 

I went to have a word with her and had some stern words at that.  She came back into the bonus room and told Grace I said she had to go home.   I said that wasn't what I'd said and made sure Grace didn't think I was saying bad things about her.  What my daughter was doing was making me look bad and calling me a liar.  I got them playing again but those were only a few of the issues I had with her during the three hours Grace was over.

When Grace left, I told her she was grounded.   She had right at the end shoved by Grace and me because she wanted to pet the guinea pig too, which disrupted the quiet petting Grace had been doing, ruining it for her.  My daughter insisted Grace was done petting Cheerio and several other things that made no sense, but she insisted I didn't know what I was talking about.   So I said she could go to her room and write an apology for her behavior.   And not a short one.  

She came downstairs not that long later and read out to her father and me a well-written, point for point  apology that showed she knew exactly what she had been doing.   I asked her if she could tell me why she had been so impolite to her good friend, Grace.   She didn't know, she said.   I believed her.   I wish I could have helped though.   I hate when she's upset or angry. 

The Big Boy Update:  We all had to leave close to eleven this morning—all except my son.  Just like a teenager (which he will be in a half year) he is sleeping well into the day on the weekends. 

ChatGPT Taking Over

I don't feel like it's taking over, but it is so very interesting how useful it has become.   I'm hearing stories daily of how ChatGPT has helped someone.  For instance, my producer runs his wording by ChatGPT for tone and level of professionalism depending on who he's sending the letter to. 

I have another 3D printing friend who was going to ask me for some advice on how to work with a filament company and any contractual things I should suggest.    In the end he didn't ask me at all.  He asked ChatGPT.  

The Big Boy Tiny Girl Mean People:  My daughter is a pest sometimes.  She really wants to play with the boys when they're over and they do humor her some, but she gets so annoying and it bothers my son to no end.   He says very mean things to her about being blind and other hurtful things.   They both hurt each other's feelings.   I don't know what it's like because I never had a sibling.   I don't like it though. 

Not Like the Others

I've been catching up with another content creator today.  I had a question I thought he might have the answer to (he did) and it sparked one of those, "we haven't talked in ages, how are things going" conversations.   

He's fine, he had an update on their son, who had similar sorts of behaviors like our son did when he was younger.  They have made progress with getting their son some support at school.   I updated him on how our lives were going and the we got into technical things. 

I have tools I need to investigate now, one specifically called a "Mind Map" which apparently he uses to build all of his video scripts with.   I have a video I need to create that is more complex so a mind map might be the ticket. 

We talked about how our relative success was going with our social media.  Success mostly meaning are we being successful with generating the kinds of content we want to create and are people finding the information valuable?  Which rolls into growth, and are we seeing the growth we had hoped for or expected?

We broke off and talked about other content creators.  Two people specifically who are my friends now, that I have met and spent time with.  People who are the nicest folks you could meet, who are also very, very successful in social media.   Millions of followers and subscribers.  One of them has over five million now and he continues to conquer platforms and build a following in lighting time.   

My friend and I talked about that.  Were we jealous?  What did they have that we don't have?  We know the answers and we're okay with it.   They are generating formulaic content that is targeted at entertainment, not education or sharing of information about products or other things in the 3D printing space.   They play to the algorithm and it works very well for them.   

But it's not what we want to do personally.   It sounds tempting, but when you find out less than one percent of the followers do 3D printing whereas the majority of your followers do and it's not even a consideration.   I want to make content for 3D printing, not to entertain random people.  

He and I decided we liked where we were, with our much smaller audiences

The Big Boy Update:  When my son's friends come over he is SO LOUD.  HE YELLS EVERTHING AND IT FEELS A LOT LIKE THIS.   I don't know why it works that way in his head but he is one loud child. 

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter has to finalize the motions on the sign language song tonight.  I have to finish this and then go teach her the last bits and see if I can get her to do the other parts more in line with how a sighted person would move through the motions.   She is trying though.  I'm proud of her.

Not As Exciting

I'm tired.  I'm still three posts behind from the weekend at RMRRF and I just want to go to sleep. 

My daughter was excited to tell her friends and teachers about making it to the Braille Challenge nationals.  When she got home she wasn't that excited anymore.   It wasn't a bad thing, I think she just realizes it's the same thing, second year.   Everyone was happy, but it wasn't ecstatic like it was last year. 

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter is NOT having the learning of sign language for the song she'll be preforming this weekend.  She has fought me all the way and I'm having to fight back because everything she's saying is to say she doesn't need to know that, already did it, she did that once already, on and on and she really does need to practice.   She's getting there, though.

The Big Boy Update:  My son is doing toddler walking this week.  He started at the school eleven years ago as a toddler and was walked in by the Upper Elementary students.  Now he's walking the toddler's in and soon he'll be graduating to middle school.   He is maturing.   And growing.   It can't have possibly been that long ago that he was born?

Braille Challenge Finalist, Year Two

I got a phone call from the LA area today and answered it without hesitation because I suspected I knew what the call was.  My daughter has made it to the Braille Challenge finals again, which is one amazing accomplishment followed by another. 

I gave the person calling the time my daughter would be on the way home as my husband was on the way to pick her up.   She was so excited.  So very excited.   I'm very proud, and excited for her too. 

Out Of Control

I'm at an odd point in my life.  I don't think I've ever felt so out of control of things before.  I remember when I first started working at IBM as a co-op I had a hard time because I had things that were being added to my list of things to do.   I got to the point where I couldn't do them all with the hours I was working.   My manager met with me and told me something that was so foreign to me at that I never forgot it. 

He said that my workload may change over time and I'll find that I'm not able to do everything.  At that point I would evaluate everything and decide what thing or things I would decide to not do so that I could focus my time on the other things.   

Not do something you were told you had to do?  That made no sense.  That wasn't how things worked.  You were told to do something and you had to do it.  Things weren't optional.  But his advice made sense when I thought about it later.  There were "busywork" sorts of things I'd been given to do until I was up to speed with the project and could do more meaningful work.   At that point, there was no benefit to doing the other work, which benefitted only me from an educational standpoint.  

I find myself in that position a lot these days.   The frustrating thing is I'm already eliminating all the things I feel I can plus I'm not able to get to a lot of things I really want to do that will build my knowledge which will payoff in the long-run. For now, I keep thinking some day I'll get caught up.   I'm starting to wonder if that's going to happen when I'm a grandmother. 

The Big Boy Update:  My son could have gone to the beach for an overnight trip with his friend from school.  He didn't want to because he would be away from screens.  He didn't say this, but we suspect it.  He said he'd been away the entire last week and he just wanted to be home. 

The Tiny Girl Terror:  My daughter is reckless and cautious at the same time.  She had Kix on her shoulder and was running down the front, wooden stairs today.  It scares me to no end when this kind of thing happens because it could be the death of one of our guinea pigs.  Tonight she handed one off to me and we did a clumsy transfer.  Cheerio fell four inches and landed on his side on the metal grid wall, fell forward and  hit the hard desk and then bounced on the carpet.   She and I screamed and I got him and he made a strangled sound.   My daughter was terrified for a few minutes. I had to calm her down and let her hold Cheerio to be okay about his fall.   I told her that was minor and we'd been very lucky, because running down the stairs and one falling to the hard floor from a shoulder could be very bad indeed.   I think I got the message across.