Fruit Cup

I bet you didn’t expect a title like that for a Halloween evening post, but let me get to it, I have to start at the beginning first…

My children were at school later than usual today, getting home at 3:45.   Our neighborhood Halloween celebration started at 5:00 so it felt like we hardly had time to say hello to Nana and Papa, who had arrived for the evening, get dressed and get over to the clubhouse.    We made it, my daughter dressed up as a gum ball machine and my son was the green Lego Ninjago character, Lloyd.

My husband had prepared the front porch with painted signs, beakers and medical supplies and his rolling fog machine.  I had prepared the adult beverages to hand out when I returned from the party, which I left a little early from.   I was dressed up as a pharmacist, my outfit consisting solely of a lab coat but I had to up my game by putting in some contacts before the trick or treaters arrived.    I had one black contact and one solid white one—the latter being startling to look at.

The children started to come shortly and I was ready.   With my friends Darren and Jen handing out candy, I was free to deliver the, “antidotes” to the parents.   I walked like I was drunk or wounded towards the street and said, “excuse me sir, have you been given the antidote?”   Then I’d explain, “the Zika virus has mutated into the Freaka virus.  We have an antidote for adults over twenty-one.”  Then I’d hand them one of these:

I told them it was too late for me, but I hoped our antidote would save some of the neighborhood.   I am here to tell you, it was a hit.  People loved it.   They thought the drink was great.   What parent hasn’t had to give their child medicine in a bottle just like the one above?   The best part was all the reactions.   I got all different kinds, but the most unexpected thing was how much one white contact made a visual impact on people.  All in all, the drinks were a whole lot of fun to hand out. 

In the meantime while this was going on, my husband and in-laws were going around the neighborhood with the children.  They didn’t make it the whole way, but the got a lot of houses in.   My son decided to go off with Keira and Rayan after a bit and my daughter enjoyed being with Nana.   

When they got home my daughter counted her candy and in finding she had thirty-nine pieces, decided she wanted an even number.   She went out front, asked Darren if she could have another piece and then came back in, saying now she had forty pieces. 

My son laid all his candy out.   All that candy in front of him and do you know the thing he picked to eat?   The fruit cup he got from one house in the neighborhood.

The Big Boy Update:  My son removed all the peanut items after trick-or-treating tonight.   He looked over at his sister’s pile and said, “I’ll trade you all my peanut items for that skittles.”   She said sure.    I’m not sure who got the better deal in that situation.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  On the way home from school today we told my daughter she was going to see Nana when she got to the house.   She asked Papa, “does Nana still have her surgery?”   We told her she had had the ‘surgery’ part but she still has the ‘sling’ on her arm.

Rock Paper Lizard Spock

If you’ve watched the show The Big Bang Theory, you might know what the title of this post is about.   There is a point where two of the characters need to determine who will do something and instead of playing the standard, “Rock Paper Scissors” game they play a more complex version called, “Rock Paper Scissors Lizard Spock”.  

The scene where Sheldon, one of the extreme nerds, explains the rules as if it’s nothing.   It’s definitely laugh-worthy.   At any rate, the rules of “Rock Paper Scissors Lizard Spock” are valid and if you want to play, you just need to learn the winning/losing combinations.

What surprised me was my son, who has never seen the show, came home the other day and wanted to play, “Rock Paper Lizard Spock” (missing out on the Scissors choice).   It appears one of his friends at school was trying to teach him.  

My husband worked with him on the rules some.   I’m not sure if they got it all, but it was cute watching them practice the game.

The Big Boy Update:  A song came on the radio in the car yesterday and my son announced, “this is a boy song.”  My daughter wasn’t sure he was right about it because she liked the song too.   I asked him how he knew and he told me, “because boys are singing”.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  I’m not sure if my daughter has gotten more light sensitive lately or if her right eye might be seeing more but she wants sunglasses any time she’s out in bright sunlight.    We have no evidence to show she’s seeing more, but it’s a change of some sort.   More when we know more.

Why is it Called a Speaker

The Big Boy Tiny Girl Word Interpretation Discussions:
Children have less experience with words and their meanings than we do as adults.   We take for granted that, “hanging up the phone” means to end the conversation, but that meaning is so far out of date that even I only remember one phone in my life that was actually hung upwards to terminate calls.

My son and I were talking about what things were plugged into a power strip he saw under our tall dresser.   He can’t see the top of it so I told him the phone and the speaker were plugged into the strip.   He asked me, “what does ‘speaker’ mean?”  It is at this point where we commonly go to the circular definition in our heads by thinking, “well, speaker means speaker, of course.”  Followed by the thought of, “wait, why is it called a speaker, anyways?”  

I told my son it was because it spoke out sounds.   He was satisfied with that answer.   Then a short time later, my daughter and son were whizzing around on their scooters on the hardwood.   I told them to watch out in the kitchen because the dishes were drying and dad had cracked the dishwasher open.

My daughter came over to the dishwasher and said, “I want to see where it got cracked, mom”.   I realized she thought it had gotten damaged or cracked open like the egg shell she had peeled earlier in the day.   I told her it meant opened a little bit.   She was glad the dishwasher wasn’t broken.

Two more days until Halloween.  You’d better bet we’re counting down at this house.

Guys and Folks

The instructor I had for the real estate pre-licensing class I finished last week had a different teaching style than other teachers I’ve had before.   She rarely drew anything on the white board and used very few presentation slides, instead she just talked to us for eight hours a day.    She was interesting, and always addressed our questions, which made the long days sitting at a desk move at a brisk pace.

She told us stories related to real estate, the champion labs she and her husband raised and how the McDonalds she frequented only got her orders right some of the time.   She also told us many things about the NC Real Estate Commission.   She’s been teaching real estate classes for eighteen years and is involved with the commission from an education side.

She talked about how and why the test was the way it was, the changes made from previous years and the commissions expectations from instructors.    Everything she said made sense, aside from one.    The commission preferred instructors refer to their students as, “folks” and not, “guys”.

The Big Boy Update:  I got two new swing attachments for our playground in the mail today.   I like to try and find different options from the standard swings to attach to the top swing hooks.   Today was music lessons and my son happily went upstairs to work with Chelsea, but on the way he saw my husband and me putting together something he found out was a new lounge swing.   He knew it was about to be put outside on the swing set.   So I wasn’t surprised when he came downstairs early, saying, “Chelsea said it was okay if I ended early so I could go swing.”   If I was his age, I wouldn’t have been able to wait either.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter was bringing in the mail yesterday.   She opened the door, called to me and I came and took the mail saying thank you.   She came back a minute later, opened the door and dropped another envelope on the doormat saying, “I missed one.”   I told her thank you again.   Then, again, she called out a minute later, “here’s another one”, but when I came to the door there was nothing.    She laughed and I told her she got me.   For the next ten minutes we had more mail that wasn’t there delivered every so often by my daughter, accompanied by giggles.

Broker

I’ve been saying for about four years now I was going to get my real estate license and begin working with my husband when the children got a little older.   At first my son and daughter were quite young, which involved a large time commitment as any parent who takes care of young children will tell you.   Then, they started school, but it was only until noon and the three hours each day they were in school got sucked up with household management and other tasks I couldn’t easily get done with two little toddlers in tow.

Last year they were both in school from eight-thirty until three o’clock, but I was heavily time-committed with our school’s capital campaign, board and committee duties, substituting and the construction of the new school which didn’t leave much time to dedicate towards a new career in real estate.

So, for quite some time, the question has been when should I get my license?   This year after the first week of school I found myself with the available time needed to take action on my plan.   I signed up for the first pre-licensing class I could get into and prepared to go back to school.

The North Carolina Real Estate Commission has made the requirements much more challenging over recent years.   Past exams was deemed too easy.   One of the commission’s primary jobs is to protect the public from realtors.   The thought is, a realtor is not a lawyer and can’t give legal advice and yet they’re helping people with what is likely one of the largest financial transactions of their lives.   So they made the test harder.

The class I’ve attended for the past month had a teacher that, in kindness, I’m going to say screeched at us all day long.   She treated us in part like we were adults but tempered that by talking to us like we were children.   It sounds like not the kind of teacher you want to have, but by the end of the course, I knew I was going to miss her because she really cared about helping us learn.

Here’s the thing.  The pass rate for the end of class exam is fifty percent.   And the pass rate of the state certification exam is fifty-two percent.   Kim, our instructor, wanted us to know this wasn’t a joke and it was going to be a month of hard work.   And she was right.    She said, “one third of the people in this class are taking the class over because they failed the end of class test.”   There is a requirement by the commission to pass the end of class test by a certain percent or you must retake the course.   If you take the class again and don’t meet the attendance requirement, you’re not eligible to take the end of class test, which means you can’t sit for the state exam.

I thought she was joking, but she wasn’t.  During the month, I met many people who were in the class a second time—people who told me Kim was correct, the test was hard, and to believe her when she said we need to read the material and study every night.

So I read the material, which mainly included a large, small print course book.   Initially I had hoped there would be some, “fluff” in the chapters but no, it was all important.   There is a lot to cover in the field of real estate in a month and every night I’d try to complete the reading for the next class so I could have time to review.   Mostly by the time I was done reading, it was too late and I went to bed.

The Tuesday before our end of class test on Thursday we were still covering new material and I thought there was no way I was going to be able to review and remember everything in two days.   My husband heard me whine and complain endlessly about worrying I'd fail and have to take the class again.

Last Thursday was the day of our class test.  In the morning we had three hours of review by Kim before taking the test after lunch.   At the start of the class she said, “half of you will fail the test today, so pay attention because this review will help you this afternoon.”   She did a thorough job of going through as much of the material as she could in that time.  

I went into the class test fairly confident.   After the test several of us messaged back and forth, all agreeing the test wasn’t as hard as we’d thought.    We had all been studying and were most definitely taking the class seriously.    On Friday I found out I had passed the class test and could finalize my application to the NC Real Estate Commission to take the state test.   I registered for the first slot available, which was this afternoon.

That left me with two-and-a-half days for final review.   My husband was great with the children throughout the entire past month and especially so right at the end.   Today I went in, fairly confident, even though I’d heard the state test was much harder than the class test.

Folks, it was hard.   It was harder than expected.   So much so that I wasn’t sure I was going to pass the national section of the test.   When I got to the state portion I knew I had that half covered, but in the back of my mind I was wondering if I’d failed one part and would have to take it over.

I finished both tests and stared at the PASS grade for both the national and state sections.   I sat there in my seat stunned for a minute before I got up.   I was so anxious about the national portion I couldn’t even be happy yet.  I was just relieved.

Now, later in the evening, I’m not only relieved, I’m excited to be a real estate agent.   I’m looking forward to working with my husband and his team in the future.

The Big Boy Update:  My son was outside, playing with his friends.   I have no idea what the context was but I heard him yell out to them, “I’m growing younger!” as he whizzed off on his scooter.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  We were reading a Halloween book tonight before bed.   On each page of the book there is a flap and underneath is a typical Halloween creature (ghost, bat, witch, etc.).   When they lifted the flap on each and every page my daughter said, “too scary!”

The Moon That Can’t Be Seen

There are a lot of things my daughter can’t see.   Some of them make me sad—well, all of them make me sad, but sometimes something just gets me down more than other things do.

I was looking up at the night sky, or rather the twilight sky and trying to decide if it was a full moon or a nearly full moon and if it was waxing or waning.   My son was in the yard at the time and we both took some time to look at how big the moon looked on the low horizon and how bright it looked in the sky.

My daughter wanted to know what we were looking at so I told her we were talking about the moon.   She remembers the moon and knows it’s in the sky, but the small point of light in her whole visual field that is the moon is just not something she can see.    She will try though, and wanted to know where the moon was.   I pointed in the direction, but that didn’t help because she couldn’t follow the angle of my arm so I turned her head so she could see the moon.

I don’t think she saw it, but she said her typical positive, “oh” response that gives us no information on if she did or didn’t see anything.

In any given day I’m reminded at least a dozen times of the things my daughter can’t and may never see.  I try not to let it get to me.   Sometimes it does though.

On the other side, I am constantly surprised by what my son does see.  I’m a little warped in what to expect from vision in a child at this point because my daughter’s lack of vision has made me aware of all the things vision gives us information-wise as people.    So when my son points out something far away or small or hard to see because of high contrast I commonly think, “wow, he’s got great vision coupled with superb observational skills”.   I don’t think it’s really that, but when you’re used to a child who can’t see the tree five feet in front of her, you get a little lopsided in your expectations of vision.

The Big Boy Update:  My daughter brought home some, “gluing work” from school late last week.   To do this work you use a small brush, dip it into a tiny bowl of glue, brush glue onto the back of the attachment paper and then place it on the main sheet.   It’s not so much creating a specific design as much as it is working on fine motor skills.   My daughter’s page was covered in rectangles so much you almost couldn’t see the background paper.   I was asking them where the pieces of paper were from (a cut up tissue box from their classroom).   They weren’t sure so my daughter suggested we look on the back side of the pasted, glued pieces.   My son said, “maybe the ones on the back are the background?”

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  We’ve been trying to come up with independent work for my daughter to do at home.   She far prefers to do something with other people such as play a game, spend time together outside or do a craft.   One thing she is good at and enjoys is drawing.   I decided to repurpose the “lego table” in the corner of the dining room to a drawing table.   I got a little light, some notebook and coloring book choices, markers and crayons and set the whole table up.   So far she likes working there.   I had to add a second chair so Madison could draw at the same when she comes over to visit.

I Know What You Can Do

My husband and I were talking about a water mark that appeared on the table after snack with my children the other day.    We were going over options on how to get the mark removed and why the table had become more susceptible to water intrusion than it had been when it was originally purchased.

My daughter and her friend, Madison, were in the kitchen at the time had a suggestion as well.   Madison said, “I know what you can do; you can buy a new table.”  We explained how we liked the table and didn’t want to get a new table because of one little mark.   My daughter wasn’t convinced though.   She said, “okay, but if you can’t fix it, you could still get a new table.”

We didn’t get a new table.  Instead, we removed the water mark moisturized the wood for good measure.

The Big Boy Update:  My son and daughter were counting in the car this morning.  I can’t remember how counting came up but my son told me he wanted to make up a new number.  He created “Seph” which is between five and six.   My daughter, not to be outdone, created the letter “Fey” which came before H.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter informed us at dinner last night, “I’m very graceful.”

Tired From Running:   I ran about twelve-and-a-half miles today.   I was doing fine but at the end I started feeling unusually tired.   I got home and was definitely feeling tired.   About an hour later I started eating everything I could find, starting in the fruit bowl.   I’m not sure if it was lack of calories or something else, but it took several hours for me to feel mostly normal again.