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.