Do you ever feel as if your child is in a constant state of punishment?

I was texting back and forth with a mama who is having liar-liar pants on fire at her house.  Her child was ill prepared for homework and so forth.

Gee golly, haven't we played that song here at our house?

Just this morning when getting ready to walk out the door, K says, "Oh, look!  I have a reading paper that I forgot to do!"  She was very sing songy in her voice and I was not so sing songy.  I turned on the mama yell, which I don't like to do but resorted to because I WAS SO FRUSTRATED!  It was a full page of words (probably 10-12) that needed looked up in a dictionary.  I knew that there was not enough time to look them up in a traditional dictionary, so I took her to my bedroom, pulled the words up in the online Webster's and had her fill the spaces in.  Yes, I wanted to send her to school ill-prepared.  Yes, I did want her to sink on it.  The only saving grace was that the teacher forgot to write it down for the assignment books.  It took her an additional 20 minutes and where she had planned on eating breakfast at school, the first bell rang while she was walking down the sidewalk.  I asked the cafeteria lady if she had breakfast and she said that she hadn't stopped in for any.

Super.  She went without food this morning, but it was a choice.

The child strings her school work out all over the table and her desk.  I check over everything in the morning, make certain lines and books are signed and shove it all into the backpack so that she knows I've already trouped through.

She'll be going without TV for the weekend.  She is spending one night over at her grandparents and she'll have to tell them why she isn't allowed to watch TV.  She had to explain to my MIL why she had to write 3 sentences 140 times for her lying.  She's gone without TV for her lack of organization of school work, but never did she have an assignment that hung over until we were getting ready to walk out.

I'm frustrated.  I know that the kids are frustrated because of the teachers being frustrated about all of the changes to the changes to the changes in education.  Everything is up in the air and our air is far too cold for them to go out to enjoy because we get a snowstorm every other day.

I feel like a mom who only punishes.  UGH!

In like a lion . . . with blizzard-like conditions.

Winter Storm Watch

URGENT - WINTER WEATHER MESSAGE

NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE CLEVELAND OH
407 AM EDT TUE MAR 11 2014

.LOW PRESSURE WILL MOVE THROUGH THE LOWER OHIO VALLEY LATE TUESDAY
NIGHT INTO WEDNESDAY. RAIN WILL MOVE INTO THE AREA AHEAD OF THE
LOW TUESDAY NIGHT. THE RAIN WILL CHANGE TO SNOW BY SUNRISE ACROSS
NORTHWEST OHIO AND SPREAD EASTWARD ON WEDNESDAY AS COLDER AIR
MOVES IN BEHIND THE LOW. A PERIOD OF FREEZING RAIN IS ALSO
POSSIBLE BEFORE CHANGING TO ALL SNOW. BASED ON THE CURRENT TRACK
OF THE STORM...SNOWFALL SHOULD BE HIGHEST ACROSS NORTHERN OHIO
INTO NORTHWEST PENNSYLVANIA WITH DECREASING AMOUNTS FURTHER SOUTH.
A GLAZE OF ICE HOWEVER WILL ALSO BE POSSIBLE.

MEDINA-SUMMIT-PORTAGE-TRUMBULL-RICHLAND-ASHLAND-WAYNE-
INCLUDING THE CITIES OF...MEDINA...AKRON...RAVENNA...WARREN...
MANSFIELD...ASHLAND...WOOSTER
407 AM EDT TUE MAR 11 2014

...WINTER STORM WATCH REMAINS IN EFFECT FROM WEDNESDAY MORNING
THROUGH LATE WEDNESDAY NIGHT...

* ACCUMULATIONS...3 TO 6 INCHES OF SNOW ALONG WITH A GLAZE OF ICE.

* TIMING...RAIN WILL OCCUR MUCH OF TUESDAY NIGHT INTO WEDNESDAY
  MORNING. THE RAIN WILL CHANGE TO SNOW BY LATE MORNING AND
  CONTINUE THROUGH THE AFTERNOON. AS THE RAIN TRANSITIONS TO SNOW
  THERE COULD BE A PERIOD OF FREEZING RAIN. THE HEAVIEST SNOW
  SHOULD OCCUR WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON INTO THE EVENING COMMUTE. THE
  SNOW WILL SLOWLY TAPER OFF OVERNIGHT BUT THERE MAY BE SOME LAKE
  EFFECT SNOW SHOWERS THAT PERSIST INTO THURSDAY MORNING.

* WINDS...NORTH 15 TO 30 MPH WITH GUSTS UP TO 40 MPH POSSIBLE.

* IMPACTS...ACCUMULATING SNOW ALONG WITH A GLAZE OF ICE WILL
  SLOW TRAVEL ACROSS THE REGION AND MAKE ANY UNTREATED SURFACES
  SLICK.

Here we go again.  It could be way worse, but at mid-March, I've been clearing beds and planting snap peas.  There is none of that right now.  :(

I don't know why blogger doesn't like the NWS report, so I apologize for the splits in words.  I tried to fix it and I give up.

Liar, liar, pants on fire.

I talked about my child and lying lately.  Oh, it isn't me lying.  It is K.

Hubs asked her to clean her bedroom yesterday.  I wasn't aware and since the cat roams upstairs, she had her door shut.  He came home, checked the room and informed her that she hadn't cleaned.  "I did a little."  Perhaps she did, but she didn't get it done as asked.  Okay, no TV until it is complete.

Fast forward to today.  We all went to church.  K and I stayed behind for the all-you-can-eat taco bar put on by the youth as a fundraiser.  (I'm still full.)  We got home and K was to get to cleaning her room.  She piddled around in there for a few and announced that she was done.  Hubs informed her otherwise.  Rinse and repeat a few times.  Finally when the room was possibly doable, Hubs asked about sweeping.

"I did sweep."

"Really?"

"Yes."

I'm sitting and taking the conversation in.

"But I didn't hear the sweeper."

"Oh, I swept with my hands."

"No, K.  You have to sweep with the sweeper."

10 minutes goes by.  She announces that she was done.

"You swept with the sweeper?"

"Yes."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes."

"Funny, because I didn't hear it."

"Oh, I, um, swept with the little sweeper."

I couldn't take it anymore.

"This sweeper?"

"Yes!"

I flick the switch and it is dead.  It is not working.  It is cordless and dead, dead.  I had been sitting in the living room folding laundry and knew she hadn't taken it anyhow.

"Oh, well, maybe. I forget."

Really?

I gave her 100 times to write.  She lied repeatedly and each time got another sentence.

"When I lie, I know it is wrong.  Lying gives me a double punishment.  I know when I am lying and God does, too."

She has given us a hard time.  She has had a fit.  She even lied again about leaving her room and going to complain to her dad about the writing.  She lied when I asked if she left her room.  "No."  "Really, but I heard you."

So for now, she is writing 130 times.  She keeps begging for us to go on a walk.  We would go, but since she's only on 40 and it has been hours, I don't see it happening for a long time.

Wish me well.  It's wearing both of us out.  Even Hubs said to me that he feels bad because it seems like she is always punished.  We ask simple things of her.  We ask her to be honest, to do her homework and turn it in when due, to keep a clean room and to do a few chores around the house.  We don't run a child work camp and it isn't like the child can't breathe right.  Something has to break, right?

A second too late.

We've been walking every morning.  Actually, we walked every morning this week, which is the first in a long time.

Just to remind you, it's been a hair chilly.

We've practiced spelling words.  We've practiced vocabulary.  K has carried a bag of canned/non-perishable foods all week with her.  It is the Harvest for Hunger food drive to benefit our area food bank.  Yes, her mother is in charge of the food drive.  ;)

These past mornings have ranged from 5 degrees to 16 F this morning.  We've had different degrees of freeze-thaw during all of that.

Hubs and I were caddy corner to our house, getting ready to cross the street and I stepped onto the driveway apron of the neighbor's drive and down I went.  It really happened faster than I could control it.  I couldn't think through it but I can tell you that I was very aware when my head bounced against the concrete.  It is at this point that I tell you that long hair saved me.

Huh?

I've neglected to get my hair cut in probably 2 years again.  I had my hair wadded up in a flump, tucked under a hat and all that bundled under a hood that was fastened.  My backside took the first hit, then my head bounced, but the padding from the hair, the hat and the hood kept me from getting knocked out or -- worse.  Oh, I had a headache.  An instant headache.  Hubs turned around to see me down, tried to skitter to me but was rolling down the windows (thanks, Sochi Olympics) to try to keep from falling himself and I told him I would get myself up.

"Did you see stars?"

"No."

He texted me all day.  At first, he didn't realize my head bounced.  He saw me flat out on the apron and sliding into the street.  He told me that he was just going to tell me to be careful with the ice.  He said that he opened his mouth and just didn't get to get the words out quick enough.

My eyes weren't dilated and the 2 Advil I took right when I walked in helped.  I also ate, which helped. (I had a headache that I woke up with.)  I still have a little of a hum of a headache, but it is really low level.  My back is aching and I'm sure that slogging everything with the food drive tomorrow will only make it better.

So my noggin is okay.  I'm really okay if the winter leaves us, though.  My one fall a winter is done.  It can leave now.

Miss Leia's first visit to the vet.

A quick snap left me with a grainy photo.  Sorry.

Leia's now 10 1/2 months old.  We've had her for a month and a half.  Between her skittishness when we first got her to the dreadful cold, today was the first time that seemed practical to take her.

Baby thing did not enjoy going back into a box.  After placing her in the cat carrier, I walked out of the room for a few minutes.  There was a ruckus and she was trying everything she could to open the door.  I placed the carrier on the front seat next to me, had kitty hand holding mine for a little bit of the drive, then she resigned to traveling, laid down and settled in for the drive.

When she came to us, she was 5 1/2 pounds.  She is now 8.1 pounds.  She was overly thin and I think that a chunk of that was that she did not enjoy being kitty-in-a-box.  The box stressed her out and she didn't enjoy being fishbowl kitty.  She has just now become comfortable enough to use the litter box in our presence.  There were a few accidents in the beginning because she was scared to death to use the loo when we were around.

Just in the last week and a half, she has become very comfortable with being upstairs.  Just today, she was investigating the couch and enjoying watching out of big window in the front storm door.

The only real concern we've had about her is that (I apologize for the detail) she is cow pie kitty.  I've thought all along that the food may be causing upset due to pies and odor, and brought it up to the vet.  She checked out as healthy all the way around, but he suggested that though she had a wormer, there could be a little something in there that wouldn't have been covered by the worming meds.  I opted for the test to rule that out and it came back negative.  :wipes of the forehead:  We went on to discussing food.  Though she seems to love the taste of her current food, Purina Pro Plan, I wanted his take.  We talked about how Smudge had eaten Royal Canin Urinary SO and though I would be more than happy to skip the $60/bag of cat food, if Leia would need a similar diet, we would do what we needed to do.  He suggested Science Diet or Royal Canin.  I discussed the adoption facilitator talking with us about Wellness and he said it would be excellent.  He wants Leia to have a high protein and low carb diet.  When they took Leia for the test for worms (ick) I went on and hunted down bags of cat food.

Wellness won.  The bag that I purchased is grain-free and looks like a delightful sum of things that I don't at all mind giving to my critter.

Right now, we are on the 50/50 split with food.  She ate it and seemed to like it really well.

She knows where K's room is and stands outside the door, waiting for a piece of yarn to fly out to her.

She has nosed her way through our room.

After a bit of a fright while investigating the table a few weeks ago, she learned that the food surfaces are not places for kitties to be.  (I tried to pick her up off the table. She ran, flew up onto the counter, spun herself around and went straight to the basement.  It was like racetrack kitty!)

She talks and talks.  She was having a conversation with K the other day.

I've seen her use her kitty opposable thumbs to pick crayons out of K's crayon carousel and go running through the basement with them.  No kidding.  She picked them up, placed them in her mouth and went running.

Oh, and how her motor runs.  I can tell you that her motor was not running today when she was at the vet.  I can also tell you that she was a bit miffed at me, but she seems to have been brought back around.  (I hand fed her vittles, which restored her trust.)

The vet's office?  They loved her.  A good kitty Leia is.  How happy we are that she is here!

iTunes: How to list your albums chronologically and not alphabetically.

I want to see albums by the date that they were created.  It was driving me insane to see them alphabetical.  I finally did a quick search on the internet and found a kind soul who said what you needed to do.  Here goes:

You want to add the date before the album title. 

Click onto the album art and from the window, choose Get Info.

Yes, you want to edit the information. 

When the window pops up, change the album title to reflect the date created.  The year is on the top right hand side of that window.  Click OK and you are set!  

I don't think that Hubs is at all disturbed by the lack of date organization.  It was killing me in an OCD kind of way.

I promise that I'll figure out screen shots soon enough.  Rome wasn't built in a day.

Writing won't kill her and early to bed won't either.

In church, K kept asking.  She wanted to get a drink.  Then she wanted to go to the bathroom.  I granted her one drink because she's had a cough.  That would have been a total of 5 times leaving service if I allowed her each time she asked.  Instead, on the fourth request, I wrote this down for her:

She had to write 5 times for each time she asked, then she had to write 5 additional lines for giving me a hard time about it. 

K does suffer a bit from time, date and place OCD (Mama diagnosed), but more of a calendar and time to leave kind of thing.  I love the child, but I couldn't take it any longer.

Right now, she's just gone to bed.  It is 7:30 PM and just about a half hour ago, I asked that she put her clothes away.  I washed and folded a bunch of things.  She said that she had put them away, but when she opened her door, I thought I saw clothes on her desk.  I had her open her door wide and she was a bit hesitant to do it.  She finally did and when I questioned her about the clothes she said that she had put them away, but pulled them back out to get what she needed for tomorrow.

Y'all, I'm not an idiot.  They were still in the same stack as what I gave to her.

"K, is that a lie?"

:insert tears:  "Yes."

"Then you will go to bed at 7:30 PM.  Lying isn't okay.  You could have said that you hadn't put them away yet, but you didn't."

I feel bad.  She was going to start reading a Little House book to me tonight.  :(

ETA:  I sent her to bed with no music and no books.  That didn't go over well, but I told her that she was to go right to bed.  "But you can't take my books!"  Why yes, yes I can.  Ugh.