December 3, 2014

The total climbs to forty-five baby spiders.

This morning I had one of the fifth grade classes in the lab. I talked with the teacher most of the time about random stuff. Mostly crafts and hobbies. And her tiny hands. I think that came up while talking about typing. I had never looked at her hands before but there were surprisingly small.

While we were talking one of her students kept asking to get a drink. She was doing it in a overly nice voice with a smile on her face and it was really creepy. At one point she mentioned the fact that she was using her nice voice and not yelling or angry, which made it even creepier. At the moment, this girl isn't allowed to go to the bathroom or get a drink or go anywhere else in the school without an adult with her because of some accusations regarding one of the kindergarteners that the police are currently investigating. It is sad, partly because it is obvious things happened to this fifth grader, but it is even more sad that she did these things to the kindergartener and the kindergartener's younger sister, because the kindergartener is so sweet and innocent. While the fifth grader is big and mean.

Both second grade classes came in next and nothing eventful happened. The first class had three student teachers and they always spend their time wandering around the lab, like sharks unable to stop. So I just stand back.

When I wasn't doing work things I worked on school things. I read through and made comments on my group member's paper for our group project. I learned that Word has a comment feature where you can highlight stuff in the document, click on “add comment” or whatever it says, and then a column pops up to the right of the document, with a line to the highlighted bit, and you can write a comment. That is pretty handy. Shortly after finishing that I learned that we don't have a discussion post this week for that class. So I'm technically done. That would have been nice to know before I read those chapters last night but learning knew things is good for the brain I suppose.

This afternoon I filled out four surveys, one for each of my professors, one about the program in general, and a short one regarding my group members. I also went through my reflective journal and made the edits my mom pointed out. I could turn that in now but I want to read over it one more time. As soon as it is turned in then I will be done with everything for the semester. I feel relieved. Unless something horrible happens in the next couple of days, I will have successfully completed my first semester of graduate school.

I also had the other fifth grade class in the lab and I spent the whole time talking to that teacher about random stuff, mostly food related. We talked about how strange it is that the thought of having ice cream made from human milk is really gross, yet people readily eat products made from cow's milk. And drink cow's milk. Along with milk from other cows. I'm in the same boat where milk from an animal sounds way more appealing that a human's milk, even though I don't drink either, but that is so strange. Very backwards.

Tonight was Chipotle night and my burrito was again huge this week. It was also good but not great. The rice was way too salty. That happens occasionally with the white rice but this is the first time I have experienced it with the brown rice.

I texted the new volunteer kid to see if he could hang out tonight because tomorrow night is my mom's birthday but I never heard back from him. No surprise there. He turns eighteen the Friday after next and then I think he'll officially be out of the system and my responsibilities will be over. Or maybe that whole process takes awhile. He's only my second kid and the first to age out of the system. It will be a learning experience. It usually takes awhile to get another case but I don't think I'm going to start another one if it is offered because the beginning of a case is always time consuming. Going around and meeting everyone and reading through the file and getting to know the kid. With one day off a week from work and schoolwork on top of that, I don't feel like I could give a new case the kind of attention it needs. We'll see how I'm feeling though. Maybe if it is a younger kid. I'm kind of over teenagers. Especially ones that I can't get to talk to me.

After dinner I started going through the channels on the TV that we actually get so I can match them up with the ones I got online. That is going to be a long process. It took me forever going through the seventy-eight Sirius XM channels. So much typing. But I'm getting there. Maybe in another week or three.

I emailed my grandma back tonight about the Brussels sprouts. I didn't mention anything about the house auction that my sister told me about tonight. She apparently made less the $300 which is absolutely ridiculous. One of the couches, which was dated but was practically brand new because it was treated really well, sold for $8. And the really nice dressers were well under $100 each. My grandma feels sick about it all, my sister feels bad, and I feel bad. It all comes down to miscommunication and most of that is due to my aunt intentionally interfering with things because she didn't want my grandma to bring more stuff down to her house. Or so we assume. My grandma said had she known that we wanted more of the furniture she would have let us have it. And we didn't say anything about it because we wanted her to get more money in the auction. It was all of our faults for thinking the auction was going to be a legitimate thing. There should have been minimum prices on things but it seems like they started the bidding at pennies and worked their way up. On top of all of that my grandma got three bills for the adds the auction company placed. One was for $700. So my grandma basically got robbed and is having to pay the thief. I'm just glad we got out all of the stuff she and my grandpa made. That is the important stuff.