Can You Believe It?

Driving home from school today, I saw gas for sale for $2.99 a gallon. I thought I'd never live to see the day. Two weeks ago, I paid $4.29 a gallon when we were still in the middle of our "gas shortage". I've heard it could be below $2.00 by Thanksgiving, but I'll believe that when I see it.

Amazing.

(BTW, I did not actually stop and take a picture, though I might if it gets below $2! This is from photobucket.)

There are Days. . .

when I'm so glad that my friend, Shelley, introduced me to Babywise seven years ago. For those of you who don't know, Babywise was written by Gary Ezzo, who, I've discovered, is one of the most hated men on the internet. Whatever. All I know is that it has made our lives with babies wonderful. While none of my kids have ever acted exactly the way it was written in the book, it always gave me a plan and a goal that I wanted to get to. Both Matthew and Andrew struggled with naps, and Nathan fought falling asleep at night, but by the time each of them were four months old, we were cruising along pretty good with all of them sleeping through the night and napping well.

Which brings me to this week. Andrew was up last Saturday night for about an hour and a half in the middle of the night. I still don't have any idea what his problem was. All I know was that he was wailing. So, guess who got to stay up with him? That's right, yours truly. Needless to say, I was exhausted last week at church. After we got home and ate lunch, it was wonderful to be able to put him down and have him fall asleep quickly. (Then I could take a nap too!) Then, yesterday, I was working on cleaning some stuff up in our bedroom when I discovered that he had crawled away and was sitting in his room playing with his toys. (And pulling stuff blankets out of the bottom of his changing table too, but oh well.) I just love that while he loves to cuddle and be held, he also is able to entertain himself for a period of time. I don't worry when I leave him with a babysitter or at the nursery at church, because, while he may fuss when I leave him off, he is able to separate himself from me, and then when we reunite, he knows I'm always coming back. Plus, I get compliments every week on what a happy baby I have. (And that makes me feel good. Yes, I am a shallow person. :-) )

Frustration

There are days when I truly wonder if I'm getting through to my kids at school. This week was a collection of those days. This group has been a challenge from the first day, but this week showed me just how far I have to go. Gwinnett County has instituted an instructional calendar that we all have to follow. While it's been a pain to stick to the calendar, especially in math where we have to move on sometimes even when I don't want to, it helps me stay focused on my instruction. In addition, we are giving Benchmark tests this year. We gave a pretest at the beginning of the year, and this week, we gave a test that covered the skills that I taught the first nine weeks in Language Arts and Math. While I would love to say that all of my kids did wonderfully, I can't. Actually, many of them scored very poorly, some even below 50%. It was extremely frustrating to see that. I feel like everyday is a fight with these kids. I have so many who struggle with school, plus I have ones who don't struggle, but also don't care, so their only goal is to fool around. So I'm spending most of my time with behavior correction and not very much of my time teaching. Plus, I get the feeling that no one has ever asked these kids to think beyond the obvious. Whenever I ask them a question where the answer is not so obvious, they struggle. They also have a very bad habit of raising their hands to answer without even thinking. I've even had kids raise their hands to answer a question that I haven't even asked! They also have a hard time retaining knowledge. We spent one day in math this past week working on rounding numbers. We used number lines, we talked about the tens that "sandwich" a number, we did numerous examples together and independently. So, the next day, I gave them 5 numbers and asked them to round them. There were only about 5 kids out of 20 who even had the smallest idea of how to get started. Most of them just sat there and waited for someone to give them the answer. They've had so much given to them, they just expect it. If they need to work to get something, there's just no reason for them to try. I've also had times where we will do a worksheet together, and I will give them the answers as we are working through the sheet. Unfortunately, when it comes time to grade it, I'll have kids getting 60 or 70 percent because they weren't even paying attention. I've tried really hard to plan lessons that get them engaged and interested, and they struggle with that as well. I've just got to keep plugging away. Hopefully, for the ones that are behind, their parents will see that it can't all be done at school, and they need to work at home as well. I sent home the Benchmark scores today, and I'm expecting alot of notes when we get back to school on Tuesday. (Monday is a work day to get report cards done.)

On a happier note, Matthew took the Benchmark tests this week in first grade, and I got his scores today. While I may not have succeeded as a teacher this grading period, I did as a parent. He got 100% on both the Language Arts and the Math. My kid rocks!

An Open Letter to the Candidates

Dear Senators Obama and McCain,

My name is Carrie, and I'm a typical mom in suburban Atlanta. I have three little boys, and I am a public school teacher. While I am a social conservative, I haven't yet decided who I will be voting for this November. Right now, the person who can solve this problem may be the person I vote for.

You see, here in Atlanta, we have no gas. That's right. Two weeks after a hurricane that did only minimal damage to refineries in Texas, and our gas shortage gets worse every day. Worse! What is going on?? I have been trying to conserve gas, but I do have to drive to work everyday, and there is no mass transit between my home and work. The only places I go right now are work on Monday through Friday and church on Sunday and Wednesday. How else can I conserve? It seems ridiculous that in a major metropolitan area, there are people who have to take vacation days because they can't find a gas station with gas. Then, if we do find gas, it's over $4.00 a gallon. So not only are we suffering a gas shortage, we are also being gouged in price.

What I want to know, is what will you do to prevent this? I don't want to hear about renewable fuels, because I have a car that runs on gas right now, and that car is going to stay my primary source of transportation for a while. What will you do the next time there is a hurricane (and we all know there will be a next time) to ensure that there are parts of the country that are not out of gas? What is your plan for this crisis that is affecting a large part of the population that you want to lead? We can all talk about wonderful pie in the sky theories about becoming energy independent, but the problem I'm facing right now has nothing to do with oil supplies and everything to do with domestic distribution. What can you do to fix that?

Thanks.

Our New Addition

This has been a very long 12 days. Let me catch you up. Jeremy's accident was on the 8th. We dropped the Escort off at the collision repair place on the 12th, and heard on the 16th that State Farm was declaring the car totaled. (On an aside, I started to spell State like Satan, and I don't think that was a Freudian slip. You'll see why.) So, I called someone from State Farm, because my original intent was to use the money and fix the car on our own. (It's paid for, so I really wanted to keep it.) Well, I was informed that since it was a salvage total, it was going to take at least six months to get it back on the road. So, I asked her about at least getting reimbursement for a rental car. What I pretty much got was that since the person who hit Jeremy claimed someone had hit him, it was considered an Uninsured Motorist, so his company wasn't going to pay for a rental car, and we didn't have rental car reimbursement on our policy. As you can imagine, I was pretty depressed about it Wednesday morning. I think it was the combination of knowing we had to try and find a car on top of the fact that I had essentially been without any transportation for over a week, plus it was Wednesday, and we weren't going to be able to go to Awana since I had no way to get us there. (I wasn't going to ask to borrow my uncle's car for another week.) On top of everything else, I really felt like the service that State Farm markets (you know, "Like a Good Neighbor. . .") was really no service at all. All our agent had done for us was put the claim in the computer. We were the ones making all of the phone calls to the claims adjuster and the total loss adjuster and everyone else. So, Wednesday night, I just prayed for a miracle to happen because I was pretty much done with the whole situation. Thursday morning, I sent an e-mail out to the staff at school just saying that we were looking for a reliable used car in the $3000 range. An hour later I got an e-mail back from one of the fourth grade teachers telling me about a car that had belonged to her in-laws who passed away last year. She brought it to school on Thursday, and Jeremy came over to look at it. After driving it, he decided we'd take it. We went over today and picked it up, and here it is. . .It's a 1993 Eagle Summit, but it only has 78,000 miles. It is in immaculate condition, and it looks almost brand-new. It really is the miracle I prayed for!

Unfortunately, we had to deal with State Farm one more time. Thursday evening, I talked to the total loss adjuster to work out a time when we could sign the title over to State Farm and get the check. Even that was hard. Since we are on opposite schedules, it's really hard for the two of us to be together during the week. I offered Saturday, she said they don't work on Saturdays. I said someone could come to school where I could sign it and then take it to the house where Jeremy could sign it. She said that there are two different reps for Snellville and Lilburn, and apparently it's like gang territories where you can't cross into someone else's territories. Plus, she was taking Friday off. So Friday at school, I just kept getting transferred around until I got to the transfer rep who was the one who would actually come bring the check to us. He was the only State Farm employee who actually went out of his way to help us. He offered to come over today (Saturday) and get the title from us. He stopped by this morning, and it took all of about 5 minutes to sign the title and get the check. As you can imagine, I don't think we'll be insuring this new car with State Farm. I spent yesterday evening doing some research online to see what it would cost us to insure the cars with someone else. I'm done with State Farm and their "personal" service.

We Finally Got Excitement!

I was thinking this weekend that I should post, but I thought what should I post about? We haven't had anything interesting or exciting happen, and I doubt anyone really cares what my opinion of John McCain or Barack Obama is. I do have some thoughts about Sarah Palin that I'd like to share, but I want to get them organized in my head before I put them on paper (screen?).


Anyway, we did have some excitement yesterday! Here's a glimpse:

Yes, the Escort met a Jeep up close and personal last night. Jeremy was on his way to work, and he was the last link in a chain reaction crash. He was sideswiped by a car that was swerving to avoid a car that turned out in front of it. So, thankfully he wasn't at fault. He did get really wet, though, since his window was shattered, and it was in the middle of a driving rainstorm. He wasn't hurt, either, but he will be picking glass out of his shoes for the next year! :) Right now, we're making due with one car, but thankfully my uncle Dan is coming through with a car for us to borrow tomorrow evening so I can get to church. Unfortunately, we don't have a car rental clause on our insurance, and the agent said we could rent a car and then try to get the money back from the other insurance company, but I'm not too confident about that. Apparently, the woman who caused the whole chain took off.

There is one good thing! We had to take both cars in to get them worked on because the "Service Engine" light was on, and we have to get that fixed before we can get the emissions tested, and we have to get the emissions tested before we can get new plates. But since the Escort needs some serious body work before we can get the plates renewed. So, now I just have to pay for the van to get fixed. I'm going to call whatever governement agency handles plates to get a temporary tag so we can work on the Escort next month.

I Love Holiday Weekends

I love having a holiday weekend. I have three days to get all of my errands run, and I can sleep in late since I don't have more days to squeeze in my errands! I got up at 9:00 this morning. Yes, I am lazy, but I'm going to grade papers now, so I'm not that lazy!