Illnesses Experienced by Members of Our Family Since September 1st:
chest cold, viral sore throat, strep throat, pneumonia, bronchitis, ear infection, stomach bug, warts, migraine and acute anxiety (obviously)

Number of illnesses Experienced by Dan
Zero.

Classroom Activities Thwarted by Network and Computer Problems since September 7th:
Watching a video from the Frontline website, using Wallwisher and TodaysMeet for backchanneling, collaborating on a Google document, watching a screencast posted on Moodle, using Aviary to record audio, viewing completed Prezis, using school gmail addresses to sign up for Prezi accounts (school gmail blocked by proxy!), commenting in a Moodle forum, and signing into computers wirelessly for any purpose.

Basically what's going on is I'm getting my ass kicked by back-to-school. This happens every year, and even though by year ten I'm theoretically prepared for it... Well. It's still awful.

I'm teaching online all the time and a brand new prep besides. I have 27 more students this year than last for a total of 155. And, the computers I was supposed to use for teaching 21st Century Skills don't load web pages. Also, did you know we're living in a multi-generational, extended family household? As I type this, there are six adults and two children here with me under this one roof.

Also, Shef is testing every existing boundary and Mac won't sleep. I don't know if you've tried it, but four people (yes, Shef still visits!) in a queen bed does not make for a restful night.

Last night I told Dan that he should just go to Shef's bed when Mac came in. This worked pretty well, and Mac was especially pleased. At breakfast he told Dan, "I sleep in Mommy's bed. You go out."

Someday things will be a little calmer. Maybe in a month or two or six.

LUCK

I feel like we're on a run of bad luck lately. I try not to dwell on it because things could be so much worse; however, things could could also be better.

An example of the type of bad luck I'm talking about is the fact that we had to replace our garbage disposal this morning. Our other one was leaking all over the place.

Also, we're probably going to have to replace some aspect of our garage door/garage door opener system tomorrow. We wouldn't have had to do these things if someone, ANYONE, had bought our house at any point within the last ten months.

Also, that Leinenkugel's on our MacBook.

Also, I rear-ended someone a couple of weeks ago.

Also, the skin keeps falling off my right ear.

Also, I had to get new brakes last month.

Also, Alex Wong, my favorite dancer on So You Think You Can Dance, had to have surgery on his Achilles tendon and had to drop out of the competition.

That kind of thing.

GREAT, THAT'S JUST

My house has been sweltering and humid.

I have not yet packed for my trip tomorrow.

I missed a call from my sister in West Africa because my phone didn't even RING.

And, the aforementioned humidity is having an unfortunate effect on my hair.

Finally, I still have a scar from that chin zit I picked to hell this winter.

So.

That's just great.

I know this looks like my blog and everything, but we all know it's not my blog. I'm pretty sad about it, to tell you he truth. On Friday afternoon when she helped me develop the URL-changing plan, Rachel (who no longer wants to be linked here for obvious reasons) totally understood my pain.

"It's real grief," she told me when I apologized for crying over my blog when we both have a bunch of other things that are more worth crying over than an archive moved to another URL temporarily.

Here's one thing that's cheering me up: this is my first blog post created on my iPad. The iPad keyboard is pretty functional, except do you know what it needs? It needs arrow keys. Are you listening, Apple? Let's add some arrow keys so I can more easily write posts for my fake blog on my new super-awesome computing device.

This year has been such a weird mix of exhilaration (Best Year Evah!) and almost falling off a cliff of anxiety and busyness.

Basically, whenever something happens to upset the (extremely tenuous) balance - kid sick, parent sick, parent traveling, major shake-up at work, Dan working all the time (even more than usual), or babysitter sick - things get sort of terrible.

This week, I'm sad to say we're dealing with four of the conditions listed above.

Rachel told me tonight that she thinks she should write herself a letter to open every year. The letter would say, "FEBRUARY ALWAYS TOTALLY SUCKS." And then she'd remember and maybe not be so miserable. It's a good idea. Let's consider this blog post that letter.

Hey you in February 2011 with the left ear sticking out: It'll be better in March!!

Okay, great. Done. I feel so much better.

TokBox - Free video chat and video messaging

I'm really struggling with myself right now. Here's the problem: I have a lot of school work to do over this break. Like, a LOT of school work to do. Maybe 35 pounds of papers to read. I decided that I would do each of the following things every day of my trip: 1) exercise; and 2) work for one hour.

I exercised already, thank goodness. But, I have not done a lick of school work. It's 8:30, and I want to go to bed with the Hedgehog book I'm reading for Lee's book club.

I think I'll probably have to compromise. I'm going to grade papers for 30 minutes, and then read Their Eyes Were Watching God for 30 minutes, if I don't fall asleep. I'm teaching that book starting Wednesday, January 6th, and I haven't read it since 1997.

Omg. Here I go.

For Mothers' Day '08, Dan got me a Flip video camera. I loved it! It even had pink accents! I uploaded a bunch of great videos from it to this blog.

The camera broke just before Jdoc's wedding a year later, and when I called the Flip people for help, they said I should just take out the batteries and let it rest. Then when I put the batteries back in three days later, they said the problem would be fixed.

I was skeptical and asked for clarification, but they insisted that resting would help the Flip.

In the end, the resting did not help, but I kept the Flip in a closet hoping that someday I could revive it.

And then, today I did! I put some batteries in, it worked, and I got a great video of Mac saying, "Happy Thank You!" But when I plugged my camera into the USB port, my computer wouldn't recognize the camera. I sent the Flip people an email asking for help, and they sent a form message back asking me to answer about a million clarifying questions and provide tons of information about my computer and my Flip.

To tell the truth, I might not do that. It would probably take about an hour for me to answer the questions, and then I'm guessing they'd just tell me that my Flip is broken and can't be fixed and my warranty is over or never activated or something.

Perhaps I'm being a pessimist, but that's my best guess about how this situation is going to resolve.

A couple of days ago, my mom offered to watch both the boys tonight so I could go out with a friend.

Dan is in Austin for work. I thought he was in Chicago, but finally I realized that he was in Austin because he was telling me this evening that it would take him most of a day to fly home. And that he had a layover in Atlanta.

"Aren't you in CHICAGO?" I said.

"No!" he said, incredulously. "I'm in AUSTIN!"

Huh! I was sort of confused when he told me it was 90 degrees when he got off the plane yesterday, so that explains that.

Anyway, I tried to find a friend to go out with tonight, but after a few rejections, I gave up.

So now I'm eating cheese and watching You've Got Mail on Bravo. The cheese is organic, so that's something.

We've had (surprise!) kind of a crappy weekend here, but we did manage to get Shef to the birthday party he was scheduled to attend yesterday.

First, I forgot what time the party was to start and consequently had a meltdown in the parking lot of the garden store. But, after we got that out of the way, I determined the time and we were able to shop for plants and get to the party.

Of course, neither Dan nor I took a shower before we left the house. I was wearing the same pants I'd worn for the last three days. Dan was wearing a fifteen-year-old Williams College t-shirt with a hole in the back.

"Geez," he said, after we walked out of the party place. "These parents really dress up for the birthday parties."

It's true that it doesn't take a lot to look okay, but it does seem to take more than we have.

April has been one damn thing after another over here. After the sewage, I had another crippling migraine complete with vomiting, confusion, and unbelievable pain.

"Am I going to die?" I asked.

"No," I was assured. "You're not going to die."

Sure enough, I'm still here. But then, guess what? Shef is sick with strep again, and the basement needs a few more go-rounds with bleach.

Thank goodness there are only two more days of this month. I've convinced myself that May is going to be a whole new world.

This morning, I went down to the basement to do some laundry, but instead what I did was discover an inch or so of standing water with toilet paper floating around in it. And presumably some other stuff in it, too.

First, I called Dan. He said to call the plumber. They said they'd come over in a bit. And then, I called some of my friends so they could feel bad for me about the crap in my basement.

Molly said she felt bad for me, but that she thought that the time she had one single rat in her basement was worse than my basement full of crap.

"I don't think that's true," I said.

"It is," she said.

"Why?" I asked, thinking of the hours I'd have to spend scrubbing shit off the basement floor.

"Because!" she said. "It's a, a...RAT."

I guess, but I still don't agree.

Wow, it's been a terrible week.

After all the strep, I got a wicked three-day migraine plus a ruptured ovarian cyst. Both of these caused a lot of pain.

Today, the painkillers seem to be working appropriately, and I'm no longer so sensitive to light that I cover my eyes when sitting near a window.

This weekend is supposed to be beautiful, weather wise, and I'm thinking that if I'm still well, it's likely I'll be in an excellent mood. I might *MIGHT* even participate in my family's egg roll and egg hunt, but that sort of depends on how I'm feeling at the exact moment.

It was a terrible weekend at our house.

For one thing, on Friday morning my mom came over to babysit while I rode my bike in the basement for 30 minutes. Afterward my legs ached all day and I developed a sore throat.

Hmmm. I thought.

Then, on Friday night, I wasn't sleeping. The sore throat was raging.

Darn it! I thought.

On Saturday morning, I looked in there with a flashlight and saw some white spots.

Crap!

Later, I took myself to the Target Clinic to get a test, and sure enough, it was strep.

Then, I made Shef get a test because even though he has no symptoms, that strep had to come from somewhere. He cried and refused to open his mouth, but finally they got the swab in there.

Positive! I knew it.

On Sunday night, I got some kind of massive stomach attack. I popped a Zantac and lay on the bathroom floor in the fetal position. It subsided eventually.

Meanwhile, Mac was all out of sorts. Crying in the night for long periods of time, even when we held and bounced him. He seems to have developed conjunctivitis. And I'm betting on an ear infection. We'll see the doc in 45 minutes.

It's no wonder the house is a mess.

Most every weekend in February was spoken for, and the ones that weren't were overtaken by the pestilence.

There were also three short weeks of school in a row for Shef, two planned and one caused by the aforementioned pestilence.

As a result, I veered off of the FlyLady system of home management, and we were briefly engulfed by CHAOS (Can't Have Anyone Over Syndrome).

I have also suffered from WBGIAOOMSS (Winter Better Get Its Ass Out Of My Sh*$ Syndrome). I find this to be a paralyzing, yet untreatable condition that causes increased use of profanity and a lack of desire to live.

I mean, I DO want to live. But I want to live in Santa Barbara. I've heard it's nice there.