Breeder’s Corner – Page 14

Cold and Flu Season

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Dec 082008

The creeping crud is making the rounds at our house, and it’s hit The Artist particularly hard. Last Tuesday after dinner he mentioned he might be coming down with something, because he felt “pretty crappy.”

Just to put things in perspective: this is a kid with a high tolerance for discomfort. He goes out in forty-degree weather wearing a t-shirt, not because he’s trying to be macho, but because he honestly doesn’t feel cold. He hasn’t had a sick day from school in two years. When he broke his arm as a kid, we didn’t get it x-rayed until the next day because he insisted he was well enough to spend the night at his grandparent’s house.

When this kid says “I feel pretty crappy,” this is what a normal person would classify as “I feel as though I have been run over by a truck and dragged through rough gravel and then hung up on meathooks over an open furnace.”

I kept him home the rest of the week. I’ve been dosing him with fruit juice and Nyquil, and he spent about four days mostly watching TV and dozing on the couch. Sunday he felt perky enough to play on his computer a little bit.

Last night he was coughing until after eleven, when I went in and suggested he take some more Nyquil.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I’m worried I won’t be able to get up for school.”

“If you can’t sleep for coughing, that’ll be just as bad,” I pointed out. “Maybe you should take one more day off to recover.”

“I don’t know how much more school I can afford to miss.”

This is the first he’s been absent all year, but he knows if he gets behind he has a lot of trouble catching up. He also worries about missing too much swim practice. So he went to school today, and swim practice. I fed him a hamburger from Hardee’s for dinner, dosed him with Nyquil, and he said goodnight and went to bed.

I remember when the kid would jump at any excuse to miss school. When did he become such a responsible young man?

Still Unemployed

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Oct 072008

I’ve continued to scour the college job postings, internet job boards, and temp agencies. I have seen a number of part-time positions, but so far only heard back from one of them—and they wanted someone who could work from eight to four on Mondays, which I’d be unable to do because of classes.

Meanwhile, I’ve added another class to my rotation. A classmate alerted me to a “continuing education” class in Quickbooks being offered by our college; as nearly every business nowadays is using Quickbooks, I signed up for it. I’ve heard rumors that Wake Tech will be adding a Quickbooks class to its accounting curriculum, but that’s a bit late to affect my degree.

I’ve also been scheduling dentist appointments for myself and the boys, teacher meetings, doctor appointments, and all the other assorted claptrap that comes with managing a couple of kids. Yesterday in the dentist’s waiting room I started wondering how I would juggle all those things around a job. I’ll figure it out when the time comes, I guess.

Classes are cruising along pretty easily this semester, mostly because I’m taking half as many classes as I did last spring. It’s much easier to keep up with the coursework for three classes than it is for six. It helps that most of the stuff in Business Finance was covered in Intermediate Accounting I and II. Now that I’m in the third class that covers bonds, I think I’m finally starting to get a handle on them. (I never claimed to be a genius.)

I sit in the front row whenever I can, so I generally don’t know what the other students are doing during class. Apparently what they’re not doing is taking notes; the instructor expressed concern on Monday that several of the students (who, coincidentally enough, sit in the very back) never take notes in class. Strangely enough, they also seem to be struggling with the material.

Me, I write down everything the instructor writes on the board. Even if it’s already in the book, I write it down again in the margins just to remind myself that the instructor was emphasizing that information. I take most of my notes in the margin of my textbook; the thing is covered in notes, hand-drawn tables, and highlighting. Hard to believe I was reluctant to write in my book at all my first semester. After I found out how little I’d get for reselling ’em, even in pristine condition, I said “screw it” and made full and enthusiastic use of the textbooks. I chalk up the cost of ’em to the overall investment I’m making in this degree.

Last night I spent a good ten minutes fretting over a difficult homework problem. My husband was sympathetic up to the point where he found out it was an extra credit assignment. “You’re stressing this much over extra credit?”

“It’s worth five points on the next test!”

But I wasn’t the only one; this morning Sweet Studious Boy and I were tag-teaming the instructor, trying to coax her into giving us hints on a couple of the harder extra credit problems. (SSB has started wearing glasses this semester. He’s so cute in those things I could eat him up. So to speak.) And the Svelte Beauty who sits on the other side of me approached for some advice as well. Clearly I’m not the only overachiever who was working on the extra credit two days before it was due. I imagine it’s frustrating for the instructor, though—she mostly gave the extra credit to help out the people who haven’t done too well on the tests. The students who are working hardest on her extra credit assignment are probably the ones who need it the least.

Cyclin’

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Sep 292008

Saturday The Artist was bored, and I was bored, and both of us wanted to get the hell out of the house and burn some energy. So I dragged my bike out of the shed, had The Artist pump up both tires, put it into the back of my Honda Fit, and we drove to the closest trailhead of the American Tobacco Trail. We took turns riding my bike up and down the trail. The Artist wants a bike of his own for Christmas, which strikes me as a fine thing—maybe it’s my vanilla upbringing showing, but I think every American kid should have a bike.

Shortly after we got there, as I was taking the first turn down the trail, I spotted a long, thin shape stretched across the road ahead. I stopped a few yards away and called The Artist, “There’s a snake in the road!” He ran up to join me; The Artist loves snakes.

The amber-colored reptile was about three feet long, with a triangular head and a diamond pattern along his body. The shape of his head clued us that he was a viper of some kind, but neither of us could remember the species. We stood a respectful distance away and admired him; he lay perfectly still with his head raised and kept an eye on us. After a bit another couple came up on bikes, and I cautioned my son to move over so they could pass on the snake-free side of the road.

“Watch out for the snake!” he called as they approached.

They glanced over as they passed. “That’s a copperhead,” the man observed. “Don’t get too close.”

So that’s what he was. Quite a lovely creature. After the other couple passed, the snake decided the area was too busy for his liking. He moved cautiously toward the edge of the road; when we didn’t give chase, he sped up and disappeared under the brush by the side of the road.

We spent about an hour and a half riding up and down the first half-mile or so of the ATT. The Artist did most of the riding, as he hasn’t had much chance to ride a bike and needed practice. The ATT is a great place for biking; reasonably level, shady, no cars. If we can get him a bike for Christmas maybe we can ditch this back-and-forth shit and see if we can make it to the Chatham County line.

Recently my husband got his bike fitted with a small electric motor, and has been taking it to work a few days a week. He invested in a bike rack for his car, and I’m thinking I’d like to get a bike rack for mine as well. Because… when I was putting the bike back into the car after we were done… I *gasp* scratched the paint on my car’s bumper. If The Artist hadn’t been so completely euphoric about the whole bike-riding trip, I would have been really upset about that. But if we’re going to be riding bikes with any regularity, I’ll want a better way to transport them to a place we can ride them.

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