Learn Something New Every Day!

Been busy for way too long here and not having time to post on my blog like I really should be doing. I thought once I got through the madness of my class reunion planning and the event itself, things would settle down, but guess I was wrong on that count!

Last week, I was supposed to do something really simple -like just make a couple of phone calls and wouldn't you just know it, I forgot to do that too! Finally, late last night, I remembered I should have called this one lady from church about some important stuff, and again, had forgotten to do that, but then, I remembered something about her. Hey! She's on my Facebook so I could then send her a message via Facebook and thus eliminate -maybe -for a little while the phone call, plus I could send that message to her at 2 in the morning and definitely didn't have to worry about waking her up.

Of course, there's another side to that issue too in that I don't know how often she checks her Facebook so I suppose I should try to put her back on the "Please call as soon as possible list" just to be on the safe side, shouldn't I?

Going back in time a bit -to try to get up-to-speed with a lot of things -I was telling Mandy today about a conversation I had with the lady I normally go to when I need to get my hair cut, trimmed, a perm -you name it! She and I are old friends from way back so she knows too that it is rare that I will call her for an appointment a while in advance of needing said appointment. Nope! When she hears my voice (or sees my name/number on her caller ID) she probably immediately starts thinking of when she has the earliest possible opening available that she can then fit me in.

Yeah and that's exactly what happened to me the Thursday night before the weekend of my class reunion as I called her about 9 p.m. that night to ask if she could squeeze me in sometime Friday -preferably -but if not then, at least on Saturday the latest!

Lucky for me, she wedged me in to a slot at 1:30 on Friday afternoon so when I went to our class "Night Before" event then on Friday night at the Moose, I had a brand new look via a new hair cut as well as a perm! And, I gotta say, she did a bang up job on it/me too!

Anyway, we got to discussing -my hairdresser and I -about a lot of things -some serious, some not, some stuff I never thought about at all before but somehow, they came up in our chat that day.

One of those things was about the tanning bed she added into her shop a couple years ago. I haven't even a clue now how that came up for discussion but it did and in the course of that, she said about tanning bed supplies and how many things along those lines she now has to stock for that part of her operation! I didn't believe her but she told me to look it up on the internet so I did and by gosh, by golly, she was right on about that for sure! I had no idea that so much stuff was available and that you really should have this, that and some other things -a bunch of those other things! Darned good thing she has a really good sized house with a full basement she can use then for storage for that along with her supplies for her hairdressing needs too!

See how you can learn something you never thought about before just on the spur of the moment some days!

And while I'm on the subject here of learning things every day, tonight I had the pleasure of working with Kurtis to help him with his homework. Tonight, that involved reading and he had this little book he was supposed to read. Well, it wasn't until after we'd gone through the whole darned book -all 8 pages of it -that he then whips out this piece of paper that I had to sign, swearing that I had witnessed his doing the reading ya know. And as I signed the paper, I saw that apparently he was supposed to do the reading of this book -actually, I'd call it a booklet rather than a book, based solely on the size of the thing. But anyway, we were supposed to be doing the reading in segments -one specific area tonight, another tomorrow and a third area then on Thursday so all those things would then all be done by Friday of this week!

Boy, sure do wish he'd shown me that paper earlier this evening!

Do you have any idea how difficult it can be to get kids his age to simply focus on the task at hand and also, to remember how to break a word apart and sound it out!

I had forgotten completely about that part of the learning to read process so by the time we finished working on this booklet, reading those 8 pages, it had us close to 90 minutes to finish that project!

Stop and go. Stop and go! Every word -very slow!I know with him, part of the issue is his comprehension of the procedures at times and once it does settle in and he understands things, then he surprises the heck out of you because it seems like he just learned it right then and there.

But let me tell you this, I am hoping his comprehension of sounding words out, step-by-step, kicks in pretty quickly because ya know, I'm not all that patient a person about some things!

I know it will come -eventually -but I want it to come to him now and for him -hopefully -to get a good grasp on those principles of reading and learn to love it and to love books too like I always did! Actually, he does love books already -just doesn't like to do the work to learn this process called reading!

And I know that how? Because tonight, he had been reposing in my recliner earlier, a nice book in his hands and leafing through it, in a very nice, rather loving manner as he scanned over the pages and pictures and such. Later, while we were working together on his reading assignment, I caught him not even looking at the words but rather studying the pictures in the book -which I didn't want him to get involved in the pictures until we had read the paragraph on each particular page. I could see he was often just glancing at the first letter of a word and then, just tossing out a word he'd seen earlier that started with the same letter -but not being the same word. So I called him out on that and asked him if he was trying to play tricks on Grammy to make her think he was really reading.

His answer to me? "Yes, I am, Gram!"

Well you little stinker! Not nice to do that to me Kiddo!

Oh and one more thing before I go to bed tonight too and along the learning something new every day line. Come February, Mandy is going to be a stepgrandmother and I'm going to be a step-great-grandmother -to a baby girl!

It's official now from the ultrasound Katie had done today that the baby is a GIRL! Kurtis is rather nonchalant about this coming event but Maya -well Maya has already found a website -on her own -with names -I think it was called "Naming Your Baby" or something like that and she has been sifting through that site, writing down on a separate paper the names she likes now to give to Katie so she will have a good selection of names to select from for her baby!

Can you tell she is quite excited over the prospect that she will have a niece?

Cool!