Vertical blinds

We have several gorgeous picture windows in our house.

In the Great Room we have 3 long and tall windows that are too close together for drapes, and the drapes would obscure the beautiful moulding that frames each window.

The dining room doesn’t have the moulding, and has a bit more space between the windows than those in the Great Room, but is also a set of three long and tall windows.  These have large half circle windows on top.

The library (potentially future child’s room) is similar to the dining room.

The guest bedroom could have drapes put in its large picture window (actually a set of three windows that can be opened but with no walls between).

All the windows are between 81 and 84 inches long (this is important as most of the pre-made Roman blinds are 64 in long).  Widths vary, but are generally in the 30+ inches category.

All of these currently have off-white textured vertical blinds.  They all look great when the blinds are open.  They’re energy efficient when the blinds are closed.  But… apparently vertical blinds are so far out of fashion that people COMMENT on them.  My sister, my mother-in-law, #2….  (You can still *buy* vertical blinds, and apparently these are very nice quality vertical blinds… but they’re still vertical blinds.  They don’t have quite the color in stock at Lowes that we have at home, but they have similar textured off-whites.)

We’re pretty much ok with the vertical blinds, except for a few annoyances.  A few of them got dirty during a rainstorm when a bottom window was open and we have no idea how to clean them.  A few of them broke up at the top and are currently hanging by the grace of clear plastic tape.  And the clippy thing at the top of one of them in the guest bedroom refuses to face the right direction no matter how many times DH takes it apart and puts it back together.  (It used to be 3 of them that wouldn’t face the right direction, but now it’s down to just the one recalcitrant.)

So while the in-laws were here over break we went window treatment shopping. We hit up JCPenny’s and Lowe’s and another cheaper local store.

We measured all the windows.  We decided on roman shades, because they don’t obscure the moulding in the Great room.  We liked Bali as the brand.  We picked chocolate as the color.

Of course none of these have prices, and over the holidays there aren’t a whole lot of people trying to sell you blinds.  So we just decided what we liked and left it at that.

On the internet, Bali links to places so you can order blinds.  JCPenny:  $325.50 for one of the three windows in the Great room.  They claim that’s 70% off the original price, but I imagine that is a lie.  Lowes gives $291.55 for the one window.  Home Depot says $276 but doesn’t give the exact size.

So… to outfit the Great Room alone we’re talking upwards of $900.  And that’s only one of the rooms with vertical blinds.  There are four rooms with vertical blinds.

Dear readers,  What would you do?

Challenge Update: WOOOOO

This month’s challenge was :

Oct.:  write every day for 30 min., without fail

Here’s how I did at it:

Not so good.  Well, I started out ok.  I was even making beautiful graphs and charts and everything.  And then… October.  Partly I ran out of things that were easy to write on in 30-minute chunks.  I wrote all the easy parts and all I have left are the hard parts, but people keep calling meetings.  I now have a bunch of stuff backed up that requires thinking, right when my brain is reaching the end of its useful life for the semester.  (Too bad the semester isn’t over!)  I wrote some things in small chunks, which was good, but thinking is harder and takes longer.  And my brainage is minimal right now.

Another reason I pooped out on writing at the end of October has to do with my partner and his Diabolical Plan.

See, my partner came to me and said, “I really want to start going to the gym in the morning before work.  And that’s really hard to do.  It would work a lot better if you came with me.”  *puppy dog eyes*

When I told my friend this, she said, “Did you punch him in his mouth?”

Mournful, I said, “No.  I went to the gym.”

Readers, it sucks.  This is how you know I love this guy: I have never worked out at a gym in my life.  And now I am doing it multiple times a week.  I bought a membership.  I’ve tried out various machines and even the saline pool.  Ugh ugh ugh.  I hate gyms.

Fortunately, it was the day AFTER this conversation with my partner that my doctor called and said my triglycerides were too high, and that I needed to cut back on pasta (possibly more on this later but possibly not), as well as to “get aggressive” with diet and exercise.  I had a little moment — ok, hours — where I pouted on the couch and then cried about losing all the good food in my life.  Don’t tell my mom.

My partner has been very encouraging and proud of me.  He even bought me a gift: a heart-rate monitor.  Gee.

We don’t talk in the morning on the way out the door.  Putting on shoes is the limit of what I can manage at 6:30am.  He knows I will cut him if he tries for more interaction.  And I tend to feel queasy at that hour.

Getting up at 6:15am almost every day?  I don’t think I’ve ever been so grumpy (hello, rumblings!) as I’ve been the past week or two.  And yes I am sleeping.  And trying to eat well or at least better, but that’s infinitely hard.  Most of the time I am fueled by hatred of the world.  I don’t hate my partner, but I do hate the world.

Nov.:  take up some form of exercise, at least 30 min per day at least 3 times per week

• fidget more.
• take the stairs at work

Report from Oct. 24 – 31st:  FML.  Oh god.  Here is my current schedule:  gym on MWTh; ride horses TuSat; rest FSu

The gym takes place at o-dark-hundred hours.  I am starting slow.  Today I did a 10-minute warmup on the elliptical, then got off and stretched.  Then I did the elliptical some more for about 20 min at around a heart rate of 154 bpm.  I hate everything about this.  Though the machines do have TVs on them, so I watched a show about baby cheetahs while I sweated and hated.  Awwww.  Also, my partner and I are both about to take a few days off from the gym: him because he has a martial arts tournament, and me because I won’t go without him and also I am tired.  Also also, eating a lot of protein is hard.

At least I enjoy riding horses and it doesn’t take place quite so early in the morning.

(Also also also, there is political shit going on at work that makes it clear just how little the university values our department and how unrespected we are around this place, but that’s another story.  I am feeling quite a kinship with the chaps over at Hungover Owls.)

Nov. 2:  I didn’t take the stairs in my office building but I did take the stairs in the library.  Did you know that there are 8 flights of stairs to get up to my office?  They are death.  I am too exhausted to fidget.

GRUMPY EXERCISER DEMANDS ENCOURAGEMENT!

please?

#1 tries to be more productive Day One: Internet Addiction

I was crazy productive the year after I had a baby.  I think part of the reason for that productivity was that I had enforced break-times  for pumping that were probably about ideal for optimal research productivity (~20 min every 3 hours).  When I wasn’t taking a break, I was super focused because time was precious, and I knew I’d be able to take a break for whatever I felt like doing.  This past year, DC long-since weaned, I’ve gotten pretty bad at separating my work time from my internet play time.  So I decided to reboot.  For the sake of productivity!  Viva la productivity!

Day 1 was a bit shaky.  Here’s my frantically written notes from that day.

I am mostly successful at keeping my internet time to while I’m eating my cereal.  We’ll see how long that lasts.  Bonus:  I make DC’s lunch instead of DH.  When K starts we will start making it the night before, but for today, I feel like a good and virtuous partner.

I get to work early enough to beat the traffic around the high school.

I installed leech block and blocked this blog and cnn, hours from 9-12, 1-3, and 3:15-4:40.

This leads to increased clicking on Not of General Interest and Bardiac and other sites with awesome blogrolls.  I tell firefox to forget these pages so they are harder to automatically click on.

I notice myself checking my bank account.  Hey, a reimbursement, that’s cool.  Of course, I can’t enter it into the checkbook register from work, so there wasn’t much point in that.

Argh, I want to write a blog post.  Instead I will jot down my thoughts on paper.

I muse on how when I’m doing mechanical tasks that don’t take any thought I need to have some kind of entertainment in the background or I stop doing the tasks.  For tasks that require thinking though, I prefer silence or familiar music.  I listen to Morning Edition online and Performance Today.

Hm, 3 hours without the blog and nobody has commented.  Also nobody has written anything interesting.  Why does nothing interesting ever happen on the internet when I’m away from it?  You’d think I’d have figured this out by now.

So the above is what I typed in during my lunch break.  The following are my scattered notes, sans context, from the remainder of the afternoon:

“Reclaim 2 hours on weekend. “  What did this mean?  I don’t know!  Maybe it’s about me trying to start working on research on weekends again, which I have.  Except it’s more like 3-4 hours.  (Sometimes more when there’s a deadline!  I hate working on deadlines though.  :( )

“goofing off and getting distracted”  Probably a note about what I was doing.

“problem– work isn’t unpleasant, just not as pleasant as short-term alternatives”  Man, that sure is true.  It’s not that I don’t like work… I’d just rather you know, be watching cat videos on youtube or something.

“I want to make excuses for myself”  It’s true… I keep wanting to come up with valid reasons for me to waste time online.  But the truth is there’s always *something* I could be working on, even if what I planned to work on can’t be worked on for whatever reason.  There’s always a referee report or reading or writing or *something*.

“Lit review nice or mean?”  I have NO idea what this note was.  Following it is something that suggests it might have been a research note to myself.  Oh, I remember what this thought was.  A really good paper I was reading didn’t place as highly as it ought to have, and I thought perhaps it was because the author slammed all the previous literature in kind of a nasty way.  Not something to do to potential reviewers!  One can be polite and professional and build on previous (imperfect) research without being a jerk about it.  Previous research is what makes a field exist!

How do you keep yourself on task at work?  Do you have planned and enforced break-times?

Schooling update

DC loves kindergarten.  Most of all DC loves first grade where ze goes for math and reading.  Also, DC must be learning things because ze is sleeping more hours at night, despite having to get up earlier.

The new K teacher is working super hard.  She’s got themed units.  This unit is apples.  DC has been regaling us with all sorts of apple facts.  Ze made an adorable apple book in the shape of an apple in which DC has drawn the inside of the apple and labeled its parts.  We had a long discussion last night on the meaning of the word, “flesh.”  (DC asks, “Do you like to eat flesh?”  I explain how flesh doesn’t just mean the flesh of an apple, but could also mean meat.)

DC’s printing has improved dramatically in just two weeks.  That’s something that nobody wants to work on at home (especially not DC).

We’ve been pleasantly pleased this week at what ze is bringing home from the first grade classes.  Ze had a spelling test (ze already knew how to spell the words, but the reminder of the difference between P and 9 helped before the actual exam).  They’re doing timed addition practices of x2 numbers (so 1+1, 4+4, etc.).  This is great because DC knows a lot of math but again, doesn’t like practicing things that require memorization at home and we don’t force things that are boring at home.  But the lack of memorized addition facts made triple digit addition and subtraction go pretty slowly which made them more boring, so we haven’t done any of that kind of math in ages at home.  I like that ze is learning new stuff at school, especially important stuff that we don’t find fun at home.

The best thing on the timed addition facts is that DC didn’t finish in the minute, and hir reaction to not finishing.  Ze got pretty far in a minute, but there was still a line and a half left.  Ze then drew a line in red, and finished the rest of the page untimed in red.  Then they corrected the ones they did and ze wrote c’s next to the correct ones.  Ze explained all of this very matter-of-factly to us and didn’t complain about not having enough time or being nervous or not finishing or anything.  Ze got as far as ze did and finished the rest after.  The first grade teacher has done a great job in that respect, and we are very pleased.

Initially we were a little worried that DC was just going over for “reading,” which ze is doing at a 3rd grade level, so we weren’t sure that the move was all *that* helpful, but based on what ze is bringing home, ze’s also going for spelling and language arts, for which ze has more knowledge gaps that first grade can fill in.

They’re also using the second grade Saxon math textbook in first grade, which I like because I always felt Saxon math was about a year behind what it should be in terms of topics.  (Of course, I feel that way about University of Chicago math too.)  And the first grade teacher is supplementing with a lot of fun fun pattern matching stuff based on a math workshop she went to last year, which is like beautiful music to me (especially given the drawbacks of Saxon math).  Math *is* about pattern matching.  Mmm, math.

The Spanish teacher does immersion.  Sadly Spanish conflicts with first grade math some days, so the Spanish teacher has been sending home homework for DC (even though there’s technically no homework in K).  The French teacher isn’t as impressive– they watch videos and do coloring.  I wish French conflicted with math instead of Spanish conflicting!

The K teacher has also worked really hard at open-ended exercises that meet the kid where he or she is.  So they write their own sentences and copy words from around the room.  There’s a word-wall where they put new words, and it has everyone’s name.  She’s set up stations that they do each day and many of the stations change with the theme for the unit.

DC is learning a lot and making new friends and we’re very very happy.  We’re very lucky to have this opportunity, a single private school whose primary mission is academics, and which is willing to work with us, in the small town.  Well worth the additional expense over preschool.

WELL worth ignoring the nay-sayers who argue that early entrance to kindergarten is stealing a child’s childhood.  We know that it’s enhancing it, at least this year.

July Challenge Updates

June was CSA month.  Eat less junk, more veggies.  I did ok on this.  For part of the month I ate less of everything because it was too hot to eat.  Mojitos helped with that.  (#2 has also been mojitoing it up, though from the infinite stores of backyard mint, not a CSA.)  I resisted buying ice cream, instead eating down my reserves of other sweet things so I don’t have to move them.  I also ate sandwiches with plenty of protein.  I still need to drink more water, though.

I did do ok on the cooking part, though it is still a work in progress.

I made a pesto thing.  It had:  2 kinds of basil, mint, some frozen peas that I thawed, salt and pepper, lemon juice, olive oil, almonds, walnuts, chives (including a flower), a garlic ramp, and regular garlic.  I think that’s it, unless I forgot something.  Later I stirred some grated parmesan and romano cheeses into it.  It’s pretty good.  I put some in the freezer and another big blob of it in the frig to go on pasta.  I also got eggs to make a frittata or omelette thingy out of all the greens I’ve gotten from the CSA.  And I’m firing up the mojito machine for the rest of the mint (note: not an actual machine).  Turnips are over, scallions are in.  Nom nom nom.  I also made some salads and a whole huge bunch of pasta things with greens and whatnot.  Some had chicken, too.

Greens I like: lettuces (mostly), spinach, basil.  Greens I am sick of: weird bitter greens like kale and mustard greens and chard (#2 AGREES, though she does think kale and chard are some of the better greens, which isn’t saying much); fennel.  Things that are awesome to get: all kinds of Allium species (Nom nom nom), sage, cilantro, basil, snow peas, some kinds of lettuce.  I look forward to other totes awesome things as the summer goes on (such as cucumbers!  possibly eggplant!  I could do with some carrots too).  Things I could take or leave: turnips, sugar snap peas.  (#2 misses her CSA which has been canceled until Fall because of Weather.  #2 would also love those sugar snap peas.  They make a good snack raw at the office, though not quite as good as snow peas.  Chomp chomp chomp.)

July is write every day without fail month.  Blogging does not count.  Fortunately (?), I have a nice big pile of things to do.  Hmm.  Did I mention I’m also moving?

#2 will be spending much of July traveling.  Zoom!

Adventures in kindergarten choices

So, if you’ve been keeping up…

DC misses our state cut-off for kindergarten.  We’d been planning to stay at hir preschool through kindergarten and go straight to first in public school.  But, ze has been growing out of hir Montessori and all (but one or two) of hir friends are going to kindergarten next year.  (All but one of hir friends are about a year older.)  So we figured, why not look into starting early.

So I read up on tons of books about giftedness and early acceleration, because I’m a nerd and a wonk and I like to make informed choices.  Acceleration is a good thing for gifted kids, not ideal, but a good thing, especially little wunderkinds like ours.  It’s not a good thing for all kids, and you hear the occasional horror story because folks don’t understand counterfactuals– people tend to blame all their problems on the skip even if they would have been even more miserable without it.

We called up our local public kindergarten and then a bunch of other public schools to ask about acceleration.  They weren’t interested in talking with us.  Another parent says you have to be very vague over the phone and then spring these kinds of things on them in person after you’ve got your foot in the door.  We will keep that in mind for the future.

Then we called around to the private schools we’d heard good things about and talked to lots of parents about their schooling choices.  The Catholic school has no exceptions in their policy for skipping/early entrance, which is to say they don’t allow it.  At half the price of all the other private schools in town, they can do that.

After some searching we found the ideal situation.  A dream K teacher, experienced, loved by everybody, full of differentiation and stations at a school that allows acceleration and so on.  Whew.  DC spent a day there and loved it so much ze wanted to start K this year instead of waiting until next.

Then, the day after DC’s kindergarten readiness test, we found out that this dream teacher of 30 years up and quit.  She wanted to transition to part-time and because of some miscommunication with administration, she was moving to a half-day kindergarten at a different school (with a wait list a mile long and no acceleration).  Ack.

So we talked to more parents and checked out the super-expensive prep school that allows early entrance.  It was horrible.  So many wasted resources.  Tiny classes, but the kids were bored stiff and misbehaving.  Their science class, in a separate room with a specialized science teacher, was coloring in a worksheet of a stylized tree.  (At DC’s Montessori, they look at actual plants!)  The teachers didn’t understand the terminology I was using to ask about differentiation (“differentiation” “acceleration” “clustering” etc.) and the admissions director had to ask them my questions again using tiny words.  No wonder the best college the graduating students get into is the local state school.

The prep-school experience did change our framing… instead of comparing to the wonderful K teacher we’d lost, we were able to see that we had two good options, even if we’d lost the amazing one.  DC could stay at Montessori another year and we could try to enter 1st grade at one of these private schools the next year, or we could go with the original school we’d decided on and their new teacher.

We talked with Montessori and found out that one of hir friends who we thought would be going to K next year actually misses the cutoff by a couple of days.  So DC would have two friends staying back, not just one (and would be second oldest, not oldest).  Ze would still be learning a lot of geography and history and hands on science, even if not accelerating so much in math and language arts.  Montessori is also less expensive and tax-deductible as it would still count as preschool.  On the minus side, they told us that ze would be spending a lot more time as a teachers assistant for the younger kids, training them on stations and so on.

At the private school, they’re moving up the pre-K teacher to K.  Her teaching style is much more rote- repeat, but she knows that is not really appropriate for older children and is working on changing, shadowing the current K teacher a couple of times a week.  The kids in her class are well-behaved and not as bored as the ones at the prep school.  The language, music, etc. teachers will not be changing.  There’s less racial, ethnic, and religious diversity at this school than at Montessori, which is too bad, but more diversity in terms of disabilities.  DC will also not be the youngest in the class– there’s another wunderkind a month younger and one a month older.

What decided us was that after talking with the new K teacher, we got an email from admissions requesting DC to come in for more testing.  They tested DC at the reading level of an 8 year old (apparently ze couldn’t define the word, “quench”) and they weren’t able to finish the math testing but ze got a perfect on what they did test.  The recommendation is single subject acceleration to first grade for math and reading.  While there for testing, DH talked to some of the parents who were there for track and field day and they told amazing stories of how their children’s lives had been changed for the better by the school.

So not perfect like before, but not terrible either.  We think ze is going to be able to continue learning in a supportive environment, and that’s what’s important.  The kids around should also be nice and well-behaved.  Hopefully this is what we’re going to go with and there will be no more unpleasant changes!

So that’s our kindergarten adventures.  Hopefully our first-grade adventures will be less exciting for us.

May goals and organizational discussionatude

May:  Clean and organize my house FOR REAL

This includes but is not limited to:

• closets & drawers — cull clothes
• kitchen table
• articles in my files and everywhere else
• boxes o’ crap
• organize books
• mop floors
• untangle the vacuum cleaner brush (OMG grossest job evar)
• call to get blinds fixed
• borrow or rent steam cleaner for carpet
• trip to Goodwill to get rid of stuff

I will cross off tasks as they are done, but probably on the Monthly Challenges page instead of here… watch me go!

#2 will

• Cull her filing cabinets of old stuff
• See about getting a second filing cabinet (will it cost her?)
• Go through her class crap from Spring semester, culling and organizing as necessary
• General cleaning and organization

She will do this by spending an hour a day for the days that she is in her work office instead of her home office.  

Update:  #2 will contemplate doing something similar in a month or two.  #2′s goal for May is to get tenure.  There will be no updates, only pain.

Do you have any exciting plans for May?

In which #1 ruminates on April Goals

To ruminate means to chew over.  Nom nom nom.

After chewing, is is important to clean your teeth.  Floss can help.

My April goal was to floss at least 4 times per week.  (and partly also to have a successful month after the previous month’s “March is where goals go to die.”)

I had big success with this goal, and the key for me was in allowing myself to do it only every other day.  I know that one should floss all the time.  Shut up.  I hate flossing.  Letting myself off the hook every once in a while was beneficial to me staying on track!

It turns out that, in addition to flossing, I also hate blogging about oral hygiene.  Ick.

Question from #2:  Do you think you’ll keep up with every-other-day flossing now that the challenge is over?

The good thing, though, is that having a monthly goal that took, at most, a few minutes per day allowed me to get rarin’ on my May goals (things have shifted around, if you haven’t checked the challenge page recently).  I signed up for my first-ever CSA and got a chatty welcome email from the farmers who run it.  I also started work on cleaning out my home office, which isn’t going as quickly, but that’s ok.  I have all of May to do it!

(*If you’re looking for your Monday money post, we posted it yesterday.  It’s about “them” taking away your home.)