Glitter

I'm sitting here watching The Five and trying to see straight. I've been spending too much time with my cross stitch and my vision is crazy blurry because of it. Please forgive any typos. I'm going to have to cut back and/or take a break for a day or so from the cross-stitch because eye strain is no JOKE! I've been working on a penguin for Austin (he doesn't read here so he won't know) and some things that are similarly colored for my other kids/daughter-in-law. I've just been staring at black and white thread on white fabric for too long lately.

How cute is my niece, Jamie? This is what she wore to school today. She stopped by here for just a few minutes between school/library/church this afternoon and I had to get a picture. I didn't pose her, by the way, this just comes naturally. It's funny because as a second born child in a family of first borns, I see so much of me and her Aunt Mimi (my sister-in-law's sister) in Jamie. It's like God said, "this family needs a little more sparkle" and then came Jamie.

The other day she was working on a visual example of a distributive property - I had to google "distributive property" and watch a video on it to understand. Khan Academy has it in their sixth grade math section and she's only in fourth grade. This may be part of that whole "common core" phenomenon or it just may be that she's advanced. At any rate... a distributive property is like if you have the equation a(b + c) = a x b + a x c. She had to make a poster demonstrating this property without using numbers or letters... so like using monkeys and bananas and (whatever) in place of the a(b + c). So monkey(banana + cake) = monkey x banana + monkey x cake. Seriously. I could barely understand it enough to explain it to my dad because he was going to help her with the printer (two flights up from my Whine Cellar). Her vision for her project included glitter. Lots of glitter.

This common core thing is why I'm doing a little bit every day on Khan Academy, even the really basic stuff. Life is so complicated with smart phones and clouds and all these things that have just gone beyond my level of understanding. I figure if I go through all the lessons on Khan Academy that I'll be behind on a few less things. Right now I'm working on the Declaration of Independence and third grade math. You forget so much over the years, even for someone like me who reads a lot and watches a lot of PBS and C-Span.

I'm not interested in Obama's speech tonight. I think he had no business as President. I think he has no clue what he's doing and I think he's not the least bit interested in doing the right thing for this country. He's a narcissist - and trust me, I know a narcissist when I see one, having been briefly married to one. I'm just hoping his little dog and pony show doesn't interrupt Big Brother and I pray that God is watching over this country because our golfer-in-chief sure isn't.

Anyways. I'm just enjoying a very quite evening. Austin and his girlfriend spent a couple of days here and I love 'em but when my pain level is up, I can only tolerate so much personal interaction. Girlfriend prefers to hang out with me in my living room while Austin watches tv/plays x-box. I'm glad she enjoys my company but when I'm hurting it takes all of my energy to just deal with the pain and the last thing I want to do is be congenial. No Miss Congeniality award for me.

Speaking of which... my favorite blog writer, Grace at www.camppatton.com has a cousin who is in the Miss America pageant this weekend. She's Miss Idaho, the one who got some notoriety for being diabetic and competing with an insulin pump. So I'm like... two degrees of separation from someone in the Miss America pageant which makes me infinitely more interested in it.

And... that's about it. Hope your week is going well. Love and hugs, y'all!