May 12, 2025

Monday Memes. 5/12

10 days until I feel like I can breathe and/or focus again. I need to take a social media break. I don't care about a person's end of the school year gifts for teachers. Don't complain about the cost of summer camps. I don't care what your kid's field day is like (the real ones know that field is a nightmare for all involved). Yeah, I know Maycember is a thing but we make this more complicated than it needs to be. So I need to stop scrolling. Here's some memes before I put the reeling on hold for a few weeks.

(It's possible I'm still depressed over the end of 1923 and then also I'm stuck in the loop of watch 1883 and I hate every second of it.)



From the local Facebook page:

 














May 10, 2025

A few recommendations (and a few things you cannot make me care about). 5/10

+Agua Mystica. I have owned exactly one body spray in the last 5 years. Something about having a baby that makes you not want to coat yourself in scent because all they do is breathe it in. So I stopped wearing whatever I'd been wearing after Wells was born. But a few years ago, pre-Sutton, I bought something coconut-y from Sephora and I used it in 2021 and, to me, it smelled like "Kansas and Covid" so I threw it out maybe a year ago. I saw this Sol de Janeiro scent on an Instagram reel and was intrigued. Instead of buying it at Sephora, I got it at the PX on the army base for like $6 less lol. It smells citrusy, but like at the beach. 

They had so many scents that Wells went a little crazy spraying the samples and I went home and had to immediately take a shower. 


+1923. I just watched two seasons in two weeks. No regrets. I had seen bits of 1883 here and there (I think Scott watched it) and I really don't like western-style anything because it's gruesome and depressing. However, 1923 is terribly gruesome and fraught were danger and trauma at every turn. Animal attacks, shipwrecks, drilling a hole into someone's head to relieve the pressure on a subdural hematoma...and so on. Maybe people didn't live as long back then because they continually made dumb choices. (I COULD NOT WITH THE CAR DRIVING WEST.) Alex stressed me out so much that I had to just google what happened at the end so I could watch in peace. Honestly, I didn't like her much but I did like Spencer and then I spent a lot of time deep in Dutton family trees online. It's evident when you look at a character like Alex or Elsa, you see where Beth gets her personality. And, honestly, can you believe that a slimy, cowardly reptile like Jamie came from Spencer's family line? Make it make sense. 

I'll probably move back to 1883 and watch that next. Taylor Sheridan writes the best shows (Yellowstone, Mayor of Kingston, Landman).

+Good news: the medicine I've been using on a plantar's wart took it right off my foot. Amazing and basically painless. It's prescription only, a combination of Aldara and salicylic acid. Super gross but it basically kills all the skin and you peel it right off. So I recommend using this if you're dealing with a similar ailment.

+I recommend reading your communications with the teacher before asking questions. For example, we had a field trip and I got multiple messages on a messaging platform asking about when/where. I simply scrolled 2 inches up the feed on my phone, took a screenshot of what I'd already sent them a few weeks ago, and resent it. Taking a screenshot of the feed and sending it back is a whole new level of passive-aggressive, I'm aware, but....I would be simply too embarrassed to ask my kid's teacher such questions when it was my responsibility to retain that information in the first place. Plus, it's a field trip within the school day: there's not a lot to know. Your kid still arrives and leaves at the same time. 

Onto A Few Things You Cannot Make Me Care About:

The Karen Read trial. Stop. I don't care. I didn't care the first time when I saw the first trial go awry. I don't care about the conspiracy theories. I think she was drunk and accidentally hit her boyfriend. I feel awful for him and his niece and nephew but I don't care about her and the sensationalism. I felt the same about the Murdaughs. Terrible for the victims, I don't care about the trial. 

Do not paywall your substack. Don't do it. I don't care if you're successful as a blogger or a writer or whatever. The internet is for free, the way God intended.

Influencer culture. We see through it. Everyone sees through it. 

The Pope stuff. I don't care. It's not biblical. 

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Tell me something you don't care about. Did you watch 1923

May 6, 2025

My problems begin and end with my feet right now.

Sometimes I think I'm in a season where I'm so apt to rush and panic and try to do All The Things that there is no way for me to slow down. I physically cannot because then tasks won't get completed. Lately, I've had to let a lot (a LOT) go. 

About two months ago, I noticed I had a small toenail fungus on my nail (gross but stay with me). This has happened once before and, that time, I went through multiple topicals and homeopathic remedies and nothing worked. Finally, I went to the doctor via telehealth in 2020 and she prescribed me an oral pill that went into your bloodstream and destroyed the fungus from within. 90 days of taking a pill every morning, they make you take a pregnancy test before you start it, and you have to get bloodwork halfway through to make sure your liver is still functioning properly. Extreme right? Well that was 5 years ago and I went to the doctor two months ago for annual bloodwork, I mentioned the fungus and she gave me the same medication again. Obviously, different doctor, different state but same idea. I started taking it and within a week, I noticed my feet were aching constantly. Like, unexplained muscle pain. I assumed it was from some not-so-supportive shoes I'd been wearing but nothing actually made it better. I was miserable. I would soak them, elevate them, whatever. They weren't swollen or anything. Scott assumed I had some really tight muscles so he massaged my calves and that really hurt and did kind of loosen things up but it never actually got better. Sandals hurt, sneakers hurt, bare feet on the floor hurt the most. 

At some point, two weeks ago, I realized it could be the medication I'd been taking. I stopped taking it. My feet stopped hurting within the day. 

I think I do have a really tight muscle in my heel but my feet don't ache anymore. My doctor asked me last week to go back in (today) to get the liver function test done and I was like "oh I stopped taking it" and I wrote a brief sentence about the foot pain as a side effect and she as just like "okay you don't need the test then". No "HMMM that's really weird". Scott had told me weeks ago that I should legitimately go to the doctor if my feet hurt that bad. I was like "What would they even do? Nothing. They would do absolutely nothing." Which is exactly what happened anyway. 

So as I'm getting over the Foot Pain Incident, and as the fungus is pretty much gone anyway because I did take 5-6 weeks of pills (I will just continue on with tea tree oil), I've also been dealing with a plantar's wart. It's honestly been there for awhile and last spring the dermatologist gave me a medication to put on it that "kills it from within" instead of an invasive procedure. I used it for a bit, it got a lot better, so I stopped but it definitely came back. The medication I have is now expired so I renewed the prescription and started using it again. My advice: go to a doctor and don't use those wart remover patches from the store. They make it a much more painful process. 

So, as I'm soaking my feet in magnesium epsom salt last week, I got one of those rasps to take care of dead skin. I didn't feel like I should go get a pedicure with the fungus situation, you know? (100% that's how I got it in the first place back in 2018.) Well, the rasp slipped and I grated my foot. Literally, a bleeding cut on the side of my foot. It rubbed on everything. Every shoe, every sandal, it burned like crazy when wet. I ended up buying some New Skin spray to cover it and that was an experience. I had a gauzy bandage over it Thursday and Friday just so I could walk in shoes. By midday Friday it felt so much better and that's good because I had to wear heels to the regimental ball on Friday night. By the absolute grace of God alone, the shoes I had didn't rub in that spot. 

Anyway, that's been the last few weeks and I can't help but think in the normal season of PCS panic (we don't know when/where we'll be living yet in two months), this has forced me to physcially slow down and I think that's by design. 



May 5, 2025

Amazon lately.

Let's start with Audible: I reactivated my subscription for 99 cents a month until July because I'm completely bored with all podcasts so I grabbed some books to listen to, mostly on the weekends. I do like to follow the Daily Deals for Audible and the on-sale books are usually worth it, a few dollars for an audiobook is okay to me when the alternative is waiting months and months (up to a year from my lovely library consortium). 

I really recommend On a Quiet Street. 5 HUGE stars from me. The narration is great so I think that it's worth the audio version if you like that kind of thing. It's on Kindle Unlimited for free, though.

And then, The Arrangement was also very good. The narration was well done so, again, go for that if you like audiobooks. It is *not* free on Kindle Unlimited (which is why it's been on my TBR for a year+ and I finally bought the audiobook). 

Jury is still out on the other two books. 


I grabbed these Sanuk yoga mat sandals the other day. Mine from two years ago are super worn out an slightly chewed up by Mav, so it was time for a new pair. Two pairs lasted me 8ish years. I recommend!




I realized that we needed sunblock for the season a few weeks ago. I got Blue Lizard spray, Sun Bum sunscreen stick for faces, and e.l.f. for the face with primer in it. I do not wear face sunscreen every day because those who are prone to breakouts (per my dermatologist) aren't recommended to use it every day if not out in the sun. 



And, like with the brush hair dryer thing from a a month or so ago, I really thought I could make it to the end of the school year without buying more under-eye patches. Nope. Those 5am alarms require something to wake me up. I bought a variety pack for fun. Good reviews and I do like them a lot. Normally, I buy the 24k Gold ones, but I think they are all honestly the same. 


April 30, 2025

Ending April with Memes

 

I think cameras in classrooms is the best possible thing that could be done to improve the state of education. Parents need to see their kids acting like fools and they'd be *shocked* at how little learning Junior is doing because he/she is never on task. The worst is parents who are like "my kid needs a cell phone to record bad teacher behavior". Let's just record everything. I'm on board.





















I still remember we weren't allowed to have outdoor recess lasts year on eclipse day because that's where we're at in the evolutionary spiral.




April 28, 2025

The decision to homeschool.

I'd say, round February-ish, I started becoming completely disillusioned with the public school system. It wasn't that I didn't enjoy teaching. It wasn't the students. It's not the school itself. It was the system. The system that dictated how much your kid was going to learn in a given school year: Knowledge being doled out on the terms of snow days, virtual learning ("learning") days, and sick days. I first realized this was a problem back in 2020 when my students were being quarantined when they weren't even sick and even when I went on maternity leave and, though the teacher who took my spot was hardworking, they couldn't find a certified teacher to finish out 4th grade for my students (going as far as asking me if I were going to take the "whole 6 weeks off" because they were out of options). 

Education was been gate-kept. Not intentionally or with malice, but it has. This year, our school had 17 school days off between January and February due to district sick days, snow days, and federal holidays. That's 17 days of 1st grade my kid won't get back. That's 17 days of 3rd grade my students won't get back. Imagine how much content could be covered in 17 days. 

Something happened in 2020 where we decided school was "extra", like organized learning wasn't one of the most important parts of childhood. And that trickledown effect has come with us into 2024-2025 and I honestly don't think it's going away. 

So anyway: All of these thoughts and experiences were being mulled over in my head, and then I started to think about curriculum. Curriculum is the element of school I'm probably the most passionate about. Especially in elementary, if you don't have a solid uniform curriculum available to all students, and taught by all teachers, you get a mish-mash of skills and standards being taught. Each curriculum is organized a little bit differently, so if you switch from one to the other, especially moving state to state, you might miss a skill or standard that's already been taught. For example, if you don't get "telling time" at the end of 1st grade, you may not see that again until the end of 2nd grade. That's an entire year of not being given explicit instruction by a teacher on how a clock works. That's a lot when you're 7 years old. This is how you end up with gaps and it's how I ended up with a class of 4th graders on a military base who had had wildly varying experiences in 3rd grade in 2020 (some never seeing a classroom that year...Hawaii...). And then the kids didn't even have a certified teacher to carry them through the last 10 weeks of the school year in 2022. 

So, thinking about Wells, specifically: When I considered that we'd be moving 2-3 more times before we "settle" somewhere and I thought about how many gaps there would be in his education because of that, I felt like homeschooling would be the right choice for next year. I wasn't planning on working next year, and this way he can get what he needs to be a successful 2nd grader and we'll see where we are when it comes time for 3rd grade the next year. He's one of the more advanced kids in his class and it would crush me to know he's missing bits and pieces if he gets, God forbid, a lazy/unskilled teacher or just has a major gap in whatever curriculum is being used. I've seen a lot lately online about how schools are failing our kids and, with the new school choice laws coming about in 2025-2026, I want to point out that you, the parent, are still 100% responsible for your child. You do not get to blame the school. You get to decide. You have to decide. You can't blame the doctor or the dentist if you don't like them; you find a new one. You need to find a new way for your child to learn, whether that's a new school or taking it into your own hands. You are their advocate. 

I made this decision around the end of February. Scott hopped on board really easily for some reason, even though he hasn't liked the idea of homeschooling in the past. I ordered everything we would need to do 2nd grade and it's ready to go. I did do a lot of research and talked to many homeschool moms I know, mostly military, to get a feel for their "why". My "why" seemed kind of selfish at first ("it will be inconvenient to find him a new school and I don't want him to have to deal with that transition") but the WHY popped up after I'd already made the decision...

I'm relieved I made this decision when I did. It's a whole separate long sordid tale, but we probably won't be scuttling off to our new location (Kansas, guys, so not super exciting) as soon as June rolls around. Scott doesn't start work until later in the summer so we will list this house, try to sell it, and then buy a new one in Kansas. Financially, it makes the most sense. So we won't have an address by the time school starts! Meaning, I don't even know how I'd register him. He'd have to start 2nd grade here most likely or miss a huge chunk of 2nd grade. All that transition, when you have two kids who aren't particularly excited about moving in the first place, would make it worse. This way, we have the freedom to basically do whatever we want (like travel) until we find a place to live in Kansas. 

It's a lot of change in not a lot of time but the relief in knowing I don't have to have it all figured out today is worth it. I've discovered that homeschool is just the way you do life and you make it fit your life, not make your life fit the local school schedule. With the military still dictating our every move, this is what makes the most sense right now. 

But anyway, I'm excited. I will have a lot more to say after we get going but I have a loose plan and I have a curriculum I'm excited about...We still have a lot of life to get through in May, so I'll probably start plotting out the fall sometime this summer. 


**Note** Wells has made tremendous progress in the last two years. He had a great two years of preschool, to start, and then he had wonderful teachers for kindergarten and 1st. He actually asked me why I'm taking him away from the school that has taught him so much (*crying emoji face goes here*). I gently explained that he wouldn't be at this school next year anyway since we're moving so it doesn't really matter. I would have no problem with him continuing onto 2nd and then me being his 3rd grade teacher but that's not the way army life works. (he also absolutely hates getting up for school at 6am so, win-win)

April 25, 2025

Friday recommendations (one movie, lots of music), 4/25

1. The Revenant. We watched this movie from 2015 on Tuesday night. I'd never seen it. I noticed it was in our Disney+ queue because Scott had been watching it at one point. Very much recommend. 

2. The reason we ended up watching The Revenant is because Scott had been trying to get me to watch The Expanse, as he'd basically made his way through all five seasons (on Amazon) either after I went to bed or early in the morning on the weekends. He swore the characters and storylines are ones "you get really attached to". 

No. 

Don't do it. The first episode was good once you wrapped your head around how disturbing and weird 300 years from now could be. But I promise you, you will not care. It is awful. Every evening, Scott was like "ready to watch?" and I was like "ugh". I could think of nothing less fun than watching The Expanse. I don't care what's going on and there's way too much going on. 

3. I fell down a Spotify rabbit hole last night. Do you remember The Spill Canvas? Gold. This video is what you would get if you were trying to recreate 2008 in a lab. Like, future generations could study it if they wanted to write reports about 2008. 

Just kidding. No one writes reports anymore. 

They have ChatGPT do it. 

4. I hate ChatGPT. I hate it when educators use it, especially. Like, no. Do the work. Don't be lazy. 

5. Speaking of a gold mine, do you remember Cartel? Never mind: THIS is 2008 in a bottle. 

And then the actual gold standard of the early 2000s: Taking Back Sunday.

Or, cinematic gold: Brand New

6. Honestly, kids today have it too easy: I had all of that ^^^ downloaded *quite* illegally back in college. And if you want to know where all of our Away Message Lyrics™ came from, they were from songs like those. 

7. Okay, well, that was nice, but I spent last night listening to that music while putting reading data into spreadsheets because I'm woefully behind, put together half of a Walmart grocery order, and fed the dogs multiple treats after the kids went to bed. 

I'm officially *officially* old. 




April 18, 2025

Longest 4-day week ever




 


Everything I buy in Costco-form, I end up forcing on them. 








The people with student loans they don't think they should have to pay back... also don't know the difference between male and female... and also have big opinions on tariffs. Change my mind.




(If you understand this, you are not Gen Z.)






Every once in awhile,  I come across an NFL meme and I crave fall. This is a hard time of year for those who dislike golf, baseball, Nascar, and basketball.



This is what midwest nice is really like, underneath the facade: