what’s new – Lori Cameron

teacher’s pets

November 11, 2023November 30, 2010

On the off chance anyone cares, I thought I’d give a quick update on what’s new around here.

Update #1: The kids are now all being home-schooled. Yes, by me. Yes, I am aware I’m not a teacher. Yes, I know they’ll be completely unsocialized and spend the rest of their days living in a cave. Thanks for your concern.

It all started with Foster. He just isn’t a classroom kind of kid. He’s very bright and astonishingly creative, but he’s also quiet and adept at flying under the teacher’s radar. While she was busy with the high-maintenance kids, Foster was busy tuning out everything he found boring (math, in particular) and losing himself in writing and drawing. He needs one-on-one attention to make sure he’s staying on task and a teacher, responsible for 25 kids, can’t provide that. I can. I can also tailor his day so he has more time to spend on his passions. And I can find ways to make the boring stuff slightly less boring.

After a couple weeks of home-school, Charlotte was so jealous of her brother’s new-found love of learning, she started asking to be home-schooled too. We discussed the pros and cons at length and made her think about it for a while and she eventually decided yes, she wanted to be home-schooled too. After another couple weeks, Anna came to the same conclusion.

The kids LOVE it and say they have no regrets and no interest in returning to regular school. They learn just as much, if not more, in a home-school day and do it in half the time of a public school day. While teaching them isn’t as hard as I expected, it definitely is time-consuming. I’m lucky that I can bump my Wingspan work and library shifts to afternoons and evenings to accommodate our school schedule.

I should also mention that I was prepared for huge disapproval from everyone who found out about this and was shocked to receive almost none. Our biggest supporters, in fact, were the principals of the kids’ former schools who think it’s a terrific idea. (Which either says my kids were so bad they’re glad to be rid of them or they recognize the public school system is not an ideal learning environment.) Aside from my mother, every single person to whom I’ve mentioned it has gushed about what a wonderful idea it is and how their __________ (daughter/niece/neighbour) home-schools her children too. I am amazed at how many home-schoolers are out there.

Update #2: Our house has still not sold. Honestly, people, what are you waiting for?

Update #3: My doctor continues to struggle with finding the right dose of thyroid medication for me and seeing as she goes on maternity leave shortly, this issue isn’t likely to be resolved anytime soon. I am still waiting to see my specialist regarding the nodules, which, according to my latest ultrasound, have not shrunk despite the meds. Bummer. In the meantime, I am experimenting with my medication (what happens if I start taking double? what happens if I stop taking it entirely?) because hey, I’m impersonating a teacher everyday now so why not a doctor? How hard can it be?

Update #4: My novel is pretty well finished and now it’s time to start searching for an agent. The thought of this makes me so nervous I could puke. Or maybe that’s just the double dose of desiccated thyroid I took this morning. If any of you have become literary agents without mentioning it, please do let me know and I’ll send you my manuscript for you to ignore and/or reject.

And what’s new with you?

settling in

November 11, 2023October 21, 2010

So I’m still trying to settle into the new site – hanging my pictures on the walls, figuring out where exactly the furniture should go, and so on – but the boxes of all my old stuff still haven’t arrived. And by boxes, I mean files on a hard drive. My archives, to use a term that gives my collection of pet photos, lame status updates and rants about the weather a fancy name.

Since he had a problem with my totally inefficient plan of cutting and pasting HTML, post by post, The Boy Wonder is valiantly trying to figure out how to transfer all my old posts to the new site in one shot. And one shot (to the back of the head) is probably what I’m going to get if I nag him about it one more time.

In the meantime, please feel free to leave comments about what works and doesn’t work for you, both literally and figuratively. For example, on my desktop computer, the site’s colour scheme is a range of vibrant greens with a nice, sand-coloured sidebar. A sandbar, if you will. But when I looked at it on my laptop this morning, I was disappointed to discover the greens are flat and washed out and the warm sand colour a pale grey. Bleh. It makes me wonder what others see. Is it my laptop screen that’s off or is my desktop monitor overly bright? Should I quit worrying about it and go do some dishes? No. Should I go to bed? Yes.

at last

November 11, 2023October 19, 2010

After bugging The Boy Wonder for a couple years to re-do my blog, I finally got sick of waiting and decided to do it myself. Et voila! (I was going to write ‘Et viola!’ but worried you might not realize that’s a joke. It’s one of my pet peeves, as you can imagine. One of my 23,000 pet peeves.)

Anyway, to make a long story even longer, I started fooling around with designing a new site during my fourteen seconds of free time every day and, two months later (with a little bit of last-minute help from The BW), here it is. It’s still a work in progress – as am I – so please be gentle.

maternal pride and some white-hot anger

November 11, 2023July 1, 2010

The day after my last post, I accompanied Foster’s class on a trip to CFB 14 Wing Greenwood, where Foster promptly stole a parachute and tried to hijack the Hercules plane we were being shown:

That kid. Honestly. I can’t take him anywhere.

Two days later was this girl’s birthday:

Anna is twelve now. Twelve. Crazy. Because her birthday was a “marking day,” Anna had no school and instead spent the day going out for lunch and Frenchy’s shopping with Jam, then opening presents and going to Swiss Chalet for a birthday dinner with the whole family.

Two days after her birthday, Anna had a swimming/sleepover party with four of her friends. Yes, you heard me correctly: a swimming AND sleepover party. Are we not the world’s greatest parents? Yes, I think so. The Boy Wonder took Foster, Charlotte, Anna and four of her friends to the Acadia pool to swim for a couple hours, then they came home, decorated make-your-own pizzas for supper, ate homemade cake and then “slept” in the basement. I think I spent about eight solid hours just doing dishes that day. I won’t post photos from her party because I’m not sure how the girls’ parents would feel about that, but I can sum up my shots by saying the girls were JUST A LITTLE EXCITED.

Two days after that (see the pattern?) was the closing ceremony at Anna’s school, during which she won an Outstanding Effort and Achievement award:

Please forgive the photo; I was standing about a mile and a half away. That’s Anna to the left of the kid in the orange sweater. Her teacher is poking her head in between the two kids. The hoodlums in the back are the other Grade 6 teachers.

Anyway, this is what is printed on the back of her certificate (wording and random capitalization not mine, obviously):

This Award is presented to two students in each Homeroom

Who have Demonstrated an Outstanding Dedication to Learning.

These students have Shown Tremendous Intellectual and Social Development.

Both Exemplify the Academic Spirit and Work Ethic of

EMS to which All should Aspire.

Good God. I weep for the future. Seriously, people, just because you write something in italics doesn’t mean you can capitalize at will. I keep studying this little passage, looking for a pattern and I can’t find one. We have a few capitalized verbs, but not all. We have lots of capitalized nouns, but not all. I hate to be bitchy about it (not really, but let’s pretend), but shouldn’t EDUCATORS pay a teensy bit more attention to these kinds of things? You know, “setting a good example” and all that?

But maybe I’m just punchy because my medical situation has gone from bad to worse: a thyroid ultrasound I did about a month ago has revealed I have two nodules on my thyroid, one on the left side and one on the right. The good news is that the nodules aren’t necessarily cancerous and, even if they are, thyroid cancer is one of the easiest to treat. The bad news is I have to have a biopsy to find out for sure. Big needle in throat = no fun. So the revelation of this whole nodule thing combined with my whacked out hormone levels certainly helps explain my crappy health. Oh, how I’d love to take my ultrasound report and cram it down the piehole of that arsehole endocrinologist who said my problems were all in my head. Close, goofball – they’re in my throat, but better luck next time.