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Various life things
-Years ago, when the kids were small, I was sad about not having enough free time. Now that they are 13 and 8, I feel like my life is a lot less physically stressful than when they were toddlers, and I have rather more constrained free time, by which I mean "if I am okay with being interrupted basically constantly." I actually have quite a bit less unconstrained time, whereas when E. went to bed earlier (now she goes to bed at almost the same time I do) I would often be guaranteed an hour at least in the evenings. Unfortunately I have a hard time doing anything that involves mental energy with the interruptions. This post is due to E actually being on an overnight field trip so that I actually did get some uninterrupted time tonight!
-Hope those who celebrate had a nice Thanksgiving! (YES, I have been trying to write this post since before Thanksgiving.) We saw D's sister's family (including their two girls, who are older and younger than E) for the first time since the onset of covid, and also D's dad had flown over for the holiday, and it went surprisingly well given that we hadn't seen them in so long, including playing hilarious Telepictionary (passing pads of paper around interspersing drawing with guessing the drawing until the pad has gone all the way around the table -- the best was "Nutcracker ballet" becoming "Addition of random stuff" -- this works so well for my kids because it's not competitive in the slightest). We were also able to see two of my cousins (and their kids, one of whom just started college!) and do a hike with K/B/D plus B's sister, which was also excellent. We had plans to see a third cousin and family that fell through when third cousin and family got covid :( (though they are better now)
-E is going to high school next year. There are three public high schools and some private high schools in the area. The intersection of "has a not-terrible math team" (E's condition) and "isn't more than ten miles away and isn't more than $X" (my conditions) is one public school, so that's the one she's going to! (There are also some other considerations, like "has support for neurodiversity" and "does the school expect the kid to be well-rounded or is it OK with a kid who hates writing," which also plump in favor of this particular school.) They've been having a couple of different events like tours, a showcase (with the other public high schools in the area), and so on, which I find fascinating but which she's mostly been bored by (makes sense; I was bored at her age too). I have enrolled her. She is not in that school's area so I also have to put her in for a transfer next month, but it seems pretty straightforward.
-I've organized Mathcounts practice at her school but there are two other parents who are interested in coaching so I actually haven't done a whole lot of coaching (though I've done all the organization and communication parts). I did do last week's practice, where we talked about geometric series but then they got stuck on simple algebric manipulations, which is not where I was expecting the kids to get stuck! E, who has never got stuck on algebraic manipulations,, thinks this is all hilarious.
-I have a new church calling! As of... August? It is being a co-teacher of Sunday School (scripture class) to the 11-13-year-olds, which so far is a GREAT calling although I've only actually taught three times (and promptly found out after the first time I had pitched my lesson a bit too high for them and I need to tone it down). The kids are great, they are all very sweet. (One of them is a bit of a class clown and likes to disrupt the class -- and E never says anything -- and another is special needs -- but that's where it helps to have two co-teachers.) The kids are sometimes engaged and sometimes really not, and I have to figure out how to increase the proportion of the former, but I will work on it. At least E (who is in the class until January) thought it was "fine," which is higher praise than she gave the last teacher ("why do I have to go to this") so there's that. I only have to teach once a month (on average) and there are almost zero people logistics involved, which is very restful after my previous calling which to be fair wasn't much logistics (I am in awe of the people whose callings involve planning group events, sometimes Very Large Group Events, which sounds super scary to me), but apparently the high percentage of the logistics that involved people, plus the uncertainty combined with responsibility and always having to have it in the back of my head every week, was really doing something to me. (I'm not particularly enamoured of doing the logistics for the Mathcounts team, but it's very predictable and after the very beginning there were very few logistics involving people.)
Hilariously, the current-no-longer-new music director does not seem to let this bother him. I am trying super hard not to be judgmental about how we often don't have special musical numbers these days unless someone else arranges them and does all the work, and... okay actually succeeding reasonably because this is so much less stressful for me. (I don't mind accompanying people, and I don't mind brainstorming numbers with other people who want to do it, I just don't want to have to be responsible.)
(Guess what I do not have to do this Christmas, even a little bit. PLANNING CHRISTMAS MUSIC. I cannot TELL you how happy I am about this! I am still helping with extra-long choir rehearsals for a Christmas program I'm not going to be able to attend, because that is what I do, but it turns out that for various reasons which I think boil down to various different people deciding to give me a break this year, the number of rehearsals I've had to attend this December is waaaaaay lower than usual.)
Aaaaand I wrote that (in early November) and then we were told that we were going to have new ward boundaries and then the next week it... happened. So now Awesome Music Family is in the other ward (nooooo), as is Amazing Organist, and a bunch of other people I adore (but you can see what I am worrying about logistically, lol), and two of the three girls that E was sort-of-kind-of-tentatively starting to hang out with during activities. Bah! (To be fair, we have also gained a few great people.) I have been thinking things like, if we are the body of Christ, it was like we had three arms (we really were a bit bigger than most wards) and while perhaps occasionally awkward the third arm/hand was skilled at so many things and it was awesome and we could multitask like crazy and do the most amazing things on the piano with three hands, and now that third arm is... gone.
-I promise I have been reading books during this time, and I will try really hard to write up at least a couple of them!
-Yuletide? HAHAHAHA. I mean, I do have a rough draft! My awesome beta was like, "That's a good start!" which is encouraging but um I hope I can do some more work on it very soon. I'm stuck on a bit that is taking a long time to work loose but hopefully it will happen... this week, so I can post the thing?
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Congrats on sorting out E's school, and on the class and no Christmas music planning!
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Thanks! I'm currently particularly pleased about the No Christmas Music Planning, which has decreased my usual December stress levels by... a lot. :) But I'm quite glad that the school sorting went as easily as it did. It really seems like the best choice on several different levels, though it's much much larger than her current school and we'll see how she adapts to that. (I don't worry about her being overwhelmed by all the people and it negatively affecting her academics, but I do worry about her getting lost socially, which is probably going to happen somewhat in any case no matter where she goes.)
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Haha, I keep thinking to myself that surely I'll have more free time when S is older, but clearly that's a foolish dream. She already goes to bed ridiculously late for someone her age--I don't know whether that's nature or nurture, but either way it's totally my fault.
I can't believe E is going to be in high school! Congrats on getting things settled with her school; it sounds like a good fit.
Hope Yuletide is going well! I have posted my assignment--I might keep poking at it a little more, but I'm very happy that it's basically done. I might even try writing a treat this year...
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I am hoping it is a good fit! Her current school is tiny, which has been great for her, and the high school is quite large (~2000 kids). So she won't be used to that. She is looking forward to having more resources than a tiny school can provide, but idk if she really understands what it'll be like to be at a huge school. I guess we'll find out...
I did finally end up figuring out the irritating bit and posted before the deadline! Though there are some things I do want to poke at a bit more (though probably not much). I am definitely writing a treat, in the sense that I was working on it while writing my assignment :) (yes, I procrastinated from writing my assignment by writing a treat *facepalm*)