The "what's On Your Mind?" Thread -2018

[debbila]

Ah, in that case you could put it anywhere, like the bottom of a closet. No need to bother with covering in plastic bag.

 

[Alicia88]

Our closet doesn't have a ford so we'll just have to keep it in the bedroom with the door closed.

 

[arouetta]

I still vote for the trash bag.

debbila If you don't have kids or your children are older you might not be aware of the latest trends in car seats. It is very, very difficult to find a car seat that doesn't have a removable carrier for an infant weighing less than 20 pounds, and the few you do find are likely to be very expensive. They are expensive because the maximum weight is considerably higher and the adjustments needed to fit the huge weight range means more movable parts and more complex construction.

 

[Katie M]

I certainly hope this is my last snow-related day off until winter comes again.

I'm going to go to the dentist Friday to get this tooth checked out.

 

[kashmir64]

I'm feeling a little better today. Actually got up and took the dogs out myself, instead of having to rely on someone else. But that's all the energy I had. I'm still on a liquid diet and there aren't many calories in soup or yogurt. I'm having my son pick me up some instant breakfast, the kind you put in milk, to see if I can't get some nutrition and calories that way. The pain comes in waves. Sometimes it's a '2' and sometimes a '7'. I wish this abscess would just heal already. I'm on 2500 mg/day of antibiotics and they make me nauseous.
It's time for me to shove 1000 mg down my throat, so I'm going to lie down a bit until the nausea passes.

 

[Alicia88]

I had to be on a liquid diet after my wisdom teeth were removed. My mouth is too small for me teeth - dentist said I must have gotten my mouth size from one side of the family and my tooth size from the other. That's why I have fangs. Anyway, they were growing sideways into my other my other teeth and they were taking up even more of my limited space. The dentist had to shatter them and pull them out in little pieces. I was on a liquid diet for a couple weeks and I was always so hungry. Liquid just doesn't cut it. I tried slimfast shakes cuz they're supposed to have an appetite suppressant. Didn't work, but they had enough nutrients, they helped with my energy level.So that was something.

 

[arouetta]

Ensure has a lot of calories, and the store brand has the same nutrition. If you like chocolate milk you'll like the chocolate fudge Ensure.

 

[Willowy]

You can get extra-calorie Ensure too. It has 350 calories instead of 250. . .an extra 100 calories can really make a difference when you're sick.

Hope you feel better soon!

 

[Alicia88]

I actually really like ensure. I had to drink 3 a day while I was pregnant to help me gain weight. I still only managed to gain 7lbs throughout my pregnancy. I have a very high metabolism. Gaining weight is hard for me.

 

[kashmir64]

Thank's for the Ensure idea. I had it once and it was disgusting. It was the strawberry though, and I don't like strawberries. The chocolate sounds like it would be worth a shot.

Alicia88 all four of my wisdom teeth were impacted also. Like you, my dentist had to cut the gums, shatter the teeth and pull them out in pieces. But the liquid diet only lasted a few days.

Just the thought of soup turns my stomach. This liquid diet is to last until I have absolutely no pain for over 48 hours, so about another 10 days. I'm not really hungry, but I need to have something. I'm so weak, and I hate being weak. The chocolate Ensure may be just what I need.

The funny thing is, this is caused by pressure on the colon. I haven't had pressure on my colon that I remember. (I have not been constipated at all) Except...Samai likes to knead me in that exact spot. She doesn't knead with claws, she just pushes with her paws really hard. I guess 17 lbs of pressure (constantly) was just too much for it to take. When I say "I love Samai to death", I didn't mean it literally.

 

[Mamanyt1953]

Happy Birthday to me.

From one kitteh to another:

Well, the monthly shopping trip is done again, and everything is put away and I am WIPED OUT! I'm going to finish here, kick back for an hour, cook TONS of spaghetti and sauce, then just veg out in front of the tv.

 

[Willowy]

Hmm. I always knew my uncle couldn't read well. The teacher told him he was too stupid for academics so he dropped out after 8th grade (that was all that was legally required in this state back then) and worked on the farm. I assumed he has an undiagnosed learning disability that nobody knew how to deal with.

But now I just talked to his brother, who told me that HE can't read well. I know learning disabilities can run in families. Was it that or a bad teacher? They went to a one-room rural schoolhouse so they would have had the same teacher. Now I want to find some other locals the same age who went to the same school and see how their
reading skills developed. . .

 

[artiemom]

Hmm. I always knew my uncle couldn't read well. The teacher told him he was too stupid for academics so he dropped out after 8th grade (that was all that was legally required in this state back then) and worked on the farm. I assumed he has an undiagnosed learning disability that nobody knew how to deal with.

But now I just talked to his brother, who told me that HE can't read well. I know learning disabilities can run in families. Was it that or a bad teacher? They went to a one-room rural schoolhouse so they would have had the same teacher. Now I want to find some other locals the same age who went to the same school and see how their
reading skills developed. . .

When I read this, I immediately thought of a learning disability.. and the one I thought of was Dyslexia. Many kids used to be singled out, or thought of as 'slow' or even having mental impairment because of it...

 

[arouetta]

Or ADHD.

According to my mother my father was functionally illiterate when he graduated from high school. I know that in elementary he had a first cousin in the same grade, super small school, and he was always compared to his cousin and told that he was stupid and lazy. Then chicken and egg thing, he believed he was stupid and didn't apply himself that much, the other teachers in higher grades knew he was stupid and lazy and didn't really work hard at getting him involved.

He was actually diagnosed with ADHD when he was 7, in 1962. My grandparents were told that there were no treatments for it. Family genetics, I and my daughter also have ADHD.

It is so horrible, that mental programming that was done when he was young. I remember in my teens he was taking EMT classes, and every night before a test he would say that he was going to fail the test, that he was stupid, and every test result was 95% or better. Didn't matter what the scores were on earlier tests, the next test was going to show how stupid he was.

 

[Willowy]

every night before a test he would say that he was going to fail the test, that he was stupid, and every test result was 95% or better. Didn't matter what the scores were on earlier tests, the next test was going to show how stupid he was.

My dad used to do that, well, probably still would if he ever took tests. And, as far as I know, his teachers never said he was stupid, just that he "didn't apply himself". I know he tested extremely high on an IQ test in elementary school and after that his teachers pushed him so hard about "living up to his potential" that he rebelled by not doing anything, ever. And my mom won't draw anything, ever, because her first-grade teacher told her that her drawing (which she was very proud of) was terrible. Did anyone get out of 1950s/1960s public education with a healthy sense of self-image? Did they actually tell the teachers to insult the kids as a motivational technique or were they just individually jerks?

 

[segelkatt]

I don't know about here in the US as I was not here as a child. I have heard some horror stories though of teachers calling students stupid and handing out some really awful punishments. In war torn post war Germany there was a real shortage of teachers so classes were huge, 40 kids to a class was nothing and there were no teachers' aides. Boys and girls were segregated which worked out ok as there were home ec classes (sewing, embroidery, knitting, darning etc) for girls and woodworking and other classes for boys. Singing and P.E. and art were for everybody. Boys were taught by male teachers and girls by female teachers. We wrote on slates as paper and pencils were very expensive. I had ended up in the middle of the second grade after attending 7 different schools due to us being refugees and being moved a lot. I was desperately behind in being able to write cursive although reading and math were ok. My new teacher took it upon herself to give me extra assignments in penmanship so that I would be able to write as well as the other children. Yes, it was extra work but by the end of second grade I could write as beautifully as the other children and better than some. Yes, we got a grade in penmanship. So I think it is the individual teacher who is to blame or to be praised. From what I hear now there is too much emphasis on mainstreaming every child who is not standard to the detriment of the average kid who does not get enough attention and that with tiny classes and teachers' aides and even parents helping. Still, there are kids coming out of high school who still can't read worth a hoot and don't know much of anything and these are average kids, not special needs kids. Something wrong here and I don't know what it is.

 

[Alicia88]

I think part of the blame belongs to parents who aren't involved enough in their children's lives. Teachers can't be expected to do everything.

 

[Willowy]

I think part of the blame belongs to parents who aren't involved enough in their children's lives. Teachers can't be expected to do everything.

That's probably part of it; I'm not sure their parents could read well or even at all. A lot of farmers and famers' wives back then couldn't read. But that must have been fairly common and I bet most of the kids at the school learned to read anyway. Too bad it's kind of a touchy subject, I'd like to ask them about it but they'd think I was calling them stupid too :/.

The next generation (my cousins and their cousins) all seem to be fine. Some ADHD and so on, but no extremely serious learning disabilities. So I think it must have had something to do with home environment and/or their schooling.

 

[Katie M]

Just had to order a new charger cable for my iPod. Selene has been chewing on this one.

 

[arouetta]

I think part of the blame belongs to parents who aren't involved enough in their children's lives. Teachers can't be expected to do everything.

I've always felt that's an excuse the teachers and schools use. Students should be learning the skills needed to navigate life, and no parent is enough of an expert at everything to be able to teach all that. Add in cultural, religious, medical and attitude reasons for a parent to say they refuse to teach a life skill and you are going to end up, well in the mess we are in right now.

For example, kids need to learn how to navigate the financial/economic landscape so they know what is needed to maintain a good credit report, balance their checking account, calculate a safe debt/income ratio and figure out if the interest on a loan is reasonable or unreasonable and how that interest will affect the monthly payment. Parents with bad credit who always overdraft the bank account don't have the skills to teach that. So that is a life skill that should be taught in a mandatory economics class.

Same thing with comparative religions (to stop the religious conflicts within the US we have now), sex education (women have more economic power when they can plan their pregnancies, STDs will drop, and end the problem of too many mouths to feed leading to poverty and child hunger), hygiene practices (spread of disease), math and literacy (used every day all day), resume writing/interview coaching/job coaching (how to land and keep a job), cooking (nutrition, better food choices, fight against obesity), computer skills (used for just about every activity now) and more that I can't think of right now. These are things that are needed to be good citizens in this country which is the reason that paid for public education was mandated in the first place, but these are things that not every parent can or will teach. The mandate wasn't because we needed to compare test scores with Europe, it was mandated because a well educated citizenry was deemed essential to safeguarding democracy.

Spoiler

Okay, yes, now is the time for one of you other folks to point out the error I made in that statement, since we are technically a republic, not a democracy.

Yes, we would have to fund schools better and overhaul the concept of what is important and what isn't when it comes to doling out funding. But just because things aren't perfect now doesn't mean that teachers shouldn't try. But instead of taking a day in math class to teach checkbook balancing (addition and subtraction) or a day in English to practice resume writing, it seems that teachers instead throw up their hands and say they can't even teach the basics and they shouldn't have to since parents should be teaching everything. They say they can't teach everything, but it seems they are just like everyone else - they want to earn a paycheck just sitting there doing nothing instead of working hard at teaching life skills.