Couch 207: The spiced gingerbread couch

I dont get Fox. So no chance of trump showing up on my screen. How did jose's pitch go?

I think watching paint dry is more interesting than baseball. I honestly do not even know who is in the world series this year nor what game number they are playing tonight.
Is this the last one?

It’s Game 5. And there will be a Game 6 for sure.

Nationals, Astros.

They're already closing and/or delaying places for tomorrow. I'm really hoping T doesn't cancel. I see him at 10am, so he'd have to let me know early if so. So far my kids' schools are neither canceled or delayed but we shall see.

Sacrilege! My husband is a huge Houston sports fan. He's been yelling and whistling all day. LOL! Our middle child's middle name is Houston -- I kid you not.

My mother was a huge baseball fan and my father is a fan but not as rabid as my mother. We were even dragged to see at least one baseball game when we went on vacation so she could visit different stadiums. At home, we would have to get to the stadium in time to watch them prep the field and couldn't leave until the very end.
I usually took a book along to read. Sometimes, when it would go into extra innings, I would wish I had thought to bring along 2 books.

We’ve arrived at Monday. I tried not to make it come but there was no stopping it.

Time to leave for work. You can do it Jersey. You can do it. It’s only 8.5 hours today.

Morning couchies! And, ugh. I am paying a price for going barefoot all weekend. My heel is hurting big time (I have a heel spur and am not supposed to be going barefoot at all, I was pushing it one evening a week with belly dancing class but two full days in a row the past 2 days was apparantly too much, even wearing the arch support band thingie.) Darn it. I still have the clunky boot-thing I had to wear for 2 weeks when this first started so I am wearing that today. Oh, well. Glad I kept the boot anyway! Hugs and head nods all around

You got this, Jersey!

Damn stupid tasty feelings.

Ugh, the property manager at my current place has done something weird with the housing numbers. I live in a house that was converted into a duplex. Beside the house there is an apartment with a garage underneath. These two buildings have separate addresses, let's say 28 and 34, that's similar. I live in 34. When I moved in, I asked what the mailing address for my unit is, and was told it is 28 street name #3. I gave this address to my relatives. When I set up the electric, I was told that my meter was attached to 34 street name #3. I was really confused, and contacted the property manager. She said oh, they have that address, too.

So then I notice there is actually a 34 on the front of the house. I had not noticed that before because my front door is at the rear of the house and the parking area does not cause you to walk past the front door. So then I think, well it doesn't seem like 28 is my address. I also find out the mother sent me something at 28 that I never received. Luckily, I had not set up mail forwarding yet since I still held the lease at my old apartment. Anyway, I set up mail forwarding to the 34 address and all is well. The mailboxes are across the street, not directly in front of the two houses.

Anyway, the neighbors living at 28 just moved out. I just noticed that the 28 house number has been removed from that building and has replaced the 34 on my house. I have no idea why and I was not informed of this change. I don't know if this will affect whether I receive my mail in the mailbox. I am really annoyed because I have packages en route addressed to 34 and there now appears to be no 34. I am annoyed because if I do still get paper mail at 34, it appears that I need to use a different address for packages - and sometimes you don't know if something will be deliverable in the mailbox or not. This is a problem.

More bad news. I did really terribly on a midterm in a class where I really needed to do well. It's particularly frustrating because I knew the material but I just couldn't work fast enough. I feel so discouraged. I don't know how I can make myself be faster. I don't understand how other people do it faster. I mean, other people also had trouble finishing but not nearly to the degree that I did. I've been having this problem all semester in all my classes, but this test was probably the worst and it was the longest since it was given over two days.

I hate feeling so helpless. The therapist is going to help me try to get an accommodation through the disability office for extra time on tests, but that doesn't fix this semester. So discouraged. And I hate that the professors in my major, including my advisor, who I'm going to have to take more classes from now have the impression that I'm a terrible student.

I got off a 43 min phone call with my mum ie it was her talking and with my occasional monosyllabic inputs. Honestly it was the exact same thing she was telling me about yesterday down to the story about the woman with 7 kids.

Talking but not speaking.

Can I get an opinion on something? Is it OK to say the following to a child? (I wasn't the one who said it.) Trigger warning, just in case:

Everyone has something they struggle with. At my first university I had extra time in my exams. It did help.

I'm not sure how they system is in the US but could the second semester help balance out the first?

I don't see a huge problem with it. I doubt such would be that big of a deal. It might not be the best thing ever, but whiny children are quite annoying and sometimes adults say things. I think it best a child not be treated like a hothouse flower. Seriously - children are being mislead by being overly protected, in my opinion, and it is leading them to be unable to handle a lot of adult life because they were so sheltered and handled with kid gloves that they are wrecks as adults (my students).

My parents would say those sorts of things - we really did not take it seriously and it is not part of the litany of complaints the sibling and I have about our upbringing.

Hmmm I'm not sure. I don't think it will harm them in the long run but to be honest I can never imagine the family next door saying that to their kids. (I've watched them a lot in their garden and they've been over when younger).

I think that's *not* ok and the younger the child, the even more not ok it is. My dad used to threaten to take me to a nearby children's home because i was so emotional and cried about everything. That was an awful thing to threaten me with as a kid. Every time we went anywhere in the car that was near that place I was afraid they were going to leave me there. Even with the in my childhood home, it was still my home, and I was so afraid they were actually going to take me there. I think it had long term effects on me.

That sounds painful. I hope you feel better soon.

Well, if it's not ok, I'm a horrible mom lol. I've said very similar to my kids. I can only handle so much whining! I would never leave them at school or anywhere else, and they know that, but it's an expression of frustration.

Well at this point it's looking like I will not pass this class, so I will have to retake it next semester. The only exams are the midterm and final which are each worth 15%. I got a ****ing 48% on the midterm. That's slightly lower than I was hoping for, but I definitely was not expecting a good or even decent grade. I would have been over the moon if I got a C, which is really saying something. I have something like a 36% average on the pop quizzes, which are 10% of the grade and I also never have time to finish.

Anyway, I really needed to do better than I did on this exam to bring my grade up in this class. Instead, it's dropped 7 or 8 percentage points.

There's another class I think I might also be ****ed in, but the professor hates grading so who knows when I'll know my grade on anything. She waited until the day before the withdraw date to put in all the grades for the semester in another class I was taking from her. I withdrew from that class, but I wish she hadn't waited literally months to do any grading because then I could have dropped and received some refund of tuition.

Anyway, part of my angst is that I feel bad that my parents are supporting me and I'm failing stuff which wastes their money. And at this rate, I'm not going to graduate when I said I would.

Kids' schools were delayed by 2 hours. I barely made it to Ts on time with the roads and traffic but I did. Hoping it goes well since it's Monday and all.

One time when C was a kid, our dad pretended he was getting in the car and never coming back. I don't remember what it was over. It was scary and it has obviously been imprinted in memory. Must have been young enough to believe he might mean it, so 4 or 5. That seems a bit different, though. Maybe?

ETA - I think it probably depends on the context and family dynamics if a parent saying they are going to leave a child somewhere is going to be damaging. If there is abuse or neglect, it very well might feel like a real threat to the child.

ETA2 - One time my grandma actually did leave my dad at the mall when he didn't stay in the car as he was told. He had declined to accompany her inside but then left the car. He wasn't a little kid or anything. But she drove off without him so he had to walk home (I think my grandpa took pity and picked him up somewhere along the way). It's a funny story we like to tell in my family.

One time when I was in junior high, my mother became unhinged and threatened to leave and she got in the car - but she was in pajamas and she and my father were supposed to go out that night. I did not react but my sibling did. She did not even pull out of the driveway. She came up and asked me why I didn't care. I remember asking where she would go wearing pajamas and having a thing with dad that night? To my grandmother's house? She conceded and that was the end of it.

Plus one of my grandmother's favorite story of when she was growing up was that her parents would threaten to turn in all 12 of her siblings in to the local orphanage. My dad and his siblings used to joke about it all the time - we really just would never have taken such a thing seriously.
I threaten the dogs with the local shelter or that I will sell them to passing ishmaelites on almost a daily basis- they don't seem to take any notice - even when I emphasize that neither of them is gifted with the ability to interpret dreams.