jeliza

Today was the first day of any kind of coherent distance learning for the kids, which was ... well, there is a reason we don't homeschool, we are not at all suited for it.  There are some technical details to be sorted - O appears to have inherited some of her mom's strange effect on computers -- but we've muddled along somewhat reasonably. Luckily (and I suspect intentionally) her English teacher shifted their big project to be based on a book they get to each pick from a list of classic literature, and half of them are old enough that they are available free from the Gutenberg Project (since her library account is half-broken for unclear reasons, so no ebooks from the library.)  She picked Wuthering Heights, which I've actually never read, and should maybe do so. Dan's class is reading To Kill A Mockingbird, but they'd already started so he has his book on hand.

(Maybe going back to putting time in proofreading for the Gutenberg Project would be a good use of my stuck-in-the-house time.)

The ceramics and drawing teachers are still trying to figure out what on earth to do, and details are still getting hammered out for everyone at the state level as well. No one involved with this is getting paid enough, I'm pretty sure.

I continue to not have any significant illness symptoms, though the same cannot be said for everyone in the house. We'll see where we are once April comes around.

I just realized that almost all my recent posts are locked down to just me because of speculative angsting I don't really want to pull people into. Oops. I will be taking many uncomfortable tests soon, which have a very high probability of saying "you're fine" but the waiting is just ... ugh. 

The kids have finished their first semesters of regular high school and it is .. challenging?  As ever, the problem is not their smarts, but all those lovely ADHD/sad brain shenanigans.  They've also both come down with a horrid virus which means missing a whole lot of school, which doesn't help.

I am really perturbed that when the career center people came in to give the presentation about "hey, almost time to register for next fall" they apparently spent most of it on COLLEGE COLLEGE COLLEGE which just makes the kids who are already definitely not on the straight-to-a-4-year path feel like crap, but given the current economy and population full of 20 somethings with five figures of student loan debt working retail and driving for uber on the side, i think it's irresponsible to be pushing it that hard for "everyone", especially without at least talking about the vocational/trade programs and community colleges and such. I mean, Shorecrest has an *in-house* culinary arts training program that is quite good, and that's not even the only thing they offer, but they don't seem to be pushing it.

(Jeez, do I ever journal about anything besides sickness, parenting and business?)

I am mostly drowning my sorrows in fanfic, which I now realize stems directly from seeing my twitter acquaintance lorata post a couple years ago about her Captain America story treating more realistically how two men who were from the 40s would handle waking up in a world where it was okay to be gay. I at that point didn't actually care about Captain America at all, and had barely ever read any fanfic, and now my habit has slowly snowballed to where I read far more of it than I do "regular" fiction, and most of it Marvel-based. (Also Leverage. Anything crossed with Leverage, because heists are pleasing.)  I also now have Opinions(TM) about how the movies massively screwed up Hawkeye, Black Widow, the Maximoffs and the Winter Soldier, and am probably going to shell out for Disney+ so I can watch whether they fix anything in the spinoff series-es. And I'm buying comics of characters I only learned about from fanfic.  The sheer quantity of Avenger fic which has the specific canon of MCU but substituting Matt Fraction-era comics Hawkeye is hilarious.

(The fic is Slow Work, and it's still one of the best long-form fics I've read.)

I haven't written any yet, though I'm starting to consider it in a "write the fic you want in the world" way, except the amount of research I would need to do is daunting for most of it. And I haven't written any fiction in 25 years. I might be able to manage the  Lilo and Stitch/Captain Marvel crossover where Stitch and Goose are buddies who wreak havoc at the beach without excessive prep, though.

Her first double-decker ice cream cone. With sprinkles and a cherry because why not? #summer #ritesofpassage #yummy via Instagram http://ift.tt/29tLcWB

All ready for the last orchestra concert of 6th grade!

0's experiment turned out so pretty (which is why we used cauliflower instead of celery)