Yesssss, do it up Kat!

I was so impressed with what you've done so far with that backhouse, I can't wait to see your yardwork!

Adam and I accidentally spent a good 45 minutes peeling wallpaper at like 10pm last night haha. It doesn't look like we did much, though!

He went to home depot this morning and while he was there he found a wallpaper scraper and he brought that over, I was so excited haha. (Adam is Lilys boyfriend. I think he basically lives here, he goes to work, comes here, leaves at 9:30 each night to go home and sleep, and comes back. Yesterday he came over after work, laid down on Lilys floor and napped for four hours, then woke up to take the trash out and scrape wallpaper before he went home LOL)

lol I will have to send you some pictures of the baby pines on the ground in the graveyard area. Its SO CLEAN looking now except the one end. (I did that back in November I think or maybe early December). Need to finish out the end, but its been covered in poison ivy so I have to be more careful there, plus there is a lot of other things tangled up.

Thats very nice of Adam!! LOL It seems all of Lily's boyfriends have begun living at your house? I miss those days. Katies friends used to do that, live at my house :P

My problem is, I kind of hate cutting anything down. Like, I just want to let everything live :P Or at least try to!

But I also do like having room to walk so.. pffffft haha.

Yeah, I mean I agree with that for the most part, but junky looking vines and thorny things annoy me, so does poison ivy. And I hate pine trees.

Ok guys. Its that time - classes start tomorrow (my first zoom meeting is actually TONIGHT!) and regular zoom classes are on Tuesdays. I've been looking over the syllabus and assignments (some are locked sigh) and trying to print off information I need. Need to buy printer ink again sigh Can't win for losing there hahaha. Hopefully after this semester I won't need ink constantly! I just feel better having it all printed out and able to read at my fingertips rather than having to go hunt it down online. Lots of my classmates would rather just get online. Fine for them. I like printed materials :P

Anyway. Hopefully my books show up soon - although looking at the assignments I only needed one? So not sure why TWO were assigned to the classroom management course. Eh I'll figure it out. (That is the class with the locked assignments, even though the teacher said everything would be opened this weekend).

I'm more nervous for the student teaching, although I also know that will be fine. its just figuring it out and then doing it. (the hard part will be the lesson plans on the mercer template which is HORRIBLE) That one is also a little confusing, because ONE person is the "teacher" yet another person has been assigned as my "supervisor" - I like both, but am actually happy I have the 2nd lady as my supervisor. She doesn't seem as intense as the first lady hahah.

Ahhhh, you're so close Kat! Good luck on this semester.. and your student teaching!

Yeah, we have some poison ivy that really should get taken care of.. and we have a lot of big dead trees that should come down.. but they're not really in the way of the house, should they fall, so.. I'm not sure I currently care all too much?

We have a LOT of blackberry bushes growing wild in the back, but the animals love to eat them so I just keep them trimmed back some so that we can still walk by.

My wild blackberry bushes got choked out by thorny vines and poision ivy and other junk. So I've just been trimming ALL of that back as I can. The risk of trees falling on the house is why we got rid of most of the pines...that and the pine cones/needles. They're worse than leaves - almost. At least the lawnmower can blow leaves around, needles and pinecones, not so much! I have SO MUCH oak leaves now hahaha its a mess. Need to rake it all up and dump it up in the graveyard area I guess. I've just been doing that rather than clear that area out - because I don't want to risk messing up the graves. The newest one is over 100 years old now. (death date of 1920s) I trim vines and junk up in there, but otherwise I've just been letting it grow, because I can't afford to keep it tidy properly. I mean I would LOVE to clean it all out, level it out with dirt/topsoil, get grass to grow and fence/brick wall around the tombstone areas, but I can't afford to do that. So I established an outside perimeter and rake all the leaves and yard debris up inside that area and the rest is "yard" vs "graveyard"

Thanks! I'm excited and nervous and a bit scared. But mostly because I am always like that. I KNOW this semester will go well once I get going and get established in what I need to do. In reading over some stuff - guess what, oh joy oh joy. I get to now stay for faculty meetings, pto meetings and go to any events (daddy daughter dance/spring fling) (those last two are IF i can, and sigh I can lol) I knew I'd have to start doing that stuff when I became a teacher, but eh! Naaaah, I get to start doing it EARLY LOL I'm also supposed to attend parent teacher conferences if I can, but I can't because those are Dec and May (class is over end of April). But I"ve observed some of those already anyway so I feel ok about missing that. And go to teacher grade level meetings, but I don't know if I'll be able to do that either. They don't' really do that for PreK. The worst part is my lead teacher is a procrastinator (Oh, well, I didn't do small groups for this week, so um, we'll start those tomorrow and I'll figure something out) and I'm supposed to have my lesson plans written out and placed in an online portfolio for the university supervisor at least a week in advance. THAT will be fun haha. I CAN do that, but its getting her to agree to what I decide (which, since she knows I am doing student teaching SHOULDN'T hopefully be a problem) LOL and then writing out the lesson plans. OH such fun. I need to stop looking at stuff don't I? LOL

Oooh yeah, we don't really have trees in the yard that drop stuff.. besides leaves, of course! And those I mostly just let lay so the bugs have somewhere to nest in the Fall and winter.

I had a dream last night that the kids and I forgot to go back to school tomorrow and showed up at 11 and no one was happy to see us :( What a sad dream! LOL. Told my coworker and she was like 'Uh, you know damn well that if you're not here at 7:01 I'm calling you". Which is true, once sh ecalled me when I was having trouble clocking in outside the door LMAO. BUT STILL, so sad!

Yeah, I get you! The anxiety gets to you haha.

Well, the oak tree is the main one, because its kind of in the middle of the "yard" area. And they are big leaves and SO MANY of them lol I have sweet gum trees in the terrace that drop gum ball (seed pods) in the terrace but mostly that isn't an issue, but they dropped a LOT in my neighbors yard last year. They're technically in her part of the terrace and she was debating cutting them down lol And I do have a pecan tree, which drops branches ALL the time (smaller ones) and every other year or so it drops pecans. Some are good, most are bad :/

Hahah yeah, you know they want you at work!! :P I had a weird dream too but don't remember it now, just that it was weird. I have all my alarms turned back on, so I won't forget to get up and go!! :P

You know I've been having weird dreams, after I told you the one about the house and the giant hamster wheel ahahhahaa.

Ugh yeah, I've seen those gum seed balls on tiktok, they look awful!

ooooh, pecan tree, that's nice! I love oak leaves though, they're so gorgeous...

Mine aren't. My oak leaves turn brown and linger. I still have ugly brown leaves on the tree, even though I have a bazillion on the ground, and thats after I mowed them all up around the tree once this year! LOL

I love their shape!

I don't really care so much about fallen leaves, I'll mow them over once or twice in the fall, but I don't care if there's a million of htem on the ground really haha. I just don't want too many snakes..

Also. I can't believe how awful saggi quests on kumos are. yikes.

Yes. He SUCKS there lately. Until the past, umm maybe month? or less - I was doing great with him, but all the sudden his payout is crap and he asks for outrageously expensive items!! Rumi and Mauve occasionally do too! UGH! I do not (ok rarely!) spend more than 100k total on a kumos quest. Because the reward isn't worth it most of the time. Not if I want to have profit sP!! So this past two weeks, I've turned down anywhere from 2-9 quests a day there :o Usually just 3-4, but i did turn down NINE one day :o

I don't do much with the leaves in winter honestly. I'll mow them up or rake them up once or twice and then whatever falls after that stays put. I'm too lazy to go out in the cold to mess with it.

Yeah, today was the first day I did more than 2 of saggis quests.. and I only had to turn down one of Rumis, instead of 3-4! So that was nice.

Once I stopped doing them the cool new kumos way and just did them the way I do them here (open everything in a new window and buy them that way), it did go a lot faster.. but kumos itself is still sooooooo slowwwwww.

I have two tabs open to start - kumos on one, legacy on the other. I use the legacy site to account search my items, and then shop search if I don't have it - because 75% of the time, its cheaper on legacy NPC shops! And they'll be in stock when Kumos isn't. So I get the very cheapest prices. I use the ctrl key to open new tabs to search, so my two main pages (kumos quests and legacy account search) stay open all the time.

I get done with kumos in less than an hour, and legacy takes less than 2 hours - IF i stay focused lol I do not use the account search with legacy quests tho. Guess I should but the shop search shows me if I have it priced in my shop and I try to price everything every day, so only new items are ones not priced...so most of the time I can see in shop search if I have the item already.

I do my quests on my desktop 90% of the time tho, so thats easy. When I am doing it on my phone (legacy only!) I use the back swipe a lot LOL so I'll click to buy whatever, back swipe to the quest, click to buy the next item, back swipe to turn in the quest, etc.

[edit] since I got two new pets over thanksgiving, I've spent the past month or so trying to get books read to them. I've done the bath house shop, the carnival prize shop, blue building, recycle beast, the survival shops (louis and skitters), I've done up to 10 point books in the quest shops, I've got all the lounge books. I'm up to 2020 in the steamworks books I need to look at esthers shop and figure out from wherever else I can buy hahah I've also been buying supercheap (under 10k) books whenever I get one, so that they've both been read that book. What a lot of books there are!! :P

Yes yes. My PhD Pets. They're so smart. All of them hahah!

Shelirious has read 2331 books! - Shelirious has 966 books left to go! Grongo has read 735 books! - Grongo has 2562 books left to go!

Smartest and Least Smartest lol

Oh yeah, I never use account search.. find it in my shops is good enough for me!

I've been using a tab in legacy too, because SO MUCH more is in stock over here.. especially for the library quests.

Rattoony has read 2867 books! Inkblot has read 92 books!

My smartest and least smart ahahaha. Poor Inkblot. :P

Anea has read 1180 books!

This is my second.. I think your least is going to catch up to her, soon!

Wow you've read some expensive books to Rattoony hehehe!! Sheli is my first pet to read to, but some of the more expensive ones I read to Ruan first before deciding on Sheli instead. Grongo is the newest pet, made 1 day after Thanatos- Katie chose Thanatos and then Wes chose Grongo. Nathan chose Uzimaki five years ago :o I didn't realize it had been that long! Nyala was my most recent created pet that I did. Shane hasn't shown any interest in my site when I play so he hasn't made a pet hahah

I have found that minions is usually the most stocked for me, on kumos. I dunno about on legacy. I just try to buy wherever its cheapest lol

[edit] 750pm Well our "maybe one hour" zoom meeting turned into a bit over an hour and a half. Not surprising. These people WONT SHUT UP. Anyway. So evidently our group of 14 (15 now, there is a new student who needed this class to get certified but had passed everything else previously) is split up under 3 teachers? But somehow I am in one lady's class but the other lady is my supervisor and i'm supposed to be in her class - so they have to move me around. Hopefully that will be done tomorrow, so I only have the one teacher instead of two. LOL WEIRD!!! Whats weirder is that I seem to be the ONLY one out of the 14/15 of us to be with that lady??? Like, huh? I am ASSUMING that another group of students (EDUC - K-5 probably) is also under supervision and divided among the three teachers as well as our ELAD (Birth-Kinder) group.

That does all sound odd, Kat! Hopefully it gets sorted out quickly!

Ugh guys I am SO. EXHAUSTED today LOL. First, my brain kindly woke me up every 15 minutes or so all night long to make sure I wouldn't forget to go to work today.. :P Then working again after not doing so for two weeks is a lot haha. My feet hurt! :P

Well not sorted yet today ;) I got a text a bit ago saying field placement says they moved me, but I am not showing up.

I hear you on the waking up (I didn't wake a lot, but I did wake up early, like 430, so I would not forget to wake up I guess) LOL And it was a long day. A good day. For four-year-olds they did amazing coming back after a two week break!!

My foot hurts a bit extra today, since I was walking a lot today. I took 3 groups to the library to check out a book (because our weird library/specials schedule made it so they didn't get to check a book out as we went right before break) and then I had to go back to the library TWICE for my own purposes lol so 5 trips to the library! Plus a trip to the nurses office for an ice pack and a bumped head check. (both the library and the office are almost all the way across the school from my classroom/our playground)

I wish both of you ladies good luck on your tax adventures. Things are so muddled since DOGE tried to streamline everything that I'm not surprised that the free taxes for the low income crowd has been taken away. ;( You both are describing why I don't own a home. Oh, boy, the work you have to put into it and the money... Ugh. I'm so glad that right now all I have to do is pick up the phone to the rental company and the issue is fixed, sometimes same day.

Good luck Kat on your new classes. I know you'll ace them all.

Mieke, I'm very glad you didn't forget to go to work this morning. :D

thanks!!

I have no idea why it seems sooooo much later than it is right now. I feel like it should be like 8pm at least!! Well I guess I have an "idea". Its probably because I went back to work today after two weeks off hahahaha but still. I just feel like it should be later in the day!