Yea I fell out of doing that regularly - playing the carnival games. I did get quite a few neat old morostide items that way!

I kind of need to figure out some new goals on here. I mean - I still have my reading to my pets, feeding Kayano all the foods (he's already a gourmand - but hey, why stop when I still have lots of food I can feed to him lol) - and sometimes I try to get better scores for a new game achievement - but mostly I suck at that.

I started playing Reflection, just a little added for s/thing to do and even though I barely make anything, at least it's a little.

FFS!!! I used s/thing I hadn't see before (or paid attention to) and it transformed my main pet!!

UUUGGGGHHH!!
Thankfully I still have a couple reborn potions so I can put him back to what he was as a reborn Tigrean.

DAMMIT. lol I've actually done this w/ the BB quest and not knowing what it was, I had transformed him into a Bumbus many years ago. Pretty frustrating then, also.

I have 2 full trades of stickers up if anyone has time to sticky me? I went on a bit of a shopping spree. :D

I'll sticker ya, @/maria

Oh man, I just made this soba meal that is SO good! Gotta have good soba and not the regular wheat version. Good soba is buckwheat.
Anywho, the only surviving lettuce from my garden is mustard greens.... my fault for experimenting w/ the mixed salad greens - so I added some leaves in along w/ the yellow beans, cooked them and then added soba, and then fried some chicken in oil and mirin. The seasoning for the soba is a garlic chili sauce (Thai), sesame oil and toasted sesame seeds. YUM!

On another note, I finally finished my second book by means of covering it. Again, it's not cut to spec and def needs more work..... not to mention I used a rotary cutter for a lot of things and it's my first time using one ........ and I'll take pics of it when it's completely dry by tomorrow. Will take pics of both, one has a cloth cover which is the most recent and the one I needed more supplies for, and the other is my first. For some reason I keep relying on my memory for videos I haven't watched in WEEKS to get me through this shit. 😂

It's supposed to rain off and on for the next several days. The ground and plants REALLY need it so I'm looking forward to it. Will also help when I'm pulling those damn sticker weeds out, as well as all the other crap that's grown up in the new garden (which is always a pita) and the tomato garden. Just gotta keep on the damn wild strawberry that grows everywhere to take care of the flower garden, as it's gotten a lot better over time.
Watered all the indoor/outdoor plants today, since they're on the porch and won't get the soaking we need. Kinda enjoyed a quiet weekend to myself, although it can feel rather weird being all alone.

In trades if you still need it (It costs 175 Wizard Tokens) Trade Lot

Yes thank you!! I need 16 more haha but am not worried over getting them all at once.

Off to my first day back at work!!!

Thanks :)

Back from vacation! It was a good week.

Dropping Lily off at marching band later and picking up the dog and groceries.. but for now most stuff is put away and life is OK :P Except that the cats tore up the house, and apparently something broke INTO the house through the window where our AC goes, they knocked the cardboard out... and so Twitch was outside, too. But. It's fine. Sheets and blankets are in teh washer now, I washed almost everything before we left so.. it'll be fine.

The only issue is.. lily and I leave at 9:30 Wednesday morning to go camping :P

Sorry it took a while, but accepted the offer ^^

Oooh Silvy and Taarna are all sunflower-y!!! :D pretty!!

In and out eh Mieke? :P I hope ya'll had a great vacation, I saw some of the pictures and I would have had fun!! :P

Got home around 4pm to a child still asleep. He is going to be so screwed when school starts and he HAS to be up before 7am. I've tried talking to him and telling him to get himself back into a more school-ish schedule, but he hasnt yet. He only has til next Wednesday!!! :P Then I will be dragging his butt out of bed and into the car so we are not late, no matter what.

Got some stuff done at school this morning. The faculty meeting which is normally from 8-11 (ish) was over by 930 !! yaaaay awesome! IT was cute and fun. And short and to the point, however they will be doing another one next monday in which ALL faculty will be there (a bunch of Kindergarten paras and some new teachers were not at school today). So that may be the super long one :P Then I got lucky and my lead teacher had come in one day earlier to do something, and she spent some time arranging the room, so there was little to finish arranging, just some cleaning and then putting things back on shelves and stuff. Stuff is all over the tables still - but for the most part is put away out of the cubbies and closets so I can prep those for the kids soon. She is deciding what she wants to use for labels (backpack hook nametags, cubby nametags, lunch choice name tags, table name tags, etc). Then I can put them all out. The other para and I decorated the doors (almost but not quite finished), and some teenagers who were earning volunteer hours put up our bulletin board papers. We decided upon Cowboy/Cowgirl for the doors, and the bulliten board is a black background with a burlap edging, filled in with stars with the kids names for open house - later those stars will be replaced with kids school work stuff. Our "theme" this year is saddle up and lead - so thus why the cowboy-ish type stuff. We were supposed to dress up as a cowboy for a costume contest today, but I had nothing cowboy ish - none of us PreK dressed up hahaha :P Oh well. Three of the teachers went a little crazy (fun) and one of them won the "contest" - I dont think she actually got a PRIZE tho lol Other than recognition. She dressed up in cowboy clothes, but then brought in her kids riding horse, where you bounce on it and it "rides" you around (its got wheeled feet, and when you bounce, it moves forward) - it was too funny.

So all in all, a good first day back. Oh and I got permission to skip the PL training in the morning and go to the salary meeting.

Of course, once we saw the master schedule for the school year (who gets recess at what time, specials at what time, lunch at what time) - BOTH PreK lead teachers went a little ballistic. For some STUPID reason they put our specials time DURING NAPTIME!!! (nap is usually 1-2pm) 140-210!!! Whaaaaat? They got told they complain every year and to deal with it (probably not in those exact words, but then again, I wouldn't put it past our principal to say that!)!! Change naptime, change center time, figure it out. :o And ya'll know me, while I was there alone at lunch, I figured out a way to do the schedule, but not gonna bother giving it to them because they probably wouldn't use it anyway. :P It wasn't that hard, other than the fact I had to totally rearrange the usual schedule LOL :P Its just more of an annoyance. To me the worst part about the specials being at that time (oh and its only 3 days a week) - is the fact that half the time we will be all the way across the school building and have to get the kids back to the room, get their backpacks (those who ride buses) and get out the door so we aren't trampled at dismissal. No snack time for bus riders!!! (Eat at home I guess, or while in the hallway????) ugh. We will figure that out.

Soo... back when I was working nights, I read sooo much stuff. Studies, medical journals (good gawd the jargon), health stuff... One of the interesting things I read was about our sleep schedules. While sleeping during sun/night cycles is optimum, we actually didn't sleep on that kind of schedule until just over a century ago. Farming was the way to survive and during extreme summers, it never did any good for people to be out during the hottest part of the day so it was up at the buttcrack of dawn, down for a few or more hours during the middle of the day, and then back up to continue to working as long as there was light.
Anyway, the thing I noticed w/ teens is that they'll self regulate. Yeah, it'll be tough but hey, we all get through it. I knew of a few people (older than me) that would maintain their night schedule when we were off, but it's b/c they believed they wouldn't be able to handle the turnaround. I was never one of those and even when I first went to nights - granted I was younger than them - the adjustment period was pretty short.

Sorry... rambling I guess.

Where did you go, Mieke? Seems like the vaca was pretty good and that's always awesome to see.

This week is already stretching out and taking too long. Waiting until Friday to get paid for the month doesn't help, but I think it's more than that on my mind. I need to get out and do s/thing. Gas prices have gotten a little better so maybe I'll take a trip to the forest I planned to camp at and take a look around at all the areas I could possible go. It's a couple hours away so it would probably be an overnighter but hell, I'm prepped for those. :P Even my youngest found a place to go that was close to her to get away from it all. I'll post a pic that she sent me and since we both have the app, I was able to see that she was and it was to a rather large state park w/ an even larger lake. That makes me happy but since she was alone, it terrifies me. Too close to the human trafficking going on all over that no one ever talks about.

This week is always very long, and yet at the end, seems like it went by too fast for me - starting back to work, PL days, "Education Celebration" (that's tomorrow, WHOLE county gets together and has an inspirational speaker type thing), Open House to meet the kids, and then a few more days of PL or planning time. Seems to drag and then its ZOOM what, school has started? :P

So... I am quite happy to relate that I got what I consider a good increase on my salary. The meeting was basically a quick PowerPoint overview of the study they did to compare our counties salaries with 7 other nearby counties, and the proposals that the board of education was given, and which one they took and adjusted. In the end, I got about $4400 annual income increase, which ends up being about $368 before taxes per month, so I am guessing after taxes I'll get between $250-$275 increase in my bring home income! :) Not bad to me whatsoever. (Basically, I got a $2.90 per hour raise) Of course - I also got an email stating that I have to go to a training tomorrow at 130 eyeroll because I got permission to NOT go to the PL today I guess. Crock of **** but whatever. I'll do it. Dunno what it is going to be honestly because no one ELSE is going to be doing that training with me??? Not that I'm aware of anyway :P Well, Ms Price, the other PreK Para, probably because she went with me to the salary meeting LOL

I know most kids adjust but its a freaking pain in the butt to have to drag him out of bed what seems like every single morning. Which is what I did all last year pretty much (I won't say EVERY SINGLE DAY but it seemed like it). I know he doesn't like getting up early, but that is the time we have to get up/leave to be at school/work on time. I honestly would prefer it if we didn't go in so early for school, but then that would mean we were at school til later in the afternoon. so ugh on that too :P

Yikes on the bad area, but yay for some relaxation time? Hope you get to go too, I know from what you've said that you'll enjoy that!!! And its nice to get a little break doing something you like to do.

NICE on the salary increase!!! Congrats!!! Sorry for all the exclamations!!! 😂

I think early school is actually good if they don't make s/thing like math the first course of the day. Or English. Science used to perk people up but now it's fakebook. -_- Best times to retain information are early in the day and right before bed, the latter providing you get enough sleep to process the memories.
Oh, and I KNOW you know!!! (more !!!) You are SO right... they fucking suck to wake up. A good portion of that time wasn't me waking them up, though. The earlier years, they were nicer and so cute. I swear they were worse when I started working regular days, got up earlier than them and made sure they were up b/c I couldn't just take off to drive home and there when they lived a half an hour from school. Now THAT is some lazy little shits. (I always see kids walk b/c they don't want to take the big yellow monstrosity.)

Ugh... our company has those "inspirational meetings" and I think they're utter BS. This next one is going to be about all the new tech they've implemented, yet half of the software doesn't work correctly, as in allowing all the applications we need to run on it. The other half have been pushed back on their implementation.

Ok para/teacher.... I've been going round and round about this. My signature in my thread - the apostrophe on "hero" shows a possessive, but since the adverb (I think) of "wears" is in front of the noun, then should it be "heroes" instead? Gawd this one is bothering me b/c the ending of the noun is a vowel and it throws me off.... and well, it IRKS me to not know these things b/c I SUCKED in English! 😂

I am not positive but I think no apostrophe - because "hero's" means "hero is" with an apostrophe 😜 (her favorite hero's supergirl - for example) I am not an English major/teacher myself lol We work on recognizing what the letter looks like and sounds like in PreK and they tell us not to worry about the sounds lol.

School for him starts at 740. This year they changed the "Swag" time to the morning, so from 740-820 he really doesn't have anything to do unless he chooses to work on something (like if he falls behind in work or needs time to finish a project or relearn something). Then 1st block (period) starts at 820. I have to be at work at 715. So he gets dropped off at 710. He either hangs out in the cafeteria or the classroom depending on COVID rules (I don't know what they are anymore) Oh and sadly, due to the fact that he failed 2 classes this past year, and then since he sliced his finger open in the middle of summer and it was difficult for him to complete the summer school class - he will be taking FOUR academic classes this semester (no electives until Jan)

Yep, the possessive of the apostrophe is what I was thinking. Gonna change it again for the third time, lol.

HS started here by the same time, I believe. First shift has always started at 6, for me. Thankfully when I started, it was the last year for my youngest and she already had a ride set up and was more self sufficient than my oldest ever wanted to be. When they were young, before my night shift position, I had to drop them off at some kind of early program the schools had.

Making my grocery pick up list for Friday. Avoiding concrete really helps keep the pain in my foot down and I have a lot to get. Has anyone else noticed the lack of cashiers in big name stores? If they don't have enough self checkouts, then they're installing them. That's another thing I hate about a big shopping order - waiting in line for them to open up enough self checkouts to get the amount of people that will pile up, through. Haven't seen Target but the last time I was there, they had absolutely no self checkouts so I imagine they still have cashiers but, I generally don't have a reason to go there. It's rare that I can't find s/thing I need for cheaper, somewhere else (mostly Amazon).

I shop mostly at walmart, and yes, it irritates the crap out of me that if I go early, there is NO regular checkout lanes. I don't like to do self-check-out when I am buying a LOT of stuff. I'll go thru it if I only have a few items and the lines are long or something. I generally go to 2 different walmarts near me. Mine (in my town) has TWO sets of self-check-out areas. The other one (locust grove, where we do the fireworks sale - about 15min drive) has only 1 self-check-out area. BOTH run ONLY self-check-out until at least 9am, and then they only open 1 or 2 regular lanes until after 10 or 11am. But by then, it's a busy crowded store!!

Yea, the elementary school opens its doors at 715, the kids can go to breakfast or straight to the rooms (we used to have them in the gym until 740, watching a video or sitting quietly - but COVID....) The high school opens its doors at 7am, which is why I can drop him off & run over to my school (They are literally around the corner from each other lol)

Do you mean you do the online order, pick up in your car type of ordering? I can understand that, with foot pain. Or simply for convenience. I haven't ever really done it for a grocery shopping order, but I did do it a few times for some random orders, when it first started being a thing that you could pick up in your car. I just prefer to pick out my own stuff - especially meat/produce. I have seriously thought about doing it at walmart since MOST of the stuff I get there ISN'T meat or produce lol But I just go early and get done in less than an hour. But yea, with a foot issue that makes walking hard, I would probably seriously be doing pickup!

I used to think I'd get bargains at Target, until I really started looking at price comparison....now their store brand stuff is about on average the same as walmart store brand stuff, but (its been quite a while since I've been to Target) I think the name brand stuff was generally more expensive at Target than Walmart. And Target is a 35-45 min drive vs 10-15min drive for either Walmart. Idon't remember seeing self-checkout there but as I said, its been a while since I've been. And my grocery store (Ingles) where I go get my meat has a self-check out in the middle of their checkout area.

YESS the online ordering and store pickup is incredibly convenient. I actually see so many more of those people in the stores than I do associates wandering around, unless they're doing stock/inventory. When I want to search for s/thing in particular, I leave it off the list b/c they can tend to be lazy and not actually LOOK for a specific item and claim it's "out of stock" when you can literally go in the same day and find it yourself. And yeah, I wouldn't recommend it for MOST stuff that isn't grocery. They seem to know the grocery aisles better than say the home goods aisles.

It's only concrete I'm trying to avoid. When I spend a lot of time out in the yard, as bumpy and uncomfortable as it is to either walk around barefoot or in my water shoes (even w/ the insoles), I notice (and have always read about) the difference in how you walk and it definitely shows the next day as my foot isn't anywhere close to being as sore as it would be if I spent an hour walking around a big store. My water/beach/whatever shoes are incredibly soft but have awesome grips on the bottoms... say, for navigating mossy rock creeks.... but I have been playing around w/ 2 types of insoles, both have the arch support that helps. One is softer than the other and ironically, it makes my heel feel quite uncomfortable.

lol... I was doing self checkout when it was still very new. I LOVE the convenience, privacy and s/times quicker packing I can do. In cashier lines, I would always line up my items by the way I wanted them packed (I'm sure a lot do this) but now I can pick out of my cart as I wish. What I DON'T like is the fact that there are SO many items that are flagged as needing a person to make sure you're "of age" to buy. Now THAT is seriously irritating.

Hahah yea I try to do that (like, all cold stuff together, boxed food, soft stuff with eggs, etc) but the cashiers sometimes still just randomly throw stuff in bags and I'm like WTH???? They obviously don't teach how to bag anymore in training - they used to! Hubby started off as a bagger as a teenager, he remembers doing training. Nowdays cashiers are the baggers most places (only a few places have actual "baggers" to help bag groceries that I've seen anymore!) and they have no clue how to bag stuff. Normally I don't care TOO much - unless its squishable and you put it with something heavy, or you put non-food with FOOD!!! (and ok, I can live with say - ziplock bags being put with a box of crackers or something - but please!!! dont put my laundry soap or bleach with FOOD!!!) I think most people have done the grocery shopping for the pickups - so yea, the workers would know that area better than the others. I agree tho, how are we to know if something is really out of stock or if they just didn't look hard enough to find it? :P And I have seen a LOT of them at my walmart - the associate shoppers or whatever they're called.

I am a barefoot at home type of person - or flipflops around the yard for the most part. Sandals just about anywhere else. Tennis shoes or boot type (fuzzy soft boots, not cowboy boots or combat boots) in winter when I get really cold. I probably need some sort of insoles to help with my feet, but they aren't horrible or anything painful, just I sometimes have like what feels like a small rock/pain (bone spur perhaps?) in the pad of my foot right behind my toes, and I know some of my sandals make my feet hurt because they have NO type of support or bottom at all (just like, thin slab, ugh, I miss my good sandals that had a nice cushioned pad!!!)

My floor is concrete :P well, I mean, I have carpet and carpet pad and all, but its 15yrs old, and the foundation is a concrete slab. I don't think they put anything on top of the concrete slab except the carpet/pad :)

I didn't know they did training for bagging, but common sense would work for me. If I have a kid or another person w/ me that has unloaded things in an order I didn't want, the chances are 50/50 that they will bag accordingly. I will say that MOST of the time, they did well (if I had another person unloading my cart).

I seriously wish I could walk around barefoot. Carpet was nice for that, but terrible for cleaning. I can't stand things sticking to my feet, indoors. Outside, the only thing that bothers me is the amount of spiders I see casually crawling around in the grass and while I know there are LOTS more bugs, it's those that bug me most. Plenty of times I get in the right mind frame and don't think about it, which is when I get the least amount of secondary pain from being on my feet. I've even mowed barefoot before I got the water shoes b/c of the hill on one side of my house that I mow that I most definitely don't want to slide on and my own feet were the best traction. (That HAS changed now since I have a great trimmer to take care of the hilly parts, now.)

Rewatching Dexter, which doesn't seem like anyone's cup of tea in the chat but his sister described his g/f's baby as a "rolly polly shit machine" and I had to laugh out loud.

I guess like you said, it depends on if the bagger has common sense :P Another thing that irks me, although I understand WHY they do it, is they double bag crap. I get that the bags a flimsy anyway, but i hate having TWO bags on stuff. I also hate having very little in the bag tho...sooo lose/lose situation there :P

I've heard of Dexter, but don't think I've watched it, if hubby ever did, he probably watched it when I was at work.

Ugh yea its annoying when stuff sticks to your feet. Seems like that would happen MORE outside than inside! :P Grass, dirt, bugs, whatnot. I don't ever walk barefoot off the porch because sometimes we get stickers in the grass (little caltrop type weedy things OUCH!!!!)