Thursday ~ Last Day of August 2017

[ladyebug]

Good Morning.

Well, things in Houston for our folks have not gotten worse, but are certainly not better yet. Nephew Sean works for Motiva refinery in Port Arthur, and they shut down, which didn't help the price of gas.

Nancy's brother has been in the hospital for 6 days. She is worn to a frazzle. Hope they will release him today. Pneumonia much better, but Hemoglobin still wacky.

John's 82 y/o nephew is heading into dementia, so we are all falling apart with age.

Best friend in Utah called. Second knee surgery scheduled.

On the upside, Deb called. I got to talk to her very briefly. She is always rushing off somewhere.

Got John's bacon cooked this morning, put a stew on to stew and have meat and veggies cut up for kabobs, which we haven't had in YEARS.

Well, that's my story. Trash day and I've already got my eye on several things.

[Paula A]

Ugh. Woke up to heavy smoke outside and did not go out and swim. air quality is rated Unhealthy for today due to fires up north and a north wind bringing it down the valley. Chico isn't as bad yet, but the news people said the heavy smoke in the air started at Red Bluff and REdding is much worse. All windows are shut here, and usually, I can have them open in the morning to freshen and cool things but not today.
On the Up side, it is Thursday which means one less child and then tomorrow, one less and it is a nice way to ease into the 3 day weekend.
Nancy, the news coverage of the hurricane damage to lives and property is staggering. I have donated and with all the promotion on ABC today, probably will again. I am sure there will be an ongoing need for a long time. The stories of regular people out rescuing are just so heartwarming and inspiring. What I like to think we as Americans are really like...
Hopw you all have a clear day and Texas and the hurricane states get some relief!

[Paula A]

Did I really write Nancy when I was thinking Elaine???

[JoGee]

Good morning!

Elaine, my thoughts are with everyone in Texas every day. We've made a donation towards helping.
Yes, aging takes its toll, doesn't it.
The kabobs sound good!

Paula, hope those fires are over with soon. I'm glad we don't have any nearby again!

Nothing much going on here. Another pretty hot day ahead. I'll no doubt find some laundry that needs doing.
I have a cupboard that needs some sorting out, and probably get rid of some of that stuff.

Hoping you all have a very good day.

[maxie]

Morning Elaine and all to come...I feel so for the people caught in the disaster in Texas. We are already feeling it in out gas prices but paying more for gas is not near as bad as what people are suffering and will suffer for a long time to come. Yesterday I went to bed with a dandy headache, a real boomer, then was up at midnight so maybe all I needed was a nappy? Anyway, the bone scan is easy peasy...never had one before and did not know what to expect. What I did not expect was the condescending way I was treated while registering by a child not much older than my granddaughter. I do not like to be called honey because I have gray hair and I can assure you that I am no body's sweetie! So I got over that and decided ignorance just might be a disease after all. 'I see you had a hysterectomy...are you premenstrual?' wth? Then I come home to math. We are reading numbers in the millions, writing them out in sentence form then writing them out in some expanded form like 11,375,450 is 1x10,000,000+1x1,000,000+3x100,000etc. Well, I can not do it stretched out and once I figured out how to do it I can only keep the numbers in order long wise because I CAN SEE IT. So I write the number down the paper and on each line I do the times thing. Trying to get Andrew to do it that way when they are shown the other way is causing a lot of stress. Why in the world are they doing this? Drew was very patient while I worked on it and you would think as simple minded as I am in math it would be easy to show a kid once I figured it out but obviously he is as simple minded as I but in a totally different direction! All those +'s and x's! I felt like an idiot that I could not see what they were doing but it has to sink in my way and I felt like a very inadequate grandma to many generations away from this stupid math. Why do they change things and force this silly extra crap? It is not easy for the person trying to do the homework who is not a mathematical genius and where was Sierra? Well, boy comes first you know...another thing that aggravated. One section he had already finished at school and it was wrong but I did not have the energy to correct it. We both kept our cool and broke the stress with stupid little things like elbowing each other but I had such a headache that I missed my evening session of depressive news. Today I am getting a haircut so that always brightens my day even though I will be driving back home today. My hairdresser never calls me honey! And no one in this family would dare call me sweetie!! Does anyone even understand this mumble jumble I just wrote? I thought spelling was bad but math..........going to be a long ass year!

[bethina]

Morning checking in from work.....long day already...came to work ready to go home!! A lot of bad attitudes going around.

[maxie]

Bad attitudes must be a regional thing Beth, lot of them around here also...mine included!

[JoGee]

Maxie, I remember when "New Math" came out, my oldest kids were in elementary school. It made absolutely no sense to me. My kids took 4 hrs to do their math homework. I taught them the math I understood, and how to check it by doing it in reverse. It worked. Not what the teachers wanted, though. We had a meeting, and I told the teachers the homework shouldn't take 4 hours. If they were unable to teach the kids math, they shouldn't be burdened with the piles of homework, and expect someone else to teach it. The New Math was not of my generation, so I could only teach my kids what I was taught, and it worked a lot better and quicker....and the answers were correct!!! Until they learned to teach their math, that's what they could expect from my kids. They were speechless. I left, and within a couple of weeks they went back to old math. They did, really.
I'm not sure I understand the expanded version of writing out problems for given numbers as Drew is doing. It seems a bit redundant to basic math. The kids have already learned the columns of ones, tens, hundreds, etc. this expanded thing is just spitting it all out in reverse. ?????

[maxie]

Jo expanded version is: 103,727,495. 1x100,000,000+3x1,000,000,000+7x100,000+2x10,000+7 x1,000+4x100+9x10+5x1.

I could not even see it as written so had to bring it down the page. I do remember my boys doing the New Math and that it was quickly discontinued. Now we have core math. Yikes..can't wait to see what comes home tonight!



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