Score Card for the Week
Projects completed:
Gleek’s multi-page mystery story featuring the ghost of the explorer Samuel De Champlain which needed to demonstrate the qualities of an explorer, have at least three clues, have at least three obstacles, be detailed, and typed. With a card stock cover.
Kiki’s art project for reflections which she originally envisioned as five small paintings matted together to create a single image. But then some of the details were too small for painting, it didn’t turn out how she pictured, and she decided she hated it. In the end she stayed up til 3 am the night before it was due, discarded three of the paintings to finish up the other two, and still was not happy with the result. At least it got turned in.
Gleek’s explorer board game based on the life of Samuel De Champlain. We re-purposed all the pieces from a CSI Miami board game that I found at the thrift store. There was much cutting, pasting, taping, and gluing to get everything in place.
Link’s balsa wood bridge. He did this pretty much by himself, both carefully and methodically. There was a moment of panic in the final assembly, but all turned out well.
Link’s book reports. He had to finish up two book reports before the end of the term. This meant finding and reading books then writing the reports. Fortunately both the books and the reports can be short. One down so far.
Putting up t-shirts in the store and then shipping them. All the packages ordered before 8 am yesterday are out the door.
Howard spent some time designing new merchandise. Most of these items are ready to go.
Gleek’s Tiffany Aching costume. This included the creation of a book entitled The Goode Childe’s Booke of Faerie Tales and the acquisition of a black witches hat.
Patch’s Nac Mac Feegle costume. The Halloween shopping fairies smiled upon me yesterday afternoon and let me find all the needed pieces in a single store. I have a little bit of minor sewing to do, but I still count finding all the pieces as a win.
Projects incomplete:
Mailing another 30 or so packages.
Link’s second book report.
Kiki’s page-long Japanese translation assignment, which was due today.
The repair of the furnace which decided not to heat the house today. Current house temp 61 degrees and dropping.
The repair of my windshield so that I can pass safety and emissions and re-register the car. Also so that I can get that chugging noise in the engine checked.
Howard wanted to draw several weeks of comics, hasn’t happened yet.
Helping both Kiki and Link figure out costumes.
All the less urgent things which got shoved so far out of my brain that I can’t remember what they are. However I will remember them quite clearly next week when they still aren’t done.
Patch’s reflections project which he had originally envisioned as a visual arts piece, but discovered that creating what he had in his mind was beyond his current capabilities. The new plan is for him to write a story on the theme instead. This is due next week. Time must be made for it over the weekend.
Gleek’s book report. This is due on Monday. Fortunately she has already read the book and the report itself is not particularly difficult to put together.
Emotional dramas endured this week:
Gleek’s fear that her story and game were not good enough.
Kiki’s emotional roller coaster over her art piece.
Link’s overwhelmed sadness at having end-of-term pressure.
Kiki needing to work through her emotions about a mean girl at school who has chosen her for a target.
Patch being much more volatile and quick to anger than usual. Still haven’t figured out if this is an age thing or if there is some underlying emotional issue that I need to dig out.
5 out of 6 Taylers having at least one semi-depressed day during which all efforts seemed futile and the tasks ahead insurmountable.
Many arguments over the cat because the whole family loves the cat, but we all have differing opinions about how to appropriately love, play, and interact with the cat. The cat also has opinions, but is fortunately blessed with a deep well of tolerance and patience.
Kiki realizing that she simply does not have the skills nor the time to make the Samus armor costume that she has been envisioning for over a year. She had to grieve and figure out how to put that dream down for awhile.
Many arguments along the lines of “argh! You’re not listening to me!” vs. “I was listening, I just needed to finish this one thing.” Also many arguments over “Yes you did!” “No I didn’t!” Players were completely interchangeable. Everyone took their turn being unreasonable.
Other thoughts:
I have a hard time feeling sympathetic with children who are feeling overwhelmed when I am also feeling the same thing, only my overwhelmed also encompasses all of their things as well. Yet observing this out loud does nothing to help anyone, and it is in some measure false. Their things are theirs and I should keep my mitts off.
Link really impressed me. The day after stomping off sad and depressed, he sat down and made his very own checklist for how he was going to accomplish all of his work. Then he calmly and quietly work his way down the list. He just did it. I need to remember to compliment him for that maturity.
I don’t like it when I go into a rant and realize that I sound exactly like the rant which annoyed me from a child only hours ago. It makes me have to face the fact that either I am as childish as they are, or their rant was valid and I should have been more respectful of their emotional experience. A little of both probably.
On Monday the shirts arrived. Today I will ship out the last of them. We’ve had the influx of income which lets us re-stock the store for Christmas and which will let us pay bills in the interim. I am very glad of this. I could wish that this event was not in the middle of all the other events, but it couldn’t have happened earlier and we didn’t want to delay. We need this flurry of merchandise right now, but it will be nice to get back to the slower-paced work on creating books.
And after writing all of that out, I discover that I have no interest in actually calculating a score for the week. Instead I’ll just let it all be what it is and hope that next week can be calmer.