Dreaming Paris

It’s called Mudflats, written by an Alaskan who is up to date on what’s going on and offers his POV on all of this.

All I have to say is, McCain must not want to win. Can you imagine what could happen if something happened to him and SHE became our president?? Oh, my gosh. It doesn’t bear thinking.

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I can’t believe it. Tomorrow my site goes live! I’m just a little bit behind schedule, so it won’t work until a little later in the day, and a couple of things aren’t quite complete, but the important stuff is. Of course, no tutors will actually be tutoring tomorrow because no students have been able to sign up yet, and being Labor Day, the likelihood is slim that any one will for a few days yet. But still! It’s here!!!

The Tutor Connection

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but I came across a link to this blog called Cake Wrecks . Truly some wrecks there.

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to get into the groove of something new.

When I quit my job, I think I went into some kind of traumatic shock thing or something. The first week was great, of course, but then, I became depressed, and had no motivation for planning my new business. I began to get scared that it wasn’t going to work. That I’d made a horrible mistake and what was I going to do NOW?!? There was a bit of a glitch up w/my IT partner (not my husband) at the time that also had me freaked out (it’s all okay, now). He’s the one providing the tutoring interface. I met him at the NTA convention this past April, and he’s really a cool dude. I couldn’t do this if it weren’t for him, and he’s working his buns off doing things for me that he hadn’t originally intended, simply because I’m ignorant and thought I could do things I couldn’t do. Eli is more than cool, he’s awesome, and I highly recommend his talents and want to see him succeed. (His business site) You see, he’s just beginning in his business, too. So we’re helping each other, because if I succeed he succeeds, but without him, I can do nothing. Not so with him, actually. He could maybe find another client that isn’t so needy, someone who doesn’t require quite so much in the way of how she wants her site to work. OTH, he’s learning how to do things that he’ll need to know, and he’ll be able to offer those things to others, and I think that he’ll have an edge that way, because most of the online tutoring interface companies don’t supply the payment option integration that Eli’s doing for me because they mostly cater to colleges and universities, not entrepreneurs like me. Those companies that do what I’ll be doing have inhouse IT guys who create their stuff for them. So what Eli and I are doing is new, yet not.

ANYWAY, as I was saying, I was going through this traumatic depression thing. But I pushed through, kept plugging away doing the things that I needed to do, though I was a little behind. But finally, FINALLY, and it happened the week I got ready for a meeting with the tutors I’d lined up, I began to feel good about it all again, to be motivated, and to spend more time on the things I should be spending my time on. Of course, it’s typical me behavior to end up doing the bulk of my work as the due date approaches because I seem to thrive under pressure, even though I’m stressed and quite frantic that it will never all get done, and I drive my family crazy with it all and swear I’ll never let myself reach that point again-until the next time, of course.

But I’m on track with my business, and I’ve finally started my healthy lifestyle habits as well. I started an exercise regimen of yoga and strength exercises that my trainer had given me (sparkpeople.com is awesome, too, at helping me to develop routines), and I’ve been tracking my eating for an entire week now. At first I wasn’t trying to limit my intake, I simply wanted to see where I was and get back into the habit of writing it all down. That truly is the best habit for me to cultivate w/regard to staying in control of my eating. It’s too easy to forget things you’ve taken in and to mess up if you just estimate it each day. Yesterday and today, though, I finally stayed within my limits. Yay!

I’ve also finally slipped into a routine for my work day. It gets messed up a bit when I have to go out to meet prospective tutors, however, I’ve decided that I won’t do that any more. If they can’t come to my office, they’re just not for me. I can’t be driving all over the city to meet with people. Can’t afford it, and it wastes too much of my time.

This next week will be full of hitting the pavement, though, because I have to visit schools and colleges and put up flyers and drop off business cards so that I can drum up business. I have enough tutors to start. Yay! I thought I might only have 6 or 7. It looks like I’ll have at least 15! Woohoo! And I’ll be able to cover the basics-English, Math, Chemistry, Physics, Spanish, and Accounting. Those are the subjects most asked for. Humanities topics aren’t often requested. Anatomy/Physiology and the Biologies are requested on a limited basis, though my experience may change now that I’m going to be working with 4 year schools.

You all will have to check out my site The Tutor Connection when it goes live on Monday, September 1st.

Thank you so much to Roy for the name. It’s perfect for what I plan to do with it. I’m still working on the café idea. I plan to reach that point 5 years from now. I even have hopes that I can buy our old house, the one we lived in before this one. It occurred to me that it would be perfect. Of course, the young man doing business there now would be affronted to hear that, so thank goodness he doesn’t know of my blog! He knows me, though, because I drop in there every so often, and he knows I used to live there. I love what he’s done with the place, and it fits in perfectly with what I want for the future. I’d have to add on to it, but it’s on a very busy road in a central location for all the schools in the area, fairly close to the interstate for easy access. It’s two stories, so I could have the café downstairs, along with a lovely patio outside, and for those who don’t deal well with distractions, I could divide the upstairs into tutoring rooms. It has a kitchen and two bathrooms and is zoned residential and commercial. It’s on a corner lot with lots of space for parking. It really would be perfect.

When we lived there, I always wanted to buy it, and it kills me that we couldn’t when it was being offered for only $54,000! Of course, it needed a lot of work, and the present owner has taken care of all of that. When I first spoke to him, he said that if he ever sold the business, he wouldn’t take less than $500,000 for it. Ha! But that shows he has thought of selling, and when I visited him a few days ago and asked how business was going, he said it had its ups and downs, and his tone of voice and expression seemed to shout that presently he’s in a down time. I’m not surprised. The building really isn’t suited to what he’s doing. He sells shabby chic furniture for indoors and out, as well as other furnishing odds and ends. The place is cram packed with stuff, pieces on top of pieces, and it’s not easy to navigate without fear of knocking something over. Plus, it’s not really quality shabby chic. It’s shabby dressed up to look shabby chic in some instances, though he does have some nice pieces, and he’s not over-priced the way some places are. He has this one mahogany and wicker screen that I just love and wish I had a place for. Also, he had a rug that I wish I’d seen the day before because I’d already purchased some rugs to make do for my studio/office. It was within my price range and just the colors and style I’d been looking for! Oh, well, with throw rugs I’ll be able to take them up when I want to paint and not worry about getting stuff on the carpet. I don’t think I’d like having to roll up a rug.

Always a silver lining, which really is the point of this post. I’m over my trauma and back in the game, enjoying my life and what I’m doing! Now, if only I had some money, life would be perfect.

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I hate it when companies decide to discontinue a product that I love and have used for years. I shop Yves Rocher for lip color, nail polish, face moisturizer, and shower products. They had everything that I loved. They still, THANK GOODNESS!, have my favorite lilac shower gel and lotion (I’m all stocked up, so that’s not a hint), and my favorite face moisturizer, though if they were to discontinue that, I do have a couple of other back up brands, so that’s not such a big deal. But the nail polish and lip color…WHAT AM I GOING TO DO?!?!?!?! They no longer have my color magnolia. I use that same color for both lips and nails. I have all kinds of nail colors, and I’ve tried many different lip colors, but for my coloring, and for what I like, that was THE best color for me. THE BEST. I’ll sometimes change up nail color just for the fun of it, but for day to day wear, for a color that goes with my skin tone and simply matches everything that I wear, there just is no other color like magnolia ANYWHERE.

HOW COULD THEY DO THIS TO ME??????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

I’m going to try out their new nail color auburn rose because I know that sometimes they simply change the name of the color, but it’s essentially the same. However, their lipstick of the same name looks all wrong. The champagne rose looks more like mine. But how can you tell online, you know? If I order enough, I get a free gift of mini-lipsticks, so maybe those colors are in there, and I can try them out w/o having to buy a lipstick I may never use. Their free gifts and free shipping are the best part of the deal. I love shopping Yves Rocher. Or I did. Until they let me down like this.

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and I said I didn’t like the way he got things done, sleeping on the job, those raindrops keep falling on my head, they keep falling…

This weather is killing me. One morning it was so bad when I woke up that my husband said I looked awful, like I had a hangover or something. Well, that’s what it feels like. My head pounds, my eyes are bleary, and all I want to do is sleep forever except that it even hurts to sleep. Pleeeeeeeeease let the sun come back soon. All of my joints and muscles that usually cause me trouble in an annoying now and then way are screaming at me. My neck, shoulders, lower back, right hip, and even my right knee has been squeaking at me lately. And something went wrong with my right ankle, the one I twisted a few weeks ago. It seemed to be healing up, and then I turned it wrong and caused it to swell and hurt all over again. Even worse than when I first twisted it. For the last two days I’ve been limping around and when I sit on the couch, I ice it down and keep it elevated. I’m living on anti-inflammatory pain killers. Tonight I have ice on my ankle and a heating pad at neck and shoulders, and I don’t want to go to bed, not because I’m not tired, but because I dread what I’m going to feel like when I get up. Once I start moving around and waking up, I feel better, but it takes at least an hour, and in the meantime, I just want to die.

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Copying from Miz UV

1) Copy this list into your blog or journal, including these instructions.
2) Bold all the items you’ve eaten.
3) Cross out any items that you would never consider eating.
4) Optional extra: Post a comment at www.verygoodtaste.co.uk linking to your results.

My own twist-since I’m now vegetarian, just take it for granted that I wouldn’t eat any meat, but I’m not crossing it out unless it’s a meat that I wouldn’t have eaten even when I did eat it.

1. Venison (and squirrel)
2. Nettle tea
3. Huevos rancheros
4. Steak tartare
5. Crocodile
6. Black pudding
7. Cheese fondue
8. Carp (not absolutely certain)
9. Borscht
10. Baba ghanoush
11. Calamari
12. Pho
13. PB&J sandwich
14. Aloo gobi
15. Hot dog from a street cart
16. Epoisses
17. Black truffle
18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes (I like these better than grape wine, actually)
19. Steamed pork buns
20. Pistachio ice cream
21. Heirloom tomatoes
22. Fresh wild berries
23. Foie gras
24. Rice and beans
25. Brawn, or head cheese
26. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper
27. Dulce de leche
28. Oysters (but only fried. I’d never eat these raw. blech.)
29. Baklava
30. Bagna cauda
31. Wasabi peas
32. Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl
33. Salted lassi
34. Sauerkraut (with bratwurst, of course, and now I find fake bratwurst to cook w/it)
35. Root beer float
36. Cognac with a fat cigar
37. Clotted cream tea
38. Vodka jelly/Jell-O
39. Gumbo
40. Oxtail (but only in soup)
41. Curried goat
42. Whole insects
43. Phaal (I love curry, but in moderation)
44. Goat’s milk
45. Malt whisky from a bottle worth £60/$120 or more
46. Fugu
47. Chicken tikka masala
48. Eel
49. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut (I love Krispy Kreme doughnuts)
50. Sea urchin
51. Prickly pear
52. Umeboshi
53. Abalone
54. Paneer
55. McDonald’s Big Mac Meal
56. Spaetzle (Yummmy!)
57. Dirty gin martini
58. Beer above 8% ABV
59. Poutine (highly unlikely that I would ever want to eat it, but it’s not in the would NEVER eat category)
60. Carob chips
61. S’mores
62. Sweetbreads
63. Kaolin (I don’t eat rocks and dirt, thank you. There must be some mistake on this one.)
64. Currywurst
65. Durian
66. Frogs’ legs
67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake (I love deep fried pastry w/conf. sugar)
68. Haggis
69. Fried plantain (meh)
70. Chitterlings, or andouillette
71. Gazpacho
72. Caviar and blini
73. Louche absinthe
74. Gjetost, or brunost
75. Roadkill
76. Baijiu
77. Hostess Fruit Pie
78. Snail
79. Lapsang souchong
80. Bellini
81. Tom yum
82. Eggs Benedict
83. Pocky
84. Tasting menu at a three-Michelin-star restaurant (only because I have no idea what this means)
85. Kobe beef
86. Hare
87. Goulash
88. Flowers
89. Horse
90. Criollo chocolate
91. Spam
92. Soft shell crab (the only crab I can stomach is deviled crab)
93. Rose harissa
94. Catfish
95. Mole poblano
96. Bagel and lox
97. Lobster Thermidor (I feel about lobster the way I do about crab)
98. Polenta
99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee
100. Snake

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Hi, A.  I ordered and received a copy of your text Essentials for Successful Tutoring a few weeks ago.  I LOVE IT!  You and your tutors have done such an excellent job of developing a very readable and useful handbook.  My directors think very highly of it as well.

I would like to ask permission to reproduce, in part, your chapter about The Way We Communicate for inclusion in my tutor handbook.  I could pair it down to a bulleted list of main topics and sub-topics, but I love the narrative so much that, with your permission, I’d like to keep it.  Will you please let me know what you think at your earliest convenience?

Thank you so much for this wonderful contribution to tutor training literature.

It’s nice to receive messages like this.

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I was cleaning up things in the house when I realized the kittens had been quiet for awhile. I figured that they were asleep, but because my cleaning led to me deciding to move the litterbox, I went to find them so that I could show them where I was moving it to. They were nowhere to be found. I mean nowhere. I realized that I couldn’t remember seeing them since I’d taken the trash out, and I panicked. I raced all over the house looking EVERYWHERE that I could think of that a kitten could hide. I called and called. Usually, when I do that, one or the other one appears. In fact, I’ve never had both of them go missing like that. It’s usually only one of them who finds some new place or other to sleep where no one thinks to look. If one of them is around, it’s a sure thing the other one is, too, somewhere. But neither of them were responding to my calls.

I tried opening and closing the sliding glass doors. When Numa hears that, he comes running, trying to beat us to the close. No Numa. How could they have gotten out? I would have noticed. I was so careful to open and close the front door quickly so they couldn’t follow me out. But obviously they’d done it somehow.

At that point I was crying copiously. This isn’t happening, this isn’t happening. Breathe. Remember how many times your own children got lost and you always found them. (Only my boys, actually. They were good at running off when you weren’t looking. One time, my mom, brother, ex-sister-in-law, her husband, my husband, and I took our kids to the zoo and we lost my sons. None of us knew where they’d run off to, everyone saying, “But I thought they were up ahead with you…I thought they were still behind with you.” Talk about panic. The relief at seeing the two of them over on the next hill, big brother in the lead (9), watching over little brother (6), was so…well…relieving!) So I go out the front door and walk the block, calling the way I always do in the house. No kitties.

I come back in the house and resume crying, then call my husband, still in hysterics. “I’ve lost the kittens. I’ve looked everywhere. I searched the neighborhood. I can’t find them. They’re gone. I don’t how this happened.” “I’m coming home.”

I breathe again. Okay, they’re micro-chipped. Call the company. My husband comes home while I’m doing this. I finish the phone call and run into his arms, crying once again. “I can’t believe this is happening.” He does his own search inside and out. No kitties.

I do up the flyer you see above, but before printing it, I do one last opening of the sliding door and calling their names. I close the door, near tears again, and turn around, just in time to see Numa coming around the corner of the piano. Where one is, the other won’t be far behind. I scooped him up and held him tight, reassured that Maddy had to be around somewhere.

I’d searched under my bed already, but there is so much stuff stored under there. That had to be where he’d come from, though. I peered under, using the bedside lamp to light up the dark. No Maddy. Then Numa popped back under the bed. The only reason he’d do that once he was wide awake would be to chase his sister. So I looked once more, and suddenly, to the right of Numa, I see a paw reach up between some boxes, and then an ear.

I seriously do not want to go through this again. Of all the pets I’ve ever had, I’ve never been this hysterical over them disappearing. I’ve got it bad this time around.

Oh, and the no collar comment on the sign? Well, their collars are still too big, and I was worried that they’d get caught on something and choke to death while we were sleeping or something, so I took them off. See? I’m losing it. But I’m going to a specialty store this time and find collars that will fit. They must have bells. I must be able to hear them when they move.

Remember the water bottle post? It took ONE day. ONE DAY for them to learn what get down means with using the water. I only have to use it occasionally when they decide to be deliberately stubborn, but usually a simple get down will do it. Especially with Maddy. If it doesn’t, all I have to do is pick up the bottle and point it at them and they’re off like a shot. Why have I never used this with any of my other cats before? No more yelling or clapping or getting up to get them down. It’s great!

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I put collars on the kittens with their rabies tags. Maddy is going especially nuts. She’s taking a short rest,  panting away after her exertions to rid herself of the irritating neckband. What they don’t know is that as soon as they settle into them, they’ll be allowed outside. I had hoped to at least keep Maddy in, but it’s a no go. The way they run to the doors as soon as they hear them open, it won’t be long before they make it out on their own.

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