Lazy writer is lazy

[oloriel]

Not really; I currently churn out fanfic at an alarming rate. Seriously, I've produced about 70,000 words since August, so I feel no guilt whatsoever about ignoring all the NaNo mails. Even less guilt if I actually use November to finish and revise last year's NaNovel, which is Original and, I hope, will at some point be publishable.

But I've been writing very little about real life. So I'll throw a couple of bulletpoints into the ether. I may expand on them later on, or not, or in comments, or whatever -- but at least that way, I won't really forget it.

-- Desaster in the boiler room. The ventile on the exhauster of the heating system burst, which made the heating system drip water until the exhauster came off entirely, flooding the boiler room.
On the plus side, we're having a warm October so we're not desperately dependent on the heat. I mean, it could've happened in January. On the minus side, the same system is responsible for our hot water. Not so bad for us, because we have an old electric boiler in the downstairs bathroom so we can still take hot showers; worse for the tenants, who have no electric boiler and only get cold showers. (Lukewarm while the solar system on the barn roof is still in action.)
Really bad: It's not just the exhauster that needed repairing, because thanks to the flooding, the electronic control panel gave up its ghost. It has now been replaced, but now it's turned out that the compressor has also suffered damaged and also needs to be replaced -- well, it's not over yet. Hurrah.

-- Swimming teacher drama. Felix is currently taking a toddler swimming class, which doesn't actually mean swimming but fun game-like exercises in the swimming pool that will supposedly help kids to save themselves or at least keep themselves from drowning until help arrives, should they fall into a swimming pool. Sensible enough.
It's just that Felix doesn't (yet) care for most of the exercises. Unfortunately, the swimming teacher is convinced that a two-year old must follow unfamiliar instructions and if he protests, that's just a tantrum. After a particularly dramatic teacher-induced tantrum, she spouted some pseudo-pedagogic bullshitand made a lot of suggestions that I knew I could not follow (I'm not gonna ignore my kid when he's panicking in the swimming pool, even if I know that he cannot possibly drown
Fortunately, the week after that, she agreed that if Felix didn't want to do the exercises, he could just sit on the stairs and watch. Felix spent the entire hour walking up and down the stairs, squatting down and very slowly submerging his hands and wrists and elbow and shoulders, clearly experimenting with the sensation of different depths of water. Whenever the swimming teacher came closer, you could see his face twist... but she left us alone for the most part. I hope it stays that way, until Felix decides that he'd like to try the "fun" games too.

-- Varroa infestation. In summer, my bees were practically varroa-free; unfortunately, the darn mites have increased insanely in fall. I've already treated my colonies with formic acid, which made them shed dead mites like crazy, but there shouldn't have been so many in the first place. Damn. Now I can just hope that they still have enough intact winter bees to make it through, well, winter. :(

-- Computer argh. Jörg's computer has been slow and stupid for a long time, but then it suddenly stopped working altogether. Normally, Jörg has enough computer parts lying around for makeshift solutions, but now he hadn't, so we actually had to take the computer to a local repair shop. Well, it turned out that the graphics board had committed suicide, but once that was replaced, Jörg also found a friendly virus (which explains why the computer has behaving more stupid than usual in the past weeks, haha). It ended with the full format-and-start-over routine. Particularly helpful since there are a lot of bills that need to be paid and the tax declaration to prepare. (Well, the tax declaration has been waiting since at least March, and Jörg never got around to doing it, so I suppose this was the universe's way of telling him that he waited too long.)

-- Oh, and we're again/still broke. Have been ever since the big renovation in the tenants' part of the house last year, which I also didn't blog about, and holy crap, that was a bloggable piece of drama that really should be documented somewhere, but I can't be bothered now. Suffice it to say that it completely blew our resources, and to make matter nicer, the old tenants afterwards decided to move home, and it took us half a year to find new tenants, which means half a year of no rent, which isn't helping if you're already broke. Well, it isn't helping if the heating system breaks down, either. Or if the computer acts up. Or if I'm too stupid to parallel park and make a dent into our car's bumper (fortunately, the opponent was a brick wall, which didn't take damage). The bumper is plastic crap, so it broke in one single spot, which means the entire thing has to be replaced. -- Actually, now I remember why I haven't posted about most real life stuff, because it's just too frustrating to think, let alone write about.

-- Oh well. At least the bout of hormone-/whatever-induced out-of-breathness and exhaustion is mostly over. That is, I need a lot of sleep, but at least I feel awake after that. Seems to have been fixed by a combination of sunlight and more meat on the menu. Maybe it just was last week's cleaning spree (on Sunday, we had visitors who'd never seen the house before, and I didn't want them to get too horrible an impression). And a lack of iron, of course. ;)

Comments

[cowboy-r.livejournal.com]

I still haven't replaced the rear bumper on my car, because it's like a thousand clams, and I've never had it, and the bumper still works fine, it just looks like crap.

[oloriel.livejournal.com]

Yep, that's how I would handle it, too. I'd put some duct tape on the damage so no water gets in, and be done with it. But the car is Jörg's other baby, so to say, and he cares a great deal about its looks. We haven't been able to get it fixed yet either, though, because as you say, a thousand clams. >_>

[independence1776]

Sounds like a good idea writing-wise to me!

Oh, man. That's a lot of crappy stuff. *hugs*

[oloriel.livejournal.com]

And to make matters more fun, the pump of our dishwasher stopped working, too! I know, I know, a dishwasher isn't vital, but it certainly is a relief when you're such an unenthusiastic housewife as I am >_>

[lindahoyland.livejournal.com]

So sorry you are having all this stuff to deal with. The teacher sounds hopeless to me!

[oloriel.livejournal.com]

Seriously! "I have four children, I've got experience!" Oh yeah, like just having kids proves anything, except that you're fertile, I guess. Our tenants have four children and I can see every day that you don't automatically become a good mother or even just educator just because you have kids. I know it's easy to judge other people, but... well, sometimes, they just make it even easier.

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

I've cared for two different families of four kids each, that had very mediocre parents. Not terrible parents - not cruel, not drunk, not living in squalor or anything dramatic - well-meaning people who genuinely loved their too-many-children and did the best they could by them.

Unfortunately, that was not that well, and their children (all grown now) definitely suffered for it in a lot of ways. If there's anything I can say about 'mothers of four children' - being the child of one myself, and having worked for two of them - it is that they're hopelessly outnumbered.

[oloriel.livejournal.com]

And not particularly well-prepared for the challenge, at least when I look next door. For instance, she talks to all her kids in exactly the same way, from the one-year-old to the eight-year-old. Because clearly, they're all totally the same, especially as far as listening comprehension is concerned. Oh, and the eight-year-old is supposed to do most of the caretaking, because after all they're his siblings. But when he doesn't manage to do his homework on time or has trouble in maths, he gets a severe talking-to (in a tone that may suit his four-year-old brother but must be offensive to any self-respecting eight-year-old)...

Now, I don't know the kids of the swimming teacher. I do know her oldest daughter is called Chantal. (Chantal is an incredibly stigmatised name over here.)

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

Is it? How come? I've only ever met one person named Chantal - she's a bitch, but that's not the fault of her name. Is/was there someone infamous named Chantal in Germany?

Most people aren't particularly well-prepared for the challenge of parenthood, and that goes double for single parenthood - which can happen to anybody, though almost nobody wants to think about that. With one or two kids, though, people can manage - there's still enough time and space to give individual attention to each child, and still have some left over for oneself and for one's partner. When the children outnumber the adults, someone is guaranteed to be short-changed.

One of the fundamental problems with my generation (Boomers) in America is that our parents went in for having whole litters of children just because they could afford to financially, never asking if they could afford to emotionally. Our fathers all worked all the time; our mothers were mostly uprooted from their families by the 'Mobile Society' that hopscotched everyone around the country all the time, and the only guide they had was Dr. Spock's Baby And Child Care - which is a good book, but it's not enough.

If it was up to me, there'd be a student-run day care in every high school, and Child Development would be a required course, so that both the girls and the boys would learn how to deal with young children before they had any of their own. I think this would do a great deal to discourage both teen pregnancy and child abuse.

[oloriel.livejournal.com]

Not that I know of - it's just that the name Chantal was from the start only chosen by people of narrow horizon and little education who wanted an "exotic" name for their kid (other names in the same category are Kevin, Marcel, Mandy, Cindy or Jacqueline. Justin is a new addition for boys.). Accordingly, when you hear one of these stigmatised names, you immediately think of kids whose parents don't care for them particularly well, kids who spend a lot of time in front of the TV, and who don't get support for their school work because their parents think school is a waste of time. Even when that is untrue, with a name like that you'll always have a hard time proving that to society. Which is unfair, but that's the way it is.

I certainly know I wasn't as well-prepared as I thought! ;) I like to believe that I'm picking it up by and by, and that I do the best I can. OK, I guess most people do the best they can. >_>
But yes, being outnumbered is certainly a problem. In the olden days (TM ;)), when families were more tight-knit, you probably had uncles and aunts and above all, your own parents living nearby, so there were a lot of other people who helped to bring up a litter of kids. Some people believe that it's still perfectly possible to have five kids because after all, it worked for their grandparents too...

Hey, it could be worse; they could have had Die deutsche Mutter und ihr erstes Kind as a guide - a parenting guide from Third Reich days that was reprinted until the 70s. Basically designed to rear emotionally deprived and psychologically wrecked people desperate for authority. (OK, I'm hyperbolising. Only a little, though.)

Sounds reasonable! Sex ed should be another part of the requirements, though, so the students actually know how to prevent teen pregnancies (other than by Purity, blah blah, that works so well).

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

Ah, I see. The Chantal I knew would have fit that description; it was a good thing she never had children, because she'd have brought them up just that way. This country is too large and too culturally diverse for stigmas on names to really stick much, but it's still not good to have an odd name in a conventional environment.

My daughter and her friends are second-generation Pagan, and I note that they switch to 'normal' use-names as soon as they're old enough:: Liran (Lee), Kaddryn (Kay), Shaleina (Sheina or Shei), Rhiannon (Rhee), Fern (Alex, his middle name,) Shanti (Cat), Cianna (CeCe) and Eadaion (pronounced 'A-D-N') who's still too young to change it. She will though, because once she gets out in the grown-up world, she'll get tired of spelling and explaining it to people who then mispronounce it.

I think most people do try the best they can, and are sad when that isn't good enough - when they have to see their childrens' needs going unmet because they can't meet them, or don't even know what they need. But there are some who are so selfish and dysfunctional that they regard their children as 'narcissistic supply' that's supposed to meet their needs, and they're the kind that most commonly have too many children.

Here in America, we've got the child-rearing guides of James Dobson, a Fundamentalist whack-job who advocates whipping children with sticks to break their spirits because the Bible says to. As long as so much of this country remains under the influence of the Christian Reich Right, there'll continue to be opposition to the idea of teaching teenagers about contraception. Fortunately, there's the Internet, so the teenagers don't need to wait to be taught any more.

[ellynn-ithilwen.livejournal.com]

Good luck with the repairs and all other RL things. And with writing, of course. :)

[oloriel.livejournal.com]

Thank you. The hot water seems to be back now, at the least! Third time, and so on...

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

"will supposedly help kids to save themselves or at least keep themselves from drowning until help arrives, should they fall into a swimming pool. Sensible enough."

It sounds sensible enough, but in reality, that's not how it works. "There is no evidence that swimming lessons prevent drowning or near drowning in this age group." (http://www.redcross.ca/what-we-do/swimming-and-water-safety/swimming-boating-and-water-safety-tips/drown-proofing-toddlers). If the water classes are fun and enjoyable for Felix, that's great; if not, they're of less than no benefit to him. His instructor clearly needs a smack in the head.

With my own daughter, and all the other little ones I've taught to swim, I've gone with the lifejacket (http://www.redcross.ca/what-we-do/swimming-and-water-safety/swimming-boating-and-water-safety-tips/lifejackets-and-pfds) method, which is simply that they always wear their lifejackets in the water until they take real swimming lessons and are able to swim across the pool without one (about age 6, usually.) A proper lifejacket tilts the child backward, so they have to kick pretty hard to stay upright and get around - they learn all the 'moves' of swimming that way before they have to worry about staying afloat.

Another big advantage of the Lifejacket Method is that the child isn't led to believe that he can swim alone, when he really can't yet. A healthy fear of the water can save a child's life; wearing the lifejacket is a reminder that one will sink without it. The lifejacket also helps keep the child's core warm in the water, and makes it easier to keep track of one's own child in a busy pool or lake, where all the little wet heads look much the same. Best of all, the child can bob around independently, not needing to do the Monkey Cling on Mom or Dad: much more fun for all concerned.

[oloriel.livejournal.com]

I'm not the least bit surprised. Just watching these classes was enough to heal me of that illusion. For instance, some of the kids are really nimble and can climb out of the pool - provided the pool is shaped the way they know it from their classes, and provided they have a hand on the wall already... and then they practice jumping right in. A great thing to practice when you don't want your kid to fall into a body of water in the first place, I'm sure.

To be brutally honest, we're taking these classes because he got them for his birthday. He really enjoyed playing with water the few times we went to a swimming pool with him, and would let the icy Atlantic lap his feet for hours, so my mom-in-law thought he'd love a regular chance to go "swimming". He did - right until the stupid instructor pulled the RESPECT MAH AUTHORETEE card, which turned him from a toddler who loves water into a toddler who went "Let's not go swimming! No swimming!" Fortunately, the instructor seems to have realised that her approach was doing more harm than good, so she just left us alone last week (aside from some oh-so-smart observations). Now, we'll just attend these classes until the course is over (in December) so the M-I-L's money isn't wasted.

Ironically, part of the drama was sparked by the fact that Felix is terrified of the flotation devices they get to wear. So the Lifejacket method is no option ATM. But I wouldn't dare to leave Felix unattended near a body of water yet, anyway, and I expect in a year or two, things will be different again. And Felix will learn to swim or at least keep himself afloat until help comes when he reaches school age. *shrugs*

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

I should think a letter of complaint to the Director of the facility would get you a refund for the remaining classes: your mother-in-law did not pay good money to have her grandson terrorized and then judged by some snarky bitch who doesn't know how to deal with young children.

*wry grin* Learn the power of the Mom Letter, young Jedi. The world is full of adults in AUTHORITAH who like to bully children, and the only thing bullies respect is superior force. Sadly, the world is also full of people who'll let their children be bullied rather than risk not being seen as 'nice' themselves. Don't be 'nice'. The bitch stole your baby's delight in the water, and then had the gall to put you down for his reaction to her bad handling - I think her boss needs to know about this, eh?

This class sounds terrible, actually. Teaching non-swimming toddlers to jump fearlessly into the water is nothing but culpably stupid. The fact that some of them can learn the drill of getting out, under highly controlled and supervised conditions, absolutely doesn't mean they could apply any of that in an unfamiliar situation.

I surmise that the 'flotation devices' the're using are those inflatable water-wings that are responsible for so many children drowning (http://www.nhwatersafety.com/drowningprevention.htm). Those things are so absolutely not safe that IMHO it's a bad idea even to have them: either the child can swim, or the child wears the lifejacket.

Not A PFD, either; those can come off - the only thing I count as 'safe' (even with supervision) is a genuine life jacket, with a crotch strap so it can't ride up. They're quite expensive new, but kids grow out of them so fast that there's always lots of used ones around for affordable prices.

As a rule of thumb, I try not to introduce new things to toddlers in public, or at other times when they're likely to reject them. If you got Felix a lifejacket, it'd be easiest to get him used to it at home on dry land first - LOL, you could leave it out in plain sight and not even mention it, until his curiosity was piqued and he wanted to try it on. There's a big difference between having one's very own awesome-cool lifejacket brought from home, and being forced by some bossy stranger to put on slimy old public-pool floaters.

So true; even if Felix adored his swimming lessons, he's too young to really learn to swim yet, and even when he's a good swimmer, he'll still be too young to be around water unsupervised till he's of school age.

[oloriel.livejournal.com]

Ah, but there's the rub: The teacher is the director of the swimming school!

They're supposed to only jump into their mom's arms, but I just can't help thinking that if they practice this and nothing bad ever happens, won't they (or some of them, anyway) come to believe that Jumping Into Water is a safe thing to do, always?
As for the "drill" of climbing out, it's not actually something they have to learn; this particular pool has a handy bar, and then an overflow crevice, making climbing out easy even for very small people just as long as they already have a hand on the bar, wall or crevice. Most swimming pools that I've seen in my life are designed differently. As long as climbing is easy, I suspect anyone will do it (Felix climbs on anything and everything if we let him). I don't believe for a second that the exercise has any value in an actual emergency situation, though.

They're the toddler version of water wings, yes. To be fair, we're warned never to leave a child wearing them unattended (though I can see even at the pool that mothers will blithely turn their back on their paddling kid to talk to the swimming teacher for five minutes), and they explicitly say on the tin that they're no protection against drowning. But then, neither are US Coast Guard-approved lifejackets, as your link points out. ;)

Felix seems to mind them because they obstruct his view to the sides, because they exert pressure on his arms, and because of the swimming instructor. They're not slimy, old or public-pool, though: My mom-in-law bought them especially for him. (He wore them without drama for twenty minutes when the MIL and I were alone with him at the pool, and just wanted to take them off afterwards because they got in the way of his game of testing different water levels on the stairs.)

We have a lifejacket that my grandmother bought for one of my cousins, years ago; I'll have to find out whether it's still safe by today's standards, and whether it's got the right size for Felix already. However, wearing your own awesome-cool lifejacket is not an option, because all kids are to wear the same floation devices. TBH, though, I think all of these floation helps just give you an illusion of safety, and unless the kid really likes wearing them to frolic through the water without adult help, there's little point in any of them, floater or vest or whatever.

I dunno, I know that accidents happen, but I am honestly puzzled why so many people seem to think that leaving their children unattended near water is a good idea.

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

So, if this teacher is the Director, is it that you're going to have to deal with her at that pool as long as you live in that town? Very awkward; I can see why making an enemy of her would not be strategic.

Toddlers have little or no impulse control. If they're taught to enjoy jumping into the water, there is NO guarantee they won't do it when Mom is not waiting to catch them. Until children are of school-age - not Kindergarten, but actual school - they can't be relied on to remember ANY safety rule in a pinch, no matter how carefully they've been told.

A lot of parents simply WILL not grok this. "Oh, but MY child is different", they'll say - yeah, y'know what? I've heard that said by a lot of parents, whose children I have then watched do (or try to do) X dangerous thing that they supposedly knew better than to do. Yes, toddlers will run into the street, jump into the water, climb out the third-story window, grab at a strange dog, get into the chemicals under the sink and maybe taste some... the only safeguard is adult vigilance.

The reason Coast Guard-approved lifejackets aren't proof against drowning is because even if they fit correctly and are fastened correctly, children can unfasten them. One can't just put them on the kids and then sit and read one's book; one still has to be in the water with them and paying attention.

In a pool, the main advantage of the lifejacket is that the kid doesn't have to do the Monkey Cling on Mom, so Mom can actually swim instead of just standing there holding the kid, or precariously piggy-backing while being strangled and/or having her hair pulled. Water-wings would work for that too, but they're not as secure; the inflatable kind are prone to leaking air and suddenly slipping right off.

In a lake or salt water, especially if one's got several children to keep track of, it's essential for the non-swimmers to be in proper lifejackets, while the swimmers are on the 'buddy system'. The water here is wild; there's no lifeguards or roped-off swim areas; there are currents and sudden drop-offs... I wouldn't trust water-wings for a second.

I had to rescue my non-swimming boy once, when he got into an inflatable toy boat with another kindergartner he met, and they were promptly blown right down the lake. There's no trail nor road to that end of the lake, and the other boy's mother, who'd stupidly brought the boat, wasn't even in a swimsuit, nor was her boy in a lifejacket. What would she have done if I hadn't been there? I'm a very strong swimmer, but I had to pump it hard to catch them, and then it was a very long haul to tow them back. Search and Rescue probably could have gotten there in 45 minutes, which could have been 44 minutes too late for her son. She got the Extended Version of my pro-lifejacket commercial, you betcha.

[chili-das-schaf.livejournal.com]

I cried when I scratched the car door back this year because this simple stupid mistake would cost so much money :/

[oloriel.livejournal.com]

It's so absurd, really, how such tiny things can be so madly expensive. ;_;

[heartofoshun.livejournal.com]

I really sympathize with the shortage of money. Such stress. We never have quite enough. And there is always an emergency expenditure that pops up. I decided at the end of last winter to throw out my disgusting old coat so that when cold weather rolled around again I would be forced to buy a new one. Well, cold weather is here and the coat question is a crisis! Nothing ever changes.

Well, I hope the bees survive.

I will not even begin to rant about the swimming teacher! We went through that last fall with Alex's kindergarten teacher. Thank god, we were able to change his school and he likes school again. Oh, he was so sad and went overnight from loving school to hating it.