working out for Disney

[HouCuseChickie]

I like their green graduation caps and gowns. (Think I've only seen black or white ones before, but I haven't been to any graduations in quite a few years though.)

Most of the districts here are big on having them graduate in school colors. Some go as far as having different colors by gender. My NJ high school had girls in white and boys in blue. The other high school in our town had girls in light blue and boys in navy. What's funny...I guess the thing is for girls to wear white dresses under their gowns. So, we found K a nice but modestly priced dress online. That graduation gown stayed zipped the entire time. I didn't see that white dress once!

 

[Songbird76]

Hello-

I did a workout today with a Bosu and a kettlebell. It was very sweaty, but I felt really good afterwards.

I decided to walk to my hair appointment today. Big mistake. Even though it was in the low 70s when I went out this AM, it was so muggy. I was so sweaty for my appointment and even my hair was sweaty at the roots. I was very embarrassed. lol

My husband is going to Europe for work on Saturday, so I am looking for recipes that are easy to cook, with many servings, because I want to cook as little as possible next week.

E has been thinking about recipes like this for while she's at University. She wants to have a freezer full of soups, mini pot pies (she makes them in a muffin pan and then freezes them), and of course there are the college student staples of ramen noodles, and her first year history teacher told their class to get a toaster. That's the first appliance they need, because bread is cheap, but it will go stale, and then you can toast it and it's like brand new. We just made some buttermilk biscuits today and she said she had no idea they were so easy and that was going to be another of her go-to foods in college.

 

[Songbird76]

Sorry...I haven't been logged in for a while. Things have been quite crazy. The weather here has certainly been awful.

While we managed to avoid flood damage from the early May storms, we had some pretty serious damage from the storm on May 16th. A massive limb fell from our neighbor's oaks (the limb was the size of a full-grown tree). It totaled David's truck, caused a little over $7000 of damage to my vehicle, and damaged the garage (estimate $2000). We had several nasty storms after it that may have caused some additional damage on the house. The guy who we plan to hire for the garage thought it might be our A/C, but there's a water stain on the ceiling right near where there's some fascia board damage and it only seems to get worse with rain.

I'll try to share some pics in a little bit. I'll be honest...it's just been a lot for me. I think I've got some PTSD from it. Just before the limb came down, we were watching the weather on the news and someone asked, "Is that the wind?" I said, "I think so," then I heard sort of sizzling sound, a loud crack, and then a huge bang. I was facing the area where it came down, so I saw it. It was in the gust front on the leading edge of the storm, so it happened before it even started raining. I got the insurance claim in on our vehicles before the power went out. We were only without for about 20 hours, but there were people just a few blocks away that were out for nearly 5 days. Kendall and I were standing in that part of the driveway something like 5-7 minutes before it happened. We had just gotten home from CVS and were trying to get in an errand before the weather moved in. Considering it sent thick branches through the truck and garage like missiles...I consider us really lucky.

We ended up pulling my vehicle out from under the tree since it didn't get it as bad. It had hood, roof and windshield damage, but it looked more like it had been in a hailstorm and the windshield cracks were all over the passenger side. So, that was our main transportation for a bit. We didn't see how bad David's truck was until the tree company came by the next morning and took away the big limb. I guess at least they saved the fence and didn't cause any extra damage to the garage. We had David's truck towed to a collision center and found out by Wednesday the following week (took a while to get an insurance adjustor) that it was totaled. It took about another week for everything to be worked out with his claim check. We got him into a new truck last Friday. To add insult to injury...the check engine light came on, but that should be handled by next week. We got him a new toll road tag on Tuesday this week and now have my vehicle in to the collision center. It's supposed to take several weeks. There's a chance we may be able to get started on the garage/roof issues next week as well. At least things are tarped for now.

On a positive note...Kendall graduated a couple of weeks ago

I'm so sorry about all the damage. But if the tree is from the neighbors' yard, shouldn't it be turned into THEIR insurance? I'm glad it wasn't worse than it was, but how scary that must have been for you!!


Congratulations to Kendall!! E should be notified on Wednesday that she passed, and then her "graduation" is on July 8th. A doesn't get his exam results until July 10th, with his graduation the next day. We are reasonably certain they both passed, but we don't know if either or both of them will graduate with c.um laude honors. Since A had a panic attack in the first exam, he doesn't think he'll make it. He's pretty sure he failed that exam, but it only counts for 15% of his Dutch grade, so he can still pass even if he failed that exam. And E had some abnormally difficult exams that even the experts were surprised by and said they were extremely difficult. So it could really go either way for both of them, but they should both at least pass, which is all that's important really.

What's Kendell doing this summer? Did she get a job to help pay for college, or is she just going to soak in her last couple months of freedom before leaving for school?

 

[HouCuseChickie]

I'm so sorry about all the damage. But if the tree is from the neighbors' yard, shouldn't it be turned into THEIR insurance? I'm glad it wasn't worse than it was, but how scary that must have been for you!!


Congratulations to Kendall!! E should be notified on Wednesday that she passed, and then her "graduation" is on July 8th. A doesn't get his exam results until July 10th, with his graduation the next day. We are reasonably certain they both passed, but we don't know if either or both of them will graduate with c.um laude honors. Since A had a panic attack in the first exam, he doesn't think he'll make it. He's pretty sure he failed that exam, but it only counts for 15% of his Dutch grade, so he can still pass even if he failed that exam. And E had some abnormally difficult exams that even the experts were surprised by and said they were extremely difficult. So it could really go either way for both of them, but they should both at least pass, which is all that's important really.

What's Kendell doing this summer? Did she get a job to help pay for college, or is she just going to soak in her last couple months of freedom before leaving for school?

Unfortunately, situations like this normally end up with your insurance. In order to tie it to the neighbor, the tree would have had to have been previously dubbed as a problem tree and we'd have to have a documented history of the neighbor refusing to do anything about it. On the outside, it looks like a perfectly healthy tree.

Thank you! Hopefully E and A did well on their exams. I'm sure it's stressful, especially if people are saying it was abnormally difficult. Do they give A any special allowances? Can the exam be contested if it was unfairly difficult? It's funny how different it is here. As a senior, Kendall's grades were high enough and attendance was good enough that she was able to exempt all of her finals. Underclassmen aren't able to exempt everything, but I think Sam only had to take two finals for her seven classes and she picked the ones that she thought would boost her GPA and class rank. I'm still amazed how well she did considering how much class time they miss with school ball.

K got a job, but they are taking forever. She was hired about 3 weeks ago, did all of the preliminary paperwork, then went through all of the background checks, and now she's waiting on orientation scheduling. She was hoping to use her earnings to buy all of her dorm room needs, but at this rate, who knows when she'll start. She's coming to California with us in July and move in date in her dorm could be as early as 8/5, so this job is going to be short lived. She also has decided that she doesn't want a national parks mini trip for her grad trip (we were going to head to Sequoia and Yosemite), so we're going to spend a couple of day at Disneyland after Sam's done playing. That's what K wanted.

 

[Sans Souci]

I'll try to share some pics in a little bit. I'll be honest...it's just been a lot for me. I think I've got some PTSD from it.

Wow, glad you are all ok. What a mess. It's funny (not funny hah-ha) that you say this traumatized you. I had been thinking with all of the cataclysmic weather events, there is probably an unmet need for therapists trained to treat people traumatized by severe weather. You can't really avoid severe weather, so avoidance is not an option (but it shouldn't be). But just to talk to someone who can help you build a "tool kit" to help manage your fears and anxiety about storms, hurricanes, tornadoes, etc.

 

[Sans Souci]

On a positive note, this is the graduation montage video I put together. We were not allowed camera gear (or flowers, or stuffed animals, etc.), so this was the best thing I could do.

Aw, this is bittersweet.I cried at my HS graduation. I didn't get to see my son graduate HS. He graduated in 2020, so no graduations that year.

 

[Sans Souci]

E has been thinking about recipes like this for while she's at University. She wants to have a freezer full of soups, mini pot pies (she makes them in a muffin pan and then freezes them), and of course there are the college student staples of ramen noodles, and her first year history teacher told their class to get a toaster. That's the first appliance they need, because bread is cheap, but it will go stale, and then you can toast it and it's like brand new. We just made some buttermilk biscuits today and she said she had no idea they were so easy and that was going to be another of her go-to foods in college.

Would she be able to have a toaster oven? She could make toast, but she could also make cheese toasties and other easy meals. An instant pot is good, too, because it has a slow cooker function on it. E could put a bunch of ingredients in it, go off to class, the library, etc and come back to a ready to eat meal. Or she could make a stew or chili in the pressure cooker function when she gets home and have a meal in 30 minutes. I don't use mine so frequently in the summer, because I don't feel like eating stews or soup in the warmer weather.

 

[Songbird76]

Unfortunately, situations like this normally end up with your insurance. In order to tie it to the neighbor, the tree would have had to have been previously dubbed as a problem tree and we'd have to have a documented history of the neighbor refusing to do anything about it. On the outside, it looks like a perfectly healthy tree.

Thank you! Hopefully E and A did well on their exams. I'm sure it's stressful, especially if people are saying it was abnormally difficult. Do they give A any special allowances? Can the exam be contested if it was unfairly difficult? It's funny how different it is here. As a senior, Kendall's grades were high enough and attendance was good enough that she was able to exempt all of her finals. Underclassmen aren't able to exempt everything, but I think Sam only had to take two finals for her seven classes and she picked the ones that she thought would boost her GPA and class rank. I'm still amazed how well she did considering how much class time they miss with school ball.

K got a job, but they are taking forever. She was hired about 3 weeks ago, did all of the preliminary paperwork, then went through all of the background checks, and now she's waiting on orientation scheduling. She was hoping to use her earnings to buy all of her dorm room needs, but at this rate, who knows when she'll start. She's coming to California with us in July and move in date in her dorm could be as early as 8/5, so this job is going to be short lived. She also has decided that she doesn't want a national parks mini trip for her grad trip (we were going to head to Sequoia and Yosemite), so we're going to spend a couple of day at Disneyland after Sam's done playing. That's what K wanted.

Wow, that's so unfair about the insurance. Usually, if you damage someone else's property, you would be liable for that. But I guess since they didn't do the damage directly, it was their TREE, it doesn't count.

A goes to a special school, so they already had different accommodations, but he was allowed to do his exams on a laptop instead of writing by hand because his handwriting is so bad and it takes him so long that he'd be in danger of failing just because the teachers wouldn't be able to read it and he wouldn't be able to finish. We had to get a letter from the Physical Therapist he used to go to saying that he did indeed treat him because of his handwriting and that he really isn't able to write as is required for exams. He also got to be in a separate room for his geography test because he's colorblind, and he had an aid to help him reading maps, graphs, etc. That way, he didn't disturb the other kids when he needed help. So they do make special arrangements. And normally, if you leave the room during your test, you're done...you can't come back because you could be cheating. But he was able to talk to his Dutch teacher, and the Dutch teacher told the examiner that he had just done some breathing exercises with him, and he was allowed back in to finish. There are also kids who get extra time for things like Dyslexia, etc, but A doesn't have that.

As for the difficult tests, there's a complaint organization that the kids can call or email with complaints....anything ranging from "There was someone mowing grass right outside the window and it was distracting!" to "The person administering the exam smelled horrible and I couldn't concentrate." to "Question 13 was IMPOSSIBLE! I don't know anyone who understood what it was asking!" With E's Math exam, the expert they asked for feedback said these particular questions were extremely hard and had HE been the one taking the test, he'd have skipped them because they would take too long to figure out. And he expects the adjustment to be around a 2, meaning it's an extremely difficult test. They try to make them around a 1 for adjustment, but it's supposed to be within 0-2. Zero means it was too easy. 2 means it was too hard. In general, the more difficult tests are around a 1.2 to 1.4 I think? So a 2 is practically unheard of. All the complaints and such go back to the examination board that then determines what the adjustment needs to be and they can also just strike certain questions from the exam. You don't find out what the adjustment is or if they made changes until you get your results back. But E usually gets above an 8.5 for math (5.5 is passing, 6 is about average) and even she wasn't able to do those questions. If anyone was going to be able to do them, it would have been her or Rianne, or Jasper, and none of them got them. Same thing with her Physics exam. She used old practice exams with adjustments of 1.4 and 1.6 and she said her test was at LEAST as difficult as the 1.6 and probably a little harder even. And again, there were some specific questions that everyone complained about. So they either need to strike those questions or have a higher adjustment. But we won't know what they did until we get the results. But during the exam weeks, they had news items every morning outlining the exams that had the most complaints and what the complaints were, and almost every day, it was E's or A's tests that were listed as the most complained about. The Dutch writing exam where he had the panic attack, they just redesigned the test with new types of questions, so the kids couldn't practice because they didn't know what kind of questions they'd be asked. That caused a lot of confusion, and I guess some of it was really vague. It's all kind of subjective. Both the kids say that it's more about how good you are at taking tests than how much you know about the material, which is really sad.

That's really too bad about Kendall's job. Where is she supposed to be working? Do they have a reputation for being really slow with reaction and such. I hope she gets started soon!!

 

[Songbird76]

Would she be able to have a toaster oven? She could make toast, but she could also make cheese toasties and other easy meals. An instant pot is good, too, because it has a slow cooker function on it. E could put a bunch of ingredients in it, go off to class, the library, etc and come back to a ready to eat meal. Or she could make a stew or chili in the pressure cooker function when she gets home and have a meal in 30 minutes. I don't use mine so frequently in the summer, because I don't feel like eating stews or soup in the warmer weather.

We'd need to see the student housing first to know what's available. Most people here don't bake, so I don't think most kitchens have an actual oven...we were thinking maybe an airfryer would be good, because she could bake potatoes in it, as it's basically just a mini oven, right? And the toaster. I never thought about a toaster oven, but I'll mention it to her....that's a good idea. She's lucky she has some good cooking skills already. Her chore for the last few years has been to help me with dinner and she's been handling dinner alone on nights where I work until 6. And she's been baking with me since she was knee-high to a grasshopper, so she's quite proficient in the kitchen. When her friend group gets together for DnD, they usually cook a meal together, and she's usually the one who takes the reins, because she has the most experience. So she'll be fine when she goes to school, IF she has the facilities. But none of us have ever lived in student housing in the Netherlands, so we don't know if they have full kitchens or what. If they do, we figure her roommates are going to love her because very few kids her age can cook. She'll be able to negotiate with them for chores.

 

[Sans Souci]

Hello-

Checking in with a 40 min. YouTube video that was mix of cardio and strength training. I went for a long walk, too. My husband wanted a long walk, because he's flying tonight and I think he just wanted some exercise before sitting on a transatlantic flight.

I am going to sit outside with a Paloma and a book after dinner. It's not very humid and it's very breezy. My son is treating me to Indian food via delivery tonight, so I don't have to cook. I'll probably make a homemade pizza for us tomorrow.

No sign of Callie. She left yesterday morning after just sniffing her food. If nothing else, I hope we made her life a little more comfortable and pleasant. I hope she understood that we loved her, too.

 

[Songbird76]

Hello-

Checking in with a 40 min. YouTube video that was mix of cardio and strength training. I went for a long walk, too. My husband wanted a long walk, because he's flying tonight and I think he just wanted some exercise before sitting on a transatlantic flight.

I am going to sit outside with a Paloma and a book after dinner. It's not very humid and it's very breezy. My son is treating me to Indian food via delivery tonight, so I don't have to cook. I'll probably make a homemade pizza for us tomorrow.

No sign of Callie. She left yesterday morning after just sniffing her food. If nothing else, I hope we made her life a little more comfortable and pleasant. I hope she understood that we loved her, too.

We ordered Indian food tonight too. A new place just opened up a week or two ago and we decided to try it. It was really good. We still have a lot to try out...couldn't order everything at once. But what we got was really good.

I'm sorry Callie has disappeared again, especially since she wasn't looking good last time. I hope she's ok! But she obviously liked your home because she kept coming back....she must have been comfortable there. And I'm sure she felt the love.

 

[HouCuseChickie]

Wow, glad you are all ok. What a mess. It's funny (not funny hah-ha) that you say this traumatized you. I had been thinking with all of the cataclysmic weather events, there is probably an unmet need for therapists trained to treat people traumatized by severe weather. You can't really avoid severe weather, so avoidance is not an option (but it shouldn't be). But just to talk to someone who can help you build a "tool kit" to help manage your fears and anxiety about storms, hurricanes, tornadoes, etc.

It really can take its toll. Two weeks before this storm, we were hammered with rain for the better part of a two week period. During the worse of it, we thankfully stayed dry inside and didn't lose any vehicles (because I refused to try and get the girls to school when our street was under water), but we know plenty that did. Fast forward a week and a half and it went from severe flooding rainmakers to severe wind and hail makers. We knew the storm that did this damage was going to be severe, but we didn't even get the upgraded warnings until just after the limb fell. We had another nasty storm about a week after power was restored for most from that first huge one, just to have it wiped out again for thousands. Of course, nobody was expecting that to be that bad either. I had to fight through traffic to find a gas station with power. We all nervously joked about hurricane season starting at the end of that week. I know some of my feeling blue is just trying to get everything fixed and being without my vehicle, but some is because even with all of our supplies and blessings in this, it's such a feeling of being powerless...both literally and figuratively. I've been really jumpy ever since, especially with loud noises.

 

[HouCuseChickie]

Wow, that's so unfair about the insurance. Usually, if you damage someone else's property, you would be liable for that. But I guess since they didn't do the damage directly, it was their TREE, it doesn't count.

A goes to a special school, so they already had different accommodations, but he was allowed to do his exams on a laptop instead of writing by hand because his handwriting is so bad and it takes him so long that he'd be in danger of failing just because the teachers wouldn't be able to read it and he wouldn't be able to finish. We had to get a letter from the Physical Therapist he used to go to saying that he did indeed treat him because of his handwriting and that he really isn't able to write as is required for exams. He also got to be in a separate room for his geography test because he's colorblind, and he had an aid to help him reading maps, graphs, etc. That way, he didn't disturb the other kids when he needed help. So they do make special arrangements. And normally, if you leave the room during your test, you're done...you can't come back because you could be cheating. But he was able to talk to his Dutch teacher, and the Dutch teacher told the examiner that he had just done some breathing exercises with him, and he was allowed back in to finish. There are also kids who get extra time for things like Dyslexia, etc, but A doesn't have that.

As for the difficult tests, there's a complaint organization that the kids can call or email with complaints....anything ranging from "There was someone mowing grass right outside the window and it was distracting!" to "The person administering the exam smelled horrible and I couldn't concentrate." to "Question 13 was IMPOSSIBLE! I don't know anyone who understood what it was asking!" With E's Math exam, the expert they asked for feedback said these particular questions were extremely hard and had HE been the one taking the test, he'd have skipped them because they would take too long to figure out. And he expects the adjustment to be around a 2, meaning it's an extremely difficult test. They try to make them around a 1 for adjustment, but it's supposed to be within 0-2. Zero means it was too easy. 2 means it was too hard. In general, the more difficult tests are around a 1.2 to 1.4 I think? So a 2 is practically unheard of. All the complaints and such go back to the examination board that then determines what the adjustment needs to be and they can also just strike certain questions from the exam. You don't find out what the adjustment is or if they made changes until you get your results back. But E usually gets above an 8.5 for math (5.5 is passing, 6 is about average) and even she wasn't able to do those questions. If anyone was going to be able to do them, it would have been her or Rianne, or Jasper, and none of them got them. Same thing with her Physics exam. She used old practice exams with adjustments of 1.4 and 1.6 and she said her test was at LEAST as difficult as the 1.6 and probably a little harder even. And again, there were some specific questions that everyone complained about. So they either need to strike those questions or have a higher adjustment. But we won't know what they did until we get the results. But during the exam weeks, they had news items every morning outlining the exams that had the most complaints and what the complaints were, and almost every day, it was E's or A's tests that were listed as the most complained about. The Dutch writing exam where he had the panic attack, they just redesigned the test with new types of questions, so the kids couldn't practice because they didn't know what kind of questions they'd be asked. That caused a lot of confusion, and I guess some of it was really vague. It's all kind of subjective. Both the kids say that it's more about how good you are at taking tests than how much you know about the material, which is really sad.

That's really too bad about Kendall's job. Where is she supposed to be working? Do they have a reputation for being really slow with reaction and such. I hope she gets started soon!!

Things like this are considered "Act of God." If the neighbor had deliberately ... either through his own intentions or documented negligence ... done this, it would be all on him. When it happened, I posted in our neighborhood group about getting some help with the tree. Due to the dense tree cover here, a lot of people commented about having been in this identical situation and it was always their insurance. If the offending tree were obviously dead/sick, our insurance may have gone through subrogation, but that wasn't the case.

That's good that he already has accommodations built in. It sounds like what they have allowed is pretty helpful. It's interesting that they don't afford him extra time.

I'd be curious to hear what the ending determination is about the difficulty of these questions. While I understand that a test shouldn't be easy and the education system is different there, it feels like the testing is a failure if it's not posing questions that directly align with what the students have been taught. I understand making things tricky for bright students so that it's not spoon fed, and I understand challenging them to make them think with the tools they've been given in new ways, but there's a big difference between tricky and nearly impossible. As for As, you would think someone would take into consideration that you're testing kids with special accommodations. Throwing something at them that they could never practice in advance just tells me that these people are tone deaf to the needs of the kids being tested. People get fired over here for things like that. Legal actions for potential ADA violations could even enter the mix. I may just be thinking like an American, but it still doesn't sound right.

She got a job at Marshall's. I think it's because it's a bigger company with higher wages, but still...her waiting period has been more like what we've seen with adult jobs that require real security clearance.

 

[Sans Souci]

It really can take its toll. Two weeks before this storm, we were hammered with rain for the better part of a two week period. During the worse of it, we thankfully stayed dry inside and didn't lose any vehicles (because I refused to try and get the girls to school when our street was under water), but we know plenty that did. Fast forward a week and a half and it went from severe flooding rainmakers to severe wind and hail makers. We knew the storm that did this damage was going to be severe, but we didn't even get the upgraded warnings until just after the limb fell. We had another nasty storm about a week after power was restored for most from that first huge one, just to have it wiped out again for thousands. Of course, nobody was expecting that to be that bad either. I had to fight through traffic to find a gas station with power. We all nervously joked about hurricane season starting at the end of that week. I know some of my feeling blue is just trying to get everything fixed and being without my vehicle, but some is because even with all of our supplies and blessings in this, it's such a feeling of being powerless...both literally and figuratively. I've been really jumpy ever since, especially with loud noises.

Weather can be so scary in its unpredictability. I totally understand how loud noises would make you jumpy. That is a trauma response. It only takes a single traumatic event to get PTSD. If you feel this way after a while and it affects your quality of life, you could always see a trauma-informed therapist.

This is nowhere as intense as what happened to you, but the town next to me got hit with an F5 tornado when I was HS. It was the first of school and we only had a half-day. I went to hang out at my BF's after school. It started getting dark outside and for some reason, my bf's mom told me it was time for me to leave. I was looking at the sky and I was worried about driving in a storm, as I'd only had my driver's license for about 3 months at this point. I thought I could out run it and get home without being caught up in it. It was a 20 minute drive, but there was a large bridge with train tracks at one end, which would back up traffic on the bridge. I got caught on the bridge so the storm kept edging closer. At this point, I thought it was a just a summer afternoon storm, because no watch or warning had been issued. The storm caught up with me, and it was raining sheets with lots of wind--it was loud. It was very dark, too, almost like night. I had to pull over because it was too much for me. I pulled into a church parking lot it had lots of trees, so twigs and stuff were hitting my car. Plus, the wind buffeting my car freaked me out, so I went back out on the road. I finally made it home and when I tried to open the garage door, it wouldn't open, so I figured the power had gone out. The siren was going off and I had to pound on the door to get someone to open it, because the door bell wasn't working. My brother finally opened up the door. He had been in the basement with some friends and the dog because of the siren. So, I went down there with them. I still thought it was just a bad storm. It wasn't until my mother and grandmother called me from their respective work places did I know it was a tornado. I was just driving in the outer edges of the storm cell. It hit the town my boyfriend lived in and 29 people were killed. Then the pictures and footage on the news--the whole thing affected me for a long time. I chalk it up to being a young and inexperienced driver trying to drive in a bad storm, seeing devastation nearby, and how it forced me to confront my mortality. I remember thinking none of the people who perished that day knew they were going to die in a tornado. How many kids didn't have a parent come home after work that evening? I was embarrassed to tell anyone how it upset me, because I was only on the periphery of it. I was not directly affected, other than losing power for a while.

This stuck with me for years. My heart would race whenever a warning was issued. It didn't help that they went overboard with the warnings after that tornado. I would stay awake until a warning was over, often into the early hours watching the radar on The Weather Channel. Even as adult, it shook me. A warning was issued and my town was in the predicted path, so I packed up my car with my son and my dogs, and drove to my brother's condo. When I got there, a warning was issued for his town. That's when I realized I couldn't live like that anymore, so I took steps to feel in control of a situation I had no control over. I can't control warnings, but I can control how I react to them.

 

[Sans Souci]

Hello--

I did a 12 minute workout today with my jump rope and kettlebell. I did warm up for 10 minutes and had a nice, long stretching session afterwards. I am starting to make sure I stretch well after my work outs. I can feel how tight I have gotten since I have stopped doing yoga regularly.

I'm just chugging along here, watching old movies at night and making lazy meals for dinner. I am making crock pot Mongolian beef for dinner, served with broccoli and rice. Excitement.

I've been wanting to do some old school roller skating. I think the nearest rink to me is Camden. My husband, who rents an apartment in Jersey City, refuses to go into Camden. There are probably other roller rinks, but they might be further away.

This video makes me laugh. It's a turtle who uses a mini skateboard and chases a cat around. He looks like he's obsessed with her.

 

[HouCuseChickie]

Weather can be so scary in its unpredictability. I totally understand how loud noises would make you jumpy. That is a trauma response. It only takes a single traumatic event to get PTSD. If you feel this way after a while and it affects your quality of life, you could always see a trauma-informed therapist.

This is nowhere as intense as what happened to you, but the town next to me got hit with an F5 tornado when I was HS. It was the first of school and we only had a half-day. I went to hang out at my BF's after school. It started getting dark outside and for some reason, my bf's mom told me it was time for me to leave. I was looking at the sky and I was worried about driving in a storm, as I'd only had my driver's license for about 3 months at this point. I thought I could out run it and get home without being caught up in it. It was a 20 minute drive, but there was a large bridge with train tracks at one end, which would back up traffic on the bridge. I got caught on the bridge so the storm kept edging closer. At this point, I thought it was a just a summer afternoon storm, because no watch or warning had been issued. The storm caught up with me, and it was raining sheets with lots of wind--it was loud. It was very dark, too, almost like night. I had to pull over because it was too much for me. I pulled into a church parking lot it had lots of trees, so twigs and stuff were hitting my car. Plus, the wind buffeting my car freaked me out, so I went back out on the road. I finally made it home and when I tried to open the garage door, it wouldn't open, so I figured the power had gone out. The siren was going off and I had to pound on the door to get someone to open it, because the door bell wasn't working. My brother finally opened up the door. He had been in the basement with some friends and the dog because of the siren. So, I went down there with them. I still thought it was just a bad storm. It wasn't until my mother and grandmother called me from their respective work places did I know it was a tornado. I was just driving in the outer edges of the storm cell. It hit the town my boyfriend lived in and 29 people were killed. Then the pictures and footage on the news--the whole thing affected me for a long time. I chalk it up to being a young and inexperienced driver trying to drive in a bad storm, seeing devastation nearby, and how it forced me to confront my mortality. I remember thinking none of the people who perished that day knew they were going to die in a tornado. How many kids didn't have a parent come home after work that evening? I was embarrassed to tell anyone how it upset me, because I was only on the periphery of it. I was not directly affected, other than losing power for a while.

This stuck with me for years. My heart would race whenever a warning was issued. It didn't help that they went overboard with the warnings after that tornado. I would stay awake until a warning was over, often into the early hours watching the radar on The Weather Channel. Even as adult, it shook me. A warning was issued and my town was in the predicted path, so I packed up my car with my son and my dogs, and drove to my brother's condo. When I got there, a warning was issued for his town. That's when I realized I couldn't live like that anymore, so I took steps to feel in control of a situation I had no control over. I can't control warnings, but I can control how I react to them.

The excess jumpiness has gone away, but I am still feeling blue. I think some of it is related to not having my vehicle right now. It's given me sort of a trapped feeling. I had planned to skip it when the insurance made it sound like this should be a quick and simple repair. Now that things are going to take significantly longer, I decided to use the rental coverage on our policy. I should be paired with a vehicle tomorrow.

Oh wow!!! I think that would have freaked me out even more! While my dad was in environmental engineering before retiring, a couple of his degrees are in meteorology. We grew in a very weather aware household, to the point that just the mere possibility of severe weather scares me. We lived in the Cincinnati area during the super outbreak of 1974 and were uncomfortably close to the path of the Sayler Park tornado. I have no memory of this, but my mom has pictures. This is part of what scares me about K going to school in Oklahoma. I think sometimes that thinking it was just a bad storm makes it worse. For me, it makes me question what I would have done differently ahead of time if I knew it was going to be more than average severe thunderstorms. When that weather has a death toll, it really makes you stop and reflect on how bad it could be. Thankfully, you were able to get to safety and just had the inconvenience of a power outage. I had similar feelings the other week...a few random minutes, before we knew how bad this was going to be, made the difference between being hit by tree limb vs. watching it come down. Still, like you said, nobody got up that day thinking a tornado would rip through their town or a tree would crash through their roof.

That's tough too. On one hand, you want to stay informed because logic would say that informed means prepared. Still, it's not healthy to be in a panic every time it rains. After Hurricane Harvey, we all panicked the next time we had a heavy rain. It was like...the last time the sky did that, people's homes were under water. With this recent storm, we had several rounds of severe weather in the week and a half following. After several days of it and the fear mongering, I turned off the news. Of course, that was also the day I noticed it was pitch black outside at about 1pm. What's funny...I turned on the local channels and there was NOTHING! I guess even they got tired of the coverage. The Weather Channel also has an interesting effect. During the flooding in early May, I wasn't getting a lot of good regional coverage, so I turned to my old friend TWC. One of the scariest things for me is when your weather is bad enough that TWC has people on the ground doing in person coverage. That sent me into all kinds of weather panic. I definitely can't control it, but I still like some of the news for it to stay prepared. I don't think either kid will now be questioning my judgement when I tell them to come to the first floor during a bad storm.

 

[Songbird76]

Things like this are considered "Act of God." If the neighbor had deliberately ... either through his own intentions or documented negligence ... done this, it would be all on him. When it happened, I posted in our neighborhood group about getting some help with the tree. Due to the dense tree cover here, a lot of people commented about having been in this identical situation and it was always their insurance. If the offending tree were obviously dead/sick, our insurance may have gone through subrogation, but that wasn't the case.

That's good that he already has accommodations built in. It sounds like what they have allowed is pretty helpful. It's interesting that they don't afford him extra time.

I'd be curious to hear what the ending determination is about the difficulty of these questions. While I understand that a test shouldn't be easy and the education system is different there, it feels like the testing is a failure if it's not posing questions that directly align with what the students have been taught. I understand making things tricky for bright students so that it's not spoon fed, and I understand challenging them to make them think with the tools they've been given in new ways, but there's a big difference between tricky and nearly impossible. As for As, you would think someone would take into consideration that you're testing kids with special accommodations. Throwing something at them that they could never practice in advance just tells me that these people are tone deaf to the needs of the kids being tested. People get fired over here for things like that. Legal actions for potential ADA violations could even enter the mix. I may just be thinking like an American, but it still doesn't sound right.

She got a job at Marshall's. I think it's because it's a bigger company with higher wages, but still...her waiting period has been more like what we've seen with adult jobs that require real security clearance.

They posted the adjustments for the exams this morning before the kids started getting their calls whether they passed or not. We were very fortunate that E was in such a good position going into exams that she really couldn't fail unless she COMPLETELY tanked something, which was unlikely. But her Math and Physics exams were abnormally difficult this year. They make adjustments...it's basically like grading on a curve kind of. The N-term is the starting point for scoring. They determine the difficulty of the test and then they come up with a value that you multiply with your score or something...it's a whole equation, (something like points earned divided by points possible times 9 + 1 if the N-term is 1.) but the range of the adjustment (N-term) is supposed to be between zero and 2, where zero is extremely easy and 2 is extremely difficult. The N-term for her math test was a 2.1, so it was above the acceptable range, and the usual N-term for math is between 1.6 and 1.8, so this was a REALLY hard exam. But an N-term of 2.1 means that everyone who took that exam gets at least a 2.1. Even if they missed every single question, they can't get lower than a 2.1 And her Physics N-term is a 1.7, where the norm was something like 1.2? So that was also extremly difficult. Biology was a 1.5, and I'm not sure what's usual, but most of hers were harder than usual. We don't get her scores until this afternoon. They call everyone who failed first, and those kids arrange for retakes or whatever. And then they call all the kids who passed, in alphabetical order, and then they have to go pick up their report card at 4. She's headed out in a few minutes.

For A's, his Dutch test with the new questions had an N-term of 1.5, which is also high. But we don't get his scores until July because it's special education and they do things differently. Everyone in the Netherlands gets their scores today, EXCEPT the ones with a different type of school.

 

[Songbird76]

The excess jumpiness has gone away, but I am still feeling blue. I think some of it is related to not having my vehicle right now. It's given me sort of a trapped feeling. I had planned to skip it when the insurance made it sound like this should be a quick and simple repair. Now that things are going to take significantly longer, I decided to use the rental coverage on our policy. I should be paired with a vehicle tomorrow.

Oh wow!!! I think that would have freaked me out even more! While my dad was in environmental engineering before retiring, a couple of his degrees are in meteorology. We grew in a very weather aware household, to the point that just the mere possibility of severe weather scares me. We lived in the Cincinnati area during the super outbreak of 1974 and were uncomfortably close to the path of the Sayler Park tornado. I have no memory of this, but my mom has pictures. This is part of what scares me about K going to school in Oklahoma. I think sometimes that thinking it was just a bad storm makes it worse. For me, it makes me question what I would have done differently ahead of time if I knew it was going to be more than average severe thunderstorms. When that weather has a death toll, it really makes you stop and reflect on how bad it could be. Thankfully, you were able to get to safety and just had the inconvenience of a power outage. I had similar feelings the other week...a few random minutes, before we knew how bad this was going to be, made the difference between being hit by tree limb vs. watching it come down. Still, like you said, nobody got up that day thinking a tornado would rip through their town or a tree would crash through their roof.

That's tough too. On one hand, you want to stay informed because logic would say that informed means prepared. Still, it's not healthy to be in a panic every time it rains. After Hurricane Harvey, we all panicked the next time we had a heavy rain. It was like...the last time the sky did that, people's homes were under water. With this recent storm, we had several rounds of severe weather in the week and a half following. After several days of it and the fear mongering, I turned off the news. Of course, that was also the day I noticed it was pitch black outside at about 1pm. What's funny...I turned on the local channels and there was NOTHING! I guess even they got tired of the coverage. The Weather Channel also has an interesting effect. During the flooding in early May, I wasn't getting a lot of good regional coverage, so I turned to my old friend TWC. One of the scariest things for me is when your weather is bad enough that TWC has people on the ground doing in person coverage. That sent me into all kinds of weather panic. I definitely can't control it, but I still like some of the news for it to stay prepared. I don't think either kid will now be questioning my judgement when I tell them to come to the first floor during a bad storm.

Glad your jumpiness has gone away. I've always been very nervous about bad weather. Some people love thunderstorms, but they really scare me. We had several tornados go through town when I was growing up, but there was never really any damage in town. But after I moved over here, I went back for my mom's burial the next summer, and we flew into Chicago. My brother's flight was getting in later, and we had rented a car and were picking him up from the airport, but we had HOURS to kill, so we decided to go see the sears tower, etc. We were up in the tower and the sky turned a kind of dingy yellow color and we could see a fire somewhere down below, but we thought nothing of it. We got down onto the street and decided to go grab some dinner before heading to the airport to pick up my brother. We're walking and it got SO dark and it was only like 5pm and it was summer, and we were like "Wow, it gets dark EARLY here!!" and we could hear police cars with loud speakers in the streets, but we couldn't hear what they were saying. So we just kept walking, and then the skys opened up and it was raining BUCKETS....like we got SOAKED just taking one step out from under an overhang to walk to the next overhang. And then when we checked flights, my brother's flight had been delayed by a couple of hours, so we had even more time. So we sat down and got some cheesecake and we were just sitting there watching the rain when someone said it was a tornado. Once it passed, it was bright daylight again, but some of the roads were flooded. It was just so weird, because this was like...2003? So it was before smart phones, and we had no way of knowing what was going on. We just thought it got dark really early and it was raining buckets.

 

[Songbird76]

Just a quick update to say E got her exam scores and everything was over an 8.5 except Dutch. She graduates C.um Laude (with honors)!

 

[HouCuseChickie]

Just a quick update to say E got her exam scores and everything was over an 8.5 except Dutch. She graduates C.um Laude (with honors)!

Congratulations to her!!! That's awesome