I’m a Rule-Follower from way back. And nothing drives me crazier than people who think that the rules apply to everyone but them.
It would make me nuts when I was substitute-teaching: parents who’d send in notes asking for their children to be excused from homework because they had baseball practice, or who couldn’t be bothered following the car-line procedures (those are Safety Rules, people…), or kids who who’d mow others down in order to be first in line–as if being first to get to an assigned seat in the cafeteria makes any difference at all. I’m not a fan of the Entitled Generation.
Breaking the rules doesn’t come easy to me, so it was a hard pill to swallow this morning when I sent an email to TheKid’s teachers asking for an exception to a school policy.
Diabetes technology is ever-changing, and the newest incarnation of the continuous glucose monitor TheKid is using sends data straight to a smartphone. That means he’d need to be checking his phone several times during the school day: before lunch or snack, and any time there was an alert of an out-of-range blood sugar level.
TheKid’s school has a very strict policy regarding personal technology, including cell phones, for students: you can’t use it in school. I’ve always supported this policy, as a parent and as a substitute teacher. And today I had to explain to TheKid’s teachers why he’ll be using his iPhone in school.
This is the whole reason TheKid even has an iPhone. It gives him freedom–and it gives him data that helps him (and us) make decisions about how much insulin to take for a meal or snack or to correct a high blood sugar.
Having diabetes has required TheKid to exercise a huge amount of self-control. He can’t just grab a handful of potato chips out of a bag at a party. He has to consider how many carbs are in those chips and what his blood sugar is right now. He has to pause and dose insulin through his pump.
Now he’ll be required to exercise self-control in a new way. He’ll be bringing his iPhone to classes in his pocket, and he’ll need to check it. We’ll have to trust that he’ll only be using his iPhone to check his blood sugar.
Because kids are kids, and kids test limits, and I get that, I sent TheKid’s teachers a graphic that shows the app he’ll be using:
Courtesy of Dexcom.com
If a teacher sees him using his phone for other purposes, I’ve asked them to contact me. The usual school policy is to confiscate a phone immediately and return it only to a parent. That’s not going to work here, because TheKid’s phone is actually medical equipment. But if he’s caught using his phone for non-diabetic reasons, Hubs and I will need to deal with that at home, and in cooperation with the teacher.
I received gracious responses from TheKid’s teachers and the school principal, and I’m ever grateful for the support and concern we’ve experienced from the school ever since TheKid’s diagnosis. I am trusting TheKid to resist temptation as he’s done in so many other ways. We’re not breaking or bending the school’s technology rules for our own convenience or vanity or for some other self-serving purpose. I just keep having to tell that to the rule-follower in me.
The other day I lived through an example of how things said online aren’t always what they seem. After a Murphy’s Law hour, when everything that could go wrong did, I blew off a little steam on Facebook and then got down to the business of dealing with All The Things.
My oven is broken and there’s a mouse in the back porch. Also, I’m all out of Milky Ways.
Yes, I was whining. And venting. And trying to make light of the situation, all at the same time.
After the fact, it was interesting to do a little people-watching in terms of the reactions.
Some people sympathized.
Boo.
Oh no!
Dislike!
Triple trouble.
Noooooooo
What a bummer of a day for you.
Disaster!
Some people got the joke. And the need for chocolate at a time like this.
The worst was the last one. 🙂
Me: I’d definitely be dealing better with the first 2 if that last thing wasn’t also a factor.
That’s some serious <redacted> you’re dealing with!! lol
Without the chocolate, I would not be able to deal with the other two issues! LOL! 😉
Me: EXACTLY.
You can’t handle all that stress without chocolate!!
Local friend who understands my weakness for ice cream: Guess you need a trip to The Meadows
That last one is the deal breaker really
Noooooo!!! Not out of Milky Ways!!!! I’m sorry for loss.
This ranks as a State of Emergency.
Barb, you were on the Nightly News no Milky Ways !!! lol
Local friend 2 who likes my homemade cookies: It was the Milky Ways that really make this sad! Oh, and your oven, too (no cookies)!
Crumb. Any other chocolate?
Oh no! Out of Milky Ways!!!
Then we got down to solving some problems.
Me: Mouse-in-the-porch plan: when Street Urchins arrive, promise them donuts if they find the mouse and safely relocate it OUTSIDE. Not that it couldn’t get right back in again, but…
Friend: broken oven– I switch to the steel wok on the grill, or a crock pot– but that last one– out of chocolate with nuts– oh that is major bad!
Me: I have a toaster oven and a Nesco roaster, so I can make it work (though there won’t be cookies).
Friend 2: I have made cookies in a toaster oven…cannot be helped when you have a cookie craving in the middle of a heatwave… Lol
Friend 3: First things first: Make a run to the drug store!
Friend 4: Tomcat traps are great. You never have to touch the mouse’s carcass —- OR you can get a humane trap and bait it with peanut butter and/or chocolate. You just have to be sure to haul the catch far, far away (3 or 4 miles, or on the other side of a creek or river) so they don’t return.Then follow Friend 3’s advice and run to the store for those Milky Ways! LOL
Me: Street Urchins are currently debating whether a donut is “worth it” in this case.
Friend 6: You can solve that milky way crisis pretty easily. The others, not so much….
Friend 7: Mice hate peppermint and a mini peanut butter cracker on a mouse trap works quite well. you’re on your own with the oven. I’d call a repairman or someone with those skills.
World-traveling friend: It is too hot to turn on the oven. Pay the urchin five bucks for catching the mouse. Amazon should take care of the Milky Way problem, unless you want British ones and then I can bring some back next week. Let me know.
And then, a progress report:
Me: Looks like the Street Urchins have prevailed over the mouse! (And killed a giant bee as a bonus!)
Friend 4: HOORAY!!!!!
And then, a ray of hope for my broken appliance:
Friend 5: Barb, my husband repairs ovens! What’s wrong with it?
Me: Well, it is flashing E2 F3 in the display and burning SUPER hot.
Friend 5: I will have him call you! What make oven and how old. Gas or electric?
Commence discussion re: make, model and what’s a good time to call.
Further resolution of the situation and other good news:
Street Urchins have been repaid for the safe capture and relocation of the mouse with donuts. And I have a caramel iced coffee, so I think we’re pretty much all set.
For the record, it was decaf. And very much needed.
AND things keep looking up. I requested jury duty postponement so it wouldn’t be during TheKid’s summer vacation, and I just got a postcard saying I’m excused!
(And there was rejoicing in all the land.)
Final report:
The urchins caught the mouse for 2 donuts each plus Klondike bars. 🙂
World-traveling friend: Excellent financial negotiation skills! Amp him with sugar and send him home
Further on down the line, after it was all over:
Friend 8: actually, i don’t like this like this. i am saddened by this, but like that you find humor even in the broken mousiness and the absent milky ways…
Me: That’s my survival skill, 🙂 At least we got the mouse safely to the woods down the block instead of my porch.
Friend 9: This sounds like a very bad day! 🙁
Me: Fortunately, it got better. But all that in one hour was not fun.
And then there was this:
First world problems …
Now that’s the comment I don’t know how to take. Because it didn’t come with any emoticon to soften it, and the person who typed it isn’t someone I know in person (but who is a friend of many of my friends, and professionally I do wind up “friending” such people).
I am well aware that the lack of a working oven and the presence of a mouse are not major crises, and that not having any Milky Ways in the house does not constitute a State of Emergency.
So, OK. I was complaining about some pretty minor stuff. My friends got that it was minor, but upsetting, and the back-and-forth helped me get through the afternoon with some semblance of my sanity intact.
But now I feel like I am being judged, like I’m being told, “Suck it up, buttercup! There are starving people in <insert Third World Country here> who would love to have your ‘problems’.”
I wasn’t kidding when I told that one friend that finding humor in this situation is my survival skill. The humor here was that there were no Milky Ways, and bargaining with the Street Urchins for donuts in exchange for safe mouse relocation.
I can’t be sure that this person’s comment was meant as a put-down, but that’s how I interpreted it. Again, it’s hard to tell, just based on text and not knowing the person behind the words.
This may indicate that it’s time for me to evaluate whether it’s a good idea to have people as friends just because we have 47 mutual friends on Facebook. I might need to make an announcement that if I don’t know you in person or work with you, I’m unfriending, and then direct folks to “like” my author page.
(And yes, “work with you” counts because I work with over 100 people whom I’ve never met! If those people send me friend requests, I grant them.)
One of the Street Urchins has pierced ears. And he wears fairly BIG fake-diamond earrings. (At least, I’m pretty sure they’re fake. If they’re not, then whatever adult gave real diamond earrings to a kid in middle school has more money than brains.)
Hubs has been warning this Urchin, ever since he showed up sporting rapper-worthy ear jewelry, that he can’t wear his earrings in the pool. Earrings and pool liners don’t mix.
The other day when the Street Urchins were here, no one was swimming. The Kid has swimmer’s ear and would rather not swim at all than swim and wear earplugs but not be allowed underwater. So they were playing Kick the Can, which involves lots of hiding in two adjacent backyards.
Suddenly the whole pack of them, minus one, burst through the back door.
“[Earring Urchin] lost his earring!”
“It might be in the pool!”
Wearing only one earring and dripping wet, that last Urchin came inside as I asked what he was doing in the pool with jewelry on.
“I didn’t mean to go in the pool…”
Now, they routinely use the pool and pool deck as hiding spots for Kick the Can, but it’s a little hard to go into the pool without meaning to when the pool is above ground.
I sent the whole crew back outside to search for the earring. Daughter got into the pool because none of them would. Instead, there were four boys muttering excitedly about metal detectors and waving iPhones 6 inches above the grass as they crawled around the yard.
It seems there’s an app for that. Quite a few, in fact.
Whether those apps are real or not is another question (kind of like the Street Urchin’s earrings). This might make a good Science Fair project for the Kid for next year, though. And maybe a good Tech Talk for me.
I’ve been inspired by my friend Lisa Lawmaster Hess and working on getting things a LITTLE more organized around here. It’s a slow process. I did figure out that the set of small rocking chairs behind my desk, while cute, were too much of a temptation for me. They’re toddler rockers–one for each of my kids–and 2 are so small that no one but a small child can sit in them. So…they became tables for my Desk Overflow.
Shameful.
I took All The Stuff out of those chairs (and out from behind those chairs) and it pretty much covered the whole sofa.
So I moved an upholstered chair into the space where the rockers had been, because I know I won’t pile stuff onto that chair. Then I put away All The Stuff.
And my living room looks a lot nicer now.
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It’s time to get ready for Lent, and I’ve been working hard over at Cook and Count to load up all the meatless recipes I can find. You can find all of them right here: Meatless Recipes at Cook and Count.
Grilled Veggie Burrito: recipe coming soon to Cook and Count!
There are more to come, and as I post them, you can access them through this same link.
(AND I learned how to add a copyright line to my photos!)
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If you’re reading this through a link at CatholicMom.com, that’s because I successfully installed the link tool in the CatholicMom post. I’m in training right now to be the Substitute Blogmother during Sarah Reinhard’s upcoming maternity leave. (And she is super patient while she gets me up to speed on All The Things.) This was my very first linky-thing, and it worked! It worked!
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In other CatholicMom.com related news (AKA more shameless self-promotion), I have two posts about Lent that you might want to visit. Click on over!
At CatholicMom.com, we take a moment every Thursday to celebrate those accomplishments that make our week. My schedule has been packed this week, but there are a few things I’m proud to mention.
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I put away the Christmas tree over the weekend.
Seriously.
We have a HUGE artificial tree–probably a good 6 feet in diameter–and it takes up a lot of room. We do not have the box for the tree, as it was given to us by friends who couldn’t fit both a gigantic artificial tree and a Rottweiler in their living room. What we DO have is an enormous chest freezer in our backyard shed. It came with the house, but when we tried to plug the freezer in, we found that it doesn’t work. So the Christmas tree, which divides into three parts, lives in the freezer when it’s not in the living room.
We couldn’t get two of the pieces of the tree apart when we first took it down, and with the snow on the ground for months on end, no one wanted to help drag it into the shed. So it sat on our enclosed back porch–it was too cold to use the porch anyway. Finally this weekend we got the pieces apart and I stowed them in the freezer, where spiders and crickets cannot take up residents in its plastic branches.
And I have my porch back–just in time for the nice weather.
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I survived three days in a row of substitute-teaching for grades 5 through 8. Even though I’ve known most of these kids since they were in the primary grades, they need to test their limits every time, and they always seem surprised that I don’t put up with much.
On Monday it was raining so we couldn’t have recess at lunchtime. Back in the classroom, the kids all gathered around the computer and googled each others’ names, commenting on the pictures that came up. On Tuesday the playground was still wet so they had to stay inside. They asked to use the computer.
“So you can google each others’ names and then laugh about what you see? No. I think you did enough of that yesterday.”
They just looked at me with wide eyes–they didn’t even try to argue back. Then they found a deck of cards and started a game.
WIN.
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Speaking of kids and using the internet for ridiculous things and online safety in general, I have a Tech Talk up at CatholicMom.com today about that very subject.
