the_rck | (no subject)

Our cleaning lady has been gone since the end of July. I'm about 95% certain she went on the Hajj. She didn't use that word, just said she'd be out of the country and praying. We gave her some money as it was clearly important-- at least at the level of a graduation or wedding-- and she said she'd use it to sponsor extra prayers for us.

I've been having Cordelia do intermittent cleaning while our cleaning lady is gone. I'm trying to get her to learn the chores, and I really can't do any of them. At this point, I can't even do the chores that I normally have done-- the dishes, the laundry, changing our sheets, taking out the trash and recycling. I can do that last one time in three. The others... Doing the dishes isn't safe. It's possible, but I'd drop things and hurt myself. The laundry requires going up and down stairs which I can sometimes manage and sometimes can't. I'm more worried about problems going down the stairs than I am about difficulties coming back up. Changing the sheets is really hard on my hands and is going to get harder as it gets colder because part of the problem is that I need thumbs for the task. Just gripping the edge of a sheet is Very Bad.

Cordelia will be taking two AP classes this year, US government and European history. She considered AP English but wanted European history more. The European history class was one of those that only happens if enough kids sign up, so we didn't know until this week that it would happen. Last spring, when Cordelia did class selection, I told her to sign up for the European history and to use AP English as her fallback because there wasn't any chance that Skyline wouldn't offer AP English.

She's getting hit by a downside of the way Skyline schedules, though. Her third trimester classes will be chemistry, physics, pre-calculus, choir, and English. She has to have two trimesters of science this year, but as chemistry and physics aren't considered sequential, they can happen simultaneously.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I did AP Chem and AP Physics simultaneously, and had a lot of fun with it.

I would have had fun with that, too. The problem is that, somewhere along the line, my daughter decided that she doesn't like science or math, so she's looking at three out of five classes that trimester being things she's already certain she won't enjoy. I think that she's finding science to be stressful in the same way that I find following politics in detail to be.

She's not seeing the ways in which the universe is amazing. She's seeing every single potential breakdown point rather than finding comfort in things that work or fascination in the things we don't understand yet.

She does well in the classes, so I'm hoping that the anxiety is a thing she can overcome. She's not taking either class AP because the AP versions are both two trimester classes. Extra AP classes would mean giving up choir. The school also recommends that students not take more than two AP classes a year.

I hope Cordelia's anxiety calms down once she's actually in the classes and realizes she can do them.

Emma is taking two college classes this semester. She was really nervous to start with, but not that she realizes they're totally in her wheelhouse, she's not anymore.

*hugs*

I'm so sorry for the physical crap you're increasingly dealing with. I wish I had a wand to wave in your direction.

Many good wishes for Cordelia's pending school year.