My life as a wife, mother, and 45 year old high school student!
18 Jun 2011 2 Comments
in School
ASC sent me two new classes today, Biology 1 and English 2, which is just more verbs and gerunds and so forth.
Biology looks interesting, I think I’ll have fun with that one. The textbook is about 1200 pages thick and looks pretty good.
The English, bah, dull. But, what must be must be.
Off to do some math.
04 Jun 2011 4 Comments
My final grade for Freshman math is a 94%! AN A! I GOT AN A!
Y’all can kowtow now.
I also pulled an A in the idiot “Finding your career” course.
15 May 2011 1 Comment
in General
I talked to my eldest daughter, Bonnie, today. The news is not good.
My youngest granddaughter, Alexis Skye Perry, may have leukemia. That’s the worst possibility. She may also have some form of auto-immune disorder or God alone knows what it is. Tomorrow she will be at the Tufts University hospital in Massachusetts undergoing extensive testing.
Me? I’m worried to death. I’ve never even met this granddaughter face to face, and now the evil demon of cancer may be stealing her from me.
I am not the world’s best grandmother. I have three granddaughters, and I’ve only ever met one of them face to face, and that’s been almost ten years ago now. But I love them. Oh how I love them. Every time I look at their pictures or talk to them I am reminded of my father, I realize that this is his legacy, his great-grandchildren, beautiful, bright, vivacious.
And now, one of them may be taken from us.
It’s driving me crazy, the stress of worrying, and I admit, I’ve taken a few tranquilizers today. I can’t deal otherwise.
Please God, let this be no more than an infection easily cleaned up with a course of antibiotics. She’s my GRANDDAUGHTER! I already lost a father to cancer. Let him be the only one, Lord. Please.
I’m asking you, my friends, to pray for Lexi. She needs all the prayers she can get.
07 May 2011 1 Comment
in Parenting
Most of you know that I have three beautiful granddaughters, Kodi, Fallon, and Lexi. And I’ve also got a granddaughter of the heart, little Amy in Indiana.
I’ve been rather remiss lately on birthday giving, and I’ve decided this ends now. So i’m starting all four of the girls a legacy collection, so to speak.
Tonight I ordered four sets of cultured freshwater pearl jewelry from Amazon, necklace, earrings, and bracelet. One for each girl. They checked in at a whopping $12.99 each, which is dirt cheap.
By my way of looking at it, this gives them a classic beginning to a decent jewelry collection later in life, but at a cost where if they wear it and damage it or lose it, it’s easily replaced, so, perfect for little girls.
I’ll add to these collections every year, with sterling or 10K gold and lab created gemstones. I can’t afford anything better at this time, but they’ll all be classic design pieces that will stand them in good stead through their lives, and when they wear them, they’ll know that Grammy Jenn loves them. 
13 Mar 2011 3 Comments
in Finding worth, General, School
Math has always been my Waterloo as far as school went. I dropped out of high school on my second run through tenth grade because for the second year in a row I had math as my homeroom class and I just couldn’t face waking up to deal with it.
When I was in fifth grade I could barely handle single digit multiplication, but Mr. Deady, my fifth grade math teacher, insisted on sending me to the board every day to face down long division problems.. I couldn’t even handle 4 divided by 2, never mind 3547 divided by 248. I would stand there, pale and sweating, feeling the floor under my feet wobbling while listening to my classmates cackling at my confusion, and my teacher, who should have been helping me learn, belittle me for not understanding the processes needed to solve the problems. This happened every single day, and it’s no wonder that I grew up a) dreading math and anything to do with it, and b) giving up completely on ever learning to handle it.
Over the years I grew to understand multiplication, I was even able to handle some basic division. But I never did master division, and when it came to fractions? Oh dear, no. For some reason, decimals came easily to me, which has been useful in figuring out my grocery bill and suchlike.
Jump forward thirty-five years and I finally decided to get my high school diploma. The first book they sent me was English, good enough, always enjoyed English, although I’ve been pounding my head against some grammatical walls that are giving me headaches – nothing I won’t be able to handle, but still, headaches. The second book? Math. Very basic math, but still. Math. Ugh.
This book reviewed addition, subtraction, multiplying and dividing in its first third. No problem, I could handle that, and I whipped right through it in less than two weeks.
The second third got into fractions. And there I met my Waterloo again. I struggled through that section, then into the third section, more of the same, but harder. Every time I cracked the book I wound up crying tears of frustration. Sam and Sean stood by me, going over and over the same basic rules again and again, with the patience of saints.
Christmas time came, and I set my books aside, figuring I would pick them up again after Amy and Brian went home and the kids went back to school. Nothing in my life has ever been harder, I swear. I would rather wash every item of clothing in my house, iron it, fold it, and put it away.. five times running, than open that math book. MAJOR psychological hurdle. It took me three months to complete 90% of that book, and more than three months to complete the final three chapters and the final exam.
I am happy to say that today I decided it was time to do it or quit school – an option I was seriously considering. I sat down with Sam this afternoon and wept, screamed, whined, and smacked myself on the forehead time and time again, but! I FINISHED IT!
I am now ready to open book two, which goes into decimals, compound interest, percentages, and suchlike. I don’t anticipate too many problems with this book.
Right now, I’m feeling inordinately proud of myself for facing down, and succeeding, at something that has always rankled me, that I could not handle mathematical concepts that nine year olds handle every single day. But face it down I have done, and today I feel strongly that when the time comes, geometry, algebra, and calculus will come with, if not ease, at least no fear.
I AM as smart as a fifth grader!
23 Feb 2011 No Comments
in Parenting
Today is my oldest child, Bonnie’s thirtieth birthday. I remember the first time I looked on her face, I was so amazed that such a beautiful and perfect little person had been born from my body! Today she is just as beautiful, she’s smart as a whip, funny as all get out, loving and loyal to her family and friends, a good mother, a successful college student, and an all around wonderful person.
I’m so proud of her, and so grateful to her adoptive mother, Kate, for all of this bounty wrapped up in one human being. The day we were reunited was one of the happiest days of my life.
I’ve watched Bonnie, in the thirteen years since our reunion, grow from a very troubled young woman into a very solid and capable mature woman, and although I really can’t take any of the credit for that, it all goes to Bonnie and her mom, Kate, I can’t help but feel a huge upswelling of pride in her.
My father was the first person who ever touched her with love. Right there in the operating room, they handed her to him all wrapped up in a flannel receiving blanket and he was awestruck, gasping out “She’s already focusing her eyes! She’s looking right at me! Oh Jenny, you made a BEAUTIFUL baby girl!” He was so in love with her. I wish he had lived his full life, so that he could know her now.
Bonnie, darling womangirl, Ma loves you. Thank you for coming back into my life, for loving me, for my beautiful granddaughters.. but most especially, thank you for being YOU. The world is a better place because you are in it.
11 Feb 2011 1 Comment
in General
I lost the baby early yesterday morning. I’m pretty down, and so is Sam, but at the same time, I just keep remembering, God knows what He’s doing.
It would have been nice to make a baby with Sam, to see how our features combined in a new life.
Sam is seeing Dr. Perry next week to get a referral to a urologist for a vasectomy. This makes five miscarriages we’ve experienced together and we just don’t feel up to facing any more.
10 Feb 2011 No Comments
in Parenting
Well, you see, whenever I run across Madeleine in my life, I suddenly find out I’m pregnant! I knew that I loved her for a reason other than her bright and bubbly personality and winning ways!
Some time around the end of September, Sam, the kids, and I are welcoming a new baby into Clan McWhorter. If I don’t miscarry, which I have an ugly history of doing.
The pic on this post is a six weeks baby, taken in utero. That’s what Babylet McWhorter looks like right now. He or she is budding fingers and toes, which will be complete in about two weeks. Its heart now has two chambers, and its eyes are beginning to get their color. It has its appendix and a fully functioning pancreas. Wow.
In other news, I finally dug my schoolbooks out from before Christmas break. I have forgotten ALL the math and Sam will be refreshing me on that, but I dove right into the English grammar.
I am begging your prayers for a safe and healthy pregnancy and a healthy baby in about 34 weeks. We have already decided we won’t try for a VBAC and will just schedule a C-section.
30 Jan 2011 3 Comments
Sam and I are seriously contemplating a major change in the house, should we still be living here after he graduates in May.
We have three boisterous, growing young men in the house, and their bedroom really is too small for them. It’s time to think about changes.
Our bedroom is the biggest room in the house. To give you an idea of HOW large, it contains: A queen size bed, one night table, two medium sized dressers, two full size desks, four sets of bookshelves, one small “corner” desk, six computers, a washer and dryer, two desk chairs, and an enormous pile of boxes we have not unpacked from when we moved here five years ago. For all its size, due to those boxes, there’s almost no space in here. Without them, it would still be quite roomy.
The boys’ bedroom holds two sets of bunkbeds, two large dressers, one table, and even when it’s clean there’s maybe a five foot square empty space for them to live in.
Tonight I proposed a project to Sam which he wants to discuss and think about before we do it, but he’s open to the idea, at least.
I suggested that first, we clean our bedroom out in a big way. Those five year unpacked boxes? If we haven’t needed what is in them in the last five years, we don’t need it now. They can go, if not to the trash, at least to the shed or attic. Washer and dryer HAVE to stay in here, this is where the hookups are, so be it. Sam has not used his desk in more than three years, his monitor is on his bookshelf, he has a wireless keyboard, and he computes and studies in bed by choice. My desk I need. The bookshelves hold not just books, but a ton of garbage such as a half dozen keyboards and three monitors, none of which work. Etc etc etc.
We’re going to clean our room this summer.
The boys will do likewise with theirs, throwing away all of their Happy Meal toys and suchlike that they have outgrown.
My proposal is we ultimately swap bedrooms, but with a flair. This room is large enough that we could put up office partitions and separate it into three smaller room-like areas, with curtains at the end for privacy. Each would be large enough to hold a single size bed, a small desk and chair, and a bookshelf, or better yet, something like the loft bed/desk/bookshelf combo pictured. This would still leave a fairly broad “corridor” at one end of the compartments, with the washer and dryer accessible, and space for their bureaus and such toys as they still use. We wouldn’t buy readymade office partitions as they are costly, but make them from thick plywood with two-by-four stands, and the kids could paint their partition walls any colors they chose for their own compartment.
All three of the boys are at the point where they would all like a little hideaway of their own, and this is the best way to give it to them short of moving to a larger house, which I do not want to do. I love our crooked little cottage, and so do my bunch of men. We don’t want to move.
The boys’ current room is large enough for our bed, my desk, and both of our dressers and the night table as well as our tallest bookshelf. It has the added benefit of having a closet not filled with the washer and dryer (the boys do not understand what their closet is for, they use it as a getaway spot, complete with lamp and stack of books).
I really think that this idea would work wonderfully, and am writing up a proposal for Sam, as he has an easier time processing new ideas if they’re explained very clearly and methodically to him.
Of course, this is all pointless if we end up moving away from Ponder when Sam takes his degree in May. I’m praying so hard that he will find employment in the DFW area. I do not want to leave here, it will break my heart.
Have any of you ever done something like this, making two or three sort-of rooms from one? If so, I’d love to hear your thoughts and ideas. Even if you haven’t, share your ideas!
29 Jan 2011 No Comments
in General
Only comments made on the original post at http://www.thehodgepodge.us will count. I don’t keep track of comments on LJ or FB or anywhere else this is syndicated!
29 Jan 2011 7 Comments
in General
I’m curious to know who is reading this blog! And so..
If you read, regularly or just on occasion, post a comment with a suggestion of a new craft for me to try. Include a link to a picture or instructional, if you can. And of course, let me know if you enjoy my blog!
If I get more than ten comments, there will be three winners, less than ten and there will be one winner. The winners will recieve an autographed copy of the one and only book I’ve ever published, “Random Rants and Other Observations”.
So?
29 Jan 2011 No Comments
in General
I’ve been very lazy and lax about my school lately. Since just before Christmas I have not been able to motivate myself to pick up a textbook and pencil and get studying. This changes today.
I plan to discipline my lazy self and start studying and working for at least one hour per day per subject (I currently have three subjects I am working on, English, Math, and something called Career Studies).
In other news, I am busily crocheting an afghan for Amy’s darling Brian, in forest green and eye-blinding orange, his favorite colors. Thus, whenever they get married and set up housekeeping, they’ll be able to curl up together on the sofa for movies in blankets made by me. Amy’s blanket was the first of the dozens I’ve ever started that I ever finished.
Sam graduates in May, if his committee accepts his dissertation, which I am sure that they will. At that point, we may end up moving. Gotta go where the work is.. but I dread the thought of leaving Ponder, I love this place and my friends so much. I’m too OLD to tear up roots and re-settle again. Frankly, I’m scared at the prospect.
I’ve also been feeling very blah and somewhat depressed and useless. I found myself the other day THRILLED because I was able to yank out a hangnail that Sam was suffering with, and realizing it was the first useful thing I’ve done in months. I don’t know.
Anyways, I expect that once I’m back to work on the textbooks I’ll feel a bit better. Just sitting on my kiester isn’t doing it for me, and I am positive that that is contributing to these doldrums I am wading through.
Hopefully a more upbeat post soon!
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