Weekends are for Catching Up

We're not all fat and Happy, but we're happy for the weekend. It's a great time to catch up on EVERYTHING.

I rarely get to see Shane's virtual school, but I know he attends. We've got a system that works out and he even remembers without being told most of the time.

I assumed he was doing great since he was always in class. 

So I was surprised when I checked his account for the first time in forever. He had 23 missing assignments!

We spent the whole weekend catching up. Shane knocked off 19 assignments by Monday morning. I'd make him finish two or three and then turn him loose for an hour. Then I'd call him back and we'd chip away. There were some he could do in mere minutes while others were like trying to pull teeth from a wild animal (mostly writing assignments!).

Early on, Shane was whining about a math assignment, because "all of the clicking was too much work."

"How about I show you a better way to do it?" I said.

"You're not listening, Dad," Shane said.

"Oh, I hear you. How about I show you a better way?"

It only escalated. Shane wanted to whine and I didn't want to hear it. I was in teacher mode and kept stating we'd get it done in a calm voice while Shane kept raising his.

"No! YOU'RE NOT LISTENING, DAD!"

Once he started yelling at me I raised my voice right back. "NO. I HEAR you. YOU aren't hearing ME."

And then I showed my trick and Shane was silent. I'd like to think he realized both how much easier the trick made his life and that he'd put his foot in his mouth.

The worksheet had a bunch of blanks for numbers. He didn't want to click and put a text book in every single blank. My solution was to just make a big text box, type on top, and hit enter move down a line each time. 

He'd have made 24 text boxes, but my solution used 6.

And then I showed him how to copy-paste.

The math assignments all went very quickly.

My grading did not. I spent over 7 hours catching up on everything. The server crashed Saturday night, so I was forced to work more on Sunday than I wanted.

It felt good knocking out all the work. I even liked some of Shane's assignments as talking points.

Looking into the future - Carrie saw what we did and worked with Shane during the school week once she knew the assignments were there. She found he'd skipped some essential assignments, too, and had him fully caught up in everything by Wednesday.

School wasn't the only thing we worked on. We finally got our bi-monthly dump trip in Saturday afternoon.

I had been trying to get us to go for a month. I dream of the day we can fit all of the trash in the truck bed without the trailer and do light runs.

Instead, we dropped off 640 lbs of assorted trash and lots and lots and lots of cat poop. 

We recycled cardboard, too. The highlight for Shane was the cardboard compactor.

Not that it was easy to see anything!

We were already out so we swung by Costco to take care of groceries. 

When we got home I started working on dishes and laundry before Carrie and I did Saturday night barn cleaning to get things ready for the boarders on Sunday.

Next weekend should be a lot easier. There won't be trash, groceries, or Shane-work! It felt good to gain ground.