Happy Birthday to Me 13

Today is my birthday. (No, it's not a decade one.) And, as it's Thursday, it's time for a Thursday 13. 

Several years ago, my brother got all of our very old pictures digitized. And then he uploaded them to Google Images. In honor of my birthday, I'm posting images of me as a kid. Just because. 

1. Me as a newborn. Although, I have a couple pics where I had just... ahem... emerged, I think I'll go with one after I've been cleaned up a bit. 

2. I searched year by year, and this is me at somewhere near one-year-old. 

3. I do not remember this pic, but I recognize the couch, and I recognize the room. This was taken in the house I grew up in, in the living room. (The kitchen was behind that wall behind me.) 

4. Same location as photo #3, just a different angle. And about a year later. 

5. My hair still kind of curls like that. But I wear it longer now, so I can kind of tame that weird wave away. 

6. I vaguely remember this dress. 

7. As the years go on, it gets harder to find pictures of me solo. The feet and hand to the right of me in this photo are of my brother. 

8. I look perturbed. I don't know why I was perturbed. But I loved this dress. 

9. The year I was the Pink Panther for Halloween. (Mom made the costume. Mom made all my costumes until the costumes stopped somewhere around junior high.)

10. Not my cowboy hat. But we kids liked "borrowing" the cowboy hat. 

11. I remember this jacket. I don't remember anything else from this photo. 

12. The t-shirt says "Catalina" as in Catalina Island. (We had visited not long before this.) 

13. Me in glasses. I think I still have this pair lying around somewhere. I started wearing contact lenses when I was a freshman in high school. 

The End of July

Today is my birthday. I'm not around today as I have plans. (Nothing terribly exciting, but I won't be online.)

I thought it would be cute to post a very old picture of me. I went looking through the digital archives, and I couldn't find a good obvious birthday photo (lots of kids around a birthday cake), but I found quite a few of just me. So, in no particular order...

(My brother got my mother's old slides digitized several years ago and gave me access. I haven't seen these in years.)

And no, it's not a decade year. For me, those are years that end in one. This is just a middle of a decade, ordinary birthday. 🎂

Twins Turn Ten

Last week was just one of those weeks. Work got busy, so when I got home, I wasn't much in the mindset to do any knitting (or crocheting). 

So, I went through my picture archives on the blog. (I was looking for a specific project that apparently I never blogged about. Sigh.) And I stumbled across these. What are they? 

They'll make more sense modeled: 

So, I've mentioned that I have four nephews, right? They've gone by various names on the blog over the years, but lately they've been eldest (who's 17), middle (who's going to be 13 next week), and the twins. 

The twins turn ten... Tomorrow. Sigh. 

(Why couldn't T day fall on the 25th?)

So, anyway, I talked about the project here and I did the birth announcement (sort of) post here. Ten years ago. 

I'll spare you all a roundup of all the things I've knitted/crocheted for them over the years (mostly because I don't have the time to hunt them all down), and just leave up their baby pictures. 

Today's A to Z Challenge post brought to you by the letter

A Makeshift Birthday Card

In every workplace there is that one person who takes on the emotional labor of keeping track of everyone's birthdays. They remind those around them of the upcoming, and they make sure that those birthdays get some sort of recognition. 

Friday. The second day of school. 

As we got things situated on Thursday, the aide commented that she had never worked on her birthday before. (Our school year is starting a whole lot earlier than it used to.) She wrote her birthday on the calendar. It was the next day. 

Ms. D had been one of the aides in Ms. S's class last year. (This is the class I covered from November to the end of January.) And Ms. D was the one who kept track of the students' birthdays and such. 

It totally slipped my mind that it was her birthday the next day, so I didn't remember to go out and at least get her a card. But I did remember when she arrived, so the class sang "Happy Birthday" to her. 

As soon as she went out of class to do something, I grabbed some construction paper and created a card for her. I had the students sign it. 

Then, quietly, I got the other aide to distribute the card to the rest of the school. 

I wasn't that sneaky about it, but Ms. D seemed surprised when I presented the card to her at the end of the day. 

Because the person who remembers everyone else's birthday deserves to have her birthday remembered. Even if it was kind of makeshift. Sigh. 

I informed Mr. G of the event. I hope he brings in a cake or something for her.

Birthday Celebration

Brittany's birthday was last Wednesday. She turned 21. 

On their birthday, they get to pick an activity (we either go out or they get to see a movie that they choose). Brittany chose a movie. 

As I looked through the schedule for the day, I ran into a conundrum. Usually, we'd do the movie after lunch. But Wednesday was Brittany's work day. She goes to the elementary school next door to help. 

So, I decided that we'd do the movie before lunch. Instead of the actual schoolwork-type stuff we do in that time. 

I mean, why not? It's mid-January. Last week felt long even though we had Friday off. Even though we just got off winter break two weeks ago. 

It's not like anyone was actually going to call me out for it. 

Before we started the movie, the principal dropped in. She was bringing the cupcakes Brittany's parents brought in for her birthday. And she said Brittany's father had said she could skip work that day so she could have her movie.

But... I already planned the movie for early. 

I put on the movie. Brittany went to work as normal in the afternoon.

After lunch is our "recreation and leisure" time, so basically the students had a free day. Well, except for Brittany. I sent her to work. (Which she gets paid for. And she wants to work with kids when she leaves the school, so this is helping her achieve that goal.) 

I'm okay with that decision. Sure, we didn't get to the usual stuff we work on to help them become more independent, but sometimes it's nice to have a kind of nothing day. That's a valid use of time. Anyway, that's my story, and I'm sticking to it.

Summer School 13, Week 2

Things have been going fairly well at the alternative education center, which means it's time for another Thursday 13.

1. As I write this on Sunday, my focus is on my car. It decided not to start yesterday. Somehow I have to get it to the mechanic and get to work tomorrow. Hopefully it's an easy fix, and by the time you read this, all is settled. 

2. I took my car in for some major repairs in June, so having to go back to the mechanic is irritating. (It proved to be fortuitous that I did the repairs in June so I can get to and from work now. At least, it had been nice.) 

3. The above picture of the classroom is now out of date. The "do not use this desk" papers were removed first. Then the partitions on the back desks. There's a new kidney table in the corner of the room. And on Friday they took out all the desks in the middle. (They're going to move in new desks on Monday.) I'll take a new picture for next week's posts, I think, since things will look a bit different.

4. I mentioned the classes in last week's post. First period now has a second student. Yorik was enrolled in the class at the beginning, but he couldn't come to school due to Covid quarantine. 

5. Last Friday I talked about how all the students refused to go out on their walking field trip because they couldn't have their phones. The principal came up with a compromise. If they would write her a paragraph stating why they should have their phones, she would allow it. All but Anson wrote the paragraph.

6. So, the past Friday we went to breakfast at Chik-fil-A. (Breakfast, because we wanted to leave early so we wouldn't be walking in the hottest part of the day.) And the whole thing went very well. I have a feeling we'll be walking out again next Friday (tomorrow). 

7. Now that the continuation high school has started their school year, we have a P.E. teacher. Coach M. works at both schools as neither school has need of a full-time P.E. teacher. But both schools do need someone to teach P.E. He knows me from the continuation high school, so it's nice to see a familiar face.

8. I have not mentioned the water fountains. With Covid protocols, they had to take them out. But, instead of removing them, they've replaced them with water bottle filling stations. 

9. Alas, the kiddos don't bring water bottles. (They're not allowed to bring non factory sealed drinks onto campus.) So, the office has been providing them with plastic cups so they can get water.

10. Ronan's been at war with the school over the non-sealed drink rule. He had opened his water bottle on the way to school one day. Another day, his father had gotten him a soft drink from some fast food place (which was "sealed" when it was bought, but it wasn't actually sealed). Finally, Ronan brought an empty water bottle so he could use the filling station. 

11. The drink rule, like them turning in their phones and them getting wanded on entry, is a site-specific rule. The other schools don't check for those things.

12. This is so much different than last school year when I covered this class. Having the kiddos in person makes a big difference. Some actually do work whereas last year on distance, they pretty much didn't.

13. My birthday is Saturday. I've been on this Earth for half a century now.

Quarantine Knitting

Technically, I'm not in quarantine, but since we really don't know what to call this thing we're doing, I'll go with the term that fits the letter of the day.

As for my knitting, I haven't been doing a heck of a lot. I never found my phone this fascinating before. I still don't, really. But I do find myself stopping and just scrolling at odd times. Instead of knitting.

My current project is a birthday present for eldest nephew. His birthday was December 26th...

I sent him a card for the day, and I asked him what he wants. He said a bag for his drumsticks.

I had been kicking around various ideas for months (while finishing up the Christmas knitting), but ultimately I landed on something I've done before.

Perhaps the stitch pattern looks familiar. That's because I used it once before...

I'm basically doing this thing again, albeit with a couple minor modifications.

I'd say I'll be done with this next week considering how much knitting time I have, but I'm not really knitting as much as I could be, so no promises.

A Birthday Post

Last week I showed off my prototype for a keychain...

(I needed to replace my keychain. And some things I just have to make myself.)

I made a couple modifications, and it's done...

But, of course, I wasn't done with one. I have a few skeins of this metallic yarn, so I then had to make another...

And another...

I showed these to my roommate, and she said it needed "bling".

Bling?

Um... Yeah, I can do bling...

And one more...

This is what happens when I get in the right sort of mood. I'll be selling these. I hope to get them listed in my Etsy shop this week sometime. Ideally. I'll just have to see how this week goes.

In case you're wondering about today's post title, today is my birthday.

The End of July

In honor of my birthday (yep, today), I found a birthday-themed quiz:

Word Ladder: Happy Birthday

I got 100%, but with 8 seconds to spare. The trick to this one is each word is only one letter off from the last one. That's how I finally figured out the one that I couldn't figure out. (Hint: you can do them in any order. Just type in the word in the top box and the word will appear in the box where it's the correct answer.)

And since it's the end of July (when asked when my birthday is, I generally answer with "the end of July"), what better time to remember all those birthdays we forgot:

Born on This Day: July

I only got 64%. But I do know who I share my birthday with. (Hint: she wrote a popular series of seven novels that were made into eight movies.)