Happy Belated Mardi Gras!

Happy belated Mardi Gras day! The 4th graders at my daughter’s school get to dress up as clowns for Mardi Gras, and they get treats, and parade around the school, visiting all the classrooms. Here she is all dressed up before school! How did I do on the homemade costume (well, I did buy the wig and the makeup)? She was so excited about getting dressed up that she got out of bed yesterday morning without even complaining like she usually does every morning.

As a nice treat for me, my daughter didn’t have homework yesterday, so I got a break from helping her with homework. She also didn’t have math homework today, which was nice too. I sit down with her every night to help her with homework, and she only needs minimal help with spelling, religion, science, etc., but math is a huge chore. She was diagnosed with a math learning disability in second grade, after struggling with math since kindergarten, and, despite receiving one on one tutoring twice a week through the school, and my nightly help, still gets D’s and F’s in math.

I understand how she feels, because I’ve struggled with math as long as I can remember too. Math was a nightmare for me in elementary school. I used to be mortified when I’d have to get up in front of the class to do a math problem on the board. I ended up taking a bunch of remedial math classes in college, and had to take a required statistics class three times before finally passing it with a C. I just don’t “get” math, never have, and helping my daughter with it is very frustrating. It takes us a good 40 minutes to get through her nightly 26-26 math problems, and I feel like a moron when there are a few problems that sometimes I can’t even figure out.

Hey, it’s only 4th grade math, and I nearly have a master’s degree, so the math should be a breeze for me, but it’s not. I feel terrible because my daughter loves science – has loved it for as long as I can remember, and wants to be a scientist one day, but I’m afraid with her math difficulties, that she might not be able to. It seems like most of the really good paying jobs require strong math skills, and not having them excludes a person from a lot, but I don't know what more I can do to help my daughter.

Well, as for me, I’ve been sick for the past few days with a nasty cold that I no doubt caught from my kids. I woke up this morning with a sore throat, cough, stuffed-up nose, and the whole right side of my face hurting, so I didn’t go to work. After getting the kids ready for school and daycare, I took some cold medicine, went back to bed after my husband left to drop them off, and didn’t get back up until 2:30. I’ve been trying to rest (when my kids will let me!) and following along on the Internet with this Bobby Cutts trial.

Now, I like to watch true crime TV shows, and I’ve been on jury duty twice in the past four years (once for an aggravated murder/aggravated robbery case and once for a robbery/kidnapping case), so I’ve seen some sick stuff, but this case really takes the cake.

Bobby Cutts is a former Canton, OH (Canton is about an hour south of Cleveland) police officer who is accused of murdering his pregnant girlfriend (Jessie Davis) in front of their 2 year old son, and dumping her body in the woods. He was married at the time he killed her, and, as if that weren’t bad enough, it turns out that he was also seeing two other women (so four women total including his now ex-wife) while all this was happening! Then on top of that, one of the girlfriends was also married, and had gotten pregnant by Bobby, and had an abortion the day Jessie was murdered! And, Jessie and the two other girlfriends all knew he was married, plus Jessie had actually gotten pregnant by him three times (she miscarried one).

The prosecution is saying he killed Jessie because he was deeply in debt, and didn’t want to have to pay child support for their second child (he was already paying child support for a daughter conceived when he was in college, plus child support for Jessie’s first kid, and was ordered to pay child support to his ex-wife, who had started divorce proceedings before Jessie was killed). Can you say sick??? I know paying child support is no picnic – my oldest brother pays a small fortune in child support every month to his ex-wife for their one biological son, but to murder someone over it? All this could have been avoided if he hadn’t been messing around with all those women in the first place! And, I can’t figure out how this guy even got on the police force in the first place? Don’t they do psychological testing before letting a person join the police academy? Just crazy!

I did get manage to make some progress on two crochet projects today at least. I finished my daughter’s cupcake pillow. OK, I didn’t get it done in time for her birthday, but at least it’s done, right? I’m going to give it to her tomorrow when I get home from work. I used an H hook, Lion Brand Cupcake yarn in Pink Lemonade for the top, and Bernat Satin in Lagoon for the bottom. I had originally crocheted a cherry for the top, but after I sewed it on, I didn’t like it, so I cut it off, and used fabric glue to glue on some beads instead. The beads were just cheap ones from the beauty supply store. You’ll have to excuse the glue marks (it’ll dry clear) and the pins on the bow (those are just to hold it in place until the glue dries). I used a pattern I bought from a seller on Etsy for the cupcake, but I made it larger than called for in the pattern.

I also finished the inside pillow part of my sister’s ring bearer pillow. Now I just need to crochet the back cover, crochet them over the lavender pillow, and add a lavender ruffled edging. I’m still plugging away on her shawl when I have time. I like to crochet on the bus to and from work, but a bunch of busses were cut from the route I normally take, so most days the bus is so dang crowded, I can’t crochet at all. : (

That’s about it. I’ve got to clean up my house and get my kids’ clothes ready for tomorrow and then am going to bed