Alarms, teeth, and eyes

I have really been wanting to blog in more detail about my first day back at the university, but over the past six days that hasn't happened yet. Hopefully I'll have time while it's still somewhat fresh in my memory. Over the past couple of weeks I have been trying to work on my courses as much as possible. Aside from emailing some students and my department chair, today I took a break from that. Not because I am done preparing. Absolutely not. Because I decided I needed a day to focus more on other aspects of my life. It meant I spent more time doing Kindergarten with Oliver today. I didn't really do that much with him last week. Today I actually assessed where he is with his knowledge of associating sounds with the letters, and I was pleasantly surprised that he knew most of them. So I am encouraged that it won't be too long until he can start Level 1 of the reading program I used with his siblings. It meant that I took 13 minutes to exercise. It was the first time I exercised since last Wednesday. I usually do it longer than that, but that was all the time I had in order to make it to the eye doctor on time. I figured 13 minutes was better than nothing. It said I burned 100 calories. It also meant that today I finally did something with some of the apples from our tree (we have an overabundance). I made one batch of applesauce and also an apple crisp. I'm hoping that other people will claim the majority of the apples, as I definitely don't have time to peel and core all the apples on that tree this fall.

I also decided I was going to blog today even though I have a boatload of work I *could* be doing at this moment for my class. I also need to get going on my Nehemiah workbook because that study starts on Monday. My to do list is rather daunting at the moment, but I decided I cannot work every moment I am awake - at least not for days and weeks on end. Even without doing much work for the university today, I was very busy. I homeschooled three kids, did a large load of laundry, did a load of dishes, cooked dinner, cooked applesauce and apple crisp, cleaned the guinea pig cage, picked up a few things we needed at Walmart, went to the library, went to the eye doctor, exercised for 13 minutes, etc. I learned this evening that on Wednesdays we need to pack lunches after dinner because doing it after I picked the kids up from AWANA meant that Oliver went to bed later than usual, which isn't good considering I will have to wake him up at 6:15 tomorrow morning. I also decided I was going to blog today even though I didn't get around to taking any pictures today. I intended to take a picture of Nadia's mouth to show the evidence that she had two teeth pulled on August 22 (yes I've been busy since then and haven't gotten around to it yet) and also one of Ian to show the proof that he pulled one of his teeth today. It was his 3rd tooth to come out. Nadia had pulled out his first two (bottom) teeth. In this case the permanent tooth had already come in so it was high time this baby tooth came out. He has a few more that are loose so the tooth fairy will be busy in our house!

Tomorrow I'm hoping to be able to teach all four classes. Last Tuesday I couldn't teach any of my classes because HR hadn't issued me a contract yet. I taught all four last Thursday. Yesterday I taught my first two, and then the power went out on the campus because of a fire in one building that led to a power surge in another and a second power surge in another building, and the power was out for 2.5 hours. My first two classes are in a room that has a lot of windows, but my second two are in a room with zero windows. I couldn't teach in a pitch black room so I cancelled those two classes. The power was back on by the time I started my office hours, if it wasn't I would have left early as I don't have a desktop not a laptop computer, and there aren't any windows in my office.

Today I went to a different eye doctor - an ophthalmologist instead of an optometrist. My last eye appointment was about 20 months ago. My prescription had changed, and she gave me one for bifocals. Yahoo! My ability to read has been deteriorating rapidly. I am going to order some bifocals online to save some money. Then I have to decide about my contacts. My choices are #1 keep using the ones I have and also use reading glasses when I need to read, #2 get bifocal contact lenses (most expensive option but also the one that will give me the best vision), or #3 go with monovision contact lenses which means one contact will be for distance and the other for reading. I haven't decided which of those three options I'll choose. She said that my eyes were still inflamed from the conjunctivitis, that they are dryer than they should be (so I'm supposed to use artificial tears, cool compresses in the morning and warm compresses at night, and take fish oil), and that I have lattice degeneration of the right retina (which means I am in danger of retina detachment). I was given the list of symptoms to be aware of and to be seen by the doctor as soon as possible (within 12 hours) if it happens. I'm really hoping that when the new glasses arrive I will not get a headache when I wear them as my current glasses give me a headache. She told me not to wear my contacts for awhile, but I'm going to wear them tomorrow at least while I'm teaching because I'd really prefer to teach without a headache.

I have more I could write about, but I need to get to bed. Hopefully I will sleep better tonight than I did the night before my last two days of teaching. I have had a paranoia about alarm clocks since I was a teenager. I have a fear it won't go off on time. So I rarely have ever used alarm clocks. I am by nature a morning person so it was really not a problem because I would wake up early enough on my own. However over the last year I have shifted my wake up time a bit later (sometimes I didn't get up until 7:00AM), and now I am needing to get up earlier than I have needed to in a very long time. I have been setting my alarm for 5:30, but I end up waking up many, many times during the night to check the time and getting up before the alarm goes off. It also doesn't help that Paul's alarm goes off at 2:15AM. My prayer is that I will be able to get a lot more sleep tonight and not wake up too much before 5:30.