Adjustments

The past two months I've felt like I've been making many adjustments. One has been related to my vision. For 39 years I have needed to wear glasses or contact lenses, but until recently those were just to address nearsightedness. As I got into my 40's I started to develop presbyopia, which meant I was struggling to read for the first time. I asked for this to be addressed in January of 2016, but that time the eye doctor didn't think it was severe enough to be addressed. As time passed I began to be convinced he was wrong because I was having more and more headaches, and I thought they might be related to my vision issues. I went to a different eye doctor this fall, and she said that I definitely needed bifocals or reading glasses (1.75). It was definitely an adjustment for my brain to get used to bifocals, but once I had time to adjust, I loved them and definitely had fewer headaches. Yay! I prefer contact lenses to glasses, if I can see as well with them as with the bifocals, I'd prefer to go that route. On Wednesday I picked up my monovision trial lenses. Since I was teaching yesterday I

didn't think it was a good day to try them out for the first time, so today was the first time I put them in my eyes. My left contact is to help with my nearsightedness, and my right contact is to help with my presbyopia. I have to resist the temptation to cover one eye because right now everything - far and close is blurry. She said it will take time for my brain to adjust (up to 2 weeks). I'm hoping this will work out. We shall see! If not, I can try either bifocal contacts or just stick with my bifocal glasses. Paul saw the eye doctor this week. He's going to be getting his first pair of bifocals, although his presbyopia isn't as bad as mine (1.25 for him). I got mine from Zenni (online) which was immensely cheaper than getting them at Sears or the eye doctor. We're going to order his this weekend.

The bigger adjustment has been for me to go back to work. I had worked FT from 1992-2008, but then once I became a mom I worked PT most of the semesters (I did work FT some semesters) until I resigned after having Oliver. Those years of

being a "working mom" were very different than this semester because #1 back then I was teaching online and classes that met from 5-8pm and #2 I wasn't homeschooling back then because the kids were somewhere between birth and four years old. Teaching an 8:00 class has meant I need to go to bed earlier. I have been getting up between 5-6AM seven days a week. I have told myself not to stay up past 9:30. Occasionally I have stayed up until 10pm, but there have also been plenty of days I've gone to bed as early as 8:00pm. I lecture from 8:00AM to 1:45PM, and I had never taught four 75 minute classes back to back before. The first few weeks I would literally develop a fever over the course of the day, and by the time I finished the fourth class I just wanted to take a nap. As I've become reacclimated to teaching at the university, I can now teach all four classes without developing a headache or fever or feeling the need for a nap, although I often go to bed early those two nights. I'm very thankful that my body has made that adjustment. Nadia asked me yesterday how many weeks

were left in the semester because she doesn't like getting up so early. The answer is that including final exams she only needs to get up early 13 more times. We can do it!

I have put far less time into planning field trips over the past two months, but we *did* go on one today! This morning we went birding at the Montour Preserve. I asked a birder from our church, and she also invited another homeschooling mom from our church. So three women and six kids went birding this morning for about 90 minutes. Thanks to the Audubon Society, she had binoculars we could borrow. Some of the birds we saw included Canadian geese, hairy woodpecker, pileated woodpecker, blue jays, crows, tufted titmouse, black-capped chickadee, white breasted nuthatch, golden-crowned kinglet, robin, starling, yellow-rumped warbler, cardinal, and goldfinches. We went from there to gym class, came home and had lunch, made a batch of cookies, did a little bit of schoolwork, and then I took the kids to a corn maze. We tried a different location. We spent about two hours there in the maze and maze park. They have a 3.2 mile maze and .8 mile maze. We did the shorter one (Nadia picked it), but we walked much farther than .8 miles because we were going in circles and retracing our steps quite a bit! We didn't buy a pumpkin because they were pretty pricy. I think next year we'll return to Ard's (where we've always gone in the past), but it was worth it to check this one out at least one time. Their hayrides are much longer than Ards' (30 minutes), but we didn't do the hayride today. It was a very pretty day (got into the 70's). The only downside to these fun activities was that I didn't get much grading done although I did do some work during their gym class. Snatching a few minutes here and there I did manage to finish grading one assignment today. I have two more assignments to grade this weekend (and in the case of one assignment I have 60 students that completed it). I think I'll have more time to grade tomorrow.