Friday Photos

A look back at the week, Monday thru Friday through photos and screenshots

It was a weird week for more than one reason-

First, Monday was a day off school due to MLK Jr. day. I don’t have any pictures from this day- I think I did very non picturesque things like thoroughly cleaning bathrooms, laundry, etc.

I was scheduled to sub Tuesday through Friday. I only ended up subbing two of those days.

On Monday evening, Alyssa planned to drive to her boyfriend’s house to hang out with him for a couple of hours. She was not able to drive her car because it wouldn’t start. We thought there was a good chance that the battery fizzled out due to the cold. We could have just jumped the car but we decided to put a new battery in the car. Donnie has changed batteries in vehicles before but he decided he didn’t want to deal with it in the cold so we decided that if the car was jumpable, I would drive it to the service station that we use and pay them to install a battery.

That plan necessitated that I not work on Tuesday. Whenever we play musical cars, I am the one left standing! Donnie needed to go into work (his job trumps my very much part time job- he makes about 98% of our family’s income...). Alyssa did not want to miss school. Being a senior and a part time college student, she has an abnormal schedule so she needs to drive (and unfortunately, none of her good friends have her schedule so she can’t get a ride with them). I hated to call off but I did. Hopefully someone picked up my sub job. Our district pays among the best around and our students are among the best behaved (so say subs who sub in multiple districts) so our district is an appealing one to subs. 

Tuesday morning, a guy came out to jump the car- it started with a jump so it was the battery. While it was still running from the jump, I drove it to the place that services our fleet of older cars (ie we know all of the employees including the owner because we are in there so frequently). Now here was a problem. I needed to get home. I could have waited for the car to get the new battery put in but I didn’t have an appointment (I had called to make sure I could bring it in to have the battery replaced that day but they couldn’t work on it right away). I could have called a friend to come and get me... but where was the challenge in that? No, I was prepared to walk/ run home in sub zero temperatures if just for the bragging rights, lol! I had many layers on as I embarked on the 2.1 mile journey home. 

This was the weather when I headed out.

Well, guess what? The service guys replaced the battery but found another problem (leaking coolant which was resulting from a bad water pump). The car was not going to be done that day. I had a sub job scheduled for Wednesday and I didn’t want to call off again. For one thing, it was a scheduled early release day- I would get out an entire hour early. For another, I didn’t want to call off two days in a row. It worked out that Donnie could drop me off and Alyssa could pick me up. The day ended up being odd because we had a two hour delay due to the cold so the district did away with the one hour early release. It was a good day at school and I was glad that I was there! I worked with some of my favorite teachers and students.

Unfortunately, the car was not done on Wednesday either (more labor than originally thought so of course more $$$ to fix it). The service place said that I could come to the shop and get a loaner (they didn’t have one available on Tuesday). So I got to drive a 2006 BMW with 198,000 miles 😆. I was able to work my sub job on Thursday which was good. It was another good day at school- two in a row- I don’t take that for granted!

Thursday evening, we were supposed to get snow and we did so no school on Friday. That meant no work for me that day. Speaking of Friday, next Friday this tiny n’ tuff n’ adorable n’ ornery child turns 18! So this week was the last week that we have a “child.”  By next Friday, we will have three Rineer adults. I will have to change my blog name, lol. 

I saw this in the Daily Mail- Uh-oh!

Speaking of coronavirus- check this out

Why didn’t Fauci or anyone at WHO or any “expert” let us know what most of us suspected? That the six feet thing was not based on science and therefore unnecessary? Why did they make principals of schools take a measuring stick into classrooms to literally measure six feet in all directions from where a student who tested positive for Covid sat and force those sitting within six feet to stay home from school for five days due to contact tracing? I witnessed the dystopian-esque event myself... and was the recipient of hearing that my child had to stay home for five days because she was “measured” to have been within six feet of someone with Covid.

Speaking of schools and Covid, Jill Biden was at a school in Utah talking about the hardships of teaching, in part due to the challenges during and since Covid (see above and sending teachers and students home for being within an imaginary Covid zone and then wondering why academic scores have fallen and teachers see more students than ever who struggle). The school she visited was called Hunter High School. While there is absolutely nothing funny about Hunter Bidens’s drug addiction, felonious gun purchases, and the cover up at the highest level of government and Big Tech of Hunter’s laptop which revealed licentious and illegal activity by Hunter, there is something very ironic about Jill speaking under a banner stating Hunter High. 

Speaking of schools (and sons!), this sign was in one of one of the classrooms. I used to sign off almost every conversation with Jacob prior to a weekend with this admonition: to make good choices! If he didn’t make good choices, he did not let me know....

On that same day at school, my Apple Watch exercise shamed me:

Speaking of good choices (and an unabashed mom brag),

In less than a week, Abby will be back in Ohio. I’m glad she’s making good, fun choices in her time away.