The Lydster, Part 124: the acrostics

This past year, for spelling, there was this predictable pattern for the homework of approximately 20 words.

Monday: put the words in alphabetical order. Sometimes tricky when you have six words starting with st
Tuesday and Wednesday: write ten sentences each night, using the spelling word. The sentences, more often than not, involved the cats; “Perhaps Stormy and Midnight will be friends.
Thursday: take one word and make an acrostic out of it. This is something I never had to do, but she got into it.

With her permission, nay, insistence, some of The Daughter’s acrostics, in no particular order. All (c) 2014 Lydia Green.

Curved,
Is
Round,
Cylinder,no
Lines,
Ends where it begins

Seeing Paul McCartney live in concert for the very first time

c. 2014 K Durkot

I don’t know how to review seeing Paul McCartney in concert on July 7, what turned out to be the first stop on the US leg of his current tour. Want a review? Here’s one by Greg Haymes, and here’s another one by Greg, who I happened to see before the show, and I’d say they are pretty darn accurate.

Also saw Karen, one of my oldest friends, a Beatlemaniac before I was by a few weeks, and that was fab. (Sorry.) The Daughter and I took the CDTA down and back, and THAT was actually worked out almost perfectly.

So let me do a song-by-song musing:

Eight Days a Week – Karen saw his performance at Frank Sinatra School of the Arts last October, a highlight of her life, and he opened with that here as well. The Daughter (L) was so excited; this is the moment it became real, that she has actually seen a Beatle in person.

The Lydster, Part 123: Reading is Fundamental

One evening when she had no homework, the Daughter complained, “I understand why you’re limiting me watching television. That’s all right! But reading?”

I was so pleased. I was only “limiting” her reading because she had to go to bed, and get up in the morning. In fact, because of my lax parenting, I had to wake her, as she had fallen asleep, reading some Roald Dahl tome.

Often, her bedroom door is closed in the morning

Father's Day: faith

Lydia and Roger, 2010

One of the things I worried about when Lydia was born was whether I would be there when she grew up. After all, I was 51 when she was born, so I’ll be 70 when she’s 19.

What I had not seriously considered, beyond the normal concerns, is what if something happened to her. Her still mysterious illness in late February and much of March made me concerned because, as the doctors eliminated what it was NOT, I still did not know what it WAS.

It wasn’t until mid-May, though, that The Wife and I had a conversation with her about what she felt, I mean beyond the pain.

$30,193.86

The bill came for the Daughter’s two-day stay at a local hospital:
Over $4,000 for the emergency room
Over $4,000 for the MRI brain scan
Over $12,000 for the MRI spine scan (which they probably didn’t finish when she balked after an HOUR)
Over $4,000 for various labs
Over $4,500 in “accommodation fees”
Plus drugs and physical therapy

The Lydster, Part 122: The Games People Play

I’ve noted that I like to play various games with The Daughter, especially at the point she can play competitively with me. She can play the board game SORRY and Connect Four (VIDEO) straight up, meaning she can beat me as often as I can defeat her.

I had always beaten her in Chinese checkers, and even when I played her recently, she was playing in what I thought was a haphazard way, moving sideways when she could have jumped forward. But then she set up multiple jumps and actually beat me, by a single move.

Didn’t enjoy playing checkers with me, because she didn’t seem to grasp it. Then one day she beat me. No, she CRUSHED me. She still had 10 pieces to my two when I conceded.

I decided to play her in Yatzhee, and she she beat me the first time out. I won the next five games, but then she’s been winning half the time, so it’s worth it for both of us to play.

Stress, and time management: related

New York Erratic, who needs to blog more – just noting – wrote on March 20, 2014 at 7:29 am:

What was the greatest stress in the last year?

And the answer, had I written it at that moment would have been: “IT’S RIGHT NOW!”

I’ve alluded to The Daughter’s mysterious ailments, which have been largely mitigated and only partially explained, and would take a lot more detail to discuss, involving talks not only with doctors, but with school officials about making accommodations for the fact that she missed so much classwork.

The Lydster, Part 121: The nutritional value of Froot Loops

I want The Daughter to eat well, but if she wants an occasional box of Kellogg’s Froot Loops, a “sweetened multi-grain cereal,” I might buy it if it’s on sale. The Wife was complaining that she had made that choice for breakfast, when she replied that it was healthier than the Kellogg’s Raisin Bran I was eating. Let’s look at the side panels:

SERVING SIZE: 1 cup (FL-29 g, RB-59g)

Calories: FL-110, RB-190. Advantage, FL.
Saturated fat: 0.5g, RB-0g. Advantage RB.
Sodium: FL 135 mg, RB-210mg. Advantage, FL.
Potassium: FL-35mg, RB-390mg. Big advantage, RB.
Total carbohydrates: FL-26g, RB-46g. Advantage, FL.
Dietary fiber: FL-3g, RB-7g. Advantage-RB.
Protein: FL-1g, RB-5g. Advantage-RB.

Then it’s all those minimum daily requirement percentages.

Movies, music, romance

MDS of Pantheon Songs wonders:

What are some movies that are generally considered to be classics that you found to be just terrible/boring/ridiculous?

I fell asleep watching Citizen Kane on video; in general, I prefer seeing a film first on the big screen. But that lapse was probably because I was tired. The only film during which I ever fell asleep at a movie theater, excluding drive-in double features, was Empire of the Sun (1987), and again, maybe I was just fatigued.

I didn’t love either

The past, education, happy, sad

New York Erratic must be from New Jersey, she asks so many questions:

Are there any events in your life that you feel make good parables that you want to share one day with your daughter?

I was 51 when she was born, so there is a lot of my life to draw from. Huge parts of it she doesn’t know, significant events, and I’m not sure exactly when/if to tell her. Maybe if she asks. She DOES know about JEOPARDY!

I remember looking at photos of my mother with some guy she went out with before she dated my father, and initially, it was kind of weird, but hey, that was rather natural. When she would talk about it