Author Archives: Jen

About Jen

Jen isn't quite sure when she lost her mind, but it is probably documented here on Meditatio. She blogs because the world needs her snark at all hours of the night... and she probably can't sleep anyway.

Weekend Schtuff

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I was a domestic goddess yesterday. I made a batch of veggie burgers, a batch of pesto orzo, and 2 dozen black n’ tans. It was 6 hours of cooking and I got all the dishes done.

2 hours later, I have a MASSIVE panic attack. Jon is holding me as I am raging for a good two hours before my energy level drops and I crash. Thankfully, I took the last of my antibiotic last night, so I know that I can rule that out if it happens again. I see my big, fat, Greek doctor tomorrow morning, so I’ll explain to him what happened and see if he has any thoughts on what to do with this. I only pray that if he wants me on Zoloft that he has samples because we can’t afford for me to be on it without getting it well subsidized. *curses at insurance company who is refusing me meds and creating bills that are causing me additional stress*

This morning, I went in with Jon at 7:30 and crashed on his couch for 2 hours. I then got up and made my way down to the nursery for Sunday School. My attendant had failed to show up and so the grandpa (J) of one of my kids was there. I went upstairs to the other pre-school class to see if we could combine for the day. Upon returning to the nursery, I found that my nursery school class had quadrupled… three more boys under the age of 4. J looked at me with my puffy eyes and vacant expression and said, “I’m staying.” Believe me, I was (and still am) at the point of bowing down and kissing his feet for doing so. For one thing, one of my kids had to be held THE ENTIRE TIME and his parents forgot to pack another pacifier, creating an unpleasant situation when he finished his bottle. The older of the three brother set also kept picking on the middle child and was an absolute pill. Then… there’s J’s grandson who was having a bad day — meaning that he was being a holy terror. In the midst of it all, J is reassuring me that all will be well as I am profusely apologizing for not having everything together. He and his wife have been so supportive of Jon and I and they are the best gradnparents. They take their grandkids to church and teach them the faith and are *ALWAYS* willing to back me up in the nursery when I need a hand. They always greet me with a hug and ask me how things are with me. If I’ve been away, they ask me how my trip went. When I left to go to choir, I ran into J’s wife S in the bathroom while I was putting a cold cloth on my eyes. She hugged me and told me that it would all be OK — not knowing what was going on but knowing that I probably needed that hug.

After church, I actually got something done in my insurance mess (typing a letter to one of Jon’s doctors explaining about our evil insurance company and asking for their help) and we went and got me an Iced Cap at Tim Horton’s. Yes… it’s caffeine (which is not doing good things to me right now) and yes we are flat broke, but I needed something comforting. (I *RARELY* eat out so it was indeed a treat.) I talked to my mother-in-law who told me to talk to my (big, fat, Greek) doctor about my antibiotic situation and we cleaned the cat’s commode. Tip: if you use Feline Pine for kitty litter, make sure you change the whole box every few days because it gets ground into a fine powder otherwise. It took two vaccuum cleaner bags to contain all the cat dust and then little allergic Jen had to Clorox every part of the vaccuum cleaner used because we use this vaccuum cleaner on all our floors and it was MAJORLY filthy. It took me about half a container of Clorox Wipes to get it disinfected and all the dust out. While sitting on the porch cleaning it, I noticed several BIG patches of poison ivy that have sprung up in the last few days. I called around to see how we should remove it and my mother-in-law (when I talked to her later) suggested finding someone who is *NOT* allergic to it (as I am about 90% sure I am and we’re equally as sure Jon is) to do it and pay them because paying someone $20 to dig it up beats a $65 doctor’s bill as well as Technu, calamine lotion, and the potential to go into anaphylactic shock.

We head out to Kroger to get a newspaper (for the coupons — which turned out to be missing) and some groceries and I inadvertently picked up some Lactaid milk that was outdated, so we had to return later and exchange it. So now I’m sitting here blogging and waiting until I’m tired so I can curl up in a ball and make this day end.

Is This Really Something To Fight About?

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Girl sues to be lone valedictorian.

According to CNN:

Blair Hornstine’s latest report card had four A-plus grades in five courses. She scored a 1570 out of 1600 on the SAT and is deciding whether to attend Harvard, Stanford, Duke, Princeton or Cornell — all of which have accepted her.

But despite her best-in-her-class grades, her school district wants to name her co-valedictorian with two other students.

Hornstine, the 18-year-old daughter of a state Superior Court judge, has asked a federal judge to intervene, saying that being forced to share with students with lesser grades would detract from what she has accomplished.

She has also filed a notice saying she plans to sue the school district in state court claiming the dispute has humiliated her. She said she would be asking for $200,000 in compensatory damages and $2.5 million in punitive damages.

Her school district looks at the disagreement another way: Because of an immune deficiency, Hornstine is classified as a disabled student and has taken a class load that doesn’t include physical education and involves her spending part of her school day studying at home.

The two other Moorestown High School seniors with nearly perfect grades could not match her grade-point average, officials said, because classes like gym receive less weight in calculating the GPA.

“After reviewing these issues, I was concerned about the fundamental fairness of the academic competition engaged in for the valedictorian and salutatorian awards,” Superintendent Paul Kadri said in a court filing. “The level of competition … had been compromised.”

U.S. District Judge Freda Wolfson set a hearing for May 8, and the Moorestown Board of Education planned to consider what to do about the situation at a May 12 meeting.

Graduation is June 19.

Hornstine, who said she plans to become a lawyer, is not the first student to sue over the right to be valedictorian of a high school class.

In the last year alone, judges have been asked to consider similar cases in Ohio, Washington and Michigan. In two of the cases, students who wanted to be included as co-valedictorians were allowed by judges to be included. The third case, in Michigan, involves a student who wanted an A changed to an A+ so he would be more likely to be valedictorian.

Maybe it’s just me but… is this really so life-threatening that you have a federal judge intervene??? This kid is spoiled! I mean… she thinks “being forced to share with students with lesser grades would detract from what she has accomplished” and she’s suing the school district in state court for millions for humiliation. The school district is being a little strange in saying that they need to level the playing field because this girl didn’t have to take gym (thus having a GPA that is a little more skewed because of less classes etc.) but she also has an immune deficiency and can’t take gym.

As far as detracting from her accomplishments, she’s got a nearly perfect SAT score, she has 5 of the most prestigious schools in the country vying for her attention, she has a 4.0 — and she’s doing it with her immune deficiency problem. The fact that she is graduating and doing all of this says enough about her abilities and how capable she is. Being co-valedictorian with two other students who might have had just as many difficulties as she did isn’t detracting from anyone’s judgement of her capabilities. She says she wants to be a lawyer — would I really want to hire a lawyer who sues over something as frivilous as this??? I mean… she doesn’t have a leg to stand on because her school isn’t breaking any disability laws and her humiliation is her own swelled ego’s fault — not the school district.

Granted, her grades are the best in the class, but she also has a different standard. Would she prefer to be disqualified because she didn’t take gym? My high school also didn’t have valedictorians and salutatorians because we had so many people with 4.0’s. (We didn’t weight honors in our GPA’s or give extra points for +’s.) Instead, anyone with a 3.5 or above could audition to give a speech at graduation. I remember that one of our speakers *gasp* had a 3.7 GPA but was still a better speaker than the other two.

OK… Jen’s nerves are worked. Back to making bread.

Domesticated

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Domesticated, my domestic arts blog, is back up. However, the URL is now http://www.peacefulwaters.org/domesticated instead of the old subdomain-style one because I had to downgrade it to just a directory on my site. Please update links and bookmarks accordingly.

-The management

National Day of Prayer

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It’s the National Day of Prayer so… let us pray:

Almighty God, to know you is to have eternal life. Grant us to know your Son as the way, the truth, and the life; and guide our footsteps along the way of Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,one God, now and forever. Amen.

(LBW Prayer for the Feast Day of St. Philip and St. James, Apostles)

Answer: Partly Cloudy with Rays of Sunshine Peaking Through

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Question: How is it with Jen’s soul? (Nobody guessed the origin, so nobody got the 50 mythical points. The answer was John Wesley. Are some of ye not Methodists that read this blog????)

I’ve gotten out of the house in the last few days — Monday to fill out job apps, Tuesday to go grocery shopping and ogle household/sports/camping stuff at Walmart, and today to get a vaccum cleaner at Walmart ($48 for a decent vaccum cleaner is nothing to sneeze at) — and this has made a huge difference in my mood and all. I think that I am getting cabin fever and I look forward to being able to get my bike fixed so I can go on long rides and get some exercise. I don’t have to be as afraid of dogs when I bike (and the people here think that dogs should roam the neighborhoods which is why my babies stay indoors) and I can run errands or even bike to work if I find a job that is close enough.

For some reason, I go through phases where I am die hard into household stuff. I really wasn’t when I got married and then I was walking through the Hudson Bay Company in Toronto and started ogling bedsheets. It was strange and now, I *LOOOOOOOOOVE* walking through the household section of Walmart or Target for some reason — maybe because I’m excited to move again and be in a place where we can buy more permanent stuff or something. I’m looking forward to being a housewife in a house that we can decorate ourselves and where I (hopefully) have a laundry room on the ground floor. (I have a strange and probably unfounded fear of finding a snake in our basement, so Jon does the laundry in the house.) One of the reasons I started Domesticated was to indulge my girlie/feminine side a bit with others who were like-minded. I actually don’t mind being a housewife and cooking and dusting — just not when I’m sick. I’m also in the process of cleaning my study, which means that there will be quite a few nights of paper-organizing merriment at Casa K-M.

The State of the Felines

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I know that I really should post more about my felines (and that I should post more pics — if you’re not on my list for kitty pictures and want to be, leave me a note in the comments), so here’s “the state of the felines”.

The boys are growing. It is so crazy to look at pictures of them nursing on Jon’s stuffed fox and then to look at them now that they are the same size as Jon’s stuffed fox. Finian is my office assistant. He is too big to fit in either of my desk drawers, but he *loves* the camping chair in my study. I’ll be working on the computer and I’ll hear a mew from the doorway or my feet and I’ll just pat the chair. He will come bounding up and leap gracefully on to it and allow himself to be petted while he purrs lustily and lashes his beautiful, plumey tail. He will then occasionally attack my right hand, causing me to have to type lefthanded (and make instant message conversations a little more difficult); but he always cleans my wounds when done. He is a wonderful stressball and is content with me reaching down and petting him occasionally.

Cullen is still the smaller of the two but is an adorable cat. He is a total Daddy’s Boy and will not let Jon leave his sight if Jon is at the vicarage. His stripes and yin yang are still bold and his Mary mark (the little M that tabbies have on their heads) looks like someone painted it with henna. He is still the more skittish of the two but he is a definite attention monger and loves to “explore” my study and bat hangars out of my closet. He keeps me company at night and is very good at attacking anything that moves on the bed. He considers himself to be a mighty cougar (or puma) and enjoys bringing his “prey” (a pair of ski socks that he has completely unrolled or a skein of yarn that he has claimed from my crocheting basket) onto the bed and kills it before my eyes. Currently, he is being a homicidal, jungle cat in the forest of paper bags we have scattered in the living room. He still loves to “help” us make the bed by pouncing on lumps. He is a very useful cat.