Stress? Is that it?

I have been fighting a headache off and on for two weeks.

In the past couple years or so, most of my headaches have been hormonal, and I can almost pinpoint when I'm going to get one. Unless of course my cycle is wacky, and since I am a 51 year old woman, my cycle IS a little wacky.

So I've been trying to decide what's causing it this time.

Of course all the work comp crap is still dragging on and on. Those stupid people would have saved themselves a boatload of money to just take care of me in the first place.

Now that I've taken care of it myself, I regret not doing so sooner. I am walking. Not limping. Not lurching.

I knew before the numbing agent had worn off post-surgery that they'd fixed the tear. The part that hurt me for a year was no longer hurting.

Of course I had some pretty horrendous pain for a few days, but a meniscus repair isn't anything like the agony of the ACL, and I was off the crutches in fairly short order.

We have a new manager at work. She is an okay person, I don't have a problem with her on a personal level, but she's kind of a micromanager. Most of us have been handling things for ourselves for the past eight years, and doing pretty well at it. There have been annoying little changes, and I'm certainly willing to admit that there's always room for improvement, but I'm not fond of paperwork. I don't have time to mess with paperwork during program time, and we're not allowed any planning time outside of ratio, we're supposed to do it while the kids are there.

I'm not the only person who ends up doing the paperwork by showing up a little early and working off the clock, or doing it at home in the evenings or on the weekends.

I'm simply not willing to take time away from my kids to dink around with nitpicky paperwork, so I don't. I'd rather donate my time to the company, I guess.

I'll end up talking with her about it eventually, but I'm waiting for the right opportunity to do so.

Also, she's a person who equates learning with teaching, and isn't familiar with translating everyday activities into educationalese.

Doing that translation is not just a trick to make our activities look good, though. It's truly the way kids learn best. She just doesn't understand the concept of learning through play. This isn't a character flaw or a shortcoming, it's just that she's had a lack of opportunity to see that kind of learning in action, something I saw all the time as I homeschooled my kids. It bothers her that she sees kids playing a lot when she visits our programs.

Thinking back to spy week and the codes and cooperative learning and problem solving and chemistry and following recipes and art and physical activity... well, yeah. We did not sit down and read those things from a book, instead we were active and pursuing learning with enthusiasm.

I'm willing to bet that most of the kids will remember our activities for a long time. They've sure talked about it a lot.

It will stick with them a lot longer than worksheets and teacher-guided forced learning.

I just hope I can find the right words when the opportunity to say them presents itself.

Meanwhile, I plan activities and continue to do things my way, hoping that it will all just.. work out.

I think that no matter how lovely the educational program is, no matter how many experts have planned the curriculum... if the kids aren't happy, the parents will take their business somewhere else. And my kids are happy. Sunshine's kids are happy. Brashley's kids are having fun, too. We have a lot of thriving programs, and I think our company would be smart to dig into the reasons why.

Do we do educational stuff? Constantly. We all learn every day. From sharing things we find in the amazing books I have brought in, to their speeches they're practicing for their classrooms, to pulling out the bionicam and looking at microscopic things, we are truly learning all the time.

Hm. Prices for everything going up. Anyone noticed that?
Of course no one's wages have kept up (unless they're one of the assholes elected to public office or a career criminal aka work comp attorney.. ha). I sometimes worry about where things are going to end up. We have an unsustainable economy, spending more money than we earn every day. Borrowing from the future. Not smart. And it causes me stress. More so because there's not a single fucking thing I can do about it.

Oh sure, I vote. I believe that most important races have been decided long before people go to the polls, and that voting happens because they're trying to keep the rabble unroused.

I still vote for the same reason some people go to church and believe in God. Just in case. (not intended as a slam on religion... really. I just think that some people don't really believe, but pretend to just in case... I mean, who wants to go to hell?)

What else. Hm.
Oh. The vehicle is getting old. We're going to have to get something else to drive, partly because Lyssa will need something to drive, and partly because gas is going to do nothing but go up and I still drive 160 miles a week to and from and to and from and to and from work. Right now, it doesn't make sense economically for us to have a different car, even though the one we have is a gas hog. It's old enough that even with comprehensive coverage, towing, rental car etc the insurance is still very affordable. Even with gas prices, it's still about $250 a month to drive. That's not bad. But it IS getting old. It's a '97. We're going to have to start putting money into it, or into something else.

So of course that's on my mind, too.

There's more. But I've gone on long enough and don't want to dredge up more.

Anything on your mind?