Random ramblings

My imp decided to throw a temper tantrum upon leaving the park, last Wednesday.  That meant that the kids didn't get to go to the park on Friday.  He's been testing boundaries, lately, testing them hard, and not just with Odysseus and me.  I know it'll ease up soon, but damn if it's not got me ready to run screaming for the hills. 

Even worse is that he knows that the crap he's pulling earns a spank, but he does it anyway.  And when I go to deal with it, he runs from me, screaming, "NO!  Don't spank me!" 

"Son, did you do such and so?"

"Yes."  (Said with a pushed out lower lip, and bowed head.)

"What happens when you do that?"

"I get spanks." 

"Would you rather stand in the corner?"

"NO!!  No, no, no, no--" and here, he bursts into tears. 

I wouldn't do it anyway, short of a repeat of the same behavior within about ten minutes of the spank.  He's claustrophobic, and the nose-in-the-corner is downright torture.  I find that more abusive than a spank.

I think I wound up pushing a bit too hard with potty-training the pixie.  She went several days dry (or mostly so--she'd catch herself and run for the bathroom), but went without pooping for the days that she was in undies. 

I do not understand why, but she got herself so bound up it wasn't funny.  She's back in diapers and pull-ups until we can get her trained to go poop sitting down on her potty, instead of hiding and squatting.

The dog has gone back into her "I'm a big, tough, outside terrier" mode.  I went to try to get her to come inside yesterday afternoon--before the hottest part of the day--and she jumped to the back of her pen and started spinning circles in sheer doggy enjoyment of teasing me. 

Okay.  Fine.  I went back inside and got her a cup of food, then left her out.  It's really what she prefers. 

We've put the cats on some new food--designed to keep spayed and neutered cats from turning into lazy lumps of chub and fur.  It works.  I wonder exactly what they put in that stuff that turns the cats in to spastic lunatics for about an hour after they go eat.  Because that's exactly what it does.  And I need something like that for weight loss.

I've got about half a dozen students in each class that came to me already knowing how to write a good, solid thesis statement from high school.  That's something that's never happened to me before.  The best I've ever had was about four in one class, and one in the other, plus one more that had a general idea of what to do, but still needed to polish the specifics.  I'm thinking that I'm going to be spending some of my time actually working on grammar and punctuation rules, because all they seem to need is a bit of polish.  They've already picked up focus and purpose, organization, and development.

I've still got about fifteen or sixteen papers to grade over the next two days.  After that, I'll be back to writing for a week, then grading again the week after.  I'm still pretty sure I can have Highway to Tartarus ready for beta-reading by mid-October.