Unwanted Advice

So I was having a private conversation with a coworker in the breakroom about a particularly bad night.  Let just saw one of the kids tried to slug me and got spanked for it and got up from their short spanking and immediately said "that was fun" with a smile on his face, got spanked again later on when he repeated the offense, and to top the night off when I was restraining him from running away to play when he was supposed to be sent to his room I got tired of having him suspended mid air trapped between my knees (this was an odd arrangement for the restraining and when I went to put him down he hurt his foot.

Then this complete stranger who I've never spoken to before starts bursting into our conversation and telling me how I should or shouldn't parent, whether I've studied any child psychology, and that I'd better watch out cause I'm going to get in trouble with the law if I don't stop using physical spanking.  I probably should have said "excuse me, I don't know you, leave me alone" but I tried to be polite.  It was really obnoxious.

I guess it happened because I'm young and obviously stressed about it so random by standers feel the need to tell me what to do.  I've had other coworkers try to order me to force the bishop to get the kids into counseling, which given the time tables involved in whats going on just wouldn't be practical, they're leaving too soon for the bishop to do anything more than just say hello I'd like to get to know you.

I don't mind suggestions from people that I know.  I've actually gotten some really good pointers from people at work who I'm close friends with.  However, some people don't seem to feel any boundary between my business and their business sometimes.

Any suggestions on stopping do gooders?  I'm afraid the genetic dice are weighted towards Bonnie Jean and I receiving a lot more incidents like that in the future.

Institute manuals

So I finally managed to get my institute manuals all loaded into my Ipaq along with many other documents. Took a bit of effort. But in Elder's quorum someone decided to get side tracked talking about the supposedly secret knowledge of super secret no longer practiced temple ordinances they gained knowledge about as an ordinance worker 20 years ago. Despite claiming it was some sort of super secret ordinance they offer to share their knowledge about it in public now... Then they claim that church history documents on the subject support these claim when I've READ those passages and official church literature and they don't support the super secret special knowledge claim... how many I can't trust you as a legitimate source flags can you throw?... anyhow I got bored and discovered our classroom was close enough to the university for me to pick up the public wifi access and I started downloading church handbooks and manuals to the Ipaq to fill the time. I managed to get everything except the Book of Mormon manual successfully loaded in. Suddenly I had the brain wave that perhaps the problem was my Ipaq PDF viewer doesn't like 400+ page documents. So I went home, split the manual into two parts (which for whatever reason made the file 5 times larger... must have lost some compression there) and then reloaded the document. Whala. It works.

Bonnie Jean seems to think I'm a magnet for strange lessons. People proposing specific mechanisms for how thoughts can be transmitted spiritually, suggestions that meat lovers pizza breaks the word of wisdom, conspiracy theories about the medical industry, proposals for specific commandments to follow to be eligible for the blessing of being translated... I don't know maybe I am a magnet for the weird and strange when it comes to lessons. Hopefully I won't have any more use for the wifi in Elder's quorum. In the meantime, I have most all of the institute manuals handy for casual perusal in scripture study. Pretty cool. Unfortunately I only have 20 MB of space left on my Ipaq. Perhaps I should delete that collection of Charles Dickens novels that I downloaded but have no near term intention of reading?

Swine flu

So I got my swine flu vaccine just a few days ago. I was really impressed by the syringes they were using. Instead of the typical poke you and hold the needle in while they make sure they don't overinject you and then pull it out, it was a spring loaded mechanism so that the entry, injection, and removal all happened as fast as possible. End result was I barely felt any pain at all in contrast with a normal injection. And I don't think it was just my perception either because when they gave the shot to Uriel he whined for a couple seconds and then seemed to calm right back down when he couldn't figure out what just happened because I was covering his face during the injection. Within 2 minutes or so he was back to his normal self. We were expecting a cranky baby all day long after that one.

Barf 2

Ok, so this isn't going to be the new theme of my blog, but it was too funny to pass up.

So we come out of our room to find Ulysses throwing punches at his sister. We try to send him to the corner but he refuses and when I try to move him there he decides he'd rather throw punches at me. Not that he packs that much punch at 7 years old but still I'd rather not sit there and take it so I tell him he can sit in the corner for 3 minutes or I can sit on him for 3 minutes. So I've got him there pinned to the ground, and he tells me that if I don't let him go he's going to throw up. Considering he's been sick recently I'm willing to believe him. I tell him to go to the toilet to throw up there and let him go. Instead of going to the toilet, he dashes off to the living room to reposses his blanket, which was the center of the original argument. I tell him don't go to the living room to throw up go to the bathroom. I really don't feel like cleaning it out of the carpet again. He refuses, saying that he only needed to throw up because I was squishing him before. I had been trying to only rest enough weight on him to let him know he wasn't going anywhere, but oh well. Knowing that there's little chance that he's gone from fully nauseated to feeling fine in a few seconds, I pick him up from the carpet and wrestle him over to the bathroom. I can't get the toilet open quickly so I just hold him over the tub where he proceeds to deposit his dinner. Victory! the barf went somewhere I can just wipe it up instead of trying to get it out of the carpet.

So after that when I'm cleaning it up I notice a lot of it really wasn't that chewed up and I tell him to chew his food more. BJ tells me now is not the time to lecture him on his chewing. Apparently by then he had enough energy to tell me emphatically that he was doing the best he could and that I shouldn't criticize his lack of chewing.

What an interesting day that was :)

Internet Filter

So today we discovered unexpectedly that we need some internet filters. The stuff built into the OS blocks secure websites altogether and only works with the built in browser rather than firefox. I have to wonder how many crises my body can take. I don't normally intentionally stay up past midnight setting up web blocks on people's computers. Any suggestions anyone for mac compatible web filtering across two computers/ 4 user logins plus a windows machine two logins?

Barf

I've never cleaned up barf off a carpet before. I hope I did a good job. I want my rent deposit back... though with each expedition with a sharpie or a crayon the kids take that seems less likely.

Temple Recommends

I'm grateful to have a temple recommend. I was irritated when my last one expired just as the insanity of preparing for kids to show up happened and we switched wards. It takes some time just to find out who the executive secretary for a new ward is... and then to convince him your actually a member of the ward even though he doesn't know your name like the back of his hand because apparently this part of southern Utah has little social mobility...(never thought I'd hear anybody bear testimony about how its good to experience the emotions of moving from a house you've lived in for a long time at least once in your life, but it happened here). Ok that was an exaggeration about the executive secretary but its pretty close to what happened. So when we finally settled in the ward enough to know who to contact, we finally got those recommends again. Kind of nice.

Now only to find a babysitter and get chores done early enough in the day we can use them :)