Tuesday's Activities Include: no more vomiting! lunch at Julie's, decluttering

No more vomiting! So tomorrow, T. can go back to school. Yay!

It was picture day for A., so she wore her spring dress. Possibly this will be the last time, altho you never know. It has been warm.

T. and I had lunch at Julie's. He skipped ice cream.

I did some minor decluttering today. T. and I went through two of his drawers (socks and undies, and the PJs) and got rid of too worn and/or too small. Now those drawers close much better. I also worked with him on the essay for his yellow belt on the principles of conduct -- he decided on effort. I directed him to talk about the effort of listening and waiting to ask questions at an appropriate time. Because I _will_ exploit opportunities to work on these things when they arise. We printed it out, put it in a page protector and put it in is martial arts back with his track log book and hung it in the front hall closet with his clean gi. I'm not sure this has ever been so orderly. It'll be the only time I'm sure.

We scheduled A.'s vision therapy appointments and are working on the next batch of T.'s vision therapy appointments.

T. was really kind of bored, so I had him do some math out of the Spectrum 3 workbook -- seemed about right, and he seemed to be able to do the work with effort, so about the right level. Nice to know I'm not totally oblivious to where he is in the math curriculum. It was fun watching him type the essay -- he's clearly completely memorized the keyboard layout, and has adopted and interesting single handed typing style that is more sophisticated and efficient than hunt-and-peck.

I had told my sister I was going to send her some of the For Her bic pens so relentlessly mocked months/years ago on Amazon, that I discovered were super awesome to write with. I couldn't fine them at Staples and wasn't sure if they had changed the name. The only ones for sale on Amazon were third party. I have four and only ever use one, and I've got another really nice pen as well, so I sent her three of mine; T. went with me to the post office to drop them off. We also returned 3 library books and dropped off a few items at the Middle Class Guilt Reduction Station when we went to lunch.

When I went through T.'s sock drawer, there was a pair of slipper socks in there, never worn, that he didn't want. I took them to put in my packed bag.

ETA: Eufy arrived! Review to follow, and then be revised repeatedly. Lots of fun!

I started working on the holiday card. This is a little early, but it is nice to get it started, so I know if I want additional photos in certain spaces.

I also stared at the power strip that sits on the short bookcase next to my recliner in the living room. It seems completely ridiculous to have all these USB cords that plug into very fat things that plug into outlets; it would be much better to just plug the USB cord into a USB slot -- takes up less space, etc. Unfortunately, an awful lot of multi-port hubs / charging strips / etc. have both USB and outlets (defeats the purpose) or the USB ports have a really low amount they can handle charging at one time (like, only one iPad, type of thing). I found a 10 port Anker that looks really good; we'll see how it works in practice. It would be nice if this thing would continue to work well in the face of increasing future demand, because that does seem to be the way things are going.

Eufy review, expect edits

I got a Eufy robotic vacuum cleaner. Why? Really. You have to ask? OK. Let's try some answers.

(1) I buy gadgets. I used to have a career programming ... stuff. Now I don't, because the career went obscenely well. Sometimes I want to play with new tech. I used to buy a lot of different gadgets, but now, the phone does everything, the tablet does all the same stuff for middle aged eyes and the laptop has a better OS / keyboard and runs the pretty monitor. No more gadgets there, so I buy robotic vacuum cleaners instead. Some day, I may advance to buying robot lawn mowers. It could happen.

(2) I am a middle aged housewife whose house cleaner died a while back and honestly, I'd rather not hire someone else. Nevertheless, I don't much like vacuuming, nor am I a huge fan of lugging vacuums -- even robot vacuums -- up and downstairs. So I had it in the back of my head that in an ideal world, there would be a canister and robot up and down. Children, let this be a lesson to you: when they say bigger houses mean bigger carbon footprints, they are not playing around. They are serious.

(3) The roomba is painfully loud, and gets stuck under tables. I'd like a robot vacuum cleaner that was a bit more spry. RHI the Eufy is slightly lower profile and much quieter.

After less than five minutes of set up time, which included placing the charger, placing it on the charger, turning it on, putting batteries in the remote and setting the clock on the remote, the Eufy is now vacuuming the upstairs hall (no, I haven't come up with a better name for it than that, and given that I called my office the "interstitial space" for years, really, you don't _want_ me to come up for a better name for it than that). It hits the door to the master suite a little hard; I'll check for marks, but I'm not particularly worried. It is _definitely_ quieter than the roomba. The upstairs hall does not present much in the way of challenges in terms of height / clearance, but it should prove a decent test of ability to remove dust from the floor. Because the upstairs hall is, among other things, the location of the laundry.

ETA:

Eufy gets a surprising amount of dust off a hardwood floor. It does take a while to complete the space (longer than roomba). It did not commit suicide when presented with the opportunity (upstairs hall is at the top of the stairs).