I haven't been busy, as in single mother of three busy, but busy enough. Someone put off some math homework this week and it all needed to be done last night. That involved some crying and took all evening, but she managed to get it done. I was bad and let her use a calculator once she knew what she was doing. There was no way she was going to get it all done. The teacher is expecting her to learn the material by doing the homework and long division takes so much time when you're learning it. Annoying. She was really tired by then and I still had some work I needed to do.

The work stuff was mostly a bust. We used to be able to remotely log into our computers at work and, well, get some work done when not physically in the office. The new security settings allow us to remotely login, but only for fifteen minutes at a time, then we get logged off, whether we are connected remotely or not. That is sooo annoying. I used to be able to login, check the processing status, disconnect, come back later and reconnect, check again, etc. Now, once I login remotely, I get booted off after the 15min. When my "jobs" take over an hour, that does not make for progress. I played around with that foolishness too long last night, then again early this morning.

Later this morning I went to Kitty's school for the historical Halloween stuff in her classroom, which was each student reading about their character then I helped the other moms with the class party.


Dolly had made a skeleton cat, vegetable platter of sorts with bean dip. The kids hardly touched it, but then it was on a table with chocolate brownies, a couple different types of frosted sugar cookies, chocolate cake, cup cakes, some fruit, and sodas. Some of the kids took a little fruit, but the brownies and cup cakes were the first to go and the root beer was hit pretty hard.

She also made one of these platters that she took to her office. They ate it all and liked the bean dip.

Recess was after the party, but that was indoors because of the drizzly rain, then we all went to the gym for the full assembly of historical Halloween. The oldest student was King Tut. Most of the students were characters from the recent past. Kitty's class had three or four Mexican soccer players. There were the usual clusters of Cleopatra, Queen Elizabeth, Pocahontas, Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson, etc. There were ten or twelve Abes, most of those with some sort of beard and tall hat. Most of the kids had no costume to speak of, but I asked a few and they said they are dressing up in the evening in another costume. For example, one of the boys was dressed in a blue t-shirt, jeans, and sneakers. Who is that? ... Give up? Obviously, he's Sir Francis Drake. There were a lot disguised like that. There were very few who put any effort into their historical persona. Yes, Kitty was one of those who did, mostly due to Dolly's sewing. I guess we're costume snobs.