It’s been a while, eh?  Well, to catch ya’ll up on what’s going on here — the girl recovered from her little temperature bug.  Yay!  She’s doing great and we’re puttering along with our schoolwork.  SuperMath is her least favorite class, but she prefers it over the curriculum that we used last year.  This past week we learned how to turn fractions into decimals and how to square large numbers ending in the number “5”.  (It’s a pretty neat trick, and works every time!  It would be easier to demonstrate if I could actually “write” it the way the teacher does on the board, but here goes: 

75 squared — write it where the 7 is to the left of a backwards capital “l” and the 5 is to the right.  Square the 7 to get 49.  Then add 7 and 49 together to get 56.  Square 5 and bring it down to the right of the 56.  75 squared = 5,625.  Use your calculator and see if I’m right.

105 squared — write it where the 10 is to the left of a backwards capital “l” and the 5 is to the right.  Square the 10 to get 100.  Then add 10 and 100 together to get 110.  Square 5 and bring it down to the right of the 110.  105 squared = 11,025

Works every time, but only with numbers ending in 5.  No calculator needed.  Wowsers!

She loves anatomy and American History, and while Spanish is a very elementary class (basically just learning lots of vocabulary), she enjoys it, too.  We still struggle with the management of it all, but then again, we struggle with that with life in general.  So what’s so unusual?

Work continues — I had a couple of appointments with potential clients — one of whom I discouraged from ordering from me, because in all honesty, she had beautiful draperies that were perfectly fine and I didn’t think she would be happy with what I had to offer.  I’d rather lose the sale than have her regret buying from me, or worse yet, complain that I gave her bad counsel.  The other potential client asked if I had a particular cording available for my blinds — um, no.  She really liked what she’d seen at her friend’s house and so I encouraged her to do a little more research and then if she still wanted a quote from me, I would come back and measure her windows.  I could tell this cording that I don’t have is very important to her.  I did NOT want to measure 20+ windows, knowing the likelihood of my getting the job is very slim.  I’ll go back if she decides she is still interested, but at least I’ll know that she’s really interested.

Not to mention, she had miniblinds and my allergies are in overdrive right now.  You know, it does not matter how great a housekeeper someone is — blinds are dusty.  And I don’t think I could have handled measuring the windows today anyway.  My chest hurts from coughing — why aggravate it?

Wednesday may turn out to be a very good day for me business-wise.  I hope so, anyway, especially after the above-mentioned appointments.  I received a call from a company that does apartment rehabilitations.  They are spiffying up a 40-unit complex about 90 miles from here and they would like a quote for vertical blinds for all the units.  My guy and I are running up there Wednesday to talk to the project manager and measure a few windows so I can give them a quote.  I’ll be bidding against 4 other companies (nothing new) and so we’ll see.  I’ve done residential and commerical work, and I have good references, so hopefully this one will come through.  It would be a great job to get, and if they like my work, there may be more.  They are Houston-based, so I’m sure there are other apartment complexes in my general vicinity that I could bid on, provided they hire me for this one and like the work I do.

My guy is doing well, although he’s been struggling with some shoulder and arm pain these last several months.  He went for x-rays, a bone scan and bloodwork to see what’s going on there.  The x-rays and bone scan came back negative for any abnormalities.  We hope to hear back on the bloodwork soon.  I’m sure it’s fine — it would just be nice to know why a pulled muscle is taking so long to heal.

On a happier note, our girl received her Christmas present early this year.  She’s been wanting her own puppy — while her daddy has a golden retriever and we’ve been “sharing” a Chihuahua, she wanted her own dog.  So we went out to the breeders’ home where we got our Chihuahua to see what she had and our girl fell in love with the cutest little boy Yorkshire Terrier.  His name is Willie Flynn and he’s a pistol!  He’s 11 weeks old and full of himself for sure.  Our golden and the chihuahua seem to tolerate him pretty well, although sometimes I swear that’s a somewhat disgusted look on their faces.

Well, enough for now.  I will try to post a little more of what’s been happening tomorrow.  Ciao!