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So, Ralph's fiancee brought her grandson up for the weekend. At some point, my mother volunteered me to help him with his reading comprehension, since he doesn't have any. Which, you know, fine. I'm not thrilled with being volunteered to do something that I don't really know how to do, and "It'll be fine! :D You're great with little kids! :D" is not particularly comforting.
No joke. I wanted to say, "Uhm, that's not how this works," but I figured I'd at least give it a try. It never hurts to try, right? And at the very least, I'd keep him from irritating the hell out of the neurotypical members of the household.
Then he got here. Turns out in addition to his reading comprehension/ADHD problems, he also has night terrors. So the first night he was here, he woke up screaming at about two. Once I was more awake, I felt really bad for him. I still do. The worst part of it is, he doesn't even remember what he saw. That's such a fucked-up thing for a nine year old kid to deal with.
So last night, Marge left him a nightlight and also left my bathroom light on. As far as I know, that did the trick for him.
Unfortunately for me, just about the only thing I require (apart from medicinal help) to fall asleep is darkness. Not "near darkness". Not "mostly darkness." I mean I need the room to be pitch black. I stopped using regular alarm clocks because they keep me awake -- and even the teeny tiny light HK-47 makes when he's charging can keep me up, if I'm in an insomnia cycle.
So between his nightlight, the bathroom light, and the family of mice throwing some kind of goddamn mouse disco in my air vent, I didn't get to sleep until around four. I know I was awake at three thirty. And then I got up at six.
Just a quick reiteration that HughesNet is the devil: I installed the HughesNet download manager last night, right? To make sure I didn't go into FAP. Set the manager to grab Mint and my so-easy-you-are-ninety-nine-percent-guaranteed-not-to-melt-your-M:\-drive program. Tried to sleep at three. (Didn't. See above the cut.)
Woke up at six, realized my computer was off, the download of the easy-dual-boot program was finished, and Mintn had been left high and dry.
So I resumed the download, wrote a brief note explaining what the hell was going on and that I had maybe found a work-around for the whole FAP problem. Called the house at ten, had to deal with Ralph trying to pass my screensaver off as the download progress, then nearly had a frigging heart attack when he said that he saw a big green box (the download), but above that and to the right he saw a big white box that said "SERVER ERROR."
Turns out that was my HughesNet status page having a bitchfest (for some reason, it doesn't like to refresh every $NUMBER seconds for hours on end. Who'd have guessed?)--and that the FAP had cut in. So now I'm not going to be able to complete the download until... oh... four AM.
No joke. I wanted to say, "Uhm, that's not how this works," but I figured I'd at least give it a try. It never hurts to try, right? And at the very least, I'd keep him from irritating the hell out of the neurotypical members of the household.
Then he got here. Turns out in addition to his reading comprehension/ADHD problems, he also has night terrors. So the first night he was here, he woke up screaming at about two. Once I was more awake, I felt really bad for him. I still do. The worst part of it is, he doesn't even remember what he saw. That's such a fucked-up thing for a nine year old kid to deal with.
So last night, Marge left him a nightlight and also left my bathroom light on. As far as I know, that did the trick for him.
Unfortunately for me, just about the only thing I require (apart from medicinal help) to fall asleep is darkness. Not "near darkness". Not "mostly darkness." I mean I need the room to be pitch black. I stopped using regular alarm clocks because they keep me awake -- and even the teeny tiny light HK-47 makes when he's charging can keep me up, if I'm in an insomnia cycle.
So between his nightlight, the bathroom light, and the family of mice throwing some kind of goddamn mouse disco in my air vent, I didn't get to sleep until around four. I know I was awake at three thirty. And then I got up at six.
Just a quick reiteration that HughesNet is the devil: I installed the HughesNet download manager last night, right? To make sure I didn't go into FAP. Set the manager to grab Mint and my so-easy-you-are-ninety-nine-percent-guaranteed-not-to-melt-your-M:\-drive program. Tried to sleep at three. (Didn't. See above the cut.)
Woke up at six, realized my computer was off, the download of the easy-dual-boot program was finished, and Mintn had been left high and dry.
So I resumed the download, wrote a brief note explaining what the hell was going on and that I had maybe found a work-around for the whole FAP problem. Called the house at ten, had to deal with Ralph trying to pass my screensaver off as the download progress, then nearly had a frigging heart attack when he said that he saw a big green box (the download), but above that and to the right he saw a big white box that said "SERVER ERROR."
Turns out that was my HughesNet status page having a bitchfest (for some reason, it doesn't like to refresh every $NUMBER seconds for hours on end. Who'd have guessed?)--and that the FAP had cut in. So now I'm not going to be able to complete the download until... oh... four AM.
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But I found the idea of a mouse disco rather hilarious. I'm sorry.
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I'll be honest, I find the idea pretty hilarious. Totally imagining Basil from The Great Mouse Detective in the stereotypical white disco suit while Ratigan and Dawson do a karaoke cover of "Turn On The Music".
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In a completely unrelated note - Did you get my message about the Swinburne et al search? Let me know if you did, didn't, aren't interested in proceeding, whatevs.