thanks Kristin, Laura, Zenkitty and everyone for your kind words. Against my protestations Mom called and we had a good chat/cry but now my face hurts! Do you think a decongestant would help?

Sesame Street seasons 1 and 2 on DVD: Not suitable for children. [link]

Maybe a nice steam bath?

maybe a nice hot shower

OK had a shower, face feels better. Had some time to contemplate the fact that it is tough being the mom. Everybody dumps on her and she has noone to dump on. So sometimes she does crazy shit. Like forward your emails to the person you were talking about. For instance ...

"Last year I got Meg slippers that I had to go to three different stores for. When I finally found them they were on sale so I was able to buy her a bottle of Vodka and then I saw a bunch of flavored vodkas in a candy cane shaped plastic thingy by the checkout line so I had to get them too. (I always go over). I guess I should have known how little my gift meant to her by the fact that she never opened the candy-cane of vodkas"

and then I got...

"Thank you so much for my Christmas presents last year. I didn't mean to not drink the flavored vodkas, I forgot about them and was only reminded of them when I saw the empty bottles on the counter in the kitchen. I apologize for forgetting about them. Please forgive me."

Holy shit! What do I say?

Mom says, " think I've done enough damage for tonight..............I'm signing off..........."

!!!

Urp. But honestly, probably not a bad thing to have happen. I'd just say that you understand how that can happen, and of course you forgive her, but what you really want them to understand is that these gifts mean something to you, it's not just an exchange of $50.

I have to tell my roommate because he drank the vodka too. We toasted her being gone! We thought she left the vodka behind on purpose as a final "fuck you and your christmas present too!"

Maybe it was more of a "you'll enjoy these more than i will" gesture? Um, ok, stretch. My family stopped exchanging gifts when i was 17, after the year my stingy aunt gave me a broken pink tiffany watch. Sorry that yer family is being jerky :(

maybe I'm attaching too much importance to the gift exchange.

The actual subject matter doesn't matter anywhere near as much as the reasoning.

This is exactly my point, though. For the students that actually learn how to reason abstractly using quadratic equations, it's great content. But the current system doesn't require that - they need to know the skills, not the reasoning. And I believe that most students don't need to learn each and every Algebra skill in order to reason abstractly and, indeed, being forced to learn them all actually overloads many of them to the point where reasoning is the last thing they do.

I don't know if I'm making sense. It's late. Bedtime!