I spent the morning looking up stuff to apply to the school job and asking permission to use letters of recommendation.
I have not heard back from that Sergeant. I will give him until Monday and I will reach out to my other old leaders. Maybe they will respond this time. I would rather reestablish contact, but not ask for anything--this time!
I worked with my brother again. I really should collect data, but it definitely seems like I am seeing slow improvement. Mom complained that it wasn't a full hour, but I had him count 10 mini M&Ms, we did 140 flashcards, and then counted M&Ms again.
A hundred and forty flashcards are not many if they are cooperative, but it seems like I spend half of the time saying his name and trying to get him to look at me.
Then we did another kettlebell workout. I thought that I played the same video as before, but there were definitely different exercises. I was struggling and supposedly I was making him do the work (I wasn't!). When the instructor started yet another exercise I changed it back to Hallmark and got my brother water.
Somehow I played a half-hour workout video, not 15 minutes!
I need to figure out how to get Mom to declutter. She used to complain about how big her table was in the living room. She had me take it to storage and then we picked up a footrest.
That was way more comfortable!
She uses it like a table, but stuff always falls off. Almost every time that someone comes over she says "Quick! Hide the junk!"
Then she gets upset that I lift the footrest lid and dump everything inside. No, we can't put stuff away, especially unceremoniously!
Then we picked up another footrest, which she also uses as a table. It is also empty. Unfortunately, the lid is hinged, and I cannot just remove the hinges, so there is no easy way to move the junk inside.
I pushed back the footrests to have room to work out and realized that it had not been vacuumed underneath for too long, so I did that before pushing the footrests back. Today I pushed them forward and it was also dirty underneath, so I vacuumed that part.
Shouldn't I move all of the furniture at once and vacuum underneath?
I do not think that I mentioned Mom's bed anywhere. She always says that she needs a firm mattress, but for some reason after Dad passed away she bought a double-pillowtop.
Then she started complaining that her bed was too soft and her back hurt. This led to far more naps during the day and, instead of spending a great deal of time trying to get her to choose a mattress [on-line], I did a bunch of research and bought her a Casper.
A bunch of people on YouTube promote those mattresses and give you a $50 coupon. The problem [for us] is that Casper gives them $75. That isn't a problem for them, but Casper's default coupon works out to over $100 off a queen-sized!
NextBigThing got me $125 off of $1,095, 11.4%. I tried every code that I could find and that was the best. I installed Honey just to check and it didn't do any better, so I uninstalled it.
The fun thing is that after all of that work I found it on Amazon for $985.
It arrived yesterday and I was furiously attempting to catch up on notes with a giant and a ridiculously-heavy box next to me on the bed. Mom mentioned that she and my brother received their stimulus checks last Friday.
"Can I interest you in a brand-new mattress?"
"I need to sleep on it."
"Perfect!"
She slept a lot!
It was $1,024.32 with tax. I am sure that someone will tell me that they got a better mattress for $300, but we are happy so far.
I just need to get the old one out of my office!
Hopefully we can get some money for it after TPgate. When Mom bought it we put the best cover on it that we could find, but I worry the cover got damaged when I wrestled it out of her room, across the backyard, and into the shed by myself, despite constantly asking my brother for help.