It is what it is.

We're heading to DC next week for spring break. I wish we were staying here so we could housetrain the puppy, but my mom worked the guilt thing, so we've got to go. It should be OK, it's just going to be a pain traveling with a dog. We'll have to stop every couple of hours so Mookie can have a break and that's bound to make the drive considerably longer than it would normally be. I'm excited to see my family and all, I'm just not looking forward to the actual trip.

I find myself in a dilemma. I'm getting run ragged with all my daughter's activities. I'm sure she's getting run ragged, too, but I forced her to do guitar, so I'm not going to drop that. I think it's the taekwondo because it takes up so much time. Here's the problem, by the time we get home at the end of the day, she really doesn't have enough time to do all the practice and studying she needs to do before it's bedtime. She's supposed to practice her guitar six times and week, and if we're lucky, she gets two in. She's also been having a problem memorizing "math facts," which are basically just memorizing basic addition and subtraction. The do these things at her school called mad minutes where the kids have one minute to answer 30 or 40 addition or subtraction problems. The kids are supposed to be able to do this, but my daughter counts on her fingers and usually only ends up answering around 18 or so. This is not acceptable according to her teacher. The teacher says if she can't answer at least 80% of the problems, she's going to have problems in math next year, which I think is a load of shit. She understands math concepts very well. She knows exactly how to get the answer she's supposed to get, she just doesn't have the answers to simple problems memorized. Anyway, she's developing a complex about the entire thing. It's akin to when we had to memorize our times tables and it's something you've got to do, but to be perfectly honest, I couldn't immeidiately look at something like 6+8 and know it was 14 until I was in college. I still had to add on my fingers, but it didn't keep me behind in any way. I don't know how to help her get over this.