100 Day Writing: Day 2

 French Friday !

Light rain this morning and the temprature dropped. I got a new idea when clean up books. I wanna to have an app to help me find out where to put back the book on the shelf by taking a photo. I'm not an IOS engineer so I tried work with AI agent, cursor and deepseek. No free food for anyone, so does applications. You need to pay if you need fancy &advance features. Of course, I don't wanna to pay so I have to work it myself. Uh, figma is not easy to use. I'm not surprised to see that how easily I found another new engineer thing to do. I want to try something else tomorrow, something that has nothing to do with engineer or coding. 

Good sign, I'm more flexible than yesterday. I can do strechtes better and less pain.

I wrote less today, because my husband is at home and he wants this computer to play game. Shame on him.

polished by deepseek:

Light rain this morning, and the temperature dropped—a perfect cozy vibe for reorganizing books. While cleaning, I had an idea: What if an app could tell me exactly where to put a book back on the shelf just by taking a photo?

I’m no iOS engineer, so I tried cobbling things together with AI agents, Cursor, and DeepSeek. But here’s the catch: nothing truly useful is free. Want fancy features? Pay up. Since I’m stubbornly frugal, I’m stuck DIY-ing it.

Figma? Not as easy as it looks. And now—surprise!—I’ve stumbled into yet another engineering rabbit hole. Sigh. Tomorrow, I’ll try something entirely unrelated to code. Maybe painting. Or staring at clouds.

Progress Note: My flexibility’s improving—stretches hurt less today. Small wins!

100 Day Writing: Day 1

 Today is my second day after being laid off. I tried to be busy and try new things. While, my daily schedule is fixed in the morning and night for taking care of kids, driving between home and school. So, I'm still kind of feeling that I can not get away of the way that I used to live. Not as good as I wish but somehow it is already nice enough for me to get a break. 

Working from home as an engineer and being parents at the same time blend the boundry of personal life and work. I got used to rash and live with pressure. There's always a tick tack sound in my ear. I kind of a little passive that this is the normal way of adult life. I wanna to change my mind and try new ways of living. Breaking from compatable zone is not an easy thing to do. But at least. I can start with small things to begin with.

I like rerange furnitures in my home when I feel something is not right or just don't like how it's now. I regret. I ask myself why I brought such heavy wood bookself. I don't know its weight but it must be over hundreds of pounds. I made a few scratches on the floor. The bookself break and fall down from stairs. My musule bustles and I rest for few minutes before I try again. Since it's already break, why not decompose some parts and maybe easier to move to upstair. Why I don't wait for my hunband back home and move the self together? He broke his ankeles and even without the feet problem he doesn't like my idea move furnitures around. While, that's fine, I can do it myself and enjoy my own way. Good thing being an adult is that you can do your own thing without listening to anyone else. Finally, I got it work and also moved the other bookself downstair and organizing all books in a neatly way. 

This is first day I back to writing for my life. I gonna keep it. 

I asked DeepSeek to polish for me and it replied below:

Day Two After the Layoff

Today is my second day after being laid off. I’m trying to stay busy and explore new things, but my daily routine—morning and night kid duties, school runs—still anchors me to the life I’ve always known. It’s not the fresh start I imagined, but maybe this break is exactly what I need.

As a work-from-home engineer and a parent, the lines between job and personal life blurred long ago. I grew accustomed to rushing, to living under pressure, that constant tick-tock in my ears. Part of me passively accepted this as "just how adult life is." But now, I want to shift my mindset and try new ways of living. Stepping out of my comfort zone isn’t easy, but small steps are still steps.

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The Bookshelf Incident

I’ve always rearranged furniture when life feels unsettled—or when I simply dislike how things look. Today, I regretted my choices. Why did I buy this monstrous wooden bookshelf? I don’t know its exact weight, but it’s easily over a hundred pounds. As I wrestled it upstairs, the floor gained new scratches, and the shelf itself cracked, collapsing mid-move. My muscles screamed. I sat, catching my breath, then had an idea: If it’s already broken, why not take it apart? Maybe the pieces would be easier to carry.

A logical voice whispered, Wait for your husband. But his ankle is injured, and even when healthy, he hates my furniture-shuffling whims. That’s fine. I’m an adult—I get to do things my way, even if it’s harder. Eventually, I triumphed: the shelf (now modular) made it upstairs, its twin migrated downstairs, and every book found a new, orderly home.

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Writing Again

Today, I returned to writing for myself. However this goes, I’m keeping it up.

Celestine & Lisa Learn - First lesson of Phonics

Celestine is 3 years and 9 month old. I cannot believe that she's almost 4. Fei and I were quite busy recently on work. We didn't have many time to play with kids. Things started to settle down. Now, I'm back on my track of home schooling Celestine and Lisa.

Monday, I started teach Celestine Phonics. She now knows almost all letters and able to write couple of them. I feel it might be a good time to start teach her Phonics. We finished 1 session in the book. She did great job and we learned three new words: motorboat, hamburger and ice cream.  She laughs practicing making sound of m and s. Silly Celestine.

Lisa started her first week at school yesterday. She did a great job. Celestine walked her all the way to classroom today. They singed along the way. Lisa began to cry at the classroom door. It takes time for her to get familiar with her teachers and other kids. I hope she will enjoy it soon. Ms. Phoebe is great and mindful. 

Home Story:
Three Friends under Deep Sea: Octopus, Squid and crab.

Learn with Cele: learn jobs

Today, we started with a matching game, jobs. Yes, this is the 3rd matching and glue game we had this week. Next week, I will plan more draw or count activities. 

I printed different jobs with things related to the job. Some Cele already know, like police drives police car. Some Cele can guess based on the picture, like the police badge. Some she's not familiar with, like the construction worker. We have talked about construction trucks a lot, but not the workers. Also surprised me that she matched the hose with firefighters I thought it's the farmer but she thinks that the firefighter uses water to put out fires. Kids are smarter than I expected.

 

She lost her patient in the middle but we finished together, I helped her put on glue and her put the pictures in place matching the correct jobs. 

Then we tried some fun games: colorful bubbles and paint with bottles. 

She asked to pour colors into the pan by herself. I thought there will be colorful bubbles once I pour dish soap and water in. But it turns out to be black when all colors mixed together. lol But, she doesn't care, she likes to make bubbles with a straw. We haven't played it since last autumn, too cold to play.

At last, it's the time for sisters. Paint together with bottles. We have blue and yellow and two bottles as painting tools. They don't use the bottles the way adults would use them. They played with the bottle for a minute and started painting their hands.

Tonight, after dinner, we have a wonderful storytime together. We read:

hungry wolf,

brown bear

runaway bunny,

rabbit or duck. 

Learn with Cele: dough time with Lisa.

 Today we learn with Cele and Lisa. I got a fun game for both of them: dough time. This is Lisa's first time playing dough. Cele hasn't been playing dough for a long time. I used to make cookies together with Cele and made her dough in different colors. 

For Cele, I printed a dough mat with numbers for her to learn. She likes to make apples and hang them on the tree. But I feel it's a little hard for her to make numbers with dough, maybe the dough is not soft to roll. lol

We all enjoyed and played for almost 30 minutes. I would like to let Lisa join our learning activities more often. Extra time for me to get prepared and choose a good activity for both of them.

Learn with Cele - Things that go together 03 - Count and Qtip paint

 Today is windy, we have to stay inside for the most time. After Cele's nap, we start our learning. Today I prepared a pack of activities, in case she wants to try different things.

We start by counting ladybugs and matching numbers. She's learning counting with fingers, sometimes repeat counting the same one, sometimes just miss one. I helped her count one by one and figured out the numbers. I feel she's not into numbers as she likes letters. But we could try different ways to learn math like Pete the cat story: Tome the cat falls in love with math through counting racing cars. I need to find things that Cele loves and play them with math.

Next, we did a night painting with a Q-tip. I gave Cele black paper and a Qtip to paint yellow color as stars. She only plays it for 2 minutes.

I feel today, she's not quite in the mood of learning. Maybe she just woke up. 

Also, I feel Wednesday could be a break day. We could play the most interesting things on Wednesday for a break.

Learn with Cele - Q day - Quilt

 Today is the Q day. We have learned the letter Q, head with a straw.

We played the game: making a quilt for the letter Q together. It's super easy to prepare, print out a big letter Q, and cut several small color papers. She knows glue papers very well. Now, she learned to put glue on the background paper first and then put the small paper on it. She likes to glue, she glued two big Q.

After making the Q a quilt, we also did a practice: finding a small q and cover it with papers. 

She asked for more funs, so I found her a color task: coloring a quail. She colored it all brown. lol. I know that she doesn't like coloring too much.