-
Packaging…
I went to Target the other day, and I picked up some contact lens solution. Pretty good deal, right? It’s not buy one get one free, but the pricing was great, and it LOOKED like buy one, get one free. See how both of the containers are equal in size? Nice. See Ted in the background? See how happy he is? Also nice. Then, I picked up some toothpaste, and look, a FREE tube of toothpaste comes with the one you pay for. Gotta love that. The way this is packaged, even though the front of the box clearly says that the FREE tube is going to be 4.2 oz,…
-
Blogaversary
I first (well, not first) came to the bloggy world one year ago today. (I say not first, because I actually started a blogger account, wrote one post, then promptly lost interest back in the summer of 2002.) If you look at Cherry and Autumn’s Mom‘s archives, you’ll notice that they started the same month that I did. I’d like to claim that I started it all, that I was the leader of our little group jumping into this world, but the truth is that I was the holdout. I felt like if I started a blog, I wouldn’t really have anything to say. People would be bored and no…
-
Another Pilgrim Post
After yesterday’s post about The Scarlet Letter, a tale of Puritans in New England, I thought I’d continue on a theme. After all, tomorrow is Thanksgiving. YAY! I was intrigued to see an ad in the newspaper for a television show, promising to tell a thorough, factual story of the crossing of the Mayflower and the beginning of the Plymouth colony. As this is Thanksgiving week, I thought it might be an interesting show to watch. The show is called “Desperate Crossing – The Untold Story of the Mayflower” The story starts in the early 1600s, with the Puritans (as we now call them – they were called separatists back…
-
The Scarlet Letter
I’ve finished the first book of my reading challenge. One of my New Year’s resolutions a year or two ago was to go back and read some of the ‘classics’ that I missed in high school and college. One such book was The Scarlet Letter. Reading books written 150 years ago requires me to slow down, to concentrate. I liken it to reading a book in a second language; a language of which I am familiar & fluent, yet it is not my first language, so I have to stop and consider the meanings of the various words and phrases. The style of the writing is such that I could…
-
What’s He Building In There?
 Without gossiping too much about our neighbors, let me just say that I was reminded recently that the identity that we show to the world is not always the identity that we show inside our homes. We recently found out that one of our neighbors has been leading a life that we merely had hints of, and the depths of which we had not imagined. Thinking of this reminded me of a day last year…I was walking back to work, after walking Maya to school. I passed by a house with its alarm going off. I used to work for an alarm company, so I know that there are…
-
TiVo Alert!
Popcorn and toast? For Thanksgiving? You bet! A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving is on tonight at 8:00, on ABC. ENJOY!
-
Kismit
A few weeks ago, I was talking to my step-mom on the phone, and she was telling me about a yummy recipe she has, for pistachio crusted cod filets. Hmmm, I thought, that sounds pretty good. So she mailed it to me.2 days later, Ted came home from the grocery store with a bag of pistachios. What? We NEVER buy pistachios. I swear, I’ve known him almost 20 years, and I don’t think we’ve EVER bought pistachios before. I’m not dissing pistachios. I love them. But they’re addictive and if there’s a bowl of them in front of me, I’ll eat the whole bowl, and I have witnesses who will…
-
Idaho? No thanks.
Not to lump a whole state into one nutty town, but I’m thinking no. Has anyone read about this news story? Here’s the gist. The tiny town of Greenleaf Idaho has passed a law that residents “who do not object on religious or other grounds…keep a gun in the home.” What? OK, don’t worry, all you have to do is object on any grounds you want to be exempt from this law, so it’s pretty much gutless. But what is the reason behind this law? “…citizens should be armed in case Greenleaf, which sits on high ground, is overrun by refugees in a Katrina-like flood.” Get that? Because when your…
-
Left or Right?
(Sorry the lettering on this pic is hard to read…it was bad on the original as well…)Â Yesterday, I attended a seminar on brain development. It was interesting to find myself disagreeing with the keynote speaker, as she talked about how children should not be introduced to letters and numbers until their corpus callosum is completely sealed, which happens at around age 6. Kids that learn to read before that age, she said, aren’t really reading, and if they are “forced” to learn prematurely, they don’t develop correctly socially and so on. Whatever. I read before that age, and so did Maya and all of her Montessori classmates, and you…
-
Why?
Why did my beautiful daughter have to inherit my mouth, so that she had to go through the pain and torture of braces? Ted has PERFECT teeth, not a cavity, straight and pretty and perfect (except for the few he knocked out in a motorcycle accident). And why did she have to inherit my eyes, so that she now needs to have glasses? Ted has pretty darned good eyes, no glasses until his mid 20s. Still way better than mine in the prescription department. Me? Full on braces, headgear, whole shebang. I swear, they were (ALMOST) worse than childbirth, because I had to keep going back and having pain again…
-
Warning…
It’s been 18 hours since my last Diet Coke. Ack! How do I feel, you may well ask? Well, my neck hurts, right at the spot where it kind of meets my shoulder. I’m guessing that has nothing to do with caffeine, and more to do with sleeping on it funny.  I’m also kind of cold. But I just closed the window, so that should help. The giving up of the diet coke has not been easy. I enjoy it. But I really need to take good care of my body, and there’s nothing in soda that’s good for me, so away it goes. It’s been over a month since…
-
Wordless Wednesday
-
Learning About Brain Fever
One great thing about having a child Maya’s age is showing her the books that I loved as a girl, and seeing if she enjoys them as much as I did, or not. Recently I went through my bookshelf and found a few she might enjoy: Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret. This book was HUGE when I was in the 5th and 6th grades. I think I got it from the bookmobile that used to come to our neighborhood. If you’re a man, or a woman who spent too much time living under rocks, so you don’t know this book, it’s about a girl named Margaret, who is…
-
Fostering Resiliency
The Center for Human Development in our area offers a “Healthy Choices” program, called “PEP” (Parent Educators Program), which the parents bring to some of the schools. Maya’s school is fairly small (under 200 students) and fairly new (this is their 6th year), and we are working to implement the PEP program in the school. Back when I was on the school board, when we realized this charter school experiment of bringing Montessori Education to the public schools might actually ‘take’, and we were probably going to stay open, we started looking past the immediate needs of getting a permanent location, running water, a principal, and funding to pay the…
-
I Stir My Rice…
When we make rice around here, unless it’s baked in the oven, we make it on the stove top. Mostly, we pour some long grain rice in a pot, pour in some broth, cover and bring to a boil. When it’s boiling, we take off the lid, stir the rice, reduce the heat to low, and replace the lid. Then you leave it until it’s done. Sometimes I go in and check the rice, lifting the lid and stirring the rice. Every time someone is over visiting when they see this occur (unless they are members of Ted’s family…I think they all stir their rice, too) they react as though…