Education

New Math

4 + 4 = 1.5


Who knew?

Life Skills

Someone learned to blow bubbles (motorboat) in the pool this weekend. Someone did it several times in a row on Saturday. Someone pretended he had no idea what his mother was doing on Sunday when she tried to get him to do it again, and possibly reliably enough to shoot a video. Someone has no idea how much trouble he's going to be in with the internets once they read this.

Photography

Someone has also discovered that when the little silver box comes out, he should mug for the camera when really the person behind it just wants him to keep doing what he's doing.

Reading

Someone discovered the joy of pulling all the books off the shelf at Barnes & Noble, while Mom and Dad try and find a decent children's book that doesn't look easily digestible.

In which I become a thief

The remnants of tropical storm Erin headed through Houston last Thursday. We got about an hour or so of rain out at my office, but not too terribly much. I had class on Thursday evening, and while I heard about some flooding in East Houston, nothing said that HCC might cancel the classes. So I went ahead and went into town.

I got to the building, parked on the 5th floor like I always do.

I went down to the 1st floor and out the front to get dinner. Just like I always do.

The security guard said “Good Night!” to me like he always does.

I came back in and the security guard had me sign in, like he always does…(why? I don’t know, because when I leave I don’t pass him again.)

And THEN he tells me that HCC is closed. And in my damsel in distress mode, I made a big deal out of it because a) I have no money to pay the parking garage guy and I need a validation sticker and b) I was thinking on the ride over how I wish I could just go home and it turns out I could have – but instead opted for a 2 hour pointless side trip.

The way this building works is that they can shut the elevators down so you can leave via any floor of the parking garage, but you cannot get up to any offices with out a badge. They shut it down like that every day at 7pm, but also are able to do that, if say…an office closes for the day.

So he lets me up to the 7th floor anyway – doesn’t seem like a very secure thing for him to do, but maybe he recognizes me. Except if he recognizes me, why then does he tell me “Good Night!” every time I walk through to get something eat if he knows I’m coming back. He’s right, there’s no one up there, and there’s a sign that says they’ve closed the campus. Except if I hadn’t made a huge deal to the security guard about it, I never would have seen the sign and they didn’t bother to broadcast that news on anything.

And then I turned criminal.

I had no money. No cash, the parking garage only takes cash. I hadn’t been paid – payday was the next day, my allowance fund was not even enough to bother finding an ATM.

I knew where the receptionist kept the parking validation stickers, and without so much as a backwards glance, I walked around her desk and opened the drawer. I looked to see if I could sign in and account for the sticker, like I always do – but there was no sign in sheet anywhere.

I assume HCC has to pay some amount of money for those stickers and I suppose, the guys in the parking garage might have bought my story if I hadn’t gotten one. But if HCC didn’t want me to steal a sticker, they should have called me and told me my class was canceled.

Tonight, in some morphed bit of reasoning, we are making up the missed class by having a field trip, during what should be tonight’s class. So somehow, a 4 hour class that we missed and a 4 hour class tonight (8 hours total) will all be made up for by a 4 hour field trip. I’m not arguing, I just want to know where the logic of 4+4=4 comes from.

Current Events

Guess what’s on the news today? No, go ahead, guess. It won’t be hard. I’ll give some clues. You tell me how many it took you to get it.

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Its kid related.

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Its China related.

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Its toy related.

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Its paint related.

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Its lead related.

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If you don’t have it by now, how’s life as an ostrich?

How many more lead paint related recalls are coming? It makes me afraid to buy toys. Luckily I’m not big on buying toys to begin with, but still.

It started out with cheap vending machine jewelry, but has moved on to Thomas the Train and Mattel. Every time I hand him a toy with any kind of paint on it, I think “Is this going to make him dumb?” “Am I poisoning my own child?”

And as a special bonus, this makes me oh so proud to own stock in Mattel.

A boy and his truck

We went to Babies R Super Expensive this weekend, we were looking for some more tank top outfits that are tank tops and shorts in one. We thought we bought them there before, but I guess not. We also needed a few more bottles, as 2 are MIA and 2 are visiting the grandparents. I had a coupon for 15% off in my wallet, but forgot it in the car, and I left Clinton alone in the store for not more than 3 minutes while I went out to the car to get the coupon.

3 measly minutes. And the 2 of them found this:


That's a reenactment of my face when I saw the price.

He was not giving it up. And I figured for sure that when we got home, he'd just ignore it, but he did at least play with it. And he's even got his hand signals down, at least for the right turn. Nice and safety conscious.

Or maybe not.

Carrot results

I tried to pull up just one, but a bunch came with it. Here's my biggest carrot:

For some size perspective, these are pictures with a teaspoon:

I still have a few left, the package said 60 days to harvest and it's been 60 days, but I thought I'd give them a few more weeks. Also tiny carrots? Not that tasty.

Keeping the lynchers at bay

I know it's been a while since you had a picture and the one I'm about to post is not a new picture, it was actually taken in June.

If he's playing with my toys, I get to lick him, right?

My eye has been hurting for a few days, yesterday when I put my contacts in, I thought to myself, I should probably wear my glasses, but I didn't. Because I'm vain.

Mid morning I told my supervisor I was going to the Whole Health Center before my eye fell out. It's like a clinic at work, for $10 you see a nurse practitioner, and she can write prescriptions or whatever for general issues.

I made the minor mistake of describing the pain as "pressure" and the woman FREAKED OUT. She suggested I go home immediately - despite the fact that I have a deadline of (well, today) for my 250+ page report. I told her I had a deadline and that I couldn't get home to take my contacts out until this evening, I can't drive without them, and I'm not driving 60 miles to take my contacts out and come back. Anyway, she prescribed the drops I felt I needed and an antibiotic I feel I don't need. I'm doing the drops (also antibiotic) for a couple days and if it gets better, I'm not taking the pills. She also said something about if it didn't fix it, that I could come back and they could give me a shot and then we'd "re-think" the breast feeding. Now look, I'm not a breastfeeding nazi or anything, I'm not a member of LLL, but I've made it 10.5 months. And surely a scratch on my eye is not going to be the reason I stop with only 6 weeks* to go. If it’s not healed next week, I will go see a real doctor. And I do think it's a scratch and not so much an infection, simply because the last 3 contacts I have put in my left eye have only made it a couple days before ripping in half. I understand the need for the antibiotic approach for keeping me from getting an infection from the scratch, but the drops are also antibiotic and I think it's overkill.

Since I have a high deductible insurance plan, and as such will be paying my entire cost of prescriptions and doctor visits until I shell out $1100, I looked up the price of the prescriptions online and found that they were both on Target's $4 list, so I decided to go there to get them filled. I dropped them off, the pharmacist said it would be 10 minutes; I wandered the store and came back. She asked if there was a Dr. who the NP worked under and I said "no" it's a work clinic. And she said "Oh, well I’ll just fill them under the NP's name, since she is legally allowed to write prescriptions." Uh...yeah, I mean, shouldn't you? Shouldn't you fill a prescription under the name of the person who wrote it anyway? Whether or not she works with a doctor. Or is that just me? So then it was another 10 minutes, because rather than page me and ask, she just waited until I came back and then didn't bother to do anything else towards getting the prescriptions ready. Whatever, I can't complain; it was only $8 for something that would have cost about $40 at Walgreens (according to their website). I started my drops last night and have applied them twice this morning, and while they sting at first and actually make my eyes redder, they do seem to be working, because I don't have the pain I had before.

* My goal was originally 1 year. 1 year THEN wean, so technically, it's more than 6 weeks.

Ethical dilemmas continued

FAIR WARNING, THIS IS NOT A STORY FOR THE FAINT OF HEART. It's a little gory and very sad, you may want to skip this post. And also not read it either while eating or shortly after eating
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Ok, I warned you.

On Friday morning, Clint left for Gun Barrel, and I was preparing to take my girl scouts to Lake Limestone. I had a bunch of errands to do, and one included taking Ivan to the vet for what seems like will be his annual cortisone shot for his mosquito allergy. Apparently we can’t do anything to prevent this, without allergy testing and weekly allergy treatments, so, he had an appointment on Wednesday, Clint left work early to take him and then couldn’t find him. We rescheduled for Friday morning, so I was looking for him. The cat knows when he has an appointment and knows exactly where to hide, because I couldn’t find him either and ended up calling and telling them that I would need to call back if he resurfaced.

In my hunt for him however, I was in the backyard, since we have a section of fence that’s like at a 45° angle and has been for a few weeks, I thought that as long as I was out there, I’d go see what we’d need to do to fix it. Ever made a decision in which you truly wish you could turn back time? I come up to the fence and notice a particularly foul odor. And I’m looking and I see what I think is possible fangs from a snake and maybe and eye and some skin that looks scaly. And I looked on the bottom side of the fence.
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It’s not a snake. It’s not fangs. It’s a claw. Now, I can’t tell if it’s a raccoon, or a cat or a possum. But I didn’t stick around long enough to find out. I ran back into the house, horrified. Remembering the other night when I heard a cat crying and I couldn’t find it. Remembering the nights that Scarlett was back in that corner of the yard and I could not for the life of me get her to come in.

I called Clint, one of his household duties is the removal of dead animals. He used to share this duty with Shane. I have issued orders of removal for a mouse, a squirrel and now, this – what I hoped was a raccoon. I told him of my grisly discovery, and went on to the Girl Scout trip. I can honestly say that animal was in the back of my head all weekend. (I did find Ivan and took him to the vet and all is well with Alexander, and also the gray cat that does not belong to us, but apparently we feed.) So when Clint finally got home, and went to inspect the dead animal, he said he needed my help in its removal due to the angle of the fence. I asked if he could tell me it was a raccoon. And he was silent. And I knew. And he said slowly, “I … can … tell … you … it’s … a … cat.” And I said “NO!!! Tell me it’s a raccoon.”

And all I could think about was the week I was missing Alexander. How during that week all I wanted to know was where he was. If he was dead, I wanted a body, I needed closure. Here’s the thing, this animal, which I would still like to believe may not have been a cat, had already lost a significant amount of hair, there’s no recognizing a cat by its skeleton and dried up skin. And there had been lost cat posters around the neighborhood a few weeks ago, but not within the last week or so. That cat has been hanging on our fence for at least 2 weeks. We put him in a black trash bag; he’ll go out with the rest of the week’s trash on Wednesday. How do I get over this? How do I live with myself for not being able to tell someone what happened to their cat? What if I call the lost cat poster people and it turns out not to be their cat? Or worse yet, what if it is? And who’s to say which of the lost cats is the one we have? The cat, like ours and so many others in the neighborhood had no collar. I’m heart broken for this cat, and his/her owners. And I’m mad at myself for not looking harder for that crying cat a few weeks ago, when I may have been able to save him.

I know now, that when I hear a cat crying, I will walk the fence of our yard. But that doesn’t save this cat. This cat that I'm still hoping is actually a very skinny raccoon.

Is this an ethics test?

Saturday's mail contained my completion certificate for the roofing systems class I'm currently enrolled in. A class which is still supposed to meet 6 more times. That certificate is all I need (in addition to what I already have) to contact the TREC board and get permission to take the inspector test. I can't wait to see if any of the other guys in the class decide they no longer have to come since they already have their certificate.

Monthly Newsletter #10

Dear Landon,

This month you discovered that you and Noah are not the only babies in the world. You met your new cousin, you stared at her in disbelief. She’s so small. You fretted over her and gave Uncle Austin a dirty look when you thought he made her cry. You met one of her friends, who is about a month older than you, and she ran all over the room and you bit her butt. Or maybe you were trying to give her a zerbert or kiss. We’ll never know. But you most definitely liked her. There was much screaming for joy. And “yea!” clapping.

You’ve begun cruising with some regularity. I set you down on the floor and you rarely stay there, it’s off to find something to pull up on. Standing is the way of the future. Also, baby proofing is apparently the way of the future as well. Someone we know has a cabinet fetish and has some strong pull towards the pantry when it’s open.

You still have an aversion to most of the toys we present to you, instead favoring things like a broom handle, or dog toy, or a plastic cup, or the dogs’ water bowl. The dogs have been kind thus far, allowing you to play with their stuff, although they don’t seem to understand why they get yelled at for playing with your stuff. Their interest in where you are and what you're doing and that they come poke their noses in your face makes you giggle almost uncontrollably. Scarlett even brings you a rope occasionally thinking you might throw it for her. And you don’t, but one day you will, she’s sure of it.

With my new job and Daddy picking you up everyday, and having given one of your car seats to your cousin, we have switched car seats around and bought new ones, I used to take you in with the carrier and now in the mornings I have to carry you into Linda’s and hand you to her. For the first week you were terribly upset. Every time I handed you to her, but you seem to have realized it’s the same process, just different a mode of transportation.

Love,
Mom

My day can only get better

I dropped my 2 cans of soup and 2 packages of macaroni and cheese off in the reception area this morning...I'm pretty sure there will be a school supply drive this month. My job is totally making this small change challenge thing easy.

I’ve already had a terrible day – it started last night. When I discovered that the plate thingy around my tailgate handle was stolen, I thought it had just fallen off because it's broken before, but there’s clearly a dirty handprint where someone took it. I assume it's a bad design and someone else's broke and they took mine instead of buying a new one. It's a $20 part, people, it's not that expensive, it's a hassle, but there's no need to make someone else go through it.

Trying to be vague about it, Clint told me a story last night that has my hackles up, I cannot stop thinking about it and how awful it was. I don't really know what's worse, this story or the M!ke V!ck one, it's that bad in my opinion.

This morning when I left the house I saw a woman who does NOT live on our street walking her dog, shooing 2 dogs who had gotten out (the dogs do live on our street, or at least one does for sure) off of our street onto a busier street. I should have stopped then and picked up those dogs, but I took Landon to his baby sitters first because I don’t know the dogs’ temperaments, and when I got back I couldn’t find the dogs. It made me sad to think that a woman who has a dog would be so careless as to shoo a dog onto a busier street. And this woman walks with a stick in her hand, presumably to whack at other dogs when she comes across them, at least that's what I think now, since she was waving it around wildly at those poor dogs. I tried to be all “I hope one day her dog gets out and someone shoos it further away from her house and onto a busy street.” But I can’t even do that, because it’s not her dog’s fault that she’s cold-hearted.

When I got to the babysitter’s and opened my back door to get Landon out, his bag for the day spilled everywhere.

When I got to work and opened the back door to get my stuff out, my bag with my food drive donation spilled everywhere.

And now I have a headache.

I just want to go back to bed, can I go back to bed? I didn’t even get any Landon loving this morning because he was asleep the whole time. And I have class tonight so I won’t see him again until 9:30 or 10 tonight.

Small Change Month wha???

Somehow my numbers and Beth's numbers are screwed up, I think she skipped a number and went with the month number, but if you'll remember she gave us 6 weeks for one challenge and blah blah blah, she says this is the end of challenge 7 and the beginning of challenge 8.

Guess what? I didn't do anything this month. She didn't give specific instructions "do something for a charity" is not all that helpful. Is this the month I cash in on my normal non-profit work as a Girl Scout leader? Or do I say that because I did a couple things a few months ago, that one of those counts for this month? But I already feel bad for having kind of ignored the whole, clean up a local park or playground one in favor of using cloth napkins. I do have an out. At work this week they're collecting canned goods for a local food bank. So If I can remember to pick a few things out of my pantry or stop by the grocery store, I can drop those in the "lunch bag" in the reception area and I will get credit for this month right, even if I have to do it tomorrow?

Next month's challenge is to find a way to donate school supplies.

100th Post

In honor of my 100th post, a picture inspired by I CAN HAS CHEEZBURGER.

Introducing....

Zoey!!!

Born July 25, 2007. Right around 11pm.



7 lbs 9 ozs, 19 in long




She has lots and lots of light brown hair, and really long toes. There's something about having long toes and being really smart, right?

Zoeywatch

Zoey was supposed to be here yesterday. Zoey apparently takes after her cousins and doesn't show up when she's supposed to.

I remember having a talk with Landon in utero about how important is it to be on time and that people like it when you're on time, and keeping people waiting is just plain rude. Landon paid no attention to my admonishments and stuck around as long as he could. Kathy had the same talk with Zoey and she apparently likes her current place as well.

Landon's probably been sending her secret messages about how AWFUL it is to be born and telling her to stay put as long as she can. He's saying things like "They pulled me out, and I told them I wanted to go back in, and they wouldn't let me, and then I screamed about it for 3 or 4 months and it seemed like no one was really understanding my pain!"

They're admitting Kathleen tonight, and starting induction tomorrow, so hopefully all will go well and by tomorrow evening we should have a Zoey. I can't wait to see her!

Getting Your Ducks in a Row

Picture it, you’re 9 months old, it’s July 4th. It’s been raining so much that the fireworks display that your parents intended to take you to has been canceled. What else is there to do but take your first big boy bath?

So your mom puts a couple inches of water in the bathtub, dons her bathing suit, and gets in with you. At first, you’re all, hey man, this is not where I normally bathe. But you decide it’s ok if it’s what you have to do.

And then… She starts handing you ducks. A fireman duck, a devil duck, a mama duck, 2 baby ducks. And an ugly duckling (a dinosaur).


You’re trying your hardest to keep all your ducks in a row. But it’s difficult at best, and really probably impossible, you only have 2 hands and this crazy woman has handed you 5 ducks and a dinosaur. And then it comes to you. Your sister has the best idea of all. And you stick a duck in your mouth for safe keeping while you try to deal with all the other ducks.

Either that, or we have the next Ozzy Osbourne.

This year carrots, next year cucumbers

Children eat more vegetables if they are homegrown according to this article. Soooooo…I planted some carrots. They’re growing!!! See these? Carrots! This is exciting, I can’t remember the last time something I planted as a seed actually grew and came up green. I’m jumping up and down and doing cartwheels, the very least you can do is clap a happy clap for me.





As much as I would love to believe that I could maintain a garden, I don’t have the time. If I don’t walk by my plants on a daily basis they have a 99.9% chance of dying in the first month. If I do walk by them they only have a 50% chance of dying, so they have better odds in pots on the back patio. So any vegetable growing at our house will have to be contained in pots. This year I’m going for carrots. Next year I may add cucumbers or tomatoes. I’m leaning more towards cucumbers, I don’t often need fresh tomatoes, but I may in the future.

Today's lesson (#2)

Put in your contacts BEFORE cutting up the habaneros and jalapenos for the carnitas.

Busy, Busy, Busy

I know that I haven't posted in longer than usual. I do have some posts in the works, they're good posts, posts with pictures even. But the last couple weeks have been pretty busy, and our home computer is fritzy, which means that any pictures I have on there are out of pocket.

My new job is great, I love it. I have not regretted this move one bit. I like my supervisor, I like the people I work with, I like what I'm doing.

Landon had his 9 months check up. No shots, but they did do a blood prick on his toe - and he didn't even cry, and neither did his daddy. He was 18 lbs, 4 oz - which is at the 25th percentile for his age and his height was 26" or something and that wasn't even on the chart. So he's got my short genes, I guess. The didn't tell me the percentile for his head, but it's always been pretty big. The doctor said to ramp up the food and try some finger foods. So we bought a bunch of stage 2 foods and finger foods, and I've been shoving everything I think he might be able to swallow down his throat, and he's loving it. Wagon wheels being a favorite. And last night he even ate an arrowroot cookie.

And the project of the moment is waiting on cousin Zoey. And waiting and waiting and waiting.

Monthly Newsletter #9

Dear Landon,

You are finally crawling. And I am learning to not leave you in places and expect you to stay put. I realize the attraction of the bathtub, but diving head first into an empty bathtub is not a wise move, as you found out…the hard way. You didn’t fall hard and the bump on your head was really small. But, your father is not prepared for what lies ahead with the bumps and bruises that are to come as you get to be more and more mobile.

Last week you got to spend 2 whole evenings alone with your daddy. He was scared to death, but I had every confidence in him. And he did fine. And you two bonded.

This has been on the whole a pretty uneventful month for you, so I asked your Dad when I could stop writing these monthly newsletters and he seems to think that I should continue through 12 months and then just do one every 6 months or years. So here’s the thing, I’m going to need something to write about and if you look back it’s been “you’re about to crawl” for like 3 months and then this month I got to write “you’re crawling.” And I’m out of ideas. You'll notice you've learned to really hate the camera, so most of your pictures look pretty sad. You are the only one who has control over that, I'm just sayin'.

So here’s a video of something cute you’ve been up to:










Love,
Mom

And the theme for the night was ... disappointment

Ever paid for something, to be somewhere and while you’re there you are mentally adding up in your head how many people paid to be there and what there must be in the bank account of the event group? Ever then start adding up what the cost of the event was and see a giant discrepancy and want to gouge your eyeballs out due to sheer anger?

Oh, hi, did I mention my class reunion was last weekend?

The theme was pirates of the Caribbean – which I can only assume they came up with after buying this cheap treasure chest from Oriental Trading Company which sat on the check in table. NOTHING ELSE was piratey or Caribbeany. The theme for the night should have been disappointment.

I’m not saying I want this job in 10 years, but I am saying I could have done a much better job. I have a few issues with the way things went down. And they’re kind of rambly because I just typed as I thought of them.

First of all, there should have been a breakdown of the cost for the afternoon event and the evening event, if you chose to attend just 1 of the 2 you should only have to pay for the one you attended. Second of all, you should not be able to show up and pay at the door. There should be a deadline to RSVP, you cannot plan an event based on an unknown number of attendees. A monetary surplus is inexcusable, because this is not a for profit deal. And those who paid ahead should have pictures on their name tags, and those who didn't should not - not the other way around.

Why did we fill out those little forms about what we’re up to? Why weren’t there awards? Most kids? Most successful? Living furthest from “home”? Ehh – I need more time to ruminate, but I could have come up with a good 10 or so awards. Why was there not more than plastic trays of food? For the amount of money we paid, there should have been more decent catering. I’m not saying there had to be a sit down meal, but it could have been actually catered – like we were told it would be. Why was there not a cash bar? Nothing says “classy” like hauling a cooler in while dressed in cocktail attire.

What’s going to happen to the pictures taken that night? Are they available for purchase? He certainly didn’t take the time to photo graph each person, so it’s not like I would buy a huge set of photos. Is there a scrapbook being put together somewhere? Will it be at the next reunion? What’s the point? What about the DVD? Who the hell is going to watch a DVD of their 10 year reunion? Totally unnecessary.

What happened to all the questions about what giveaways should be? There were no giveaways. There were 2 items in the drawing at the end of the night, one was a digital picture frame which was fine and the other was a picture frame mat. Whose idea was it to have everyone sign a picture frame mat and give that away? What is anyone going to do with that? Should I have a picture of my class hanging in my house somewhere? I highly doubt it.

They need to publish a ledger now. I realize that some people paid as little as $35/head, and some paid as much as $55/head. I really am interested to see what was spent where. And what the balance in the account is at this time.

I compare this event to a wedding, only because by my own estimation about 100 or so people attended. 100 people at an average of $45/head – is $4500 they had to work with. Take a wedding reception, replace nuptials with awards, adjust the cost of the flowers into the awards, and you have a much better reunion for roughly the same price. I know it can be done. I’ve been personally involved in at least 2 of similar cost.

Beyond my disappointment for not getting what I paid for, I saw people that I hadn’t seen in a long time, I talked to a few people I probably wouldn’t have otherwise seen again. But it felt very much like high school, where the people you see anyway are the people you’re sitting with all evening long. I know I was not the only one who was disappointed.

The Modernish Father has a pretty good wrap up of the night.