pet peeves of the week

-put down the cell phone and drive your car
-that stick coming out the side of your steering wheel, it's call a turn signal you can move it up & down to indicate to drivers around you which direction you are moving your car in
-those cars & trucks that have sirens & flashing lights, they are called emergency vehicles, pull over for them, they are headed to an emergency
-SLOW DOWN IN SCHOOL ZONES

color me thrilled

just got back from taking C to the dentist. C my lovely mutant sized 7 year old, just turned 7, 7 year old apparently has the mouth of a 10 year old. This means we have to go to see an orthodontist for a consult like now at the age of 7. damn we need to win the lottery, damn we need to play the lottery so we can win the lottery

fair update 2007

fried twinkies rock!
that's all I got tonight more tomorrow...

no child left behind?

I know this is a knox county school thing but I am guessing it is tied to the no child left behind crap. spelling last year: we would get a list on monday the kids would have a spelling test on friday, great straight forward we would work on these words each night as "homework". This year they have decided this is not the best way to learn or test spelling, students should learn in context? So we have no specific list to work with, they do send home a list of sentences that have key words to learn for the week-maybe one or two will be on the spelling test which consists of inane sentences-
When we hike we will mix a cake.
really?
My pet has a fine fin.
so?
and these 2 were just last week's there are many many more! They may technically be correct grammar but they sound stupid.
Plus the grade is not just for spelling it includes grammar & handwriting. Handwriting???!
Poor C keeps getting an S on handwriting because he is not using the correct denealian method, I have a hard time counseling & correcting him on this one I cannot recall the last time I put so many damn curly loops on my letters...

R.I.P. Anita Roddick

while living in England in the late 80's I discovered & fell in love with the Body Shop. wonderful products, no animal testing with real commitment to the communities where the employees lived & worked. when I was first back in the states the stores were hard to find but there was one in NYC near Astor Place that I would frequent. Now they seem to be almost everywhere-even in airports, which was handy traveling last summer with the ban on all lotions & liquids, during lay overs I would pop in and use testers. In K-town there is one at the mall I use to frequent but I must admit a certain loathing for the mall, I worked at one in CT for years, so I tend to avoid them at all costs but maybe I need to stop by this week for moisturizer & peppermint foot lotion

latest craze for kids

ok so it may not be the latest or even a craze but C came home last week asking to buy a webkinz.
I had seen them at hallmark about a month ago so we stopped in during our travels Saturday and picked up a chihuahua because that was the closest looking to a pug-well only if you squish his nose back and of course C keeps calling it a chinchilla but regardless..stuffed toy, it comes with a code so you go on the interweb & create a little virtual world for your pet. Very cute sort of build-a-bear meets beanie bears and they go online.

the fair

I am going to go out on a limb and say my favorite, fondest memory of kidhood was the Danbury Fair. Came to town 2 weeks every fall and the friday before Columbus Day was fair day. All of the Danbury schools had the day off & all kids were given a free pass to the fair for that day. Columbus day being a larger holiday up north(more Italians) we would have a 4 day weekend but that friday we would go the fair. It was christmas & your birthday all rolled into one-there were rides, games, elephants, the big top with all sorts of silly things to buy-mom & dad still have their first ginsu purchased under the big top, cap guns, those little popper things,oxen pull, cows, horses, the Clydesdale's, chocolate covered frozen bananas, lumber jack contest-I guess that would be strong man now, ooh zeoplis, the Sleepy Hollow Ichabod crane statues & bridge, Paul Bunyon & babe statues, sheep, pigs, Dutch village windmill and all, cowboy hats(Danbury is hat city after all), the cannons where we would eat warm gingerbread & drink hot cider before heading home, the paddle boat ride, car racing-if you've seen Arthur you've seen the track at the Danbury fair. They also had races every saturday night in the summer you could always hear it from the house, we even went once or twice. God I could gone on for days! I remember one year mom had surgery or was sick or something Dad took us for just 2 hours & we were heart broken. The first year I was allowed to hang with my friends for a few hours without adults-of course we kept loosing people and spent our precious time unsupervised riding trams back & forth looking for 1 or 2 people. The last year of the fair in '81 we were allowed the whole day with friends, well we were "grown-up" freshman in high school after all..and yes the beloved fair grounds is a
mall-granted it did give me a job for several years and sort of eventually kind of brought me to the south so it wasn't all bad I suppose but I wish the fair was still around!
And all of these leads me to the Tennessee Valley Fair in Knoxville each fall, in the 15 years I have lived here for some reason I have never been until now. We have plans to go next Saturday and I can't wait I am so excited been talking it up to C who is clueless about it all so he doesn't even know he should be excited too, so I will excited enough for both of us!!

work

ever have days where it seems like you can not accomplish ANYTHING? and it is stressing me out more than it should because I have a little weird headache or I having been having a stroke since last night-one or the other. What age is that you start thinking every odd ache & pain is cancer/heart failure/stroke?

you know it's early

when you have to wake the dog up to let him out & when he is done he comes in and promptly goes back into to his cage & falls back asleep....

it was inevitable

C is a Vols fan. Yes a dyed-in-the-wool head over heels orange wearing UT football fan. Oh where did we go wrong?! He was allowed to watch part of the game last night and first question out of his mouth this morning "did they win?" And football is yet another sport he is aching to play, we have ruled NO on that sport for right now. I think he is too young and D just never wants him to play football EVER which I think in this area where football is a religious experience and with C's size and apparent natural abilities in sports(courtesy of daddy's gene's not mine) that will be hard to enforce. And D played baseball, basketball & football growing up so it might be hard to explain why it was ok for dad but not for C. The problem is D now looking back feels that he was always playing or practicing for something and we don't want C to be over loaded with extra-curricular activities especially at such a young age plus some of D's physical stuff is in part due to football related injuries & he only played high school not college ball. I can already see that we might fall into to the year-round sports track he takes tae kwan do weekly plays spring & fall baseball and I am letting him add basketball this year. Ultimately I think as long as he is doing well in school, not over tired and enjoying playing what he is playing it'll be fine. If C stops enjoying a sport we will quit right away, I am striving not to be the pushy parent.
I did have some interesting insight into my hubby's psyche yesterday at the baseball game he admitted to it being difficult in the competitive situation to be sitting on the sidelines and not actually playing the game.