Five Things About Living In The Boonies

(about 0.5 miles from me)

1. Not a lot of traffic, although sometimes the wildlife is both cheeky and stupid. Long drives can be dangerously hypnotic across the flat, flat, flat terrain.

2. Very Big Sky... Which is way cool for those times when you want to lie in the grass or float in a pool or pond and watch the clouds change shape and move on by. It also means tornados, whirlwinds (really!), microbursts, killer arctic winds in winter, and dust storms when it's been dry. And, staaaaaaaaaars, like you wouldn't believe, all year round.

3. Stocking up on canned goods is still a smart idea before the first snowfall.

4. Lots of quiet. Sometimes the loudest noise is the wind.

5. You can let your energetic Labrador off his lead to run and run and run in a straight line, and he'll come back exhausted, happy, and unharmed.

Five Completely Dumb Things I’ve Done...

…in no particular order

1. When I was a kid, despite knowing I should stay away from electrical outlets, I still tried to plug my plastic iron’s plastic cord in, just in case (also, don’t put me near signs that say “Wet Paint”). When I got up off the floor, with my hair sticking straight up and a snootful of electrically fried plastic smell, I decided that maybe staying away from electrical outlets would be a good general principle after all.

2. I took a driving test in a car that was really amazingly awful. The horn didn’t work, so I had a rubber ducky that I used as a horn. My three-point turn, because of stiff steering bits, was more of a five point and big smile at the examiner turn. It wouldn’t go over 45 miles per hour without shimmying and making scary clunking noises. The headlights chose their own brightness, pretty whimsically, which made night driving extra spicy. I passed the test, though. Maybe the examiner just wanted to get the hell out of the scary car with the dangerously perky (it was a sham; I was embarrassed and scared shitless) driver.

3. I sat in a train station in Paris and pelted pigeons with dried chunks of baguette. I was frustrated and hungry, and the damned baguette was inedibly hard. Even the Parisian pigeons snubbed it. I beaned one big b*stard pretty hard in its tiny head and got cussed at (in lovely French) by an old lady.

4. In high school, my best friend and I went to see a sci-fi movie. When we bought our tickets, the clerk looked at us funny, and pointed us to the correct theater (one of three). We were a little late, so we squinched into some seats in the back so we wouldn’t disturb people. We watched the screen for a few minutes and realized that a whole lot of people were having a lot of sloppy sex. My friend poked me and said, “I thought this was going to be a sci-fi movie”. I said, “Maybe it’s alien sex. Maybe it’ll be over soon.” We decided to tough out the alien sex until a few seats away we heard a guy, well, you know, doing the Pee Wee Herman thing. We looked at each other in embarrassment and left. We checked the marquee; it was supposed to be the sci-fi movie. We asked the clerk, and he said we’d gone in the wrong theater, but we hadn’t – the sci-fi movie was listed on the sex movie theater. So, in the spirit of adventure, my friend and I went back in and watched the porn. It was yucky, and we were the only girls in there, which was also yucky. The sci-fi movie was next, but we left halfway through because we were still stunned and kind of numb from the porn, so we headed for a coffee shop and spent a lot of time looking at each other in VERY BRIGHT LIGHT, drinking coffee and saying, “Well…Holy shit.”

5. I got very, very drunk in my late teens, and spent the night at my stepbrother’s house. His wife took in stray animals, and I woke up covered in cats. I thought I was hallucinating, or having the dt’s or something. I got up to go wee and had to pry cats off my head, my neck and my arms. When I sat down on the throne, thinking I was in a fur-free zone, the window clicked. I looked up, and there was a cat, sitting in the window, watching me wee. I had to scrape cats off my pillow to get back in bed, and the sound of all that purring and scratching totally freaked out my still-drunk self. I have not gotten snockered since, and I don’t have any cats. I wonder why?

Here’s to a wiser weekend!

Friday (Where did the other four days go?) Five

1. Tutoring: I’m a volunteer tutor two days a week at the middle school and a private tutor for an adult learning German in the evenings, once or twice a week, depending on when she can get away.

2. Housewifery: (snort) Of course. It’s fun being the fill-in-the-blank fairy, i.e. grocery shopping, toilet sanitizing, laundry, dry cleaning, stair mopping, dog training, dinner cooking, etc. Amazing how much time gets spent doing things other people find invisible.

3. Following up on “professionals” who ought to know better: School district employees. I think that’s self-explanatory.

4. Calling depressed people: I’m no Pollyanna; I just call up folks who missed group and find out why the hell they weren’t there because I’m nosy. Usually, they wind up admitting they didn’t go because they were too depressed, and, yes, they realize the irony, and then they promise to show up the following week and most of the time they do. I’ve bailed once or twice myself. Someone called me, too.

5. Getting ready to get ready, aka Productive Procrastination: I have a bunch of family accounting to do. It’s mounting. So, I’m neatly arranging and categorizing piles of paper, labeling files, organizing receipts, and…. Not doing it. I’ll get there. I just need to get really DANGEROUSLY ready. Urk.

Have a good weekend!

Five Things I Could Have Done Without This Week

1. Monkeyshines with the school district: They had a total lapse of brain function with respect to proper procedure for Doodle’s 504 and handed out THEIR rough draft without ever giving me a copy and without letting me know they were doing so. Consequently, I was contacted by a couple of teachers asking about the particulars. I think the teachers were great – they were jumping right on to helping Doodle. Unfortunately, it felt a lot like sandbagging to me. I wrote an extremely polite email to the gun-jumpers about procedural safeguards. I later received a reasonably polite response and acknowledgement that I was right. It’s enough. Why do they always think they can do stuff like this and get away with it? (OK, that was 90% rhetorical.)

2. Hot weather: Hey! I thought we were done with that for the year! I was looking forward to long pants again!

3. A slow leak into the basement: One of the toilets needs a wax ring replaced. I hate knowing this much about plumbing.

4. A backed up kitchen sink: see no. 3 above. I should be grateful that my husband will jump into the breach and deal with the nasty bits, though.

5. Insomnia: always makes me feel like I’ve missed the next day. It happened twice this week. I did get to watch some interesting movies, but in a choice between REM sleep and movies from the 80’s, I vote for sleep.

Soldiering on…

Five Cleaning Tips I’ve Learned

The cleaning frenzy that took me over last week continued into this week. I figured I’d share some tips that have worked for me in the past and some I’ve recently discovered.

1. Keep the supplies where you need them. I don’t remember where I learned this tip, but of all of them, this is the most useful. I store my replacement trashcan liners under the one in use in each trashcan. That way I can just lean in to get a fresh one. It also assures I have enough around. Same thing with general purpose cleaner, cleansing powder, dishtowels, glass cleaners, etc. I keep a small supply of each in each bathroom under the sink, and I never have to stop in the middle of cleaning to go up or down stairs to get something I need. Also, when I run out of something, I’ve cleaned enough, and I stop and replenish the supply on my next trip through instead of trying to do it all at once. When my main broom, which I use for the kitchen, needs replacing, I put the old but still useful one either upstairs, downstairs, or designate it for patio use and throw the grungiest of the lot out. I even store clean sheets under the mattress so that they’re there when I change the bed.

2. From the Clean Team: Go ahead and use cleansing powder in the toilet bowl. It’s cheap, easy to find, cleans very well, and you’ll be buying a new toilet long before you get anywhere near wearing through the porcelain. Toilets last for decades, even with using cleansing powder. Get one with bleach if you can, too.

3. Speaking of bleach and its wonderful way of killing every germ or bacteria it touches, the How Clean is Your House ladies taught me to soak my kitchen sponges, dishcloths, and brushes in a very light bleach solution in order to disinfect them. Previously, I’d rinsed them out at night and hosed them down with a disinfectant spray. Waste of my time. Now I throw them in the clean side of the sink (the kids wind up putting dirty dishes in the other side during the night), close the drain, add about ¼ sink of hot water and ONE capful of bleach. I leave them there overnight and drain the sink and rinse and ring them out in the morning. This is just enough to act as a thorough disinfectant, but it doesn’t bleach out the dishcloths. It does remove lingering stains, any smells, and other ickinesses. It doesn’t seem to degrade the materials either – and, even if it did a little, it’s not like there’s a sponge embargo in my town preventing me from getting new ones.

4. Coffeemakers: I learned this one yonks ago, again from an unremembered source, when I was on my all-natural cleaning quest. Run a whole potful of white vinegar through the machine to clear out lime, or if your coffeemaker isn’t that caked up, run a pot of half white vinegar and half water through, then two or three potfuls of plain water. The smell is ferocious at first, but you’ll be amazed at the amount of lime and scale that it clears away (plus, pouring it down the drain can be combined with the next tip, so you get double use out of the vinegar) and your coffeemaker will work like a champ. This is the same thing that happens when you use a commercial preparation for cleaning your coffeemaker, and it’s cheaper and, really, less damaging to the inner tubing and mechanism.

5. Drains. The HCIYH ladies combined things I’d tried before in a new, very effective way. I had previously used baking soda and vinegar to gently blow drains clean and didn’t find it noticeably wonderful. I tried pouring boiling water down slow drains, and, while it worked for a while, it needed to be done fairly often. My British TV friends clear slow drains as follows: shove ½ cup of household salt down the drain, and follow it with a quarter cup of baking soda. Pour a goodly dose, between a ½ and a full cup of white vinegar on top (this is where you would use some of that coffeemaker vinegar). Let it foam until it’s done, then pour a full pot of boiling water down the drain. The salt works as a mild abrasive, and although it dissolves, it does seem to do some abrading while the vinegar and baking soda reaction is foaming it around in the drain. Following it with hot water clears any loosened but not completely dissolved crud, and whoosh, it works like a house afire for me.

My kitchen sink tends to run slowly from time to time (I suspect my children of letting too much grease and crud bits go down when they’re doing dishes), and I’ve had problems with all my bathroom sinks. I can understand that – they get toothpaste muck, hairs, soap scum, and so forth, and it all has a chance to dry all day until the same yuck gets washed down it again that night. So, I first tried the above on my slowest bathroom sink. It foamed for 20 minutes. I wondered if I had accidentally gunked it up worse somehow. Then I poured the boiling water down it, a whole potful – about 10 cups of water, and for the first time in years, there was no delay – it just drained away as fast as I poured it. Then I tried it in the kitchen, same thing. I’m a believer.

Five German Foods I Miss

I get nostalgic about Europe sometimes, Austria and Germany in particular, since I haven’t been there in over a decade, and I particularly miss the different foods. I get awfully tired of the same American flavors, and I try different ethnic variations. I can’t get into flavoring main courses with peanuts or lemongrass much, which is my own bias, and I can’t seem to get my family enthused about the foods I really miss from Austria and Germany.

I have tried making these things at home, but our ingredients are just not the same, or I couldn’t get the ones that are. I did finally find an online company that will ship perishables that might do the trick. I won’t recommend them until I’ve tried the foods.

1. Bauernbrot: There is no bakery in any area where I’ve lived for the last 26 years that makes real Bauernbrot. What makes that particularly obnoxious is that it’s ubiquitous in Austria and Germany – not at all a delicacy, it’s available everywhere, all the time, and is eaten the same way we Americans eat squishy white bread. And it used to be dirt cheap, too. It’s a rye bread, but not with seeds or distinctly dark, it just has rye in it but that doesn’t dominate the flavor. It’s got a wonderful, chewy crust, the bread is firm, and it went great with everything, even when it was starting to get stale. When fully stale, you could hammer nails into mahogany with it, though, which made it a good crouton for French onion soup.

2. Leberknoedelsuppe – Liver Dumpling Soup. I am one of those few people who actually enjoys the taste of liver, but there are only two ways to get it in a restaurant here in the states – fried to within an inch of its life, in a big slab, with either bacon or onions, or, if you’re lucky enough to be down South, you can get breaded and fried chicken livers in a nice gravy, over rice. No one else in my family will eat it either way, so I wind up settling for slab liver maybe once a year out in a restaurant. I miss Liver Dumpling Soup. It was a perfect winter soup – warm, filling, flavorful… Did I mention filling? On a student’s budget, that was particularly important. About two years ago I did drive two hours to meet a cousin at a “real” German restaurant. I ordered LDS in the restaurant, and I just about swooned with delight. I even got some to bring home. That’s a long way to go for a bowl of soup, though.

3. Gulaschsuppe: Goulash soup. I don’t think I’ve ever seen this, not even on a menu in an ethnic restaurant, here in the states. Maybe it’s exclusively, or predominantly, Austrian. I lived on it for the better part of my exchange year because it was cheap, nutritious, and, yes, filling. It also taught me how real paprika can be used in cooking – Oh, boy!

4. Semmelknoedeln: Dumplings made from bread cubes. It sounds nasty, but they’re really tasty – more flavorful than most large dumplings, and a perfect accompaniment to anything with a gravy worth savoring. And, if you only have a little Gulaschsuppe left, pouring it over a Semmelknoedel is a great way to make sure you don’t miss a speck of soup!

5. Fresh Austrian Marzipan: Both Austria and Germany have a lot of spankingly good pastries and desserts, most of which are more the type I usually like – not too sweet, excellent pastry, fruit in abundance, unsweetened whipped cream, but there’s nothing in the whole world like sitting down with a Wiener Mélange and a piece of freshly made Austrian marzipan and people watching. One bite, one slurp of coffee, and my bones used to just slide right out onto the pavement as the rest of me got all blissed out on that perfect combination of flavors. I was probably, unknowingly, quite entertaining, getting all relaxed and smiling like a lunatic over my marzipan and mélange. So what? I’d make a fool of myself all over again, for just that reason, if the opportunity arose.

So, when my goodies get here, I’ll give them a try and report on the results. Until then, have a great weekend!

Five Reality Shows

OK, I’m eating crow here, a thing that is becoming less and less common on reality shows, which is why I’ve started watching more of them. Here are my top four plus two contenders as the TV roster stands this summer.

1. Deadliest Catch: Who would think that watching guys fish for crabs would be absorbing? I was sure this was going to be another bang-clang type man show, but it’s not. Although the fellow who does “Dirty Jobs,” Mike Rowe, is in charge of it, he doesn’t show up and make lame puns. He doesn’t even show up in the main show, which now has an offshoot called, “After the Catch”. Or something. Anyway, Deadliest Catch follows several crab fishing ships, their captains and crews through various crab fishing seasons – who knew there were so many kinds that would be commercially viable? —in the Bering Sea.

There’s pack ice, frozen sea water clogging up ships and weighing them down, people falling overboard, intership rivalries and pranks, big crabs, little crabs, helicopters, rogue waves, scary storms, and people being people – trying to do the best they can at what they do. I guess all the captains have gotten to be famous and are a little freaked out about it. I don’t wonder. It’s not what you’d think of as a glamorous job – it’s bound to smell awful, involve a lot of slime and engine grease, and I’m guessing it takes most of them three months in front of a fireplace to feel dried out. Sig’s a cutie, Phil is a dry wit, and there’s some newbie captain who deserves to be frequently pantsed. Give it a try and maybe you’ll wind up trapped in the crab pot, too.

2. Top Chef: I will never in my life, knowingly eat raw Geoduck, and certainly not with pomegranate sauce or a side order of sea urchin risotto. I’m lucky I know how to spell those things. Nevertheless, watching the chefs charge around the kitchen, chopping, sautéing, slathering, setting things on fire (sometimes on purpose) and making huge mistakes is another exercise in human nature in the pursuit of a worthy goal. They sure serve a lot of stuff raw, which makes my maternal soul wince. I’m sure that if you have really excellent health insurance and that ever-useful trust fund, running the risk of intestinal problems for the sake of gourmet cuisine is no problem.

Anyway, when I watch this show, I not only get to vent my inner picky child’s disgust at some of the foods, but I feel like I learn a little about cooking and get some new ideas for things to try to change in my own painfully ordinary kitchen. My husband, a man for whom the phrase “meat and potatoes” constitutes his complete lifetime’s desired menu, is also fascinated by Top Chef. We were both impressed by a handmade seafood sausage containing scallops, sea bass and possibly shrimp, to be served at a snooty barbeque. Go figure.

3. How Clean Is Your House: This is a BBC production with two adorably snarky British women, one little scamp who likes to come off as a household scientist, and a taller gal with starched, bleached, tightly coiffed hair, a rack like a middle-aged Pamela Anderson, and a tendency to call the clients “nasty little buggers” to their faces. They’re called in to clean disastrously grimy homes, they always seem amazed at how filthy the houses are, and, what makes me laugh the hardest is – they run around scooping bits of horribleness onto their fingertips and insisting the other one smell it. The smeller always yells out some very British epithet and then the scientific gal starts taking swabs of things to send back to the lab so they can prod their client to be less nasty in the future by terrifying them with scary sounding science. They have a team of cleaners to come in and do the majority of the scouring, so they don’t pretend to be doing it all themselves. The two gals also offer some nice tips for various bits of cumulative crud removal and general tidiness habits. I like that their cleaning solutions lean heavily towards environmentally friendly things that are affordable and easy to find. It also makes me feel like my house is not so awful, or, as my daughter put it, “Mom, our house has bedhead. THOSE houses are catastrophes!”

4. Project Runway: It’s not back yet, but I’m hoping for another season of getting to watch a bunch of men sitting around sewing and being catty. Where else, eh?

5. The contenders for possible future watching:

On the Lot: A raft of hopeful film makers make short films and are critiqued by Garry Marshall, Carrie Fisher, and a guest name-brand director for the chance at a chunk of money and a chance to work with Steven Spielberg. The shorts I’ve watched were so much like commercials, I kept watching for the product I was going to be urged to buy. A few have been very creative, one or two deep, but the short format does not hold my interest over time. Garry Marshall is a class act, Carrie Fisher is mostly incoherent, and the guest directors have been either emo/self-absorbed or really outstanding in their critiques. The MC is a twit and they make her wear unflattering clothing, which is either blatantly slutty or fits so badly I can’t tell if she’s pregnant or has hip dysplasia. They also spend 2/3 of every show saying the same damn thing about calling in, over and over and over, until I leave the room and miss the rest of the shorts out of sheer annoyance. I hope they fix that, or a promising show will bomb due to viewer fatigue and irritation.

Hell’s Kitchen: OK, I don’t like hearing people yelled at by some hysterical rage fanatic, being humiliated, or treated like dirt. That’s why this show is on the edge with me, and also probably why it’s called Hell’s kitchen. I do enjoy the bits where the contestants talk about each other, working as a team, how they support each other, and the recipes, which are not as outlandish or impossible as the ones on Top Chef. Sometimes the Screamer in Chief has nice moments where he behaves as a mentor, and those are OK. My inner snark has moments of malicious glee watching the contestants trash talk or undermine each other in their alpha dog struggles.

OK, despite the TV talk, I’m heading out to deadhead petunias and mail some bill payments. Have a great weekend!

Friday Five – King of the Forest

Every time I watch “The Wizard of Oz” I snicker when the lion character dons a ratty looking robe and crown and takes up a scepter and sings, “When I am the King of the Forrrrreeeest!” I don’t know why, I just do. So many of his pronouncements and speculative edicts are silly or impossible, and along those lines, here are my silly and nonsensical speculative edicts for when I am (gendered titling aside) King of the Forrrrreeeest!

1. No more political parties. I am so sick of politicians toeing the party line and the ordinary, generally independent schlubs among us getting shafted for thinking we ought to be governed by good sense rather than ideological agendas. So, no more Republicans, Democrats, Libertarians, or whatevers. Anyone attempting to form a political party will be sentenced to 30 days in jail with Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, Kevin Federline, and Kato Kaelin, a collection of the most useless and self-absorbed users I can think of, so that, perhaps, wisdom and insight will strike them, and they’ll figure out what they, the political organizers, look like to the rest of us. It’ll probably be an eye-opener for their fellow inmates, too, but I’m not counting on that.

Candidates for office will have to fill out a form which asks questions of a basic nature concentrated on issues pertaining to the office they’d like to hold. They must answer in 250 words or less, and they will be held legally accountable, should they be elected, for holding true to these “promise” forms. If they deviate, engage in pandering to special interests, or merely piss me off, they get to go hang out for a “learning experience” in jail with a crowd of narsty exemplars of my choosing. Right now, I think Karl Rove would get to hang out for the better part of a year with Josef Mengele, Svengali, and Dr. Mesmer, and all of them would be under orders from me to Change His Mind about a number of things. I get to resurrect dead people as KoF, too.

2. No more celebrity news circuses. A little reportage is fine, but all day fests about people who are or were famous for excessive boobage, bad reputations, sorry behavior, criminal antics, being mean to other people, drunk, disorderly, royal, or any other thing that seems to fascinate our shallow infotainment news media, are banned now and forever. One or two line news blurbs, such as “Arrested for drunken driving, Mel Gibson made a number of racist remarks. He will be appearing in court on May 2.” If anyone wants more information, they can go to a website, buy a scandal magazine, or call his publicist. And no more speculating about anything on a news station or news channel. It would have to be a separate program, which clearly states that there will be references to news drowning in large pools of mostly witless and self-serving speculation.

3. School boards have to have balanced budgets or overages will be garnished on evenly distributed percentages from the members’ personal income until the overrun is paid back. I think that would pretty much fix the fact that my tax bill is 180% of what it was last year, and almost entirely due to one of three school districts getting cashola from my property taxes. They just keep selling bonds, manipulating finances, and adding school hours and programs with no regard for the taxpayers whatsoever, raising their share of my taxes without hesitation or conscience. I’m so sick of hearing “it’s for the children” when it’s really greedy or stupid adults with no understanding of the consequences of their actions. I, being a person of sense, think it’s more important for children to have a roof over their heads, food on the dinner table, and health care. If their parents are having to use credit cards, take out second mortgages, delay paying bills, and spend a lot of time arguing and creating a stressful environment for the kids, all because the tax bills are doubling, then that’s not really “for the children”, is it? (grumble, snort)

4. Congress has to do the same thing, and this time we’ll be garnishing the income and seizing the holdings of lobbyists (who will be abolished), Congresscritters, the administration – including past presidents who contributed to the debt (Welcome to workin’ for minimum wage, George! Yes, I would like fries with that!) and their appointees. By my completely speculative calculations, that would bring most of them down to the level of middle-class in terms of living standard, and then they’d have to get real jobs to pay the mortgages on their houses. Property taxes would be reasonable, though, because of #3 above. I am a compassionate KoF.

5. Lifetime achievement awards with annuities guaranteeing a modest standard of living for the rest of their lives to between 10 and 100 Americans per year for amazing innovations that:
a) recycle existing stuff, any kind of stuff, in environmentally friendly,
creative, and durable ways.
b) significantly contribute, in measurable ways, to the common good in
pretty much any area I decide is important, and for
c) whistleblowers in government, industry, whatever, where clandestine wrongs
are being perpetrated against the populace, important information is being
withheld, machinations are happening, etc. These people do not deserve to
be blacklisted and demeaned, they deserve to be rewarded for doing what is
right.

As KoF, I intend to REWARD THE BEHAVIOR I WISH TO ENCOURAGE. There would also be funding available for promising research.

Well, that was fun. I should probably go let the dog in and wipe down the kitchen counters again. Have a great weekend!

Five Things I’d Like To Do This Summer

1. Help my risk-averse daughter get her driver’s license. She’s 17 and had the behind-the-wheel teacher from hell. It scared her off of driving for several months, and then she started driving with hubs, a person organically deprived of patience because of his ADHD. They were driving in snowy, icy weather, and had some very slippery, sliding encounters with the pavement. The best experience they had was when hubs had her driving around a church parking lot and had her deliberately go into a slide. They wound up stuck deeply into a snow bank at the edge of the parking lot. Fortunately, a wedding was just ending so they were rescued by men in tuxedos. So, the sum total, as my daughter wryly puts it, of her experience of learning of drive with Dad, is that if you get in trouble, you’ll be rescued by men in tuxes.

It’s probably also somewhat my fault that both my driving age kids are so cautious behind the wheel. I have no doubt that on more than one sleep-deprived day whilst driving them all somewhere in the momvan, I pulled to the side of the road as a result of their rambunciousness and hollered, “I’m steering a thousand pounds of rolling, steel death here! Can you please quit pulling the wings off of each other and be quiet?” I’m guessing that kind of yelling would have a lingering effect.

Anyway, I figure I’ll take Bunny out on the deserted country roads and let her learn the mechanics and techniques of merely driving until she has more confidence and skill and then we’ll try some encounters with traffic. That worked OK with Spawn, so I can only hope.

2. Hang out near water. That probably doesn’t sound like much of a goal. I do live near a river, but I don’t like it. It’s a stinky river, and it’s busy with boaters who drink and holler, and jetskiers who drink, holler and vroom. I’m thinking of something more along the lines of both a largish lake and at least an overnight stay. I need to stare at a large body of water for a little while. It’s very calming on the one hand, and invigorating on the other. Plus, it would be a nice change of pace from thinking about my sandy, weedy yard.

3. Speaking of weeds, I’d like to cut the big ones down. We get a lot of mulberry and Siberian elm hopefuls, and I really want to cut them down and poison their stumps to discourage them. We have a big yard, so it could conceivably take me a summer to conscientiously get rid of all of them. I think it’s like painting the Golden Gate Bridge – I get all the way to the other end and then have to start over again.

4. Yarn Crawl! It’s in the works with my small cadre of sister knitters from Chix, and we’re hoping to head north at the end of the month and work our way back south from yarn store to yarn store, fondling the fuzzies and critiquing the patterns along the way. There will, perhaps, be girl food midday.

5. Work with Doodle on learning to write on demand. The kid is brilliant in mathematics and science – always in the 99th percentile, but put him in front of an on the spot essay or extended response demand and he reacts as if someone had hit him with a “Petrificus Totalis” spell – locks right up, his brain frosts over, and you’d swear that if inertia weren’t working for him, he’d topple right to the floor and shatter like glass once he landed. He now has a “thing” about it, an aversion that kicks in because he’s had problems with this particular situation for so long, and the aversion is part of the problem. He does work well with a planned strategy or the literary equivalent of a formula, and I’ve looked up a few on the web, mostly from colleges. He’s going to have to take the SAT when he applies to IMSA, so he’ll need this skill, at least to some extent. It’s not that I have a desire for him to become a wonderful writer; I want to help him get past the blockage and be able to write a modestly acceptable response. Wish me luck.

Have a great weekend!

Five Nice Things About Today

1. Strawberries! Lots of large, ripe, delicious strawberries available in my grocery store – and now at my dinner table.

2. Books – I got a couple of books from my Amazon wish list which will just about complete my collection of Charlotte MacLeod mysteries.

3. No school -- I didn’t have to wake anyone up for school, no buses rumbled by, and I got lots of time to myself today.

4. Birthday wishes from friend and family far-flung, near at hand and otherwise!

5. Cheap hair doodles at Walgreen’s! I have long hair and have a residual teenager living in my decision-making apparatus when I wander down the hair aisle at Walgreen’s, so I like adolescent hair crap – twisty rubber bands with big balls on them, shiny, magpie-attracting scrunchies, and chignon chopsticks, which probably no one other than middle-aged goofs like me wear any more. And they’re shiny. (grin)

Have a great weekend!

Five Things About Getting Into College

1. Your High School Has a Reputation: Yep, and the colleges in your state know it. Possibly, if a lot of the graduates go to a particular out of state college, that college knows it, too. Your high school may be known as being horrible about inflating grades, grading fairly, being outstanding in science and math, or having really well-trained students in foreign languages who need math remediation. Some of the teachers in your high school also have reputations at college – as being outstanding in preparing students, or as being burnouts who hand out A’s and lard transcripts with false information like so many scared hookers needing to meet a pimp-enforced quota. You might want to see if you can find a loose-lipped or just open and truthful admissions office employee in a nearby college to see what your high school’s rep is.

2. Grade Point Averages/Class Rank: These don’t count as much as you might think, particularly if your high school has a funky system of adding points depending on how they rank the difficulty of the class. Once the colleges know, and that happens pretty quickly after the fact, that your high school is grading AP classes on a 6 point scale and honors classes on a 5 point scale, with regular classes at 4 points for an A, the GPA and class ranking stats are either disregarded or looked at very differently. This kind of thing is excused by high school administration as a way of preventing students from gaming the system by taking all slacker classes and getting straight As to beat out someone who took challenging courses and got a GPA lower than 4.0. It may matter for the high school, but once this enters the data stream, it diminishes the whole class rank/GPA importance at the admissions level. Often, colleges will ignore the high school GPA and recalculate yours on a strict 4 point scale, only checking on course names/attributes if the GPA is unusually low. Also, class size matters. Being #5 out of 2000 is different than being #1 of 200.

3. Standardized Tests: The ACT and the SAT tests are important because they are the only uniform, objective measure of student achievement and aptitude available to the college. As GPAs and transcripts become infested with all kinds of manipulations, these tests become more and more important in the admissions process. Really outstanding scores can open doors on their own – admissions departments will look at those and, regardless of grades, see a gifted student looking for somewhere to call home, and most colleges would dearly love to enroll and enthrall as many gifted students as possible. The better the supporting grades, especially if they were in challenging courses, the faster the acceptance letter goes out. Even average or barely above-average grades can be excused under the “bored gifted student” theory, if the scores are high enough. When you get into the middle regions on the test scores, that’s when transcripts and high school GPAs are examined more closely for support or explanation. Conversely, a straight A transcript with a mediocre test score will signal that there's a high likelihood of grade inflation.

4. AP Classes: AP classes are not as highly regarded on campuses as you might think. At this point, most Ivy League colleges are only accepting scores of 5 on the AP exam as being sufficient for the student to skip an introductory level class. Some of them are no longer allowing students to skip introductory classes at all and don’t accept AP scores in lieu thereof. Other colleges may accept a 3 but require an additional placement test to confirm knowledge, however, they’ll let 4’s and 5’s skip the intro classes. There has been a debate raging for years over the validity of the AP class structure and curriculum as opposed to honors level classes and how each of these aligns with college expectations. I personally do not recommend AP classes for my kids or for others UNLESS the student has already taken every other available class in that discipline and has a true interest and desire to take the AP class. There is much more to be learned and experienced in the college classroom of comparable level that cannot be duplicated in a high school setting, and in the race for grades, GPAs and class standings, students who take an AP class just for the “status” or points may be missing out on far more valuable lessons in a good honors class, or in the college class they’d like to skip.

5. You don’t have to graduate from the first college you attend: I think the estimate, last time I saw it, was that about 3/5 of all colleges students who graduate do not do so from the college they first entered as freshmen. Since the 70’s, college students have become more nomadic, life stresses have changed, and families themselves move several times, bringing college students with them sometimes.

It’s not a bad idea to consider getting those first couple of years of credits from a cheaper college whose credits will transfer to your student’s eventual college of choice. The costs of attending a 4-year university are rising frighteningly every year already, anyway. It may be that your student doesn’t have the scores or grades to get into their preferred college – better to go to somewhere cheaper and prove themselves by doing well in college level courses and then transferring to the desired location. This also gives students a chance to accustom themselves to college level work, save a little extra money so any student loans won’t be outrageous, and to figure out if they really want to stick with their first choice as a major, or if something else is a better fit, which might also change their minds about what college they want to finish up at.

Most colleges require that you take 60 hours through their school in order to get a degree from them. That’s the last 2 years, at 15 hours per semester. Transfer information is available on their websites, and that information shows what colleges and which courses from the current college have been comped out to classes on the desired college campus.


OK, that’s it for me for the week. Have a great weekend!

Five Things To Do For My Head Cold

I hate head colds. With a stuffy nose I sound stupid and comical and pathetic all at the same time, my nose gets red, and I’m cranky. As a mom, and many, many moms can relate, unless I make a specific conscious effort to treat myself as well as I would a sick kid, I could have this durned cold for the rest of the month. So,

1. Put the warm, ugly robe back on: I’m not going anywhere, so there’s no reason to be all dressed and harnessed up like I’m going to be called on to be the emergency chairmom for a PTO meeting. I think many women have favorite ugly robes. My sister used to have one made out of a pink chenille bedspread. It had been washed so many times it was more of a mauve-gray color, and it was big enough to cover her and two shy Druids.

My stepmom had a blue, quilted “sick day” robe that zipped up the front and had big cabbage roses on it, along with handy side pockets for holding tissues. Mine is a green velour robe with a zipper, and one good pocket. It used to have two good pockets, but I left a dog cookie in one when Hoover was a puppy, and he got the cookie by chewing through the pocket. I guess that’s one example of doggedness. Anyway, my green horror has been so well loved that I’ve completely worn away the nap on the elbows and was left only with the underlying mesh until I patched over those with some spare blue sweatshirt material. The hems are frayed, too. It’s a perfect sick day robe.

2. Lie on the couch without guilt, all day: Normally I feel pretty guilty about lying around on the couch unless it’s late and I’m watching TV with the kids or the hubby. The last time I lay down on the couch during the day for an extended period of time, I had just broken a big toe and needed to elevate it and let the aspirin kick in. That was in 2003 or so.

3. Take vitamins and slurp them down with Orange Juliuses: I always tell the kids to take vitamins when they’ve got colds, and I guess I’ll line up the OTC bottles and have at them myself today. I figure Orange Juliuses are good medicine – half orange juice and half 7-Up – nutritious and soothing to a potentially cranky stomach!

4. Let someone else fix dinner: We swap off making dinner, and the kids have gotten really good at it over the years. This would normally be one of my nights to cook, but it’s kind of icky to think of sick people cooking the food. Since I’m the sickie, I will excuse myself from cookery and nominate whoever the heck else feels up to it. All the kids know how to make chicken soup from scratch, y’know, if anyone was looking for hints and ideas.

5. Put down the needles and wallow in stuff I’ve already knit and read until I doze off: It’s just cool enough today to need an afghan and some nice hand knit socks. Hey, lucky me, I have plenty of each! I’ve also been on a series reading kick and am working on Charlotte MacLeod’s Sarah Kelling/Max Bittersohn books. I’m up to The Convivial Codfish, one of my favorites. It doesn’t take a lot of brainpower, but it is amusing and sweet.

Have a great weekend, and take good care of yourselves, too!

Five Favorite Stuffed Toys

I didn’t have many stuffed animals or dolls as a kid – I had a koala bear instead of a teddy bear, and back then stuffed things were usually stuffed with an abominable sawdust mixture and made of heinous plastic fibers, which made them mostly uncuddly and very unwashable, so the koala was Not My Favorite. I also had some hand-me-down toys from my sister, and, sibling rivalry having been ramped up to the nuclear level between us, you can imagine how little I cared about the hand-me-downs. A few months ago, I decided to quit stealing my kids’ stuffed toys and get some for myself, just because. So, I have:

1. A stuffed emperor penguin with chick: I love this one, it’s soft, soft, and I like penguins. The chick is attached, sitting right between Dad’s feet, cute as can be. This one rides in my car with me, and the kids borrow it for cuddling when we’re going somewhere.

2. A Raggedy Ann and Andy: I count them as one because it seems wrong to have one twin without the other. When I was in elementary school, there were a lot of kids’ books about the Adventures of Raggedy Ann and Raggedy Andy. They ate a lot of candy, in fact, they ate candy exclusively. I thought that was a little yucky, but I liked the whole fantasy aspect of their stories when I was a kid. Also, I can wash them, and I like that they are plain, modest, and friendly looking.

3. Paddington Bear: Oh, Paddington. If I could have traded lives with anyone or anything or a fictional character in my childhood, it would have been Paddington. I envied him his life with the Brown family. No matter how sticky he got, how often he got lost, how many times he dug up the wrong plant, let the tub run over, or made a mess of the kitchen, they loved him nonetheless. What a lucky bear! I envied his duffel coat and his rain hat, and I wished I were him. So, I have a Paddington Bear, and he sits in my knitting basket next to my usual chair. Sometimes I just look and him and smile, and other times I pick him up and straighten his coat and give him a hug. A Paddington Bear is a good thing.

4. Not Got A Sock Monkey Yet. I can’t decide whether I want to knit one for myself or buy a pre-made sock monkey on line. When I was little, you couldn’t buy sock monkeys, someone had to make one for you. My friend Sarah had one, and all the way up until 6th grade, she slept with her sock monkey. It looked rode hard and put away wet and was all lopsided because she liked to sleep on it in one particular way. Lucky monkey, to be so loved! So, I’m still dithering over the monkey.

5. Fifi, sort of. She’s a black poodle wearing blue pajamas and white bunny slippers. I tried to give her to my daughter, but my daughter has her tiny teddy, Theodora, who rules the Pink Bedroom with a worn Iron Paw. Bunny doesn’t play with Fifi much, and every time I’m in her room, I pick up Fifi and snuggle with her. I went to one of those stores where you pick out a stuffed animal and add any noisemakers to it, if you want, before they fluff in the stuffing for you. Then you pick out clothing and pay a large wad of cash, and they create a nice cardboard cradle or pet crate, and you have to name the critter before you leave. Fifi was my first. I later had a pig stuffed and dressed him in a silver tracksuit and gave him to Spawn. His name was Kevin Bacon. Yeah, well, I probably needed an aspirin.

Anyway, I’m thinking of filing formal adoption papers to have Fifi become mine officially, and if that causes a lot of horrified expressions on Bunny’s face, followed by a great teenaged slamming of doors, then I’ll go make one up for myself.

Man, now I feel like I need a nap. With a stuffed critter!

Five Places I Get News on the Web

I get syndicated feeds from a bunch of sites. Lots of my interest is in education, what with the whole having kids thing and all (I know people are snorting and hooting and going, “Oh, YA THINK?” behind my back. I’m fine with that. Have a beer.) so my sources are weighted in that direction.

1. Education News : Extremely reliable, mainly national but some international links, digests, and guest columnists. Lots of resources, high quality source of information, mainly for K-12. Really, the majority of the information deals with K-8, but that’s probably more of a reflection on the ratio in original source reportage. Daily feed.

3. Wrightslaw: Not only is there a fascinating personal history for the founder of this website, the wealth of legal information and analysis is unbeatable. Wrightslaw covers news and legal updates for IDEA and 504 issues for kids with disabilities. I can’t recommend it highly enough. Many of the articles are also handy for general-purpose interactions with school districts, or in situations where there is a potential for legal action in the future. Plan to spend several days thoroughly investigating the website if this field applies to you, and sign up. The feed is weekly, I think.

4. Quirky happenings and headlines from This is True: Comes to you weekly and wittily in simple text format. Originator of the Stella awards for dumb lawsuits, a good site for rolling your eyeballs over Zero Tolerance interpretations, and lots of good humored stuff ‘n nonsense.

5. German Stuff at http://www.germanabout.com/: Although I don’t like the preemptory way the “about…” sites try to seize control of my computer, I’ll deal with it for this one. I recommend this site to everyone who wants to learn German, practice German, help others learn or practice German, or who just has an interest in the subject. There is lots of valid and vetted information here; it’s a truly professional quality site for reference and use for beginners and those who are refreshing their skills. Once a week updates on news, specialized vocabularies, word of the day (if you want it), all with advertising, but y’know, advertising happens.

Have a great weekend!

Five Assorted Things to Ponder

My computer is finally virus free and working at a reasonable speed again, so…

1. I ‘ll be celebrating an important national holiday today, seeing as it’s National Chip and Dip Day. I don’t normally eat either, but it’s important to make my patriotism obvious and support our troops by stepping up to the plate (chip bowl) and batting (or dipping) away. Also, just for fun, I called up my republican house rep. And urged him to support HR1415, the Restoring the Constitution Act, so’s we can be a free country again, too.

2. My post on the Last Sock has generated a lot of nice comments. The latest one, which mentions using one’s Mensa card as a humor enhancer, reminds me of one of my first experiences with Mensa, or, at least, with another Mensan.

I had joined and not gone to any meetings or said anything to anyone about joining. I did put a little decal on my MomVan window, and it looked a lot like a Batman emblem. A pompous ass of a neighbor, who was always trying to convince anyone who’d listen about the absolute correctness of his point of view, asked why I had a batman sticker on my car. I told him it was a Mensa sticker, and he was much struck, telling me he was a Mensan also. He hadn’t been to any meetings either since joining, so he quit being a pompous ass to me, and I cut him some slack on thinking of him as a pompous ass, and we decided to make a group trip to the next monthly meeting, along with our spouses.

My husband gets carsick if he doesn’t drive (or maybe he’s a control freak, but let’s not go there), so on the night of the meeting, he and PA neighbor dude were sitting in the front seat of the neighbor’s car, the wife and I were in the back, and everyone was yakking up a storm except my husband. He was just sitting there, looking a little cranky. He rolled his eyeballs as the volume increased, and then he started making little motorboat noises – BRMMMMM, BRMMM. The noises got louder. He started miming driving the car, brrrrmmmmm-ing away, bouncing in the driver’s seat, leaning forward over the wheel, and so forth. He finally got everyone’s attention, and PA’s wife said, “HEY! Do you need the keys, maybe?” He put a big stupid smile on his face and nodded enthusiastically, and we all laughed for quite a while over the Mensans forgetting he might need the keys to actually get us to the meeting.

We keep in infrequent touch with our former neighbors, but if hubs or I forget to give the other one something obvious that’s necessary to complete (or begin) a task, a short “brrrm” will usually suffice as a reminder.

3. Der Foehn – in Austria, I could swear I heard it referred to as “die” Foehn, but that probably doesn’t matter to anyone other than me and my calcifying brain cells. Anyway, during the transition between Winter and Spring, there was occasionally a time when the air was warm, there was still snow on the ground, and people would be cranky, short-tempered, a little peculiar, surprisingly romantic or fey, and it was jokingly blamed on der Foehn – a warm Spring wind sweeping over the Alps. The hapless humans dwelling in Switzerland and Austria (and maybe elsewhere) were supposedly emotionally disrupted by it, and it caused a general sense of unease and sometimes inexplicable behavior. There may be more to it than that, but I probably wandered off in a Foehn-induced haze somewhere during the casual discussion of it.

Anyway, der Foehn has been sweeping through my house the last couple of weeks while the snow took its time melting. It seems to be gone, mostly, now, and I’m glad of it. It felt a little like I kept waking up slightly new (to myself) each day, and I had to get reacquainted with me – disorienting, but not necessarily horrible. Other family members were equally affected by it, so things were odd around here.

4. Bravo for coffee! For those of us who truly enjoy our brews, SciAm advises the middle-aged and happily caffeinated amongst us that we might not need to switch to prune juice after all.

5. The new principal at our local HS seems to have spent a quarter and bought a clue. After 15 years of tyrannical domination by an unscrupulous and popular football coach, said coach was retired, pretty forcibly. There was a huge, orchestrated outcry by his supporters, he made a splashy move to another district, and that district wound up, within a year, getting him charged with multiple violations of some state school sports code, and he quit there, made more headlines, and is, quite predictably, suing everyone in sight to supplement his already overly-generous pension receipts. In a very dark corner of my heart, I hope he gets crushed by a bus full of Odyssey of the Mind contestants on their way to do voluntary community service by helping out at the Special Olympics.

Anyway, the new principal, not someone I would previously have crossed the street to spit on, is restoring some academic integrity to the high school. The senior slack-off year, full of courses that did not require books and barely required attendance, has been dealt a deathblow – hurrah! Instead, seniors have to take any core classes they may have missed, with added challenging options of dual credit with the local community college, work-study programs, and a number of other things that get a nod of approval from most of us concerned parents.

I am crossing my fingers and hoping for, over the next several months: a) the death of the block schedule and return of an 8 class day, b) increased rigor being brought back to foreign language classes, social studies, and English, c) further AP classes being offered, d) a big shake up in the teaching staff, removing some destructively dead wood and putting remaining teachers where they will do the most good, and e) the return of a GOOD German language sequence.

Five Types of Parents…

…Of Kids I Tutor

I’ve been tutoring off and on over the last 34 years. Since I’m 47, that may seem a little odd, but I was a peer and near peer tutor in school, too. When I went on to college, I tutored for pocket money, and since college, I’ve tutored for pocket money, out of pity, out of a sense of public duty, to further good relations with schools, and sometimes out of boredom. I’ll even admit to a couple of rounds of tutoring due to morbid fascination and/or sheer cussed determination.

There are all kinds of students who need tutoring – some don’t have the hardware, so to speak, to do the work they’re asked to do. The teachers know it, the kid knows it, and sometimes the parent knows it, but the system requires it. Other kids have the hardware, but their software got corrupted somewhere, and other kids have spent so much time sliding by or not caring that it has finally caught up to them and they are seriously in the soup. Sometimes really questionable teaching has derailed them. There are lots of reasons why kids may need an academic helping hand.

More consistent are types of parents. I probably haven’t really listed all of the ones I know here, but it’s time for Friday Fives, and it’s my blog. (snort)

1. Uninvolved and Don’t Care: These are usually the parents of the kids I get referred to me by the school system and teachers. The parents are usually unable to help their child due to circumstances of a pretty wide variety, and they never contact me. The kids never mention that their parents ask about their school day, how the tutoring is going, the parent never enters into the equation unless they have been abusive, which will cause problems for the kid academically, and it shows when I meet with them. These kids tend to confide in me, particularly if I’ve been working with them for a while, and that puts me in a sticky spot. Teachers don’t hear from the parents either.

2. Clueless But Proactive: These parents call me for private tutoring. It’s almost always for math, and the problem is not just that they don’t understand the new curricula or new theories, it’s that they didn’t get the whole concept the first time around when THEY were in school, so they are unable to help their own kids. They are usually earnestly apologetic, very fluttery and worried, and sometimes they will hover around to make sure that I know what I’m doing.

They’re kind of cute sometimes, too – I can spot them eavesdropping, and after the session, they’ll say something like, “Holy cow! If someone had explained it to ME like that, I might not be so dumb in math!” I always offer to have them sit in and learn along with their child, but they never do. I have had some call me on the QT and ask for math lessons for things like getting a real estate license or other certification that requires basic math, but we always do it sort of secretively, so that no one knows they needed help. These are very sweet people, and they’re usually very loving, caring parents.

3. Enablers: Kids will try to get away with just as much laziness as they can, and these parents let them do it. These folks always have some excuse for why Freddy or Sally is having so much trouble – he has too many sports activities, he’s upset over the move, over the divorce, we just stopped home schooling him last year, and it turns out he’s YEARS behind (no surprise there!), he’s afraid of his teacher, he doesn’t like riding the bus so we’re letting him study at home this year, etc., etc., etc.

What it really boils down to is that the kid is has more will power than the parent – the kid whines and wails and rolls in the floor in a great show of helplessness and despair worthy of an Oscar, and Mom (it’s almost always Mom) falls for it. The kid is usually perfectly capable of learning the material, and would do so easily if put back in school and given a suitable environment at home in which to study. That’s where the problem really is – in the home; the homes are invariably chaotic and disorganized, characterized by noise, interruptions, petty questioning, lack of patience, and interference. It’s not the kid who has the problem, it’s the parent. These situations rarely work out – the kid exerts more guilt power, or the parent doesn’t like having the door to the study room shut for an hour and keeps interrupting, and when no magical osmotic learning occurs during their short attention durations, they all give up.

I have no problem taking these people’s money. I have no problem answering the school district’s questions honestly when the parents try to use me as a referral without consulting me, either.

4. Stress Monkey Overachievers: The parent, usually a professional and a father, calls me up, absolutely on the edge of an angry breakdown of some sort. “My kid is in XXX private academy, and he’s never had problems in XXX before, but he’s getting a B in it now! Can you help? He HAS to have an A or he won’t get into (insert Ivy League college name)! He has a test next Tuesday, can you have him up to speed by then?” I usually refuse these jobs unless the kid himself convinces me that HE wants to be tutored, and I’m easy-going enough to tutor the kid who wants to get Dad off his back, too, I just won’t help Dad railroad some perfectly OK kid who missed a decimal point on his last quiz.

It usually takes three sessions – one to put the kid at ease and solve whatever small problem is at issue, one to build the kid’s confidence in asking for help in school from the teacher and other pupils (they’ve usually been so crushed under Dad’s ego needs that they’re afraid asking for help is going to make Dad go into a rage over the kid’s incompetence), and a third one with kid and both parents to calm Dad down and get his approval (in front of the kid) for the sane course of getting help at school. I always leave the door open for them to call me back if there’s another need, and there has only been one callback in all these years.

5. Hostile: The parent calls me because someone else told them they really needed a tutor for their kid. They spend the first call explaining to me why I’m unnecessary, how put upon they are, that the kid just won’t try, that the kid won’t listen to the parent or the kid wouldn’t need tutoring, and what incredible buttinskis grandparents, spouses, neighbors and parents of kid’s friends are. Sometimes the kid has himself, prodded and poked and asked the parent to call for a tutor.

Whatever the case, the parent is hostile towards me and really wants their money’s worth – they want a kid who doesn’t get fractions to be doing differential equations by the end of the second session, or they’ll call it quits in a huge huff of consumer dissatisfaction. Sometimes they call me names. They do that once, and promptly see my large, strudely ass heading out the door. I do not return until we have established some rules of conduct and boundaries, after which we all get along great.

You know that the parent was just hugely embarrassed that they couldn’t help the kid and that the problem got big enough to be noticed, and that they took out their frustration on me. I know it, too, and I know it going in. Sometimes, if the parent is having a humble moment, I can slide a few sympathetic words into our conversation and divert them from getting their knickers in a knot. Sometimes not and it plays out like a cheap novel. I usually spot an LD in about 40% of these cases, recommend a screening, and everyone is a seriously happy camper as a result. The parents then think I walk on water.


I know these parents well, and I’m sympathetic with all of them because I’ve walked in their shoes -- I’ve been too busy to be as involved as I wish, I’ve been clueless, I’ve been guilty of letting a kid slough off when they really should have knuckled down, I’ve even been an occasional stress monkey. And, two of my kids have ADHD, and I was pretty hostile myself until they were diagnosed. I’d be happy to sit down and commiserate with them over coffee and cinnamon buns, but that’s not why they called me.

Mostly, I think about the kids – having a rough time of it, not wanting to be the center of negative attention at home or at school, wanting to succeed or at least get by, hoping to learn a few study and coping strategies in addition to just the material at hand. I get my goodies from seeing them smile, feel more confident, or being excited and proud of themselves and bragging to me about their good test grades.

Anyone can tutor, and public schools are generally thrilled to find someone who will step up to the plate and help out. I hope that anyone reading this, if you have a little time during the day, maybe you’re retired or work a different shift, will call a school and see what you can do – elementary schools have kids who need to be read to and practice reading aloud; lots of schools really just need a “body double”, someone to be present and encouraging and keep a child focused while they do their homework, someone to show them how to use a glossary and index. And, of course, if you can help them with math or other subjects, that’s great, too.

It’s a good use of time for everyone.

Five Things My Husband Never Expected...

...When He Married a Smart Chick

1. Books Everywhere: Lots of them. Lots of alternate reading materials, too. There is not one single room in the house without a stack of books. This includes bathrooms, the basement, the laundry room, the garage, the kitchen, and a few other places I have hidden books out of sheer embarrassment after realizing I have TOO MANY books. If I’m going to come clean, I may as well come really clean and admit that I have not yet succeeded in paring the sheer quantity of books down to where I can store all of them in the usual places, as opposed to just everywhere.

I know that some people, when they hear “lots of books” think of old English libraries with leather bindings and comfy chairs. That would not describe my books. I read in bed, on the couch, in the bathroom, while waiting for the washer to fill, while knitting, while cooking, and while decompressing after driving somewhere. I read when I brush my teeth and as much as possible when exercising. They are paperbacks, softbacks, hard cover, truly ratty ones of each type, and the occasional overgrown pamphlet. They are in all types of condition, most with covers and some with the cover worn completely off. I don’t really care, since I don’t “collect” them, I read them. If all the words are there, then they’re just fine to me.

Hubs is not a big reader, and at first he really couldn’t understand why I wound up with so many books. I don’t know if he understands it yet, but he accepts it at least.

2. Really Smart Kids: I’m not really sure what kind of kids my husband expected. Probably kids who were more like he was as a child – gear heads, constantly playing pranks that were sometimes dangerous or ill-advised, kids who ran all over the neighborhood playing kickball and trying to paste things on pets or something. A very snarky part of me is thinking that if he wanted that kind of kid, he should have spent more time with them when they were little. Instead, he got mini BoS kids. They have enormous vocabularies and aren’t shy about sharing.

When Bunny was a tiny, tiny tot and came into our bedroom during a thunderstorm, she woke us up by saying “WAKE UP! I’m frightened!” I replied, groggily, “huhn?” She whacked me with her stuffed rainbow trout pillow and said, “FRIGHTENED. You know, it means ‘scared’.” I’m pretty sure my husband slapped his hand to his forehead and groaned out, “Oh, God, not another one,” before going back to sleep.

Then there was the dinner incident with Spawn, several months before he started kindergarten. He had taught himself to read with those wonderful Disney books on tape and lots of being read to by Mom, and there he sat at the dinner table while Bunny threw chicken skin to the dog. His legs were swinging to and fro, far above the floor, and he was loading corn onto his plate like there would never be any more. He looked at his Dad and asked, “What’s a chalice?” Hubs stopped with a mouthful of chicken and looked at him in astonishment. “A what?” he asked. “A chalice,” replied Spawn, waiting for an answer. They both looked at me. “A goblet type drinking vessel,” I replied. “Oh, OK, thanks,” said Spawn and went back to packing his maw with corn.

Hubs gave me the look. The “I can’t believe these are children, and how the hell did you know that, and why does he want to know???” look.

I answered the look, “He’s been reading the Grimm’s Unabridged Fairy Tales book,” I said, “How far have you gotten, Spawn?” “I’m done. I just wasn’t sure what a chalice was,” he replied.

3. Strange Food: I am adventurous with food and have been for as long as I can remember. When we first got married, my husband liked things from boxes, bags and cans, and anything that needed to be sectioned, stewed, or didn’t have some component with a copyright label on it was not actually edible in his opinion. I think this might really have been due to the fact that his parents were the same way, but he blames my food adventures it on my curious mind.

I admit, I’ve made some mistakes. The raisin and rice stuffing was a disaster, especially when the turkey had not completely defrosted. I had a few mutant cakes until I got a stand mixer. Some of my homemade candy attempts were questionable, however, I’ve always been pretty good at soup. Hubs does not believe that soup from something other than a can really counts as soup.

For example, early in our marriage, I found out that hubs likes Scotch Broth. He wanted it from a can. I’d never had it before, so I tried it and liked it. Naturally, to me, that meant I read the ingredients label, eliminated everything of the preservative nature, and tried to replicate it. The first night was lamb stew, which was kind of heavy and hubs only ate a dab of it. The next night, it was thick lamb soup, and by the third night, it tasted just like (insert famous canned soup maker name) Scotch Broth to me. He said the lamb chunks were too big and there were too many vegetables.

So, next time it looked like soup weather, I made chili. Nope, no good, not from a can. Also not acceptable were the homemade chicken noodle, the homemade chicken and rice, the homemade minestrone, the homemade oyster stew (which also got a thumbs down because it had FISH stuff in it), and clam chowder got ruled out before I even had a chance to make it.

We duked it out, sort of, compromising with the occasional foray into stuff I can’t stand intermingled with stuff he can’t stand. Then we had kids, and they liked the stuff I cooked. He knew he needed to set a good example, so he would, manfully and with good cheer, eat chicken stew with home made dumplings, and broccoli. He has tried curried chicken, but he draws the line at things in aspic and frou-frou girly salads. He even tried bouillabaisse, didn’t like it, but decided to try it. He has found out that his friends envy him his homemade dinners and tasty, fresh foods. They complain about only getting stuff from boxes and bags and cans.

4. Really Smart Kids – Part Two: When smart kids take standardized tests, they get outstanding scores. I never truly realized that there are few students who routinely score in the 99th percentile until my kids started bringing high scores home, and hubs reacted to them. He wanted to celebrate, to give them things for doing such a great job. I pointed out to him that they didn’t do anything out of the ordinary, they were just themselves. I think he felt like I had taken the wind out of his sails. I told him to be as happy for them as he wanted to be, but to understand that this is part of the way they are, and that making too big a deal out of it might spook them or cause them to be smug or arrogant.

When Spawn’s ACT and PSAT results came in, hubs sat down in the living room, mouth agape and said, “I’ve never heard of anyone getting a score like this before.” I took a couple of deep breaths and replied, “I did,” and just looked at him. “These are going to open a lot of doors for him,” he said. “Yes,” I said. Hubs looked at me for a very long moment. “Thank you,” he said. “You’re welcome,” I answered.

5. The Yarn Thing Run Amok: I have to try everything. My curiosity is a rampaging, ravaging beast, and that extends to yarn stuff. I have probably got at least one of every size knitting needle made, and one skein each of a significant percentage of the yarn obtainable in the US today.

It took a few years before my yarn monster showed up – I was working and didn’t have much time to knit, and it wasn’t in vogue, and sometimes I just get tired of explaining why I like the things I like. Hubs was a little surprised when he found out I knew how to knit and crochet. He was really surprised when he found out how well and how quickly I could knit and crochet. He was even more surprised when I started buying yarn in afghan-sized lots.

I don’t think hubs expected to find half-finished projects in every major room in the house. He does like the extra-long afghans to cover his feet while he’s watching TV, and he loves his balaclava and wool socks for when he’s using the snow blower.

He’s actually been pretty nice about the whole knitting thing – he likes seeing the kids in hand made sweaters, hats, mittens, etc., and he thinks they were extra cute when they were little, rolling around in the snow in a rainbow of colors. I don’t think he expected so very much yarn and so very many knitted things, though.

Five Things I Did Yesterday

I’m busier now, in a wider variety of ways, than I ever was when I had a paying job. Most folks don’t really believe that housewives and stay-at-home moms are all that busy. I think they have, as I did, an idealized view of how smoothly things run around the house, with errands, and with kids. It’s been my experience that people who haven’t been SAHMS think we have all the free time in the world for leisure activities (or for things THEY want us to do). I don’t know why we set ourselves up with unrealities to envy, but I think it’s pretty common. Anyway,

1. Physical Therapy: I’ve gone into detail already about this earlier this week, so there’s not much to add, other than the recuperation time is down to about 45 minutes afterwards, and then I can go do other stuff. Which I did, including an early lunch date with my spouse, a weekly thing we do instead of dinner out. I’d prefer dinner out, but then he gets all squinty and unpleasant about the expense, so we compromised.

2. Tutoring/Counseling: Straight from lunch, I tutor at the middle school. I’ve had one student in particular for over a year now. Yesterday after discussing and doing superlatives and comparatives, then mathematical functions with fractions, the student opened up to me about problems in the home. We talked quite a bit, the student seemed relieved and more relaxed, and I recommended talking to the teachers and the social worker, in confidentiality if necessary, and perhaps coming in and staying late to be able to study more effectively. I then followed up by cluing the social worker in, insisting on confidentiality, and toddled home to meet my own kids as they returned from school. They decompress at me, which I also consider bonding/mom time, and then I get an hour with my daughter, watching Dr. Phil before more stuff happens.

3. Knitting Group: I handed off parenting to my husband when he got home, and headed off for my once/week knitting group, noticed I had no gas, and filled the tank on the way there. It was a lively group, with 6 people, two of whom are newbies and needed instruction and reassurance, swapped numbers with another new member (but not new knitter).

4. Making Dinner: Thursdays are supposed to be “eat leftovers” nights, since I’m off at knitting during the usual dinner hour. I can usually count on the hubby to feed himself leftovers, and the kids are capable of it, but sometimes they forget, don’t want to, or get focused on their games and time slides by without them eating. Last night was such a night. I could only talk two of them into leftovers, so I heated those up, cooked burgers for my daughter and myself, and added leftover warmed up veg.

5. Tutoring, again: Got a phone call from a newbie knitter from earlier at knitting group, who needed to talk about needle size and gauge swatching, handled that, then while eating dinner, helped my youngest with his polynomials and word problems, then showed my daughter the ways of writing a compare/contrast essay on The Great Gatsby vs. a movie of same, and helped her with her outline, including looking up all the right terms (since kids can never find last year’s handy reference papers, and I can never remember the stuff) for a proper, detailed literary analysis. We discussed themes, methods of choosing what to include (need evidence!) and proper argument techniques.

Which left me with 15 minutes to spend with hubs before Jon Stewart’s Daily Show, which we all watch, hubs headed off to bed, and I chased around after the kids, getting them to bed, too. It was a pretty good day, all told, no appliances quit or spewed anything, no one got in fights or cried, my back is feeling better every day, the pets are healthy, all the homework got done with little or no stress, I got to do something for myself that was fun, and I got a decent night’s sleep.

I think about how much more physically demanding it was when the kids were small. All that running around and worrying about them whacking each other with Tonka trucks or sticking things in electrical sockets (because eventually they DO figure out how to bypass the safety measures) was exhausting. And it was intellectually stultifying, too, small words, careful consideration of what’s appropriate discussion around small kids and their very big ears. They get sick less often now, which means I get sick less often, too.

This is easier physically, but more demanding intellectually and emotionally. It never dawned on me, when I was holding their tiny, newborn little bodies, that I would someday be trying to dredge up decades old experience with quadratic equations and English papers and hints on cellular respiration or saponification, but that’s just as much of parenting as changing a diaper or cubing cheese or turning Barney off and going to the park.

I suppose I can paraphrase JFK here and say, “Ask not what your SAHM can do for you, but what you can do for your SAHM.” And, in case you’re wondering, cleaning the living room would be a great idea!

Five Spam Types That Irk Me

I should first admit that I sometimes read real life junk mail. I’m curious, I’m a compulsive reader, and I like to know what’s being touted from time to time. I also sometimes look at spam to see what’s cooking. Sadly, spam often lacks the tacky charm, the emotional thrill (“You may have already won!”) of paper junk mail.

1. Stocks to buy: If I were interested in buying stocks, the last thing I’d do would be buy those on advice from some wanker with a fraudulent return email address. Which is just one step below buying swampland in Florida, because at least the swampland might offer me a picture of a ‘gator as a consolation for being monumentally stupid.

2. Penis Spam: I don’t personally own one, and if I were to forward the p.spam to the possessor of same in my life, he might get so insulted that he’d consider not bringing it home for my entertainment anymore. And, life’s too short to play with your….. well, you know what I mean.

3. Lose weight now: Thank you. I’m sure I want to take advice and buy products on weight loss while sitting idly in front of my computer from someone who is doing the exact same thing. I’m pretty sure my Grandmother was right when she said, “go do something, dammit” although she might have just wanted me to get off the couch so she could sit down. If she were around annoying me today, I’d have Buns of Whole Wheat or something, instead.

4. Unintentional Spam: Sometimes neophytes, or even experienced computer users, will want to send their new email address, a particularly spicy anecdote, some wonderful pictures, a prayer for the troops, or a joke to everyone in their email address book. Unfortunately, we may have quit corresponding 5 years ago, I may be in your address book as a result of someone else’s galumphingly inept emailing, or I just don’t know you at all, and what really concerns me is how you got hold of my damned address. Second in this category are emails that have been repeatedly forwarded until I have to click more than twice to excavate the message you wanted me to see. Please, peeps, cut and paste and save time for those you wish to enlighten, entertain, or harass.

5. Credit card/paycheck loan Spam. No, just no. No today, no tomorrow, and no for everyday after that in perpetuity. Are they insane? Where’s the trackability? The accountability? Just thinking about it makes my eyeballs spin in opposite directions.

Fortunately my ISP traps most of the spam, so I don’t spend too much time choking and whacking the keyboard with my fist. What it doesn’t get, my home spam filter gets. I even have to check them periodically to make sure they haven’t inadvertently snagged a worthy message due to some phrase or trigger word. But it’s worth the small annoyance to get rid of the much bigger one. I hope someone comes up with a fix-all for the spam soon. In the meantime:

“EnLarga your penus NOW and youf boss will advance you aLoan, so you can buy my EFEDRA – garanteed wt. Loss products – and some !!!Penny Stocks!!! While I tell you this one about a farmer…”

Five Good Things About Folks with ADHD

My husband and both of my sons have ADHD. It often makes life very trying, it can certainly be frustrating, but there are moments of lightness and humor that are pretty fun, too.

1. They think I am unusually smart because I can remember stuff that they haven’t even thought of since it flickered off the screen of their attention span. Sometimes, as a Mom and wife, this works out to my advantage – I can play head games on the unwary, swearing up and down that they really did like stuffed green peppers the last time I served them, although I always give myself up as a prankster after poking at them a few times. I have been dubbed the family Oracle because I remember what the dentist said to them the last time they went, where they probably left their shoes, and why so-and-so is no longer speaking to them.

2. They are very forgiving. They don’t remember what the hell they were supposed to be mad about unless it was truly huge and/or they did something to lock it in their memory cells. Before any of them were diagnosed, I used to think they had more grace and kindness than anyone I’d ever met. Now that I know they’re just senile as all hell, I still like to think of it as grace, merely unintentional grace, and it gives me an example to follow in my own mind.

3. They are very energetic. Sometimes this gets bad or annoying when it hits the frenetic stage. Other times it works out pretty well for me because I could easily slide into a state of permanent mediation and physical indolence, which would cause me to be mistaken for a large piece of damp laundry occupying couch space. Having a son or husband twitter through the living room, inciting small mayhem or a desire to sally forth and DO something is a good thing.

4. Their needs for tangible materials to cope with their memory/attention problems has made me more reliable, more organized and more receptive to using the same or similar strategies. When my husband and I were first married, I couldn’t believe how horrible his time sense was. I got him a better watch, a pocket calendar, a wall calendar, and finally, over the years, he added in his own reminder computer programs, little pocket doo-dads and the like to help him remember important dates and appointments.

When the kids headed off to school and we went through the forgotten homework, books, assignments, and so on, I was the first Mom to insist on a Day Planner for the kids, follow-up homework hotlines, the option of an extra set of books for home, and to drive, with unrestrained fervor, the first 504 plan for an ADHD kid through the local school system. Assignment books and follow up methods are now de rigueur for all kids in the schools.

I decided, about 6 years ago, that between doctor appointments, following up on homework assignments, and various activity meetings, I needed a day planner, too. I am never without it now, and I’m glad I got one. When I started having to remember things for not just the five of us, but also for my Dad, it became crucial, particularly for scheduling his medical appointments, which sometimes need to be done a year in advance.

5. I’ve gotten incredibly good at estimating time myself in order to teach my kids how to estimate preparation time for getting to school or other appointments without having to dash out the door, already late, with their pants unzipped and wearing only one sock. I also clock durations, so that I can use actual data in future estimates or even in arguments with them. They hate that, in a kidly way. No more can they argue that they can’t possibly do the dishes because they have a date – I ask what time the date is, then inform them that if they will quit whining, they can get the dishes done in 13.5 minutes if they focus, have time for a quick shower – 8.5 minutes, get dressed – 5 minutes for the boys, 12 for my daughter, and still have time to drink a glass of milk before they leave. And they’ll be on time. They give me the look. I return it, raising it one set of maternal eyebrows and adding that they’ll also be in my good graces if they get hopping.


I usually win, and they love me anyway – because they can’t remember how many times I’ve pulled the same damned stunt on them!