Spelling Errors

Little Brother sorted through the mail after school yesterday and found some Christmas cards to open.  After I reminded him to save the envelopes for me so I can check return addresses and remove the cancelled stamps for the mission collection, he got busy opening the cards and inspecting the photos he found inside.

But since he wasn't just shredding the envelopes like he usually does when he opens mail, he took a few seconds to notice the names and addresses.

"Mom, guess what?  On both of these cards, our last name is spelled right!"

When you've got a last name like ours, that's a pretty tall order.

I mentioned on Facebook that Little Brother is proofreading all incoming Christmas cards.  That got some interesting reactions, ranging from suggestions that people sending cards to my house should write illegibly to disguise the errors, to the declaration from my sister that she'll spell it her way no matter what.  She's been spelling it consistently WRONG for almost 21 years, being a little extra generous with Z's in an already consonant-heavy name.

One of my aunts, a first-grade teacher, remarked that Little Brother should keep a list of the people who've spelled it right so he can give them a special sticker as a reward.

That brought me right back to the days when I was teaching first-grade Spanish, before Little Brother was born.  Each teacher in that school, no matter what the subject, was to make and use a bar graph that could be regularly updated in the classroom:  quite a tall order for a traveling teacher who had only 35 minutes per group as it was.  I wound up asking the kids to bring in those stickers off the bananas that showed the bananas' country of origin.  We would paste them onto a big poster that I hung on my travel cart.  Every time we got a new sticker, we'd count the number of stickers each country had (it was a good year for Honduras, if I recall correctly.)

It's really tempting to make a similar chart with all the variations on our name...I won't, but it's tempting.

This, That and the Other Thing

This morning when I went outside to grab the newspaper, I could see the morning star.  Had to rush in and get Little Brother away from his breakfast so he could see it too.  (He thought it was worth it.)

Speaking of breakfast, Little Brother is a major-league toast eater.  He'll go through 6 to 8 slices each morning.  But that wasn't enough to get him through until snack time.  Now I serve him 1/2 cup of vanilla yogurt before the toast.  For snack, he has fruit and a string cheese.  He says mornings are much better now.

I am doing my best to resist the open bag of candy corn that's sitting in my kitchen.  But I've got some Count Chocula in the house...my kids had never eaten it before so I just HAD to get a box.

Generally I am not a flavored-coffee person.  But I highly recommend Godiva Coffee's Pumpkin Spice.  It pairs equally well with candy corn AND Count Chocula.  Note to self:  go back to Wegman's and get another bag of this coffee before it disappears!

Looking forward to tonight's activities.  I schlep the kids around a lot to things they do.  But tonight's event is really for me.  It's the first rehearsal for the Festival of Lessons and Carols in the parish where Little Brother attends school.   Little Brother will be in the children's chorus, and Big Brother will play various musical instruments.  I'll be singing and playing guitar.  I have no illusions of having the kind of musical ability that many of the other singers/musicians possess.  This is an amazingly talented bunch of people!  But I find that I sing and play better when I'm challenged by being among musicians who are better than me.  Time to stretch!

I don't get to bring my guitar tonight, though.  It's just a vocal rehearsal for the first day, which kind of freaks me out because my guitar is definitely my security blanket.  It's hard for me to sing when I don't have something for my hands to do.

I'm still hoping against hope that I find the earring I lost the other day.  It's not a valuable or expensive earring, but it was a really cute pair of earrings and I liked them a lot.  I should have an earring more than 8 days before I lose it, I think.

Last night I took Middle Sister shopping.  She had a really weird shopping list:  shoes for the Homecoming dance and a blanket sleeper (known in this house as a "woobie.")  The sleeper is for her Halloween costume.  The last time I saw her wear one of those, she was 4!  After trying on a lot of shoes with insanely high heels, platforms, sparkles and the whole nine yards, she settled on a beautiful and feminine pair of black silk pumps.  Grown-up shoes and little-kid pajamas, all in the same shopping trip.  I guess that's life with a teenager.

Reelin' In the Years

Middle Sister had four of her friends here earlier, and they were all lining up to primp in front of the bathroom mirror before I drove them to the football game.  As she left the room, one of them asked, "Is there a guitar pick in your bathroom?"

She never asked about the Army Guy, who stands only about an inch away from the guitar pick.  He's been guarding the bathroom for at least 3 years now--possibly more.  It's been so long that he's part of the landscape, and when I clean the bathroom I just put him back on the counter, in the same place he was before.

Sure, it would be easy enough to carry the Army Guy over to Little Brother's room.  It's only across the hall.  For that matter, I could just toss the Army Guy in the trash can.  Earlier this week, I cleaned out the family-room closet and toy box, and boxed up all the Army Guys along with the other stuff Little Brother no longer uses.  My guess is, he'll never notice it's gone.  After a suitable interval, I will donate the usable toys to our school's pre-K or Goodwill.  (Tuesday's good.)

I can't get rid of everything, though.  When I pulled the battered copy of The Very Hungry Caterpillar off the bookshelf, there was no way I was putting that into the donation box.  The same goes for the entire "Little Critter" series (Middle Sister was a big fan) and The Little Engine That Could, which we memorized during Big Brother's childhood and hid during Little Brother's.  We just couldn't go down that road (track) again.

Some people have scrapbooks, all beautifully decorated and labeled, full of photos of their kids.  I've got their entire libraries, as well as a few Army Guys, Matchbox cars, and an American Girl doll.

"The things you think are useless I can't understand..."

Reworked

Barbara has been doing an occasional series on laundry.

Laundry is one of those chores that we do one way and we stick with it. Even when our system isn't working well for us, we stubbornly stick to that system.

I freely admit to being a slave to my laundry system, which hasn't worked well for us since we moved into this house. That was in 1998.

Our old home was compact, with no wasted space, but not much to spare either. The utility closet (big enough for furnace, water heater, washer and dryer and nothing else) was just inside the front door--in the dining room. I had room for one laundry basket on top of the dryer. So laundry got done and delivered to the bedrooms, to be put away. I had no choice--there was nowhere else to put it.

Then we moved to this house, which has a laundry room in the basement. Since I had always folded the laundry right there by my dryer in the old house, I did the same here. But it was so easy to fold the laundry and place it in a laundry basket--one for each family member.

Five laundry baskets take up an awful lot of floor space in the basement.

And by the end of the day, I would forget to hassle nag remind my kids to carry their laundry baskets upstairs and put their clothes away. So they'd go to the basement to look for stuff, and rummage through the baskets, and I'd get annoyed because they had unfolded all the neatly-folded laundry.

It wasn't working for me. It wasn't working too well for them, either.

So I tried something different--which, for me, is a big step. The only time I willingly try something different is when I'm cooking. I stepped out of my Laundry (Dis)Comfort Zone. When the dryer was done, I dumped everything into a basket and took it right upstairs. I folded it on my bed and delivered the folded things to everyone else's beds. Now when they get home from school there is laundry on their beds, to be put away. There are no baskets cluttering up my basement floor, full of tumbled clothes. There is no "Mom, where's my (insert name of article of clothing here)?" There are no mad rushes to the basement downstairs to find that missing piece of a uniform.

I deliver as I go, and it's amazing how much better I feel about getting that done. The only thing I need to tweak is what happens to the Lonely Socks, since I'm no longer in the basement to utilize the Lonely Sock Clothesline.

It feels so good to retool a system and have it work out so much better!

Eco-loser

I tried. Really, I did. For several years now, I have put up with dim-and-getting-dimmer lighting in the family room and dining room. If I didn't turn on the dining-room light when I started cooking dinner, we wouldn't be able to see our food during the meal. And you couldn't read in the family room.

So this week, I kicked them out: all those compact-fluorescent lights we'd installed in those fixtures. At $7 per bulb, it was going to take a while to realize the energy savings when we had to turn them on earlier than we needed them in order for them to get halfway bright enough to use. Now I'm supposed to find a special disposal site for them, because apparently they're toxic waste, too.

Fortunately, I've been hoarding those good old incandescent bulbs (thank you, Thomas Edison!) I can switch on that dining-room light just as I switch off the kitchen stove, and it's nice and bright in there. (You could land a plane on my dining-room table if you had to.) I'll save the mood lighting for dates with TheDad at fancy restaurants. Although the dim lights were good for one thing: it was harder to see whatever Little Brother had spilled during the meal.

CFLs just do NOT work for me.

So Much for Idealism

There's a song from the musical Barnum that goes, in part:

Bigger isn't better,
Taller isn't smarter,
Stronger isn't always wise.

It's a lesson I've always tried to teach my kids--all of whom started out as little "peanuts."

But last night my kids learned, without a shadow of a doubt, that the one with the memory foam pillow wins the pillow fight.

It's the Little Things

On a day when I've been up since 3:30 AM (to take Big Brother to school at 4 for departure for his senior trip), it's the little things that will keep me sane, awake and reasonably happy until bedtime.

My whole family knows to stay away from me (far away) when I'm sleep-deprived and cranky. I tried to go back to sleep after I dropped my son off, but no such luck. So I figured I'd do my best to make the most of the rest of the day, in the hopes that I won't be sending the rest of my family running for the hills.

First of all, I said yes when TheDad asked if I wanted to hit the diner for breakfast. We had a nice time, too, just relaxing. I think we both needed that. And the poached eggs hit the spot. So did the (caffeinated) coffee.

I was home just in time to leave again for daily Mass. That's always a good thing.

Then I took myself for a long-overdue haircut. Last time I got a haircut it was December! I had the stylist try something new and so far I like it.

After that, I stopped at Panera for my favorite lunch of an asiago-cheese bagel with veggie cream cheese, and a caramel latte.

Maybe, if I can manage to get my work done early today, I'll squeeze in a nap before the school bus gets here.

But if I can't, and I'm so sleepy I can't be trusted around the stove at dinnertime, there's no fear. I found a pack of pre-seasoned taco meat in the freezer, so all I have to do is heat that up and add some tortillas, lettuce, salsa, and some boxed mac & cheese.

And if you want to hear what I sound like when I'm not sleep-deprived, I'm guesting on this week's Among Women podcast. Pat Gohn does a fabulous job hosting this podcast, and it was great talking with her.

Pardon Me, Your OCD is Showing

Little Brother likes to help me unload the dishwasher. While most of its contents have to be put away in cabinets beyond his reach, he's more than capable of taking care of the silverware, especially since the little basket that holds them in the dishwasher is removable. He actually gets mad at me if I do "his" job.

Letting him help in this way, though, is a lesson in letting go. He (usually) gets the knives, forks, and spoons into the right compartments. But pointing in the right direction? Not so much.

This is one of those times when I need to remind myself that it really doesn't matter if the spoons are all facing the same way. He's 7, and he willingly helped me to a household job. I don't have to go back into that drawer and turn all the forks around so the tines point toward the wall.

I really want to, but I don't have to. And it's going to take all I have today to leave those forks alone.

By the time dinner rolls around, most of the forks will be back out of the drawer and on the table anyway. There's always a chance that tomorrow when Little Brother empties the clean-silverware basket, he'll face the forks the right way. (I can talk to myself like this all day, but I'm still going to struggle to stay away from that drawer.)

I've got to learn to save my perfectionism for situations when it's really needed, like editing. The sorting of silverware is something I'll need to let go. It might drive me crazy today (if I'm not crazy already) but it's way better for my kids.

Things I Love About Autumn

• The changing colors of the leaves
• Pumpkin spice lattes
• Crisp apples
• Sweater weather
• Halloween fun
• A nice warm towel after a shower, because the towel hooks are located directly over the heating vent
  

Gratitude

That's what I'm feeling right now--for my mp3 player.

Little Brother and Adventure Boy are here, with their toy guitars, practicing for their "band." Adventure Boy just offered to teach Little Brother a song from "Nacho Libre."

Thank God for noise-reducing earbuds.

Word of Warning

Don't be the last one asleep on Easter Sunday. If you sleep in, your siblings will find all your eggs and move them to "better" hiding places.

The Groundhog was Wrong

I knew all along that it would be an early spring. How can that groundhog avoid seeing his shadow with all those lights for the TV cameras?

It certainly feels like spring this weekend. Monday's igloo that was built by Middle Sister, Boy Next Door, and Big Brother collapsed on Friday and there's not a trace of it left, save for the sand-diggers and small shovels strewn around the front yard.

We've got the windows open and I am listening to the birds sing. I spent 20 minutes already today on whatbird.com, trying to figure out what bird woke me up this morning. I never saw the bird, but his call goes "whistle whistle, twit twit twit twit twit." He whistles twice and twits at least 3 times, and each time, he adds a few. Then he gets quiet and starts all over again. Yes, I am compelled to count how many twits each time. So if you have a clue about this bird, I'd be so grateful.

We saw two robins in the yard this morning, and the kids wore shorts yesterday.

AND we've already had our "spring ahead" on the clock. So it must be spring. So there, groundhog!

Spoken Like a True Girl

I came home this morning after Mass and grocery shopping to find a message on our voice mail. Apparently it was left yesterday afternoon, and I didn't realize it. The little girl who lives behind us wanted to play with Little Brother. She's almost five, but quite the pro at leaving messages!

"Hello, my name is Cutie Pie, and I'm calling to ask Little Brother to come over and play with me, because I want to play. Give me a call back. My number is ###-####. Bye!"

I feel bad that we didn't realize she'd called, and at the same time I'm really impressed at her ability to leave a message. It must be a girl thing, because Little Brother will call and say things like, "Hello, can Cutie Pie play? (wait for someone to respond, which won't happen because this is voice mail)...Bye."

Feels Like Monday

I always get messed up on these long weekends. I am convinced that it is Monday today.

Little Brother made a bet with his uncle on the Eagles game this weekend. If the Eagles lost, Little Brother would have to wear a NY Giants t-shirt for a whole week. Well, you know that the Eagles lost. Little Brother does not own a Giants shirt but his uncle was happy to provide him with one! Other than school, he is wearing that shirt and even hiding it so I can't wash it. (I found the hiding place, though...don't worry! No stinky Little Brothers allowed around here!) I'm glad that he is being a little man and living up to his end of the agreement. Maybe he will think twice before gambling again.

There are a lot of errands to run today and it is NOT warm out. I could put some off until later in the week and hope for a warmer day, but I have to do some today, so while I'm out I may as well just get it all done. One of those errands is re-registering Big Brother for school. He will be a senior next year. I have to go to the school with the forms and the very last school-bus application I will ever write for him, and of course a large check.

And it promises to be a busy week in basketball for Middle Sister. Practice tomorrow, game Thursday, game Saturday, game Sunday. Fortunately her jammed finger from last week is all better. She's already talking about softball for the spring.

Facebook is Cool

I originally joined facebook so that I could spy keep my eye on Big Brother, since he had joined facebook to share photos with friends.

I've recently discovered that I have a whole bunch of cousins, aunts, nieces, and a sister-in-law on facebook! In fact, a bunch of my cousins and I have been keeping in touch this last week, concerning my dad in the hospital. Facebook has been an easy way to keep them updated.

My dad is mystified that I am communicating with the cousins in this manner. He refuses to look at facebook, but he did say that he received a "demand" to be added as a friend, from one of his accounting students. And my sister said that if her cousins want to communicate with her, they can find some other way to do it.

I think it's fun, though. I'm enjoying the pictures of my cousins' kids, since none of us live in the same area! And I think it's good to keep in touch, no matter what way you choose.

Oh, and Big Brother--I have more friends than you. I WIN.

Memo To My Children

If you are going to insist on wearing mismatched socks on purpose, I am going to stop trying to match your socks when they come out of the laundry. I'm just going to give you a whole pile of your unsorted, unfolded, and inside-out socks and let you figure it out.
Love,
Mom (who wears her socks matched, thankyouverymuch)

Red-Letter Day

One of the highlights of first-grade life is the Great Crayon Replacement. A couple of months into the school year, that starter box of crayons is starting to look like a scrap of cardboard with a few naked, colorful stumps.

Little Brother was coloring a shark picture after dinner tonight when he announced that he was allowed to bring a 24-pack of crayons to school now. He was a very happy guy. I told him that I'd go down to the basement and get him a box of crayons to put in his schoolbag.

Little Brother had other ideas.

He took the nice, new 64-box of crayons that was just opened a week or so ago (I try to hide the school supplies until they're really needed, but the lure of the New Green and Yellow Box is irresistible to grade-schoolers and middle-schoolers alike). Then he started counting out all his favorites.

He has pretty good taste in colors. Like me, he goes for the interesting name. Why take plain old "purple" when you can have "purple mountain majesty?" Who settles for "green" when there's "granny smith apple?"

His teacher runs a pretty tight ship, though, and I was concerned that she might not appreciate the Little Brother Sandwich Bag of 24 Great Crayons. I figured that at least he should have the basic colors in there, so I started quizzing him on whether there was red, orange, black, and brown in his selection.

We were doing fine until we got to yellow. "I don't need yellow," he claimed. "I'll just use yellow-green."

"That's not the same," I answered. "What if you have to color something like the sun, or a star?"

He finally conceded that yellow would be a good addition to his set of colors, and happily zipped up his little sandwich bag of crayons and put it in his schoolbag.

And now we have a 40-box of crayons sitting here, with no good colors left in it, and plenty of empty spaces. No one's going to use that now. I'm sure they'll start tearing apart the basement looking for another 64-box, which I don't happen to have down there. (And if I did, do you think I'd tell them that?)

Caffeinated!!

Boy, was that a mistake.

I really wanted a soda at lunch, and all we had was regular Coke or Dr. Pepper. Wisely, I decided against the Dr. Pepper....

Then, on the way to school to watch the Halloween Parade, I stopped at 7-11 for a coffee. I should have gotten the decaf, but I was unable to resist the "Heavenly Blend." It was really good, too--almost like coffee ice cream. Yum.

That was a lot of caffeine all at once, though. It's probably 3 times the caffeine I consume on a daily basis. So I'm feeling just a little extra...hyped up. OK, a lot extra. It's not really a good feeling, either.

I guess it would be best if I stay away from the Halloween candy today. I'll just put some of those Milky Ways in a Secret Hiding Place so I can scarf them down enjoy them another day.

Ask a Dad

Every year one of the most challenging parts of planning our Living Nativity "Greccio" service is finding a baby to play the part of Baby Jesus.

We're not too particular about whether we find a boy baby or a girl baby to play the role. One year we even had twins, which was great because the first baby started screaming halfway through, and his mom ran up and switched him out with the understudy! Another year we didn't have a baby lined up in advance, and we begged the parents of a sleeping toddler to let us cast him in the role. He slept through the whole thing.

But this year, our parish business manager gave me the name of a family whose child was recently baptized. I called them and left a message, and eventually got a return call from the dad of the family.

Normally the moms arrange these things, and I have years of experience in describing what will happen, who will be holding the child, how the baby should be dressed, that we will provide a clean and soft white blanket to cover whatever the baby is wearing, that it only takes about 20 minutes and that it is outside and there are real animals.

And normally the baby's mom will freak out over one or more of these things, and I have to reassure her that her child will not be handled by a snotty-nosed four-year-old but instead by reliable teenage girls, and that the animals will not touch the baby, and that I'll bring a gallon of hand sanitizer, and that I use hypoallergenic laundry detergent.

But when the dad makes these arrangements, he says things like, "Great!" "No problem!" "Sounds good!"

I'm definitely going to make it a point to talk to the dads in the future when we plan our events.

Attention Fellow Office-Supply Geeks

You know who you are. I won't bother to name names.

I found 2-packs of the Sharpie pens at Wegmans today. I have been wanting to try these ever since I saw the ads in Real Simple (and I have to say, the companies who advertise in that magazine are very effective at making me want the stuff they sell!) New kinds of pens--how could I resist? I love pens. I think there are about 8 of them in my purse right now, because I NEED 8 pens....(well, one's a Sharpie, and one's a pencil, and after that I really only need ONE pen in there--but they just keep sneaking on in). Whenever TheDad goes to a convention, he comes back with a handful of pens, and I hijack most of them before the kids get to them.

About the Sharpie pen--I got the pretty blue color. Blue's my favorite, after all. It really is that light of a blue. Very different, but very nice. I can see the ink a LITTLE bit through a standard sheet of copy/printer paper or planner paper, but not as much as the ink from a roller-ball or gel-ink pen. So far, so good; we'll see what happens when I leave the cap off for hours or drop it on its tip. It's kind of a very, very fine felt-tip type of pen. The ink dries instantly, which is great, because I do tend to smear ink around. For that reason, I'd recommend these to "lefties" like my sister.