4:15 am: Woken up by daughter. "Daddy, I threw up!" Console. Clean her face, change her PJs. Put her in my bed. Remove soiled linens (she managed to nail Dora square in the face, that's my girl!) and place in washer, fight back the urge to perform the liquid laugh. Over the past decade I have gotten over my vomitphobia (with snot being the sole body fluid that still grosses me out), but for some reason the load left on the comforter last night made me gag. Maybe it was the texture. It was chunkified! Go to sleep on the sofa.7:00 am: "Daddy, breakfast! Put on Kids TV!" Make breakfast. Daughter says "I want bacon too!" I guess she is feeling OK now. Drink a can of V-8 Vegetable Juice. Sit down at the computer to catch up on Snowflake and see what cooking utensils or digital cameras the Instapundit is selling via his Amazon.com affiliate account. Surprise! He's not selling anything this morning. (Glenn, I know that you sometimes stop on by, and I appreciate it! I love ya, man. But the product pimping needs to be eased back.)
8:00-10:00 am: Mow, edge and trim the yard. I still catch myself watching for landmines, even though our dog passed away over a year ago. I guess it is a habit ingrained over 13 years. Son has fun cleaning the driveway with the blower. First time since March I didn't break into a sweat while doing yard chores. Yippee!
10:00-10:30 am: S, S & S. Emerge from the final S to hear the kids fighting over my iPod. They like that Tap Tap game. Beg and plead that they not drop it on the tile floor.
11:00-1:30 pm: At the Pack Committee Chair's house. Six Webelos are going for their Aquanaut pin, plus some cubbies are going for their swimming belt loops. After they leave, the Committee Chair and I work on perfecting the evening meal for next Saturday's campout: silver turtles. We learned that hash brown potatoes turn into a soggy, revolting mess. Better to use sliced potatoes. My kids refused to eat the results until it was layered with half a bottle of ketchup.
1:45-2:30 pm: Walmart.
2:45-3:15 pm: Snowflake update on CH.C. Why do I follow this train wreck? Because it is a real-life soap opera, only more entertaining and without commercial interruption. Second load of laundry.
3:15-4:00 pm: Velcro Catch. These things are great. My son is a lefty, my daughter is a righty, but she throws with her left arm. Go figure.
4:00-4:30 pm: Billz. Kids play Sonic Heroes.
4:30-5:30 pm: Kids still playing Sonic Heroes. Don't they ever get sick of this? I guess I shouldn't talk considering my addiction to Snowflake's tale. Third load of laundry. The chore I hate the most is folding, particularly denim pants. After folding seven pairs of briefs, I decide that next time I buy my son underwear it will be colored. You parents will know why. Check e-mail.
5:30-6:30 pm: CiCi's. The only place I hate more is Chuck E. Cheese. But kids love CiCi's. Only thing I can stand there is the soup and salad. The "pizza" is covered by some type of pre-melted cheese product with the consistency of Elmer's Glue. I experience strange sensations as the heat-activated braces on my teeth expand each time a hot spoonful of soup enters my mouth. My teeth hurt mildly, but I can already see the difference. Akubi: Do it.
6:30-7:45 pm: "Would you turn the PlayStation off? Enough!" After a nice tantrum ("Don't look at me!") the kids play with the roller coaster. This is a pretty cool toy for $20, BTW. It's a nice project that will take a few evenings to build, particularly when you just discover that your eyesight is no longer 20/20 and you need reading glasses.
7:45-8:30 pm: Bath time. Shower time. I marvel at the grime that is deposited on a child in just one day. Put fresh linens on daughter's bed. "Brush your teeth NOW!"
8:30-9:00 pm: Magic Tree House. Say prayers. Kisses and hugs.
9:00 pm: Start typing this. "Would you two go to sleep? NOW!"
16 comments:
Forgive me, Lou, but what is Snowflake?
Hi Tom,
"Snowflake" is Casey Serin. From Caseypedia:
Snowflake is a term of endearment for Casey Serin. The moniker was first used by JimBobJoeBobJim in a January 16, 2007 comment to Exurban Nation, collectively referring to members of Generation Y and their alleged perception of themselves as "special little snowflakes".[1] The nickname was applied to Serin shortly thereafter, Serin being an egregious example of a person who fits all of the purported stereotypes of his generation.
Thank you!
Sorry, I forget that of my dozen or so readers not all of them are as intrigued by the walking disaster zone known as Casey as I am. :-)
Anything newly discovered in the heavens, Tom? Any NCAT in the observatory? :-)
The trouble is we're doing a sky survey at the moment and are probably making discoveries every night, it's just that we don't know! The data get reduced offline in the UK (the amount of data we gather each night is mind-blowing) and then analysed by the various groups, and it's only a year down the line that we get to hear about what they've discovered. Every so often though, I will put up a post in my blog about discoveries that interest me, just haven't done that for a while!
No NCAT to report, although recently have been involved in some very strange stuff about 9/11 conspiracies which has led on to chemtrails and fake moon landings. All very bizarre but have one thing in common - government conspiracies.
As for the real estate crash, I was hoping to write something about that soon on my blog - in my area we've had a huge house building boom and driving down this one particular street the other day, right on the oceanfront, I noticed that nearly every house now has a "for sale" sign outside it. My guess is most of those houses cost $500,000 to $1 million to build and are being sold for half that now. I need to do a bit more research though, and take some photos! The other things is, when the next big tsunami hits, and it will, those houses will be flotsam.
You've been in that house for a long time, way before the real estate bubble, so unless you refinanced for massive cash you should be sitting pretty, now and in the future. Except for paying to defend against a frivolous lawsuit from an insane manic-depressive kOOk (who is probably deceased at this point), I can't imagine that you took any money out. :-)
BTW, I am sure that you remember PZ Myers. He is running a HUGELY successful blog now.
I never refinanced (I was tempted!) and even though I have an ARM, my payments have never been more than my original payments and in fact are way down these days, so I put in extra every month to pay down the mortgage. I bought my place for $135K, three or four years ago it was worth half a million, but it's back down now, but probably worth double what I paid for it, at least. At one stage the land was worth more than I paid for the land+house together! I was lucky though, I just happened to buy at the right time, there was no real strategy involved. Even if the slump continues here (we usually lag the mainland by a year or two) I should be OK.
Interestingly, most of the new houses here were bought by retiring Californians! My newish neighbour is one, although she's very nice and I think's she's OK for money. I suspect she bought the land years ago when it was cheap - there are several undeveloped lots here that are owned by people on the mainland.
Yes, I know PZ's blog!
I don't know how you managed a day like that. Oh, to be young again.
Though I half kid that I've got 63 kids, they aren't really mine. Man, there is nothing worse than a sick kid. Ugh. They are so helpless.
Even though I'm on the ugly side of 40, my mom still gets all weird when I'm sick. I guess it never really goes away.
You're a good day Lou.
Dad, not day, Dad.
I've been grading papers for the last 3 hours and my brain is officially rotted.
I've been grading papers for the last 3 hours and my brain is officially rotted.
A lot of people think teachers only work 8:00-3:30 and have 3 months off each summer. Sweet! We know otherwise. The thing is, I know what teachers are required to do, and a lot of it is, frankly, busywork bullshit intended to feed the bureaucracy.
I've said before that I don't have the temperament to teach. I am in charge of a group of 35 hyper boys for an hour each week, plus (gulp) the entire upcoming weekend (and more to come). I can't imagine what it would be like for 6 hours each and every weekday. I suspect that you'd read about me in the paper.
Two weeks ago, including pre and post school tutoring hours, continuing ed classes, and some mandatory teacher training, I put in close to 80 hours. Last week was easy in that I only put in about 60 hours.
But, I work in a Title 1 school and in order to keep our federal and state grants, we've got to really bust hump and make sure the kids actually learn. We don't take the shortcut and have them learn to just take tests. That would be easier but would hurt the kids long term.
Scott - there are many people that really appreciate the work you do and are also encouraged to hear that students aren't just being trained to pass tests.
I work with and train relatively well-educated people (albeit in a specialized field) and those that have been taught to think rather than cram for a test are the ones that 1) make it in life, and 2) make my job so much easier!
I have no idea what a Title 1 school is, I didn't go through the US education system, I'll look it up. In the meantime, thank you for actually educating children and not just playing the system. If more teachers were like you I suspect you wouldn't have to work so many hours.
@Tom
Title 1 is a shorthand way of saying very poor and usually a very high number of "at risk" youth.
Still, while there are some rough kids, they still deserve to be educated. Hey, if they don't get educated they'll just follow through with stereotype and end up a ward of the state in one sort of way or another. That would end up costing society more in the long run.
As long as there are people as crazy as me that think they can change the world, we might actually do just that.
To Anonymous, who knows what is going on behind the scenes and please stay quiet about the situation:
It's not a question of being PC. I slept on the couch because my daughter snores like a freight train.
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