Hooray for A Cold

I’ve been swimming a lot recently, while the boys have been in their joint swimming class (which is going quite well).

Last night, however, I discovered I had caught some lurgy and am now living on Sudofed substitutes again.

The good news on this is that I took my notebook to the pool with me today, sat at the back of the bleachers trying not to make eye contact with anyone, and made some progress on the second of a series of children’s stories I’ve been writing, but which had stalled for a while.

I’m taking Debbie’s 500 words a day challenge even though I know it’s going to be, well, a challenge. I’m aiming for 5 days a week.

Wish me luck!

iPhone Cartoon by Debbie

by Debbie at inkygirl.com, a great site for writers.

Turning Into My Mother

After I waved the boys off this morning (”have fun storming the castle!”) I turned my attention to the garden, specifially my vegetable plot.

I’ve been nursing some seedlings along for the past wee while. Sadly I lost the cucumbers (apparently they REALLY mean it when they say cucumbers don’t like to be transplanted) and have already put out some of the lettuce and mesculun (salad mix). My zucchini/courgettes though, were calling to me. Some of them were starting to fade in their little plastic pots and, since the weather here is turning warmer, I decided it was time to transplant a few.

I built a trellis out of electrical conduit and trellis netting, pounded some rebar into the ground and slid the trellis on top. (I have it on good authority that this will do the job. I’m skeptical and will be ready with the guy wires assuming my vines ever grow up the thing).

I then fetched my beloved, long-nursed zucchini seedlings out in to the garden. I gently up-ended the pot and eased them out….and promptly snapped the stems on three of them. I had actually started a lot more plants than I thought I would need, thinking I could share some with the neighbours, but it looks like the neighbours will have to fend for themselves, because, as I put the plants in the ground I managed to snap the stem on one more. Of the six plants I handled this morning, two are now in the ground and still attached to their roots. (I put the others in the ground anyway, and covered them with dirt, just in case they felt like growing new roots along their stems, but I’m not optimistic.) I still have one back-up plant hiding out here with me in the office, so if tragedy befalls the two that made it, all is not lost. Yet.

After that, and a bit of general weeding, I made some wire cages for the seedlings, put a shade cloth on the trellis since the sun decided to make an  unscheduled appearance, elected to wait until later to put out the pepper and (more) salad seedlings, tidied up, swept the deck and decided to take a well-earned sit down in the still morning-shady corner of said deck.

At which exact moment a squad of workies pulled up across the street and started to do this.

At the risk of sounding like my mother…oh, too late.

Boys and Brains

Some hiccoughs in the Kindergartner’s progress recently have had my antennae tingling every time I come across any information about boys and schools and intelligence. I”ve discovered a few really interesting things recently.
This podcast of a recent Voices In The Family radio show was quite fascinating. The guests were a writer who has gathered all kinds of statistics and studies together to find out why boys are doing so poorly in school compared to girls (and there has been  a decline in boys’ performance in recent years) and a psychologist who studies these kinds of things.

Peg Tyre, the writer on the show has a book called The Trouble with Boys: A Surprising Report Card on Our Sons, Their Problems at School, and What Parents and Educators Must Do which is chock full of examples, studies and conclusions on the topic of boys and formal education. The thing I really like about it is that, although she does present conclusions, they are offered alongside the stats, which means that parents and educators can take that information and weigh it in the context of their own boys and their own situations.

The next podcast I listened to was a recent episode of Radio Times, also from my local NPR station. The guest was Richard Nisbett, who has written a book called Intelligence and How to Get It: Why Schools and Cultures Count. Apparently the whole question of intelligence and what it is, is quite fraught and political and I get the impression that the experts all disagree with each other quite vehemntly. However, I liked this guy’s thesis (that intelligence is largely affected by environment). It just makes sense to me. The podcast starts off with a discussion of intelligence and IQ scores and brain size and racial differenes that you might find a bit dry (but which I found fascinating), but it warms up a bit once they start talking about schools and once the callers start calling in (a pretty intelligent bunch of callers, if you ask me. Sometimes you get runts, but this show attracted some interesting and concise callers).

I’d recommend both of these shows, and possibly the accompanying books, to parents of young children, who are concerned about how to help their kids negotiate the world of school and learning.

You Know You’re A Stay At Home Mom When…

I love that I get to stay at home with my children, but there are, as in any career, downsides to the job. Sometimes they strike me as funny, so I’ve started compiling a list.

You know you’re a Stay-At-Home-Mom (SAHM)  when:

…You really amuse yourself by writing both ‘ketchup’ and ‘catsup’ on the shopping list and deliberately leaving it in the cart for someone else to find.

…You put on make-up because you’re Going Out! (To your annual OB/GYN check-up).

…You actually look forward to going somewhere that requires you to wear tights/panyhose.

More to come, as they occur.
What would you add to the list?

Best Job In The World

The news is full of the guy who won the contest for the “Best Job In The World” – as a caretaker of a tropical island, which was a brilliant PR campaign by the Queensland Tourist Board, by the way.

Talk of the Nation, on NPR, is doing a call-in show, asking people what their ‘best job in the world’ would be.

I know what my dream job is. And it doesn’t take a huge investment of money or equipment. The only barrier to entry is to carve out time and energy and discipline and self-confidence.

Off I go, then…

Happily Hitched

It’s wedding season here in the US. Anyone who has ever listened to 1930s & 40s popular song knows that ‘moon’ and ‘June’ are synonymous with love — and it’s not just because they rhyme. In most of the States the weather is unbearably hot any time between June and October, so most weddings, with all the formal dress, are planned for the months between last-snow-date and the end of June.

After years in the wedding wilderness, we finally got invited to a wedding recently, and it’s got me all gushy and sentimental, as weddings are supposed to do. Ever wonder why you have to stand in front of your community and make those vows? I think it’s less to do with the couple getting married, and more to do with making the bitter old wives and tired old men spend an evening looking back and getting misty-eyed about when they were as young and blissfully ignorant as the impossibly young couple that’s getting married today.

It worked for me.

I’m thinking about compiling an article of Things To Know When Courting.

Something Kev said, which my mother should be very happy about, was that guy should always look at the mother. This, he reasoned, was a glimpse into the future, and well worth doing if you were contemplating getting yourself hitched to the daughter. I think my mother should take it as a compliment that he came away from his first meeting with her, thinking that he was onto a good thing with me.

I think potential brides should also pay attention to the father of their beloved. Fight it as they might, there is a strong tendancy in the men I know best, to turn into a version of their own father. But the best reason to pay attention to your love’s parents is that, no matter how distant they may seem while you’re dating, if you ever accientally combine zygotes and get them a grandchild, they’re going to be part of your life until one of you dies. It’s best if you can forge a working relationship with them early on.

What insights do you old married couples out there have, for the foolish kids embarking on the journey this year?

Wheeee! A Wedding

One of Kev’s colleagues got married today and we got to go! It’s the first wedding we’ve been to in years. We’ve outgrown the wedding phase and even the christenings phase. Now we’re pretty much relegated to first communions and funerals until the boys grow up and start pairing off.

So it was lovely to be all gussied up for something as happy and fun as a wedding.

We ditched the boys with Angus’s godparents and there they stayed. I must admit it was weird to come home and be in the house alone with Kev. Very very strange. I have it on good authority that the boys are sleeping and happy, though. And I have to be up kind of early to pick them up tomorrow.

But it was lovely to go out dancin’ with ma man.

Holiday Pics

Official photographers all over DisneyWorld take your picture and we, like the suckers we are, had to buy them. But hey, at least we have pics of all four of us!

Earth Day

Earth Day Failures:

• Driving 12 miles there and back for a 20 minute appointment
• Getting lost on the way (even with GPS), and driving an extra 3-4 miles
• Sending A in for ‘hot lunch’, which is served on disposable, coated paper plates.
• Sending A to school with Cheese-Its in a plastic zip-lock bag for his snack.

Earth Day Successes:

• Driving at/around the speed limit, with one eye on the fuel consumption meter. (Driving like a teenager versus driving like an old lady: 2.6mpg improvement for the old lady)
• Sending G in for lunch bunch with the Laptop Lunch box and all fresh foods.
• Walking to preschool and back to pick up G.
• Turning off all those lights and appliances that usually just get left on by accident.
• Shutting down my computer. Now.