FF: Emotional Roller Coaster

*SO there's a difference between clarified and softened butter? Is that why my cookie dough became pudding?

The butter problem didn't matter too much though because 1) my phone rang, 2) I multi tasked and tried to peel potatoes while baking and talking and the peeler slipped - ouch! and then 3) we got involved looking at the potato that looked like a butt.

The smoke reminded me that I forgot to set the oven timer.

*Know what makes me sad? People who say, "Of course we budgeted for Christmas. Didn't you?"

*Know what makes me sadder? The dad who told me that he has $100,000 in his daughter's college fund. She just began high school.

*Know what makes me saddest? That Weight Watchers works better than any diet pill. That one really could make me cry.

*Do any of you know where I safely stored the decal I bought for Christmas decorating that says something about such a big miracle in such a small baby?? I'm hoping to find it before we take the decorations down.

*My youngest son's teacher is doing something quite lovely in class. Each child has a secret pal this month. They are to look for positive ways to enhance the other child's day and then next week, each child will write a letter of affirmation to his or her secret pal. Wouldn't you like to be in that class?

*On a similar note, my extremely strong-will child was destroying my day this week. Everything was an argument and he wasn't about to give in at all on anything. A very nice woman watched my child assert his will aggressively, and then the woman turned to me and said, "You know, don't you, that this doesn't mean you're a bad mom?" My heart was warmed by her spontaneous affirmation.

Has anyone warmed your heart this week ?

FF: Kudos and Raspberries

Kudos to me for keeping my track record 100% in convincing myself that I do NOT need to shower to just run into to a grocery store, and then seeing acquaintances there who apparently did not listen to that same inner voice.

Kudos to teachers who intentionally do NOT assign major homework or projects to be done over the week-end and instead tell students of all ages: get outside this week-end, spend time with family and friends, and come back on Monday ready to learn.

Kudos to teachers who do NOT believe in assigning group projects.  I don't care how it's set up, there will always be a weak team member. And don't tell me this is how the business world works.  Oops.  Sorry. This is turning into a raspberry!

Kudos to Kris who is, perhaps, the grandest baker and cook of them all and whose Halibut recipe turned me into a successful fish cook. She is the face of Alaska for me, and I reallyreallyreallyreally hope I can meet her IRL some day.  Until then, we'll remortage the house and eat some more Halibut.

Kudos to our firefighter friend who made repeated trips into a burning home to rescue some belongings of a family whose house was a total loss.  The love of Christ is so apparent in this man.

Raspberries to drivers who think they will "help" my brand-new driver daughter along in her skills, speed, and confidence by tailgating her and swerving out of their lanes to see around her car.

Raspberries to people who can NOT hear anything anyone else has said, and I do NOT mean because of a hearing loss.

Raspberries to my dryer who is flirting with a very serious electrical breakdown.

We need to finish on a positive note, so .... kudos to family dynamics that make us smile:

this morning's example was our 8 year old boy who said just as he left for school,

"Oh, I can't leave until I say good-bye!"

I smiled and held out my arms, but the boy turned the other way and walked toward the dog. 

Now, kudos to these gracious hosts:

FF: Yes, I Do Write My Own Blog Posts

Fragmented thoughts is the theme of my week.  My students just took a grammar quiz on run-on and fragmented sentences and did sufficiently well.  Then they turned in their next essays - which were full of run-on and fragmented sentences.  Maybe the people they pay to write their essays should have taken the grammar quiz.

On Sunday I lost my glasses and squinted through a few events for the next few days, but then Checkered pointed out that my glasses weren't lost.  They were only taking a little vacation in his truck.  And they're still there.  I do wish they would at least send a postcard or something.

Have you sent or received a postcard in the last year?  I haven't.  Although I do buy them while on vacation,

I never send them.  Nor do I scrapbook.  So why buy them?

I sent my 13 year old out to ride his bike the one mile to school yesterday, but there was a steady downpour so I drove him instead. But then I began to think about Kelli Norgaard's posts about her Danish counterparts riding bikes in all kinds of weather and I felt like a wimp.

Then we saw my son's classmate - cold, wet, and miserable - with another 1/2 mile to walk.  I mumbled that we should stop and give the boy a ride, but immediately changed my mind because he doesn't know me nor do his parents. I felt angry at a legal system that made me second-guess my Good Samaritanism.

Then my son, in a little display of panic, told me we couldn't offer the ride because the boy is popular and my son is not.  That made me even more frustrated at a lot of people including my own son.

So I went to McDonald's to vent my frustrations at a Mocha Frappe' but asked for no whip and no drizzle.     Just so you know, skinny Checkered, it helped tremendously.

However, it didn't even take the edge of the fact that I teach English and my child currently has a D in the same subject or the fact that another child of mine read 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea with me (a very difficult read) and then failed a test on said book. 

And now a completely unrelated question: how close are you currently to closing your blog?  I am teetering in favor of other social networking options (yes, I still love Facebook) and writing projects.

Finally!!!! Have any of you Texas residents encountered trouble with the wild horses and cows I've heard about on the news? I am serious.

These random, disjointed thoughts are sponsored today by:

FF: Take it from me

I am a veritable font of great vats of wisdom.  If only I could get paid for everything I know.  Here's a sampling from what I've learned this week:

Take it from me, your vision will improve tremendously once you remove your READING glasses after driving on a dark, rainy night.

... when someone tells you how easy it is to write a Harlequin-type novel, they haven't written one.

... watching an 8 year old read his Bible every night just before bed will absolutely melt your heart.

... if you cheat on your diet repeatedly by ordering mocha frappes from McDonald's, you will dribble on your shirt and not notice, thus giving away your little secret.

...if your daughter is convinced that you're crazy, she will eventually find someone with a crazier mom.  In contrast, you will suddenly look great to her.

... if a college teacher has a brainstorm and pulls up a Schoolhouse Rock video, "Conjunction junction, what's your function?" for her students to watch, they still won't know what a conjunction is afterward.

And if that same college teacher tells a student that she knows what he has between his thighs, she might mean his cell phone, but the students won't believe her.  Take it from me.

Now what have you learned this week?

FF: Perspective

One of the biggest lessons of my middle years has been the awareness that perspective influences everything.  For example:

 My seventh grade son fell off his bike near school this week only to be assisted in his recovery by a very pretty and popular eighth grade girl.  I saw that as an opportunity for him.  He saw it as mortification.

I've never liked being a little older than my husband.  I get to every benchmark birthday first and find that to be uncomfortable.  But then Aging Mommy called me  a minor-league cougar.  I LOVE my new label.

I decided to get a second part-time job since full-time jobs are not seeking me out.  The warehouse job sounded great: flexible schedule, lots of work through Christmas, very little cognitive effort, and maybe even a store discount.  Then I read the part about having to climb a 12-foot ladder.

Checkered used to come home and be a little disappointed when my dinner plan involved just pancakes.  Now I find that if I tell him I am determined to spend no money on groceries this week, pancakes sound pretty good to him.

Our daughter's first day of driving was survived by both student and teacher.  She seemed quite surprised that the accelerator didn't have to be pushed all the way down for the car to move.

During those driving hours, she could not find the turn signal.

And those two previous items make me wonder what the driving teacher means when he refers to our daughter as "Killer."

Again perspective: this same daughter tells us that the girl she is taking lessons with would be a "really good driver -- if she could just stay between the lines."

My fifth grade son was very disappointed that his fellow morning announcers at school were all girls.  Then again, he said he is is shopping around since he plans to have a girlfriend next year. So maybe the girl crew is okay.

I heard a sermon recently which, while I agreed in principle, I did not agree with many of examples.  Afterward, my friend called and said, "Wasn't that dynamic?" 

This week my daughter has been asked to Homecoming by three different guys.  All via texting. 

It is, indeed, a new generation.

FF: Choosing to Smile

In class a while back we were discussing the concept of continuous and continual.  I asked the students for an example of continuous  and a girl answered, "My period."  I actually blushed and then I felt sorry for her because she was either very sick or going to fail the vocab test.

This week's teaching goof was that I thought  I wrote "frag" on the board.  You know it!  I really wrote "fag"  AND referred to it several times without seeing the mistake.

At the beginning of the school year, I invited myself on my daughter's 10 minute walk to the bus stop.  She told me she didn't need me, and she didn't.  I went anyway.  That walk has become absolutely precious to me now as we walk and chat.  Now it's my daughter asking every morning at 6:25, "Ready?"

I used to do my best to avoid seeing or hearing Michelle Duggar on television.  Ironically, I intentionally never miss that show now.  Okay.  I'll admit that I respect her.

Just so you know, I do love Fresca.

And the final fragment: we went to Curriculum Night at our boys' schools this week.  At the end of the evening we were looking at the writing samples in our youngest son's class and found our son's paragraph on the wall.  It was a beautiful tribute to his dad and listed all the ways his dad showed love. By the end of the paragraph we had misty eyes ... when ... oops, we discovered that there are two boys in there with the same first name.  OUR boy wrote about Niagara Falls.

Now, come on with me and let's go blog hopping.






 

FF: Closing out the season

~My youngest boys put a black light in their room this week, and I shared their disappointment when the dog's white chest failed to glow.

~We bought an electric smoker a while back and I'm convinced I don't know what I'm doing with it.  The ribs from the restaurant are just so much better than the ones I make.  Please, please, please help me by telling me how to make better ribs.  Did I say please???

~Some neighborhood driver has installed a train? truck? fog?  horn on his car.  He likes to test it during the night.

~We went for a walk the other night and crossed paths with another family. We stared at each other while we disentangled our dogs and then went separate ways, but then we crossed paths again at the end of the our walk.  Checkered and I admitted to each other that they looked familiar but we didn't know who they were.  Our son reminded us that it was the same family we had camped with for AN ENTIRE WEEK-END earlier this summer!  I feel better knowing that they didn't recognize who we were either!

~On Sunday, during what should have been a very special service for a beloved former pastor who is very, very ill, my eyes kept shifting to the backsides of various women.  I was fascinated by the way so many of those backsides don't really fit on the chairs.  Then I tried to discreetly measure my own backside.

~Coincidentally, I'm getting serious about Weight Watchers again next week.

Until then, I'm going to party!!! Join me??

P.S.  Happy birthday, DAD.  You're a wonderful man and a great dad.  Love you!!









 

                               

FF: Knock Me Over With a Feather

Is there any limit to what I never knew before?  Previously unknown to me:

• My whistling range is so limited.  It's a very shaky 11 note scale I whistle.
• One boy who lives in this house would gladly spend the remainder of his life curled up on the couch while playing video games.  That's why I make him walk home from school when the weather is nice.  Because he is so sweet, it turns out that my well-intentioned neighbors have been giving him rides home on those days :(
• Two of my children misspelled our last name on school papers this week.
• Do NOT plan to camp near Mt. Rushmore the week before the Sturgis bike thingie.  Rates for everything - even campgrounds with outhouses - seem to double.  Our solution for those campgrounds:

(It would be okay, Lord, if you want to intervene in that previous situation.)

• What does one do when one's daughter has a group project due and the group  backs out the day before the deadline? One builds a model of the Globe Theatre, of course.

• Blogslapping is a term which refers to using one's blog to get revenge on someone. Check out: caughtya.org or litterbutt.com or rudepeople.com. Perhaps someone who enjoys blogslapping might want one of these from cafepress.com: 

 In class the other night I referred to Pepper as a not-so-smart dog, but oh so sweet.  One student was offended that I would speak of my DOG that way, and I do wonder what the student would think if she could have read my thoughts about her at that moment.  Wait a minute!! Did I just blogslap? Ouch.

Now go visit my virtual neighborhoods.

FF: Venturing into Thinking

Not having a natural inclination for any thing science, dear Caution has labored without pause to prove some scientific principles for you this week. Pay her well for her troubles, shall you?  (Are you able to discern that Caution has been reading The Hobbit?)

Principle One:
Swimming does, in fact, do an adequate job of substituting for one's bath - if one doesn't look or sniff too closely.

Principle Two:
Some students do feel compelled to share their innermost thoughts with their English teacher by way of introductions following the first class:  "Hi, I'm Ted and I'm gay."  "Hi, I'm Patricia and I think I'm pregnant."  "Hi, I'm Dr. Caution and I'm going home by way of Dairy Queen."

Principle Three:
Young, hungry male children who have played outside all day will indeed lose their appetites when the nicely dressed woman in the next car picks her nose ... and eats every last thing that comes out of her nose.

Principle Four:
A medical visit will not be happy when the doctor greets asthmatic child and his mother by saying, "It's only the beginning of June and he had a flare-up in March, so he can't be having one this soon." 

Principle Four, Part B:
Visit will get worse when doctor puts aside her comment that child is moving very little air, BUT HE HAS A SUNBURN AND MOSQUITO BITES!!!  GOODNESS!! Those things give the doctor CHILLS.

Principle Five:
Some children read in bed or listen to a baseball game.  If one's child is 10 and is texting in bed, that's allowable, too, until the vigilant mother learns that the women on the other side of the texts are 17 and 18.

Principle Six:
If a schoolboy waits until his mother is rushing him out the door - late to school - to empty his backpack for the previous day, there will always be an emergency note requesting that some magnficicent  project or monetary donation be sent in that very day.

Principle Seven:
Harken thyself over to these sites (and it is here that Caution cannot recall if she is to be speaking in King James vernacular or Tolkien...)

here:


here:





 

and here: