grrlTravels

may the norse not be with you either

It is a ridiculously warm, gorgeous day here. It's cold in Oslo today, but here in the great northeast there is no norse-ness to be found. There is nothing more to be done on such a Halloween as this than to post a heap of photos and go outside to eat more candy.

1. “Size matters not, ... Look at me. Judge me by size, do you?”
2. She is a princess of a different sort, a princess in a jumpsuit. I am infatuated with the hip boots.
3. E. must be a jedi knight this year. "All of the boys are being Star Wars Mommy."
4. The gang poses between engagements.
5. In line for the parade at school.
6. E. is clapping in time with the marching band. Yes, the parade had a band! It was populated by junior highers and the only instrument in tune was the drum, but still. A band.
7. Z. with her Fairy Princess, aka The Speech Therapist. Seconds later Z. ran straight at us and refused to parade any more.
8. If your family likes a lot of attention, a Yoda costume is a good way to go. Yoda is the hit of the party. Of course every time someone calls R. Yoda he just looks confused. "Who is this Yoda you speak of? And when may I have another cracker?"

Four. Four. We're out the door.

Sweet Z. is four. We gave her a Z. day, including a trip to the zoo and very little eating on her part. She had a ride on a merry-go-round, her very first face painting (go Z.!), and boat ride with Baba.

She is not so sure about being four yet. But she did open all of the presents this year, and she says, "More birthday. More birthday." So I think four is going to be fine.

Happy Birthday Z.!

[Z.'s birthday also happened to be picture day at school. Not her favorite thing, to be sure, but she endured.]

1 - 2 - 3 SPIN!

Tuesday was backwards day at school. Well, it was Tuesday of Red Ribbon Week and Tuesday meant wear your clothes backwards. Something to do with just saying no to drugs. I don't really get the connection, but I don't get a lot about school just yet. [In fact I feel so disoriented by it all you would never guess that I made it thought 7 years of grade school myself. Granted it was during the dark ages, but it should count just the same.] I just thought about what they could wear, put the clothes out the night before, and dressed them backwards and sent them to school. E. was giggling with anticipation. Wearing your clothes backwards is The Funniest Thing Ever!

Except it wasn't backwards day. Backwards day is next week. The preschool teacher wrote a note saying it was backwards day, but she had her weeks mixed up. Thus, E. was the only kid in his class who was backwards this week.

Z. was not the only child in preschool to be backwards, and in any case she has decided to embrace the backwardsness of it all anyway. You will recall that she was struggling with school. Baby bird did not want to fly. I was waiting it out. One day I sent her in with an obnoxiously large "necklace" crafted from orange ribbon, the left over plastic wrapper from the 4x6 photo paper, and two photos of Z., one with K. and one with me. We talked about the necklace, how Mama and Baba always loved her and always thought about her and would take her to preschool and would always, always, always pick her up too. About how if she felt sad or lonely at school she could look at the photos of us and think about us and know that we were coming soon to get her.

K. and her teachers loved the necklace. It was the best idea EVER. Nevermind that I had read about similar ideas online, that the idea totally and completely was not mine and I probably would have taken 14 years to think of it on my own. I took the credit graciously and sent her into school wearing it.

It was a miracle necklace. One day she hated school and the next she was fine. Seriously. The teachers said that she looked at it frequently during the day and that she seemed to feel like it was similar to the ID cards that the teachers wear around their necks. With the necklace she began to do a few little things in the classroom, like playing at the centers. She didn't cry any more. One day she unpacked her backpack by herself. And she would wear the necklace at home too, after school. Huh. Who would've thunk it? You never would, if you had seen the hideous thing strapped around her neck.

After a bit she stopped wearing it. I continued to send it in her backpack, but the teachers said she didn't need and it and that she was continuing to make progress. All good. Amazing. Wonderful!

And then she came home wearing it Monday and yesterday and today. She plucked it from her folder in her backpack of her own accord on Monday and put it on. And then she refused to unpack her backpack. Or do centers. Or participate in class or interact with the other preschoolers. It seems the miracle was rather short lived.

We aren't worried. We know that backtracking is normal and especially so for Z. As long as we continue to see progress we aren't going to make any major changes. I may think twice about dressing her for backwards day again next week though. A little more backwards will see her crying and clinging to my leg before school. And I do not want to kick her out of the nest again. It's taxing, the kicking. I think instead I shall work on a better looking necklace. One with a nest and a baby bird. And some glitter. Everything is better with glitter.

That's all I've got for you. Everything's better with glitter. Bye now.

$500 Gift Carde from WALMART

I have a few posts rumbling around in my brain, but my brain is quite soupier than usual due to being filled with phlem and an erratic but strong compulsion to cough. Even when the coughing does nothing but make my head hurt worse. My brain is so soupy it is completely unable to make the connection.

Rather than post some longwinded (yes, I know I am) discourse which turns out to be too phlemy to make any sense I shall ask you a question.

Do you ever click on any of the spam which comes into your mailbox uninvited?

This has never seemed to be an issue for me. I made a decision long ago that I would not aid nor abet the spammers by ever, ever, ever clicking on any spam, no matter how sparkly or fascinating. The reasoning was something to the effect that if no one ever clicked on any spam spam would eventually be deemed useless and it would cease forevermore. Sadly my little Campaign Against Spam (CANSTSPAM) has not worked as effectively as I would have liked. But I am nothing if not certifiably committed and have never clicked on a single link.

It was all going quite swimmingly for me until the other day when I got the very first spam which looked interesting and reasonable. I sat in front of my computer for several long minutes debating the pros and cons of throwing my Campaign out the window for the sake of satisfying my curiosity. In the end I deleted the message and emptied my trash immediately so as to remove the temptation once and for all. It was the fear that clicking on that link would notify every spammer in the world instantly that my email address was a keeper, thereby increasing my spam-to-real-mail ratio to 1 gazillion to 1 forevermore, that tipped the scales. [You do know, don't you, that when you click on that link at the bottom of the message to be removed from the mailing list that what you are in fact doing is confirming that your email address is valid, so that your valid email address gets put on a list and sold to the other dirty spammers? You knew that, right? It's not a conspiracy theory, dude. It's TRUTH.]

But I am still tempted by that message. And what if it returns, all glowy and seductive in my inbox once again? On a day when I am feeling rather more vulnerable and needy? WHAT IF I MUST KNOW the next time?

What's your story? Do you click?

coping looks a lot like cooking, as long as there is food

The economy is nagging at me. Nagging. Well terrifying me, anyway. Nagging, terrifying, whatever. I was against the bailout until I spoke with several people I trust who said they were against the bailout too except for the fact that it seemed like the only thing to do, given the circumstances. And AIG. AIG. AIG and the $440,000 jaunt after the $85 billion bailout loan. Uh huh. Now I realize that $440,000 is only .000005% of $85B (if my algebra skillz have held up) but isn't it the principle of the thing? And don't get me started on that smug guy from Lehman Bros. who is worth $480,000,000. (That is very, very, very close to half a BILLION dollars. Which is a lot, lot, lot of money.) If you get me started on him I may never stop. The economy shreds my brain like a brain eating amoeba.

So. The economy is tanking, the people running our financial powerhouses are greedy, lying pigs, not one of whom was willing to wave a tiny white flag, and the checks and balances which are supposed to be in place are not balancing nor checking so far as that goes. So I said to K., "What will do if there is no food? We have the smallest of yards and no room to plant anything which might sustain the children."
K.: It isn't going to get that bad.
[K. does not yet realize that in my head we are already gleaning the fields. Soon he will know.]
Me: What if it does? I need to know what we are going to eat.
K.: It won't get that bad. Things are not going to get that bad.
[Here comes the gleaning, in a sense.]
Me: [imagine a long, long diatribe about the Great Depression, Lehman Brothers, moldy bread, AIG, mulch is inedible, ditto stones, AIG, babies with distended stomachs, AIG, the complete collapse of the trucking and airline industries, stinkin' Congress and the stinkin' bailout, and worms] What. Are. We. Going. To. Feed. Our. Children.
K.: We will live on clams and fish from the sea.
That K., he is a problem solver. I don't know how the kids would do with clams* and fish, but at least it is something. Seaweed too, I think. It is bursting with all kinds of life-enhancing vitamins and minerals. I mean, K. and my abilities as they relate to fishing are pretty close to pathetic, but I am able to lasso some crabs when the occasion arises. So crabs and seaweed anyway.

So what does one do when one is sitting at home stewing about the economy, studiously avoiding CNN.com and the like while imagining what the Great Depression was actually like, trying like mad to keep the fear from the children and planning to take up fishing in the very near future? It turns out one makes soup. A lot. Of soup.

It started out with 2 batches of Late Summer Vegetable soup which began as an effort to pretend that summer was not ending. Then followed Lentil with Swiss Chard (tastes healthy, if you know what I mean), more Late Summ Veg, Chicken Gumbo (I am officially not a gumbo girl despite my love of okra), and Split Pea (not a Martha recipe! but from another favorite, Ina Garten). My freezer is full of frozen soup. I am planning what to make next: Chicken tortilla? Black bean? Lima bean? Whatever it is it must be cheap. And quick. I must spend my time figuring out how and where to grow the corn. I've decided wheat is beyond me, but corn, corn I think I can do.

*You know of my intense love for clams. I will eat them if I have to, though. Yes, I will.

[The blog. Sigh. The blog went down, then it was up, then it was down, then up and down at the same time. I was instructed not to post. I did not post. I hope we are good now. Fingers crossed.]