March 17 - Construction in the gravel pit
March 18 - Percy busy shunting trucks
March 19 - The trains have taken to piracy
March 20 - Building a big big tower
March 21 - Gathering black walnuts from the yard
March 22 - Clearing small trees
March 23 - Pruning branches
It might have taken 5 years, but it is now time to decide whether or not my stance on certain vaccines is a firm principle or just an idea I like to adhere too. It is about to cost me something, or more specifically it is about to cost Mayhem something.
State policy says you can opt out of vaccines with a waiver & your child can still attend school. This policy affects the required attendance grades of K-12. It does not affect the optional Pre-K program that our county offers. There are only 40 spots and over 150 kids apply. They have various criteria for elimination & selection - including developmental assessment, whether the child has been in a pre-k for 3 year olds or other learning environment, transportation needs and vax status. If you are not fully vaxed they don't have to take you, assuming you don't have a strong developmental need. Mayhem doesn't have one. He is also not fully vax'd, so that drops him down on the list. Havoc was dropped down for having been in K-3, (vax status wasn't an issue last year, though he is missing one too) and ended up on the wait list, never getting a place. They have to take Havoc for kindergarten, so the waiver is not a problem for him. The waiver will probably keep Mayhem out of the pre-K program.
So, how strongly do I feel about the chicken pox vaccine? Is it a principle or merely an idea? It is the main hold up. Mayhem is missing 2 others but that is due to his delayed vax schedule & my forgetting to make his yearly appointment in January. If he'd had the appointment, he would have had the vax's then.
I'd originally thought I'd let them have a chance to catch it. It's not that I want my kids to be sick, but there are no long term studies on this vax and I really have reservations about this rush to medicate without knowing the long term consequences. I don't want my kids being the test subjects. We're probably going to get the vax. The odds of him getting chicken pox at this point are pretty slim, what with everyone else being vax'd for it. I'm not happy about it but after thought, I'm fairly sure what I have is an idea & not a principle.
In the scrapping sense, someday I will own a hybrid vehicle. There are 2 main reasons why I won't be making any hybrid projects anytime in the near future.
1. You have to cut things out. My issues with scissors go back to preschool. If it is a straight line, even with the help of a cutting tool & guide, there is only a 75% chance I will get it right. I'm better with fabric than I am with paper, it seems to slip less. If it is not a straight line there is a 75% chance that I will screw it up. If there is some sort of die cutting machine involved the odds go to 50%. That is why I am a digi scrapper. I can undo my mistakes without a waste of paper, ink & money
2. No one in my family would have any idea what to do with my little gift projects. We aren't 'photo gift' people. The gift would be honestly appreciated at the time & looked at then. But then it would be set on a shelf or in a drawer & become the worst type of dust collector. The worst type because it is a hand made item, made by a family member, giving a personalized gift to you. You can't just toss it when you realize 10 months down the road that you have never looked at the thing again & would like to declutter a bit. By & large they are not useful items, they are decorative & decorative just doesn't work well with my family.
I love the key plate & scallop albums Sweet Shoppe is selling. They havea birthday calendar premade set to go with the key plate & I can sort of see a use for it. But even if I had some reason for making them (all my just for the heck of it creativity is directed toward amigurumi at the moment) I would never be able to cut out the paper to fit on the album. The shape would defeat me & I'd waste a lot of paper trying to get it right. I have to reprint, at least once, the rectangular bookmarks that I make for my dad every Xmas. They are selling a Maya Road Calendar, that stands up. That is a possible. It's a rectangle and it's useful. But so far they have no albums to go with it, though I am sure some will be coming. It's a 5x7 so possibly some of the brag book sets would work with it.
The third, less influential reason I don't hybrid is I'd have to go buy stuff - things called Modge Podge & Kryron that are some sort of adhesives and a craft knife & probably some other stuff and knowing me I'd buy the wrong stuff. It just seems a bit complicated...
Mayhem is obsessed with Thomas the Tank Engine. OBSESSED. Not a day goes by where the Take Along trains are not played with. Nearly every day he requests I set up a track for him, each day having different requirements - one day a curvey track, the next with bridges, the next a 'big big track'. We have, depending on the stock at the libraries on any given week, 8-12 Thomas videos in the house & we watch about one of them a day at quiet time. I think that he has made 4 non-Thomas video requests since the first of the year - Over the Hedge, Cars (a former obsession), Madagascar and Barnyard.
It does make him easy to shop for on holidays & birthdays. I send my family an updated list of movies we own and trains we do not and they have no problem finding him something. He's getting Max & Monty and a new DVD in his Easter basket from my folks. At around $5 a train the Take Alongs make easy rewards for the chore chart, which explains why we have so many....
He's had other obsessions, Cars and Bob the Builder. Bob had no accessories but we borrowed a lot of videos from the library. Cars has one movie but lots of accessories, and we own most of the die cast cars (another cheap & easy gift for both boys). The Thomas seems to be the most lasting. We got our first Take Alongs about 2 years ago and there has never been more than a week or so when they are not n play. Those weeks tend to be in the summer. Thomas rules the winter.
I've managed to do a layout a month about it, inspired by Sweet Shoppe challenges
I've been making these the last few days
The white one looks like an egg, but the others...I'm not so sure. I think without context, like a bowl or basket, people will probably wonder what the hell they are.
I have 6 of them completed, but the boys like to kick them around & 2 have gone missing. I found the pattern in my "The World of Amigurumi" book. It also has half eggs, with chicks, but the boys preferred just decorated whole eggs. I'm hoping to have a dozen to put in the basket by Sunday. Then I am going to work on mushrooms
I am making one of my Irish grandfather's favorite meals.
Muller's spaghetti with Ragu sauce.
Yeah, my family has never been much into 'cultural identity'. Pap, born in 1912, was the child of Irish immigrants & his job was to assimilate, which he did & never looked back. He married the granddaughter of German immigrants & together they went through the Depression & alone she went through WWII rationing & together they went into the canned & frozen food nirvana of the 50's. Nan's opinion was that she'd made enough food from scratch in her life, meals in boxes were a wonder to be enjoyed!
Oh cabbage appeared (though not corned beef) and shephard's pie, with mutton & turnips, and of course lots and lots of potatoes, but Pap's favorite meals were packaged versions of Italian food & if I am supposed to be honoring my Irishness, well.... Ragu & spaghetti it is!
I admit I am delighted to have the excuse to avoid that disgusting bane of my existence - cabbage. I cannot stand cabbage in any form. The smell of cabbage cooking send me fleeing from the building, hopefully before I start gagging. I have a strong, immediate, reflexive reaction to the smell of cooked cabbage.. When I was pregnant I have to leave work for the day whenever the cafeteria was serving it. One quarter German, one quarter Irish and I despise cabbage. Don't like onions either. I do love Italian food though. I blame my ancestors personally.
March 10 - Some kids only have a sandbox. Ours have a 14'x14' gravel pit
March 11 - Diggers at work
March 12 - Off roading with your 4x4
March 13 - This backhoe has a lot of work ahead of it
March 14 - Train parade
March 15 - The Island of Sodor today (you didn't think we'd manage a whole week without it did you?)
March 16 - We colored eggs for Ostara. These are the ones that didn't crack too much.
I crocheted a market bag, from a Lion Brand pattern (must be logged into Lion Brand to see pattern). Somewhere along the line I screwed up. Somewhere between round 9 & 14 I duplicated a round & then early on in round 15-28 I added a couple more stitches. This ended up a full 18 stitches per round wider at the widest part. Which explains why I had insufficient yarn to finish it. I didn't discover I was off by 18 stitches until I was on round 29 & decreasing and I wasn't going to unravel back 20 rows to figure it out. Not when there were only 4 rounds left.
So this is my market bag. Not the most attractive thing I have ever done. I also changed the straps. I need 2 short straps for groceries, over the shoulder doesn't work for me.
On the plus side this thing can hold 4 gallons of milk at once!
I'm making it again. This time in ecru & I'm checking the stitch count more often.
DH took the morning off & accompanied us to school registration. They were registering kindergarten & preschool at the same time, in the same room and there was no way I could fill out 2 sets of forms, stand in 3 different lines and keep track of 2 small boys, who might be taken off for evaluation at any moment. DH had to be there.
He did Havoc's paperwork and I handled Mayhem's and we were out in a hour. Havoc was assessed for 25 minutes. The woman that did it then went over everything with us. She showed us the picture of himself that he drew (including an exact replica of the stripe pattern on his shirt, but minus any hand), the answers he gave to various questions "what is a window made of" (Havoc said metal, but we have sliding glass doors & no windows & have been having issues with the metal frames so it was understandable), his ability to follow 2 step instructions, to cut out shapes, to count (He only counted to 11 but he can count to 100 & was asked to count to 20, apparently he was distracted by the words on the walls and was too busy reading them to pay attention to counting) and the standard alphabet, colors things. He did very well & is certainly ready for kindergarten.
Mayhem's evaluation was about 10 minutes and he was returned to us without a word. We had to ask him how it went & what they wanted to know. We were given a note telling us what sort of things they were assessing & that if there was a problem or any questions they would be addressed right then. So no news is good news?? Or is it? They only let 40 kids in the program & they are chosen based on who would benefit most from the 'readiness program'. I'm not sure what that means specifically. Havoc ended up 6th on the wait list last year & never got in.
Apparently we will find out if Mayhem gets in by the end of April. BUT! There are 2 classes, a morning & an afternoon. And this year they are considering doing a half year program as well as a full year program. So Mayhem could end up in say the afternoon class of the full year program, going from 1-3:30pm Monday to Friday, September to June. Or he could end up in a morning class in a half year program, going from 8:30-11, Monday to Friday, Feb to June. Or any other combination. All we learn on April 30th is if Mayhem is in the program; we won't know which until the beginning of August. That will be decided by bus routes. If there are lots of 4 years around us that would benefit from full year, we get into that one, etc. Even though I will be driving him & there is no bus involved.
At least they are not asking me for a $75 'waiting list' deposit on top of the $50 application fee, the way a couple of the private preschools are doing.
Specifically, is my vague unsubstantiated worry about putting my 5 year old on a bus with 16 year olds, worth at least $250 a month? That is how much gas would cost me to drive him to school & pick him up every day. It is 22 miles one way, in a car that gets 20 miles to the gallon, with gas at $3.15 a gallon. And this is in addition to my regular gas costs. Our county is rural, we just got our first grocery store 2 years ago & its a small crappy store. Our 'downtown' is full of small restaurants & junk-tique stores. If I want to buy some decent produce, or fill a prescription or need some socks, I have to drive another 30 miles from the school in order to do so (though due to the way the roads are laid out, I can to these places in 20 miles from my house). Apart from gas & the occasional old movie rental, there is very little I can buy "on the way" to or from school. I'm already driving the kid to preschool, so this is not speculation on my part. I know how much it costs me from experience.
Next year though he will be in kindergarten & there is a school bus. But this county is rural with a low population density and cannot afford multiple bus runs to the same area to pick up maybe a dozen kids per school. There is one primary school, one elementary school, one middle school & one high school and all the kids on the bus route ride one bus together.
They publish the bus routes in the paper before school starts, so I know from this year what route Havoc will be on next year. It is unlikely to change. The bus starts at the county line, coming down our road (We live a mile inside the county), picks up all the kids on our 5 mile long road, picks up the kids on the renamed part of this road on the other side of the intersection & then goes to the schools. About 10 miles of homes. This is not a subdivision. This is farm country. My nearest neighbors are about an eighth of a mile away on either side of me & across the street. You can see no other homes from my home. I don't know my neighbors. I don't know if they have kids and I don't know anything about those kids. There is no way to casually walk by someone's house to meet them. You have to get in your car and drive, usually up a long driveway. You have to be intrusive & assertive & determined. I am not these things. But then, apparently neither are my neighbors, because in 10 years only the people across the street have ever come over to introduce themselves.
I'm worried about Havoc on the bus. He's a shy & sensitive kid, with glasses. You know the type. The ones who get picked on mercilessly by others? That's him. He hasn't been picked on yet & I'd like to put it off . Would he be better off on a bus full of primary school kids? I think so, not just from the bullying standpoint but also because I don't think 6 year olds should be exposed to 16 year olds, to what they talk about, to how they behave. Maybe there will be some great older kids on that bus & Havoc will get along great with them. But maybe he'll get molested. Someone did, about 5 years ago there was an incident. Though to be honest that took place in a different county & that county switched to multiple bus routes the following year. But I don't want my kid to be this county's test case. I know I am overreacting and being an anxious mother. People who don't live in this county & who's 6 year olds ride with other primary school kids have full sympathy for me. People who live in this county say "oh." They don't think I am nuts or overprotective (Or they don't say so anyway) they just don't seem to see the issue. Of course the kids ride one bus. They road the bus with the older kids & eventually they were the older kids who road the bus with the little ones. That's just normal.
I'm trying to sort out how much of this is a rational concern & how much of this is mom not wanting her baby to grow up. He is in school now, it's not that. But somehow putting him on a bus is emotionally so much more for me. I cry just thinking about it. I don't mind the teacher taking away his time with me, but I just want to shout "NO YOU CAN'T HAVE HIM!!" to the bus driver. Not my baby. not yet. And I know deep down it's just that that is the problem. There are legitimate concerns about him being on the bus, but mostly I think it might be that he's not my baby anymore. Is it worth $250 a month for me to avoid dealing with this for another year. Next year Mayhem will be on the bus and I feel much easier in my mind if they are together.
Kindergarten registration is tomorrow. Where did my baby go?
March 3 - "Big Paints!"
March 4 - sickness keeps everyone home and getting lots of rest while watching movies
March 5 - even the loader isn't feeling up to working
March 6 - a day spend reading books - over and over again
March 7 - Sodor is back in business
March 8 - reading a new Thomas book
March 9 - gale force winds cause trouble on Sodor
or "Why you should put things back where they belong when you are finished with them."
I have a Bob the Builder DVD. Actually I currently have 7 Bob the Builder DVD's. I am certain I own 3 of them, two we have had for over a year and the other still has it's case (I take them out of their cases & put them in a binder, but I'm not always prompt at tossing the case). I am certain that I have borrowed one from one library & two others from the local movie rental place. I know this because their cases are clearly labeled with their owner's names & the the due dates. The seventh one though, I'm at a loss to explain. I might have bought it recently at the second hand store & tossed the case. I bought several kid vids there for $3 a DVD & I do remember tossing a couple cases. (I resell them on half.com if the kids are not into them) I might have borrowed it from the local video store, or even Blockbuster. Or I might have checked it out of two different county libraries. I don't have the case, so I have no way of knowing. I can't call & ask any of them because the libraries & the local video place won't tell you what you have checked out unless you are standing in front them, photo ID in one hand and member/library card in the other. I suppose I could be tricky about it. I could call them & say I'd like to extend my loan on this DVD & if they say "We don't have that listed for you" then I could eliminate them.
I don't know what happened to the case. It is nowhere to be found. The standard DVD changing procedure in this house is to remove the DVD in the player, set it on top of the player, put the new movie in and then watch the new movie. Repeat with every other movie until you have a stack of DVDs sitting on the player, or until the rentals are due back. Never put the movie back in it's case or binder sleeve. Never. Put the cases on top of the TV, or beside the TV, or stack them up on the DVD player, next to the stack of DVDs, or carry them into another room for no apparent reason. I think I am going to have to declare a moratorium on movie rentals until it has been properly demonstrated, over a period of time, that the people in this house (myself included) can be responsible human beings who take care of their things.
It's not like we don't already have a binder full of DVDs we already own & never watch. Mostly because they are scratched from being stacked up on top of the DVD player.....
I made this guy this week
He is from a Lion Brand pattern & all told took me about 3 hours to make. Those 3 hours were spread out over 4 days because the kids have been sick & I haven't had much time to just sit & crochet.
In scrapping news I did manage to get a layout done. It was for the Sweet Shoppe inspiration challenge; the theme being to redo an old layout.
This is one of my earliest layouts, donei n my first month of digi scrapping. Everything was my own creation
This is the redone layout. Credit can be found in my DST gallery, link in the sidebar.
Clean up the yard.
Seriously. If I take 10 minutes & put all the outdoor toys away where they belong - sandbox stuff in the sandbox, balls in the bin, construction toys on their shelves & park the bike & red car in their places, when the boys come home from school, they immediately want to play outside. It doesn't matter if it is warm, cold, raining or a driving hailstorm; they simply *must* play outside. They've barely looked out a window for the 2 previous days when there were balls, loaders & buckets strewn across the lawn. But now that their stuff is put away, they must go out & put it back. Perhaps they are marking their territory? That would make sense, if we had neighbors. But the cows really don't care & there is a barbed wire fence to keep them out even if they did care..
The boys have shown real improvement about picking up in the house. They seem to now understand that the blocks have to be put away before the train tracks come out and the trains need to be back in their bins before the pirate fleet sets sail across the floor. Most of the time they will respond positively to a reminder to put away the toys not being used. Sometimes they even do it unprompted & then come and find me to show off "Wook Mama! All toys away!!"
Outside lacks this progress. Winter is probably not the best time for frequent reminders. It's cold, windy & rainy and I am not inclined to stand out there insisting they put things away before they come inside. Warmer weather is coming though and I think it is time I started reminding them the outside toys must be put away as well.
The boys have had a cough or runny nose for weeks now. Weeks. Monday it grew into something else. Havoc woke up saying the front of his head hurt, so I gave him some sinus meds & sent him to school. He apparently had the chills at school, but was himself when I picked him up at noon. He was feverish & asleep on the sofa by 3pm. Mayhem was burning up about 6pm but I couldn't find the rectal thermometer & he doesn't really get how to hold one in his mouth. Then Havoc begins shaking with cold in his sleep about 7pm (he's been asleep since 3) and when I wake him his fever is 103.3. Ibuprofen all around. Mayhem's fever went down fairly quickly but Havoc's lingered & I think he was scared of what he was feeling. After being in bed about an hour, he came out & lay on the sofa with us & fell asleep there. Mayhem came in our room about 2:30am, his fever returned. DH ended up sleeping in the guest room. Havoc appeared in our room about 5:30 complaining about his sinus again. Everyone was feverish by 7am. So everyone stayed home from school. They were both listless all morning. Mayhem fell asleep about 11. Havoc asked for mac & cheese for lunch & then vegged out to Cars for almost 2 hours. Both of them seemed much better by 2. Slight fevers returned just before bedtime & were treated. Mayhem again was up at 2:30am, feverish & in our room. I moved him to the sleeping bag on the floor Havoc had already been up and was laying on the sofa. Both were dosed. And hour later I had to get up & tell them it was not breakfast time, turn off the tv & lights & put everyone back in their beds. Havoc stayed on the sofa and apparently at some point Mayhem joined him & slept on the floor. They were back up at 6am. Both are in school today. Both are no doubt tired. God knows I am.
While all of Monday evening various illness issues were going on, I had a pot of chicken stock cooling on the counter. I'd made it that afternoon from the carcass of a roast chicken we had on Friday. It smelled delicious & I was just waiting for it to cool a bit so I could stick in the fridge to let the fat congeal before I froze it in 2 cup containers. I totally forgot about it Monday night & left it there. I also failed to notice it for most of yesterday. So one pot of stock ruined.
Feb 25 - Henry delivers yogurt raisins for snacktime
Feb 26 - The trains are having an off track adventure
Feb 27 - Monster truck racing track
Feb 28 - Havoc playing the punching game
Feb 29 - The Island of Sodor today
Mar 1 - Soft block tower building
Mar 2 - New homes on Sodor
Last year, when Havoc started K3, I bribed him to go the first few weeks. I said if he went to school all 3 days without fussing or crying we'd go to McD's on the last day. It became a habit. Every Thursday, we went to McD's. It continued into this year, though I was able some weeks to 'forget' to go. I'm not terribly concerned that their health will be ruined by eating 4 mcnuggets and some apples once a week & the $9ish it was costing me (with cookies for dessert, more if I get something too) was not the end of the world financially either. I just wasn't happy that it was now expected. I wasn't so unhappy i was just going to cut it off & endure the wailing & gnashing of teeth that would ensue. But I did want to go back to being a reward, not a right. I'd been reinforcing that in January with much wailing & gnashing of teeth (often my own).
Then we got the Wii. There is a video rental place just up from the McD's. You can rent a Wii game for 5 days for $6.99. You can also buy prepaid cards at a discount - $25 credit for $20, $40 for $32, etc. They don't have the largest selection of games; Blockbuster they ain't, but enough to keep the boys happy. They are more interested in racing games & Mario type things & there is a decent amount of those. If you are looking for any hot new games, you won't find them here. By buying a $40 card can rent for 5 weeks and I save at least $13 over going to McD's, plus have enough left over to almost cover a 6th game or to rent one kiddie movie for Mayhem each of the 5 weeks as well. And the boys aren't eating McD's, which means I am not either. Not a bad deal. We get to try out a variety of games without dropping $25-50 a game.
But I'm going to have to make the effort & go well out of my way to Blockbuster & rent Lego Star Wars. The video place doesn't have it, though they will be getting Lego Indiana Jones.
Feb 18 - The Island of Sodor today, a more rural part
Feb 19 - Bowling in the house
Feb 20 - Someone is hiding in the 'fort'
Feb 21 - Teaching brother to play tennis
Feb 22 - Terrance the 'bullzidder"
Feb 23 - We had friends over for a picnic
Feb 24 - Teddy bear sleep over
A friend of mine is expecting her 3rd child in a couple of months. I decided I'd make some little crocheted animals & put loops on them so they can be hung to baby carriers and things. I found a cool looking shark pattern but it's in German. My friend Bettina helped me with some translating and I went back & rewrote it into English. So now I am working on that. Then I am going to to make a turtle & then an octopus. I haven't worked from an established pattern in ages. We'll see how it goes. So far the shark is going along. I'm used to crocheting a bit more loosely than you need to for these stuffed things, and sometimes I feel like I am going to snap my hook in two from exerting so much pressure to pull it back out of the loops when I single crochet.
There is a treasure hunt going on in the digi scrap world. It looks like a lot of fun, almost 50 designers are involved. I started out on it, but a lot of the prizes require store registration to download & I am already registered in dozens of stores I'll never go back to. I think I stopped about 7 or 8 clues in, after the 3rd store where I had to register. I understand that with all the piracy going on that is the best way to make sure mostly only people on the hunt get the prizes, I'm just not up for al the registering & since you have to download the prize to get the next clue, that ends the hunt for me. I may pick it back up again this evening & register more places but my internet connection ain't all that at the moment so it's just easier not to right now.
I'm Stacey42, because I am soooooo creative with my user names.
I've spent the day so far uploading photos of my projects, finding groups to join, searching out people, listing my hooks (OMG! I had no idea I had so many crochet hooks) and looking for things to add to my queue.
Ravelry is a dangerous place, not just from the possible crochet project ideas, the new people to talk to, and the cool yarn. But because Ravelry gave me a link to The Library Thing, an online personal booklist. You can slurp up you amazon purchases & add them all at one go to your Library. If you have a bar code scanner you can scan your books & upload that file. (DH is getting me a bar code scanner. He's getting it to test for something at his job & if it works for what he has in mind for them he'll buy another one for them & give me this one. How geeky is it that not only does he think I might want a bar code scanner to catalog my books, but that I am actually excited to get it?) You can tag the books & rate them & link up with others who have the same books & see what else they might have. The downside of the Library Thing is you can only have 200 books for free. It's $10 a year or $25 for lifetime, right now. They are still in beta. I'm not sure how much I'll do with it so I"m not paying yet. But I have over 1500 books on my personal booklist, that I stopped updating around the time Mayhem was born, so if I use it I will certainly have to pay.
Feb 11 - Sodor today
Feb 12 -Gordon delivery goldfish crackers for snacktime
Feb 13 - a two story car house
Feb 14 - Sodor today
Feb 15 - a rescue mission
Feb 16 - new playground equipment at the park
Feb 17 - a beautiful day for bike riding
I'd been keeping all my yarn in this big bin
and the crocheted rounds in zip lock bags, but it was a pain in the butt to drag out every time I wanted to crochet. Taking out a skein or two made me lose rounds & left the skeins vulnerable to small boys. Plus the more rounds I created, the more space they took up, so I had bags all over the place.
I went to Michael's & JoAnn Fabrics looking for a craft bag of some sort, maybe with wheels, that could hold everything compactly. They had some nice scrapbooking storage bags & some nice cross stitch & embroidery storage bags and some nice yarn storage bags for knitting & crochet projects. But my goodness, the price! Even without wheels.
Then I went to Wal Mart to see what I could find. This is what I came up with. The bag itself was $8 and the little bins were 97 cents each. I've got 3 of them. I can keep a variety of yarn in the bag, which makes it easier to get the 'random' look in the squares. I don't lose track of the rounds & it zips shut so the boys can't see the yarn & aren't tempted to play with it. I just don't zip it completely shut and feed the yarn through the space.
My wrist is feeling much better. I did a little crocheting today & it didn't hurt but I'm not doing much yet. I haven't found any of those bracing gloves, but I'm headed to the big city Saturday to do some shopping with my GFs & will check a few places there. I'm thinking I might need to change my crochet style. I use the overhand (knife) method, maybe the underhand (pencil) method would give me less stress on those muscles.
Pat, I'm signed up to get on Ravelry. I signed up back in November but apparently I left an 'n' out of my email addy so it went to someone else or bounced. I only realized that a week or so ago when I saw a blog post about it. So I had to go back & sign up again. I think I should get my invite in the next couple days.
Ah, Valentine's Day, the first true opportunity of the year to retain my Lame Mom crown. Sure Mayhem's birthday is in January, but the fact that I did absolutely nothing for it in his class can be excused by the fact that his birthday was on a Saturday & his class only meets Tues-Thurs. Valentine's Day though is on a Thursday, so I get 2 chances to utterly fail to meet the expectations of others.
I know there are moms out there that genuinely enjoy making elaborate V-day cards & goodie bags for their kids' classmates. They get a great sense of creative satisfaction from cutting, gluing, glittering & stuffing their creations. They don't care what others are doing, they are enjoying themselves. On the opposite end there are the moms who are too busy to bother. They buy the 99 cents pack of 25 cards at Target and write names on them, end of story. They don't care what others are doing & are too busy to find out anyway. Then there are those of us in the middle. Some care a great deal what others are doing & consider it a competition and some don't want to care but can't help hearing the others comparing the efforts of others & feeling vaguely guilty that we have time to do something creative but just don't want too & therefor often find our guilt prodding us into stuffing heart shaped erasers & small pencils into red bags we've highlighted with silver glitter glue while bitching to ourselves about the whole thing.
Not that I am speaking from my own experience. I am Lame Mom. I have the time & even the personal creativity to do these things but I chose to be lazy & buy the 99 cent cards. It is the choice to not do things I am perfectly capable of doing that makes me Lame. I have friends though that feel enormous social pressure from other moms to meet the personalized creativity standards. One of them is busy making heart shaped rice crispy treats that will be wrapped in pink saran wrap & tied with red heart bows, as I type. She doesn't really want to make them, but feels she must. Strange thing, peer pressure. Even when you see it, and acknowledge it, it's still so hard to step away from it. Even as a pregnant 35 year old woman with a college degree, professional job and 2 kids of your own.
I did make the effort to go & look at the card aisle, rather than just simply grab the cards from the Dollar Spot rack. So, I walked the whole length of Target, which is really going above & beyond what I had planned to do. I ended up buying valentine cards with prefilled candy boxes attached to them. I can't decide if that makes me more or less lame than buying the 99 cent cards. On the one hand it seems less because a minor effort was made & there is more to it than a flimsy square of paper. On the other hand it seems more because I am acknowledging that there is so much more I could do and so obviously refusing to do it.
But what really makes me the Lamest Mom Ever this V day is the fact that I do not know the names of all the kids in my sons' classes and there are only 8 kids in each class, including my own. Havoc has been able to name everyone in his class but Mayhem is no help at all. He's just as likely to name kids in Havoc's class as name the ones in his own. So all the cards just say "from Mayhem" on them. Yep, Lame Mom.
