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Archive for April, 2014

Cleaning the Toilet

Posted in Musings and Epiphanies, tagged , , , , on April 29, 2014| Leave a Comment »

On Sunday, after we got home from church, I told the boys they would be helping me around the house. I gave them options to choose from, like sweeping the floor, dusting, helping me in the laundry room. Nope…what they fought over was who gets to clean the toilet. I feared they would get to fisticuffs! Younger son claimed cleaning the entire bathroom and we avoided injury. Older son reluctantly took dusting and sweeping the rest of the upstairs. This left me free to work on the laundry room and reclaim parts of the family room for me.

The kittens now have their “rest room” in one location. Since they are huge six month old kittens, we don’t have to dedicate a room to their potty needs. I then moved their food to the top of a cabinet. They can work their need to jump on EVERYTHING and the dog can’t reach it. Another project I have to do soon is repair where the kittens tore the curtain rod out of the wall. That’s one way to get me to change the curtains.

In a very real sense, I have brought my work home with me. I am accomplishing all this fabulous housework by breaking the work in to small manageable tasks and completing all of it using the “tolerable ten”. Anyone can stand to do anything, even moving a litter box, for ten minutes.

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(Note the baseball hat for size reference. Cujo is one big six month old kitten!)

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Challenge Accepted

Posted in Musings and Epiphanies, tagged , , on April 24, 2014| 2 Comments »

Adopted #3 Son asked me recently why I don’t write a book or a story. I don’t think he intended it as an explicit challenge, but perhaps an ulterior motive did exist to kick me in the ass to do something more productive with my copious free time. I chewed it over for a couple of days. I write this blog…when time and life permits. And isn’t that bullshit. If I wanted to, I would find the time every day to write a new post. Am I such a slacker? Yep. And here I am, owning up to it.

Still, writing a book, a story. Could I do it? Don’t know. But this evening I started a free write to try it. It was fun. I don’t know if I could sustain the topic I wrote about this evening, but I have to start somewhere and see how it goes. Here’s the problem…and this is often the problem with writing a post. I feel an unbelievable amount of pressure to not have errors since I run a writing lab. So this evening, I gave myself permission to do what I tell the students to do-WRITE. Don’t edit, revise, etc. Just WRITE. And I had fun writing. We’ll see where it goes. We’ll see if I can be as dedicated as Uncle Stevie and write every day.

But will I be letting Tom Hanks down? In Nothing in Common, he says to the students on the tour…”I love advertising. It’s what I do. I don’t have the Great American Novel hidden in my desk drawer….” Or am I more like Kevin Bacon in She’s Having a Baby…in advertising but really writing a book? I suppose since I run a writing lab, writing in my spare time isn’t wrong. It’s not a cheat. It is what I do.

Perhaps, just perhaps, that’s what I’ve been looking for. The missing thing. Maybe I’m a writer who forgot to write? This will be fun to watch. And write about. And I’m not even going to proofread this post. I’m just gonna let it stand. I simply wrote.

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The Price Is Right

Posted in Musings and Epiphanies, tagged , , on April 1, 2014| Leave a Comment »

Younger son was home sick the past two days. He’s all better and will return to school tomorrow. But the greatest thing happened at 11:00am. We watched The Price Is Right together, just like I did when I was a kid and home sick from school. Bonus, for April Fool’s Day, Craig Ferguson was hosting. He brought the horse and Geoff. It was so clear how much he enjoyed hosting the show. I assume Drew Carey will be hosting The Late Late Show. There were clips of Drew on the Late Late show set on one of the prize televisions. Anyhoo, younger son and I had a blast watching it. He was really laughing and was calling out prices and higher or lower. I will cherish this memory.

Older son gave me a memory I will cherish too. It’s just a bit grosser. He made me a bowl of cereal for breakfast. Cookie Crisp. With milk…and mayo…and ketchup. April Fool’s! He got Hubby pretty well with the fake worm in the apple. Good times, good times.

Happy April Fool’s Day!

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Smoker’s Double Standard

Posted in Musings and Epiphanies, tagged , , , on April 1, 2014| Leave a Comment »

cigarette
This has been bugging me. A custodian smokes a cigarette in a school on a Saturday. Yes, he’s not supposed to be smoking in the school. He throws the cigarette into a trash can and a short time later, no school because of a fire. A person at a motel has a cigarette in a designated smoking area, throws the cigarette, and a short time later, no motel because of a fire.

The motel has been called into question for smoke alarms, sprinklers, code standards.

The school hasn’t. At least as far as I’ve heard in popular news and and media.

Why the double standard? How does an entire school burn down from one burning trash can? What if it had been a bad toaster, microwave, faulty wiring? The cause shouldn’t matter-the fact that an entire school could burn down should matter. How did the smoke alarms and fire alarms not get triggered? What happened to the sprinkler system? Aren’t schools supposed to have those? Isn’t the alarm supposed to be directly connected to the fire or police department? If the school could burn that easily, thank goodness it was a Saturday.

Is the school not being questioned because no one wants to implicate the fire inspector who said it was safe for children to attend that school? Is it because no one wants to fess up to how much asbestos was in that school, perhaps explaining why it burned so easily?

I’m telling my boys if they smell smoke at their school, hightail it to the office and report it as they go out the front door. I also need to reach out to my fire department and confirm that the school met code and passed inspection with flying colors. Check with the administration that they fire drills will really work. Have they tried a fire drill during lunch? In the afternoon when the kids are all antsy? And on and on.

Oh, and while I’m thinking of it, smokers=bad, but let’s legalize pot.

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