holy seventh ring of hell, batman!

or why i'm up at 3 am right now.  -_-

so i'm over at my mom's house because i promised my sister i would help her with her garage sale.  several things are already inherently wrong with that statement: namely, "sister" and "help".  basically, she didn't come home from work until 6:30 in the evening and then proceeded to empty out her closet of all her clothes.  so yeah.  she wasn't even *close* to being ready for this thing.  and we'd planned it for three weeks.  and if you think that's not such a big deal...

yep.  that's the fallout from all the purging we did of her closet.  and that's not even all the hangers.  imagine the piles we had.

still, you might be thinking, gentle reader, that this shouldn't have taken so long, much less warrant a post subject title like the one above.

but wait!  there's more.

so we cleaned out her closet.  it's now 8-ish pm and the kids are ready for bed.  it's their normal bed time.  but uncle mark has decided that i needed to do an interview with this financial planner guy.  basically, mark is apprenticing with this company and this was his "training".  initially, when he pitched the idea to me, i thought he would be giving me this spiel, and informally at that.  but, no!  at 9pm, this man in a suit comes and proceeds to give me this soft sell about either a. investing in this company and/or b. working for this company in some pyramid-ish, ponzi-like scheme thing.

by the time he was done, it was 10.  my kids are shattered.  and my mom has no good cable channels or fast wi fi so they're tired and bored. to give them credit, they're not whiny or cranky, but i'm feeling guilty as hell.  i dismiss the man as politely as i could and hurry the kids to bed.

then the fun begins.

i brought my normal sleeping clothes - flannel monkey pjs coz we all know my hubby keeps our house at freezing arctic temperatures - but i forgot that my mom loves to conserve energy and money so she has her temp set at 80.  EIGHTY FRICKIN' DEGREES, PEOPLE!  and i have flannel pajamas!  and i'm sleeping in a bed next to dutch oven aly.

I CAN'T FRICKIN' SLEEP LIKE THIS!

aly also grinds her teeth.  argh!!!!

but that's not the end of it.  guess who's up with me?  dylan.  he's a bit homesick.  and he's been getting up every 30 minutes or so - bathroom, water, etc. - so just when i think i can fall into a dozy, exhausted, sweaty sleep, dylan wakes me up and we start the process all over again.

finally, i just get up and decide that it's much cooler in the living room anyway and so, here i am.  blogging at the butt crack of dawn, knowing i have to get up in less than 5 hours to set up for this blasted garage sale that's probably not even gonna pan out or earn us any money worth this hell because we're so disorganized.

i need coffee.  and i would just get up and grab some starbucks or even 24-hour mcdonalds crap but i don't have the code to the alarm and am trapped here.

and dylan is eating pepperoni pizza, reading over my shoulder.

i am in the seventh ring of hell.

and this was supposed to be a fun, cheery post about our camping trip.

oh, well.  better luck next time...

p.s. did i mention that earlier today - or yesterday now, i guess - i had already spent a long, hot, gross day knee deep in algae cleaning our inflatable pool? FML.

of puppies and precociousness

the other day, my MIL got a phone call from florida.  a man asked to speak with dylan.  my MIL answered cautiously that no, dylan wasn't available but this is his grandmother. what can i do for you?  at this point, the man asked how old dylan was and when she answered "eight", he began laughing uproariously.  then he proceeded to tell her that he was a pomeranian breeder and that dylan had placed an online order for a pup, filling out all the relevant contact info but just leaving blank the payment info.  of course, he said, he couldn't hold dylan to the contract since he wasn't 18 or older but that my MIL should be porud of having an eight-year-old smart enough to do all that.

imagine if my son had a hold of my credit card numbers.  0_0

i dunno whether to be proud or terrified.

Borders blows

A Fond Farewell... Thank You for Shopping at Borders

well, that sucks major monkey nuts. i'd just bought the borders reward plus thingie about a month ago, after being assured that it would be honored online even if stores were closing right and left. i should have paid more attention to the signs, i guess.

i wonder how barnes & noble are still going? or are they next on the chopping block?

sigh.

i feel like this is the end of an era and i don't know if i like the one that's replacing it. ebooks and instant gratification are all well and good, but does this mean books in print are going the way of the dodo? will they soon be defunct, like VHS tapes? will i never get my own ISBN to engrave on my tombstone as i'd envisioned because the publishing industry is going digital?

my heart is shattering slowly as we speak.

and now for some station identification...

so i think it's time to clarify some things for you, gentle reader, since you can count yourself one of the rare, faithful few who actually deign to skim my musings in your spare time. you deserve some need-to-know info.

first, the labels. yes, labels. they are located underneath the title of each post. i guess in other arenas and forums, they're known as "tags" but perhaps they're not as intuitive here on blogger. dunno. not up on my code and html designing as i used to be.

regardless, there they are. and i put them there because i'm lazy and i can't be arsed keeping up more than one blog. however, as you know, i have many facets to my life and most of them are completely disparate from each other. not only that, i have whole communities dedicated to said disparate things and i am different people to these different communities. call me sydney bristow, i guess. a gal of many aliases.

anyhow (i've decided that 'anyhoo' was getting too annoying, even for me), if you are a reader from a specific facet of my life and aren't interested in the others, then these labels will be your godsend. follow me on my guided tour, if you please. anything labeled:

• knitting - is self-explanatory
• life - is about my kids, my work, the minutiae of my day
• the universe - is about my inner monologue/rant/rambling on sundry universal themes/topics
• everything - is about miscellanea like youtube vids of interest, books/movies/tv shows i like, or anything else - like this little number - that defies categorization

so there you have it. of course, a lot of my entries will probably overlap and i shall attempt to use the appropriate labels for your personal edification. if i miss the mark, somehow, my apologies ahead of time but life *is* messy and convoluted that way so perhaps i don't need to apologize?

oh, i just reread what i wrote - like the good english major/teacher that i am - and i realize i said "first" earlier on, implying there's more than one thing i wish to address. now what was the other thing...

sorry. senior moment.

okay, got it. the title of my blog and the URL. they don't match. that's because i really wanted my title to be my URL but it was already taken so i had to come up with a new URL but i still wanted to keep the title, so...voila! and in case you're not a nu-whovian and both phrases need explaining, i've added a handy-dandy link right under the subhead of my title. it's very subtle. blink, and you'll miss it. ahahaha! pun intended.

oh, and because most people are visual learners anymore and will only skim to the pictures, here's one i found simply by googling "random picture":

edwards/keelan/maricel signing off! :)

Texas Study Raises Questions About Impact of School Discipline

i know that most news is bad news because, really, how many people would tune on or stop to read happy things (unless it's a boom in the economy and a lowering of taxes)? but every time something about education comes up in the media, i become alternately outraged and/or ashamed and/or fearful and/or all of the above, both as an educator and as a parent. here's yet another in a string of news bits. thanks, lisa, for giving me more provocative summer reading.

Texas Study Raises Questions About Impact of School Discipline - NYTimes.com

you grow wise, young padawan...

i was gonna wax contemplative regarding that last harry potter flick, it being a seminal part of our common culture and being the end of said seminal part and all. but the longer i wait, the more removed i feel and to poke at it now would be tempting fate. (for those of you in the know, you'll remember that i tend to obsess and obsess *hard* over things - can we say "pearl harbor" and 1940s vintage clothing? - and i fear prodding the beast that is/was my HP obsession would be dooming my family to non-mommyhood).

instead, i give you a response to this post of mine by one of my best and brightest. introducing ciku gachiri, former student and current friend:

I just read your post and not only was it a delight to read but absolutely, positively, 100% correct. That's what Tumblr is. A long-form social networking site and by long form I mean it's merely a longer form of people's status bars on Facebook. It's not better, just longer. Your whole thing about punctuation, grammar, etc was also spot on. I was *just* having this conversation at work, actually. It drives me up the wall whenever I read misspellings and oh gawd, bad grammar. I even die a little when I read a typo because it's usually something that if read through JUST ONCE could be fixed! But hey, nobody rereads their work, right? I can't say I'm a saint when it comes to spelling, grammar, punctuation, etc. but at least I try. *At least* I reread through my work whether it be a text, a blog, an email or whatever. Yes, it takes me 10x longer than the average person to send something that should be "instant" (i.e. this very email) but I like to think the quality is a little higher than the average person's too. Though I must add, I'm a little obsessive. Lord knows how many times I've combed through past posts on my Blogspot to correct spelling and typos or change around sentences to make them sound better. It's not like anyone is going to go back and read them but it feels better once I do it. Like now, all is right with the world. Sigh. I blame my parents.

I just wish people cared a little more about what they sent out for the world to read. Now again, I have been guilty on numerous occasions (especially this past quarter in my creative writing class. Oh goodness...) of turning in assignments without having even skimmed through them. The main reason is lack of time (I save things until the last minute) but another strong reason is lack of caring. I didn't care. And I feel like most of society is the same. They don't care how it sounds, if anything is spelled wrong or if they used "effect" instead of "affect" but rather that you got the message. All that matters is that you get the gist of what the person is saying. I blame this on our "I want it now!" culture. For the most part, I love it! Who doesn't like dinner in 3 minutes thanks to the microwave or communication with an entire office in 1 minute thanks to email or being able to chat with a friend in 1 second thanks to texts? But for every good there is a bad and I think you're right, everything is only as good as the next tidbit or soundbite.

As creepy as Mr. Ruiz was (and perhaps still is) I remember him mentioning how when we type, we type with so many typos that are automatically corrected or revealed to us by that red squiggly line that when we write by hand we have the same number of typos, misspellings, etc. but never go back to change them. This left Mr. Ruiz with paper after paper ridden with errors and our generation with atrocious spelling that we think is alright. He then said he wished we had to use typewriters (like he's even old enough to have used one...) because with that, no typos/misspellings were allowed. If you made just one mistake, Bam! You had to rip out the paper and start all over again. His theory was that spelling was a lot better back then than it is now because of the typewriter and although at the time I just quickly nodded my head so he could leave us alone and stop berating my generation, after some time I couldn't help but agree with what he was saying. Because of this, I unfortunately do not believe writing will go back to the way it was.

Unless writing is confined to only the elites who have nothing but an ink pad and paper or even worse, stone to chisel, and all other forms of "showing" are erased (i.e. television, movies, pictures) writing for the masses will never again be beautifully detailed, elegant, and sanstypos. Could you imagine Shakespeare coming out with *any* of his work today? It'd be thrown out! "What's all this about comparing Juliet's beauty to a rose? Just say she's beautiful!" Not to mention no one would understand it. I know you know even the peasants understood his plays. Now writing for the masses is geared towards an 8th grade reading level and even that is a joke. Pole a sample of 8th graders and I'm sure we'd be disappointed at best by the results.

Maybe I'm just being pessimistic but I think writing is only going to get worse. That means people like you just have to continue writing the way you do and pray that it catches on. If not beautiful prose, at least we'd live in a world where slang in an email to a teacher was considered vile, thinking "puppy" was a verb led to jail time and writing using cApiTaL aNd lOwErCaSe LeTtErS aLoNg w1tH nUmb3rS caused a person to be ostracized by society and forced to live in Siberia or the Sahara desert where no one knew of their crime.

That Edwards is a world I would love to live in.

slacker mom confessionals

it's a balmy 77 degrees out. slight breeze. clear, blue skies. i have set my fold-out chair with attached fold-out canopy out in the driveway. my knitting basket is by me and i'm preparing to finish a few rounds while performing my dutiful mommy duty of watching my kids as they ride around on their bikes on the street.

about 40 stitches into my 4th row, i am regaled by stomping and pounding and a raising of voices that soon escalates into a full-blown screaming match. i'm counting stitches and i feel myself becoming irritated that i have to referee yet another fight between the kiddos, losing my count in the process.

then i remembered confessions of a slacker mom, a book i finished in the hour it took me to finally come down from my 2-shot frappucino high (3 o'clock in the morning, after having watched the midnight show of the last HP movie; more on that in a later post). and thus, thinking of the wise words of ms. mead-ferro, i simply sat in my fold-out chair, continued counting and knitting, and proceeded to let the little drama play itself out.

after not very long since the first angry remark, the two did indeed come running up to me, their little tattletale faces at the ready. i shook my head curtly and commanded them to "work things out" without looking up from my knitting. what followed next was a 20-minute exchange that i wish i could've captured with the school ipad. it was an oscar-worthy performance on both parts - every word fraught with righteous wrath, every inflection laced with outrage. as i listened, i was filled half with amusement and half with awe - sure, my children were screaming at the top of their lungs but it was what they were screaming at each other that was amazing. they sounded like two little adults, slinging well-articulated, SAT vocabulary-riddled sentences at each other like seasoned politicians. aly was using the power of pathos, invoking her hurt feelings; dylan was throwing around ethos, stating he needed to be listened to as the older brother. soon the two of them were at it with the logos of children, going back and forth with "well, you do this!" and "you do that too!" but they were still being very intelligent and logical about their arguments. it made my english major soul proud, i tell ya.

but it wasn't the precocious use of language that awed me. it was the end result. after 20 minutes of being banshees, my kids worked it out. all on their own. i'm not kidding. they hugged each other - gasp! - swore they'd never fight again, then came to me to announce their resolution with very sincere, determined expressions. sure, it took 20 minutes. sure, the whole neighborhood heard our business. sure, i probably looked like the most neglectful mother, just serenely sitting in a chair and knitting while world war three broke loose around me. but waiting paid off. i didn't have to raise my voice. i didn't have to worry about taking sides or hurting one or the other's feelings by doing so. i didn't have to stop what i was doing. the kids regulated themselves. i was practicing the art of slacker mom-hood, and whaddaya know? it worked.

i'm glad my MIL and my husband weren't around. it wouldn't have worked had they been because they wouldn't have let it go on for as long as i did; they would've interfered at the first sign of an altercation. at the risk of sounding judgy, i have to say that perhaps this iron-fisted, traditional, "grown ups know best" approach may not be the best solution all the time. it seems like it requires a lot of energy and effort on the grown ups' part, and it takes away the responsibility and problem solving ability away from the very people who should be owning up to both.

i dunno. to each his own. and i'm sure the mommies that read my blog will have loads to say about this. but damn if i don't feel energized and invigorated and proud of what i'd just witnessed. this slacker mom business may just revolutionize life for the edwards clan. at the very least, i'll be able to finish tons of knitting projects.