Em and the Possibilities There are no guarantees in life…only the possibilities

I would touch the topic of my new job that requires me to stand almost the entire shift.

I would mention my first day of school, which was truly an exersadist’s dream: class #1 in the basement of the building at the bottom of the hill, class #2 on the third floor of the building at the top of the hill. Then a few buildings over to complete some paperwork, and a walk back to the bottom of the hill to eat. Oh, and did I mention class #3 on the second floor of building #2? Good thing it’s a beautiful campus.

But no, today I want to talk about The Bathtub. Imagine a bathtub so deep that a Very Pregnant Belly can be totally submerged in warm water. Imagine a bathtub the *perfect* length – no bent knees, no tippy-toes. An enamelled cast-iron (and therefore heat-retaining) wonder.

I want to fill this tub with waaaaaaaarm water, a bath bomb, and me. Classical music lulling in the background, a glass of wine, and the kids sleeping sweet dreams.

No tubby-toys cluttering my line of sight, no ring around the tub to be scrubbed before I get in, no soaking-wet towels on the floor from the latest splash-fest.

Doesn’t it sound simply wooooooonderful?

Somerset Bob tagged me with The Nice Award.

Innit shiny?

I don’t usually think of myself as “nice”. Too many conversations with the teen ending in “EVILMOMMA!” or “your mean!” (standard reply: mean AND evil. You can’t forget the evil part.) and entirely too many days where I feel like all I do is yell at the kids or am ENTIRELY too grumpy.

However: I am not one to try to talk someone out of speaking kindly of me. I’ll just smile, say “Thank you!!!!!” and pass out a few more:

Cara Michele at Chosen Fast. A relatively recent addition to my real-life as well as blogging life, CM is an activist for the homeless in Greensboro and an all-around lovely person.

Esbee at Life in Forsyth. I love reading her local event posts as well as her occasional sprinkles of family life. I’ve found more than a few kid-friendly events through her blog, though agorophobia still keeps me from taking the kids out more than I’d like.

J. Lee at Single Mom in the City. She’s not posting as much as she was because of that whole thing called “life” that we all do, but I still enjoy her stories about dating and family-management.

The ever-tasty Biscuit at One Biscuit Hound. Ms. Biscuit and I “met” on a parenting board or two, and I learned a lot from her posts about dealing with autistic behaviors. I followed her over to blogspot when I stopped doing the message board thing QUITE so much, and have been a devoted reader ever since.

Babble much? Out of all the people I’ve mentioned here, I’ve known Holly the longest. We met on an online game while I was still pregnant with Daniel. No, that’s not precisely right – we had met before, but didn’t become “friends” until my belly started getting big. And then I yanked her out of the “friends in the box” category when her happy lil family moved to NC. And I STILL want her to COME BACK, HOLLY COME BACK!!!!!!

Go forth, my lovely tagged ones, and multiply. I’ve got to do a quick pickup of the livingroom before I dash to campus for the traditional first-day “hurry up and wait”.

Eliza tagged me with a frugality semi-meme. (No linkback to her cuz she’s totally friendslocked though.)

1. If we have to pay, we don’t play. Parks are free, Chuck E. Cheeze is not. Lightning bugs are free, glowstix are not.
2. I carry my homeschool registration card with us everywhere and *ask* if they give a price break on admission to homeschoolers. Most of the time we get a significant discount, if not outright free admission.
3. I know this isn’t an option for most folks, but I do my own computer parts swapping and maintenance. Our older system isn’t all that energy efficient, but it doesn’t stay on all the time, and costs almost nothing to maintain. And I don’t get bent out of shape if the boys mess something up – I just wipe the drive and start over again.
4. I stack trips to save on gasoline. Bank, gas station, grocery store #1, grocery store #2, HFS if necessary, then home to unload it all.
5. Shop at more than one grocery store. Aldi’s for staple foods, WalMart for the things Aldi’s doesn’t have.
6. Compromise with my teen on her “fashion needs”. We shop at Fashion Bug, but only the 50% clearance racks. I give her a budget for an item and if she wants to spend more than my budget, she earns the extra money. I categorically refuse to shop at the Mall.
7. Outside of Daniel’s dietary issues, we don’t do a lot of prepared foods. I do make a batch of tuna salad and/or egg salad once a week so I can grab a quickie meal
8. I check at the library before I buy the book. This absolutely annoys my bibliotaphic tendencies, but I cannot afford to spend money on a book I don’t love – and these days, more often than not I’m really glad I didn’t. (Case in point: The Sword of Truth series by Terry Goodkind. First few books were awesome. The Pillars of Creation was about 500 pages longer than necessary. After that, the plotlines are essentially recycled. Case #2: WHY does Anne Rice need to spend 4 pages describing a scene?)
9. As our lightbulbs burn out, I’m replacing them with compact fluorescents.
10. Check Goodwill, your local Freecycle group, and the thrift shops first. I found a 12-bin toy storage rack for $6, and bought baskets that fit at the Dollar Store. I got a printer for the kid’s computer on Freecycle.
11. I’ve seen hundreds of websites with “green cleaning products”. I don’t waste my time – I use laundry soap for cleaning 90% of the surfaces in this house.
12. We use cloth whenever applicable. Napkins, hankies, spill absorbers, menstrual products. I even have muslins dedicated to grease absorption (southern cooking, y’know).
13. Don’t spend money you don’t have. I do have a credit card that I use in emergencies. Flat tire that can’t be repaired? Emergency. Trip to Starbucks for a $20 cup of coffee? Non-emergency.
14. Used Textbooks. I categorically refuse to pay more than $20 for a book that I’ll only use for a semester. The screamingly new edition isn’t THAT much different from the previous.

That’s everything I can think of right now.

1. Uneven :: application
2. Wonder :: Woman
3. Spider :: man
4. Emma :: Jane
5. Swing :: dance
6. Orbit :: the sun
7. Flirt :: constantly
8. Donation :: contribution
9. Veil :: ripped
10. Atmosphere :: pleasant

And yourself?

After a week of watching that tooth get more and more wiggly, I managed to talk Daniel into letting me “dry off that tooth so I can look at it” with one of our flannel rags. Well whaddaya know, it came right out with a wiggle and a pop.

And then he freaked. Not a huge freakout (thank goodness), but a freakout nonetheless. “Mommy, my blood is coming out!” and he started gagging. I tossed a towel on the floor for him to spit on, but it didn’t bleed for that long. And he wouldn’t let me wipe his chin – I had to hand the rag to him and let him do it.

We looked in the mirror, made a big deal out of putting the tooth in an old pill bottle “to make it easier for the Tooth Fairy to find”, debated over whether the Tooth Fairy will bring him a quarter or a dollar, and now he’s happily eating a popsicle. Oh, and he’s ready to spit watermelon seeds through the gap.

Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. TEACH him HOW to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime.
– Lao Tzu (emphasis mine)

The Winston-Salem Journal reports that the Farm to School program is more expensive this year and schools have either reduced their purchases or threatened to drop out of the program completely.

We all know fresh fruits and vegetables are better for you. We all know that locally grown produce is preferable – it helps the local farmer, and the kids get produce that hasn’t travelled hundreds (or thousands) of miles.

I’d like to know something, though. Since most school systems I’m aware of are city/county consolidated, why can’t the school systems work with the farmers and leave the “DoD bulk purchasing system” out of it? North Carolina has a decent amount of former tobacco acreage laying fallow, why not put it to work feeding the school kids? And why not include the school kids in the program? Field trips to the farm for the littles to watch things grow, and work-related course credit (and/or volunteer credit) for the bigger kids. TEACH them the connection between the land and the food on the table. There’s a vast chasm of difference between reading about what happens when you plant a seed, and watching it happen.

Urban/city kids can still learn about/plant container gardens, make arrangements with people who DO have space available, or at the very minimum take them to the local Farmer’s Market. Wrap their basic subjects around food and/or farming. We all know addition and subtraction starts with “if I have 5 apples and give 2 to Daniel, how many apples do I have left?” so why not expand that to other subjects. Food is nothing if not a historical topic (people have always needed to eat, yes?), Science is a given, there’s plenty of food/gardening related literature, paintings, music and even a play or two.

I do realize this is a radical change from the current education system and will most likely get swept under the carpet. Homeschoolers teach like this all the time, though – so I KNOW it’s a system that works.

CD Recovery Toolbox – Free

You can bet your sweet beehind that I’ll be downloading this puppy and trying to rescue those CDs that I’ve been obsessively hanging onto. Just as soon as I go buy a spindle of blank CDs.

And? You can also bet that IF they recover and behave themselves, that I’ll be saving an image to one of the many spare hard drives I have sitting around. Have I mentioned how much I love my IDE to USB converter cable? I really should get another one. Or two.

via Lifehacker.com

The word of the day is “scratched”.

as in “I have hundreds of dollars worth of software that is quite possibly inoperable”.

WHY oh WHY did I not image them and stick ‘em on the spare hard drive??!!?? Then I could burn a backup copy whenever I needed one.

We’re going through the stack now. The boys are enjoying the games that actually work, and I’m biting my nails, hoping and praying that the vast majority actually work.

AAARRRGGGHHH!

1. Darling :: Nikki
2. Majesty :: crown
3. Pebble :: toss
4. Fate :: sealed
5. Instant :: replay
6. Screen :: calls
7. Unplugged :: phone
8. Dairy :: allergy
9. Benefactor :: financial
10. Market :: up or down

Now you

The job is exactly the same as it was when I worked there before.

Which is to say: although the computer systems have been upgraded and the work process been observed and tweaked by an efficiency expert, there is still the timeless rhythm of processing items and documentation.

Which is to say: management still wants it faster faster faster and faster still. Oh, and I noticed you slowed down, could you pick up the pace? Here is a pile, are you done yet?

Which is to say: although the job is just as mind-numbingly boring as it was before, I am in a better mental place than I was the first time around.

The job is a GOOD job. (As long as GOOD is acronym for Get Out Of Debt, that is.) Having a specific goal of rebuilding my wheezingly empty savings account helps.

Only having one job this time around helps.