Yes, that is fake chicken. Yes, that is Ranch dressing for dipping. Yes, I cut up those carrots only after reading about Levi only eating a hot dog... wanted to look like I had better food choices than a four year old.
Friday, April 04, 2008
Wednesday, April 02, 2008
Lyssie and Tex and Caves and French Toast
I woke up at 5am this morning to see Alyssa and Tex off. Roomie always gets up at this time (and when we looked out the window, Neighbors were up, as usual, too). I never knew how happening this time of the morning could be, and I am contemplating doing it again sometime.
Roomie, Tucker, and I will miss their quips, their insights, their humor, and their dog treats.
Soon after they left, I went to Evergreen Community Charter School to take a fourth grade class on a caving exploration trip in Tennessee. Details about this trip and yesterday's adventure will follow in a later post...
From there, we zoomed over to another school to run a TAASC meeting. The kids made French Toast (or as called in certain circles, "Freedom Toast;" does anyone say "freedom" fries, toast, kiss, braid anymore?). While some of their creations looked mutilated, the TAASC students seemed to enjoy the cinnamonny delight. As an extra touch, Greg and I added a swiggle of maple syrup on their individual pieces of toast, which they brought to us in their hands.
While that last sentence wasn't super clear, I would like to make one point and one tangent stemming from it:
1. A swiggle is a technical term for just a smigen. To all of our parents: I have no idea why your children were hyper when they got home. To the parent who is a pediatric dentist: we brushed our teeth immediately after licking the syrup off of our sticky fingers.
2. This french toast was easily handled in their hands, but I'll never forget a student who lost her bowl on a longer TAASC trip and wanted us to serve steamy mac and cheese in her hands. She stood on line with her cupped hands extended. When we gave her a cooking pot to use as a bowl, she still protested, "It's fine... I don't need it... just serve the mac n'cheese in my palms."
From there:
* home for a run with Tucker to lose the restaurant/dog treat pudge;
* a walk with Roomie to scope out the neighbors;
* a drink with a lovely lady (and then a lovely gentleman, too) to debrief the week;
* an email check to see that no one loves me;
* a blog comment check to feel just a smigen
(swiggle would not work in this case, by the way) better;
* a time sitting and staring at the screen to think of a response
or a comment to add to others' blogs;
* a time sitting and staring at the comments that others posted
on my blog to try to think of a response to their responses;
* some more time staring as one gets super sleepy.
Then, I began this blog entry, just for Rebekka (who can pay me back with free science-like advice when she finishes her dissertation and has a dr. in front of her name) and I stared at the screen some more.
I didn't come up with a comment for tinytim or stupidmommy or even a response to a comment on this blog.
Nothing. Staring.
OH! Here's one: Deb commented about thinking 12:52 referenced a Biblical passage. It doesn't in this instance, but when I googled 12:52, the first website was about a restaurant in Germany, I think (ah, the power of deduction and photographs).
The second one was about Luke 12:52; I skipped the 'merican Bible interpretation and went straight to the King James, you know, so as not to die...
The third entry was about Isaiah 51 and looked like this:
א שִׁמְעוּ אֵלַי רֹדְפֵי צֶדֶק, מְבַקְשֵׁי יְהוָה; הַבִּיטוּ אֶל-צוּר חֻצַּבְתֶּם, וְאֶל-מַקֶּבֶת בּוֹר נֻקַּרְתֶּם.
Okay. That's the best I could do for now. I'm falling asleep.
Roomie, Tucker, and I will miss their quips, their insights, their humor, and their dog treats.
Soon after they left, I went to Evergreen Community Charter School to take a fourth grade class on a caving exploration trip in Tennessee. Details about this trip and yesterday's adventure will follow in a later post...
From there, we zoomed over to another school to run a TAASC meeting. The kids made French Toast (or as called in certain circles, "Freedom Toast;" does anyone say "freedom" fries, toast, kiss, braid anymore?). While some of their creations looked mutilated, the TAASC students seemed to enjoy the cinnamonny delight. As an extra touch, Greg and I added a swiggle of maple syrup on their individual pieces of toast, which they brought to us in their hands.
While that last sentence wasn't super clear, I would like to make one point and one tangent stemming from it:
1. A swiggle is a technical term for just a smigen. To all of our parents: I have no idea why your children were hyper when they got home. To the parent who is a pediatric dentist: we brushed our teeth immediately after licking the syrup off of our sticky fingers.
2. This french toast was easily handled in their hands, but I'll never forget a student who lost her bowl on a longer TAASC trip and wanted us to serve steamy mac and cheese in her hands. She stood on line with her cupped hands extended. When we gave her a cooking pot to use as a bowl, she still protested, "It's fine... I don't need it... just serve the mac n'cheese in my palms."
From there:
* home for a run with Tucker to lose the restaurant/dog treat pudge;
* a walk with Roomie to scope out the neighbors;
* a drink with a lovely lady (and then a lovely gentleman, too) to debrief the week;
* an email check to see that no one loves me;
* a blog comment check to feel just a smigen
(swiggle would not work in this case, by the way) better;
* a time sitting and staring at the screen to think of a response
or a comment to add to others' blogs;
* a time sitting and staring at the comments that others posted
on my blog to try to think of a response to their responses;
* some more time staring as one gets super sleepy.
Then, I began this blog entry, just for Rebekka (who can pay me back with free science-like advice when she finishes her dissertation and has a dr. in front of her name) and I stared at the screen some more.
I didn't come up with a comment for tinytim or stupidmommy or even a response to a comment on this blog.
Nothing. Staring.
OH! Here's one: Deb commented about thinking 12:52 referenced a Biblical passage. It doesn't in this instance, but when I googled 12:52, the first website was about a restaurant in Germany, I think (ah, the power of deduction and photographs).
The second one was about Luke 12:52; I skipped the 'merican Bible interpretation and went straight to the King James, you know, so as not to die...
The third entry was about Isaiah 51 and looked like this:
א שִׁמְעוּ אֵלַי רֹדְפֵי צֶדֶק, מְבַקְשֵׁי יְהוָה; הַבִּיטוּ אֶל-צוּר חֻצַּבְתֶּם, וְאֶל-מַקֶּבֶת בּוֹר נֻקַּרְתֶּם.
Okay. That's the best I could do for now. I'm falling asleep.
Tuesday, April 01, 2008
12:52?
While visiting stupidmommy et al (see one post below), she asked how my blog got its name 12:52. Just like explaining my Outward Bound name, Cowgirl, I didn't have a great story to tell Deb about the name of my post. Feeling stupid, I muttered, "Uh, it's the time in the afternoon when I started my post... back in 2006." I was never clever at thinking of band names, either.
I posted about three blogs in that year and then didn't pick it up again until late last year with the support of Alyssa. (In 2006, she wasn't me emailing in caps, "WHERE'S TODAY'S POST?" like she does these days.) Because it's 12am and I have to go to work in a few hours, I thought it'd be the perfect time to see if there was a witty story associated with 12:52.
I looked back to those first few posts and didn't find any witty stories about 12:52pm. However, I had a post about some kids visiting my West Asheville house on a rainy Saturday. It brought back a great memory. I realize that I wouldn't do "three strikes" anymore, but would try Love and Logic. Here a couple of the first posts that I just re-read:
Day One 12:52
I'm on my way out to get Man and The Twins. Raining with tornados in the air.
Saturday Visit
Man and the Twins are students from my after-school program. The fourth-grader has a real name, but his family calls him “Man.” I prefer to call him T-Bone. The twins, who are in kindergarten, also have individual names for their individual personalities, but their family dubs them “Twins.” Singularly, each is called “Twin.” For instance, I heard a neighbor yell at one of them, “Twin, quit messing with my dog!” I wonder if the boys’ sisters will be called “Girl” and “Baby Girl.”
On a rainy Saturday, they walked with me across the highway overpass from their house to mine. I grasped the twins’ hands as tightly as they grasped brown-bagged lunches. While I was alerting the twins to the bocce-ball-sized dog poop in front of the defunct Mexican restaurant, T-Bone shouted, “Twin! You’re losing your lunch.” He looked down at his ripped bag, and we turned to see a Ziplock of Oreos and sealed cup of applesauce spaced down the sidewalk like Hansel and Gretel’s crumbs.
When we arrived at my house, they ate bologna on white, cookies, and applesauce. The twin whose lunch was scattered on the sidewalk realized that his Capri Sun was missing. “It’s okay,” I told him as I looked in the refrigerator, “we have milk… uh, water…”
I saw the old bottle of pineapple juice and offered him a glass.
“Apple?” he asked hopefully.
“No. This is pineapple. You might want to try a little bit to see if you like it.”
He liked it. The boys sat at the table and ate until they were hyper. My planned afternoon of baking cookies, watching a movie, and making popcorn changed as they hurtled over the couch and threw my books at each other. I lost my calm arrogance and turned into some poor dupe on Nanny 911.
I took a breath and turned to the one jumping over the couch, “That’s strike one for you.” He looked at me with wide eyes, not believing that I would use the after-school lingo of three strikes and a time-out on this special weekend visit.
Not missing a beat, however, he went into his usual teary melodrama, “Just one more chance, please. Just one more chance,” before I suggested we all go outside and play a game. The “game” started with sprinting races across my narrow, ten-foot lawn.
Next, I suggested we have a jumping jack competition. After a few pushups, T-Bone was onto my ploy and asked if I had a football.
Nope.
Frisbee? Broken.
A weight-lifting bench? In fact we do have a weight machine in the dirt-floor basement.
After they bashed the weights for an hour, T-Bone asked if we could have a scavenger hunt. I thought about my idea of a scavenger hunt and said, “Well, I haven’t made clues and our yard is so small…”
“You can just hide something and we have to find it.”
Obviously.
T-Bone suggested candy or chocolate.
All I could find was a box of garlic Triskets. Each time they found the treasure, they’d get one Trisket each. After discovering the garlic crackers in places like the mailbox, the woodpile, and the back of a pickup truck, the twins decided to hide them for T-Bone and me to find. We searched for forty-minutes before they unearthed the bag from a flowerpot which was full of dirt.
I didn’t want a prize Trisket after that.
On the way home, I suggested we stop at Family Dollar to get a wiffle-ball set. Only one of them had a temper tandrum and sprawled himself on the floor when I wouldn’t buy Batman toys.
His mood changed when he found his missing Capri Sun (straw and all) on the sidewalk.
I posted about three blogs in that year and then didn't pick it up again until late last year with the support of Alyssa. (In 2006, she wasn't me emailing in caps, "WHERE'S TODAY'S POST?" like she does these days.) Because it's 12am and I have to go to work in a few hours, I thought it'd be the perfect time to see if there was a witty story associated with 12:52.
I looked back to those first few posts and didn't find any witty stories about 12:52pm. However, I had a post about some kids visiting my West Asheville house on a rainy Saturday. It brought back a great memory. I realize that I wouldn't do "three strikes" anymore, but would try Love and Logic. Here a couple of the first posts that I just re-read:
Day One 12:52
I'm on my way out to get Man and The Twins. Raining with tornados in the air.
Saturday Visit
Man and the Twins are students from my after-school program. The fourth-grader has a real name, but his family calls him “Man.” I prefer to call him T-Bone. The twins, who are in kindergarten, also have individual names for their individual personalities, but their family dubs them “Twins.” Singularly, each is called “Twin.” For instance, I heard a neighbor yell at one of them, “Twin, quit messing with my dog!” I wonder if the boys’ sisters will be called “Girl” and “Baby Girl.”
On a rainy Saturday, they walked with me across the highway overpass from their house to mine. I grasped the twins’ hands as tightly as they grasped brown-bagged lunches. While I was alerting the twins to the bocce-ball-sized dog poop in front of the defunct Mexican restaurant, T-Bone shouted, “Twin! You’re losing your lunch.” He looked down at his ripped bag, and we turned to see a Ziplock of Oreos and sealed cup of applesauce spaced down the sidewalk like Hansel and Gretel’s crumbs.
When we arrived at my house, they ate bologna on white, cookies, and applesauce. The twin whose lunch was scattered on the sidewalk realized that his Capri Sun was missing. “It’s okay,” I told him as I looked in the refrigerator, “we have milk… uh, water…”
I saw the old bottle of pineapple juice and offered him a glass.
“Apple?” he asked hopefully.
“No. This is pineapple. You might want to try a little bit to see if you like it.”
He liked it. The boys sat at the table and ate until they were hyper. My planned afternoon of baking cookies, watching a movie, and making popcorn changed as they hurtled over the couch and threw my books at each other. I lost my calm arrogance and turned into some poor dupe on Nanny 911.
I took a breath and turned to the one jumping over the couch, “That’s strike one for you.” He looked at me with wide eyes, not believing that I would use the after-school lingo of three strikes and a time-out on this special weekend visit.
Not missing a beat, however, he went into his usual teary melodrama, “Just one more chance, please. Just one more chance,” before I suggested we all go outside and play a game. The “game” started with sprinting races across my narrow, ten-foot lawn.
Next, I suggested we have a jumping jack competition. After a few pushups, T-Bone was onto my ploy and asked if I had a football.
Nope.
Frisbee? Broken.
A weight-lifting bench? In fact we do have a weight machine in the dirt-floor basement.
After they bashed the weights for an hour, T-Bone asked if we could have a scavenger hunt. I thought about my idea of a scavenger hunt and said, “Well, I haven’t made clues and our yard is so small…”
“You can just hide something and we have to find it.”
Obviously.
T-Bone suggested candy or chocolate.
All I could find was a box of garlic Triskets. Each time they found the treasure, they’d get one Trisket each. After discovering the garlic crackers in places like the mailbox, the woodpile, and the back of a pickup truck, the twins decided to hide them for T-Bone and me to find. We searched for forty-minutes before they unearthed the bag from a flowerpot which was full of dirt.
I didn’t want a prize Trisket after that.
On the way home, I suggested we stop at Family Dollar to get a wiffle-ball set. Only one of them had a temper tandrum and sprawled himself on the floor when I wouldn’t buy Batman toys.
His mood changed when he found his missing Capri Sun (straw and all) on the sidewalk.
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