Tuesday, October 26, 2010

And Now For Something Completely Different

Blech. Was that depressing, or what? Sheesh, if I weren't depressed before, I would be after reading that. So let's lighten things up a bit, shall we?

Things are a bit sunnier here today, in the metaphorical sense, and I realized that I hadn't shared with y'all one of the funniest things that's happened lately.

Punkin, not surprisingly (to me anyway), has turned out to be pretty smart. She is doing really, really well academically in school -- and behaviorally too, but that's another update for another day.

Periodically the teachers give the students benchmark tests. For kindergarten, the students are required to draw a little picture and then write a sentence about it. Punkin has been working on sight words since the beginning of September and I've seen her attempts at spelling come home on other projects -- "rabit" for "rabbit" and "ruod" for "road" -- both pretty excellent attempts I thought.

So, when we got her report card it included her benchmark test. Her picture was a self-portrait with a frowny-face, though more sad than angry. There was something smudgy next to her, but I couldn't tell what it was since I was looking at a photocopy. Her sentence below it read "I had a bad daeee. I hurt my knee." Everything was spelled perfectly except for "day."

"Punkin," I exclaimed, "this is fantastic! You did such a good job writing your sentence! I'm so proud of you!! But I have a question. What's this smudgy thing here beside you?"

"Oh, that's my bike," she replied.

"Your bike?"

"Yeah, I was going to write 'I had a bad day because I fell off my bike and scraped my knee' but that was too many words. So I changed it."

That's one smart cookie.


Monday, October 25, 2010

All The News That's Fit to Print

It's been pretty quiet around here, I know. I'm sorry for that. The truth is that it's been really hard for me to write lately, feeling like I have, which is mostly depressed.

I tried for a long time to figure out what was wrong with me but I can't come up with anything that feels like the "right" answer. We decided not to go forward with the house thing right now. If we wait just 8 more months we'll be in a much better position financially. And while I'm glad we're waiting, it was still a disappointment and why I didn't want to get my hopes up about a house again.

I had to quit boot camp. You can read all the reasons why over at Bodies in Motivation. I'm thinking about going back one day a week while finding other ways to exercise other days, but even the thought of going back doesn't cheer me up.

I was talking to Mr. Daddy about my feelings about boot camp and I said "I've been in a funk since I had to quit" and he said "You're ALWAYS in a funk." And that makes me sad because up until recently I was feeling pretty darn good. I don't want to seem like I'm always in a funk.

Lately I'm too busy. Overwhelmed. Underwhelmed. Frustrated. Blech.

Friday, October 1, 2010

The Princess Who Saved Herself

One of the best new kids' songs that I've come across is The Princess Who Saved Herself by Jonathan Coulton. If you haven't heard it before, go here to listen to it now for free. It's a wonderful antidote to the helpless princesses we and our daughters are constantly bombarded with.

Be sure to listen until you get to the phone call in the middle. That cracks my shit up every time.