why did I come home again?

good question.

The joys of parenthood

I never realized how hard it would be to find those little metal buckets (you know the ones I mean; about 3 1/2 inches high, you see them stuffed with candy as a teacher present or whatever) or even just little plastic flowerpots! I mean, jeez! Dollar General - no. Ace Hardware - no. Target - no. Walmart - had some smallish plastic flowerpots, and some miniature washtubs, but none of those little buckets.

Washtubs it is.

So while I'm looking for little metal buckets, or little plastic flowerpots, we run into an old - I guess she's a friend; or used to be a friend. Gah. She's okay, just carries baggage with her from the past that I'd just as soon skip.

J sent me this AWESOME link - said he figured it was right up my alley, and that it reminded him of me, too. I went and read it.
WOW WOW WOW WOW
It's like - the me that could have been. I *wistful sigh* used to be a perfect size 6. Before I got happily married, mothered and domesticated, I had considered becoming a Geisha... and the brain on this chick! Here, go read her: Elle Wakefield

One of the links on her blog led me here: Nationmaster. She was talking about how the US spends more on defense than all the other countries of the world COMBINED, which was bad enough... I started poking around, looking at other statistics. I took a look at percentage of GDP spent on education by different countries, and just about swallowed my tongue.

WE COME AFTER LIBERIA? ARE YOU KIDDING ME?
We come FORTY SEVENTH:
#1 Moldova 10.3%
#2 Namibia 8.5%
#3 Denmark 7.7%
#4 South Africa 7.5%
#5 Uzbekistan 7.4%
#6 Barbados 7.3%
#7 Saudi Arabia 7.2%
#8 Sweden 7.1%
#9 Finland 7%
#10 New Zealand 6.9%
#11 Botswana 6.9%
#12 Norway 6.9%
#13 Israel 6.9%
#14 Jamaica 6.8%
#15 Cuba 6.7%
#16 Tunisia 6.6%
#17 Saint Lucia 6.5%
#18 Ukraine 6.4%
#19 Lesotho 6.4%
#20 Estonia 6.4%
#21 Jordan 6.4%
#22 Seychelles 6.3%
#23 Latvia 6.1%
#24 Congo, Democratic Republic of the 5.9%
#25 Ireland 5.7%
#26 Libya 5.7%
#27 France 5.6%
#28 Slovenia 5.4%
#29 Belarus 5.4%
#30 Australia 5.2%
#31 Fiji 5.2%
#32 Lithuania 5.2%
#33 Swaziland 5.1%
#34 Dominica 5%
#35 Austria 5%
#36 Venezuela 5%
#37 Netherlands 4.9%
#38 Macedonia, The Former Yugoslav Republic of 4.9%
#39 Liberia 4.9%
#40 Hungary 4.9%
#41 Morocco 4.9%
#42 Bolivia 4.8%
#43 Panama 4.8%
#44 Belize 4.8%
#45 Saint Vincent and the Grenadines 4.7%
#46 United Kingdom 4.7%
#47 United States 4.7%
(Caveat: this data is from 1990-99.)

fever dreams...

Middle school sucked. Add Higgins (from Magnum PI) as your French teacher, and then have him teaching you art that day. Add pissed off new student who gets upset with Higgin's evaluation of her French skills and proceeds to beat the living dogsh*# out of him.

There was lots more, but the mental image that stays with me is sitting in a room in the teachers-only area with my mother (the science teacher) and Higgins, picking fragments of the bicycle (that the girl used to help beat him with) out of his skin with tweezers from my keychain multitool.

It doesn't FEEL like winter...

I want one of these!

While putting the kids to bed tonight, I had a couple of interesting invention ideas.

For deaf people, a wristwatch that has an alarm function that rather than beeping, pokes you. Some sort of mechanical mechanism that makes bumps stick out rather than a beep, or vibrates, or maybe a tiny shock or something - great for deaf people or people who want a silent alarm that isn't obvious say, in a meeting, or in a movie...

altho, now that I think about it, I think I can do that with my cellphone. Hrm.

Altho a deaf person wouldn't have a cellphone, now that I re-read it.

Anyway, the other idea I had (as I was trying to put the kids to bed and the damn phone kept ringing) was some sort of device that you could connect between the phones and the wall (like the DSL filters we have) that had a centrally located button that you could push that would prevent the phones from ringing. ('cause if you've got 5 phones in the house, it's a pain to go around and turn all the ringers off, and if you take the phone off the hook, then nobody can get thru.) When a person called it would answer and say "we're currently trying to put the children to bed, if this is an emergency please press 1, otherwise please leave a message and we'll call you back." so if they pressed 1, the phones would ring, and if not, it would forward them to your voice mail.

Dinner party yesterday was awesome - and our house is gorgeous, and the food was incredible, and I had about 7 people not come, but all the rest were there and it was wonderful.

J & Patrick are still working, so I have the house to myself... it's kinda nice; clean, decorated for christmas house, I got the kids to bed & asleep by 8:30... quiet, calming...

*contented sigh*