Well it would seem I have gone and dropped off the planet again. With three kids, school, and now work as well I do not manage my home time well. When I should be doing laundry that is usually up to my knees, or homework which I am getting behind on, or even picking up diapers at the store, I instead get backed up doing who knows what. Periodically I think I will stop and blog about a thing or two, but then I get distracted and pitch the project all together.
Today is different though, the laundry pile has dwindled, homework is on hold, tv is a bore, and I won’t be running out for diapers til after the oldest child is out of school. With a few minutes to write and a few more to browse buddies blogs I am starting with a tag from my talented scrapbooking buddy Nicole.
Actually it is called a “Blog Blessing”. The idea behind this tag game is different from other tag games. Rather than look inwardly, we are to look outside ourselves and bless, praise and pray for three blog friends. By participating in this endeavor we not only make the recipient of the blessing feel valued and appreciated, but we are having some fun too. We?re going to see how far the bloggin? blessings can travel around the world and how many people can be blessed! Be sure to go to the blog of those you are blessing and leave a comment on their blog to be sure they check yours!
The first person I would like to bless is Damien. When it comes to blogging this husband of mine is completely dedicated. He is also devoted to keeping my blog going including guest posting to tell the world I am still alive, thanks honey. Second goes to Carrie the Gremlin Wrangler. She is one of my favorite bloggers and even when I disappear, she peaks her head in rather than dropping me like a hot potato. She is also an extremely talented artist, mom and comical cashier with posts that have me in stitches most of the time. Next is Jessica the Rock Chick. From the first day I started she has been supporting me as an avid reader. She is genuinely one of the nicest bloggers I have met who amazingly keeps her spirits high even while raising teens. Though I could hand out a blessing to just about everyone on my blog roll I am only supposed to have three, so my final and fourth blessing goes to Boho Rhap. I don’t know where this amazing blogger gets her talent, but she makes her own incredible templates and also has some of the best photoshop skills I have seen. I am eagerly awaiting the day that she starts offering tutorials, I may never leave my couch again if that day comes. Ok, so just one more. Rosemarie at Miscellaneous Matters is a sweet proud momma with enduring faith that shows up in all of her posts.
I do have some pent up blogging waiting to bust out, so hopefully you’ll come back in the next few days and you won’t be disappointed.
That’s what my wife takes care of! I’m the husband, Damien, you may sometimes read about here and I want to just check in for Sarah through a short guestblog post and let you know what is up with super-wife.
You can find my blog over at: Postcards from the Funny Farm
She’s started subbing and it’s been so awesome seeing her on my campus smiling ear-to-ear. Today she is at a study group with some other people in her college class. She may write soon about some of the challenges of teaching a special ed class for over a week on long-term sub assignment. She will hopefully aslo write soon about the amazing rewards of working in the classroom with children. While it doesn’t pay huge amounts (about $120/day before taxes) it is great for her to be able to pick the days she wants to work by accepting certain jobs and passing on others. Not to mention the fact that it is excellent preparation for her career as a teacher which will be coming in the next few years.
Be patient with Sarah, she’s not as die-hard of a blogger as me (though I am working on it!). I’ll try and convince her to post something in the next week. Thanks to those of you who have checked in with her either through trackbacks or directly in emails to me or her. She is fine and I am hopeful will be back blogging very soon.
Thanks for reading my wife’s blog. Have the best day of your life.
How many of us I wonder end up in the career we dreamed about as children? I know for me when I was 8 years old and in third grade I was new to the area and didn’t have a friend in the world. My teacher was Mrs. Allen. She was super friendly, and even let me stay in during recess to help grade papers. Yes this sounds a bit corny, but eventually the one friend I made turned out to be the type that only came to school once very other week, so I counted on something to occupy my time. Eventually Mrs. Allen ended up moving to Arizona, but she left such a powerful impression on me that from that day forward I wanted to teach. Once I reached high school I started to think of different professions, and even considered being a CPA, but was again inspired by two incredible teachers in my senior year. I now had an example who made me want to be important in the life of a child, and two others who had gained my respect in making me think on a deeper level. This was when it was certain that I was going to teach one day.
I finished high school with a high GPA, started community college and then oops, found out I was pregnant. I was probably the last person anyone would have ever thought would be entering into single parent hood as I was super responsible and “going places”, but plans were made to be broken, right? I spent the next 4 years raising the sweetest little boy on a waitresses income, and periodically continued going to go to school to get my degree, but sometimes a second job would get in the way and school would get to be too much of a challenge so I would decide to stick with waiting tables.
Just before I met my husband in 2002, I had started going to school full time again and finally pushed through my AA and started my BA. I gotta say I hit many bumps in the road, including a hectic mommy schedule with two additional pregnancies and added family members, as well as frustrations with myself for waiting so long to finish. Plus each time I would run into someone who I had told I was going to be a teacher it would remind and embarrass me that I still wasn’t doing it.
Now, the point of this long winded post is that tomorrow is a super big day for me. I am going to be walking on to my first campus as a teacher. Ok, well actually substitute teacher for now, but still a huge milestone for me. What seemed like an impossible goal for awhile there is now actually happening. I will be finished with my BA in just 5 months and I can not believe I have made it here. I am super nervous and am not sure I will be able to sleep too well tonight, but I can say without a doubt that I am glad I didn’t give up when the tough got going. Wish me luck that I don’t fall flat on my face on day 1.
I often mention my overwhelming load of homework, but rarely discuss the nature of it. Well today is different because my homework involves a subject that I feel needs to be publicized as much as possible. California State Bill 777. If you have heard little or nothing about this bill let me bring you up to par. Mind you, this is a bill which has already been passed without going to a public vote. As a parent and future educator I find it both frustrating and ridiculous. What SB 777 has done is changed the definition of “gender” in California education code. Where it used to read that your gender was “the biological condition or quality of being a male or female human being”, it no longer does. Now your gender is what you “perceive” yourself to be. Educators are not allowed to challenge a student who may be born male who now feels he is a female (or vice versa). Nor are they allowed to disclose the child’s chosen gender to the parents.
Big deal right? What this means is that males who perceive themselves as females (and vice versa) if not allowed to use the facilities of their choice are now being discriminated against. That if they want to go into a restroom of the opposite sex they must be allowed. That anything that was previously male or female only, is now open to the opposite sex if they perceive them self as that gender. Before you think this is extreme and will never happen, LA Unified has already put it in to place where students of the opposite sex must be allowed into the locker room of their choice as a result of this bill.
What you may find if you start reading up on this is that the advocates of the bill are claiming that SB 777 is necessary to remove discrimination and hate crimes against trans gender and homosexual students. Except this was already very clearly specified in Ed. Code 200, 220, and others if you read them. They state, in many terms, that it is unacceptable to discriminate against students for any of the above reasons and more. So the advocates of SB 777 decided rather than spending their time, energy, and state tax dollars to enforce the laws that we already have in place, they would instead put their energy into re writing the law so as there would be no misunderstanding that “gender” is NOT how you are born.
Before anyone misunderstands my position and thinks that I do not support the rights of these innocent children, or that I would condone hate crimes on a trans gender individual, that is not the case. However our children were already protected under the existing laws which apparently have not been actively enforced every where. What this bill seems uninterested in taking into account however are the rest of the children who are now being put into uncomfortable and unsafe environments. When educators are being told that they are no longer allowed to stop a male student from entering into a female restroom, other students security is being put at risk. There is a lot more to this bill if you are interested in reading up on it hopefully with enough attention to the matter it will be forced to be brought back to a vote or appealed. As parents and citizens we should at least have that right.
I can’t begin to explain how many times my favorite pictures have been ruined by red eye. New technologies make it really simple to fix most of the time, but sometimes these simple fixes leave a gray hollow look in the eye which isn’t much better. So today I decided to go in search of a tutorial that would completely eliminate the red eye and gray from a picture of my little one that was not fixed after two different red eye removers. As certain as I am that there are tutorials out there for this, I couldn’t find one for my version of Photoshop, so I created my own. By the way, this is only the second tutorial I have ever written and my first pdf so please let me know if I missed anything crucial in the process. Let me know what you think.
This is how my day is starting out. I have been doing laundry while trying to read my ethics assignments. Mind you the disclaimer in the front of the syllabus says it is important to read in an environment that is “conducive to concentration”. Ha Ha Ha. This is a memo that the little ones missed. Here I am trying to read about the meaning of life as well as the first five chapters of Genesis with both girls staring at me wanting breakfast. So I get a bottle for one, cereal for another, two poops changed and try again.
Meanwhile I realize I have nothing in the house for dinner, and tonight is my dinner night at school as well where I am supposed to pick up fried chicken. Hence at some point today I will be making not one, but two trips to the store. It is only 9 am so I decide to give reading another shot. Mind you while reading through these materials my assignment calls for me to answer questions like “who are we?”, “where are we?”, and “where are we going?” Huh? I mean if I knew the meaning of life in the first week of the class what in the world am I doing here? Before I have a chance to answer any of the above, the girls are sounding off again. Then Dora takes away any opportunity to read in a “conducive environment”. So I decide I might as well continue working on the house with a 3 year olds birthday party in two days.
Once again the littlest one decides playing independently is beneath her so I put her on the counter where I am washing dishes so that she will be near mom. Umm, here is where some of you may be gasping thinking who puts a seven month old on a counter to play? Well, the answer is the idiot who looked away for a second only to barely miss catching said little one as she slips off. OUCH! The poor thing cried for almost ten minutes, but some walking, rocking, and comforting from mom finally calmed her down.
By the time my nerves calm down it is after 10am, and I have read only enough of my assignment to know it isn’t interesting nor simple, I have filled 1/2 a dishwasher full of dishes, and have washed two loads of laundry but folded none. My point being that I am sitting here blogging with 100 things still waiting for me and all of it needing to be done by 5pm. Luckily one of my favorite cd’s just happens to be in the radio. So here I go…off to conquer the world while listening to Eddie Rabbit (ha ha ha, you can flame me about this one later).
I always hoped I would meet a man who really loved his kids. One who wanted to play with them, who read them stories and one who hugged them when they were sad. When I met my husband I KNEW I had hit the jackpot on all of these things. For that reason I snatched him up quickly. Sure enough I was right. He turned out to be all of the above and more.
Now, here comes the “and more” part. We happen to have a spoiled princess in our home and one in training. These girls have “daddy” wrapped so tightly around their tiny little fingers that if the eldest princess says jump, daddy literally jumps. Case in point. Last week the littlest one wanted a “red” from her dad (red being fruit punch that dad has made super sweet). After it was made, she changed her mind requesting soda instead. So being the responsive father he is, down the drain went the red to be traded in for Coke. Needless to say, the sight of the red being poured down the drain sent the princess into distress resulting in a rather loud shriek. I imagine most moms wouldn’t have made it this far, however our endearing dad calmly poured out the Coke to make another red which her highness now demanded, only to get yet another curdling screech for losing the last one. As mom is rolling her eyes and laughing at dad for the situation he has gotten himself into, she notices that he has now poured BOTH drinks into separate cups for her highness. Problem solved, right? Personally I would have stopped with the first drink and said if you don’t like it you can have nothing, but she didn’t become a princess because of mom, as I suspect is the case in many homes 
Note: the above mentioned scene is not a rare one. In fact just this morning the princess woke up on the wrong side of the bed. Of course mom can rarely fix the problem without a full intervention when daddy is requested, so she just sits back and giggles while observing the hoops he is jumping through. Within a five minute interval this morning dad prepared cereal, a banana, a book, and finally, wouldn’t you know it…cake icing to please the princess.
Once dad was off to work order was restored and the cake icing was replaced with a reading of Miss Spider’s Tea Party, but for the record, mom wouldn’t want it any other way then all of the kids flocking around for dads attention.
Well skeptic Sarah has once again been proven wrong. See Damien signed up for a service called Pay Per Post at blog network thinking he could make a few extra bucks while blogging. Needless to say I wasn’t so certain it was a sure thing. When he was approved for his first post which was to pay him $20 I was impressed, but then he got a $15 referral credit from someone who signed up from his link, and another $5 for a second post. Within a week he had earned $40, so I decided I would try it out. It turns out you can take up to two opportunities per day deciding for yourself what type of post will fit your specific blog or writing style. You submit a link, and wait until the closing date of the topic signed up for, to get paid. Now it may not be a means to quitting your job, but this can certainly provide a few extra bucks for some sort of event. In fact when I was a kid we crushed aluminum cans to earn extra family money for trips or eating out. This is much easier than that. I figure if Damien can make $20-$30 per month by casually taking a post here and there, and I do the same, within a year we will have over $500 for a trip. Pretty darned sweet since we are sitting here blogging anyways. Now I won’t feel as bad about the laundry piling up all around since after all, I am earning vacation funds right?
Is there a rule that says whenever you have loads of stuff to do you should instead waste your time away on something else? I ask because my week is jam packed with an enormous “to do” list, yet here I sit, not doing any of it. Here is a glimpse at my week.
- Gather all necessary documents to apply for a substitute position (done)
- Get finger printed for above stated job
- Fill out and address birthday invitations for 3rd birthday party coming up
- Get homework done for class one (due Wednesday)
- Finish homework and study for final exam for class two (due Thursday)
- Get to the store for diapers as the littlest Riley has only 1 left
- Make dinner multiple times this week since I have yet to do any mass cooking for the freezer this month
- etc. etc. etc
Now that you have seen my rather boring list of things to do, I would like to share what I did instead this morning with toys piling up around me and Blues Clues chiming in the back ground.
Yep, I decided I would try to make my own flowers for my first decorated cake. Mind you the party isn’t for nearly two weeks yet, but I couldn’t shake the notion of conquering the darned flowers. Surely I had a back up plan to run to a bakery and buy a sheet of flowers if this flopped, but I am very excited to say that I successfully made two flowers on my first try and am fairly certain I will get them the way I want them on the day of the event.
I’m not sure if bringing a third child into our home tripled the amount of stains we see, or if mom got tired of trying to prevent them when everything else got chaotic, either way stains have taken over the Riley home. As a result I am dedicating my Thursday Thirteen to a variety of methods for getting rid of different types of stains. Feel free to add to the list in your comments if you have any brilliant removal tips of your own as I can always use new ideas.
1. White Vinegar- Apparently this is the fix all cleaner. I knew that it removes laundry stains, carpet stains, and coffee stains from cups and pots. But after reading this article I’m thinking I need a few gallons of this stuff on hand.*
2. WD-40 & Dish soap for crayon marks- If you happen to be one of the many who have love magic erasers, skip this one over. For myself those crumbly sponges have really started to bug me, so for crayon marks on a painted wall simply spray them with a bit of WD-40, and wipe them away. Then of course you’ll need a hint of dish soap to clean off the WD-40, but then…Viola, your walls are clean.
3. If an obnoxious youngster paints on the wall with a rather obvious second color that won’t come off, paint over it.
4. Alka- Seltzer- Drop a couple of tabs in your toilet if you have a ring and the seltzer will magically make it disappear (or prevent the stain to begin with by using Clorox toilet bowl tablets).
5. For the kitchen and laundry I tend to count on good ol’ reliable bleach. Just make sure to wear your rags or you will inevitably lean against a counter and ruin an outfit.
6. Oxy Clean- If you get a carpet stain or stains or your clothes use a bit of this cleaner and it does a pretty good job of getting the stains out. Note: this stuff is far more effective on fresh stains, but I managed to severely fade out two rather large coffee stains left behind by dh on the carpet.
7. If the carpet stain resists peroxide, oxyclean, vinegar, and anything else you can think of, buy an area rug.
8. Soak your whites in Biz overnight. The next morning set them to wash as usual and they will look almost new without the dull look that some of your whites may have acquired over time. Now if you have a front loading machine like myself you may need to take over a bathtub, but it works just as well.
9. Peroxide- I am thinking this works on the same principles as oxyclean. Mix it up with a bit of baking soda making a paste and scrub stains away.
10. Bath Stains- Break out the soft scrub. I know you were probably hoping for something more convenient here, but I have yet to see a bathtub ring that could resist soft scrub. Also new products on the market for showers work great (that is if you remember to spray them after every single shower).
11. Windex- This is right up there with white vinegar removing ink stains, carpet stains, and of course hard water stains.
12. Oil stains? If you change your own oil or spring a leak, break out the kitty litter. Be generous when sprinkling this over your stain, let it absorb overnight and just sweep it up the next day.
13. When all else fails and you are completely inundated with stains, sale the house and buy a new wardrobe.
*For any of the above methods always try on a small inconspicuous spot first lest you goof up and destroy it all together
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