Took the kids to "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" as per their insistent request (I insisted the house be cleaned first- it was when I came home- they had all day to do it since today was a school in-service day.). A steroid-enhanced Dr. Seuss and Monsters, Inc. had a baby (this movie) on the Yellow Submarine.

Nathanael panned it- did NOT do the book justice (of course). Last year during the long drive back from Miami to Cincinnati, he had narrated his favorite parts of the book to us. I mean, he was seriously into this whole book. Of course the perpetual end of the universe as viewed from a posh restaurant can't really be dealt with well on film. So he had to settle with some disappointment, even though he says it's not just that, it's that they altered many events (I believe to make it understandable to the many of us who only understand things on the level of Dr. Seuss, Monsters Inc., or the Beatles' submarine. Wait, I think you have to be on LSD to get the submarine thing.) Well, anyway, that was Nathanael's opinion.

Micah and his friend Josh enjoyed it...sort of sat back and just let the movie happen to them. Which is what I did...I have to admit I liked the egocentric Zaphod...Sam Rockwell resembles my imagination's version. Though admittedly (and expectedly) he was a flatter character than the book's Zaphod. And the original Zaphod didn't lose one of his heads (and half a brain) to a hula doll. Marvin was cute- who else noticed the resemblance to Strong Sad of Homestarrunner.com fame?

So if you want the whole "Hitchhiker's", read the book. Character development was NOT strong in the cinema's version. Just no time, too much material.

I need to start thinking of homes for the kittens. They are cute but are getting to be too much even for their mommies to handle. But they are awfully cute, all 9 of them in a big pile in the shed. Both mommies attend to any kitten and to each other. Fiona nurses her grandchildren and Helen nurses her little sister and brothers. It's interesting.
Speaking of Fiona, she hasn't really been feeling well lately. Kind of listless and uninterested in stuff but always hungry. I was thinking worms...well today she may have solved her problem... (beware those of weak stomach, read no further)...you know how cats vomit, well Fiona hocked up a huge...thing...onto the garage floor. It was the nastiest thin I've ever seen. It looked like Geena Davis' larva baby in The Fly. LOLOL Those of you with animals, PLEASE laugh with me. I never knew something like that could come out of an earthly being. It looked more like something Jabba the Hutt would blow out of his nose (do slugs have noses?). Anyway, poor Fiona. Well, I think she's probably feeling better now, anyway. I didn't look TOO closely, but I recall seeing her knocking over the trash the other day. And her fur is all white. So I think it was (get ready to run for the loo, those of weak heart) cat hair and bacon grease.

On a brief hiatus from my 2 jobs. Friday I'm doing a disability appointment. Man, those can sometimes be painful. Several times I've sat with a person repeating their entire life story to a doctor. Many people have had horrible, horrible lives. I've heard many things that give people pain. Things that I wouldn't be able to go on living after. Or maybe I would because I'd have no choice, like those people. MondayI'm back at Q-Fact (simultaneous interpretation, the hardest kind) working with La Verdad (which is interested in hiring me) in the a.m. and Rough Bros. in the p.m.

Micah had a sensitive moment today. Long story short (I'll try): Fiona kept going into Steve's closet and looking intently, twitching her tail. I thought she'd found a mouse. Steve kept saying, nah, she's mistaken. I said, no, something's in there, some animal or something; she wouldn't act like such a predator if there weren't. After Fiona returning several times to the closet to watch and twitch and act ready to pounce, without any of us seeing anything, Micah went through the stuff in there to see if he could find the phantom mouse. What he found was his poor little snake which had escaped from the terrarium where he'd put him. The kids had found 2 garter snakes, and 1 had escaped. Well the poor little snake was alive but pretty scratched up. Probably the cats had done it at some point, even though they are all usually outside. Anyway, he debated on whether or not to try to nurse it back to health, but in the end decided (with my advice, too) to let it die, so...he let the cats eat it. He got a little choked up about it but it was better to let it die than live in pain. Such is the circle of life and all that. But I do love Micah's sensitive side, which comes out in these moments. Behind that tough guy exterior...

I've had a cold (caught from Micah who had it earlier this week and stayed home 2 days). Had it over the weekend. AT LEAST I had it on a sucky weekend weatherwise instead of having to stay in bed some really nice weekend. Yes, the weather really reeks here. Friday we had some nice thunderstorms, which I enjoy. But by Saturday it was cold as winter again, and it even snowed.

Will be needing to give away kittens soon. They are at the cutest age ever now. Fiona and Helen are now mothering one another's kittens. They have forgotten whose are whose. They each just nurse whichever kittens happen to be around. They all live in the shed, which is good, because I couldn't deal with the mess in the house. Fiona and Helen will snuggle up together, too, and lick lick lick they love to clean each other. Today they both sat on my lap in the easy chair and licked one another's faces. Put a bunch of licky kittens in the mix and you get a pile of animals all licking each other- very funny.

If anybody who lives near me wants a kitten, I'm willing to take them one. I have gray, orange, and white ones. The gray ones are girls, orange are boys, and white are both.

Dang I hate the cold. The older I get the more I hate it. I just really long for South Florida right now. I know it gets cold there, too, and there is the hurricane issue, but it's usually warm and balmy and it doesn't get cold at night. Heck I don't even care about beaches that much. I just like the warm breezes.

Gonna start a little business here soon with Nathanael promoting his graphics, fonts, and funny cartoons on t-shirts. They are really, really good. He wants to call the company Permanent Marker, Inc. (I guess the Inc. belongs there, right? We'll have to make sure we're actually Inc. before we write Inc. on stuff. Inc., Ltd., S.A......)

OK I'm going to be honest now. I've been researching this for a long time and I'm still not 100% sure, but I think I'm about 99% sure that when I was a child, and probably when many of my family members were children (especially on the Blaser side), I had a mild, probably the mildest type which many people have, case of Asperger's. I'm not trying to self-diagnose- I avoid that if at all possible- BUT the evidence is pretty clear. I think I still have this- that's why certain noises and voices bother me. Always have. I always hated it but that explains it. I actually suspected this a long time ago but until my little nephew was diagnosed with full Autism I didn't really, really look into this. It certainly explains SO much.

When I was a child I really was NOT on board with the rest of the world, yet I noticed little details, had fixations about things, things I still remember so clearly, and even though my verbal skills developed really well from about the age of 7 (some Asperger's have advanced vocab and talk early...I think I talked about on time). I think Nathanael has a LITTLE, little of this too...the fixations...I remember thinking my little 2-year-old neighbor Alex Schmid had it years and years ago (he's about 18 now, I guess). The intense interests are a sign of great intelligence but I think the Asperger's plays some role in some things.

My symptoms are something I remember subjectively, but I'm trying now to get a handle on this objectively.
1. Lack of socialization skills. For many years I attributed this to my being just such a homely child. I saw it kind of as a problem that fed on itself the more isolated I became. I figured people didn't bothered me because I was such a fright to look at. Which is true, I was just not cute. But this just doesn't explain my lack of skills. A lot of homely kids have excellent socialization skills. The kids CALLED me ugly, but really the whole thing started because I always preferred to be alone. I did not care much to play with anyone else until about the first grade when I found a friend who was, to put it mildly, kind of the same way.
2. I did not pretend. I did not play house. Or horses. I saw no point. Later when my friends began to play Dungeons and Dragons and that kind of stuff, I saw that as the most boring stuff ever created (think Magic, the Gathering- if I were 15 today, I'd be bored by that). It's NOT that I didn't have imagination, though. I drew, created music, played by ear, drew by memory, got excellent at drawing faces, which I still do. I was always very artistic. I do poetry. I daydream.
3. Teachers always said I was off in my own world.
4. I remember being tracked into the "slow" class in first grade. I remember it was the slow class because I was in there with other kids who were not considered bright. They had reading problems, learning disabilities, etc. Then, all of a sudden, in about the fourth grade, we must have all taken our proficiency tests, in which I always placed in about the 95th to 99th percentile. These little scantron tests (the kind of stuff I'm grading now) proved I was smart. My IQ was tested at genius level (though I don't consider myself to be one), which, btw, is about 135 or something and higher. I think my IQ at that time was tested to be 139. Let me tell you, genius level doesn't mean so much, because a LOT of people are that smart and higher. For example, my son Nathanael was tested in first grade to have the SB IQ of 157. And who knows how accurate these things are? The more you take such a test and average the numbers, the more accurate the number supposedly is, but if you take such a test repeatedly, it may also be measuring the face that you are just learning how to take the test better, not solve the problems innovatively each time. Anyway, I digress. (Feel free to skip all this reading. It's run-on, it's just off-the-cuff thinking, typing thoughts as they happen to occur.)
5. My mother took me to a doctor twice when I was little to try to see what the heck was the matter with me. Well of course in those days I think the doc tried to say I was just a little overactive. Today I may have been diagnosed with ADD. But it was not hard to get my attention for a long, long period of time if I wanted to pay attention to something. Words were OK, but people trying to COMMUNICATE did not mean much to me at all. I remember thinking that. I remember the drone of a teacher's voice, but yet I would be focused on the drone of a lawn mower outside the classroom window, noticing a drop in tone as air pressure dropped, meaning it would soon rain. I would fixate on that and pay no attention to the endless blah blah blah of words. Sometimes teachers nearly literally sounded like Charlie Brown's teacher. Not that it was always that way. Sometimes when a teacher was speaking, and showing something interesting, or teaching us letters, I was very attentive. But all report cards, especially during the early years, had me not paying attention.
6. I always played alone. I guess I mentioned that. But the teachers said that, too. Just about every report card.
7. I was fixated on stuff!!!!! Yes, I was. Later this may have developed into some manic episodes, but the fixations in early years were beads. I loved beads from Day 1. Counting them. Memorizing every single detail in a bead. Beads were utterly beautiful to me. I still can see beads that way. Such beauty in the detail of a simple plastic thing with a hole in it.
8. I was fixated on some routines. Like the school bus. I remember being so afraid to miss the school bus. If the school bus deviated even an inch from its prescribed routine, I remembered. IT was a huge event. A serious event. Something I remembered and something that scared me. I still remember once when a train was blocking the tracks we needed to cross to get to school. Mrs. Wyant took turned and had to go out into the country in order to find a crossing to get around the train. That made me curious and a little frightened. Any deviation in the bus routine was so fascinating, eerie, and strange to me. It's almost like a routine such as that was sacred, or inviolable, and if something happened to change it everything would be just haywire, almost the end of the world! I used to have dreams about the bus coming for me and it would be coming from the OTHER direction of my street than it did normally. Or I would ride the bus to my brother's school instead of my own.
At school when it was raining, instead of waiting outside for buses, we would wait inside until the buses were called. Our principal would announce that and I cannot ever forget the tone and seriousness of his voice. It was as if this man were God making that announcement. I was deathly afraid of missing my number being called and thus missing my bus. It never occurred to me that my parents would come and get me if I did miss the bus.
Another routine that even earlier I HAD to adhere to was that I HAD to watch Sesame Street every single day at 4:00. I watched the clock until the hands were at the four and the twelve. I knew then it was time for my program to start and it was absolutely every single weekday that I HAD, HAD, HAD to watch it. My favorite thing was a little thing called "dots" in which dots would come on to the screen in lines starting from the top left corner, until they filled up almost the whole screen. Then at the last minute one of the last dots would jump. Or roll. Or change places with another dot. Or the dots would start to laugh. That stuff was the MOST HILARIOUS thing in the entire world to me! I was bored with Big Bird and the storylines. But the dots skit, and the count from 1-10 skit, and sometimes Ernie and Bert, just because Ernie had a rubber ducky. The storylines- I don't remember them! I only learned later about David and Maria, people or Big Bird talking with the kids about this and that life lesson, etc. None of the storylines interested me in the least.
8. Those quirky movements. What I used to do was rock. Rock, rock, rock. I would call it "bouncing". I probably rocked until I was 7 or so. When I was in a chair I would bounce constantly.
9. How I played with toys was odd. The one thing that really convinced me about this was the fact that I used to take ALL of my puzzles, mix them up, and dump all the pieces on the floor. Then, I would put EACH piece on edge. I would then have hundreds of puzzle pieces on their edges. Later I would knock them all down but it was fascinating to me to have them all on edge. Is this not the same as even when autistic children line up their cars. They categorize. Memorize. Even spaces apart. Then, probably before I knew that our big US map puzzle pieces represented actual places, I memorized all 50 states. I do not remember ever not having known all 50 states. I memorized them as SHAPES, though. They were shapes, not necessarily places to travel, probably until we moved to Ohio and I understood pretty early the concept of maps. My parents would show me Ohio and Iowa and how Grandma and Grandpa (both sets) lived in Iowa and we were going to drive from "here" to "here".
10. Physical delays. Not too much but some. (Nathanael had a couple of physical delays, too, like bikeriding- took him years- but once he caught on he's been on a bike and has almost not gotten off yet- Lance Armstrong now). I was delayed in some physical activities. Never good at sports. Uncoordinated. Took me a long time to learn those things. I eventually caught up in bikeriding, jumprope, even blowing bubbles with gum, but much later than others.
11. Not wanting to be touched. When I was a baby my parents said I was content not to be picked up or touched. I was content to be left alone. I used to play with little lint balls on carpet. They fascinated me. But I didn't need hugs; in fact, I remember being a kid thinking grownups hugging me was so intrusive, and I didn't like it. Fortunately my family wasn't touchy feely with everyone else. We were not made to give hugs to anyone we didn't want to. Most kids need a lot more affection from their parents. Now as an adult I HAVE to hug my kids. I'm so maternal and demonstrative. But it's maternal instinct kicking in. My kids have been pretty demonstrative. Always wanting to nurse when they were babies. Patting me, being affectionate. Hugging me a lot. When they were babies they wanted to be picked up a lot. Hm.

I just never fit in. I always wondered what was wrong with me. I remember even the first day of pre-school I came home and said to myself, "they hate me there, just like I thought they would." But ONE day, there was a man (probably a student doing studies or something) who came to our class and took JUST me out. He gave me some beads and string, and I was utterly in Heaven. I still remember that day like it was yesterday. It was the most awesome day I had! I still even remember a light we used to pass going to pre-school in the carpool. We passed under this same orange blinking red light EVERY single day. It is so clear to me. I did not think pre-school could exist without us passing the light.

I am pretty convinced that I have had just the slightest of Asperger's. And I know that during my childhood my brain also rewired itself in part in order to do what was asked of it. Communicate. It's still been a problem for me but I've learned, but I always wondered why it was so hard. Also, why did certain sounds bother me. Certain sounds will ALWAYS bother me. I always assumed sounds bothered me, and my mother, and my grandfather, because we had this excellent sense of pitch; therefore we could hear sounds more precisely than most people. But this doesn't explain why some voices irritate me to the point where I cannot be around the person, and I feel terrible because it isn't the person's fault. Some people (but not all) chewing gum and snoring bother me. I just want to rip people's eyes out. But other sounds that bothered my grandpa (barking dogs) don't bother me at all. Now I realize that my brother Joe probably has this, too, in a different way. His issue was always lights. His memory is as photographic as mine is audiographic. Now when he's sitting and watching a movie, he can't have two lights uneven in light output or two different types of lights in the background. He HAS to turn one off. The setting of lights has always bothered him and I always wondered why the heck was he so irritable about something so little? I now realize that this thing goes with sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell.
I have to find out more about it and maybe I'm totally off-base. It does explain so much, though. Why is this even important now? Aside from the fact that it identifies a part of me that I can try now to put to use instead of deny or overcome, I think I may have a little insight into the mind of an autistic person. Maybe I can be a bit of a bridge from an autistic's world to the "rest" of the world. Maybe I can communicate with Hayden. My little nephew- I just love him so much- maybe I will actually understand him on an intuitive level that others may not know. I know that an Asperger's person has a good chance of having an autistic kid. Mine are not autistic- they both talked at a young age, Nathanael was very early in particular with not only nouns but adjectives as first words, describing feelings, and Micah, well, he's not even close to Asperger's, I don't think- he was running at 9 months old and riding his bike at about 3. And is very, very social. So Nathanael may have a little of this thinking, but he's not autistic. But since this goes in families, and tends to go sometimes with musical/artistic ability (we are all very musical and play instruments by ear)...probably I and my siblings all have some form of this and I just hate the fact that it culminated in one of us having autism, precious little Hayden, I would jump off a cliff for him, I would lie in front of a train for him if I had to. I just want to communicate with him, I want to bring him out, and reach him too, and I don't know how much of a role I will ever play in his life since right now I'm not seeing them much (some private matters and I don't want to intrude)...I hope to play with him a bunch at Crowduck. I think there are things we can do to make autistic people comfortable and realize how they think and develop some of those brain receptors to be stimulus-specific enough to focus on some aspects of communication. I just think the world of Sierra and Hayden and maybe I was given a little extra insight by God because God knew that when I was 40 years old that insight would be needed. So here I am.

Thanks anyone for reading this epistle. I may be off-base and I may not have this type of thinking at all, but there are some convincing data on this and it tends to explain a few things. There may be more evidence in contra. Feel free to offer opinions.

Still going strong grading 11th grade essays on the singular topic, "Write a letter to the director of a foreign exchange program for which you have been selected, informing him/her of the country you wish to visit. Give reasons to support this..." and yada yada....so....

I've learned a great deal of geography- Paris is in Italy, English people speak French, Australians speak Spanish, Africa is a whole country, as are Europe, Asia, and South America. South America is in Mexico, the Washington Monument and Leaning Tower of Pizza (sic) stand in Paris, Mt. Fuji is by the Great Wall, and, let's see, Mount Kilamanjaro towers over Tokyo. It's an interesting new world!

OK, enough fun- I'm going to give them a break. MOST of the kids know where they are and where they want to visit. I've actually learned from some of them. I'm learning that some people in Arkansas wish to visit Canada because they can take a higher quota of ducks, geese, and whitetails, and the whitetails of Canada surpass 300 pounds, while those of the great state of Arkansas barely top 220.

To be fair, I was discussing with a colleague, let's see how many of US could accurately locate Little Rock on a map of Arkansas. Or name any other major city there. He agreed...yup...that's true! Few of us could!

We don't grade on geography knowledge, though. We grade on standardized English. That's tough because there are several dialects we're looking at. Many intelligent, articulate people just do not know much standard English. Every language has its standard form. Chinese, Arabic, Spanish- kids have to learn those standard forms in school, too, when possible. However, different dialects have their own grammar. The grammar usually follows fairly standard rules. The main dialect groups I have been coming across are the Southern/Ozark dialect and the Ebonic/African-American dialect. I'm pretty familiar with variants of both dialects, living principally among Appalachian and African-Americans in Cincinnati.
So, when someone says they want to go to "Spine" I KNOW this is not a usage error. It is considered a mechanical error, because in the south "spine" and "Spain" are homophones. It is difficult to mark off "It is" in ebonics as a usage error, because in that dialect it means "there are" or "there is", kind of akin to the Spanish "hay". It has no number agreement. The Ebonic possessive is the same as the subject pronoun. In other words, "their hands" = the Ebonic "they hands". "My" is the only commonly used possessive (form of "I"). "His", "their", and "your" are not used. It's also difficult to mark off usage errors when kids of both those dialects switch the perfect for preterite- "I run all the way to the store" or "I have to see how the government is ran". Think French- French uses the perfect (with their "to have") in order to describe preterite action. In some English dialects, the same happened, but the people dropped the "to have" form. Interesting switcharound. Also, in some English dialects, a double negative is common. In standard English, it is not, though it is in all Romance languages.
Then frequently I come across papers written by kids whom I immediately identify as Spanish speakers. I recognize the Spanish syntax immediately and know they write much more understandably in Spanish (though it may not be completely standard, either). It's hard to have to mark errors when I the error is only due to their being so new to English. I can even recognize how much schooling they have had in Spanish. If they speak, but don't write, Spanish, their English has fewer spelling errors due to Spanish written phonetics. I knew a Spanish speaker in Chicago who didn't write Spanish at all, even though he had an accent when he spoke English. His writing skills were purely English, phonetically. When he met a girl from Spain named Cruz, she pronounced it "Cruthe" and that is exactly how he wrote it! Once I read a paper of a girl trying to pass herself off as a Latin with only 1 year of English, and I knew she wasn't because she spelled "competent" something like "compitit" and that is not a spelling error a Spanish speaker could ever make, since the word "competente" exists in Spanish and is never prounced with a schwa, so there is never any question what vowels belong there. The guy I just mentioned couldn't have even made that mistake. I think she was just pretending because she misread the prompt and thought she had to pretend to be an exchange student in the US.

It's all a test of the standard form of English, though. So even though I know how dialects are, I have to grade it using the standard form. I just hate that someone of reasonable intelligence will appear ignorant in the eyes of others simply because they have not learned much standard English.

I have to keep details private but I ask for your prayers, any of you who read this. Two of my brothers are facing intense, painful problems right now, and I'd appreciate your prayers for them...thanks.

Knock on wood, is this RIGHT? I can only hope!

Just did the taxes and I'm very cautiously, almost superstitiously optimistic that...I have done them correctly...because if I have, and all these wonderful deductions are for real (according to TaxCut for this year, they are...) we are getting a good whopping sum of $$ back from our wonderful Uncle Sam. For some reason the deductions are MUCH more than they used to be. Man I remember tax time under the Clinton years...it was heavy. I expected to have to pay major, major money this year. I'm half expecting to get audited and be told I've done something very, very wrong. This just can't be true. It's strange. The individual and child tax credits plus the standard deductions are, I guess, what do it (I did the individual itemizations and the standard deduction was still greater)...I mean the program did all the math...what is up with this...$3100 credit per person plus an additional $1000 per kid...is this really right? It's what TaxCut tells me. Please, please God, let me be OK, please don't let me to have made a huge mistake...

I started writing this in another group I'm in, in response to Amy, whose hamster mysteriously died and whose dogs and cats deny any knowledge of the event, and I thought it would be interesting if you are contemplating small animals (hamsters, etc.) to remember MY experiences with rodents, reptiles, fish, and kids, just as a warning.

HAMSTERS
1. When they have babies, sometimes after a couple of weeks the babies fight and kill and eat each other.
2. Sometimes mother eats a few babies.
3. Hamsters, even if they don't die any other way, do NOT live long. A couple of years MAX. If you have sensitive kids, a hamster isn't a good choice.
4. When you put a hamster in a cage, even if you think the cat isn't going to get at it, the cat will. Our last hamster ended up being a tasty midday snack for our then-cat, Desdemona.
5. Hamster sex is hilarious. Watch two hamsters going at it and try not to laugh. I dare you.
6. Hamsters are boring, and do little except eat and burrow (unless engaged in #5). It's easy to forget about hamsters because they don't DO anything. They're low-maintenance, a pile of seeds lasts for days, and they make little noise. So one day you WILL smell something. Depending on your stomach, you will gag first and then toss the contents of the entire cage into the garbage, or be brave and pretend you're on Fear Factor trying for $50K.


SNAKES
1. Un-hungry snakes don't fare well with mice. You put a mouse in for a snake to eat, and sometimes the mouse ends up nibbling on the snake's tail, the tail gets infected, and YUCK.
2. Snakes escape. Our boa (may he rest in peace) escaped and two weeks later a hysterical neighbor called the police when she found him lounging on her rock wall. That is how we found our snake.
3. Snakes are boring unless they're eating. The whole neighborhood will turn out to watch a boa go through mice, rats, and the aforementioned hamsters.

FISH
1. Fish get ick.
2. Fish don't last long.
3. Betta males fight to the death so you can't put them in the same tank. Put a mirror in the male betta's aquarium and watch him threaten himself over and over again.
4. Goldfish have a 10-second memory. Each time they cross the tank, it's a brand new experience for them. So tell the kids their pet won't get bored while they're at school.
5. Gars die slowly. They twist out of shape and your husband will want to wait and see that the gar gets better because he's had the gar since college. Let it die and let go.
6. Fish are boring unless they're eating. The whole neighborhood will turn out to watch a gar go through a dozen goldfish, get hugely fat, and poop long orange strings.

KIDS
1. Kids get creeped out when you:
a. Flush a dead fish down the toilet and it doesn't go down so in the morning that's the first thing your little boy sees when he goes to take a whiz...
b. Slam the door accidentally on your iguana's tail. Iguana is fine (tails regrow) and casually walks away, but the cut-off tail just lies there twitching by itself on the floor.
2. Kids are bored unless they're eating. The whole neighborhood will turn out to watch kids shoot milky snot rockets. 'Nuff said.

I don't usually post stuff I copy elsewhere, but this was apropos since so many people I know have little boys, as do I except mine are a little past this age. But I DO remember! Oh, the ceiling fan issue is STILL a problem in our house. :)

JOYS OF BOYS The following came from an anonymous Mother in Austin, Texas... Things I've learned from my Boys (honest and not kidding): 1.) A king size waterbed holds enough water to fill a 2000 sq. ft. house 4 inchesdeep. 2.) If you spray hair spray on dust bunnies and run over them with roller blades,they can ignite. 3.) A 3-year old Boy's voice is louder than 200 adults in a crowded restaurant. 4.) If you hook a dog leash over a ceiling fan, the motor is not strong enough torotate a 42-pound Boy wearing Batman underwear and a Superman cape. It is strongenough; however, if tied to a paint can, to spread paint on all four walls of a20x20-ft. room. 5.) You should not throw baseballs up when the ceiling fan is on. When using aceiling fan as a bat, you have to throw the ball up a few times before you get ahit. A ceiling fan can hit a baseball a long way. 6.) The glass in windows (even double-pane) doesn't stop a baseball hit by aceiling fan. 7.) When you hear the toilet flush and the words "uh oh", it's already too late. 8.) Brake fluid mixed with Clorox makes smoke, and lots of it. 9.) A six-year old Boy can start a fire with a flint rock even though a 36-year oldMan says they can only do it in the movies. 10.) Certain Lego's will pass through the digestive tract of a 4-year old Boy. 11.) Play dough and microwave should not be used in the same sentence. 12.) Super glue is forever. 13.) No matter how much Jell-O you put in a swimming pool you still can't walk onwater. 14.) Pool filters do not like Jell-O. & gt; 15.) VCR's do not eject "PB & J" sandwiches even though TV commercials show they do. 16.) Garbage bags do not make good parachutes. 17.) Marbles in gas tanks make lots of noise when driving. 18.) You probably DO NOT want to know what that odor is. 19.) Always look in the oven before you turn it on. Plastic toys do not like ovens. 20.) The fire department in Austin, TX has a 5-minute response time. 21.) The spin cycle on the washing machine does not make earthworms dizzy. 22.) It will, however, make cats dizzy. 23.) Cats throw up twice their body weight when dizzy. 24.) 80% of Men who read this will try mixing the Clorox and brake fluid.

So much I want to write but sometimes trying to sit and do that is too much for my lazy brain. I'm full-scale into this project at DRC for April- have qualified to grade junior essays from the great state of Arkansas. What were they thinking when they created their rubrics?! Anyway, I finally got through the training in 5 areas- content, style, formation, usage, and mechanics, style and usage being my most difficult areas. For the third qualifying packet I finally knocked out those two areas, and now I am onto live tests. Basically what I was trained to do is grade the essays according to the Arkansas School Board standards.
DRC is contracted by many states to grade state proficiency tests of all different grade levels. There are multiple projects going on, some more difficult than others. This, I am told, is one of the more unwieldy projects, and one of the most difficult to grasp. But I've finally gotten into the groove after practice-grading 120 essays.
It was really nice today when one of my paper-grading colleagues, with whom I hadn't really spoken yet, when we thought we were going to be pair-grading, said, "I haven't had the chance to say this but I want to tell you I think you are SO pretty." I almost looked behind me to make sure she wasn't talking to someone else! "Me?" She said, "Yes, you are so pretty. I just think you have the prettiest shaped nose and such beautiful hair!" I was so flattered! I mean, she had NOTHING to gain by saying anything so nice to me- she wasn't a man (or gay, or anyone who might say those things because of other motives, flirting, lol)- so there was nothing compelling her to say that to me other than she really thought that about me- so I was so sincerely flattered- and she is really beautiful herself. What a nice thing to say! That just made my day even AFTER coming home to a letter from the Bureau of Motor Vehicles saying I have moving tickets, 1 from eight years ago, that I failed to pay, and I better pay up or they will restrict my license update privileges- someone was going through old moving ticket files and to be honest I didn't know there was anything on me! I'm now getting a vague recollection... :(...... you mean if I don't pay a ticket for 8 years it just doesn't go away? Well, time to pay the piper... I guess even pretty people have to pay their driving tickets. What?!!! Not moi! Only the "little people" pay traffic tickets! (huffing away a la Miss Piggy/ Leona Helmsley).

Nice weekend. GREAT weather. Watched a lot about the Pope, and what a beloved man he was. He executed the papal role with dignity, decorum, faith, and above all, love. Another beloved man, Billy Graham, commented on how much he loved the man. He was invited to the funeral but cannot go because of his own declining health, but is sending his daughter instead. He lived with great reverence to God. Both his health and his suffering he considered gifts and he truly set an example of dignity in living and dying. He did not compromise his faith or beliefs. He remained true to his calling and did not bow to the gods of the age. Many have come to know the Lord because of the Pope. I love the picture of him with Mr. Graham, and the one with him and Mother Teresa, another great beloved person who was such a beacon of love and grace. What servants of God, those people. They are the ones whom, when God asked who was ready to serve Him, said, "Here am I; send me." And I know there are many like them, unsung perhaps, but just as important in the Kingdom of God. They are all about us and many are behind the scenes. But so many people we kind of ignore or look past, those people will be in the Halls of Fame, so to speak, in Heaven.