Vagaries
Some of you may be familiar with this picture that floats around the internet every year at Halloween, of a pumpkin that has been carved to look like it's barfing -- with the pumpkin "guts" (seeds and the orange goop) pulled out through the mouth. Here's an example in case you have no idea what I'm talking about.
Well, apparently someone in the Davis Square area had the idea to do a barfing pumpkin on their front step a couple weeks before Halloween this year. And Ruthie and her little daycare friends saw it one day on their daily walk around the neighborhood. Well, Ruthie just canNOT stop talking about it!!! It's like a month later and we still hear "I saw a sick pumpkin when I was walking with my friends. It was sick because it frowed [throwed] up." And for the past week or so, every day when we're driving to daycare to drop her off, "I don't wanna go to school! I don't wanna go for a walk and see a sick pumpkin!"
Apparently her daycare teachers have been telling her that the pumpkin got all better. And I've been telling her that she's not going to see any more pumpkins because Halloween is over. But it has yet to sink in, because she still keeps talking about the sick pumpkin. A LOT. LOL! Who knew that a barfing pumpkin would make such an impression on a 2-year-old? :)
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Got Isaac's first report card today. I find it very difficult to take this seriously because I mean, you know, it's kindergarten! And it has only been what, two months! Yet I still find myself getting annoyed at all the "S"s on his. (They use this ridiculous system where it's "M" for "Meets the standard," "S" for "Shows some progress toward the standard," and "N" for "Not meeting the standard." Or as I'm choosing to think of it for brevity's sake, "Mostly," "Some," and "None." Whatever. Anyway, I have my first parent-teacher conference with his teacher on Thursday, where I shall grill her mercilessly until she cracks under pressure and confesses that indeed Isaac deserves all "M"s and she only gave him some "S"s in a moment of temporary addlepatedness. ;) Or something like that. On the plus side, in the comments section she started off with "Isaac is an absolute joy to have in class..." so at least she has SOME sense. ;) hee hee.
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I recently re-read The Handmaid's Tale for mofic's bookclub. It was interesting. I had only read it once before, and I'm pretty sure that was in high school, not long after it first came out. Clearly, I experienced it very differently as a 34-year-old mom of two than I did back then as a callous adolescent. When I first got started, I didn't even know if I could make it through the whole thing, but I did. It's fascinating to see how much of today's scary society Atwood predicted twenty years ago. But I also feel an odd sense of relief, because I feel like, as scary as the society is that she describes in there, it could never really happen. Maybe. Probably. Right?!
I also recently read Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides, which I enjoyed and found very well-written, but I find I don't actually have much to say about it.
I also did a re-read of Terry Pratchett's Wyrd Sisters and decided, on the whole, that it's right to put that on my "read in 2008" list, because I never said that it was a "new to me" list like my 2008recipes list.
So my LibraryThing tag "read in 2008" now has 37 books on it, but it should be 38 because there's one I haven't found yet to add it. That's pretty good considering that I was aiming for 40 in 2008 and it's only mid-November. Right now I'm working on River of Gods by Ian McDonald, which is an enormous tome, so that could take me the rest of the year, lol!
Well, apparently someone in the Davis Square area had the idea to do a barfing pumpkin on their front step a couple weeks before Halloween this year. And Ruthie and her little daycare friends saw it one day on their daily walk around the neighborhood. Well, Ruthie just canNOT stop talking about it!!! It's like a month later and we still hear "I saw a sick pumpkin when I was walking with my friends. It was sick because it frowed [throwed] up." And for the past week or so, every day when we're driving to daycare to drop her off, "I don't wanna go to school! I don't wanna go for a walk and see a sick pumpkin!"
Apparently her daycare teachers have been telling her that the pumpkin got all better. And I've been telling her that she's not going to see any more pumpkins because Halloween is over. But it has yet to sink in, because she still keeps talking about the sick pumpkin. A LOT. LOL! Who knew that a barfing pumpkin would make such an impression on a 2-year-old? :)
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Got Isaac's first report card today. I find it very difficult to take this seriously because I mean, you know, it's kindergarten! And it has only been what, two months! Yet I still find myself getting annoyed at all the "S"s on his. (They use this ridiculous system where it's "M" for "Meets the standard," "S" for "Shows some progress toward the standard," and "N" for "Not meeting the standard." Or as I'm choosing to think of it for brevity's sake, "Mostly," "Some," and "None." Whatever. Anyway, I have my first parent-teacher conference with his teacher on Thursday, where I shall grill her mercilessly until she cracks under pressure and confesses that indeed Isaac deserves all "M"s and she only gave him some "S"s in a moment of temporary addlepatedness. ;) Or something like that. On the plus side, in the comments section she started off with "Isaac is an absolute joy to have in class..." so at least she has SOME sense. ;) hee hee.
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I recently re-read The Handmaid's Tale for mofic's bookclub. It was interesting. I had only read it once before, and I'm pretty sure that was in high school, not long after it first came out. Clearly, I experienced it very differently as a 34-year-old mom of two than I did back then as a callous adolescent. When I first got started, I didn't even know if I could make it through the whole thing, but I did. It's fascinating to see how much of today's scary society Atwood predicted twenty years ago. But I also feel an odd sense of relief, because I feel like, as scary as the society is that she describes in there, it could never really happen. Maybe. Probably. Right?!
I also recently read Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides, which I enjoyed and found very well-written, but I find I don't actually have much to say about it.
I also did a re-read of Terry Pratchett's Wyrd Sisters and decided, on the whole, that it's right to put that on my "read in 2008" list, because I never said that it was a "new to me" list like my 2008recipes list.
So my LibraryThing tag "read in 2008" now has 37 books on it, but it should be 38 because there's one I haven't found yet to add it. That's pretty good considering that I was aiming for 40 in 2008 and it's only mid-November. Right now I'm working on River of Gods by Ian McDonald, which is an enormous tome, so that could take me the rest of the year, lol!