Tag Archives: family

Now the second day…

Posted on August 16, 2011 | 12 comments

Good morning everyone!

Good morning!

I have to blow off  some steam today.  Anyone who has, or has had, a girl child between the ages of 9 and 16 will understand. 

The first day of school apparently went very well – no homework, except for spelling, no conduct numbers and people we like in our classroom made for a very good day. 

The second day has started out rougher.  She is now on her fifth or sixth outfit – each one has something wrong with it, with six minutes left before she has to leave the house.  Let’s just say if Mandy finishes eating her food before you’re dressed, you know your dressing process is taking way too long. 

No-no, having finished her food, now turns her attention to an envelope from the coffee table

I think she finally acquired an outfit, but is putting on her sneakers at a pace that would put molasses to shame.  I still have yet to see her emerge from her bedroom with a complete outfit on.

This delay means that Kayla will miss first breakfast here at the house, but not to worry – now that school has started, she also gets breakfast at the after-school center where she catches the bus and at school, so she won’t go hungry.  I, on the other hand, have felt three more grey hairs pop out on my head since I have been repeatedly exhorting her to get dressed. 

She finally emerged from her bedroom, fully dressed.  (Do I hear a sigh of relief from the galleries?)  In doing so, she tried to quietly slip out of the house with two book bags – the small one she insisted on buying with her own money when we went shopping for school supplies and the large one from last year which we told her was still in excellent condition and would work better anyhow.  I think she was hoping we would neither notice, nor comment.  Why she would think that given the two parents she has, I don’t know. 

Sunrise over the lake in the morning

While on the surface, it has been a rough morning, deep down everything is okay.  We are healthy, together and taking care of each other, so all will ultimately be good.  Still, tonight – THE CLOTHES GET LAID OUT FOR NEXT MORNING!

Have a great day everyone!

Nancy

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First Day of School!

Posted on August 15, 2011 | 14 comments

Good morning Everyone!

As hard as it is to believe, our summer vacation is over, and school started today!  It really does seem like it was only last week that summer vacation was just starting.  See, The First day of Summer Vacation . 

Since it was the first day of school, of course pictures were called for.  Kayla is entering fourth grade this year, and was gracious enough to wear the outfit I bought for her for the first day of school without any fuss. Kayla started our picture-taking session by telling Darwin what to do.

Kayla telling Darwin what to do.

He wasn’t exactly listening.

Darwin wasn't exactly listening.

So we left Darwin out of the next few pictures.  I tried hard to get a good one of her smiling but I’m not sure how well I succeeded. 

What IS it with her and the camera?

This picture I though was a good close-up.

Just playing around

Almost time to go....

Then she realized she really was leaving in just a minute:

I really am going to leave in a minute, aren't I?

 Once Mark came out, Darwin decided to re-enter the picture-taking process.

Daddy and Darwin Make Me Smile!

 Then, a small miracle happened – Darwin stood still long enough for me to get a good shot of all three of them!

As I watched Kayla and Mark walk out the door, ghosts of memory walked out beside them –  each of the little girls that Kayla used to be that also went out that same door for a new school year.  My favorite memory is from kindergarten.  We took pictures that day too.

Mark and Kayla, first day of kindergarten

 

At the door, ready to go, with Tyra

We drove Kayla to school for the first day of Kindergarten, and walked into the school with her to take her to the classroom.  Although she insisted the whole time she wasn’t nervous, of course we knew she was.  Still, we got to the front doors of the school, she took each of our hands, and as we opened the door to go in together, she took a deep breath, and a solidly determined look came over her face – she was going to succeed in entering this new phase of her life, no matter what.  We knew she was going to be okay after that.

Here’s hoping you and yours, whatever grade they may be in, have or had a good first day of school this year!

Have a great day everyone!

Nancy

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Posted in On the Home Front, Reflection, working mom

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Football Follies

Posted on August 12, 2011 | 2 comments

Good morning everyone!

Picture by Torsten Bolten, on Wikimedia Commons.

Last night was a big evening at our household – the first televised pro football game of the 2011-2012 pre-season popped up on ESPN.  All three of us love watching football; Kayla more out of self-defense than anything else, since she has learned that if a live NFL football game is on, we will be watching it.  Mark is a serious student of the game, but I am much more of a dilettante. 

I know basic aspects of the game, such as the fact that the object of the game is to take the oblong shaped ball down the field to cross your opponent’s goal line, that a touchdown is worth 6 points, a point after kick is worth 1 and that you can, if you choose, to “go for two” after the touch down instead.  A lot of the finer rules escape me.  For example, I know it is a bad thing if anyone moves (besides the one special dude who always gets to run the width of the field) before the ball is snapped, but I continually get lost between false start and encroachment.  The difference is whether the defense or the offence does it, but I do have a hard time keeping it straight. 

I know the names of certain positions, but not all.  For example, I know what a quarterback, center, running back and wide receiver do, but I really couldn’t tell you the difference between a nose guard and a tackle (although I should be able to).  I get a little confused about the tight end, because he seems to be sort of a running back, receiver and member of the offensive line, all rolled into one.  I also know the names of certain players, heavily weighted towards those players who played for Auburn University or in the SEC, including Jason Campbell, Takeo Spikes, Heath Evans, Peyton and Eli Manning, Carnell Williams, Ronnie Brown, Sean Alexander and a host of others, and I am eagerly awaiting the debut of Cam Newton, Nick Fairley and Lee Ziemba onto the NFL stage.

Curtis Painter (7) and Peyton Manning (18), picture by Chris Staley from Wikimedia Commons

There are certain key points of the game that are hard to miss.  In particular, I think that a good offensive line is probably even more important overall than a star quarterback, running back, wide receiver – none of the last three can do what they need to do if the offensive line isn’t in the trenches slugging it out for them.  I think the star quarterback, running back and wide receiver would agree with me.  The same is true also of the defensive line.  You can predict the winner of a game by whichever of the two lines wins the battle in the trenches. 

I have decided this year to learn a little bit more about this game that I love to watch.  My goal for this season is to learn the names of each position on the field and what they do.  Unfortunately, last night I didn’t make this decision until I was into my third game of BeJeweled on the iPad, so I lost the opportunity to learn anything beyond the fact that the ESPN announcers felt that the lack of a full length training camp was very, very bad for the rookies.  They referred several times due to the fact that they believed that this rookie class would be the “lost rookie class of 2011.”  The rookies didn’t look particularly lost to me; it seemed that they had found the stadium and locker rooms just fine! 

Have a great day everyone!

Nancy

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Out of Our Gourds for Gourds

Posted on August 11, 2011 | 4 comments

Good morning Everyone!

Mom and Kayla Working on Their Gourds

This weekend, my mom, who is visiting, Kayla and I had the chance to work on a craft project together.  My mom brought up two huge gourds, which she had allowed to dry for over a year, which she wanted to paint; one is to be a Christmas decoration, painted like a Santa, and the other is to be a Halloween decoration. 

The Picture They Knew I Was Taking

Well, I got a little curious, because it seemed odd to me that a plant would be developed solely for decorative purposes, and Mom couldn’t think of any food purposes behind the gourd, so I did what any reasonable 21st century individual would do – I googled “gourd.”  I found out several interesting things about them. 

The Picture They Did Not Know I Was Taking!

First, they are related to cucumbers and melons.  I wouldn’t have guessed either relationship, although had I seen the scientific name for the gourd family first, Cucurbitaceae, I might have been able to guess at the cucumber relationship. 

Hmmmm - Doesn't look much like a cucumber to me!

Second, they were brought to the United States around 10,000 years ago with the peoples who crossed over the land bridge which then existed on the Bering Straits.  Genetic tests have shown that the American bottle gourd is most closely related to the Asian bottle gourd.  The Asian bottle gourd is descended from the African bottle gourd. 

The gourd is not quite as big as Kayla, but close!

Third, and I find this most interesting, the gourd was the first domesticated plant in the Americas.  It was not grown as a food crop, but as a container.  The gourd itself is the fruit of the plant; its shell is strong and buoyant, and has been used for thousands of years as containers, for musical instruments, and fishing floats.  FN. 

Gourd fronts with finished base coat

Fast forward about 10000 years to my dining room table, where our gourd painting experience had begun.  Mom had downloaded directions on how to paint the Santa Claus from the internet, and had a much smaller example of what she wanted the Halloween gourd painted like, so art class was officially in session. 

Gourd Backs

We spent about three hours on Sunday afternoon working on them, and didn’t get much further than the base coats, but we had a lot of fun doing it!  I can’t help but wonder, though, if the gourds feel that they have taken a step down, from valued container or musical instrument, to simple decoration, but perhaps they are just grateful to still be useful even after 10,000 years!

Have a great day everyone!

Nancy

FN.  See, “An Asian Origin for a 10,000-year-old domesticated plant in the Americas, ” from the Dec. 20, 2005 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America for further information if you are interested.

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Kayla’s Conundrum

Posted on August 8, 2011 | 2 comments

Good morning everyone!

In case you haven’t noticed, it has gotten hot again.  That ugly two word phrase “heat index” which usually comes with the equally ugly “heat advisory” has slipped back into my weatherman’s vocabulary.  I think our heat index was somewhere between 106 and 108 the other day.   When that happens, our house gets a little warm; our poor air conditioner does the best that it can, but only manages about a 20 – 25 degree temperature differential during the day.  At night the house cools down, but when the heat index is over 100, it is still several hours after sundown before the air conditioner gets to rest. 

The other night, we put Kayla to bed at her usual bedtime.  An hour later Kayla started crying, so I went into her bedroom to see what the fuss was about.  She told me, “Mommy, I’m hot.”  I gently pointed out to her that the fact that she had her bedspread,  a thick blanket and a sheet tightly cocooned around her might have something to do with it.  She emphatically disagreed. 

Rather than teach her elementary thermodynamics at 9 p.m. on a Tuesday night, I decided to make another gentle suggestion.  Perhaps, I urged politely, the room might feel cooler if she used her ceiling fan?  As I did so, I turned the fan on for illustrative effect.  I was told that solution, too, was unacceptable because it meant that the fan would be rotating while she was asleep.  A little less gently and politely, I mentioned that the fan rotating was the whole point of the exercise.  She remained unimpressed.

At that point, the tired parent part of me kicked in.  I told her that I was sorry she was hot, but she had to stay in bed.  As she crawled back under her comforter, the blanket and the sheet, I had one last idea.  I told her that I would bump the air down another two degrees, but that it would take a while for her to feel any effect because the air conditioner hadn’t even gotten below 76 yet.  A little teary-eyed, she sniffled her way to sleep as I closed the door. 

Kayla managed to find her way to sleep and out of her conundrum.  When she got up the next morning, she showed me that she had turned on her fan.  She also conceded that having it on did make her feel better.  Whether this was sans bedspread and blanket, she failed to share. 

Have a great day everyone!

Nancy

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Ten Reflections on Hot Green Tea in the Morning

Posted on August 5, 2011 | 4 comments

Good morning!

Having noticed that my caffeine of choice, Diet Coke, is rapidly increasing in price to the point where I will have to get a second mortgage to continue to indulge my current habit, I have instead been trying to drink a little bit of hot green tea in the morning.  After about four days, I have come up with a number of observations:

Green Tea Lid

1) Hot tea is, well, hot.  Once I get the tea past the scalding point where I can drink it, the first sip sends a wave of warmth through my whole body.  I can see this would be a good thing in the winter; in the summer, not so much! 

2) The green teas flavored with fruits are not bad tasting at all, especially when you add 1 teaspoon of sugar to the cup with the tea bag and then let the hot water flow over both.  I like the pomegranate flavored green tea and a blend called “raspberry soiree.”  The only problem with “raspberry soiree” is that I spend the next 60 minutes humming “Raspberry Beret” by the Artist Formerly Known As Prince.

3) Herb tea and green tea are not equivalent!

4)  The poor lonely coffee cups in the pantry that until now have only been used for ice cream (on occasion) and the caffeination of visiting parents and other guests are now seeing the light of day more regularly.

Lonely Coffee Cups

5) This is supposed to be doing something good for my health, although the idea that an anti-oxidant is a good thing is counter-intuitive to an oxygen/air-breathing life form, and the elimination of free radicals makes me feel a little bit like I am violating someone’s freedom of speech. 

6)  I have something else I need to remember to throw away as soon as I use it and not leave it lying around.  Dried, used tea bags are definitely not attractive!

7) I finally have something I can sit down at the table with and not be immediately surrounded by a pack of dogs begging for it.

8 )  The daughter still comes over to view the tea when she’s up, but it’s summer and she’s not been up often enough this week for it to really be a factor.  I let her try some peppermint herbal tea one morning, and it was not a hit! 

9 )    While not as many as for coffee drinkers, there are lots of cool accessories you can gather with tea drinking.  My collection currently includes a Keurig mini-brewer (off-limits to anything but pouring water in it to make tea with) and a ceramic tea pot. 

10)  The teaspoon of sugar (and possibly the heat of the tea) makes me crave a glass of ice water immediately after I drink the tea.  Drinking more water is always a good thing, right?  

Have a good day everyone!

Nancy

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Shadow’s Spread

Posted on August 4, 2011 | 2 comments

Good morning everyone!

This Summer's Bedspread

Usually, Mark and I keep the same bedspread on our bed year round, only changing it out periodically to get it cleaned, but this summer, we decided to switch the regular comforter out for a lighter bedspread.  The bedspread  is  lighter and more comfortable than the regular comforter for summer, but there is another reason I like the bedspread, aged though it is.

 
 

Quilting that remains on bedspread

Shadow loved this bedspread.  It was originally quilted.  Stitch by careful stitch, night after night, without messing up one single square of fabric or alerting us to what she was doing, over the course of her 16 years, Shadow managed to pull out every one of the quilting threads in the bedspread, leaving only a few on the side.

Before and After

We have been without Shadow for over nine years now, but I still won’t get rid of her bedspread.  20 years from now, in whatever condition it is, I still will be carrying it around.  I can’t touch Shadow any more, but I can touch the bed spread she worked so hard on, and smile at the memory.

Shadow and I at Calloway Gardens

Have a great day everyone!

Nancy

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Handkerchiefs

Posted on August 3, 2011 | 6 comments

Good morning everyone!

Regular followers of this blog will remember that Mandy and Darwin’s favorite pastime, after playing tug of war with one of my elastic headbands, is to snatch a handkerchief from wherever they can find one and chew it. 

 They are beginning to be quite gifted in this regard, and have now been caught snatching handkerchiefs from bedside tables, under pillows, bureau and sofa tops, and just about anywhere except the pocket of someone carrying one (and that’s only because they haven’t figured out how to be pickpockets yet.)

Not unexpectedly, this activity of theirs has taken a severe toll on the number of handkerchiefs available for Mark’s use.  We have decided, as a general rule, that if the washed handkerchief resembles a Rorschach blot more than a square, it should be thrown out.  This rule means that Mark is almost out of handkerchiefs, so we have been keeping an eye out for some but with no luck. 

From Print Shop Professional 2.0

On those rare occasions when he goes out of town overnight, Mark usually stops on his way home and buys something for Kayla and I.  On his last trip a few days ago, though, I knew he wouldn’t have time to stop, so I told Kayla that it was our turn to buy  him something, and we set out towards the nearest city to hunt for handkerchiefs. 

 I lucked out and found some at Target, so bought the store out of their entire five box stock.  Kayla asked if we should leave some for somebody else, and I told her no, they would have to do without for now since we had been looking so long! 

Payphone

When we got home with our treasure, Mark called.  He had just reached his hotel room.  I let him talk to Kayla first, and she told him that we had bought him something.  He apparently asked what, because she held the phone out from her head, without covering the receiver, and asked me, “Can I tell him about the handkerchiefs?”  I told her she already had.

Have a great day everyone!

Nancy

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Bird Watching, Twinkle and Dog Rules, the Sequel

Posted on August 1, 2011 | 2 comments

Good morning everyone!

  • Bird Watching

    From Print Shop Professional 2.0

I am writing this post today with a copy of Bird Watcher’s magazine sitting next to me. Why have I subscribed to Bird Watcher’s magazine when my experience with bird watching is limited to the birds I see at zoos, the birds that sit on my fence, and the birds that sit on lamp posts, electrical wires, and the huge flocks of sparrows that wheel through this area in the fall?  Am I eagerly starting a new hobby that would require me to tramp through wilderness at the crack of dawn armed with a binocular and the ability to sit still and silent long enough to see something worthwhile? 

No.  The truth is that I just don’t believe Publisher’s Clearing House when they say that a purchase is not necessary to win their grand prize of $5000 a week for life, and Bird Watcher’s Magazine was one of the best choices available to me. 

  • Twinkle

    From Wikimedia Commons, by the European Southern Observatory

We went and saw Cowboys and Aliens Friday night, and riding home Kayla got kind of sleepy.  Mark felt like singing, so, joking around, he started to sing “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star.”  That woke Kayla up enough for her to say, “The stars are beautiful, but they don’t really twinkle, do they?”  Score again for the 9-year-old!

  • Dog Rules, the Sequel

    Mandy's close-up

A while ago, I wrote a post about the hierarchy my dogs use, Dog Rules.  While I retain the sobriquet of She-Who-Feeds-Us-Every-Morning, Mandy has also awarded me with the title of She-Whom-I-Must-Ask-To-Let-Me-Out-Immediately-After-She-Settles-Down-On-The-Couch-For-The-Evening.  Her timing is always impeccable.  No matter how late it is, (The term late is relative; I need to be on the couch by 8 to start settling down for bed at 9, so I am referring to whether I sit down at 8, 8:30 or 8:45), and how long Mark and Kayla have been on the couch already, the minute I sit down and pull out my cross-stitch, she comes up to me to tell me that she needs to go out.  Darwin, never wishing to be left behind, joins in.  Tyra usually skips this mid-evening excursion, because she has already staked out her spot on the sofa so she can sit by Mark. 

Tyra on the couch

Mark thinks it’s funny.

Have a great day everyone!

Nancy

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Acronyms and Adobe

Posted on July 28, 2011 | 2 comments

Good evening everyone! 

I’ve just been through one of those few times when my day job takes over my entire life for a short period of time.  Mark and Kayla are always wonderful in their support for me when I have to do that; the dogs are okay with it as long as they get fed every morning.  However,  now that it’s all over and I have taken a deep breath, everything shimmers back to normal. 

Shimmer

Still, even in high pressure situations, there is humor to be found.

In Alabama and most federal courts, e-filing is now required; this lets you file briefs and exhibits electronically and gives you until 11:59 the day something is due for it to be timely filed, but, as one district court clerk’s office has politely explained  in their e-filing rules, “While a filing is timely as long as it is filed prior to 11:59 a.m. the day it is due, the clerk’s office strongly recommends that attorneys e-file during working hours, when someone will be able to help them if a problem should arise.”  Unfortunately, I was not able to heed their advice this time, but it all came out right in the end.

The briefs I were working on were in an area of the law that uses a lot of acronyms.  Because it is easier to refer to NHTSA rather than the National Highway Safety Transportation Agency, and to the FHSA rather than the Federal Highway Safety Act, and the  STATSER rather than the Smith-Thomas Act To Support Edamame Research  (all right, I made that one up), in certain areas of the law you just have to resign yourself to the acronyms and try to keep up with the scorecard as best you can.  So Monday night, while I was studying  notes someone had made for me to help with these responses, I came across the following phrase:   “since then a LOT has been done to change the design.”  I spent five minutes trying to figure what on earth LOT stood for, only to realize that LOT stood for, strangely enough, the word “lot”, with emphasis.  Things started to fall into place then.

For technical reasons I have tried to understand, but decided that it is simply better to accept, the documents that we file, as well as the exhibits, need to be filed in .pdf format, the kind of file that you use Adobe Acrobat to read.  When we need to refer to deposition testimony [FN]  in a response, we have to find the deposition, print out the pertinent pages, then scan them in to convert the group of pages  into a single file in .pdf format.  (Most courts do not permit you to file the entire deposition; only the pages you are referring to.  A few courts are different.)  Many of the court reporting services now automatically send you depositions in electronic format, which makes this process a lot easier. 

I had called the Birmingham office yesterday afternoon to check that all the depositions were available electronically.  (The original office, where I work, is about 65 miles away from the Birmingham office.)  After I was assured that they were, and got a mobile phone number from Christine in the Birmingham office staff in case there was a hiccup, I turned back to proof-reading and finishing my writing. 

 Fast forward three hours, to when I was finally ready to start putting the exhibits together for filing.  I opened my Adobe Acrobat Reader and plunged into the correct file on the server – only to discover that nary a deposition was to be found!  After a heart attack and a round of adrenaline that didn’t go amiss anyhow since I needed a pick-me-up, I started looking around a little bit to  figure out what was going on so I wouldn’t have to call Christine at 8:00 p.m. and have her return to the office.  After another five minutes, I realized what the problem was.  I had the Adobe Reader program set to where it would only show me Adobe files in the file directories.  Once I changed that setting to “all files,” the depositions I needed magically appeared.  I gave a sigh of relief, and the gathering of exhibits could continue.

Relief!

Technology:  can’t live with it, but sure can’t live without it!

Have a great evening everyone!

Nancy

FN.  For those who don’t know, a deposition is an out of court questioning session where the questionee is under oath.

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