Monthly Archives: June 2011

The kids have been out of school for two weeks, which means I’ve spent two weeks not really doing much of anything. Even when they do go to camp they’re only there from 9 to just before 3. When they go to school the days are from 8 to 3.30. Since I’m working out from 9.30 to 10.30 a few mornings a week this means that I’m not even going to shower until 11am.

So basically I’ve skipped showering. I either commit to smelling awful or I float in the pool. The pool is warm and I’m alone so I don’t even have to shave my legs. I just plop in there relax a little. In fact I’m so lacking in pride these days that I’ve done my second Momversation with horrendous hair. It’s not even bedhead, it’s just housewife who’s given up hair. I could get a haircut, but I’m too lazy for that, plus I think I’ve had my 2011 haircut already.

It’s time to wash the windows. I’ve just rescreened half the house and I’m here to tell you that any fool can do it. I spent about $20 on supplies to rescreen the windows in five bedrooms and a few hallways. Of course I did it the day after I’d given myself a manicure. Since the kids have been out of school I’ve also repaired some of the grout in their bathtub, which is an interesting story.

You see a few weeks ago Mr. G told me that he’d need to do a test shoot in our house with a small crew on a Thursday. I explained to him that I play tennis every single Thursday from today to the rest of my life and there’s no way in the world I’m willing to have that interrupted. Mr G changes the shoot to a Friday, and of course I play tennis on a Friday for the first time in a year. I come in the door at about 11.30 and the driveway is full of pick up trucks and lighting equipment. This doesn’t look so much like a test shoot as it looks like a shoot. I smell bad, I’m hungry, I’m tired, so I kick my shoes off at the door and head upstairs to my bedroom. I fling the door open and I am alarmed to find Anna’s husband in my bed with a bunch of car parts.

There is a muffler, part of an engine, suspension and other assorted parts on my bed. Inside my bed is Anna’s soon to be late husband. I smiled as much as I possibly could, grabbed my things from the bathroom and headed to the kid’s bathroom to clean up. I stood under the water and tried to let it wash the tennis and newfound anxiety off of me, but when I started looking at the tile more anxiety came over me. There were cracks in the grout.

Being a homeowner I have many fears, but the big one is that there will be a water leak from the top to the bottom floors. Cracked grout makes me shake. So, because of the filthy man and his his filthy car parts in my never filthy bedroom I’d found one of my worst nightmares, a potential leak.

I kept the kids out of their shower and tub for four days so that everything would dry out nicely. I used a grout saw to scrape away any loose or adjoining grout, then I mixed fresh grout and applied it where it was needed. A day later I applied sealant and a day after that the kids were back in their shower. Of course I’m still in there every day checking to be sure that not a drop of water can get through.

Maybe I should thank Anna’s husband?

So now that I’ve fixed the grout and rescreened the windows it’s time to wash the windows. Well, I’m getting ready to do that, and to deadhead the climbing roses when I see that a bird is building her nest on my kitchen window. I feel like it’s an omen of good things to come so I whip out my iPhone and take some video.

Twenty minutes after I took that video she dropped an egg right there on my kitchen window, which seemed a little less adorable. I’m totally willing to evict a bird, but I’m not willing to evict a bird sitting on her egg. Now I have to wait until the baby is hatched and flying before I can wash my filthy kitchen window.

It's so filthy it makes me shake

Ooh and also there’s a new meme where people tell you to google “Blue Waffle” and click “I’m feeling lucky”. Don’t do it. There’s nothing lucky about it. It’s slang for a very diseased ladybit.

I’m at Momversation today talking about how I left Alexander at the park alone and my friends FLIPPED OUT.

Please go check it out, the comments there are really interesting.

ReferralKey.com has somehow overtaken my inbox this week. I’ve had a dozen of these

While ReferralKey seems like a good idea, there are parts of it that just don’t work. Claire Diaz Ortiz has written a great post about Referral Key and suggests that she knows some ways to fix it. Essentially Referral Key allows people to pay you for referring them business.

Do you see what I just did there? I just referred you to a specialist in the field. I didn’t do that for Claire, I did that for you. The fatal flaw in Referral Key is that the payment is to the wrong person.

When someone calls or emails me needing a referral for a specialist in a certain field I almost never answer them immediately. The only time I answer immediately is if I am the expert or my brother is. Every other referral takes at least a few hours of thought. Here are just a few of the questions I’m asking myself before I refer you a friend:

• Are they the most talented person I know in that field?
• Would I want to work with this person I’m about to refer?
• Would I want to work with the company that’s searching for someone?
• Would they work well together?
• What is my referrals work style and/or work ethic?
• Do I care enough for the person who is asking to risk a relationship on them?

Most often I can come up with at least two names, but sometimes I can’t or won’t. Referrals are not something I give lightly and I would not be happy if you referred me a friend because they bought you an Omaha Steak.

I’m not really a nice woman, which is totally okay, because I’m not trying to be. I’d like to be thought of as kind and honest, but nice women clutch their pearls and say Bless Your Heart and then they die when their ulcers explode. I’ll be ulcer free.

There are people I will never like, there are first impressions I simply cannot recover from. At one point in time I tried to talk myself out of these kinds of snap judgements, but then I realized they served me well.

I don’t like Range Rover drivers in Los Angeles. I know there are regions where a Range Rover is a practical choice, but Los Angeles is not one of them. If you have elected to spend six figures on a car you have options and one of those options is to not buy a disgusting behemoth that screws up parking lots, visibility and the planet. They’re gauche and I didn’t have to teach my kids to not respect you. The kids at half a dozen schools in LA know they’re the vehicle of choice for selfish people.

I don’t like idlers. The carpool lines are a fact of life here in the City of Angels. Moms (and nannies) drive to the school, wait in the line, grab their charges precious cargo and drive off into the sunset. I totally understand not wanting to park your car a whole block away, getting out of the car and then tottering along in 4″ wedgies walking to the school to fetch your kids. I really do understand this. What I don’t understand is why you must idle your car five feet away from where our children are playing. What is so difficult about turning the engine off and rolling the windows down? When did your comfort trump my child’s right to breathe clean air?

Watch the first segment and tell me if that’s an artist or a cute four year old with some wacky parents?

I know few things. I suspect many things but I know these for a fact.

Comic Books: Comic books are wonderful for teaching kids to read. Kids learn things faster and better when they’re interested. There are two common ways for kids to learn to read, phonics and whole word. With phonics readers learn to sound words out. Readers learn the rules of English (there are many) and they pronounce words phonetically. With phonics readers may break the word into pieces. With whole word reading the entire word is learned at once. This is the more common way that readers learn in the US.

I don’t believe that one way is better than another, but I do believe that for certain types of learners one way of learning to read will be better than another.

Comic books are perfect for either type of reader. Words like POW and KABAM are fabulous and rewarding for phonics, and sight readers (whole word readers) will enjoy that most words on the page are five letters or less. More importantly they can skip the words they don’t understand and just look at the picture for the story. Because reading is supposed to be fun. Reading at home doesn’t have to challenge them, and not every word needs to be looked up in a dictionary. If they can’t read “beautiful” they can look at a picture and guess that it might say beautiful, for a new reader, this is enough.

Further, kids tend to read comics over and over again, eventually they’ll figure out the missing words, and their meaning without frustration.

Flashcards: You can teach math any way you want. You can teach theory, you can have a spiral curriculum or a flipped classroom. You can have the kids use grids, beads, computers or their fingers, but you still need flashcards. I know that memorization has gone out of style, and that everyone wants kids to have a sense of math. The reality is that they need to know 1 to 12 addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. They don’t need to understand why, that will come later, but they need to memorize these equations. Flashcards can be fun, there are plenty of games to play and a lot of screaming (the good kind) to be had.

Buy some flashcards for the summer and drill the kids. Keep it fun.

Baking: Measuring ingredients will make fractions relevant. It’s the only way I know to show a child that 1/4 is smaller than 1/2 even though 4 is bigger than 2. There’s a lot of reading too, but when chocolate cake converges with math life is good.