murumatsu
Jul. 22nd, 2008
10:45 pm - kamikaze
This is a direct quote from the announcement of the employee of the year, except for the elimination of the name:
"Like the others selected for this award, (person)'s superb "throw me into the fire" attitude helped distinguish him among his peers."
This really really bugs me. Do they seriously want to encourage a "throw me into the fire" attitude?? ("well done" in more ways than one!). I mean, if it said "Gotta put out the fire!" attitude, that would seem at least semi-praiseworthy, but "throw me into the fire"? Just what is _that_ supposed to accomplish?
Jul. 2nd, 2008
10:15 pm - indescribable
I work really hard at work. I do many different things in a day and I help lots of people with a variety of stuff. People think I am good at this.
So why is it so hard to come up with any kind of description of all of this for a resume?? What I've got so far doesn't make it sound like I do anything..
It's a family joke that the size of a yard sale is inversely proportional to the way it's advertised (ie a GIANT! or HUGE! yard sale will consist of a few items on a card table). I encountered an exception to this today--a "HUGE SALE" that actually was. Hope to go back tomorrow before they put stuff away (and hopefully actually get the toy lawnmower that E didn't wish to be parted from..)
Jun. 27th, 2008
09:51 pm - reverse aging
Why, oh why, is the five year old regressing to act like she's the one who's two??
This week it's just been endless tantrums over such momentous and terrible requests as putting clothes away, coming to the table, going to bed, etc. Often she spends more time screaming about something than it would take to just do it. Please tell me this is just a phase and she'll grow out of it...
Doesn't help that it has been a pretty bad week at work, culminating in a meeting that made it obvious that things were going to be absolutely awful for the next two weeks and not a whole lot better for the rest of the summer. How the heck the fancy reorganization which is supposed to give the opportunity to learn new things is ever going to do so is beyond me; so far all it means is spending extra time with new manager attempting to explain just exactly what it is we do. Somehow we are supposed to build endless huge new environments, maintain the existing ones, and keep training the new guy, with 2 people out on vacation for most of the next 2 weeks. Not a pretty picture.
Jun. 15th, 2008
09:45 pm - 'Nuff said
The younger kids at daycare get little daily notes (preprinted with space to check things off or write things in). E is just now moving up from the toddler room to the 2-year olds' room, and their notes are in a different format. The nap section of the toddler notes: "I slept from --- to ---". The nap section of the 2yr notes: (check one from these options)
Today I slept
Today I didn't sleep
Today I kept my friends up
Jun. 11th, 2008
01:43 pm - When you wish people did things differently
I seem to be experiencing a lot of people not quite getting their act together lately.
For instance:
--coworker is working at home, sends me email about complicated problem ending "Call me at (number). I call the number. I keep getting a "this number is out of service" message.
A while thereafter, he calls me apologetically: "Gee, I had a typo in my phone number, didn't I?"
(I was wondering about that but couldn't check it as my PDA had just broken).
--I go to meet a friend for lunch. I arrive early and don't see her. A few minutes after when we were supposed to meet, still not seeing her, I go into the restaurant and look. I do not go past the "this section closed" sign in the gloomy depths of the place. Fifteen minutes later, a waitress comes out: "Are you waiting for (friend)? She's in a booth inside..." I go back in and sure enough, she went way to the back, right past the section closed sign. (Where we sit for longer and not suprisingly get no service til we move)
--A comes in and wakes me up at 3:00 am. "I forgot to take my necklace off!" I take the necklace and, with difficulty, get her back to bed. In the morning I ask why she came in instead of just taking it off. "Because you should always tell someone when you do something bad.". The general philosophy is great, but I need to somehow get across that certain minor transgressions could perhaps WAIT...
--We go to the band potluck, where there is a nice array of food. Only problem: no drinks, no cups, no knives/forks/spoons/napkins. Debates ensue over whether it is more polite to eat sloppy things with your fingers or by lifting the plate to your mouth.
Gotta go do yet more eye drops (currently 4 different kinds). I sure hope this PTK thing works.
May. 30th, 2008
04:20 pm - Would you say this to a 2 year old?
at E's 2-yr checkup a few days ago, she didn't get any shots, but they needed a bit of blood for the lead test (I'm all for getting that checked, given the age of our house). She was quite unfazed by the finger poke, watching the lab tech get her blood, etc. So the lab tech said to her "You could be a health care professional when you grow up!" (She also kept calling me "Mom" and i had to restrain myself from commenting that I was NOT her (the lab tech's) mother).
May. 28th, 2008
10:35 pm - waiting to give..
My last couple of experiences with the Memorial Blood Center have not been real pleasant.
The last time, I went to a blood drive in the IDS building; they had great trouble with their computer, so it took forever (my suggestion that they just write down the answers and take my blood and let me get out of there was of course not taken). Then, a few weeks later, I got a letter saying they'd had a computer containing all the donor information stolen, so be aware it might be an identity theft risk.
Yesterday, I arrived when the blood drive was supposed to start. They weren't ready yet; lots of people standing around while a few laconically arranged stuff. When I eventually was called for the pre-donation interview, I sat down in what turned out to be an extremely rickety high-backed office chair. The chair tipped way back and knocked over the privacy partition. (It also made horrible ominous creaking noises every time I moved). Suggesting that perhaps they could get a different chair was ignored. There were no reaction monitors at the end, and pretty much nobody watching you during (I've given blood many times and had a couple of bad things happen, so I would really appreciate a little more attention). It was just overall not a good scene. I give blood because I like to feel that I'm helping someone else, but make it annoying enough and I won't do it anymore.
so much to say on other topics but no time to say it now, alas. more to follow in a day or two.
May. 9th, 2008
10:12 pm - progress
It is so wonderful when I can use some of the energy that usually gets sucked into the black hole of work for actually DOING things. I only had to do work stuff for an hour today, so I managed to do 2 loads of laundry, go to Target, go to the library, pick up the plants we'd ordered a while ago and get them into the garden (a somewhat complicated process as it involved getting the hose set up again and the extraction of various things from the garage), make cookies, go for a bike ride, even practice a little.
And I will shortly even get to have a shower. This didn't happen last night, because there was no hot water (figured out after the fact that Eleanor had taken advantage of an unsupervised 30 seconds or so to play with the tempting little knob on the water heater, conveniently placed at toddler height..)
Apr. 25th, 2008
04:11 pm - Random thoughts
Lots of them, most of which I will probably forget before writing them down..
Seeing lots of "Hampton Dellinger for Lt. Governor" signs when we were in NC, and thinking that name looked awfully familiar. It turns out that yes indeed, this is someone who I went to elementary school with.
The new head of our division at work (ie my boss's boss) sent out email thanking us for doing some emergency stuff, saying he would "institutionalize processes" to try to avoid this in the future. Now business-speak--especially WRONG business-speak--just makes me shudder, so I commented on this to some of my coworkers.
Coworker #1: (completely oblivious) "Oh, it's great that he's going to do that.."
Coworker #2: "Yeah, there is the state mental hospital in Fergus Falls and we're all halfway there by now.."
Somewhere after age 5, people acquire an inability to live with their parents (Amethyst says she'll never want to leave Mama, but I am sure she'll change her mind later!). Just saying, as a comment on the NC visit. Not that it was bad, just a bit tense in spots.
A thrift store has opened where the drugstore used to be in the strip mall where daycare is. They had a box of music books--I started looking through it and realized that almost all of it was for either flute or French horn. With great self-restraint, I only bought about half the box.
Eleanor is starting to put words together now. The thing she says most is "Open it!". I think the longest sentence so far has been "I want a cookie".
I wish I could just send my parents a plumber, but they seem determined to NOT fix the problems their house is developing. Since they are going to be selling the house at some point, this makes no sense to me--surely it would make more sense to get the unusably leaky shower and the non-functional faucet fixed than to refinish the floor, which it sounds like they are going to do.
Mar. 31st, 2008
04:09 pm - snow
I am going to give up and go home shortly. It's snowing like crazy. Not a whole lot on the roads downtown yet, but I expect that will change as soon as it gets a few degrees cooler..
Amethyst asked this morning if she could ride her (brand-new as of yesterday) bike when she got home. I said yes unless it was snowing, so I think she's going to be disappointed. (Riding needs to be in quotes or something as she is just starting to figure it out--it currently has the pedals off, since supposedly it's easier to learn balance by pushing with your feet than with training wheels).![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
jdmaddison wanted to go to Fogo de Chao ( Fogo de Chao --dang, I need to look up how to do links (edited to add: THERE it is. forgot a crucial angle bracket before) for his birthday yesterday. I was a little dubious since it is way expensive for dinner and Eleanor had been less than cooperative at lunch, but actually it was great--they brought her some strawberries which (along with bits of my dinner) kept her reasonably happy for quite a while. It's not exactly a place you'd usually take kids, but it does have the virtue that you get the food right away, no waiting--a huge array of things in the salad bar (including bread, cheese, smoked fish..), and then fried bananas, cheesepuffs, polenta, mashed potatoes, and the wandering meat-bearers. The special dessert (with "Happy Birthday" written on the plate in fruit sauce) was fun too.
Mar. 19th, 2008
04:02 pm - more words
more things Eleanor is saying these days:
jacket
at (=hat)
walky (where do all these "y" endings come from? We don't use them to her, but she adds it to a lot of things..)
milk
shoes
apple
duck
lala (=crayon, no, I have no idea why)
up (climbing up stairs)
appy! (="pick me up!")
yah (=yes; it is wonderful to have a POSITIVE word at last!)
Sometimes she even combines words:
Bye-bye, Daddy!
And she sings the alphabet song (which she has been doing for a while, but now you can start to make out the words).
Peculiar toddler quirk of the month: right now she LOVES cabbage.
Edited to add:
forgot a few:
fishy
Sissy (=sister)
Feb. 22nd, 2008
03:04 pm - I hate airfares.
Aargh. Thinking of going to North Carolina in May. The lowest non-stop price apparently went up $150 in the last few days (or at least between when I last checked a few days ago and now..)
With two small people in tow, it would be SO much easier not to have to change planes. But we're starting to talk a serious price difference there.
(Of course, my other fear is that once i give up and actually buy the tickets, which I really want to get done, the fare will drop _after_ that)
also lots of non-answers from people I emailed and really need to hear back from..
![[mood icon]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/moonmama/sillysuns/angry.gif)
aggravatedFeb. 17th, 2008
11:00 pm - birthday party
We had Amethyst's birthday party today, at home (unlike the recent ones she'd gone to,which were all at the Eagle's Nest or a bouncy-house place). The one planned activity I had only interested the kids for about ten minutes, but they were mostly perfectly happy to be left alone to play. (Did get one kid who claimed he didn't want cake..until he saw everyone else eating it, at which point he changed his mind.)
I've been running a LJ community for band (the director wanted some kind of comment area on the website; I knew that I didn't know enough to set that up, and wasn't sure if our hosting site would allow it anyway, but realized a blog would do just what he wanted). The really hard part has been getting people to actually READ the instructions I so carefully wrote out--yes, you have to actually JOIN before you can post, and no, I am not going to approve you unless I know who you are, which means you have to tell me separately if your username does not make that obvious...
Too many complicated things that I actually need to do something about instead of just having them on the list of things to do..
![[mood icon]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/moonmama/sillysuns/thoughtful.gif)
contemplativeJan. 12th, 2008
10:07 pm - school choice
went to the school choice fair today, it was pretty much a complete mob scene. We did manage to get the all-important cards you need to send in. I'm still not quite sure what your chances of getting a school other than your designated community school are, and the whole thing was kind of overwhelming. Am I being a bad parent when I have doubts about what otherwise seems like a potentially good school just because of the schedule (starts at 7:10 am!)? Should we be looking at private schools more?? I was somewhat relieved after the 2 school visits that we did last week to find that they do still have art, music (including band), recess, etc, but I don't have any feel for how good the schools really are. I grew up in a smallish town with good public schools; there were maybe 2 or 3 private schools anywhere in the area, and you simply went to whatever school you were in the district of--none of this crazy open enrollment stuff. I'm just hoping whatever decision we wind up making for next year works out OK. It's going to be a big change from the great daycare/preschool that Amethyst has been going to for years.
![[mood icon]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/moonmama/sillysuns/sad.gif)
anxiousDec. 31st, 2007
10:12 pm - more vocab
words I left off the previous list (reminded by hearing most of them this evening!)
baby
uh-oh
owie
10:27 am - if snowmen could talk..
just some random thoughts...(this was started a while ago, abandoned, and actually recovered, to my amazement)
We built a snowman at the beginning of the month after the first big snows. The poor guy is now buried up to his neck in snow, between being on the edge of the thrown snow zone from driveway shoveling and the several additional snowfalls we've had since. Of course, maybe for a snowman this is like going to a spa..mm, just chillin' out...
Actually, I'm hoping it doesn't warm up as much as forecast for the end of the week, or we'll have a grand meltdown and refreeze.
When I was growing up, Christmas was this huge big glittery thing that wasn't for us (to the point that when we once visited some friends of my parents who had a tree decorated with candy canes and offered me one, I was doubtful that it was OK to eat it--surely it couldn't be kosher if it had been on a Christmas tree! (Yes, they let me have it)). I have no direct experience with the Santa myth, or with the tooth fairy, for that matter. I don't want to deprive my kids or anything, but I have no idea what to say when Amethyst asks why didn't she see Santa bring the presents. Anyway, it was nice to be here for Christmas, rather than in the middle of the huge frenzies that tend to happen in Wisconsin.
after i finish this I am going to start writing down stuff for next year. Not goals necessarily, just things that need to happen, or that I want to have happen (and that I know won't happen unless _I_ take responsibility, much as I might desire otherwise..)
Just got in touch with some old friends from Louisiana who are up here for a bit; should actually get to see them Wednesday, which will be great (I haven't seen them in two years or so).
Last night, Eleanor managed to communicate that she was hungry and wanted a snack, that she wanted something out of the refrigerator--cheese--this particular cheese--it needed to be in a bowl--and then something in this cup, too...all done with only a few words, but there is clearly a lot more going on inside that than she has words for.
her vocabulary right now:
Mama/Mommy
Daddy
Hello
Bye-bye
Night-night
lemon
cookie
cracker
puppy
very incomplete lists--
Children's books that I don't mind reading over and over again: Anything by Grace Lin or Bernard Waber. The Rosemary Wells McDuff books.
Children's books that I can't stand reading over and over again: Anything about Dora. And anything involving short stories based on Disney princess movies.
The challenge is to get more of the first category than the second when visiting the library..
Dec. 10th, 2007
02:07 pm - morning
This morning, to wake Amethyst up, I sat down on her bed and rubbed her back and told her it was time to wake up.
Her response?
"I'll wake up when you stop WRINKLING me."
Dec. 7th, 2007
09:54 pm - categorizing the world
I think Eleanor sees the world like this:
--Almost anything might be a puppy
--Animals are puppies
--Dogs are definitely puppies
--German shorthairs (the kind of dog Grandpa has) are MOST DEFINITELY the epitomy of puppyness
We went to a calendar store last night, and she was delighted to see the huge section of dog calendars ("Puppy!!"). She was happy to glom onto any of these (the displays went right down to the floor, and I'd forgotten the Ergo...), but when I showed her the German shorthair calendar, man, getting _that_ one away from her involved many wails of dismay, much kicking, flailing, etc, etc.
Slowly, she is learning more words. A few days ago she was in the kitchen with me as I got her a snack. "Cookie? Cookie?" she said hopefully. Upon being handed a cracker: "Bye-bye!"
Nov. 6th, 2007
04:00 pm - numerology
Amethyst can now write almost all the numbers zero through ten. It doesn't sound like much, maybe, but I can clearly remember when she just couldn't even copy them and when she didn't get the concept of 2 digits together forming a new number (ten, not "one zero"). This weekend she was writing numbers and asking me what different combinations made ("What's one and four? Four and one?"). It's interesting to me that for her recognizing/reading/writing numbers comes before the alphabet or words (she can recognize most letters and write some but not all; she hasn't quite mastered writing her name yet). I'm sure this will come in time.
still waiting for some more words from Eleanor. Right now her vocabulary seems to be mama, dada, lemon (used several times one day and not thereafter), and uh-oh. I think she might have said "book" a few times. We are trying to persuade her that she'll get faster service if she can tell us what she wants instead of just shrieking, but she's not buying it yet.
Oct. 7th, 2007
10:39 pm - timeless
On Friday, my watch stopped. (It has both a date and the moonphase, and I am very fond of it). So I stopped at the jewelry store near daycare before picking up the kids and paid $9 (argh) to get a new battery put in. This only worked for about half an hour, so the problem isn't the battery. I then combined the strap from a watch whose plastic case had broken so you couldn't attach a strap to it with an ugly old watch with a broken strap, so I at least had something wearable. It stopped earlier tonight. It's a Timex Indiglo watch, and it still lights up just fine--so the problem isn't the battery, I would think. As far as Z know, watch repair is something of a lost art, so I guess I need to hunt for a new one...
it is now 80 inside, in October. Bleah. (We winterized the A/C last week, so can't turn it on now). Hopefully it will cool off tomorrow.
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