Excellent Blog
2007 Inspiring Blog
Rockin' Girl Blogger

The Inner Boohbah

April 5th, 2005

“I can feel for her because, although I have never been an Alaskan prostitute dancing on the bar in a spangled dress, I still got very bored with washing and ironing and dishwashing and cooking day after relentless day.”
— Betty MacDonald, 1945

(more…)

More asthma

March 24th, 2005

Wacky Daughter was asthma-attacking at 4 a.m., pobrecita.

I was volunteering in her classroom last week, and one of her buddies couldn’t stop coughing.

(more…)

My Daughter and her friend K, the Booty Dancers

March 20th, 2005

Here’s a little story from Wacky Daughter, age 5 1/2:

“We were at the Winterhawks game tonight and me and K shaked our
booties! They showed us on TV!  We won the dance contest and we
won binoculars, a water bottle, Chalupa coupons, and a tote bag and a
T-shirt that said ‘Spice up the night’ from Taco Bell. It was great.”

Yes, it’s true, A, her husband J, Wacky Daddy and I encouraged our kids
to shake their little butts in front of 9,700 hockey fans to win a
half-dozen Chalupas and a gym bag with goodies. They call it “Dance for
Your Dinner” — it’s a little crowd-pleaser they do in between periods.
The kids stood on the chairs with their behinds facing the camera and
shook it and shook it. Every time we’d tell them “You’re on the big
TV!” they’d turn around and smile for the camera. They were about
adorable.

Wacky Daughter just corrected me: “We were adorable.” (No “about” about
it.) Every time the camera went to them we went nuts and everyone else
did too. My face is still hurting from laughing so hard.

And the Hawks won against Tri-City — 4 to 2. Rock on.

WM

i have not the words

February 26th, 2005

More education stories in the paper today, about how the state has more money than they thought. No, not really, cuz there is even less money now for schools. (Well, which is it?) More teachers will need to be fired. The school year will be shorter. But the district is hiring seven people to do PR and “communicate.” So they apparently have the money for that. I cannot communicate well about any of this. I guess I wouldn’t deserve one of their $100,000 + a year jobs, since i am unable to communicate about this subject that is so near to my heart.

(more…)

Life is a Carnival (believe it or not)

February 24th, 2005

I never finished up this topic, sorry. Got too busy railing.

School carnivals take a heck of a lot of planning but man, are they ever worth it! (And I think we might even have made a little money, which is always nice.) We had two huge bounce-arounds (these are spendy, but the kids love them), a rootsy-folksy band that appealed to the crowd, a magician, a bunch of games (ping-pong ball toss into iced tea glasses, sports booth, cakewalk, all of those), face painting, and a Cajun feast with rice and beans, jambalaya, cornbread and Moon Pies.

The photo badge booth, where the kids could get their pictures taken and put their sweet little mugs on a button, was a hit, as was the arts & crafts room. It gave people a nice quiet space to mellow out. They made “shoebox floats” (for the parade) that they decorated with paper and glitter, and they could make Mardi Gras masks, too. We also sold a ton of feathery Mardi Gras masks and glow necklaces, for a dollar apiece. (You can get a lot of materials online, for cheap. And sometimes party stores will give you a school discount.) We raffled a bunch of stuff off and had door prizes, too. There was a big parade through the halls
at the end.

I came home and passed out, and so did the rest of the Wacky Family. Also I completely went into a sugar coma from the cake Wacky Girl and Boy won in the cakewalk, and the large box of peanut butter cups I devoured with almost no help from other family members. This sugar binge was followed by gin and tonic binge with the in-laws while they were here — damn, no wonder my head is fuzzy. Whew.

Some tips:

* If your in-laws are coming for a visit, make sure they arrive the night of the carnival, not the next day. Otherwise they miss all the fun! Plus you can rope an extra volunteer or two this way. (Wait, maybe this
was intentional on their part?)

* Start planning way in advance — at least three months. A lot of the bigger stores avoid charity donations by requiring at least 30 days notice — some even want six to eight weeks. Well, I understand they need time to get signatures on forms and to dither around calling “corporate” and all that crap, but it also lets them off the hook because they know that all of us Wacky Mommies and Daddies are running around at the eleventh hour trying to pull it together. Dithering, as it were.

* Get a letter from the principal as soon as you’ve set a date, so you can photocopy two bazillion copies and take them around to everyone. People you would never expect to cough up will totally surprise you, and people you think are sure bets will let you down. Gift certificates, donated items, cash money — all are gratefully appreciated. Baked goods are adored.

* Expect the unexpected — one of our “for sure” donors completely flaked out, and one of our donors who we didn’t think was even going to donate a day-old cake for the cakewalk came through with a carload of muffins, pastries, cakes and about 100 of those yummy little mini-fruit pies (which we sold with dinners).

It was fun. I’m already planning next year’s! Go for it at your school, if you’re hesitating. The kids will be happy, even if it’s not perfect, and the grown-ups will like it, too.

North Portland is red hot!

February 20th, 2005

It’s red hot over here cuz I’m pissed off. Again.

(An aside — the carnival ROCKED! The kids had a blast and the grown-ups did, too  — more on that tomorrow…)

I just read a dorky story by Stephen Beaven (he says it’s pronounced “Bevin” like Evan, not “Beaven” like “Beaver” note to SB —
change your byline, dude) and Amy Hsuan in today’s Oregonian. Headline was “Neighborhoods hot; schools not” and was all about how North/Northeast Portland families are sending their kids elsewhere to school. (The westside, for instance, or private.)

Hello? Rilly???

Why is the story dorky? Cuz they don’t get to the g.d. point: Race is an issue. Education is political. N/NE
(my part of town, where i was born, raised and schooled, thank you, yes I’m an eastside rat) has been about as “diverse” as white Portland gets, ie — there are black and white and brown and yellow and red people here. That’s why I like it here.

You hear more languages here than just English. And more and more white people are moving in to what they cleverly call “the ‘hood” and displacing the families who have lived here for decades. And the new transplants are refusing to attend the schools in the neighborhood because why? There are still black people here. (And brown; white, make that “poor white” not “classy white,” like the transplants believe themselves to be, argh; yellow and red people…) It makes the transplants uncomfortable.

Last year, three white PTA moms told me their kids couldn’t attend the neighborhood schools because (direct quote) “We’d be in the minority!” (Technically, they wouldn’t. But the mix at some of the schools in the neighborhood — don’t ever say ‘hood, okay? It pisses me off — is approximately 1/3 black, 1/3 white, 1/3 Hispanic, small percentage Native American, Pacific Islander, and Asian. So if you’re thinking “us” (whites) against “them” (anyone who’s not white) yeah, then white is the minority. What’s the problem, petunia?)

Stephen and Amy quote a North Portland mom who “did her homework” (her words) and decided to send her kid to a westside school, cuz the North Portland school in their neighborhood “didn’t have the resources to educate the students.” And Ainsworth, where her young’un is now going to school, has a Spanish immersion program. Baby, you didn’t do your homework, cuz Beach
Elementary, right up the street from you, has a Spanish Immersion program! Did they bother to mention this in the story?

No.

Did this family bother to try Beach, to see if they liked it?

No.

Did the story mention race issues? Economics? Snobbery? One of the moms was bragging that she would never have her kid attend King, her neighborhood school, but she got such a good deal on her house, she can afford private school tuition! Well, you rock, baby! Good for you!

Who will your kid play with, when she’s not in school? Will she know her neighbors’ names? Will you?

Carnival Day

February 18th, 2005

“Too many parents make life hard for their children by trying, too zealously, to make it easy for them.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, poet, dramatist, novelist, and philosopher (1749-1832)

I’m not saying that throwing a carnival for the kiddies is making life easy for them — it’s making life more fun for them, for sure. But
damn, I’ve put less hours into major projects at work than I have for this carnival. We’re organized, no doubt about it. There are four of us on the committee, plus a couple of auxiliary members. We’ve rounded up a bunch of volunteers, wrangled donations, planned out games, bought bags of toys (the whoopee cushions, I’ve heard, are especially popular), made up a schedule, gathered bag after bag of empty shoeboxes. (It’s a Mardi Gras theme — YES I KNOW IT’S LENT NOW, sorry!! — so the kids can make miniature “floats” out of shoeboxes that they’ve decorated with tissue paper and glitter.) They can also make or buy masks, and they get free tickets if they come in costume.

Wacky Boy is going as a bumblebee (thank you, A! I love the little plastic stinger on the butt), and Wacky Girl is going as a princess, or a witch. (She takes after mommy, awwwww…)

Wacky Daddy took the day off! Hot dog! He’s out now picking up cakes & doughnuts for the much-vaunted Cakewalk. Mama Em and one of her baby monkeys are doing the modern version of “hunting and gathering” for the same stuff in a different part of town. (You’re familiar with the Cakewalk concept, yes? I’ve explained the game to about ten adults and kids in the last week. Poor things, never having done the Cakewalk before! Numbers on the floor, kinda like musical chairs. The band plays, everyone walks, then the band stops and if you’re on the Lucky Number you get to pick out the cake — or pie, which A and I like
better — of your choice.)

(Carnival tip: Make friends with the bakery managers at your local grocery stores. If they won’t give it to you for free — many of them will, though — at least they’ll save you a shopping cart or two of day-old half-priced stuff. Carnival tip #2: Kids and adults, too, go completely bonkers for a carnival. Surly, drunken parents you never thought would volunteer for anything are suddenly sunny and smiley and telling you they’d love nothing more than to work the beverages table.

“We’re having iced tea AND lemonade? Coooool!”

We’re having a Cajun dinner (gumbo, dirty rice and beans, sausages, Moon Pies, the works), Cajun music, games, door prizes, a raffle, and a parade at the end. I think we’ve got about forty cakes, pies, and various forms of packaged sugar for the cakewalk, plus we’re ordering a huge sheet cake, decorated in Mardi Gras colors, to serve with the dinners.

Crazy? You bet.

« Previous Page