Summertime...

is here - and I've done diddley-squat.
Have I planned any activities for my wards?
Have I done anything to ensure chaos does not reign now that camp is over?
...
Isn't there something like a three strikes rule in parenting?
What I really desire is for someone to entertain ME!
I want to be my kids for just one day.

I'll get up and whine for waffles or sausages or say "MILK MILK MILK MILK" over and over in a monotone until I get what I want. (Dear Griffin, I do appreciate that you say "tank yoo mommy" when you finally do get what you want, but do you really need to torture me along the way? Love, Mommy)
Then I'll run away, as fast as my legs will carry me and leave my mess behind. Maybe I'll use the couch as a napkin, but then again, the rug is just fine too.

I'll make someone play my shows over and over, and then jump on top of them when they have the NERVE to try to read a magazine or the newspaper with the arm I am not laying on top of. Then, when they think I'm finally watching, I will start playing with something else, preferably with small, choke able pieces! Yeah!

I will whine "when can I get something?" whenever I get within 100 yards of an insitution of consumerism. If my adult DARES look at an item of clothing, I will shriek "NO NO NO!" or else dive under the clothing racks, ripping down a good quantity of merchandise with me - and totally ignoring that it's happened.

I will refuse to nap, even though I am irrational and rubbing my eyes...zzzzzzzzzzzzzz

I'll eat 2 bites of my meticulously (ah, who am I kidding - microwaved) dinner and say "can I have dessert?"

Then I will insist on "GLUE" for my art projects and ask over and over "can I go on the computer?" until the adults cave in. Then I'll play the loudest, most advertising filled games on the internet, surely loaded with all sorts of malicious programs (and we wonder why the computer makes so many weird noises these days). I'll also attempt to answer registration questions that I can't really read, and will spell inventively when answering.

Finally, I can be carried up to my bed, and man, the heck with bladder control! Just slap that diaper on and I'll be laying in my cage, living the good life. Or, if I am more like Griffin, trying to stall with 4 or 5 books, then "WATER WATER WATER WATER" and "BINKYBINKYBINKYBINKY" until I get both of those.

What a day - it's 8:30 PM, and the day is done. I'm so glad I am getting 10 hours of sleep! It allows me to bound out of bed, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed to great the day at 6:30 AM!! Rise and shine for another FUN DAY!!

HAPPY SUMMER EVERYONE!!!!!!!

Be glad your name is not Tom Riddle...

Real Harry Potter weathers Pottermania

Wed Aug 1, 10:14 AM ET

Sometimes it's a hassle being Harry Potter.

Especially when you're a 78-year-old man who happens to share the name of a certain fictional boy wizard who is famous the world over.

Each time a new Harry Potter book or movie comes out, Bradenton resident Harry Potter starts getting phone calls from children, interview requests from the TV networks and autograph requests.

"The kids want to know if I'm Harry Potter," he said with a chuckle. "I tell them I've been Harry Potter for darn near 80 years!"

The real Harry Potter said he hasn't had time to read any of the J.K. Rowling books or see the five hit movies. But late night crank calls aside, the retired Defense Department employee from Zaleski, Ohio, gets his mileage out of Pottermania.

"When Harry talks to the kids, they'll ask about the owl and he'll say, 'Oh, he came by and brought the mail,'" said his wife, Jan. "Then, when they're done, the mothers come on and say thank you for talking to the kids. He gets a big kick out of it."

But meeting a real Harry Potter can be a little puzzling for the kids.

"They look at you, give you the once-over," he said, laughing. "They can't relate the one in the book to the one they see here. I guess I could buy me a pair of Harry Potter glasses."

Copyright © 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. The information contained in the AP News report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press.

Mae Mae MeMe

Shameful meme copying - but I have to give Mim all the credit for this one!

Scattergories

Instructions: Use the 1st letter of your name to answer each of the following…They MUST be real places, names, things…nothing made up! Try to use different answers if the person in front of you had the same 1st initial. You can’t use your name for the boy/girl name question.

Your Name: Mae

Famous Artist/Band/Musician: .... Marley, Bob?

4 letter word: Muck

Vehicle: Motorcycle

TV Show: Mickey Mouse Clubhouse (sad, I know)

City: Memphis

Boy Name: Marcus

Girl Name: Marlie

Alcoholic drink: Margarita

Occupation: Milkman

Flower: Moon flower

Something you wear: Mittens

Celebrity: Martha Stewart

Something found in a kitchen: milk

Cartoon Character: Mickey Mouse

Something You Shout: Move it! - For sure!

Shameless CTRL + C...

My friend Laura had a great list on her website - thought I should see what I can claim to have read... All I can say is I'm definatly up to date on my Harry Potter :-)

1. The Da Vinci Code (Dan Brown)
2. Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen)
3. To Kill A Mockingbird (Harper Lee)
4. Gone With The Wind (Margaret Mitchell)
5. The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (Tolkien)
6. The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring (Tolkien)
7. The Lord of the Rings: Two Towers (Tolkien)
8. Anne of Green Gables (L.M. Montgomery)
9. Outlander (Diana Gabaldon)
10. A Fine Balance (Rohinton Mistry)
11. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Rowling)
12. Angels and Demons (Dan Brown)
13. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Rowling)
14. A Prayer for Owen Meany (John Irving)
15. Memoirs of a Geisha (Arthur Golden)
16. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (Rowling)
17. Fall on Your Knees (Ann-Marie MacDonald)
18. The Stand (Stephen King)
19. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Rowling)
20. Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte)
21. The Hobbit (Tolkien)
22. The Catcher in the Rye (J.D. Salinger)
23. Little Women (Louisa May Alcott)
24. The Lovely Bones (Alice Sebold)
25. Life of Pi (Yann Martel)
26. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams)
27. Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte)
28. The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe (C. S. Lewis)
29. East of Eden (John Steinbeck)
30. Tuesdays with Morrie(Mitch Albom)
31. Dune (Frank Herbert)
32. The Notebook (Nicholas Sparks)
33. Atlas Shrugged (Ayn Rand)
34. 1984 (Orwell)
35. The Mists of Avalon (Marion Zimmer Bradley)
36. The Pillars of the Earth (Ken Follett)
37. The Power of One (Bryce Courtenay)
38. I Know This Much is True (Wally Lamb)
39. The Red Tent (Anita Diamant)
40. The Alchemist (Paulo Coelho)
41. The Clan of the Cave Bear (Jean M. Auel)
42. The Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini)
43. Confessions of a Shopaholic (Sophie Kinsella)
44. The Five People You Meet In Heaven (Mitch Albom)
45. Bible
46. Anna Karenina (Tolstoy)
47. The Count of Monte Cristo (Alexandre Dumas)
48. Angela’s Ashes (Frank McCourt)
49. The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck)
50. She’s Come Undone (Wally Lamb)
51. The Poisonwood Bible (Barbara Kingsolver)
52. A Tale of Two Cities (Dickens)
53. Ender’s Game (Orson Scott Card)
54. Great Expectations (Dickens)
55. The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald)
56. The Stone Angel (Margaret Laurence)
57. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Rowling)
58. The Thorn Birds (Colleen McCullough)
59. The Handmaid’s Tale (Margaret Atwood)
60. The Time Traveller’s Wife (Audrey Niffenegger)
61. Crime and Punishment (Fyodor Dostoyevsky)
62. The Fountainhead (Ayn Rand)
63. War and Peace (Tolstoy)
64. Interview With The Vampire (Anne Rice)
65. Fifth Business (Robertson Davis)
66. One Hundred Years Of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)
67. The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants (Ann Brashares)
68. Catch-22 (Joseph Heller)
69. Les Miserables (Hugo)
70. The Little Prince (Antoine de Saint-Exupery)
71. Bridget Jones’ Diary (Fielding)
72. Love in the Time of Cholera (Marquez)
73. Shogun (James Clavell)
74. The English Patient (Michael Ondaatje)
75. The Secret Garden (Frances Hodgson Burnett)
76. The Summer Tree (Guy Gavriel Kay)
77. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (Betty Smith)
78. The World According To Garp (John Irving)
79. The Diviners (Margaret Laurence)
80. Charlotte’s Web (E.B. White)
81. Not Wanted On The Voyage (Timothy Findley)
82. Of Mice And Men (Steinbeck)
83. Rebecca (Daphne DuMaurier)
84. Wizard’s First Rule (Terry Goodkind)
85. Emma (Jane Austen)
86. Watership Down (Richard Adams)
87. Brave New World (Aldous Huxley)
88. The Stone Diaries (Carol Shields)
89. Blindness (Jose Saramago)
90. Kane and Abel (Jeffrey Archer)
91. In The Skin Of A Lion (Ondaatje)
92. Lord of the Flies (Golding)
93. The Good Earth (Pearl S. Buck)
94. The Secret Life of Bees (Sue Monk Kidd)
95. The Bourne Identity (Robert Ludlum)
96. The Outsiders (S.E. Hinton)
97. White Oleander (Janet Fitch)
98. A Woman of Substance (Barbara Taylor Bradford)
99. The Celestine Prophecy (James Redfield)
100. Ulysses (James Joyce)

STOP GROWING - RIGHT THIS INSTANT, YOUNG MAN!

Bittersweet - that's my word of the day.
Griffin is so stinkin' cute right now - he chatters away in this babble only he can understand - and I occasionally figure out a word here and there, which he emphatically says "yah!" to. Today, we had a nice conversation over a late lunch that consisted of honey roasted Peanut Butter and grape jelly sandwiches on whole wheat bread (doesn't the whole wheat bread redeem me?) He was munching away, shaking his head yes and no, and calling "Bob-oh!" which is his version of "Cozmo".
I actually got a video of it, I'll have to post it later. Why can't they stay at this cute stage? I know it will be gone in a flash, and we'll be back to civil disobedience mode soon enough. But, if I could freeze this moment I would...

Hudson is a at a great stage too. All of a sudden he is writing up a storm - and I love all the inventive spelling. He has a few words he knows, and he also has a "word book" we made of all the words he wants to know how to spell - we write them in there for him to refer too. We get great letters on a daily basis, and his schoolwork comes home with translation. I love the fact he is trying to express himself independently. That feeling of motherly pride just wells up behind my eyes and in my throat - my baby is on his way to becoming a reader. I can't wait - I have so much I want to share with him.

We are also waiting for 2 teeth to come out - they are so wobbly, it's time for the sting and doorknob trick. I've even appealed to his greedy side and told him if they come out by Dad's birthday (this Sunday) I will give him 10 bucks for his Nintendo fund... you should have seen his eyes - a dollar is miraculous, but 10 sent him over the edge! I am hoping they come out soon - the adult teeth have already come through behind and are pushing the baby teeth all over the place. Any tips on getting the baby teeth out, I would definitely appreciate it!

I'll add photos later...

It was bound to happen....

I'm surprised that it wasn't sooner!!

CNN apologizes for mistaken headline

Tue Jan 2, 4:10 PM ET

NEW YORK - CNN apologized Tuesday for mistakenly promoting a story on the search for Osama bin Laden with the headline "Where's Obama?"

A spokesman for Illinois Sen. Barack Obama said the apology was accepted.

The blunder came Monday evening on Wolf Blitzer's news show "The Situation Room." Both Soledad O'Brien and Blitzer offered separate apologies during CNN's morning show Tuesday.

CNN called it a "bad typographical error" by its graphics department.

"We want to apologize for that bad typo," Blitzer said. "We also want to apologize personally to Sen. Barack Obama. I'm going to be making a call to him later this morning to offer my personal apology."

Tommy Vieto, Obama's press secretary, said he appreciated the bloggers and activists who brought the error to light so quickly and helped make sure it was corrected.

"Though I'd note that the `s' and `b' keys aren't all that close to each other, I assume it was just an unfortunate mistake, and don't think there was any truly malicious intent," Vieto said.