<p>In that case I will embrace my inner-Tigger.</p>
<p>I, too, remember Woolworths. There was also another five-and-dime store with a ‘T’ in the name where I used to go to get candy and yarn (grins at Bears) when I was growing up. Right now I can’t remember what the name was. But Woolworth’s was great. My Grandma would take me on the bus in Long Beach to go get a hair cut and then we’d go to Woolworth’s for a snack. Those trips by bus come back to me whenever I smell diesel fumes… instant transport dejavus thing. My grandma always got me pixie hair cuts at the “Magic Mirror” hair salon filled with old blue haired ladies… what was my mother thinking???</p>
<p>if that was your mom’s mom, she was loving you both dearly.
if that was dad’s mom, she was dealing it with grace.
either way it is a great childhood you had.</p>
<p>I’m not sure how I feel about pooh. He is a very foolish bear ;)</p>
<p>No he is NOT!!! lol
oh… did i miss “h” ? sorry double.</p>
<p>frogs and crawdads do count! Also, possums, racoons, armadillos, squirrels, gophers (the turtle kind not little brown furry mammals) and lots and lots of snakes. My poor mother…just off the boat from the old country and I run in with a box full of little snakes I caught my first day in the woods…by the grace of something I did not get bitten by the 2 coral snakes I had put in with the ringneck snakes and glass snakes (really salamanders). Imagine her horror when the glass snakes broke into pieces and wiggled around. She bought us books to identify the good from the bad after that. </p>
<p>Payne’s Prarie is a wildlife reserve near G’ville. I think they put bison on it and are reintroducing other native species. When I was a kid it was completely wild but now has paths and lookout stations. </p>
<p>Of course my love of wild things does not extend to the invasion of the racoons in my house this past month. Finally, yesterday, one invader was despatched by a lethal trap. I was thrilled…now I just have to hope it was not a lactating female with little babies trapped in the roof. I am supposed to get an autopsy (at least about sex of the beast) today.</p>
<p>Shedding a tear for poor rocky (or rockette) racoon, FAMMoM…</p>
<p>But I can relate to the animals in the roof. One year we had bats. Lots and lots of bats. When we bought the house I noticed one little ol’ bat roosting in the eaves one afternoon. He seemed to like hanging out there but I was none too pleased with the bat poop he would leave. So I called in the wildlife wranglers who told me that they’d put up some sticky paper stuff but that the bat would be killed. This was at the height of West Nile Virus hysteria, so I wasn’t inclined to sentence the poor bat to death.
He repaid me by inviting his extended family over to stay. They managed to get into the attic and must have had fun multiplying whilst we minded our own business. Right after one Halloween I was putting away creepy decorations and in the midst of doing this I came across a very realistic looking bat decoration that I didn’t know was there… thought it was D1’s idea of a trick (it never occurred to me that it was a real bat, it was kind of mummified, I really did think it was a decoration… then again, my eyesight isn’t the best). We still didn’t realize that we had bats in our belfry.<br>
Some time later D1 (they must be attracted to her) was playing on the computer and noticed something fluttering around…and came running and shrieking for her Dad. He managed to capture the bat with a butterfly net and let it go outdoors. Not more than a week later I was in the kitchen and all the kids were in bed when I noticed something fluttering about. Another round of shrieking and running for Dad ensued. But then we decided we must be having a bat problem. Plus (memory is a little shaky here) somehow the public health department got all involved and we had to have the kids sleep in our room with towels under the doors and the public health department called our vet to verify that the dog was indeed vaccinated – so it must have had something to do with rabies.
It happened that a good friend across town also had a bat problem at the same time (in fact she and her hubby had to get rabies shots) and she recommended the bat man.<br>
So I called the bat man who came and surveyed the situation. He told us that we wanted to gather up some lawn chairs and sit outside and watch what happened at dusk… after he had hung this huge net over the end of the house that hung from the room almost all the way to the ground. I remember the story went around the whole neighborhood… and the neighbors all brought their lawn chairs to watch the show.
So at dusk, the bats came out. And came out. And came out… It was a horde! The got caught in the net and then they crawled down to the bottom of the net and flew away. It was amazing. Around 10pm they flew ‘home’ but they’re too dumb to figure out that they have to fly down and go back up on the underside of the netting to get back into my house. So after a few nights of the bats trying to get back in… they gave up and moved on to greener pastures (presumably a neighbor’s house or two or three).</p>
<p>So I’m glad that FAMMoM does not need to take heed of my cautionary tale about being nice to the wild critters in your backyard (or hanging on your eaves, for that matter) and has confronted the problem as it should be confronted…always stick it to Mother Nature when you get the chance or she’ll stick it to you…</p>
<p>I am watching for the great nephew or second cousin twice removed of the original bat to turn up again and take residence in our eaves. He/she was there last summer. The vents to the attic are blocked with heavy duty screening guaranteed by the bat man to keep us bat free for ten years. Except for the bat poop I don’t mind them hanging out outside…</p>
<p>careful Gmom
I haven’t seen the movie but read the book long ago, wasn’t it a bat that gave Cujo rabies?
[Teen</a> Movie Critic](<a href=“http://www.dreamagic.com/vivianrose/05-11-98.html]Teen”>http://www.dreamagic.com/vivianrose/05-11-98.html)</p>
<p>for those wondering where fammom’s frogs and crawdads came from, it was redbug’s thread which I sidetracked as usual.
sooo, fammom are you OK with Rabbit? Piglet and Roo is open, and Gopher (fury one) but he is not in the book. (and he says so himself)
or
you can trade with Gmom and be Tigger. heheh</p>
<p>Gmom, did you get less mosquito bites in the years you had so many bats? It should be worth something, other than guano, harboring all those bats.</p>
<p>My favorite was always p-p-p-piglet, he’s so cute!</p>
<p>p-p-p-perfect!
you be Piglet then, love can stay as Kanga.
I guess Roo is then trin, if she wants to play. Trin in love’s pouch? it’s weird. I wanna be Roo!!</p>
<p>parent e-newsletter I got today says</p>
<p>-Meet the Tiger Mom: Amy Chua, author of the best-selling parenting book “Battle Hymn of a Tiger Mother” will discuss her book and the uproar it has created. May 17. Stuyvesant High School, Manhattan. See our calendar for details. (Note: There is a fee for this event, which includes a copy of the book.)</p>
<p>I was excited until saw the “fee” for the event taking place in public HS, and includes giving away book?
wouldn’t have audience already read/have the book maybe?
who is pulling money string here? shame on you Stuyvesant high, if you are renting venue, you are one of THEM!!</p>
<p>just as I thought…
says in “our calendar”</p>
<p>NOTE: This is fundraiser for Stuyvesant High School. Admission is $45</p>
<p>this, is how it works. schools that already got everything gets more dough because, well they got everything to offer: location, facility, pushy and often powerful parents body (city counsel, artists, banker, NYT, NYer folks) to make more$ to get more of everything.
oh wait, I can’t say that… my kid is now in one of them schools after years of wondering around.
but yet but yet…
if Tigermom would willing to show up at any of ghetto HS I’d honor her guts. but then noone would care who she is or what she have done, let alone pay 45 bucks to meet her.</p>
<p>That would be exactly right. I don’t think they’d show up even if she appeared for free. If she spoke as a commencement speaker, they’d be a captive audience.</p>
<p>Those folks don’t travel those circles, struggling families would have no clue who Tiger Mom is or what she is about.</p>
<p>It feels like an extraordinarily gloomy day. The April 30 ‘wave’ of layoffs will happen tomorrow, so people are saying their good-byes. The food service will discontinue June 17th… sigh. I wonder what Tigger would do… I doubt that he’d let it get him down for a sec. Maybe I should do naked b u t t pics on the copy machine… that’d be something bouncy and would stir things up around here…</p>
<p>just kidding…</p>
<p>considering spit balls instead (feeling a bit like a school kid with all the hush hush secrets yak yak going on around here). Let me go back to pretending to work.</p>
<p>ask Rabbit
Tigger could not be un-bounced.
s/he’s the only one!!</p>
<p>I finally got Tiger Mom’s book after being on a waiting list at the library. I read about 5 pages and got bored. I don’t think I’ll bother finishing it since it’s so easy to just pick up on her biases and beliefs and not have to sit through details of her drilling her children. </p>
<p>She’s a very smart woman. She’s exaggerated her beliefs to create a firestorm of controversy, and then ridden it all the way to the bank (several times!) while claiming to be misunderstood.</p>
<p>A bit like Sarah Palin and the Octomom but she probably considers herself superior. They probably all consider themselves superior! </p>
<p>Sorry for your bad day, Gmom, just remember that you’ll be free in the lovely month of May. A better job is awaiting you out there!</p>
<p>Ooh, I get to be narrator - I think that’s appropriate, and I LOVE John Cleese!!!</p>
<p>Gotta get on the request list for the Tiger Mother book - I want to read it, but I certainly don’t want to own it!!</p>
<p>Gmom - be glad you’re not posting on engineering forum. Posted the story about helping D’s friend with school/parent dilemma, and got chastised for “not breaking up the larger paragraph into smaller sections”, altho it was done with a smiley face. Forgot I was dealing with the engineers over there! Ahh, the opposite side of the brain works in mysterious ways.</p>
<p>P.S., I don’t care if it’s all one paragraph, love the stories!</p>
<p>Just as an update on my wildlife issue…Rocky (apparently) was disposed of…I couldn’t help feel a little guilty for the violent end to a short and brutish life but the mega $$ repair to my roof helped me get over the guilt quite quickly.</p>
<p>So I take it everyone is accounted for in the 100 acre wood with the exception of C. Robin, kanga and the heffalumps and woozles…now I am definitely a woozle.</p>
<p>We spent hours and hours on those same videos and this thread has that damn tune going on through my brain, over and over … and that phrase “tut tut it looks like rain”…kept coming to me as we faced the huge storms this morning. Nice to mutter under breath as I scan the horizon for funnel clouds. I haven’t thought of that in well over a decade so nice flashbacks. </p>
<p>I just finished teaching a short class at GWU (extension/night class). The STUFF at that university! wow they have it really good…and they should with a tuition above CMUs! particularly the business school. They have a gdzillion terminals to mimic wall street traders apparently with bloomberg terminals as well but all the kids seemed to be working on term papers and facebook rather than day trading. Beautiful classrooms…I had screens, and pointers and fading lights and microphone…geez…not like when I felt lucky to have multi colored chalk for supply and demand curves when I taught uni in Ecuador and the cleaning lady would leave live chickens behind my desk to thank me for giving her hand-me-downs from my kids. I gave a students 10pt bonus for cleaning up the chicken “caca”. Imagine me asking these older students (employees of world bank, freddie mac, embassy economists, etc.) to pick up chicken poop after class…heh heh…it gives a good visual image though, doesn’t it…</p>