<p>Good morning, everyone! (It is still morning in my neck of the woods). May I suggest a great item to microwave - a useless CD. Lots of sparks and smoke! Unfortunately, I was not really amused when H did it in our kitchen microwave. The stench of burnt plastic persisted for a week, and I made no attempts to do anything about so it would remind my hubby about his stupidity.
If your son does proceed with his plans, make sure that you have an ABC-type extinguisher handy. You don’t want to pour water onto a burning object plugged into an electrical outlet. Here are some safety tips for you and your son:
<a href=“http://www.seattle.gov/fire/pubEd/brochures/extinguishers.pdf[/url]”>http://www.seattle.gov/fire/pubEd/brochures/extinguishers.pdf</a></p>
<p>Well there’s always something that has some hidden metal! That’s scary!</p>
<p>Peeps and the like are fun.</p>
<p>Guess where I am? At Starbucks between classes. It’s my last day of teaching. Monday and Tuesday are my finals, and then I’m done for a while.</p>
<p>So to celebrate I brought a laptop to say hi during my work day.</p>
<p>Yup, I slithered into class just in time. I have a bright pink plastic rain hat that always get appreciative recognition from students. I had an amazing morning. My students said they loved Donne, Shakespeare and Milton! Woohoo! I am thrilled.
Chaucer’s fart jokes.</p>
<p>College and EC’s. My kids are totally different. D did not do EC’s but she worked many hours at her work study job and volunteered for organizations in the city with an eye toward law school. And she visited every single NYC neighborhood. They even made their way to the cloisters.</p>
<p>S did many EC’s. I think too many, so he IS going to have to cut back. Music for him is completely therapeutic. I don’t think it’s a career path or an EC. I think it’s a religion. And he’s not the practice four - five hours a day type either. But that one to two hours is necessary for his soul and his sanity, and all the fine motor movement required by the violin also seems good for ADD, but I’m conjecturing there.</p>
<p>I booked his flight to Florence. It was $1500 round trip! Wow! The travel agent the teacher picked (in GA) explained that it was the cost of fuel. Plus I love her to bits and pieces, but she did not get this set up very far in advance and gave us two days to decide! But it’s non-refundable. So, he’s going!</p>
<p>In my own occasional half glass empty sort of a way I do feel sad that he’ll miss D’s birthday party, but she’s missing him in The Tempest. These international travelers.</p>
<p>Harriet, S2 is so cute. I really miss those days.</p>
<p>LIMOMOF2: Oh dear. I’m in Garden City now. Where did the rain go? I don’t mind driving home in the rain when I have all the time in the world. so I am also praying for rain for you.</p>
<p>Louis Armstrong is singing. He’s soooooooo glorious!</p>
<p>BunsenBurner: Your screen name gives me confidence that you should be our expert on all things infernal.</p>
<p>Thank you mythmom, that vanilla milk was just the ticket last night!!! That program for your son sounds amazing…gelato and violin. Lovely!!! These kids have the most fantastic opportunities.</p>
<p>Harriet, I wanna play with the microwave, too! My kids wanted to do the lightning thing, too. I had just redone my kitchen after the Wilma mess…no way was I ready to risk a fire! But an old microwave on the back porch, how bad can it be?</p>
<p>Bad this morning at WW…I think I’ll join NorthMinn on her walk (virtually…I’ll be walking in my pool!)</p>
<p>My D has suddenly taken on all kinds of hobbies this year. She didn’t have the time for them, she just wants to do everything. She got a ukulele and has been teaching herself how to play it…it sounds really pretty! She’s also into photography big time (big expensive!) and formed a book club. None of this was for college apps of course, just for herself. Time very well spent, I’d say!</p>
<p>
mythmom, do share!!!</p>
<p>Last day of class…hooray!</p>
<p>We have another month of school!!! They get out so late this year! </p>
<p>Lousy spring weather here. I need to get out in the garden but finding the time has been difficult. Also need to bring in some new trees to replace all the horrible buckthorn we pulled out. What a chore!</p>
<p>We, too, have about another month of school. It’s finally getting a bit warmer – take heart NorthMinnesota – it will reach you soon! </p>
<p>2for college: Has your daughter heard Israel Kamakawiwo’ole perform “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” on his ukelele? I listen to it every so often on youtube. Haunting in its simplicity.</p>
<p>You all are so adventurous with your microwaves! I’m impressed with your spirit though I don’t think I’m a big enough risk-taker to emulate any but the Peeps experiment.</p>
<p>Now that this college stuff is over for the year (mostly!), what can you say (if anything) you neglected during the past few months? For me, it would definitely be a tossup between housework and exercise. I went for a nice, long walk today.But, returned to still-unkempt house. I have a fantasy that once S is out of school he will be helping with that. How delusional am I!</p>
<p>2forcollege: Well, I just wrote the longest post detailing all the salacious bits in Chaucer, but it got eaten.</p>
<p>So, I’ll give a very abridged version. A carpenter, a forty year old, marries a beautiful young girl, Allison. Recipe for disaster. Then he rents a room to Nicholas, a young Oxford scholar. Even more disaster for the carpenter.</p>
<p>Allison, who’s longing to be well poked, consorts with Nicholas. They want to spend the night together so they concoct a scheme. The young scholar, as astrologer, tells the carpenter that a second Noah’s flood is coming and he should go to the work room and build boats for the three of them. And so he does. He puts them on ropes because he is on a loft, and when the waves reach that high they will float to safety.</p>
<p>Meanwhile Nicholas and Allison spend the night in bed.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, Absalom, a young priest, also comes courting Allison. He’s a bit of a fop, curls and lisps, and Allison and Nicholas decide to play a joke on him. </p>
<p>When he asks for a kiss, she sticks her naked backside out the window. He kisses it and starts screaming, “a beard, a beard.” Hm. Chaucer does not specify what hair this is.</p>
<p>Absalom is really ticked and after washing his month ten million times he goes and gets a hot poker and goes back to her window.</p>
<p>He begs for another kiss. This time, to make it even funnier, Nicholas sticks his arse out the window. Since it’s dark Absalom can’t exactly see what’s going on. Then Nicholas “lets flay a fart,” and farts in Absalom’s face. He sticks his poker up Nicholas’ arse (Chaucer’s word.)</p>
<p>Nicholas starts screaming, “water, water,” to cool his arse, so the carpenter thinks the flood is come. He cuts the rope, falls two stories and breaks his legs! He babbles so much about Noah’s flood that the townsfolk think he’s crazy.</p>
<p>Chaucer suggests that everyone gets his just desserts: the carpenter is ridiculed (his fate for marrying a young girl), the lecherous prelate gets his face farted in, and the scholar abuses his host’s hospitality gets his arse branded.</p>
<p>Only Allison comes out unscathed. She gets properly poked. You go girl! This suggest to me that Chaucer approves of female sexuality, certainly unusual for the Middle Ages.</p>
<p>When DS was little he always demanded, “Read the one about the fart,” which of course led to a passion for South Park.</p>
<p>My students, alas, don’t really appreciate Chaucer’s randy humor as much as their decadent teacher does.</p>
<p>Thanks 2 blue, harriet and mythmom - but unfortunately our prayers for rain and rain dances are not working. It’s not a beautiful day, but the rain is just not coming down the way it needs to for them to cancel D’s game. Maybe she’ll come up with a really good excuse - like the truth - since she can’t play, her time would be better spent studying for her AP than sitting on a bench for 2 hours (not to mention the 2-hour round-trip back and forth to the game). D is not the type to sit still at all, so this waste of time is just making her nuts.</p>
<p>mythmom - I don’t know if I said this earlier, but spending the summer in Florence sounds like an amazing opportunity for your S. I’m sure he will enjoy himself immensely. Btw, Congrats on finishing up classes, and good luck getting those exams graded next week. I’m sure that can’t be an easy job. </p>
<p>gladmom - your S sounds like he has his act together - I wish he could talk some sense into my D. She really tends to overdo things. For the most part, she handles things beautifully - it’s just that there are a few time during the year that she gets a bit overwhelmed - and this is one of them.</p>
<p>jnsq - both of my kids play drums, so I sympathize. We do not have a drum set, but will be getting one in the not too distant future, if S decides to stick with it. D has played for years, but that is not her main instrument and she never really wanted drums as she didn’t want to give up that space in her bedroom. S is willing.</p>
<p>NorthMinn, don’t feel bad, our kids don’t finish until the end of June. They stop classes in mid-June but still have regents and final exams that last until the end of the month.</p>
<p>2forcollege - that’s great that your D has acquired all these new hobbies. How does she find the time? My D has so many things she wants to do, but can’t because of all of her commitments. The thing is, she enjoys the things she’s already involved in too, so there’s just not enough time for everything.</p>
<p>As far as ECs go, I just can’t see D maintaining this pace through college. In high school, she is so involved in so many different activities - but in college, I expect her to have to work at a small part-time job, so I don’t think she’ll be able to do all of her ECs plus a job. I don’t think she would want to. I have a feeling the sports will be the first thing to go - she’ll still run and work out, but she will feel relieved to not have to practice 2-3 hours everyday except Sundays. It’s just too much when there are so many other things she wants to do.</p>
<p>LIMOMOF2: My daughter was in a similar situation last year – injured pre-season with a broken foot and had to sit out all season. The coach still expected her at every practice and game, at home and away. Near the end of the season when she had scheduling conflicts, she just didn’t go. (I remember praying for rain, too!) She decided there really wasn’t much he could do, and if her teammates resented her, that was their problem. There were no long-term consequences. He kind of kidded her about it at the awards banquet, but it was worth it. Normally she is scrupulously responsible, but at some point it felt foolish to miss out on something else more important in order to lend some fictional and unnecessary “moral support” to the team. In any case, I’m still pulling for a big thunderstorm with lightning in your area. Nothing dangerous, but enough to cancel the game.</p>
<p>We also do the pray for rain when we have conflicts with sporting events! Ha!
D1 has Juvenile rheumatoid arthritis so the lifting of weights and team practices are really good for her.That’s how she got involved in sports…play with friends or do physical therapy, easy choice! She also missed the first part of her season this year due to foot surgery but came back strong to finish and play in NCAA tourney. Being involved in sports has been the best thing for her…we were so proud of her this year facing her physical limitations, making Dean’s List and becoming involved in campus organiztions! Gosh…you all are making me miss her! Good thing she is coming home with some friends tomorrow night to go to a ball game and then zip back to school in the morning! So much for spending time with MOM!!!</p>
<p>Thanks jnsq and NMinn. I appreciate your support - I just don’t think it’s going to work.{sad face} I’m not going to feel guilty about this either - I sent D a text and told her she should just skip the game - as you said, jnsq, what will they really do - it’s the last game of the season, unless they make the playoffs. D is also very responsible - but it is so frustrating for her to sit there doing nothing for all that time when she knows she has so much other work that she could be doing. </p>
<p>NMinn - I’m sorry that your D suffers with Juvenile reheumatoid arthritis - but I’m glad that she’s found something that helps her. I’m also glad that her foot healed, and that she has done so well - amazing! My D is very athletic, and is a varsity athlete on three teams (2 since freshman year, and the third, this year as a soph) - but she is most likely not going to be a recruited athlete in any of her sports. She’s good, but not that good. </p>
<p>It’s nice that your D’s coming home for the night, even if you won’t see much of her.</p>
<p>Oh LIMOMOF2…didn’t mean to make a judgement on your D’s situation!!! Just wanted say I get the wishing for rain! And the reason why my D stays involved…believe me there have been many moments when she wants to walk away from sports but then realizes she would still have to put the time in to stay healthy. Sorry if my post came out the wrong way!!!</p>
<p>Now I have to think of what I’m going to make for food for the incoming crowd! Can you tell I like to cook???
Think I will make barbque pork in the crockpot for sandwiches ready for whenever they get here, potato salad, and oriental cole slaw, and some bars for a sweet!</p>
<p>I didn’t think you were making a judgement on my D, NMinn - sorry if I sounded defensive. Probably just feeling guilty about telling D to leave school and skip the game this afternoon (since our rain never amounted to anything). I just can’t take her stress anymore…lol.</p>
<p>Good luck coming up with a food plan. Luckily, anything you serve will probably taste really good to the college kids. I have to admit, if I were having a crowd of kids over, I would probably order dinner for them. I would only cook if D asked me to make something special.</p>
<p>Hey…it is lunch time here…Can I offer you something to eat??? How about a nice Cobb salad??? ;)</p>
<p>Thanks for the offer - but I’m not hungry - not sure why. H loves Cobb Salad - I think it’s the avocados, but I’m not really sure…</p>
<p>How about a drink, LIMOM? I think you need a spirit lifter. Surely the sun is over the yardarm somewhere. </p>
<p>We can have dark and stormies, and swap jocky-daughter stories. Mine was the happiest jockette on Earth until the summer between h.s. soph and jr years, when 1) she blew out her ACL (3000 miles from home, whee), and simultaneously 2) our district/section - that’s section one, to the rest of you NYers - forced a season change on one of her sports. So she spent the hardest autumn of her life rehabbing* and dragging her crutchy self to practices and games that it nearly killed her not to play in (sound familiar, jnsq?), especially because it would have been her last season with that sport anyway. And her team went way into regionals that year, too. Out of this misery came her third sport . . . which is the one she still plays in college. </p>
<p>Then again, we could have seabreezes and talk about non-jocky sons. 
I have two of those, and I love them madly. Their lives just aren’t as dramatic.</p>
<p>*Oh, did I mention the surgery? My, the things one represses.</p>
<p>I’d love a seabreeze! Great warm weather cocktail, perfect to have on the deck!</p>
<p>Haha. I have two children who probably can’t even spell sports. They don’t play, they don’t watch. Anything with a ball, grass, points sends both of them hiding in the work out room which they could opt for instead of gym.</p>
<p>I don’t get it. They’re both incredibly fit and thin. Must be H’s genes.</p>
<p>D did dance and dance and dance which did make her really fit, and her feet grew to be a mess from pointe. She always claimed that any sport was “bad for her turnout.”</p>
<p>As for S, he has no excuse besides sheer laziness or inertia. He did try to float the idea that his instruments left him no time for sports. Ha!</p>
<p>His favorite sport is reading the IMDB page for movie trivia.</p>
<p>Oh did I mention that my asthmatic, overweight self is the athlete in the family? I win at miniature golf every time, can sink as many baskets as I want, and adored tennis before asthma, plus my vertically challenged self was a volley ball front row center in the dinosaur era.</p>
<p>Now that’s an athletically challenged family when I’m the talent! I danced, too, so there is some genetic overlap.</p>
<p>To give H his due, at one point he was practically a yoga master and did yoga two hours every day before he really had to do anything else. But he can still twist himself into a pretzel any old day and bend spoons, too!</p>
<p>Non-jocky son here but used to be. Things do change. Excellent gymnast at a young age and instructors wanted to train him five days a week, and S outright said no. Did very well in soccer but changed his mind when he got to HS. One never knows. My young playwright could still end up being a surgeon (not).</p>