Osten Ard

bridge day
We have been watching an interstate bridge near our house being built. She's even tried with her legos. It is a cast inplace concrete bridge, which makes a tough balancing act with legos. She's had to change the way she builds the piers with legos. Also once it reaches a certain length it takes two of us. You have to put the legos on each end at the same time or boom. Still it's been an interesting engineering challenge for a five year old.

She had a question I couldn't answer, so I sent an email to the company. He's offered to give her a little tour of the building site, which should be a lot of fun. I need to get some time off work to go.

Hop hop hippity hop
Well DM and her doll, Baby, wore matching dresses to mass yesterday. Most of the day she was little miss sugar buzz. She got a rabbit that sings and wiggles from her aunt. Very cute... the first hundred times.

Not much
Not much going on, so I haven't been motivated to blog. We go to pre-school and work. Then we go home. Kindergarten registration is this month. Doesn't seem possible.... I remember emailing my online friends when I got to Guatemala City to get DM. My friend Melanie spread the word and rejoicing ensued. Now kindergarten.

Hard to be enthused
Hard to be enthused about work right now and I need to be. I've got a new staff person starting and someone has to like this place.

Snow on the ground today. Hope to get DM home with enough light to play a little. They don't let them go out at daycare because some kids don't have warm enough clothes and if they get wet they'd all need spares anyway.

I must be mean
Well I lost out on a set of seven novels by Stevenson on eBay. However I am feeling a bit mean as I made my rival really pay quite a bit to win. Almost glad I lost at the end when the price as the price ran up. I think what annoyed me was that they used software to win. My bids were outbid before they were even completed.

Baby vs. DM
As you know Baby is viewed as DM's little sister even given her plastic dolls status. Last Saturday DM was in trouble and was busy snivelling. She looks up at me and goes "You love Baby better than you love me." It was all I could do to keep from laughing, which would have of course intensified the sniveling. LOL

polygamy at my house
As you know, Tigger was cast aside for a Ken doll this Christmas. The Barbies are delighted and have all married him. I'm just waiting for the feds to show up and take the Skippers into protective custody.

Check out some holiday snaps
http://www.flickr.com/photos/sithiworld/

in triplicate
It is just not my day. It starts with a drunk, who we kick out. I fill out paperwork in triplicate. Then a shelter men's fight, which means more triplicate.... Don't you love working with the public

being "activating" and smellies
DM said something the other day and I had to think twice. "I'm sorry, mommy, that I am activating" She meant aggrevating. I will miss these little bloopers. :)

Smellies - why do my homeless shelter people smell worse in winter? You'd think they would smell worse in the summer with the heat. hmmmm uck!

Tigger
Poor Tigger. He is going to be surplanted in the hearts of Barbies in our house. Currently DM has no boy Barbie. She has been asking for Santa to bring her one for months and I guess he will.

However it isn't fair to Tigger. DM has a stuffed Tigger, who has been serving the role of Barbie's boyfriend and husband. He puts up with a lot from those Barbies. If the kids are sick and throw up on him, he is a good sport and wipes them off. (I finally had to have a talk with DM and Tigger about the number of Kleenx he was using. LOL) Tigger wears ridiculous costumes with good humour. And now he's going to be bumped out of the way by some boy Barbie.

horizontal bop
Don't get me wrong. I like the horizontal bop as much as the next woman, but I'm a little perturbed by the new push for us to take drugs to increase our desire to bop. Maybe I'm just not a stripper pole in the bedroom kind of girl. And have you seen the side effects

"The trade-off for slightly better sex? Unwanted hair growth in manly places like the face and chest. And the possibility of increased breast cancer. Four cases of breast cancer were diagnosed in the study, which involved 800 postmenopausal women; none of the four were on the placebo patch. While the researchers say these "may be due to chance," they add that "the possibility of a causal relationship must be considered."" US NEWS

Of course that is nothing compared to horizontal bop medicine for guys. It is true just what your mom said, you could go blind.

Bully by proxy
DM got mad at someone yesterday and had a boy in the class go pinch that person. So he got in trouble and she got in trouble. She actually admitted that she asked him to do it because she didn't want to get in trouble.

We had a long talk about it. It really bothers me that she did it. I just hope she was listening to me.

sequel to trophy wall
As you may remember, DM had a trophy wall of large boogers several months ago. On Sunday she bit her lip and then couldn't leave it alone. She said it tasted like bugs..... I wasn't really sure I wanted to know how she knows this.

Five
Yes, a fifth birthday is coming up tomorrow. DM woke me at three this morning to let me know. She's lucky that she will make it to this fifth birthday. LOL Having her leaning over my face to tell me this was alarming at three o'clock.

Five seems to be a much bigger deal to her. Not sure if it is just because she is older or that it is a big deal in the preschool world.

We hunted for goodie bag stuff this weekend. Don't want to seem cheap, but I have to make a bunch. We aren't doing a party this year. Tomorrow I show up with cupcakes and a variety of things for them to do decorations with. And the goodie bags. When I was little getting cake and ice cream was the treat.

DM was very excited that we found glow sticks. That is evidently a status item to have in one's goodie bag. I am giving a lecture on no taking it in the bathroom before handing my bags out. :) Had to make DM sit on the couch during the stuffing of the goodie bags because she kept snapping glow sticks and I only had so many.

Will they ever be somebody
The flip side of that story has been in the library this evening. One of our teen street girls is in with the latest man she has taken up with for safety. A woman without enough teeth is here to get driving directions to the state pen. Another woman is here with her three kids and the latest boyfriend.

Will they have any future? sigh

You can be anything you want to be
I tell DM that. "You can be anything you want to be." And sometimes she will ask me about that. "I can be a ____, mommy?" I tell her yes that she might have to work hard to be somethings, but she can be anything.

Today I went to vote and thought about Senator Obama. When his mom told him as a child that he could be anything he wanted to be, did he ever imagine he might be president? How far things have come in my lifetime.

patron rant
1. No it is not okay to leave your small child here between 2 and 8, not answer your phone and come waltzing after closing saying you didn't have gas to come get the child.

2. I'm sorry that the New York Times Sunday paper isn't here yet. It comes by mail. Do not get snotty with me and say "well it isn't exactly news anymore." It isn't exactly in my control

3. Yes it is unreasonable to expect that I would call every library we might borrow the rare book you want to borrow and ask if they would pull it, pack it, weigh it and then tell me how much it would cost for you to borrow it so you can decide if you actually want to pay to borrow it. If not they can just unpack and reshelve it.

4. No you do not have a constitutional right to congregate with 6 of your friends yelling and throwing things across the room. I happen to have read the constitution and it isn't actually in there.

What would Ray Davies think?
My daughter was sitting in the backseat of the car yesterday and I realized that she knows the words to Kinks songs. In her chirpy four year old voice came "I got a big fat mama trying to break me, hmmmm Live this life of luxury" And she knows more of the song and can sing it when the radio doesn't play. She also sings some other interesting songs because of my radio choices. She knows snippets of Walk on the Wild Side too.

Not sure what this says about my parenting. She can also sing along to Bhangra.....

How to make boys like you
DM was talking today. Evidently one of her girl friends at school is a bit bent out of shape because B spends more time with DM. She has a bit of a crush on B and is miffed about lack of male attention. DM was telling me how to get boys to like you. So listen up all you single girls.

1. You gotta be willing to play monsters. This means pretending to be a monster, not running around screaming.
2. Boys like it if you will look at bugs too. Anyway bugs are kind of cool, but not mosquitos.
3. Gas is not nice, but boys think it is funny. Don't go telling teacher if they laugh.
4. If they say they see your panties, stick out your tongue. Don't go telling teacher.
5. Boys like it if you hold your hands in the air going down the big slide. (I think this is a roller coaster thing)
6. Boys don't like kissing. Anyway if you kiss them you have to marry them and that is yucky.

Tales of the weird
We have mostly normal, wonderful library patrons. Then there are patrons like the girl yesterday. None of her questions really made sense and she was so out of the zone that she didn't grasp what answers you could give. I suspect this is due to the fact someone cut her head off on Friday and she could get it back on for 6 hours. I worry about patrons like her. No safety net at all when they obviously need help from someone.

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