Not Inadequate

• People – Look! I am not the only one who thinks about covering stuff with fake fur - See? SEE????

I feel somewhat vindicated now. After seeing how cute and cuddle-y that foot stool is, how can you deny that fake fur would make a cozy headboard?

• I got my hair trimmed over the weekend. My hair guy just bought his first house. He was very animated about it as he was cutting my hair.

Very. Animated.

The front of my head now resembles a brillo pad a little.

• After Melanie talked me off the “What? Literature? But I don’t know hooooooooooooooooooow!”ledge last week, I spent an entire day roaming the internets and shopping for books. Big went from learning phonics to reading chapter books in the blink of an eye. I am amazed. But now my carefully outlined Learn To Read plan has been rendered obsolete (how did I not realize that would happen? Did I think we would be doing phonics until high school? Who knows what goes on under the gray brillo pad on my head? Brillo. Pad. People. *sigh*) and we need more Litter-ah-chah around here.

Are you guys familiar with Library and Educational Services? They are an educational book wholesaler and will sell to homeschoolers. You have to register first, which is a minor pain in the ass. When I first started ordering from them, I had to print out the order form and mail a check, which was a gigantic pain in the ass. Now they take PayPal, which worked out great. I bought 30 books for $65.00 -

I also bought the 1st Grade Literature set from Memoria Press, along with the Study Guides (I might not be on the edge of the ledge, but I am not quite relaxing in the grass, either); and a buncha stuff from Amazon, including The Complete Tales of Beatrix Potter and The Annotated Alice by Lewis Carroll. I also bought some just-for-fun books - Encyclopedia Brown (I loved him when I was young!) and The Cul-de-Sac Kids. Little got the Llama Llama set, which is ADORABLE.

The UPS man brought me hundreds of books last week and only one of them was for me. How weird.

Happy Monday!

On Saturday, Jim took the kids to the zoo so I could catch up on The Real Housewives get the taxes ready.

Big demanded that his daddy take a picture and send it to me.

Like my son, I’m a giver —

                                                              Roaches Eating Fruit

I found a random number generator online, but I can’t figure out how to get a screen shot of it because I am just that lame. So you will have to take my word for it on who won the Classroom Friendly Pencil Sharpener Drawing.

What choice do you have, really? Hopefully we enjoy that level of trust around here.

I enter a lower limit of 1 and an upper limit of 28 and get 16!

Let’s see, comment #16 belongs to….me.

Huh. That’s not gonna work. I can’t win my own contest.

On the other hand, that was not specified in the rules. Maybe I need 3 pencil sharpeners?

No. Shut up, Greedy Deb.

Okay, let’s try again. This time, the winner is comment number 20!

Wait. That’s Helena and she lives in Australia. On a beach. Where it is not snowing right now. The only rule I had was that the winner needs to live in the U.S.

Sorry Helena!

Probably I shouldn’t even be telling you guys this process. Now I’ve upset Helena and this whole thing is looking a little disorganized. And unprofessional.

One more time. If this doesn’t work, I will have my kids draw names out of a hat.

Comment number 17!

Diane!

Congratulations Diane! Come on down! You have been chosen be the next contestant on….

sorry, I got confused there for a minute.

Diane, send me your address and I will mail your new pencil sharpener whenever it quits effing snowing around here!

For everyone else, I am going to be giving away not one, but TWO Classroom Friendly Pencil Sharpeners over at Heart of the Matter in April. I will let you know when so you can inundate me with entries!

Or you can buy one. It’s only twenty bucks. I have been trying to tell the maker that if he ever attended a home school conference, homeschoolers would fall on these sharpeners like ravenous hyenas and he would make a bazillion dollars. He is reluctant, but perhaps we can persuade him.

(for the record, I used Random Number Generator, but my technical ineptness prevents me from proving it.)

To enter the Classroom Friendly Pencil Sharpener Give-Away!

I am going to select a winner tomorrow, so it’s your last chance to bribe me!

Bring on the Quid Pro Quo!

Jimmie Fallon does Charlie Sheen -

Do not forget to enter the Classroom Friendly Pencil Sharpener Give-Away!

• Yesterday morning I told my son to quit eating with his hands and use his fork. So he picked up a piece of his breakfast and carefully pressed it onto the tines of his fork. Glad I got that all worked out.

• The other night I realized I had packed the meatloaf pan too full when the oven caught on fire from the overflowing drippings. It was pretty exciting for a minute.

• Homeschool moms, if you aren’t reading Melanie at Fairly Square, you should be. She keeps answering all my questions! And only laughs at me a little!

• After I wrote about Stephen Hawking and the Real Housewives, I got a bunch of comments from a guy with an email address at Columbia University. He ranted along for TWENTY-SIX THOUSAND WORDS.

Twenty-six thousand! He had to break it up into three separate comments! It must have been a graduate paper or something, but he went to quite a bit of trouble to cut-and-paste it in. 

He seemed to have a number of issues with Stephen Hawking, calling him a Tool of a Capitalist Dictatorship that Deliberately Falsifies Basic Science! who was Leading a Takeover Attempt of Theoretical Astrophysics! There were lots of exclamation marks. LOTS. Even more than I use. Do fancy colleges like that support the hysterical over-use of exclamation marks? Hopefully he was a student and not a professor.

There was some talk about UFOs and stuff about NASA and Government Propagandists and The Bermuda Triangle and Biowarfare and Time Travel and Aliens Are Coming and Fluorescent Lightbulbs and Einstien being a Communist…. You know, pretty standard stuff. It might the best comment I’ve gotten so far. It would have been better if it was shorter. Jim wanted me to publish it in it’s entirety, but I like you all too much to subject you to 26,119 words of ranting.

• And now a joke from my daughter (4):

Once upon a time there was a CHICKEN! And a ROAD and a TRAIN!

And the chicken went onto the train tracks and got RUNNED OVER!

Isn’t that funny, Mommy?

Isn’t it?

 Huh, Mommy, Huh?

Do not forget to enter the Classroom Friendly Pencil Sharpener Give-Away!

Yesterday I spent all damn morning trying to figure out how to get an RSS feed thingamabobber on my sidebar.

All. Damn. Morning.

I am confounded by technology, this I freely admit. The only reason I’m even aware of HTML is because one time I wanted to paste in a youTube video of a maxi pad riding a miniature mechanical bull.

Finally it occured to me to email Sheila at Blog Designs by Sheila and try to explain my trouble. It went something like, “Sheila, I want some of those linky thingys in my sidebar. Pls Advs.”

And then fifteen minutes later, Sheila emailed me some cute buttons and some cute button code.  See them up there, on the left? She made them all matchy-matchy!

Sheila is, in fact, amazing.

So, if any of you peeps want some fanciness or buttons to decorate up your blog, email Sheila. She is terrific.

* The Girl Scout Cookies were delivered on Sunday. So far I have eaten an entire box of Thin Mints. I am getting a little panicky, because there are only three boxes left.

* If anyone uses an RSS feeder thingy, let me know if that button doesn’t work.

* This is all true and I am only telling this story because I am really pleased with the work Sheila has done. No one needs to get their panties in a wad thinking otherwise. Unless they want to send me free stuff. Or sacks of money. Especially sacks of money. Or free stuff. Either way.

Last week after I extolled the virtues of my new pencil sharpener, Applie commented that according to the Classroom Friendly Pencil Sharpener website, I could apply to receive a free sharpener! (did I say sharpener enough times in that sentence? no?)

I figured What the Heck, and emailed the guy with a link to my post. And whaddaya know, he said he’d send me a free one! (he also said it was funny, but I’m too modest to mention it.) As long as I was corresponding with him, I thought I’d throw out the idea of a give-away and see if he’d be willing to pony up some more free stuff (check it, I don’t just hog all the free stuff for myself – I’m a giver. you’re welcome).

He said sure, and he sent me FOUR pencil sharpeners to give away! Can you believe it? I thought I’d be lucky to get one. I’m going to give two away here, and two more at Heart of the Matter next month.

Since Applie is the one who started the whole thing, I am going to send her one. It’s only fair. BUT! That still leaves one more to win!

Here’s how to enter: Leave me a comment.

That’s it!

I will leave the give-away open for…how about a week? Next Tuesday I will use a highly sophisticated method to select a winner. Random number generator? Draw names out of a hat? Whomever offers the best quid pro quo? The uncertainty makes it exciting! Can you stand it?

I know I have a couple of readers from other countries (Hi Helena!), and I think it might be prohibitively expensive for me to mail overseas. Sadly, I am going to have to limit the drawing to U.S. residents. Sorry!