Johnnie's Blurbs - Homeschool Blogger

Ben's Guide to U.S. Government for Kids

Wed, 30 Nov 2005 07:59:00 -0600

Was amblin' around in the U.S. Government Printing Office Online Bookstore (bookstore.gpo.gov) and found a great site for kids. Informative, colorful, lively, educational, ta da, ta da, etc. The GPO Bookstore isn't bad itself for adults. Reasonably priced books and CDs on practically any topic you might want to know more about concerning this country, statistics on topics ad infinitum, procedures for dozens of methods, etc.

For the kids, check out http://bensguide.gpo.gov/index.html. They use a cartoonized Benjamin Franklin (one of the early nation's most prolific producers of information, gadgets, gizmos, and ideas) as the "proprietor" of the site. There are games for students about money and how it's made and its properties, games about history, etc. Well worth your while to check it out! I spent 1.5 hours "playing" when I should have been working!! FUN!

Take Me Out To The Movies

Thu, 24 Nov 2005 21:33:00 -0600

Finally experienced Jurassic Park. You don�t just see Jurassic Park. Every time Little Fella decides to revisit the Park via that glorious medium of DVDism, the awesome heart pounding, throat drying, palm sweating begins. The Freddie Krueger movies, Friday the 13th movies, the Chainsaws, ta da, ta da, all of those only left partial tastes in my recovery system. Once I figure out how many cackle bladders are used in the making of splatter/slasher movies, I determine how high the chances are that I�m going to expend even one dime or minute toward my own heart failure.

Jurassic Park didn�t get this same deliberation. It had Steven Spielberg behind it, and Sam Neill, and Laura Dern, and the great Sir Richard Attenborough. All of that prestige clouded my judgment enough to get me engrossed in the story line, at least. By the time the T-Rex got loose, I was hooked and couldn�t have quit if I�d wanted to.

Mama worked so often that I only remember her going to the movies with us three times in my life. She said she went more often, but my clay-footed childhood memory is infallible. The first movie I saw in the theater with Mama was �Gone With The Wind.� Our grandmother, Mammy, had come to visit, and we took her to see it.

The burning of Atlanta scared the bejeebers out of me and I spent the entire fire in the lobby. The usher kept pestering me to go sit down. I�ll never know just what I said, or how he might have snickered behind his hand, but he let me stay there, peeking in the door occasionally, while Atlanta burned.

After Rhett didn�t give a d--- anymore, it was time to get the 400 pounds of flesh out of two seats. Mammy (all 250 pounds) spilled over her seat and Mama, 18 months pregnant with Brother # 3, couldn�t move. I have the most outrageous mental picture of the usher and the owner standing in the seats in front of Mama and Mammy, pulling on the women�s hands to get them standing on their numb feet. Brothers #1 & 2 and I hooted with laughter (for which I�m sure we paid dearly), echoing in the, by then, empty theater, while we waited until parts below Mammy's and Mama's waists worked again. To this day, whenever I see �Gone With The Wind,� I am reminded of the honor Mammy paid us by going to the movies with us. She was so large, she couldn�t sit comfortably, nor did she have any desire to see most movies. Mammy only saw three movies, at the theater, in her life. The first was �Gone With The Wind,� the second was �Gone With The Wind,� and the third was, you guessed it, �Gone With The Wind.� I was privileged to view that classic the third time with her. I hope they have wider seats in heaven�s theater, so Mammy doesn�t have trouble going to see GWTW.

The last time I enjoyed an in-the-theater movie with Mama, I was 17 and announced that I would be going to see the �M� rated (remember those?!) �Doctor Zhivago.� Didn�t ask if I could go, just stated that I was going. Daring! Mama wasn�t too sure about that (the attitude or the movie), but when it was revealed that she had also planned on going with a friend, she couldn�t very well fault me. So she and her friend sat in front of my friend and me (you don�t sit in a movie with your mother when you�re 17!) through all the love scenes in �Doctor Zhivago� and I fell in love with steamy brown eyes for the first time. Hey! Maybe that�s why Better Half has brown eyes!

Mama wouldn�t have gone with us to see �Jurassic Park,� even if she had lived longer, but every time I �do� a theater movie with one of my kids, I think about what it took to get Mama into a theater. I hope my children�s memories of me in the theater, with them, are as cherished.

We Can't Afford To Replace Me!!

Mon, 14 Nov 2005 19:23:00 -0600

When I was in the fifth grade, in Albany, Georgia, an article came out in the Sunday magazine section of the Albany Herald asking the question �How much would it cost to replace your wife?� Since I was only about 11-years-old, I doubt seriously that I understood the implications of the question at the time, but BOY! have I come to understand the costs involved since then.

The question was probably posed by the insurance industry to try and raise the awareness of the �necessity� for death benefits for a housewife. At that time, the cost of replacing a housewife, supposedly a relatively uneducated, unemployed-outside-the-home woman that did �nothing more� than stay home all day, would have cost about $17,000 a year. The average family income was less than $10,000. But the authors of the article figured that in order to replace one woman that �didn�t do anything more than� stay at home with a bunch of kids, clean house, chauffeur the offspring to their various activities, plus be on-call-on-demand-part-time basis to play nurse, tutor, secretary, accountant, psychiatrist, lover, and nail holder for the hammer wielder, a bereaved husband at her death would have to shell out a bundle in order to hire people to replace his �unemployed� wife.

Now. Let�s consider the same prospect of �stay-at-home spouse replacement� from a different point of view � the year 2005.

I quit my $42,000 a year job over 15 years ago for the purpose of staying home with my, at that time, two-year-old son, Little Fella. I was to become one of those �supposedly... relatively uneducated, unemployed-outside-the-home woman that did �nothing more� than stay home all day,� so that even with 10+ years of post-high-school education I was to become one of those �non-persons.� Now, let�s see what it has cost us over the years for us to carry on the �normal American tradition� of wife-at-home-children-in-school-husband-at-work-charade.

For the first three years after I no longer went downtown daily to be a wheel in the daily traffic jams, I went back to college part-time to get a post-baccalaureate teaching certificate. The other part-time was spent trying to earn a little spending money and a little more money to keep the credit card hounds off our backs. Here�s a typical week�s expenditures of over eleven years ago.

ACTIVITY

Better Half leaves for work

Mommy and Little Fella arise

Mommy takes Little Fella to pre-school

Mommy visits Dunkin Donuts

Mommy goes home and collects stuff to go to the office supply house where I get all my stuff ready to send to publishers; copy stuff, put in mail

Mommy hits Taco Bell on the way to

pick up Little Fella; home for lunch and nap (nap is free, but overhead [OH] on the house includes insurance, heat and air conditioning, new wood scraps for the holes the woodpeckers peck -- amounts to about $18/day, $19 with the wood)

While Little Fella naps, Mommy writes, cleans a (very) little, launders (very, very little)

Little Fella goes to Karate class

Mommy goes to school after drive through supper (yes --Taco Bell!); Dad deals with Little Fella at Bedtime!

TIME

6:45 a.m.

7:45 a.m.

8:50 a.m.

9:00 a.m.

9:15 a.m.

11:50 a.m.

12:00 p.m.

12-3 p.m.

4:15-5 p.m.

5:30-10:30

EXPENDITURE

$.30 (his vehicle is a �78 Honda Civic; drives on vapor)

breakfast-$.38 (Cheerios with bananas)

$.56 (even mini-vans take a some gas)

$1.45 (small coffee with 3 creams, 3 sugars, and 3 ice cubes so-I-can-drink-it-today and a lemon-filled donut)

$13.97 (in 1991, copying costs are up to $.04 per sheet, gas is still $1.11/gallon, postage is $.29 for the first ounce, $.23 for each additional ounce)

$2.83 (chicken soft taco with guacamole and sour cream, pintos and cheese, medium Pepsi)

$.46 (don�t forget, this doesn�t include the overhead [OH] on the car -- oil, insurance, a new CV joint every 1 � miles -- $4.11 a day)

Still using that $18 OH (overhead) on the house

$25/month ($.56 gas)

$1.39 gas ($675 per quarter to register, not including books)

That�s $22.73, $113.65 for a 5-day work week, not including all the overhead costs. And all of that was just Monday. Tuesday had pre-school in it, pick-up newspapers for paper route on Wednesday, ta da, ta da, ta da. Now what was left out was the hourly wage for Mommy�s time. Granted Mommy�s time can�t be figured at the dollar per hour rate because no one pays Mommy to go and do all this stuff. However, there is an �opportunity cost� that can be thrown in there instead. Because of staying home with Little Fella, we had to let go of the �opportunity� for me to make $22.86 per hour by working at that high-powered, high-pressure job in the big city. So, knowing that I would have been making $22.86 per hour if I had been working at that high-powered, high-pressured job in the big city makes $22.86 per hour a legal substitute for that �no pay� category. At $22.86 per hour multiplied by 14.75 hours just on Monday equals $336.19, not including the $113.65 for expenses during the week, just a per hour charge for a body to perform all the tasks. I�m certain that Better Half could find someone to do all that for cheaper than $22.86 per hour, but of course that�s just the out-of-bed hours. That doesn�t include the �undercover� work.

By the end of Sunday night, I personally would have cost someone $2,353.33 for one 7-day week (and that�s at 1990 prices!!). And all that doesn�t include the increased usage and overhead costs of the van, the overhead costs of the house that are greater because I�m home so much of the time, etc.

Or the other side trips. Since fifteen years ago, my upkeep and maintenance have reached monumental proportions. Now-a-days, the schedule has changed slightly but the price continues to do just as Little Fella does -- grow!

Current weekday schedule:

Get Little Fella ready for lessons (after the getting-him-up escapade, breakfast, �hurry-up-and-brush-your-teeth-we�re-gonna-be-late-getting- started, get-in-the-car-we�re-gonna-be-late-getting-to-resource, I�m-gonna-start-making-you-ride-your-bike-so-I-won�t-have-to-go-through-this-rush-rush-rush-crap-everyday� diatribe). Stay at the resource center to work in a classroom, explaining how to write an essay.

Hit Dunkin� Donuts on the way home.

Wash 3 loads of laundry while vacuuming Great Room, Stairs, and Hallway.

Put supper in crockpot on HIGH.

Clean up puppy poop on clean hallway carpet.

Collate, stamp and label 6 packages to go to customers.

Fold 3 loads of laundry with both toy poodles in my folding space on the bed (I am so fortunate to have my own devoted fan club, precious little wads of silver and white rug yarn on four legs that won�t let me go potty without them; putting laundry away is for the other birds in the house).

Contact 2 magazines (27 minutes and 22 minutes each, long-g-g distance).

As Assistant Scoutmaster for my son�s Boy Scout Troop, contact 3 Patrol Advisors to be assured that plans for the weekend camp-out are in gear; can I help them in anyway? God, I hope not!! But I�ve taught them properly and they delegate well!!

Drop off packages to customers at Post Office then pick up dry cleaning.

Do Taco Bell (late lunch) on the way to...

Pick up Little Fella at resource center.

Fill up car with gas (Little Fella must have a snack while there; the automatic car wash provides some minimal entertainment).

Drive to Wal-Mart for necessities of life (a trip to Wal-Mart 2-3 times per week is required by law in the Bible somewhere, isn�t it?).

Drive home and start homework, a 3-hour battle for a 20 minute job.

Fix supper out of the crockpot (forgot to turn it down from �HIGH� where I started it; have to salvage the results into a �stew�).

Greet Better Half at the door and pull the puppies off him; toy poodles looooove anyone who comes into the house even for a minute or a third entrance in 2 hours.

Serve salvaged supper to unappreciative audience; Better Half would eat almost anything, except turnip greens; Little Fella doesn�t appreciate �Hotdog-less� meals.

Clean up falls to Daddy tonight, while Mom continues in the general�s role in the homework battle.

Lay out the dress-up clothes for Little Fella to wear tomorrow as he takes a field trip to visit the Governor�s Mansion (I can�t chaperone �cause I must deliver newspapers and BOY! am I jealous).

Little Fella wants a game of field hockey with his favorite playmate, Daddy, on the concrete driveway.

Nurse Mom cleans and pre-medicates the scraped knee and elbow.

Psychiatrist Mom must re-re-re-instill self confidence after the �I�ll never play hockey again! I�m just no good! I can�t do anything right!� tirade.

Marshal the Bath Battle, then re-medicate the hockey wounds.

Listen to a bedtime story being read as part of the �read 20 minutes a day� assignment from the paid teacher at resource center.

Turn off �Terminator 2� after Little Fella departs for the Land of Nod, during which Mommy catnapped (they don�t have any more shows on there that I haven�t seen, but on the other hand, there aren�t any prime-time network T.V. shows, regardless of quality, that I have seen in the last 10 years. I get to watch Seinfeld, L.A. Law, E.R., JAG, NYPD, Cheers, etc. in my next life, if they are still in syndication).

Try to finish that article I started yesterday, while trying not to fall asleep.

Soothe Daddy�s hurt feelings about not owning his own business (corporate environment is �owning� him).

Set the clock for 5:30 A.M. arising.

Come to think of it, getting paid only $336.19 (we non-persons don�t get wage increases) for doing all that isn�t enough, let alone the overhead on the body (walking around the block and 20 minutes a day, three times a week on the Power Rider for exercise, cost of life insurance [to insure that I can be replaced if my warranty expires before my work is done], food, blue jeans [Thank God, no more heels and hose!!], trips to Taco Bell and Dunkin� Donuts, etc.). Maybe I can get someone to start paying me for doing all those trips for them, too, then my trips would be cost (or expense) free.

Oh, by the way, one Mom and wife (or stay-at-home DAD and husband!) at $336.19 (even without the cost of living increases) per day for over fifteen years (at 1990 prices) comes to...., are you ready?.... $1,014,384.10!!

Got enough insurance to cover your family if you met your rewards on the way home from the grocery store? Usually the winning lottery ticket should cover the tab, but mine must have gotten lost in the mail. Maybe reconsideration of how much the stay-at-home Moms and Dads of the world are worth is in order. Not just in financial terms, but in terms we can�t measure with a dollar sign.

Looks like I really am worth more alive than dead!

Reality Check

Thu, 10 Nov 2005 01:37:00 -0600

I have just been handed a check that I�m not sure I want to cash. In the amount space it reads �Reality.�

The other day, I took a couple of hours out of the middle of the day to take my now grown Baby Girl out to lunch. By the end of your first full week on your first job after college graduation, sometimes you need a break from so much learning all over again. I had visions of taking her to Houston�s or Dailey�s or even Hard Rock (in downtown Atlanta). After being introduced to her new boss and a few co-workers, reality sets in. She doesn�t have time to spend 2 hours getting in and out of any of the better, nicer or more exciting places for lunch. The Varsity (the original grease pit for fast food) will have to do.

Now don�t get me wrong, I sometimes require my grease job, too. We took Baby Girl to the Varsity every single time that we took her to see a play or show in downtown or midtown Atlanta. Go backstage and meet Sandy Duncan, then you go to the Varsity (at 11:30 P.M.). Go backstage and meet Barbara Eden, you go to the Varsity (regardless of the time). When I worked at BellSouth Center, someone came around every Friday and scooped up bodies for the block and a half trek to the Varsity. I went once a month whether I needed cleaning out or not.

The Varsity is a prerequisite to graduation from North Avenue Trade School (Georgia Tech). When I took Little Fella out of school to witness our World Famous World Champion Atlanta Braves in parade in 1995, even at 10:00 A.M., it was required that we stop at the Varsity on our way to the parade route. Some institutions just don�t have to be written in stone to be followed.

But I really had a little less reality in mind when I went to take Baby Girl to lunch. We had a truly delightful lunch, flavored by too many onion rings, french fries and chili dogs. Beloved humorist Lewis Grizzard would have been proud of us. And I can still smell the exhaust of that reality, days later!

The rest of my reality check for that day came after I took her back to work and got back in my car. During the short drive around downtown near Five Points, I came back down to Earth.

The old black man crossed the street slowly in front of me while I stopped at the light. Slumped shoulders, lower jaw hanging down, shabby coat, all classic symptoms of a solitary member of a downtrodden group, down on his luck, tired of his lot in life. Until I noticed the socks. He had his white athletic socks pulled up over the outside of his pants legs to help seal out the cold wind. The yellow stripes in the middle around the top matched, but the orange stripes on one and the blue stripes on the other didn�t. Homeless. Reality? No. The reality of it was that 2 - 3 out of the 37 people that crossed at the light were probably also homeless. Now that�s reality.

As I cruised the streets for a short while, I was privy to other realities. Georgia State University students have to cross major intersections to go get something to eat other than cafeteria food. Two out of every five fast food places are of foreign extraction, not just serving foreign food, but owned by immigrants. The traffic animal stops for no one, let alone jay-walkers. Wind whipping between skyscrapers travels at 73 � miles per hour. Olympic Park is empty. There are no police officers on every other corner anymore, but there are still hippies, now called loafers, there. The Georgia State Police Department has beautiful light fixtures framing its entrance, the old fashioned kind like in those old police movies filmed in New York City. Children still skip school to wander around downtown.

I mused these realities on the way back to my insulated life in suburbia, in my foreign car, to my mortgaged home, where my protected family sleeps, in clothing that fits, after they�ve eaten freshly cooked food, and taken nice hot showers. Sometimes it�s good to witness first-hand a different reality. It helps me appreciate mine more.

But I will still accept checks in the �reality� amount of $1.2 million. The name is spelled J-O-H-N-N-I-E L-E-W-I-S.

College and Calories

Sat, 29 Oct 2005 23:55:00 -0500

I�ve just about had all my tight blue jeans can stand of gaining weight.

For a while, I gained 5 pounds a year after I turned 33 and started back to college for the fourth time. I worked 60 hours a week and went to college full-time at night. The weight gain was caused by eating a dozen lemon-filled doughnuts and drinking three cups of coffee each night while sitting still and studying. The doughnuts were to keep the coffee from burning a hole in my stomach. The coffee was to prevent severe damage to my forehead as it careened into the kitchen table while I sat and absorbed those 3� thick textbooks that contained all the information known to man since before he found fig leaves. Osmosis of the written words through my skull was the best method of absorption. Sleep stupor can rationalize anything.

While I captured the sheep-skin, my family learned how to out-maneuver each other. Fortunately, Baby Girl was 8 and able to take care of herself and keep her daddy�s tie straight and his colors matched. It was a good education for both of them. �Daddy, Mama would skin you alive if she even THOUGHT you were going outside in that purple plaid shirt with those red striped pants.�

�It�d serve her right for not putting matching numbers on the labels so I�d know what went with what,� he would benignly reply. �Besides, I was just taking the trash out, Miss Smarty-pants.�

�That�s your briefcase in your hand, Dad.�

She still uses that cleverly cultivated capability, of being able to make the stronger sex see how incapable they are at accomplishing certain tasks. I called her husband one day to ask about our collective plans for the weekend. He promptly replied, �Wait a minute, my social director is still in the bathroom. I�ll have her call you.� I was so impressed that he�d learned to pass the buck after only five years of marriage, but he resigned. �Shoot, I learned when we were still in college how to manage time more efficiently. I just give up, give in, and ask her where we are supposed to be and how she wants me to dress. Saves time, saves energy and saves changing clothes before we go out.�

Another foray into higher education began when Little Fella was only three. Corporate downsizing offered the �learn a new trade� alternative to the daily traffic battle. That alternative became a teaching certificate. I�ve been a teacher since I was 15 months old and Brother #1 was born. Someone had to teach each underling who was in charge. So who was better qualified to �learn� them than a born teacher?

This time I learned quickly. Start with a larger size pair of blue jeans instead of migrating at a latter date. Acceptance, early on, is a virtue. Unfortunately, my body and this accumulated adipose tissue have become such good friends that it�s hard to part with this unwanted load.

Maybe I should just have a bagel and a PhD.

I've Been on a Chair Trip!

Wed, 12 Oct 2005 22:58:00 -0500

I've just returned from the most fascinating trip around the world that I've ever taken! My Better Half was in the U.S. Army for a few years, so we traveled a little around northern Europe and the UK when he was stationed in Germany. That made me think I was "worldly" and knew about other places. But not much has thrilled me as much as seeing the places I saw tonight in a few hours!

My son found a site that I'd heard him talk about, but I hadn't taken the time to view with him. It's a 3-dimensional view of the world. Just pick the spot you want to visit. Finally did and BOY! what a trip. These are satellite images that get more or less clear enough to tell which house is yours on your street (the more rural your location, the less clear the images; city locations are pretty clear). Go to www.GoogleEarth.com and download the file. It will take a few minutes and you will need quite a bit of room on your computer. But if you have the space and the time, take the trip. YOU WON'T REGRET IT!

First, look up your own house. All trips should be started from your own front door. Go by your local schools on your way to the nearest large airport where you begin your trip. Even airports are fascinating from the air! We viewed Buckingham Palace, near Trafalgar Square and Nelson's Column. But almost missed Scotland Yard and #10 Downing Street nearby. Then plug in "Shakespeare's Birthplace" and you are whisked, virtually, across the countryside to Stratford upon Avon. I didn't get to Scotland or Ireland or Wales tonight, but I'll be visiting them soon!

Next, check out Red Square in Moscow and The Great Wall of China. When you can't find these places, either get out your Atlas or look them up on http://www.atlapedia.com. Those are great references. If you input the right characteristics that you'd like to see, you can see the crevices in the bottom of the Atlantic as you cross back to see New York City. Even Ground Zero is there on Manhattan Island. And Central Park. And Kennedy International Airport. And St. Vincent's Hospital that my son does billing for, part time, after school. And, and, and...

A couple of years ago I was invited to present a Five Finger Paragraph workshop to 75 teachers at a Title I Dissemination Project Conference in Hyannis, MA. Took my son along to use as a guinea pig for the teachers. When we weren't presenting, we traveled around the area, spectulating where the Kennedy Compound might be located. We were turned around at the entrance. But I saw the entire compound from the air tonight, so I finally got my visit!

The Grand Canyon is just that -- Grand!! And Disney World from an aerial or 3-D view is almost as fascinating as being there. Check out New Orleans, before it was almost washed away. Bourbon Street is still there. These are pictures from a Spring time period in the recent past, 'cause the dogwood tree was in bloom in the picture of our house!

On our next trip, I think we'll visit the Andes, New Zealand, and Taiwan, on our way back to Wales! This is one of the most educational resources I've come across in years. Not only was it entertaining, but the navigational skills learned and the sense of direction gained (and history and demographics through Atlapedia) are well worth the time and hard drive space it will cost you to take the trip! Have fun while you learn!

"Dizzywhompus"

Sun, 25 Sep 2005 22:25:00 -0500

Modern Technology is advancing so quickly these days that I'm afraid I'll be outmoded before I get home That little saying, "the hurrier I go, the behinder I get" truly describes the aging process once you reacy thirty.

There�s no excuse for not being able to see well anymore, short of a busted eyeball. Lasik surgeries are performed in the doctor�s office now and you�re only out of commission for a few years that day.

My Better Half had cancer (melanoma) and has to have checkups every six months for the next twenty years. The checkup involves donation of about an acre of blood and X-rays. The nurses draw the blood, slap some on a slide and stick it into a computer, which READS THE BLOOD to determine whether or not there are any cancerous cells present. Even 10 years ago, the tests results would have taken at least two days. Now we can figure out before we leave the office at which restaurant we want to celebrate the �still cancer free� diagnosis!

Ten years ago, I played phone tag with secretaries. Now, I play voice mail tag. Not as personal, but I don�t get caught up in asking how the secretary�s pet is doing or when the next child is going to graduate, �cause I usually don�t talk to her. I�ll have to finish each of those live soap operas in my next life.

In cold weather you layer clothing instead of wearing that huge coat. Even layering doesn�t work when you live in Montana. For one of our last trips to the great outdoors, we found a new gimmick on the market, called �hand-warmers.� They are bags of chemical compounds, which when mixed together (massage the bags to mix the contents together), the contents become �warm� to the touch. Poke one of these �warmers� into your pockets with your hands and stay warmer than you had been. I placed one in each back pants pocket and presto! Warm buns! Same technique that grandma used back in the old days. She�d heat a brick in the fireplace, wrap it in a towel and place it at the foot of the bed under the cold covers. When you climbed into bed, toasty tootsies. The only difference is that you can�t find a grandma around when you need one, so these little bags of chemicals partially take the place.

The greatest insult to my intelligence and wallet comes from X-Box and Playstation in the forms of those video game pieces of junk. We now have $3 gazillion dollars worth of video equipment that, admittedly, is the latest thing in terms of video game-dom with three-dimensional characters and cars, but includes the premium prices in terms of it�s-new-it-just-came-out-let�s-charge-top-dollar-for-the-novelty-of-the-stuff. I would have preferred waiting until the prices came down below the platinum-priced ceiling.

Ten years ago a Compaq Presario with 486, 55 MHZ, 8mb RAM, 500 MB Hard Drive, 8X CD-ROM, etc., all the bells and whistles, cost only $1300. Technological advancements have leap-frogged so quickly over my ailing purse, that this brilliant computer system for which we paid so much and bally-hooed over for so long, is only good as a boat anchor. Now you can get a bigger, better, more whiz-bang computer system with a Pentium IV processor, 100 Gigabyte Hard Drive, 526mb RAM, 1.0GHz, etc. for $100 less than what we paid for the whizbang stuff. And that�s for a name brand system, not one put together by Joe Bloe�s Antique Collectibles and Computer Ranch Emporium. I�m sick.

Better Half has come up with the exact term to describe how we feel. He said �Dizzywhompus� just about covers it.

He�s right. I feel �dizzywhompus"-ed.

Mammy

Thu, 15 Sep 2005 16:14:00 -0500

My maternal grandmother died just after I turned 18 and had gone off to college. I still miss her.

Mammy was the greatest grandmother a kid could have. It didn�t matter which one of her fifteen grandchildren you were or when she saw her, �cause when you were with her, you were the most important person in the world, and the only grandchild that ever existed.

Mammy was rich. She had a change purse that she always kept in her apron pocket and it was always full of money. It may not have been more than five dollars, including coins and bills, but to a kid she was loaded.

Mammy was child-full and fat. Not just pleasantly plump, but fat. She was about 5'5" but weighed about 260 pounds. At least she was smaller than two of her three younger sisters. Aunt Gladys dressed out at 410, but Aunt Nell only weighed 300. So my Mammy was the lightweight. Mammy had these titties that hung down to her waist. Each of her nine children must have been well fed. I guess after nine kids, any woman has a right to weigh 260 pounds. Aunts Gladys and Nell didn�t have that excuse. They were childless and fat. Mammy was child-full.

Mammy made the best quilts I�ve ever seen. They weren�t these fancy-schmancy things that you find for $200-$400 at bazaars and craft shows. They were made with love, not design, in mind. My favorite has the little strips of cloth from every dress she made for my mother or me during one three-month visit with us. The one with baby blue stripes was the dress Mama was wearing when she told me she was pregnant with Brother #3. I kept looking at the front of that skinny sheath and wondering where the baby was gonna go. Then there was the burnished gold strip from the dress Mama made for me before I spilled a whole bowl of cereal on the skirt. The cereal didn�t matter, but the milk did. It stained. Mama had to sew a whole new skirt on that sucker.

Mammy�s teeth were cool. Most of the time, they lived in a glass beside the bed. One day, Brothers # 1 & 2 flipped to see who would try them on. An hour after breakfast, No. 2 brother was found crying, under Mama�s bed with Mammy�s bottom falsies wedged into his five-year-old mouth.

Mammy would give one of us a hand full of change, a six-pack carton of empty soft-drink bottles and the order to �go to the store and get me a six-pack of Pepsis. They�ll help settle my stomach. Oh, and get yourself a drink, too.� Mine was always NEHI Grape. Brother #1�s was always NEHI Orange. Brother #2 was too little to go to the store by himself, so his was always a begged swallow at the bottom of a grape or orange.

We thought Mammy was nuts to want to �settle her stomach� with one of those awful black drinks. But all of our assurances of imbibing one of the syrupy �fruit� flavored ones never conned her. I was twenty-five before I recalled Mammy�s prediction that only Pepsi would help settle her stomach. After one too many slices of left-over parlor pizza, I suggested that we get us a Pepsi to �settle our stomachs.� It only took twenty minutes to realize that the Pepsi did the job quite well. Since �pep� is a Latin derivative dealing with one of our internal organs, is that the reason the stuff was named �Pepsi� to begin with? Mammy was smarter than her elementary education ever gave her credit for.

I wounded Mammy unintentionally when I went to Tennessee to live with my aunt. It was near Mammy�s house, but I would never spend the night at Mammy�s house. I�d stay all day and play with the pigs, the chickens, jumping out of the hayloft, slipping through the chicken yard to the �outhouse,� running all over the farm and in general, having a blast, but when it got dark, I insisted on going �home� to Aunt Betty�s house. I loved my Mammy deeply, and I would sleep with her any time, anywhere else, but not at her house.

It wasn�t until I was about eight that I admitted that the only reason that I wouldn�t spend the night at Mammy�s because there was no bathroom inside the house. I probably hadn�t had to use the bathroom in the middle of the night since diaper days, but I was deathly afraid that I would have to potty in the middle of the night. Which meant a trip through the chicken yard to the outhouse. Having to do that during the day was enough of a stretch for a little kid, but that out-house was at the edge of my nightmares during the night. I think I would have tinkled in my pants rather than go to the outhouse at night. Even with the flashlight Mammy gave me. Even with offers of more NEHI Grapes. Even for a whole one of Aunt Mat�s egg custard pies lusciously cooked in her wood-burning stove. To go to the outhouse during the night would have meant going through Jericho�s domain.

Jericho was Mammy�s rooster. Although I could run past him quickly enough during the day, to try and miss the little piles of chicken poop on the wooden planks that led to the outhouse in the dark would have been little kid suicide. I could vividly imagine slipping on the poop, plopping on the planks and passing out as Jericho did a tap dance on my pate. Never occurred to me that chickens always went to roost at night and Jericho would be unavailable to join in my nightmare. Didn�t matter, it was vivid enough without him.

When I admitted my fears to Mammy, she chuckled from the bottom of her fat apron and confided, �I�ve got a chamber pot that can solve that problem.� A chamber pot, for those uninitiated to the finer points of camping out in the house, is a large pot, usually ceramic or porcelainized metal, with a lid and handles, in which one deposits bodily excretions and excrements when one is indisposed to travel great distances to a facility designed for such ablutions. In other words, a potty away from the potty.

If you would eat real food, not this pretend crap that comes in cans or boxes or out of the freezer these days, you never went hungry at Mammy�s house. She started lunch before breakfast, when she put on a huge pot of navy beans each morning. Didn�t matter what else there was for dinner, navy beans were on the menu. That was a holdover from when Granddaddy was alive and wanted, neh, required navy beans on the table three times a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. Anyway, pick the meat and she usually had it and a dozen or so bowls full of stuff on the table. If it wasn�t eaten for lunch, she spread a tablecloth over it, (I thought to keep the food warm, but really to keep the flies out), and you had it for supper.

The only unkind word I ever heard pass from Mammy�s lips had something to do with Tennessee Ernie Ford. Don�t know �til now what that word was, but one day when his show was on, she came in and turned the channel, because she didn�t want to hear him. Said something about his character and more than one wife. Since divorce was not in my realm of experience at that time, I never quite caught on to what she was talking about. I just knew that his voice ranked up there even with Jesus� and just behind Perry Como�s.

That�s not to say Mammy never said an unkind word. Mammy had her prejudices as we all do, but they were not against people of color or a different nationality than her. Mammy�s were against her friends and relatives that lived differently than her and (she felt) looked down their noses at her. But Mammy was smart enough to never let her grandchildren hear the comments that her children had heard numerous times. We all thought Mammy was God�s gift to kid-dom.

My favorite memories of Mammy include... Well, let�s leave that for another time. She was too much woman, literally, to confine to limited space.

Maybe that�s why I still miss her.

Maybe that's why I assumed the name "Mammy" for my grandson to call me. Hope I can live up to the title.

"On The Air"

Wed, 24 Aug 2005 20:21:00 -0500

Have you ever tried to tell your life's story in under 4 minutes? I have, and believe me, it wasn't a pretty sight!

On August 24th, I was interviewed by Good Day Atlanta Host Mark Hayes, live and on the air on Fox 5 in Atlanta at 7:10 in the morning. The focus of conversation was, obviously, The Five Finger Paragraph. My focus was to stay in my seat and try to keep my hands in my "frame" because they warned me that "the cameras can't hit a moving target." I've never been known to be a wall flower. When I was growing up at home with four younger brothers, he (or she -- me) who was seen and heard first, got to eat first. If you shrank into the background, you probably got left out! So, needless to say, I was not a shrinking violet!

I teach The Five Finger Paragraph to groups of kids, parents, and teachers, sometimes all together, and my job during those events is to move constantly to grab the attention of the little people in the audience and to hold the attention of the adults. I'm consistently moving back and forth across the stage area, tripping over mike wires, and writing on charts. I'm always embellishing and elaborating on something to get the point across. Fox 5 wanted to curtail that "entertainment" factor.

Mark Hayes is a giant, at least 6'3" and I'm about 4x4. It was obvious to the producers how dwarfed I would be if he stood up, so we sat. My hands and mouth and eyebrows and head were in constant motion as I demonstrated, succinctly, the finer points of paragraph-dom.

I realize that the purpose of the interview was to pique interest in the topic just a little bit, then throw up the web address and throw me out of there. That's why they were only allowing 4 minutes to my "spot." But try to answer questions like "How did you come up with the original idea?" and "What advantage is there to all of the colors on the hand?" and "What..." and "What..." All you end up with is a lot of one-sentence answers to the host's questions, not a lot of information is imparted, and you feel, as the BackStreet Boys song goes, INCOMPLETE!

I get to do it again on August 30th at a small cable station in south Georgia, but this time I'll get a whole 15 minutes! Won't that be a luxury!

I think I like talking to people, not cameras, a lot better. People usually don't "click a snapshot" and run. They stay for the whole movie.....

Keep Your Mouth Shut!

Fri, 12 Aug 2005 01:26:00 -0500

I�ve heard of some kids not being able to keep their mouths shut, but this one beats all! Even the orthodontist said he�d never seen it.

Trevor was away from home and the lady called and fairly screamed, �Come pick up your son. His mouth is stuck open!� My questioning did no good, �cause the lady had never seen such an occurrence and didn�t know what to do except to give him a bag of ice for the pain.

Last May, Trevor finally got braces (at 16 �). But, in anticipation of the braces, his upper jaw (the hard palate in his mouth) had to be separated (broken) to widen his mouth to accommodate all the teeth he had coming in. That done, the braces went on. Last week, the braces came off. Yesterday, he yawned too wide (is that possible?!?) while leaning his chin on both hands. With the adverse pressure, his jaw popped out of the socket on the right!

The panic call from the woman led us to chasing around for an hour trying to find a doctor who wasn�t out to lunch! Bad move. The poor boy had his mouth opened wide for over an hour and a half. After consulting nurses in several offices and determining that their doctor wouldn�t be able to help either (remember, I�m a Mom, talking on a cell phone while driving around, with a child in pain), I made the executive decision to head for the emergency room. The sounds coming from the passenger seat sounded a lot like Lamaze labor moans. As the sounds crescendo-ed and I drove faster, Trevor gave one last shriek and grabbed his jaw. Suddenly, the jaw �popped� and it slid back into place.

I slowed down to the speed limit, looked over at him and said, �So. That�s it ?!?� He replied, �I need pizza.�

The orthodontist that I had originally called gave an explanation fit for a second year medical school class, but I gleaned enough for a good at-home science lesson. The upper jaw expansion was a contributing factor. The top point of the mandible (lower jaw) fits into a sliding socket, not a closed socket like your shoulder or hip, to allow movement of the jaw during chewing. The protuberance in the front of the socket (part of the upper jaw) varies in length and that�s why there�s the possibility of the jaw �popping,� even out of place. Trevor�s protuberance was not only too short, but out of sync with the width of the lower jaw. Hence, the popping out and staying out of place!

Think again before you tell someone to keep his mouth shut. He may actually not be able to!