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Here’s a taste of the big bell we used last year. It was hard to get a picture because Amigo was too excited to stop ringing, but La Petite managed to take these.
We are off tonight for our local small-town style Christmas parade. Amigo is “riding” with the school district’s float. To me, this is when the holiday season truly begins. Now if only we had snow, I’d really feel like Christmas.
>A few years ago I asked Amigo if he would be interested in sharing a shift with me to ring a Salvation Army bell. He said yes, and loved it. We’ve been “ringing” ever since. Yesterday we went to their web site to register. I chose two locations close to us, one indoors and one out, and then listed the available shifts. I printed those in Braille, and then we talked it over. We’ll be ringing at a nearby grocery store on Friday in the late afternoon.
Last year it was a cold, long-underwear day when we did our shift. We kept taking breaks to go into the heated bathroom. But the most interesting part of the shift was the bell. One of our bells was broken when we got there, so I let the cute and enthusiastic one (Amigo) do the ringing. Then a Salvation Army person stopped by to switch buckets with us (our full for his empty) and I asked him if he could fix the bell. He took the broken bell with him and gave us a replacement — about twice the size of the other. Well, you guessed it, I got the small one and Amigo rang in the donations with the new and improved model. We had a great time, and the bucket filled steadily with coins and dollar bills.
It’s great to see my child thinking of others. I really like that he can channel his outgoing and friendly personality toward making a difference. We’ll be between the doors of a supermarket on Friday (no longjohns needed), and I hope we can encourage people to donate, too.
>You might be a Green Bay Packer fan — if your Cheesehead doesn’t hide in a closet, but shares an honored space on the piano with the music.
>We are hosting Thanksgiving this year. To be prepared, Husband wrote up the entire menu and noted who would be responsible for each dish. We printed this in Braille for Amigo to review it, and then we took inventory.
We found a few surprises. We own enough serving dishes to put everything on the buffet table. We have barely enough silverwear, though, and dinner plates and dessert plates are a little short. To rectify this, we headed to the nearby outlet mall, only to find that the Pfaltzgraf outlet had closed up and moved some time ago. It moved to a location on the route to La Petite’s college, so we know we’ll get there eventually, but we need to wing it on Thursday.
Husband went out to the French place (Tar-jay) to replenish our flatware and get a few glasses that don’t say Bacardi or Packers on them. So what’s wrong with Packer glasses, I ask? Isn’t Brett Favre someone to be thankful for? But I digress — here’s the menu, and the plan. You’ll have to imagine the snooty restauranteur accent while you read.
2006 Thanksgiving Menu at Chez OK
Appetizers:
Fresh Veggies with Dip — Her Mom and Stepdad
Fresh Fruit pieces — Brother & Sis-in-Law
Pickles & Olives — Husband & Amigo
Harvest Carrot Soup — Husband
Main Course:
Turkey with Stuffing — Daisy
Sides:
Old Fashioned Plain Mashed Potatoes — Husband
Root Mash (Mmmm) — Husband
Gravy — Daisy
Packer Veggies (Corn & Peas) — Daisy & Amigo
1-2-3 Cranberry Sauce — Amigo
Cranberry Jell-O — Her Mom
Pumpkin & Cranberry Breads — Her Mom
Dinner Rolls — His Mom & Dad
Desserts:
Pumpkin Pie with Whipped Topping — Brother & Sis-in-Law
Apple Pie — His Mom & Dad
Mince Meat Pie (maybe) — Her Mom & Stepdad
Beverages:
Wines, as chosen by your Sommeliers, Brother & Husband
Apple Cider — Husband
Soda (Various) — already stocked
Milk — already stocked
Water — Bunnies (They have to have a chore, too!)
Coffee, Regular and Decaf — Daisy
Some beverages will be in a cooler with ice to free up space in the refrigerator
Menu subject to change.
Her Mom & Stepdad will bring some small paper plates for use with appetizers.
Her Mom & Stepdad will bring some folding chairs.
His Mom & Dad will bring a folding long table with tablecloth to use as a buffet table.
La Petite will pitch in somehow.
Are we ready? I think so. Turkey Day? Bring it on!!!
>I don’t get out much. Really. It’s not a complaint, it’s just a fact. When I do get out, I enjoy and appreciate every minute of it. On the rare occasion that I get to see a Broadway touring show, I like to remember it. A souvenir mug makes more sense to me than a t-shirt or photo album.
I use the Phantom of the Opera mug at school, where I wash it by hand rather than in the dishwasher. Rumor has it that heat-sensitive mugs like this last longer that way. You see, when I add hot liquid to the mug (who am I kidding — coffee, of course), the trademark Phantom mask appears. Until then, the mug seems to be mostly black.
In fact, one cold and dreary day I walked into the teacher’s lounge to see our building engineer staring in horror at the black mug he had filled with coffee as a spooky white mask appeared in front of him. Yes, it was his first cup of the day, and yes, he was still half asleep when he picked it off of the rack. I burst out laughing and he just shook his head and admitted that he really, really needed to get more sleep. And in case you’re wondering, yes, he washed it out for me afterward, and no, I wasn’t upset.
There are a few shows I’ve seen for which I did not buy mugs: Oklahoma (classic, fun), and Wicked (wow!) to name two. I’d love to add those to my collection. And if I am lucky enough to get tickets to The Lion King, coming next spring to our town, I will definitely look for a mug.
In the meantime, I’ll drink my morning cup o’ joe from a mug with a story and a song behind it.
>Yesterday I came home from my conference in Mad-town to find Husband with a fresh haircut. I was so jealous! I’ve been way overdue for a cut, not just a trim — so much so that I couldn’t see through my bangs any more. They were hanging down to the tip of my nose.
He greeted me with a big grin and said, “You’re going in at 5:00.” Oh, what a sweetheart! He made an appointment for me. How thoughtful.
Then he followed up with: “You’re getting a cut, color, and massage.” Before I regained the power of speech he added, “And it’s all paid for already. Enjoy.”
Yes, he was grinning wildly.
Yes, it was awesome.
And yes, every stylist in the salon was envious.
And they darn well should be! (Deep, heavy sigh, big smile)
Love Thursday was created by Karen at chookaloonks.
>I attended a professional conference in Madison today with our school counselor. She and I work together to train and supervise our peer mediators, so when the opportunity came up to learn more, we jumped at it. Or, I should say, we drove ourselves to it.
If you don’t know Wisconsin’s fair capital city, let me describe it for you. It is part government, part commerce, and a large part university. It’s located on and between a couple of lovely lakes and at least one smaller waterway, so the roads are not exactly on a square grid. Our conference was at a hotel/conference center almost smack dab in the middle between the University and the Capitol building, on the isthmus between the two main lakes. This meant it was easy to find (Thanks, MapQuest), but a little tough to get to. Why the disparity? One way streets.
We pulled up to a parallel parking spot, plugged the meter, and planned to come back and move the vehicle after our hour was up. We went in, registered, and enjoyed the opening presentation. My colleague slipped out of our first breakout session to move her minivan — and didn’t come back.
Forty minutes later, she came in, breathless and looking frazzled. During our break, she told me that she’d gotten disoriented (okay, lost) on the one way streets. She could see the hotel, but couldn’t get to the main parking garage entrance. During her ordeal, she started down a one-way street the wrong way, ran a red light, endured many impatient horn honkin’ drivers, and narrowly avoided getting ticketed. Finally, safe in the underground garage, she had to back up because her minivan only fit in one section. The other had a low ceiling proclaiming in large red letters “No Trucks or Vans Beyond This Point.” She decided not to take a chance with her Grand Caravan.
The conference was good; we got some new ideas and were reassured that we are doing well in our training methods. We left shortly after lunch to (gulp) brave the one-way streets and go home.
My limited knowledge of the city combined with the compass in her minivan helped us go in the right direction. By keeping the capitol dome on our right, we confirmed that we were heading toward the highway we wanted. But when we left the center of town, it was a little tougher. I think she will forever tease me about the way I kept giving her two choices: “Well, my gut feeling is this, but we could also do that.” And “I think we’re paralleling the road we came in on, and eventually we’ll make a right and get there. Or maybe we’ll go straight and this street will curve to meet it.” “There’s a McDonald’s. We can’t be too far from civilization as we know it.” Sure enough, the road curved to the right, landing at the intersection with the McDonald’s that brought us to our destination: the road out of town. (The intersection took us out of town; the McD’s only provided us with sustenance for the journey.)
The rest of the trip was uneventful, thank goodness. I came home to hug Husband, Amigo, and the bunnies, and then get a haircut, color, and massage. But that, my blogosphere friends, is another story.
>There are too many things on my mind tonight for a coherent post. Or maybe not. I’m off to a conference tomorrow in a neighboring big city, and I spent a great portion of my day preparing plans for the substitute teacher who will teach my class tomorrow. We had a staff meeting after school with some pretty heavy issues to deal with. After supper and after helping Amigo with homework, I corrected four — count ’em, 4! — stacks of papers to be added to my gradebook when I get back on Thursday. If my sub corrects the work that’s done tomorrow, I’ll only have a few things to score on Thursday night. If she doesn’t, well, I’ll pour some apple cider for my sore throat and settle myself in for a long haul. I’m overdue for a doctor’s appointment and overdue for a haircut, too.
One of my dearest friends, a wonderful woman who had a mastectomy about 18 months ago, is undergoing more reconstructive surgery tomorrow. I promised her I’d wear pink and send positive thought waves in her general direction while I’m at the conference. What else can a person do? She’ll be in surgery for a minimum of five hours, spend a little while in recovery, and then go right home. Don’t even get me started on the injustice of the drive-through surgical center mentality.
This is someone, however, with an amazing amount of resilience. She sported a “Bad Boob” sign on her right breast the day after she announced the diagnosis. She sewed scarves in a multitude of colors to match her outfits while she lost her hair from chemo. It was a red-letter day when she realized that she had enough hair to have a Bad Hair Day! She began exercising regularly and walked her first marathon roughly one year after her radiation ended. And through it all, she was always there for the rest of us when we needed someone. She also loaned me the feather boa to wrap around the banana — but that’s another story altogether.
Tomorrow, the doctors are re-doing the reconstruction of her right breast and making the left one reasonably equal in size.
With that in mind, my over-due haircut and my sore throat are small potatoes. Mind spinning? Yes, it still is, but it’ll spin a lot less when I know she’s out of surgery and feeling better.
>In honor of Children’s Book Week, the library- media specialist in my school sets up a trivia contest. She asks two questions on the morning announcements: one for the primary grades, and one for the intermediate. Kids who know or can find the answer go to the library during recess and enter a prize drawing.
Last time she did this, I asked her if teachers could try it. She decided that teachers could do it if they could answer all three daily questions. Yes, she had three at that time — one for Kindergarten/first grade, one for grades 2 and 3, and then an intermediate question for grades 4-5-6. Well, I answered all three the first time I tried it, and won a cool trivia book, Just Curious, Jeeves.
Well, she sent out the student questions in advance, two per day, last week. I had a few minutes, so I answered what I could and sent it back to her. I had 95% right. 95%, I tell you, without looking up a single one! Watch out, Ken Jennings! So she decided to put together a whole new set of challenging questions for teachers.
I hope my co-workers don’t get mad at me for ruining the curve.
Here’s the best part: research is allowed. I can look things up in books, ask my students, and even use the Internet. So here goes: today’s question is “What is author Avi’s real name?” I’ve found at least three answers so far, so she may need to accept a variety of responses.
According to interviews published by reputable sources, Avi’s twin sister gave him the nickname Avi because she couldn’t pronounce his real name. Now the real name?
Avi’s real name is either Avi Wartis, Edward Irving Wortis, or Dghtyto Bvith Bnpht Ingworht Quvopt Jr.
I’ll stick with Daisy, myself.
>You might be a Green Bay Packer fan if:
Here’s the story on this one, modeled by Amigo, age 14.
A few years ago, I was wandering our downtown shops with my brother and his wife, buying a few Christmas presents. Our downtown has mainly small shops, very amenable to browsing, many family-owned and staffed. We saw this t-shirt hanging in the window of a shop that specialized in collectibles and knick-knacks. It was a little out of character for the shop, but it caught our attention.
“Hey, brother, Dad would wear this.”
“Um, but I already bought him a present from the bookstore. So did you.”
“My kids don’t have anything for him yet. They’ll love it.”
“You two need to buy this. Your dad would definitely wear it.”
So we headed into the store, asked for the Cheesehead shirt in a large, and the owner found one and wrapped it up for us. As he did so, he told us a story. Brett Favre and his mother, Bonita, had a new book out (Yes, I own a copy). Bonita had been at the bookstore down the street for an autograph session just a few weeks earlier. One of the fans in line had been wearing a shirt like this. She laughed at the image, said she loved it, and asked where he’d bought it. She then sent a family member down the street to buy a St. Brett shirt for her and one for her sister.
We included a note with the gift telling our Dad that he was in good company, that Brett’s mom and aunt both owned shirts just like his. He was thrilled.
Dad passed away last December. We went through his Packer apparel (he had a lot!) and divided it up between us. Amigo now proudly wears the St. Brett, Patron Saint of Cheeseheads. And when people tell him how cool it is, he responds with a thanks and an acknowledgement that yes, if Mom Favre can wear one, it must be cool.