hm.
September 21, 2010 3:56 pm
(Because I have heard their marketing department has time on their hands.)
responding to comments
May 5, 2010 9:56 pm
tim and jim (hey, that rhymes!)
Our school district has six elementary schools (K-3) that funnel into two middle schools (4-6).
The fourth graders at Otto’s eventual school don’t congregate with the 5th and 6th graders – they’re in their own separate wing of the school, separate lunch time, separate activities. They also stay in the same classroom all day. Moving to different classrooms for different subjects starts in 5th grade.
They then have one junior high (7-8) and one high school (9-12).
OMG IT’S AN UPDATE
May 3, 2010 9:24 am
yeah. Hi!
Tonight is parent orientation for Otto’s middle school.
Middle school? WTF? My kid’s not old enough to be in middle school in September! This is eighty million shades of WRONG. How did we all get so old?
In our district, you only get bussed after third grade if you live more than 1.5 miles from your school. His middle school is 1.1 miles from our house. Sigh. Fortunately there’s only one large street he’ll have to cross, and there’s a dedicated crossing guard there, but still. HE’S STILL A LITTLE KID! I’m sure we’ll be doing some sort of car pooling for at least part of the year.
(looking through the online student handbook) There are a lot of different activities, too – 4th grade band (they’ve already hit us up for getting him an instrument – he wants to play either trombone or trumpet), orchestra, Odyssey of the Mind, other stuff. He has to provide his own lock for his locker. He can ride his bike, if he wants. MP3 players and DSes and the like are not allowed (hooray, the mother thought wearily). He can buy lunch if he wants. After the first week of school, wherever he decides to sit in the cafeteria becomes his permanent spot. I think we may have to buy him safety glasses for gym.
(I just took a look at the monthly newsletter for that school – this past Friday they had a ROLLER SKATING PARTY! It looks like they had to use rental skates, though, to “ensure that our gym floor is not damaged.”)
Let’s see, in other news (yet related to roller skating). Derby is still going well – I am co-captain of the Rotten Chesters, the AWESOMEST HOME TAM EVAR. Our first bout is June 12.
Otto absolutely adores playing baseball and is pretty good at it, too. He and Mr. Whitney are doing an adult/kid bowling league that starts next week. They both did super-awesome in their respective bowling leagues – both of their teams finished first! And together they won the annual adult/kid tournament held by Otto’s league. (And it looks like they will finish first in their division for the City adult/kid tournament.)
sports ‘n stuff
January 28, 2010 9:49 am
I signed Otto up for baseball yesterday. It’s the “everyone plays, we’re not competitive and YAY TEAM EFFORT” town version of it. He’s been wanting to do baseball for a long, long time, so I figured we would comply, if only to get him to stop asking us about it.
There’s a “spring training” thing that runs on Sunday afternoons in March, and then it starts in mid-April, Tuesday/Thursday/Saturday. He won’t be able to do the Saturday ones for the first few, since that’s when he bowls. It runs until the end of June.
It’s weird being the mom who signs her kid up for sports stuff. I was never a sports kid growing up. (That one year I was a cheerleader in 6th grade was a misguided attempt to try and fit in. They didn’t have enough people to cut.) It wasn’t until I was 34 that I found my sports niche.
eep
January 14, 2010 12:14 pm
It’s been a while. Lo siento. I get so into Facebook that I forget there are people out there who may want to know what’s going on in my life.
We won the last bout easily. I got to jam, got lead jammer and scored a buncha points. 5, I think. Maybe 4.
We had Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s and survived all three.
I started working out at a gym at the start of December; I think it’s working.
I am a poor blogger. You may revoke my license.
November 3, 2009 11:23 am
So let’s see.
I had a wedding anniversary. #12. We bought a sofa and a side chair.
I had a birthday. #36. I got gift certificates, with which I bought a very cute but probably overpriced pair of shoes and some fountain pen ink. (Have I mentioned I am on a fountain pen kick now? I have a bunch of Pilot Varsity pens, a Preppy and a Lamy which I adore to the hilt.)
Our last bout of the season is November 14. We’re playing the team that we scrimmaged against in Ithaca at the start of October, hopefully we will be able to repeat our success.
I’m still getting used to the new computer. It’s a Linux machine, which has a learning curve. I have not been able to find a personal finance program that I like yet, so I still use my Mac for Quicken. (And then there’s the whole saga of moving my music files from the Mac to the Linux machine, and the converting of eleventy billion AAC files to MP3 and I NEVER WANT TO HAVE TO DO THAT AGAIN AND I’M STILL NOT DONE YET. Then there’s the whole thing that I can ACTUALLY WATCH YOU TUBE videos. I’m still not used to that yet. I’ll be on a website and someone will post a link to a video, and my kneejerk reaction is still “Oh, I can’t watch that” BUT YES I CAN. YES I CAN!
Hm, what else. We’re nominating officers for next year’s board of directors of the league, and guess who was the only nominee for Treasurer? I can’t figure out if it’s because people think I’m good at it or because I’m the only one crazy/stupid enough to do it. Ah well.
Otto’s school pictures came in last week; they turned out really nice. He has a nice, genuine smile, there’s no evidence of a bloody nose. The lighting they used made his hair look a lot darker than it actually is.
Otto is scarily into pro football. It’s totally from his classmates; we never EVER watched it at home before, but now all we hear about is how the Patriots and the Saints are AWESOME and every Sunday the TV is turned to Fox or CBS or both. He wanted to be a football player for Halloween but I couldn’t find a costume for it. I explained this to him, and he said, in passing, “Well, maybe I could be a Swiss Army Knife.”
So Mr. Whitney made the most awesomest Swiss Army Knife costume EVAR and people were giving him extra candy when he went Trick or Treating because his costume was so cool and original.
He’s bowling again, and doing really well. His average after only two or three weeks is about ten pins higher than it was last season, and he constantly bowls above that. This past Saturday, Mr. Whitney told him that if he beat his high score (123), Mr. Whitney would buy him a new bowling ball.
First game? Kid bowls a 129.
We went bowling yesterday so he could try his new ball out; he did pretty well. I ended up with a 101, a 140-something and a 120-something. My hip is paying for it this morning, though.
yay!
October 12, 2009 12:27 pm
new computer for me! I can actually watch Hulu and youtube and not have it be a series of slowly moving pictures!
We beat Syracuse on Saturday! I HAVE A ROLLER DERBY BOUT WIN UNDER MY BELT. YAY!
I am a lazy slacker.
October 5, 2009 12:20 pm
Okay, here’s the summary of the last few weeks:
Utica: lost, had fun anyway.
Yesterday: scrimmaged against some new girls from Ithaca. Won! I went to the penalty box three times (once while I was lead jammer, which was *hella* annoying). At one point a WHEEL CAME OFF MY SKATE; OOPS. I was skating around and then suddenly my skate started dragging; I was like “WTF? Am I dragging someone along with me?” and then I turn around to see my skate nut, my wheel and one of my bearings in the middle of the track. Yipes.
This Saturday: bouting against Syracuse. Whee!
School seems to be going okay for Otto; he claims he hates it except for science. He’s told us he wants to be either a chemist or a zoologist. He seemed a bit perplexed when I told him he’d also have to do well in math. “What do math and science have to do with each other?” We’ve got our first parent/teacher conference next Wednesday; it should go well.
School pictures were this past Friday; apparently while he was waiting in line to get his picture taken he got a bloody nose. So even though he went to the nurse’s office and got cleaned up, I am imagining his picture looking like the cover of an Andrew W.K. album.
MY BIRTHDAY IS THIS MONTH HOLY CRAP I AM NOT READY TO BE 36.
Saw “Whip It!”, and while it was cute and yay girls and passed the Bechdel test, it wasn’t *quite* what our version of derby is about. (We don’t punch out people, for starters.)
a summary
September 18, 2009 11:37 am
Okay, to sum up:
We lost, spectacularly, in Kitchener. Come to find out that the home team we played up there? At least 9 of their players were on the travel team (the team that came down and beat our A level team). Thanks for letting us know.
We were trailing so much by the second half we decided that anyone who wanted to try jamming was more than welcome to try it. Me, being the attention whore that I am, decided to give it a try.
So what happens? I jam. I get through the pack. I GET LEAD JAMMER. Let me repeat that. I, QUEEN KICKTORIA, #691, GOT LEAD JAMMER. I got two points and called it off before the other jammer got any points. Wahoo!!!
(The second time I jammed was nowhere near as cool. It was like when Maggie Simpson tries to walk – take a few steps, fall down, repeat. There was no lead jammer so we had to go the full two minutes. I thought my heart was going to explode by the time the final whistle blew. I somehow managed to score four points in that one, but I believe the other jammer got about twenty-six points.)
So, long story short, of the 40 points our team scored, I got six of them. Yay.
Now onto this weekend, against Utica. I’ve been elected as captain of our team, so it’s my job to rally the troops to victory. 
thursday
September 10, 2009 11:57 am
So we are now back into the swing of school. (“Otto, dressed and downstairs by 7:30.” “Okay (does not move a millimeter).”) He seems to like it okay, so far.
I’ve been trying to give him more independence in the morning; he doesn’t want it. I’ve asked him if he likes having me stand at the bus stop with him (right across the street from our house), he says “yes”. He always gives me a hug and a kiss before he gets on the bus. I know that pretty soon we’ll get into the I HATE YOU phase so I will embrace this while it lasts.
Going to Canada this weekend for a bout (Kitchener, Ontario, for those of you scoring at home) and then playing Utica again in Rochester on the 19th. Whee for bouts two weeks in a row! My knee has been fine, whee for ibuprofen! Right now my neck is sore, though – I took a few spectacular falls on Tuesday. Ah well.
entreeeeeeeeeeee
August 24, 2009 10:02 am
Let’s see. We went bowling this weekend. Well, by “we”, I mean Otto and Mr. Whitney. I’ve discovered that if I bowl more than a game or two, my left hip starts to hurt, and it was already hurting, so I thought I’d better refrain. (I watched and knit.)
Otto’s changed the way he bowls (he does the four-step approach to the foul line now) and his scores have just rocketed up. His average was a 64. In the four games he bowled yesterday, he got something like a 69, 94, 123(!) and 109.
It was also the first time in a long time that he didn’t get pissy and upset and cry-y and mopey when he threw a bad ball. (That was nice, let me tell you.)
I hope he’s able to translate that success to the lanes where his league bowls. I really do.
A week and a half until school starts. Yipes. I remember third grade. My teacher was Mrs. Hasby. I started at a new school that year (the previous Catholic school I’d gone to ran K-2; this school was 3-8 and was the logical progression for Catholic kids in the town where we lived). We were on the top floor of the building; our lockers were in the back of the classroom; one day a girl puked in the front of the room.
I wonder what third grade will be like for Otto.
Going along with the Otto-themed entry, at Carrie’s suggestion, here’s some more about teh kid.
Otto…..
- never cleans his glasses. I will look at him and see BIG HUGE SMEARS AND THUMBPRINTS on the lenses. How can he see through them?
- loves, loves, loves video games. He’s surgically attached to his DS, which becomes a problem at times when it’s time to put it away. (It does get put away, though.)
- was the happiest kid alive when I gave him my old stack of Calvin & Hobbes books.
- is not a morning person, at all. The sins of the mothers repeat themselves in their sons.
- enjoys watching old TV (Three Stooges, Star Blazers) with his dad.
- has decided he’s going to marry this one girl in his grade. He insists he doesn’t have a girlfriend, though.
- will wear whatever’s clean, regardless of whether or not it matches.
- told me he wants to dye his hair green. (I wish he’d mentioned this at the beginning of summer, because I probably would’ve done it.)
- has never really expressed an interest in riding a bike. We should probably cultivate this.
We’ve been playing a lot of Life lately. The game changed a lot from when I was a kid; now there are “LIFE tiles” and “salary cards” and “career cards” and there are no terrifying red with white print Promissory Notes. (We got our version of it at a garage sale last year; I looked at a new version in Target on Sunday and discovered it’s changed again. I am really tempted to go on eBay or Craigslist to see if anyone is selling an oldschool version of it.) Otto always names his son “Steve”. Last game we played I had boy/girl/boy; their names were “Hoosafudge”, “Hoosafudgina” and “Slanket”.
I’ve been reading “The House with a Clock in Its Walls” to Otto the last week or so. I love John Bellairs books; my sixth grade teacher read this one to us and it sent me down the path of children’s gothic horror set in the 1940’s and 50’s. Otto seems to like it too; he shrieks and covers his head with his sheet when I get to the scary parts. (It also works as a way to get him to bed in a prompt and timely fashion, at least on nights when I’m home.)
entry entry entry
August 18, 2009 12:56 pm
I’ve discovered that since I’ve been on Facebook, my blog has suffered. It’s much easier to throw up a status update (“Coffee and ibuprofen, the breakfast of champions”) than it is to compose a coherent entry.
Sorry ’bout that.
So I had my first actual real practice with falling and stuff since my knee issue – and it went fine! I landed on my right knee and it didn’t bug me at all. I screamed “YES!” which I think startled a few people. So now it’s back to work. The weather has been a nice hot humid soup, so practicing in our non-air conditioned space has been sooooo fun. Heat exhaustion FTW!
Otto is in bowling camp this week. The school sent out the big packet o’information – he didn’t get the teacher he wanted, but the form does say that a “long term substitute” is to be announced. Third grade, holy cow. It’ll be his last year at his present school, and for fourth grade he’ll go to the middle school. The district will bus students in grades 4-6 if they are more than 1.5 miles away from the school. Our house, according to Google maps, is 1.1 miles from the school. Sigh.
Only sort of related, Otto asked us when we were planning on moving. Mr. Whitney’s and my response? Never. We’re happy with our house, its location, Mr. Whitney has put in buckets and buckets of time and energy on fixing up the place, why would we want to move? In May 2010 we’ll have been here for ten years. (Talk about time flying.)
FI-YAH!
August 13, 2009 11:03 am
Otto was making his toast this morning while I was in the bathroom. I got about halfway down the stairs when I smelled the burnt toast.
“Otto, y’gotta keep an eye on your toast!” I said as I hustled into the kitchen, getting ready to retrieve a blackened, carbonized piece of bread from the toaster oven.
What I saw, instead, was a blackened, carbonized piece of bread ACTUALLY ON FIRE in the toaster oven.
I grabbed the fire extinguisher from underneath the sink, pulled the pin, opened the toaster oven door (I’m not sure this was the smartest decision – on the one hand, I couldn’t put out the fire with the door closed; on the other hand, HEY LET’S GIVE THE FIRE MORE OXYGEN!), tried to pull the trigger on the extinguisher, realized there was no trigger on the extinguisher, read the directions on the extinguisher, pushed the lever on top, watched as a blast of pale blue stuff coated the toaster oven and the burning bread and the counter and the floor.
So that was my exciting morning adventure.
I slack, therefore I am
August 10, 2009 12:29 pm
Let’s see! Connecticut was a big heapin’ helpin’ of fun, except for the part where I didn’t put enough sunscreen on Otto’s back and he turned into a lobster. The time without him was odd. I missed him bunches.
I finally bit the bullet and made an appointment with my doctor about my knee. He believes it is swelling underneath my kneecap. Gave me a prescription for super mega ultra strength ibuprofen, told me how to stretch my leg to strengthen my quad muscles. It seems to be working well, which is a relief. (He also sent me to get x-rays, to just confirm that it’s not arthritis. Guess what? I’m developing arthritis! More in my left knee than my right. My doctor seemed quite surprised that it was there.)
Only three more weeks of summer left, holy craparina where does the time go?
happy 40th anniversary, moon landing, too.
July 20, 2009 10:44 am
Hm, let’s see. Today’s my Dad’s birthday, happy birthday Dad.
I can’t believe July is half-way over. WTF? This summer is going by waaaaay too fast. It’s been a cool summer, too – only a few unbearably hot days, which is fine with me.
Otto and I are going to visit the Connecticut Contingent next week. We’re leaving on Thursday and I’m coming back on Monday, so Otto gets a few days with his cousin by himself (the CT Contingent is coming to NY on Wednesday). It’ll be the longest span of time that Otto’s been away from us – we’re not the kind of people to foist our kids on family members to get some “me time”. But I’m sure he’ll have a blast.
Derby is…going. Unfortunately I’m taking another off-skates break because my right knee is giving me grief. I land on it and it HURTS and I can’t get up right away, but five minutes later it’s perfectly fine. I’m loath to go to the doctor, to spend $80 to be told “put some ice on it and rest it and if you want you can go to a physical therapist 2x a week at $75 a pop.” So I’ll just take it easy for a few weeks and see what happens.
so
July 9, 2009 11:06 pm
Today (well, yesterday, at this point) is the one year anniversary of my first derby practice. Wahoo
so yeah, an entry
June 26, 2009 9:24 am
Hi.
Otto finished second grade in one piece. Hooray! His teacher gave me a gift card to Wegmans for helping out during the year. BEST TEACHER EVAR. He had a physical yesterday; the doctor proclaimed him to be in great health. He weighs 59 pounds and is 51.5″ tall – according to the CDC charts, he’s pretty much exactly 50th percentile for both (though I may be reading them wrong). He starts CAMP AWESOME on Monday and is really looking forward to it.
We’ve got a bout on the 4th of July, and then the B travel team (of which I am a member) is going to Utica the weekend after that. My knees will be powder by the middle of July (though I did borrow someone’s knee gaskets for last night’s practice and they are lovely and I immediately ordered a pair for myself). The place we’re practicing doesn’t seem to have air conditioning so we’re all buckets of sweat by the time practice is over (it does, however, have a pool, so maybe on Sundays we can go swimming afterwards).
Work is, well, work. Residental real estate (lender, buyer and seller), a few divorce cases, a few wills. The usual.
recovery
June 10, 2009 11:29 am
So Otto got a boatload of presents, his most favorite of which seems to be the flip flops I got for him at the dollar store. “THANK YOU SO MUCH, MOMMY!” I friggin’ hate flip flops. It went against everything I stand for me to go out and buy them for him. I must like the kid or something.
He’s all super very excited about school being done. Ten more days. Then it’s six weeks of Camp Awesome, and a week of Bowling Camp. The weather finally started being nice enough that he can sleep out on the sleeping porch off his room. The setup out there is awesome – we put our old queen-sized mattress out there, so he has TONS of room to stretch out. I’m jealous.
The only bad thing about it is that right now there aren’t any shades or blinds on the windows. While this isn’t a problem from a modesty standpoint (he’s not tall enough that you can see anything), it is a problem because it’s very light out at night and we can’t get the porch dark enough so that the kid can get to bed at a reasonable hour. (The porch faces east, but the early morning sun doesn’t seem to bug him.) So, we’ll have to invest in some room darkening shades.
I bought a hammock a week and a half ago or so and while I’ve only gotten to use it once or twice (stupid ten degrees cooler than it’s supposed to be weather), it’s very, very, very nice. Just sit in it with a book or my iPod and relax.
it’s that time of year again
June 9, 2009 4:12 pm
miscellany
June 5, 2009 12:02 pm
Ok, here’s an entry.
Things have been plugging along pretty well. Otto is going to turn eight (HOLY COW) and finish second grade (WTF?) this month. I took him to the barber earlier this week to get him a crew cut for the summer; his hair is so flippin’ weird (double cowlick? No discernable part?) that I just decided “cut it all off and start over.” He wasn’t too sure at first but now he seems to like it.
This morning while waiting for the bus, he asked me about my industrial piercing. He said he would never get his ear pierced, but wouldn’t rule out a tattoo. He also wants to (temporarily) color his hair “purple, or blue, or green, or red.”
He only has about two and a half weeks of school left, and then he starts summer camp. Six weeks of running around outside, going to movies, going to Chuck E Cheese, going to the beach. The hours are essentially the same as when he’s in school, so it fits with my work schedule perfectly. I love the town where I live!
Derby is still going, of course. We’re getting ready for our next bout, June 20th at the Dome Arena. Tickets will be available from www.rocderby.com probably by the start of next week. My leg is still giving me a few issues but it’s mostly only when I first start skating – once I’m warmed up, I’m fine. We’re doing more endurance-y type things – last night we had to skate continuously for ten minutes – five minutes clockwise (aka opposite direction) and five minutes counterclockwise. Our coach said “try to aim for between 40 and 50 laps.”
My total? 51. Yay me!
The Scion is still treating me well; getting great gas mileage (about 35 mpg).