Kreativ Blogger Award

Hey, Congratulations to me and Momcrusades!

In a previous post about skin tight clothes and the People of WalMart site, Angelia bestowed an award on my blog.

The award is "Kreativ Blogger," and there are some rules that go along with it, which I'll post toward the end.

I'm always thrilled when people I don't know read my stuff online. If anybody is interested in reading more stuff online that doesn't appear at momcrusades, you can check out Spanitz Consulting and find a few years' worth of rantings. Spanitz Consulting, by the way, has been "helping businesses by providing project management, quality management, and management-support technology consulting and training" since 1998, and Eric Spanitz has graciously hosted my rants since that time.

Anyway, thank you, Angelia, for the award. I'll do my best to fulfill the duties that go along with it!

Here are the rules:

1. Thank the person who nominated you for this award.

2. Copy the logo and place it on your blog.

3. Link to the person who nominated you for this award.

4. Name 7 things about yourself that people might find interesting. (see below)

5. Nominate 7 Kreativ Bloggers.

6. Post links to the 7 blogs you nominate.

7. Leave a comment on each of the blogs letting them know they have been nominated.

Seven things you may (or may not!) find interesting about me:

1. I can twirl fire batons. My kids get a kick out of this every 4th of July when the fire batons come out for their annual airing out.

2. My co-workers think I'm warped. One elementary youngster insisted he had nothing to read, until I handed him a pink-covered book with "Girl Talk" on the cover. Then he suddenly had something available that was much more interesting.

3. If you sleep in class, I'll take your picture.

4. Despite my rantings about fashion, I am one of the least fashionable people on this planet.

5. My husband asked me to marry him because I helped him shovel sugar beets for deer hunting season (back when you were allowed to bait).

6. I think he also asked me to marry him because I wasn't afraid to clean my plate when we went out to dinner.

7. If given a choice, I'd eat popcorn for dinner. But, the kids need something a bit more nutritious.

My nominations:

Generation Xpert - Suzanne has been observing the foibles of the different generations for quite some time, now. How do the Gen X-ers and the Boomers deal with each other? She has lots of great insight on this, and lest you think the posts are incredibly dry and scholarly, well - Suzanne has a great sense of humor, and a gentle but firm way of making her points clear. Is seeing the film "Where the Wild Things Are" something that will spark a controversy between generations? I think it has, based on the comments her post generated. Delegating the dirty work to colleagues - who's better at it, Boomers or X-ers? Don't get respect in the workplace - is it because your expectations are different from those of your Boomer or X-er employers? Check it out!

Angies Pangies - Angie is the chef behind "Angies Pangies," which is the site for people who want "real food for real people." Hooray! This is a boon for anyone who hates cooking, like me, and wants recipes that don't call for 8 million different things that I'll never see in my local grocery store. Know what else? It's a wonderful site for people who love to cook, too, because Angie takes great pains to illustrate her recipes step by step, and also makes an effort to find and try all kinds of interesting kitchen gadgets. Plus, she does this while dealing with a work-at-home spouse, a teenager, and two pre-teens, and a houseful of pets. So of course, her blog has lots of humor, too.

My Husband is Annoying - This trademarked-named-site is just too funny. The author has been on morning talk shows, because it's pretty obvious that while many of us love our husbands, they can be incredibily annoying. The annoyance can span generations, too. The site's author posted about her husband's green jacket, and how it appears in nearly every photo in any place around town or the world. My mom laughed and said Yeah, reminds me of your dad's green sweater. A-yup, husbands can be annoying, that's for sure. One fun thing of many, about this site, is that readers participate by sending in anecdotes and photos of their own annoying husbands.

NOODAD - Wiping Asses and Taking Names Since 2006 - Gregory Ng is the founder of this site, and with many other contributing writers, keeps new parents laughing through things like falling stocks, taking your kids to restaurants, a dad's dictionary of female anatomy, surviving children's birthday parties, and how not to dry your kids after a bath. Another favorite feature is "Ask the Chick."

Free Range Kids - by Lenore Skenazy is the ultimate site for people, parents or not, who are sick and tired (and did I mention sick and tired?) of over-coddling, over-protective, over-doing-it-ness of parents, public, and so forth. Do you recall the days of children playing outdoors until dusk, when everyone in the neighborhood watched out for everyone else? The days before kids played behind locked doors in all kinds of weather (ie - not outdoors in the sunshine)? The days when kids were allowed to walk to the corner store to buy a loaf of bread, a container of milk, and a stick of butter, without five bodyguards in attendance? You may not agree with everything posted, but Skenazy has a lot of topics to generate interesting discussion.

Overheard in the Office - even if you've never worked in an office, the things posted at this site are hilarious. Names are changed to protect the innocent, and it's not a site for youngsters - but be prepared to laugh out loud.

Management Insights - located at none other than my first hosted web page, Spanitz Consulting. Eric Spanitz is possessed of a wicked sense of humor, and you won't know you've been zinged until hours after. Are you wondering if small efforts are worthy of the title "Project"? Is it time to pull the plug and accept your losses? What are your limits when it comes to texting? Need insights on how soon you should answer your emails? How to handle talking politics or religion in mixed company? Seek no more - Spanitz will have the right mix of good etiquette and humor for you to handle any situation.

Birthday Parties

Once your child is of school age, it begins to happen.

Not the inevitable mountain of homework, but the Birthday Party Invitations.

For my daughter, the party invitations started arriving as early as pre-school. For both of my kids, the invitations continued with a steady flourish from about kindergarten on.

What's a parent to do?

You want your child to be social. You want your child to have good experiences interacting with other people. What you don't want is to be going broke while your child brings a gift to every party he/she is invited to.

When I was a kid, back in the dark ages, party invitations could be handed out at school - as discreetly as possible, because mom insisted you could invite only five children. So you'd corner your friends at recess and smuggle a grubby envelope with a childishly scrawled name upon it, and furtively giggling, the envelope would then be smuggled into a lunch box or a coat pocket, to be carried home.

Or, parents would mail the invitations to the children's homes. And you were told not to talk about your party at school, in front of other kids who weren't invited, because it would be rude and hurt their feelings.

These days, schools have their own policies for dealing with birthday parties. Evidently, small lessons in discrection haven't been learned by everyone.

Let's face it. Kids will be kids, and despite their best intentions, they sometimes say or do things that are perceived as rudeness by others. The child didn't mean anything by it, it just "happened." We've all "been there, done that" when it comes to this sort of situation.

"Well now little Susie, how do you like grandma's new dress?"

"Grandma, that makes you look like BARNEY!" No doubt, Barney is little Susie's most beloved television character, but being compared to a purple dinosaur is probably not what grandma was hoping for.

Anyway.

Some schools have this policy regarding party invitations:

• If you distribute invitations at school, either invite the whole class
• or invite just the boys (if you're a boy)
• or invite just the girls (if you're a girl)
• If you don't want to invite the whole class, then MAIL your invitations

The reasoning behind this is to avoid hurt feelings.
I can understand this to an extent, because at some point there is a cut-off. But moooo-oooommmm, I can hear a child saying, I have seventeeeeeeeeeeeeen best friends - how can I possibly only invite fiiiiiiiive?
And I understand that there are kids who might never get invited to anything if it weren't for this school policy. Not because they are socially undesirable, but because along with this inherent sense of fairness, kids have also this inherent sense of meanness.
Still, I can't help but feel sympathy for a parent, who, with great trepidation, says to their child Ok now, here are all 29 invitations for your class and let's pray to God that not everybody says they're coming because I'll have to rent a hall to accommodate everybody and I can't imagine how much birthday cake I'll have to bake.
When the invitations come home, I go through this round of questioning with the kids:

1. Do you know this child? If the answer is yes, we proceed to the next set of questions. If the answer is no, we RSVP "will not be attending."
2. If the answer to #1 is "yes," then I ask, "is this someone you play with at school?" If the response is "yes," then we move on to the next question. If the response is a lukewarm "sometimes" or "no," then typically, we RSVP "will not be attending."
3. If the answer to #1 and #2 is yes, then I ask, "You know this kid, and you play with this kid at school. Do you want to go to the party?"

This usually resolves the issue of whether or not to accept the dozen or so party invitations that make their way home in backpacks the first six weeks of school. There are a few benefits to my system, I feel.

• If you're a parent who follows school policy and invites every child to the party, you might be breathing a sigh of relief that another parent has exhibited some common sense and made the decision that, since your children don't normally spend a lot of face time together, it would probably be ok to not attend, thus driving up the cost of a party for the hosting parent. This is especially nice when the party is at local venue like Chuckie Cheese or some place where there needs to be an exact head count to determine cost.
• If your child is interested in pursuing a friendship with a child he/she plays with occasionally, a birthday party is one step toward encouraging a friendship. However, if your child doesn't even recognize the name of the birthday kid, I think the answer to "will Johnny be going to the party" is a no-brainer.
• If you're a parent who is concerned about going broke buying birthday gifts for 29 classmates, fear no more: If your kid doesn't know the birthday boy/girl, doesn't play with that child and doesn't want to, and doesn't want to go to the party, then you RSVP "no" and don't worry.

Children are born with this inherent sense of fairness, and it rears its head at the most inopportune time. My brother related this story, which he witnessed as he was picking up his child from pre-school the other day.
A youngster in the class had been handing out invitations to his birthday party. Only a select handful of kids in the class were presented with an envelope. One of the kids is friends with my brother's child. This little tyke responded, upon receipt of his envelope, "Where's Sally's? Sally has to have one, too. She's my friend. Does Sally get an invitation?"
Whereupon, the youngster with the invitations looked rather blank, and thankfully, Sally seemed oblivious, not realizing she was being snubbed.
I feel that 4-year-olds are not socially skilled enough to handle dispersing invitations to classmates, unless they're inviting everyone. In this case, a parent should probably have invited children by phone, or by U.S. mail, or a more discreet tucking of an invitation into the child's cubby, to be taken home amongst the raft of papers that always accompany a child home at the end of a pre-school day.
And while I sympathize to an extent with the parents who follow policy religiously, and invite every child (perhaps secretly hoping there will be an outbreak of common sense and only their child's friends will attend), I still think there are some things to be considered:

• Schools are often left with the task of teaching manners to children whose parents have somehow failed to instill them, or who have never bothered to try. Thus, the "invite one, invite all" policies.
• Regardless of good intentions, the possibility of them going awry is always there.
• In real life, we are not always invited or included or welcome "everywhere." This is where discretion and tact are needed, but still being learned, at an age when it really, really, really matters to those who are left out.
• If your child isn't buddies with the birthday kid, don't be a jerk and say, "Oh! Free babysitting, just for the small cost of a birthday gift!" and dump your child at an event he/she was likely invited to simply because of school policy. I knew a parent who had such a child at their home for 8 hours, because of school policy, and because of rude parents who said, "We're leaving town for a while, but we'll be back at the end of the party." They weren't back, and the parent fed that poor child dinner, and prepared to have that child overnight because the parents were having too much fun shopping or whatever to be bothered.

Birthday parties seem to be a rite of passage at the elementary school age. They should be approached as a simple pleasure, and not one wrought with peril. Are "invite one/invite all" policies just common sense? Should schools even have policies relating to out-of-school activities? As parents, it can be difficult to navigate through this. What are your thoughts?

Skin tight? Don't Do It

CAUTION: THE CONTENTS OF THIS PAGE MAY NOT BE SUITABLE FOR CHILDREN

I don't know how many times I have to say it.

Apparently, I won't be able to say it enough.

Why? Because not every person in the United States has gotten the message yet. I'm not quite ready to go global, but it may have to reach that point.
Today, I had the eye-bugging displeasure of seeing a nicely dressed, shapely woman wearing a business suit. The jacket looked nice, her accessories were tasteful. But, while the slacks were a good length, they were more than a bit snug, the seam of said slacks neatly dividing her buttocks into two rounds - very unattractive, and makes me wonder if she wondered throughout the day, "Why do these slacks feel funny?"

Please, please, please, please ladies....if you're going to wear tight pants, let's follow a few guidelines.

• Thou shalt not wear slacks of any fabric that allow your buttocks to become separate cheeks, each vying for a run for freedom in separate directions. No one wants to witness your buttocks churning under a layer of denim, polyester, or spandex.
• Thou shalt not wear slacks that are a size or two too small. This accomplishes nothing more than to make you look like ten pounds of sugar in a five pound sack. My daddy had a saying about that, only he substituted another word with an "SH" sound. And I'll tell you right now, it wasn't "sugar."
• Thou shalt not skip wearing the proper undergarments underneath your tight slacks. I know, everybody complains about visible panty lines. Go shopping, sisters, and find that brand that makes panty lines invisible. We'd rather not consider the unsanitary conditions roaming the up-close-and-personal parts of the insides of your slacks while you run about town sans underpants.
• Thou shalt not wear sweatpants or "lounge pants" (aka pajama bottoms) in public places unless you're recovering from surgery of some sort and cannot wear anything else. Otherwise, skip it. Dress like an adult and wear something else.

• Thou shall find slacks of a proper length and fit. This means they will not be tight, ladies, but form fitting. There is a difference, and it involves more than semantics. Tight means looking like a two-dollar whore cramming ten pounds of sugar into that five-pound sack. Form-fitting means looking like a million dollar baby who looks great and feels fabulous because she's wearing clothing that is flattering to her figure, regardless of her size, because it isn't too small and, thus, too tight.
• Thou shall wear a belt if thou needest one. Don't skip this, please. I don't want to be able to tell, once you are seated and that inevitable gap that can happen between your backside and the waistband of your pants starts to fall open, whether or not you are wearing a thong, granny's tighty-whities, nothing at all, or that fabulous brand (someone, please, tell me what it is?) that doesn't show pantylines.
• If thou hast trouble finding slacks that fit, though shalt find a good tailor. Yes, they do exist. Ask around, see who does alterations. Check your higher-end clothing stores for a reference. Check your local yellow pages. A tuck here and there, taking in or letting out of seams in strategic places, or a hem taken up or let down can do wonders for the fit of your slacks. And if you spent money to buy the slacks and plan to wear them frequently, then spend a few dollars to have them look decent while they're on your body.

Ok. So, everybody take note of this please, and get it right. Or I'm going to start taking pictures (I'll have to invest in a camera phone, I suppose, in order to be discreet) and start another web site. You know, something along the lines of "People of Walmart," which as of this moment is displaying a photo of a woman wearing hot pink, skin tight capris which unfortunately reveal the woman is wearing no underpants (unless she found those fabulous 'no pantylines' brand) and does, indeed, have two butt cheeks.


Ay yi yi. Time to go wash my eyes.
(photos from the People of WalMart web site, http://www.peopleofwalmart.com/)

Suze Orman never Met My Husband

I'm attempting to learn how to be "fiscally responsible."

I'll be the first to admit that I'm not a whiz when it comes to personal finance, and my husband will back up that statement. More than once he has shaken his head in utter despair, eyes raised heavenward, and beseeched me to please, please, please take more of an interest in the household finances. He worries that if he should drop dead of a heart attack some day (which, given today's work environment is a possibility) that I'll never be able to keep financially afloat.

I do try. But in my own defense, I have to say that I'm just not very good at it. Suze Orman would say that's no excuse, that I still have to learn about personal finance. She'd be right, of course.

So I borrowed a book from a friend of mine, called Women and Money, written by none other than Suze Orman. She's a regular feature in magazines such as Women's Day and Oprah. Orman provides advice on such things as protecting your investements. If you don't have investments, she gives advice on how to make some. If you have no investments due to money-grubbing exes or other family members, she has advice for that, too, as well as a host of other topics.

In Women and Money, Orman provides a checklist of things, along with the sound reasons why, that every woman should learn how to do with regard to her personal finances.

Items in one chapter included getting a credit card in your own name, reading your bank statement and checking on the interest rate. Is it the best interest rate? If not, check around and find a better one and move your money there. Another item was to open your own credit card statement and verify the amounts charged with the receipts, and of course, pay the credit card bill on time.

That should be easy enough, I figured. I already knew we'd found the best interest-bearing accounts we could find, and had made some sound investments in various savings programs. While I have been guilty of losing a credit card receipt from time to time (oh come off it all you self-righteous people, like you've never lost anything?) - this month, I happened to have all of them conveniently paper-clipped together, and sitting in the desk drawer, just waiting for the credit card statement to arrive.

Which it did, right on time. I confidently opened the envelope, and tossed the junk inserts that come with the statement every month. I really don't need a set of luggage, after all.

I matched each receipt with each item on the statement. I check the balance in the checkbook, which had an ample amount to cover what I owed on the statement. After all, I'd just made a deposit that day in anticipation of the credit card bill, among others, arriving.

I wrote out the check for the full amount, placed check and statement in the envelope, being careful to show the address of the credit card company through the little window in the envelope, stamped it, and proudly placed the envelope on the table to await delivery into the nearest U.S. postal delivery mailbox.

Then, The Man of the House stepped in.

Now, Suze Orman will tell anyone who listens, and rightly so, that one should never trust her entire financial life to one person. One never knows when one will be bilked by an untrustworthy spouse, lover, relative, stranger, etc. Not to mention that women need to get over this idea that only men are capable of handling money.

But, my spouse is one of those rare guys who can make sound financial decisions. He always discusses them with me, though I'm sure by now he recognizes the glazed look that appears whenever the subject of 401-Ks comes up, or the stock market. I'm sure by now, he only mentions the gory details as a courtesy.

I trust my husband. He trusts me. We have joint accounts and investments, and I have some in my own name, as well. Same with credit cards. This works for us. Other people have their own system.

This said, my husband realized early on that he'd better take control of the household money or we'd be living paycheck to paycheck. It was with a sense of relief that I turned it all over to him. He has devised a system that works for him with regard to stockpiling money for upcoming bills, current bills, savings, etc.

He sat down that evening, overlooking the proudly stamped envelope addressed to Visa, and began the weekly number-crunching and paying of bills.

Ten minutes later, I heard through several rooms of the house, a muffled exclamation that sounded something like "pffffa-- what the shhhh ffffffkkkk aaaaugh!"

The stomping of feet ensued just seconds later.

A patient but glowering face appeared around the corner of the wall from me. "Kathy," began that voice that comes out when an adult is attempting to correct an overeager child but not quash the child's enthusiasm, "I'm really glad that you took the initiative to take care of the credit card bill, but you've messed up my accounting system and it has taken me the last 20 minutes to get it all sorted out."

After a brief and carefully controlled discussion that at any other time could have turned into a shouting match with perhaps a slamming door thrown in for good measure, the sum of it appears to be that if I'm going to write out a bill for my credit card, I'm going to have to learn his complicated system of cash withholding in order to save him 20 minutes of extra book keeping every month, when said statement is due.

Pfffft. Like that's gonna happen (Sorry, Suze).

"Please," said my by-then exhausted husband, "don't do that again."

Suze would be appalled. I bet some of you are, too. But I bet an equal number of you are nodding your heads, ruefully laughing because you get the same thing from your significant others.

Well, I will get past the first few chapters of Suze's book, and work my way into "retirement and investments" at some point. I can hardly wait to see what my husband will say when he sees me sitting on the floor near the desk, bottom drawer open, our retirement portfolio scattered about.

Maybe he'd be more excited if I combined that activity with a slinky negligee.

Then again, he might just think I'm crazy.



This post, along with others, also appears at http://http://http//www.spanitz.com/artman/publish/article_218.shtml Spanitz Consulting, Inc. - www.spanitz.com - 888.SPANITZ - 888.772.6489 © Copyright 2000-2008 Spanitz Consulting, Inc. - All Rights Reserved

What are you doing wrong?

Today's Sunday paper had a great political comic. If I were really savvy, I'd post it here - but since I'm not, and won't pretend to be, I'll just describe it to you.

The comic shows a teacher at the desk, on it are the following items: test schedule, paperwork, and a box that reads "My own $ 4 supplies."

The desks in front of the teacher, instead of names, have labels: hungry, teen mom, homeless, dadless, tv on 24/7, no discipline, abused, drugs, no books.

The people walking into the classroom, wearing big grins and leading a group of cameramen and television microphones, are being led by a man holding a brief case that reads, "Drive-by Education Experts." The leader of this group is saying, "What are you doing wrong?"

You'd have to have been living under a rock to have missed No Child Left Behind, and all the ensuing nastiness that occurs whenever a new education policy goes into effect. First, teachers are accused of teaching to the test. Then, they're accused of not teaching to the test. They're accused of not teaching the whole child. Blah blah blah blah.

Well, here we are, only a scant 5 weeks into the new school year, and already I can see the same patterns and behaviors among many of the students I come in contact with.

There are too many already who have not turned in any assignments, the ones done in class and the few that have been assigned as homework.

There are already a few who have missed noticeable amounts of school.

There are already frequent fliers in the area of discipline.

There are students who have yet to catch on that there are just certain things you cannot say and do to adults or other students without getting into big trouble.

There are students who are, indeed, homeless. And this is a tragic thing.

There are students who, despite government-funded breakfast and lunch programs, are still going hungry. This is also a tragic thing.

There are students who do not have the proper clothing for the upcoming cold season here in mid-Michigan. This is tragic as well, considering there are many agencies who will give winter gear to a child, free of charge.

There are students who are witness to violence in the home, drug and alchohol abuse, and are victims of those same things and victims of neglect.

There are students who are absolutely, unequivocally in need of special education services for either emotional needs or academic needs, but for whatever reason, the people in charge of them at home refuse to allow the paperwork to go through the proper channels so their child can stand a fighting chance in what is left of our educational system.

There are students whose parents refuse to believe that their child really does need to do some studying, take a few notes here and there, and - oh gosh by golly - complete an assignment, do it neatly, and turn it in on time. Rather, the parent expects the teacher will back down and revise expectations because of football practice, dance recitals, or just the fact that the child was busy that evening or weekend with a social activity.

This is all ok, though. Teachers are only held responsible for some rather ridiculous expectations. Like, leaving no child behind when it comes to the MEAP test, for instance. And, making sure that all students achieve so that state and federal funding can come through. And, somebody else has the bright idea that teachers should be rewarded merit pay based on student achievement.

Sure. Go ahead. Just make sure that on the day the "drive-by educators" tally up the test scores that somebody removes the papers of the kids whose parents don't make them mind, who don't get fed, who were beaten up the evening before, or who are living in shelters.

Goodness knows that teachers can't control everything - but they are certainly expected to.

I'm a believer in "it all begins at home." Kids are not ready to be self-directed at the age of ten, and parents need to start realizing that. Parents need to be actively involved in their children's lives while they're still young. This doesn't mean doing the kid's homework for him, or stepping in to excuse the child from any negative results of inappropriate behavior.

What it means is parents need to continue parenting the child instead of pretending the child is just a miniature adult in need of learning his multiplication tables.

At what point does our state and federal government quit pointing the finger at what is perceived to be inadequate educators and start pointing the finger at inadequate parenting?

Raising a child may take a village, but educating a child takes that village too, as well as a good educator and good parents. So let's quit blaming the schools for "what's wrong with kids these days." Parents need to do their part, too. Raising the child isn't over once the kid is out of diapers.