Office Depot had a sale on packing tape – buy two, get one free – so I actually got excited about buying tape. That’s sad enough on its own, but I sprung for a cheap tape gun from the savings. Only it turned out to be not only a really cheap tape gun, but also a really bad tape gun. All the boxes going out today and tomorrow look like they were packed by a poorly trained chimp.
Well, they’re Jayne hats. Maybe I can pass it off as the work of space monkeys.
Next up: TX, OH, and AZ
After the meeting, the mother of the most talkative girl came up to me and kind of smilingly half-apologized for how talkative her daughter was. The mother of the least talkative did the same, for her daughter being so quiet. But both of their daughters were charming and well-behaved.
I’ve been guilty of this too. When my daughter goes around to everybody in the yarn shop and introduces herself and asks what folks’ names are, I’m going to stop with the slightly nervous laughter. She knows not to bother someone when they’re on the phone, and I’m working on teaching her to not bother them in the middle of transactions or conversations, although that’s trickier to figure out. So I’ll keep working with her on that. But overall, she’s fine, and I need to lighten up.
So I’ve resolved to stop being so self-conscious about how my child behaves in public. Apparently it’s like our own bodies, or accents, or anything else we have that’s slightly out of the norm. We’re hyper-sensitive, but nobody else cares, so we all might as well lighten up.
if I hadn’t already known Emily had issues, I never would have known from that Brownie meeting.
There were girls who wanted to talk and talk and talk, girls who raised their hand at any opportunity – tellingly, these were the girls who joined us from the other troop – and there were girls who didn’t ever volunteer, but whom I called on anyway and who had good answers when asked. Emily fell at that end of the spectrum. She didn’t speak up, but when asked, she had good, relevant answers. Like “What can you do to help stop germs?” “Well, washing your hands is good for not having germs.” The answer was well within the range of normal answers from the troop. And she stayed at the table or in the circle or wherever the other girls were, and participated well.
I was really afraid it was going to be heartbreaking to do this, to see what the other girls were doing that Emily wasn’t. But she fit right in, and nobody said anything or, I think, thought anything about it.
And you know what? For the whole meeting, I didn’t notice or think about it either. Amazing.
Well, there’s a shocker.
Your results:
You are Superman
| Superman |
|
85% |
| Spider-Man |
|
80% |
| Robin |
|
70% |
| Supergirl |
|
63% |
| Iron Man |
|
60% |
| Green Lantern |
|
60% |
| Wonder Woman |
|
53% |
| The Flash |
|
45% |
| Hulk |
|
35% |
| Catwoman |
|
30% |
| Batman |
|
30% |
|
You are mild-mannered, good,
strong and you love to help others.
 |
Click here to take the Superhero Personality Test
…went very well. The girls are sharp as tacks and blew threw our main activity and our backup activity, leaving us with 30 minutes to fill. Which we did, by talking about toothbrushing, calcium, sleep, doctor visits, and hearing from two moms who were there who were nurses. So a badge we thought would take two sessions to earn is done. They picked “Manners” as their next badge to work on.
Our cookie mom (not me!) has whipped into action and we’re getting a booth to sell at our local ginormous Harris Teeter.
I suggested that our cookie mom work with us on the cookie badge, and she will, so I’m off the hook for that meeting. Yay!
Still to be resolved: dues. Badges cost $1.25 each and come out of troop funds. Current troop funds=0.
More later – my daughter is singing Agalina Hagalina, the same song she’s been singing nonstop all day, and I’m too tired to tune it out properly and focus on writing.
After finishing up another Jayne tonight, I pulled out the second Crusoe to work on. I’m about halfway down the ankle. About a half hour ago, my husband found a thin double-pointed needle (DPN) wedged into the side of his chair and asked, “Are you missing this?”
I looked at it. It was a #1 bamboo needle. This was very odd, since I was already using my full set of 5 #1 bamboo DPNs for the sock I was working on. Or so I thought – upon closer inspection, it looks like I pulled out my #2 needles when I cast on for the second sock. The needles had been in my case because I was using them to knit my daughter’s doll. So the second sock is being knitted on bigger needles than the first.
Great. Just great. Well, it’s only half a millimeter’s difference. Gauge looks to be pretty much the same, so maybe I’ll just switch to #1s now and keep going. I won’t tell if you won’t.
Hats up for: WI, MN, TN
That was fun! Yarns Forever was great – the owner really knew her stuff, and I came out of there lighter in the wallet and heavier in the stash.
Bowling was also very fun, and I met some neat people from Greenville. I bowled an average of 81. Er… it’s not whether you win or lose; it’s how you play the game, right?
(By the way, contrary to what my last post may have implied, I really don’t drink. Which is good, because my game was bad enough as it is!)
As I’m completely wiped out now, I’m off to bed. Pictures another time!
Today prostiturtle and I are hitting some yarn stores in upstate South Carolina, then going bowling in Spartanburg with contingents of Browncoats from Charlotte, NC and Greenville, SC. Prepare to be boarded, Greenville! We’ll choke your rivers with our dead! I mean, it should be a nice friendly game!
One of the yarn stores, Yarns Forever, also sells spinning wheels. I may call ahead and see if it’d be possible to get a demo and a chance to spin. Let’s hope this isn’t the beginning of a new hobby.
Found an error in a pattern I’m knitting. It looks like it was probably just a little glitch that got introduced somewhere in the editing process – like maybe an extra line got cut out during formatting or some such. Contacted the designer, who was very nice about it. It’s a super-cute pattern, but I don’t want to say what it is since it’s going to be a gift. I’m very excited about it. I’ll post up the finished object when it’s all done.
(To the tune of the Firefly theme)
Take my shoes, take my lane,
Give me beer, I won’t complain.
Get me drunk so I can’t see,
but you can’t take my balls from me!
Okay, that went a much worse place than I thought it would, so I think I’d best stop there.
Last week a Brownie parent called me. Her daughter and another little girl had been part of a troop where the rest of the girls had aged up into Juniors, and two girls wasn’t enough for a standalone troop. She had spoken with another mom and with the co-leader, both of whom said to call me to get the okay for them to join our troop. Which I gave. We talked about cookie sales, activities, etc. for a while. When I got off the phone, it hit me that everybody said to talk to me to be sure it was okay. I AM NOT THE LEADER.
So to be sure everyone realized that we were back up and running, I drafted a “hi, parents!” letter. I sent it to the co-leader to get her input on it, since I AM NOT THE LEADER and unilaterally doing this kind of thing makes it easier for people to think that I am. Last night she wrote back and said, “sounds good! Have you thought about what we’re going to say at the meeting?”
I got home from the weekly stitch session last night just before 11pm and saw the mail. Since I was still hopped up on caffeine, I stayed up ’til midnight and wrote a freakin’ novel outlining how the meeting should probably go, what we were going to say, what materials we still needed, etc. Then I e-mailed GS HQ to ask for details on how badges are handled.
The letter looks like I’m detailing how we’re going to invade Normandy, not run a Brownie meeting. This is not the action of a mere interested mom.
Crap. I’m the freakin’ leader.