Tater Tales

And So Summer Begins

The last time I posted anything was Easter.

I'm fairly certain that no one is still checking in other than my mother and brother.  (Hey, Mama.  Hey, Jim.)

I'm not sure what happened to stop the posting, but I'm sure it had something to do with cooking, cleaning, giving baths, putting little ones to bed (which is no small feat considering the fact that Small Fry would stay up all night left to his own devices), keeping up with an increasingly busy schedule for Tater Tot, Small Fry's turning three years old (how in the heck did that happen so quickly), and the never-ending mountains of laundry that tried to take over the house on more than one occasion.  

We can add to the list keeping up with nineteen second graders (one of the best and sweetest classes I've ever had, by the way), getting ready for and making it through four days of standardized tests, field tripping it to the Memphis Zoo, and frantically packing my room for the end of the year and a move to another classroom.  I'm not moving grade levels, for which I am extremely grateful.  

The summer is shaping up to be fairly busy.  The boys are itching to visit Mama, Tater Tot is going to several half-day camps at his school, both boys have swimming lessons, I'm going on a girls' trip to Nashville for a Tim McGraw/Kenny Chesney concert.  AMEN!  I'm not even a huge fan of either singer, but getting away for a night with some funny friends  - yes, please.  My mother, the boys, and I might return to Nashville to visit Jim.  (There's your warning, Jim.  Rest up.)

And then, in what must be one of the greatest injustices of all time, teachers return to school on July 30th.

Hold me.

I'm not going to think about it until July 29th, on which I will go into my annual back-to-school depression.

Today, though, is the beginning of summer vacation.  Let the good times roll! 

 

 

 

Risen

While they were wondering about this, suddenly two men in clothes that gleamed like lightning stood beside them.  In their fright the women bowed down with their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, "Why do you look for the living among the dead?  He is not here;  He has risen!  Remember how He told you in Galilee: 'The Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, be crucified and on the third day be raised again.'"

Luke 24: 4-7

You Can't Say I Didn't Warn You

Compliments of one of my second graders who knows me well.

I think next week's spelling bonus word will be DIET...

Resolutions Update

Earlier in the year I wrote about ten new year's resolutions I'd like to kind of, sort of work on.  Some of them are going well.  Others, not so much.  Here's where I stand so far.

Learning how to put one of those slanty things over the e in words like forte.  I haven't given that one another thought.

Cooking pork chops that don't taste like a rubber shoe.  Heaven help me.  I just can't do it.  Still, David doesn't complain, so he's either extremely appreciative that I cook at all OR he likes that taste of rubber shoes.

Learning to fold a fitted sheet.  I've decided to let this one go.  I have a feeling that in my dying moments I will not stop to say, "I sure am glad I learned to fold those fitted sheets.  Wow.  I led an amazing life."

Losing a little weight.  Slowly but surely.  Most of the time I don't feel like I'm, er -- let's put it this way, not in my twenties or thirties anymore.  I really do think of myself as being around 25...until I eat a sleeve of Thin Mints and immediately gain five pounds that take around three months to lose.  Thank you, pokey metabolism.  

Getting better about grading papers.  Ummmm... I'm taking the Fifth on this one.  

Writing down the funny things the boys say.  Well, if you count putting them in the old blog, yes.  If I were to write them down on actual paper, it would take approximately 37 seconds for me to lose the paper.  Tater Tot still says "remembery" and "yesternight," and here lately he's started saying "That freaks me out."  Small Fry's new phrases are "I do it mysef" and "I talking to mysef/Daddy/Tater Tot and not you, Mama."  He also asks if everything is "far far away" even if said person/place/thing is smack dab in front of him.

The next one was about spending more time with Zeus.  I can say with all honesty that I spent as much time with him as I could until the day he left us six weeks ago.  If I go on I'll go right into the ugly cry, so I'll just leave it at that.

Cutting down on diet coke.  Let's move on to the next one, shall we?

Cutting down on white chocolate peppermint mochas from Starbucks.  DONE!

Getting my right eyelashes to curl.  I may yell a little on this one, because OH, SWEET MERCY, IT HAS HAPPENED!  Thanks to Marty, an oh-so-dear reader, both sets of lashes are curling with enthusiasm!  She recommended this product.

This little thing is pure magic.  It took a time or two to get the hang of gripping my lashes without latching onto the eyelid, but after that I became an eyelash curling fool.  Any my eyelashes?  Oh, they stay curled all day long.  I realize that I'm a little giddy -- some might say I've gone around the bend over this one -- but if you've ever suffered from droopy eyelash syndrome, you understand my joy.

So, THANK YOU, Marty!  I am twenty-six kinds of grateful!

Alrightythen.  I guess that puts me at 5 for 10.  

I may congratulate myself with a white chocolate peppermint mocha...

 

March Randomness, Part 3

I'm happy to report that our air conditioner is working again.  Amen!  Because we've apparently skipped spring and are headed straight into summer with temperatures well into the 70s.

A while back, when the weather started to warm up, the boys and I went to the park. Tater Tot stayed with his brother long enough for me to take one picture, and then he found some little fellows his own age to play with and we only saw him from a distance for the next hour.

There's a smaller play set at the park and there's a play set for the bigger kids.  When Tater Tot was little, he stayed mainly on the smaller one, but his little brother will have nothing to do with it.  He loves the slide and experimented with several different ways of coming down.

There's the back-bottom technique.

Then there's always the option of coming down head-first.

And what's a day on the slide if you don't try coming down on your knees?

You can imagine how much fun it was pulling him off the slide when it was time to go home.  He was thirteen kinds of unhappy and not at all shy about showing it.

We may go back to the park today.  Or we may go to the Children's Museum and check out the dinosaur exhibit.  Or we may lay around in our pajamas until it's time to change into clean ones and go to bed.  Playing it by ear is the name of the game around here for the week.  We love it.

Happy Thursday.

 

March Randomness, Part Two-and-a-Half

Our air conditioning unit decided to go on spring break with everyone else and conked out yesterday.  I think it was very considerate of the unit not to wait until the hottest part of the summer, and since it's only 72 degrees outside, it's only 79 degrees inside the house.  Score.

It's way to hot to write anything now, not to mention how hard it is to write from inside the freezer.

Y'all have a good Wednesday.

March Randomness, Part 2

Dear Spring Break,

I love you.  I could kiss you right on the face if you had one.  Never, ever leave me.

Forever yours,

Me.

I'm writing this as Small Fry is taking a bath with so many bubbles that all I can see is his little blond head sticking up.  He's playing with foam letters and holds each one up asking, "What's this?"  I tell him and make the sound, after which he responds, "t-t-t."  Apparently evey letter makes the -t- sound in his world.  Learning to read may be a long journey.

On to more randomness.

We made our trip to the county clerk's office yesterday morning, and while we didn't rot, we weren't looking so great after a while.  The boys managed to behave themselves until the last ten minutes and then they made up for lost time.  I got out of there with new tags, but I left my nerves at the door.  I'm sure the entire room gave a THANK YOU, LORD when we left, and I can't say that I blame them.

With the time change this weekend, we're a smidge confused around here.  We're still an hour behind in everything -- waking up, eating meals, naps, playing outside, baths... .  Until this afternoon I didn't change the clocks in the kitchen, so by the middle of the morning I couldn't remember what time we'd all gotten up, which threw everything off.  I hope we straighten ourselves out by next week, or I won't know which way is up.  Not that that's too different from most days.

In a complete change of subject matter, we were running errands a couple of weeks ago and found ourselves cutting through the parking lot of a pet supply store.  A family was walking inside with their beautiful chocolate lab.  It was all I could do not to chase them down and fling my arms around their unsuspecting dog.  What can I say?  I miss Zeus.  It's a strange thing to walk in at the end of the day and find he isn't here.  In my mind's eye, Zeus is eight or nine and still in his prime like he was in the post a few weeks ago.  He was such a good dog.

Completely changing the subject again, a certain someone in our house has one less tooth than he had a couple of weeks ago.  Good guess if you said it was David, but in this case it's incorrect.  Tater Tot lost his first tooth one Saturday morning and you would've thought Santa Claus himself had popped in for a visit.  Remarkably, the tooth fairy didn't forget, but she overpaid.  Running low on cash, she had to ask the Easter Bunny for a loan, and the smallest bill he could find was a whopping $5.  After much consulting, the pair decided that the tooth fairy should leave a note explaining that she always pays more for the first tooth and not to expect that kind of financial windfall for every tooth.  Tater Tot agreed that it was a fair deal, and the world was a truly happy place.

Here's the tiny little treasure.  

I've saved it, along with a few strands of hair from Tater Tot's first haircut.  I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do with them, but I feel compelled to hang onto them.  Maybe I'll surprise him with them on his 16th birthday or his high school graduation.  I'll have to think on it.

It's time to pull one shriveled up little fellow out of the tub and dry him off.  I mean, I guess it's time.  I"m still confused.

Have a great Tuesday.

 

 

March Randomness, Part 1

It's the middle of March and all kinds of mad and wonderful things are going on.

First, IT'S SPRING BREAK!  AND, NO, I AM NOT EXCITED AT ALL, WHY DO YOU ASK?  I thought last Friday might never get here.  It's been at least six months since we started back to school in January.  While students and most people celebrated President's Day and one other holiday in there, teachers were imprisoned in two inservices that added 319 gray hairs to my head and took years off my life.  

(Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the play?)

But let's don't think about that.  Let's scream from the rooftops that ITS SPRING BREAK!

We have absolutely no set plans, for which I am truly thankful.  I'm going to tackle this house and put it in some kind of order if it kills me, which is not out of the realm of possibility.  The piles of laundry alone make it look like we're up next for a taping of Hoarders: Buried Alive.  

We're hoping for a few days of good weather so we can go to the zoo, where there is a dinosaur exhibit that Tater Tot asks at least 48 times a day to go see.  Dinosaurs?  At the zoo?  I am slightly confused but eager to check it out.  We're also planning a trip to the Children's Museum for yet another dinosaur exhibit, and continuing with the trend is a trip to the Memphis Pink Palace for (anyone...anyone?..Beuller...Bueller?) the dinosaur exhibit and perhaps an IMAX movie if Small Fry can stand it.  Just call me Tyrranna-mama-saurus.

We haven't seen my mother for waaaay too long and the boys are going to take over my car and drive themselves to her house if I don't chauffeur them there myself.

Speaking of the Volvo wagon, look what happened last week.

Small Fry and I were on the way home last Wednesday when I looked down and saw this.  I come from a long line of people who are not fazed by large mileage numbers.  If my father were still here to comment he would say something like, "Aw, she's just a baby...hasn't even gotten warmed up yet."  Let's hope.

Our main goal for the day is to get new tags for the wagon, which were due in December, a fact that hasn't gone unnoticed by the police department in the little town where I teach.  In fact, two very nice young officers have brought it to my attention.  Once they heard the long and not at all fascinating story behind the expired tags, in addition to my shameful mentioning that I'm a teacher, each one sent me on my way with the promise that I'd take care of it over the break.  So as soon as I can convince myself to leave this comfy chair and get myself and two little fellas ready, we're headed to the Shelby County Clerk's office where we may rot before our number is called.

Happy Monday.

And if you're on spring break, too, HAPPY SPRING BREAK! 

 

It Works for Him

Once Small Fry FINALLY falls asleep, he goes into a deep, deep sleep that lasts until just before dawn.  After that his sleep becomes lighter and he's easily stirred.

Because of the way our house is arranged, you can hear the shower, though faint, from Small Fry's room, and it often wakes him up.  I can't tell you how many mornings Small Fry has come to the bathroom door while I'm in the shower, and, with his blanket and pig, plops down on the floor and goes back to sleep.

I'll be so sad when he stops sleeping with his knees curled up under him, whether he's in his bed or on the floor.

Blame It On the Spam-Man

So.

For the last couple to three weeks, some very odd comments have shown up on ye old blog, most of which claim something about how to get some, um, cheap "pharmaceuticals."  And then the text is nothing but a long strain of numbers, letters, and symbols.

I do not know what this means.  Has Tater Tales been hacked?  I have no clue.

However, I DO know that I would prefer that these comments stop popping up.  Therefore, I've changed a couple of settings.  By default, commenters are required to leave an email address just in case you and I become best friends forever and want to chit-chat via the interweb.  Now, in an effort to ward off some of the spam, if you want to leave a little note -- which you know I love -- you'll have to enter a randomly generated access code.  I know.  Annoying, and I'm sorry.

I'm also going to hold comments until I've had a chance to check them over, at least until I can tell if any of these changes make a difference.  

Again, I'm sorry.  

Blame it on the spam-man. Or perhaps it's a woman, in case we would blame it on the spamette.