Chore Charts for Elementary School Age Children

Here's what we use. I cut them out, gluing each day to a 3 x 5 card in a handy spiral of perforated index cards. The kids check the boxes, and turn in the cards at the end of the day.

What do you use?

Grand Ole Flag", per Kindergarden

"You're a grand ole flag
You're a high-fivin' flag
And forever in peace may you wave.

You're the emblem of
The land I love
Home of the free and the brave

Every heart beats true
For the red white and blue
And there's never a post or brag

May all complaintants be forgot
Keep your eye on the grand ole flag!"

In the Suburbs, What Happens After Dark, Stays After Dark

4:30am a while ago, our Boston and our, well, whatever he is, our smaller dog, snapped awake, barking, fur all up, jumping at the door to be let out. These are precious dogs, less than 50 pounds combined, the kind of dogs you negotiate respectfully with for who gets the best pillow, carry under your arm when getting the mail, the kind of dogs you worry your cats might hurt.

I let them out. Instantly, there was vicious snarling, scratching, panting, barking, scrambling, pursuit, attack. It was all obscured by the dark and the bushes hosting what was sounding like a small massacre. I hosed them pretty soundly - they could care less. And then there just was panting (the dogs...) Then there it was - a dead armadillo.

Anyone who ever watched Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom knows killing an armadillo is something best left to your assistant while you stay in the jeep.

Our Boston was the ring-leader and assasin; the smaller dog worked the perimeter. It took a broom and sharp voice to get the her to surrender her prey. Her goal appeared to be to kill it again, over and over, until, well, I don't know what she was aiming for, exactly. The rodent that looks like a cross between a possum and a turtle had an evident broken neck.

I had to shake my head and walk away in disgust. Could this be my baby? The puppy I carried in a sling at soccer games? The mature lady who has snuggled with both our babies?

She did look very proud and strong, almost regal, puffed up and towering over her kill.

We have never spoken of it again, me and the Boston. The children, however, continue to call her "armadillo breath."

Why Elementary Schools Need Counselors

10. It's bad role-setting for homeroom teachers to have to peel children off parent's legs
9. Because, believe it or not, there are issues that fall outside the job description of the school nurse.
8. Ever notice how close the counselor sits to the executive offices? You try oversight (not to mention education) of 600 kids under 12 for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week.
7. Lunchtime, Recess, and Homework
6. Their "regular job": Making all parts of comprehensive developmental guidance pro-
gram for each child happen....aimed at helping children learn and develop to their highest potential. (thanks, TrlBlzr)
5. All emotional / psychological issues, disability, learning difference, etc., from mild to serious, experienced by students, and the existing treatment / recovery protocols for same.
4. Lately, at our school, lice
3. Targets of schoolyard bullies, as well as conspirators, and the bullies themselves.
2. The great yin, yang, yaw of the childhood journey through which students push, pull, dance, fly, plod...each day...

and, let us not forget, that one degree of separation from the student's experience lies an incredibly influential and for the most part untrained cohort on which the student experience relies heavily....

1. Parents!

Lessons for Today

1. There's plenty of time.
2. Life is short.
3. Don't sweat the small stuff.
4. Life is details; love, even moreso.
5. Isn't it cool our daughter can find the olympics on youtube? She's so advanced!
6. Think twice before celebrating a 5 year old's mastery of searching on videos tagged "women's gymnastics."
7. That laptops are portable can be fixed.
8. I am messy sometimes...but trash, piss, and poo not in their proper containers, well, GROSS!!!
9. #8 happens sometimes when there are 4 humans and 5 animals, even when everyone's doing their best.
10. "Just even it up some," to a hair stylist means "cut it all off really short."
11. Sometimes it's ok to let a blog post just trail off.

Just the Shoes, Maam

Unmoved by any of the usual footwear I had selected, sitting on the floor of JC Penney with dear girl child and 17 opened and then poorly re-closed shoe boxes, I employed a personal shopper.

"Honey," I asked my 5 year old daughter, "would you do me a favor? Would you go pick out a few pairs of the prettiest shoes for grown ups out there?

One of the Few Things Duct Tape Hasn't Worked For

I have had this plantar’s wart for 4 years. My daughter used to annotate my introduction to any playmate’s parent with: “She has a wart foot.”

I have used duct tape, impulsive and messy home surgery, a year of doctor’s visits and remedies – including 2 very painful injections of frog poison or monkey urine - I don’t remember exactly but as the doctor pulled the shot from the vial he mentioned this particular cure had come from this exotic source in the rain forest.

There have been announcements that “it’s gone.”

I have used denial, loving visualizations of its compassionate passing in to nothingness, near-constant swimming, and irregular treatments of the salisylic acid goo by Dr. Scholes.

Now…I am methodical and focused, unemotional and unforgiving. I am following the package directions with a kind of surrendered and vengeful last-resort compliance. I am freezing and and I am burning. I am soaking and trimming. Start planning your massive and comprehensive retreat, you hideous and painful lump. This is Wartfare!

Something quick and funny

Our adored dog has been so patient with us, for nine years now. It must help that we go through a lot of canned "land tuna," (aka chicken), and when each can is emptied (to prepare gallons of chicken salad, also known as "land tuna"), it gets placed lovingly on the kitchen floor.

Ms. Roosevelt carries the cans away, returning them shiny clean after a few minutes.

Today, though, there was more than the usual clanging, and when she got to the kitchen, one of the cans was stuck on the dog-door magnet key she wears around her neck. Hanging, jangling, like costume jewelry. I think I heard her sigh.

Perspectives On Fever

Our son asks why a fever has to be achy, to make you feel bad?

"To get you to sit still so all your energy can be used to fight the illness," a grown up says.

The 7 year old finds this to be poor design.

"Why don't the guys who are fighting, like it's a football game between good guys and bad guys inside your body, and there would be these little pipes all around the fight, and vibrations would come out of the fighting place every once in awhile and out to your body, to remind you you are sick, and then you know to be still."

70% chance of cats, and LQ heading up

Day 3 and no repeat of itchy swelly sneezy face of son. They did spend two hours at the animal shelter on the day of allergic reaction...The nose has declared a 70% - and climbing - chance of cats.

For any of you who thinks like I do these days, with a tendency to see everything through the lens of household management of small objects, let me give you some figures:
-2 adults, 2 children, 1 dog, 3 cats, 14 fish, and no rodents
-80 fingernails and 80 toenails
-16 nostrils (excludes fish, who seem immune to the woes of living in allergy alley, usa)
-44 openings through which food should pass regularly

Related to the LQ (love quotient), here are the counts:
-22 heartbeats
-excluding inter- and intra-fish affections, a minimum daily available snuggle rate of 11 per heart
-depending on whether it's a school day or a stay-home day, and a person's appetite, the available eyes to meet lovingly spans from sufficient to heavenly
-22 souls to tell about your day, 18 of which absolutely are guaranteed to show genuine interest if you wear shrimp perfume.

Rats, Cats, Bliss, and Noses

OK, so we love cats.

We've been hoping for our wayward cat who disappeared in October to come home. Last week, learning our attic had been certified rat-friendly AAA+ by the Society Seeking Shelter for Rodents and Other Small Animals, we picked up the pace of feline pursuit.

("What are all those little flat pieces of wood with springs and metal stuff on top?" girl child asks the uniformed man heading up the attic stairs. "Just stuff to help with the couple of mice in the attic," the very smart man says.)

Cats are small, and it is hard to get just one. Especially at the shelter, knowing what we know about the shelter. So welcome triplets: Juno, Luna, and JoJo.

Luna spent an hour on the belly - this is the bliss part.

Boy child spent almost that entire hour with Juno in the other room, and emerged nose swollen, face red, and neck itching. Oh my. Needless to say this has not happened with our other cats. Blowing his nose and applying chilled benadryl gel to his face, I'm surprised at his "no" answer when I ask if he's had his face nuzzled in the cat. "OK, maybe a couple of times, he says."

A bifurcated night ensues, son and mom finishing homework and then watching a consolation-prize few minutes of cartoons in dog-only zoned living room, and father and daughter thick in cats at the other end of the house.

Cat ownership forecast? Only the nose knows.