April 3, 2013
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I Guess I Can Be Anal, Too….
TALES FROM THE BRAT FARM
I have this bad habit when I am IM-ing with my son. His spelling is atrocious and he has to write up reports for each job he installs. I worry about him looking like he’s dumb when he really isn’t. Bad spelling does affect how his superiors look at him and could actually prevent him from being promoted to a higher position (management). So we are IM-ing and I am correcting his spelling. He lets several go by and then says, *You should be an English teacher*. I tell him why I am correcting his spelling and add….don’t you mean a SPELLING teacher?
I tell him how it drives me nuts in a chat room where people are constantly spelling things wrong….like *their* for *they’re* or, even worse, for *there*! He says to me, *I can see you don’t do much texting*. I told him it was easy to ignore all the abbreviations and misspellings in texting because there’s a letter limit to each text.
He has now started to put the correct word in the IM after he’s typed it when he sees he’s spelled it wrong. I just smile when he does that. He DOES misspell words on occasion and I find myself automatically spelling it correctly on the next line. Like tonight. He was telling me how his *ancle* blew out on him when he was coming down the stairs and he was glad he only fell three steps to the ground. I just typed in *ankle* and sent it then proceeded to ask him if he had hurt himself. I knew which ankle it was because he had jumped down around 20 feet to the ground from a telephone pole when he was 17. I almost shit when I saw the X-ray. The doctor took one look at it and said, *I KNOW that God never meant for a foot to look like that!* We all laughed and the doctor scheduled surgery for the next morning while the nurse drugged my son for the pain to last the night, I think. I don’t even remember how many pins were put in but I remember how much padding was around that foot for weeks afterward.
So it’s no surprise that, every once in a while, that foot will just lose all feeling and muscle control and collapses. Of course, that paralytic moment seems to travel up the whole leg and there’s no control so down he goes. I used to suffer from a similar thing when I was younger but it was caused by surgery on my foot for a different reason. There are so many important nerves in your foot, you probably wouldn’t believe it. The surgeon had to wait a couple years before he could remove the needle in my foot due to it being next to a nerve that would have paralyzed the lower part of that leg. It wasn’t a whole needle (part had broken off in the rug). It was one of those moments….I was running after one of my sisters and my mother just dropped the needle after breaking off the thread she used for a repair of something or other. My foot hit the needle just a second or less after my mother had dropped it. Voila’! Needle in foot for three or four years before they could remove it. And it was just in time. As the doctor, needle held with tweezers, went to check the size of the needle they removed against the original X-ray, the needle slipped out of the tweezers, hit the tray and shattered into a hundred pieces. Yes, it was THAT corroded.
The surgery had been performed with just a local anesthetic and I watched as much of it as I could (Hey, I was 12!) but this nurse was at my head (I was on my stomach) and she kept grabbing the sides of my head and turning it towards her. Spoil sport. But I admit, I said to the doctor, *It’s a good thing you didn’t wait any longer to take that out!* From the horrified look on his face, I think that is exactly what he was thinking, too, but he never said it out loud in MY hearing.
Another Smiley face for Chewlee today. She was very good so, when one of the neighbor kids came over and asked Chewlee if she wanted a play date, I let her go for an hour. The girl is around 10, I believe, and she goes to the Beast’s church. Chewlee was so excited, she must have said *thank you, thank you* a dozen times as she put on her sweater and ran out the door. When she wasn’t home in an hour, I told the Beast to go get her home and he said to let her have another half hour since it was still early. He went over and got her (much to her disappointment until the mother said they would do it again when she was with us next week) and she was in a really great mood when she got home. She played on the computer for about 40 minutes. She had an hour but I think she’s played just about every game on NickJr. and watched the videos of all her favorite characters until she’s gotten a bit bored. I think they need to change some of them now. They only need to change a few. She’ll find any new ones.
I told you they have a new hidden objects game on Pogo, right? Chewlee not only loves it but she’s damn good at finding the objects, as usual. I played all four of the new adventures and still have a hard time locating them. Of course, when you replay one, they change the objects you have to find. The scenes don’t change, just the hidden objects in the scene for you to find. If Chewlee knows what the object is (remember, she doesn’t have a whole lot of experience with things like drills, oil cans, oxygen tanks, etc. so I sometimes have to describe the object to her….and she will STILL find the darn thing!). Young eyes….young eyes. Sheesh!
It WAS cooler today. Our high was only 61 but there was lots of sun and no wind so it felt nice out. It was too cool for Chewlee and I to sit outside, waiting for her bus, because it was 45 degrees and very humid since it POURED last night. We tried but ended up back inside within 5 minutes, feeling chilled. I wasn’t standing right at the door when the bus came down the road and that darn bus driver slowed down but didn’t stop until he actually SAW me open the door. He was almost to our lot next door when he stopped and Chewlee ran over and got on the bus.
Tonight we packed up her back pack together. She grabbed a few of the smaller items she wanted to take home with her (her makeup and lip glosses) and put them in her pocket. We put her papers from Monday and today inside the back pack but not in her folder. Her daily homework (the reading lesson) and her snack money were put in the folder where it belongs and then she zipped it up securely and put it on my chair by the craft table. She likes to do her practice reading while we are waiting for the bus and she can make sure I signed it. She even remembered to put her library book in because tomorrow is library day and she can turn it in for a new book. I hope I get to see or talk to th Princess to remind her that making sure Chewlee reads it and that SHE signs it because it means a Dugie Dollar for Chewlee on Friday.
Love you all. More warmer weather by this weekend (so just two more cooler days) so I hope you make some plans to enjoy the outdoors. We will be planting more veggies. How about you?
