Entries from January 2010 ↓

I substituted Kindergarten for 2 days.

On both days I had lunch duty.

No wonder kids are obese. School lunch is an unhealthy mixture of sweets and low-quality carbohydrates.

On one day the 5-year-olds were served TWO hamburgers with white bread buns, french fries and a cookie, one stale slice of tomato, one strip of iceberg lettuce, and two small slices of pear.

The next lunch was a greasy pizza slice, tater tots, a cookie and peaches in sugar syrup.

On what planet is that a healthy diet for a small human?

Pack a lunch.

Kindergarten girls are cute and sweet when they are singing, “I kissed a girl and I liked it . . tastes like cherry chap stick,” while they cut and paste.

It’s a good song. Of course, she doesn’t know what she meant and I wasn’t going to enlighten her.

Sometimes ignorance IS bliss.

There is a huge variation in intellect, knowledge and ability among Kindergartners. It only takes about an hour to determine which is which and who is who.

There is an obvious correlation between the intellect, knowledge and ability and the child’s poverty level and parental involvement. How can you tell? Spend five minutes with a pack of Kindergartners and you know.

It’s doubtful whether standardized testing or increased funding have a shot at correcting the fundamental problem of disparity.

You have the best shot if you win the Parent Lottery.

What’s with the teeth? It’s not expensive to tackle a toddler and run a toothbrush over their little baby choppers. You would presume its much more expensive to visit the dentist and pay $150-$300 per tooth for putting silver fillings and caps on every single tooth.

It’s a mouthful of paradox.

Girls are natural-born leaders. The more time I spend with young children and young teens, the more I believe that if it were not for historically keeping women and girls down with brute force, rape and emotional manipulations like, “God wants you to submit to men, it’s in the Bible,” women would be the natural leaders of the Planet Earth.

Girls are compassionate leaders who don’t want to leave anyone behind. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen a girl zip through her work and lean over and help a slower child with their work. She’ll help them cut, explain the directions again, and patiently supply them with the answer.

Today’s American girl is lucky.

Boys are sweet. It’s hard not to love them. Of course they have a hard time sitting still. Who doesn’t?

There should be more movement in school.

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Back in ’07, before the economy melt down, I was writing about Women and Money.

It’s a big deal. We say stupid things like “Money Can’t buy happiness,” when the reality is that “Not having money can buy a great deal of unhappiness.”  In a marriage especially.

Having quit my job to be a SAHM/WAHM, I don’t actually make much money. I asked my readers, of the old Blog Fabulous (now BlissTree w/b5media) and on The Girl Revolution to be just a little less economically dependent and passive about the future and just a little more active.

I convinced my husband to put $50 into my own TD Ameritrade Save Yourself Account every month.

It transfers automatically, so after the initial, somewhat awkward conversations, it doesn’t remain an issue up for debate.

We’re married. So we debate things having to do with money. There’s a limited amount of money and this is real-life, so things don’t go as smoothly as you imagine they will when you’re 20 and you think marriage is going to be all romance and rings and dinners out. Should I start selling Young Living Essential Oils? Should we spend $5000 to self publish my book? How much are we saving? How much is on the credit cards? What are we going to spend on groceries?

You know. It’s your life too.

It’s been a little over a year that I opened my Save Yourself account.

I am so glad I did. With only $50 a month, I made some investments that have accumulated to almost $2,000. I’ve bought and sold stock. It’s been a great illustration of how small things add up. You think a year is a long time – when you’re 20 – but, it goes faster and faster in your 30s and soon . . . it’s not $50, it’s $2,000.

I’ve decided to become an independent distributor – small business owner – in a brand of Healthy Chocolate and Young Living Essential Oils.   I used the income from my Save Yourself Plan to make the initial investments. No marital haggling.

It feels awesome, every time I look at it. Every time I realize, I can just decide to do something without haggling over it with my spouse. Every time I check my account I feel a little more powerful in my own life.

If you have gotten nothing else from The Girl Revolution I hope it’s that if YOU are more powerful in your own life, the odds are better for your daughter.

Modeling empowerment, financial security, body image, self esteem, and relationship stability is the very best thing you can do for a kid.

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I finally got assigned a Sister with Women for Women International.

Your sister is: Bora Tabu M’Kabonge, she lives in DRC.

She is in the Tuonembele woman group.

I’m super-excited about this because it gives me something tangible and relevant to do to change the International situation around the world.

I’m convinced no International initiative can be successful as long as the situation for girls and women remains so dire. To continue any peace-seeking process by trying to fight darkness is essentially futile and temporary.

To introduce light in the darkness, hope where there was despair, independence where there was powerlessness, autonomy where there was victimization, money where there was poverty, love where there was hatred and fear, respect where there was disrespect  . . . that is the only thing that might work.

I’m not waiting around for governments to fix it.  Look at history and see what governments do and have always done – play around with men and their versions of power and largely ignore the victimization and oppression of women around the world. Do what you’ve always done and get what you’ve always gotten. War and suffering, more war and suffering.

It’s time to do something else.

It’s time to take action for women. If women are independent, autonomous, and financially secure they become more difficult to victimize and oppress.

For $27 a month I can do that.

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Santa put fake press-on nails in Ainsley’s stocking and I thought my husband was being silly for being concerned. Everyone knows the stupid things won’t stay on for 6 hours and besides, it might be an effective means to get her to stop biting her nails.

In the past I might have been incensed by the idea of the whole child manicure thing, like my friend Lisa at Corporate Babysitter, but I just can’t muster it.

My kid wants to stop biting her nails. Wanting beautifully manicured nails might help her be motivated to stop the habit. Is there an actual harm or just an imagined one? I file my nails. Once in a blue moon I get a pedicure. Seems to me this IS one of those feminine things passed down from mother to daughter – the way it should be. We all pass down our beauty secrets and hygiene habits don’t we? It’s one of the privileges of the mother-daughter relationship. It’s part of what bonds us. Better me than say  . . . Disney or Playboy. A manicure and pedicure does feel good to me. It feels like self-care. Why wouldn’t it be the same for an 8-year-old girl?

OK – fine. I admit it. I promised to take her for a professional manicure at a salon and pay real money to encourage her to stop the nail biting habit that’s really bothering her (hangnails hurt) and driving her dad crazy. Is the world gonna end? NO. Is she going to transform into some hyper-sexualized diva who wants to grow up to be a Kardashian or Jenna Jamison? NO.

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Complaining became a big problem in our house when . . . well, since I moved into it.

But, I tried to resolve the issue with the Complaint Free World Bracelet. Which brought to light the fact that nearly every word out of my mouth is a complaint. Certainly nearly every blog is somehow a complaint. We’re too fat. TV and movies are too sexual and violent. Disney Princess Movies aren’t even written by any women – at all, like not even one woman on the writing staff. Sexual predators are stalking children online. Kate Moss must have malfunctioning taste buds. I want to publish a book, but I’m to broke and scared what you’ll think and say about it. Incessant complaining, really. I’m working on it. God is working on it for me.

Do you know what the most annoying thing you can do to a habitual complainer like myself is?

Get a 7- or 8-year-old to follow them around incessantly complaining. For about a year-and-a-half.

I decided to Woman Up and Parent. Oh the hypocrisy of complaining about her complaining was bothering me, sure.

But, hey! I’m the Mom and she’s the kid and seriously, I’m can’t stand to listen to it anymore. So here’s the deal, I told her,

“For every complaint, you’re giving me a quarter. Every time you complain you’re ruining your own life a little. Also, you’re ruining mine. ”

In the first 24 hours she paid me $10.25. That’s over 40 complaints in 24 hrs. and I let a few slide because they were legitimate things I needed to know like Mommy, I stepped on a thumb tack yesterday and now my foot is throbbing and red.

I told her she can earn the money back by not complaining for one single day.

Any better ideas? All are welcome.

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