Kay in Cal
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Posts posted by Kay in Cal
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I've got a mouthful of dough with chocolate chips right now... and it got me thinking...
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I'm mostly NPR as well... more indepth articles I tend to read online. I don't enjoy watching news at all anymore, either on TV or online--not enough depth or background. Too many soundbites.
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OK, I am recipe challenged. Meaning that most of my cooking is "on the fly"--I modify and throw in a little of this and that, rather than measure.
So this is an estimation at best, OK?
This makes home-made baked type (as opposed to saucy-type) macaroni and cheese. I use a 13 x 9 x 2 baking dish for this.
3 12 oz. packages of pasta (I use one rotelli, one shells, one "other"--lots of nooks and crannys are good. You can use actual macaroni if you want!)
3 chunks of good cheese -- about 12-16 oz. medium cheddar, 12 oz. montery jack, 12 oz. of "other"--I use sharp cheddar or mozzerella, depending on my mood
1 1/2 cups milk
Garlic powder
Italian spices
Olive oil
Fresh basil -- optional
OK: Cook the pasta.
While that is cooking: grate the cheese--I use a food processor, as this is a lot of cheese!
Lightly oil the bottom of your baking pan with olive oil.
If you have fresh basil--lay the whole leaves down in a thin layer on the bottom of the pan--you don't need enough to fully cover the bottom, just a few add a wonderful aroma to the dish.
Drain pasta, rinse with cool water, allow to dry a minute, and add to baking pan. If the pasta is too hot going in, it makes it difficult to mix the ingredients.
Now, mix in your cheese, reserving about 8oz, to the cooled pasta. Use your hands to get a good mix. Sprinkle the top with garlic powder and italian spices (maybe 1/2 tsp of garlic, 1 tsp spices) and mix again. Adjust the level of flavor to taste--I like lots of garlic!
Top with reserved cheese and a dusting of italian spices for visual.
Pour milk carefully over the top, trying to wet as much as possible.
The casserole will be full--it should bulge over the top. As the cheese melts, it will settle down, but put a cookie sheet under to catch any drips.
Bake for 45 minutes to 1 hour at 375 or so.
That's from memory--I don't really measure.
But I do love my mac n' cheese!
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For years I have said that their should be a restaurant that specializes in macaroni and cheese. I love homemade macaroni and cheese, but don't always want to make it myself... so my dh googled it for me and found:
Anyone live near the East Village? I'm ready fly out there... my post-move energy is pretty low and it would be so nice to have my favorite comfort food delivered. Too bad we're several thousand miles away. Vacation, maybe?
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I was six months pregnant with our oldest son, asleep in bed...
The phone rang, and I grabbed it. It was my mom, who said "I'm still alive." I had no idea what she was talking about, and as she started to tell me what was going on we turned on the TV in shock.
My mom works at the pentagon... at the time she was still a Colonel in the Air Force reserves (she was a JAG) as well as having a civilian pentagon job (she still does--though their offices are now across the street, not in the pentagon itself).
I spent the rest of the morning in bed, holding my belly and feeling the baby squirm as we watched TV and tried to reach all of our Manhattan friends to make sure they were OK. Then I went in to church and we started planning worship services for that night.
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Congratulations! A beautiful baby, a wonderful man... enjoy those roses!
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Me too... remnants of six week old polish are still holding on. Next time I'm going to polish them clear or French... the pink looked cute but it's too easy to see when it wears off.
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My "liberal" car (actually no Obama sticker on that one, but some peace stickers, etc) got vandalized recently when I was at a matinee movie with my boys. Luckily the "I hate liberals" stickers came off with not too much trouble... and we got to have a discussion about vandalism. And conservatism. Simultaneously.
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I agree with you there. I just think that so often professional educators talk about "age appropriateness" as if everyone's child MUST be taught at a certain time. Trust me, I got a lot of "no, don't start school so early" advice back when my son was 2 and 3--a lot of it here on the boards. We did wait to do anything formal until he was 4, but for HIM the moment had passed for those basics. In retrospect, I think I should have gone with my gut and done phonics when he was a young 2--but pretty much everyone said it was "too early", and I didn't want to be a "pushy mom". Since then I've realized that I'm chasing my child, not pushing him.
I agree that all kids have their own readyness--I just wanted to remind people that just because MOST kids read at a certain time doesn't mean that thier own child will. Could be earlier, could be later--the only normal that matters is thier own normal.
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Normal brain maturity fits a bell curve....
So 5-6 really is a "magical" average age.
But bell curves are only applicable to entire POPULATIONS, not individual behavior. That means that it is perhaps more likely in general that a child would be ready to read at 5 or 6, but your family situation/genetics/enviroment may or may not fall into the middle of that curve. That's one of the reasons homeschooling is so wonderful--the kids at the ends of the curve aren't forgotten as individuals.
My older read at 2. Maybe that's early on the population curve--but both dh and I also read at 2. My younger son is 4 and is still reading beginner books, but some people would say that is young. We're starting kindergarten with ds4 because with the older one we kind of missed the boat. We never taught him phonics, etc--it was all water under the bridge by the time we started and had to skip a LOT of levels to keep up with him.
My point is... what works for you works for you. Statistical averages are not useful in diagnosing the needs of individuals.
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though I sometimes struggle to keep all the voices consistent across multiple readings. My sons will say "He doesn't sound like that! His voice is (higher, lower, gravelly, whatever)" if I change from one reading to the next.
My husband is a wiz at this. He does the best voices, and never forgets what they sound like. Since we just moved, I know he has a New Jersey state forensics league trophy that he won for reading aloud. Really! I found it in a box in the garage. So he's always been good at that kind of dramatization.
Of course, long before we had kids we would read aloud to each other, and the voices are always important. We also used to do Shakespeare plays aloud together, dividing up the parts. Now that our kids are older, maybe we'll do some of that again as a family... hmmmm...
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After three weeks plus of unremitting packing and hauling and cleaning... as of tonight we are out of the old place and into our new house! We actually started sleeping here last week, but still had to clean/debride/excavate the old place. The last of the garage was done today... huzzah! :party:
Revelations:
1. We have too much stuff.
2. Freecycling is great--I took a lot to the Goodwill, but giving it to a specific person was so nice.
3. Having a back yard is the BEST thing ever. My boys can actually entertain themselves for a while, and make noise that I don't have to hear but can still supervise through the window. It's awesome! If you've never lived without a yard, you just don't know how lucky you are...
4. School is going to start a bit late this year. Maybe the week after next. For now we are all still in boxes, but we do have an awesome school/play room now!
5. Did I mention we have too much stuff?
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No... but excellent information might have prevented a pregnancy. I believe in teaching abstinence before marriage--and in knowing your children well enough to know if they are as committed to that stance as you are. Personally, I think every young woman and man should have a strong knowledge of birth control, even if just for use after marriage.
Yes, I always hear of folks who were responsible and their birth control "failed", but I've still yet to meet one such who was using the recommended barrier method (condom or diaphragm) combined with a hormonal method (pill, patch or implant). There maybe a few cases in a large statistical group, all I know is that none of my peers who had unplanned pregnancies was using more than just condoms--great for disease control, not an effective method of long-term birth control. I've asked three of my friends after the fact, and they had no idea that the one year failure rate of condoms is as much as 10% even with perfect use, much higher with "less than perfect" use--information that I knew even though I was NOT sexually active in high school. If a teenaged woman who is sexually active does not know HOW to protect herself because her parent has chosen to withhold that knowledge, yeah, that's a parenting decision.
I suppose it is possible that her daughter had all the information and access to appropriate resources, as well as parental involvement, but intended to get pregnant?
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I think this situation does indeed reflect on her personal and political judgement. While I'm happy that she is choosing to support her daughter, and that the young man is apparently stepping up to the plate, obviously there was either supervision or information that were not provided. To provide abstinence-only knowledge to your child (and vote for such education for everyone's children) and then be un-involved enough to not know that they are sexually active at 16--IMHO that is a parental judgement problem.
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Update: There's a new test up... and they won't give you your score! Ugh... I think I got them mostly right, but I guessed on a couple.
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I've always kind of assumed that, accidents aside, I'll make it that far.
I have three living grandparents, all in their 90s and still living independantly in their own homes. The one who passed away (my maternal grandfather) was a four pack a day smoker for most of his life and died from cancer and emphysema in his 60s. He was the only smoker in the family. I figure if I avoid tobacco use, I'll be good. I had four living great grandparents when I was born, two of whom lived to be over 100 years old. There's no family history of cancer, diabetes (even though many are fat), some heart disease among older males on my Dad's side but they've all lived through any heart attacks. I think lifestyle helps, but I don't believe any of the elder members of my family were intentionally healthy or anything... they just lived a long time.
I'd really like to live to see the Tricentennial celebrations, since I remember those in 1976. (I was born in 1970)
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Actually, Obama has expressed a clear, supportive, recent opinion about homeschooling. On p. 344 of his 2006 book Audacity of Hope:
" . . . Of course, none of these policies need discourage families from deciding to keep a parent at home, regardless of the financial sacrifices. For some families, that may mean doing without certain material comforts. For others, it may mean home schooling or a move to a community where the cost of living is lower. For some families, it may be the father who stays at home -- although for most families it will still be the mother who serves as the primary caregiver.
Whatever the case may be, such decisions should be honored. If there is one thing that social conservatives have been right about, it's that our modern culture sometimes fails to fully appreciate the extraordinary emotional and financial contributions -- the sacrafices and just plain hard work -- of the stay-at-home mom. . . . I want my daughters to have a choice as to what's best for them and their families. . ."
Thanks so much for posting this! I think that's pretty clear support for homeschooling, certainly clearer than from other candidates in the past. I wonder if those who insist he is against it have read this book? They seem to have skipped right over your post!
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This is awesome! Last Christmas we got the colosseum and all the Roman stuff... now we can add Egyptians to the mix. It's going on my Amazon wish list today. Pirates and knights, Romans and Egyptians.
My dh wants Playmobil Lord of the Rings... I'm holding out for Regency.
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1. I'm a Spanish teacher at a small Catholic school.
2. I'm a German man who is a very high ranking Scientologist. Mostly people are mad at him for defrauding them of various amounts of money.
3. I'm the owner of an art gallery (this may be the same person as #2 above, I can't tell).
3. I'm me! Most of the hits are actually me... either as a pastor or homeschooling mom.
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So it looks like we are at one end of the bell curve, and my in-laws are at the other. Guess they must freeze at our house! Thanks for the answers... back to packing.
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We spent several weeks this summer at my in-laws. I love them so much... but I was so uncomfortable the whole time. They have a huge house (I'm sure expensive to cool), and keep thier AC set a 82. At night my dh would sneak out and change the thermostat for our room a few degrees (it has zoned cooling, so we could just affect the guest rooms), then turn it down in the morning again. Virginia is so hot and humid anyways... we really enjoyed the week at my mom's house--her AC was set to 65.
Now we are home and as we pack (or avoid packing--I'm working on boxing school stuff so the computer is in this room) our AC is set to 69.
So I'm curious... what do you set your temp to in the summer? Are we the weird cold people, or is 82 too hot for most of us?
I think our thermostat averages around 70, sometimes lower if we are being very active. Of course, in winter we only turn the heat on if it gets below 60 or so in the house (not often, here in So Cal).
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Wow! That's impressive!
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Lol! I would tell him... except I already decided to order pizza tonight.
Yes, I should be packing. But all that playing to improve my score, and maybe Dharma will come and "relocate" me for free? Right? To a wonderful new job, where I can meet interesting new people...
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Yes! I did with both my sons, and had fantastic birth experiences. I did have a doula with me both times, but the hypnotraining could certainly be used separately. Mostly it has to do with practice, practice, practice--which is a wonderful excuse for quiet mommy time late in pregnancy. It works beautifully, and I have even used my "training" for dealing with surgery/pain/stress in other situations since then!
You can check out the system we used at:
FYI, there is even a picture of dh and I and our first son and a quote from my dh somewhere in the FAQ, I think.
I have four close friends who used the same system (one friend did so well, we all chose to try it!), all with various doulas. All had short, easy, uncomplicated, unmedicated births, in either the hospital or at home--including one who used the system after having a horrible "traditional" birthing experience with her first. I think having a doula who knows how to assist you is wonderful, but it is not a necessary component of the hypbirth, particularly for experienced moms.
I had a party on Saturday, and we were all laughing about how we managed to befuddle our doctors/nurses/etc during labor because we were fully dialated and pushing but so focused, calm and collected that we had to convince them that "the baby is coming NOW". I can't recommend it highly enough, and would be happy to send you my more info if you pm me.
Politically Correct Grammar?
in General Education Discussion Board
Posted
Yes, I use "they" as well, in written as well as speaking terms. Xince there is no existing single word for this usage, I think adopting "they" is just fine.
Gender neutral terms for specific professions are also only polite when speaking in general. My husband is certainly not a "pastor's wife" nor am I a "clergyman". My letter carrier is a woman, as are many of the police officers I see driving the streets. Firefighters themselves seem to have embraced the gender-neutral term over "firemen". Spouse is a wonderful word that accurately describes many circumstances--the person who is married to XYZ, regardless of gender. So there are clergy spouse gatherings at our conference, for example.
I simply think it is only polite to use gender inclusive language, unless one is certain that there are NO exceptions within the group. I'm happy to talk about women at a women's retreat, or men at a men's meeting. Though technically, in my denomination all pastors are automatically members of BOTH the women and men's groups. In my experience, the United Methodist Men serve better (though fattening!) food at their meetings.