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dangermom

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Everything posted by dangermom

  1. Mine is just about books. Howling Frog Books
  2. We've been trying--in fact we were just outside searching the sky--but every single evening, there are clouds over on the western edge of the sky! Aargh! :banghead:
  3. Yep. I checked it out a time or two before deciding to buy. I think they've kept up with the new editions too.
  4. Housewife is an old and honorable title that means a woman in charge of a household or family. Etymologically it goes back to the medieval husewif, which matched with the male husebonde--which changed into husband. I'm happy to be called a housewife, although it doesn't happen often. I work part-time and mostly I get described as a librarian and homeschooling mom, and anyway most people use stay-at-home-mom these days. But I quite like housewife too.
  5. My husband the calculus genius says he can't tell from the written version, but if you have a sound clip you could send, maybe he'd be able to figure it out. Feel free to email me something if you like. jean at roadq dot com
  6. I looked up cal day. I love Cal Day! It's about time to start planning, so I was looking up the date. The website hasn't been really updated for 2013 yet, grrrr. It just gives a date for this year and you can sign up for email updates, but there's no program yet. Cal Day is a giant open house for UC Berkeley--all the departments show off what they do. There are always a lot of hands-on science activities, music, martial arts demos, authors, all sorts of fun.
  7. Look at thinkgeek's kid's section? We got my daughter a Marie Curie t-shirt for her 12th birthday and she loves it.
  8. Yes, I love it here. I think this is the best place to live in California, pretty much, and we've been here 13 years and hope never to leave (unless of course someone offers me a year abroad!).
  9. Honestly I think it's pretty minor. He's working hard, so are you, and sometimes things fall through the cracks. Plan a really nice evening as soon as possible, and make a mental note to plan the anniversary next time instead of both assuming that you know what will happen. Our first-date anniversary was last week. It's always a special day for us. This year...well, he had the bright idea of getting me tulips, but forgot to do it. I forgot about it until that evening, and I'd come down with a serious cold and lost my voice, so I wished him happy anniversary in a frog croak. I couldn't eat anything but soup so we didn't even get takeout on Saturday night. I finally feel better now, nearly a week later, so it would be nice to do something this weekend, but my siblings are all showing up from out of town, so who knows if we'll ever get around to anything? Oh well. :)
  10. For you--In My Hands, by a Polish woman. She had to work as housekeeper for a Nazi officer, and hid 12? Jews in the house. It's quite a story.
  11. My kids are learning the Sassmannhaus method. I should think it would be fine for adults--I've done a little bit too and I should probably try to learn on my older daughter's violin...
  12. I had this really cute onesie that said BORN TO READ...heh.
  13. 11 is too young to be able to do that on his own. What I have done (this was for a 12yo girl going camping for a week) is to call the person in charge of food directly, explain the allergies, and ask for a complete menu/ingredients. She was tremendously helpful. The kitchen staff knew about all food issues (other kids were gluten-free or other things). I also had a friend who was working in the kitchen, who I knew I could trust to keep an eye on things because she has allergies herself, and my daughter knew she could go to that woman with any concerns. It was a very successful week. My daughter is very careful and responsible about her food, and she does speak up for herself when she needs to, but I would not expect her to tackle a week-long group campout on her own. The menu planner would much prefer to speak with me directly anyway.
  14. My 9yo had plenty of time to finish what was left of her math (7 problems!) before lunch. I mean tons of time. I found her with nothing done, making up rap songs for her stuffed animals--like she even knows anything about rap! Then she was hungry. :glare:
  15. Yep, that was the one, though hes written lots else. I think I'll have to look for more.
  16. For some reason I've been lazy about posting to this thread and the 52 weeks blog, but I've been reading! All sorts of stuff. The Island of Dr. Moreau (eeewwww) The Laughter of Dead Kings (a Vicky Bliss story!) The Return of Captain John Emmett (WWI mystery, meh) Sex, Drugs, and Sea Slime (fascinating; do not read while eating) You Can Understand the Bible (Peter Kreeft!) I've just finished a wonderful memoir of childhood in Nigeria (WWII era) by Wole Soyinka, and The Souls of Black Folk by W. E. B. DuBois which was amazing, and I'm reading Huck Finn.
  17. I have two girls and yeah, it's pretty normal. I have often said that my children have the common sense of ice cubes.
  18. Yes, that's what I was saying. I qualify pretty well as a seamstress, though, and I like the word better. For a general term I really do prefer sewist to sewer.
  19. I think tailor, like seamstress, carries a professional connotation. And when you get serious about sewing, tailoring is a specific skill set that is pretty advanced. I don't do tailoring! And male quilters wouldn't call themselves tailors, they just call themselves quilters.
  20. "Sewist" is pretty good, but really in the end I prefer "seamstress." "Sewer" is just unfortunate. Seamstress does seem to carry a connotation of dressmaking in particular, and lots of sewists don't do that. Sewist, I suppose, includes soft toys and quilts and banners and hairbands and shorts and thrifted pillowcases, so it's a more general term. I used to be a quilter, but now I'm more general...
  21. Oh, thanks! :) Between being a librarian and being a homeschooling mom, I've developed some of my own theories about kids and reading, and I've become convinced that twaddle in the form of easy chapter books serves a real purpose. The Rainbow Fairies are pretty awful to an adult--they're the literary equivalent of Pokemon only not as interesting--but IMO good for a little girl who is still practicing reading skills. If you (the general parent) feel that the child isn't getting enough literary fiber from self-chosen reading material, then I think upping the read-alouds and/or pushing audiobooks is the answer for a while. The more rich literary language you can stock a child's mind with by reading aloud, the more prepared she will be to read those books herself when her visual reading skills catch up. I guess it's like how SWB teaches writing skills by separating them out into copywork and narration. Within a short time, the child will be able to integrate those different elements of reading and enjoy reading complex works on her own. (Though at the same time, I think we ought to be reading aloud a lot, until an older age than we usually think necessary. We should be reading aloud to 10 and 11yos as a routine thing IMO, and most people quit long before that.)
  22. Oh, those are terrible, aren't they? So fluffy and silly! :) My daughter loved them. She is not quite 10 and is now reading all kinds of stuff, so don't despair, she'll be fine. Now I'm going to give you my Theory About Twaddle--specifically about easy chapter books. Easy chapter books, even very fluffy ones, are a boon to children and to you! You may have heard SWB talk about how tiny children love repetition--they want to hear the same story over and over, because they are learning pattern. Well, IMO easy chapter books are the next step up. They are great for allowing children to practice reading skills (which takes a lot of work!) without also having to worry too much about the story. It's repetition with variation--it has adventure, but the kid knows that it's safe. Jack and Annie are always going to make it back to the tree house, and Kirsty and Rachel will always manage to help the fairy and defeat the goblins. I vote for letting your daughter read the twaddle. Her reading and comprehension skills will benefit, and soon enough she'll be reading Treasure Island with glee. Easy chapter books will help her to do so.
  23. I don't think it's weird to measure her, FWIW. I do think, though, that getting it done by a pro would be better. I took my daughter to Penney's, to the lady everyone recommends because she is the best. My daughter didn't like it much, but she sure likes the perfectly-fitting bras.
  24. Yeah, but he was kind of a special case. He wouldn't have gone to jail if he hadn't insisted on suing his lover's father for libel, when the 'libel' was that he was gay, which he in fact was, and then it was proven in court. So then they pretty much had to send him to jail to uphold public morality, not to mention he wasn't that popular anyway. If Wilde hadn't sued, he would never have gone to jail. (I'm not saying it was right, on several levels, but that was the system. And this is a quick summary--look up the details.) Anyway, the upper classes got away with all kinds of things that would get a servant thrown out into the streets, yep. Edith (oh heck, is that her name? the maid) is a sort-of (prettified) example. It was entirely common for a houseowner, or his son, to force a maid to submit to his importunities. Then she'd get thrown out to starve when she got pregnant, and indeed prostitution was often the only way to survive. If you lost your job without a reference, that was the end of you.
  25. Oh thanks! I love Fish Whistle but don't own a copy. :D
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