Pumpkins, Pie, Perfect

Pie. HELLO.

Emma rocking the froggie wellies and the bink.

I have a death grip on her because she just wanted to climb the straw house, a la Three Little Pigs.

So pretty.

Dadd and Ellie get ready for a great adventure.

We decided to try the ever-popular and heavily touted Patterson's Fruit Farm for our Sunday jaunt. www.pattersonfarm.com They have a "Family Fun Fest" with hayrides and other attractions at their location on Mulberry, but we decided to just do the real farm, buy some pumpkins, and let the girls run. What a great idea! There was a terrific hay house that they enjoyed climbing, I bought a pecan pie, and we got two great pumpkins to carve during It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown on Tuesday night. It was a little windy. I regretted not packing hats. But the kids loved it and I would do it again in other seasons too, just to give them a chance to be outside. Tired, air-freshed kids are happy kids.

My Eileen Fisher Jacket, or, What I Wore to the Election

The most important little black circle I may ever fill in. Go, Obama, go.

The jacket, the twins, and a good day at the BOE.


A throwaway scarecrow for Sarah Starr. The head looks handmade. Bravo, crafty people.

Is it hot in here, or......

I'm just a schoolgirl at heart.

Oh, Helen.

Rocking the Sleeping Beauty diaper. On her head. at 7:30 a.m. What could be better.

Fun Stuff of Late

There's no there there, as Gertrude Stein would say. The whole UC complex at CSU is but a memory. This view from the library walkway is interesting, in that before the demolition, it wasn't possible.

Bill's new T-shirt. Emma is fan.

Zoo Day, Sunday, October 12. Perfect weather. We did the Northern Trek only, had lunch up there, went to Wolf Lodge. A joy.

Troops to Teachers, or, Lord, He Screwed THAT Up

John McCain mentioned Troops to Teachers in last night's debate. Naturally, my ears perked up. He said that it was a program to let retired and discharged soldiers go into education as a second career without having to worry about certifications and passing examinations.

WHAT?

Bill said I turned into Cartman's mother. "What what what?!?" How could this be? How could some guy just get his discharge papers and walk into a classroom teacher position with no "teacher school" training? No Praxis? NO LICENSE? I mean, yes, being in service comes with valuable experience that should not be wasted. But you wouldn't let a combat medic walk into UH and start performing orthopedic surgery. Are his skills needed? Sure. But just like medicine, teaching is a profession. And professions need licensure.

So I called Troops to Teachers this morning in Columbus. A very nice woman named Veronica took my call. A nice, really shocked woman named Veronica. I told her why I was calling and she said, "McCain just got all his facts wrong. We are a transition program for retired and honorably discharged servicemen and women. They must complete all the necessary requirements for licensure. They are bound by Praxis. Yes, they can get their license under the state-approved alternative route. But to say that they can just become teachers with no training and no license, no." I said, "What did you think when he came up with that?" She said, "I almost threw up. And I prepared myself for all the calls I'm going to get today."

Good going, Johnny. Idiot.

http://www.ode.state.oh.us/GD/Templates/Pages/ODE/ODEPrimary.aspx?page=2&TopicRelationID=560

The Perfect Pie and Poetry Party, or, Welcome to Obvious World

Sarah Smith and her bud Annie had a pie party. Yes, it was a Poetry and Pie Party on Parkdale. We cut up dozens of paint chips from the Depot to make found-word poems, ate pie, laughed, ate pie, read our poems and clicked our fingers, ate pie, looked at each other's poems (they were pretty as well as pretty good), ate pie. I mean, it was just really, really great.

New things the kids like, or, where the **** do they get this stuff?

1. Helen likes Sleeping Beauty. Really, really likes her. "Watch Sleeping Beauty?" Here's the thing--she doesn't watch the movie. The plot is too complicated and the songs aren't that terrific (no Bippity Boppity, for example.) Are Flora, Fauna and Merriweather cool? Sure. Who wouldn't want a sparkly wand to clean the house? But I fear that Helen is treading down the dreaded Princess path, and I cannot have that.

2. Harold and the Purple Crayon. Well, who wouldn't.


3. The word "pie." See #2.


4. Harry Belafonte and Liberace. My kids are like 90 year old women.


5. Wearing backpacks. This is a new thing. They don't put anything in their backpacks. They don't even take them out of the house. Ellie just likes to stand in her mirror and look at herself wearing her backpack. The twins just like to have them on when they're playing.


6. Other people's babies. Margaret had a baby last week and when I explained to the twins that a new baby was going to live at their house, Emma said, "We need a new baby." Helen chimed in, "We'll get her at Target." I've heard them plotting this new addition since, especially after they wake up from nap.


7. M & M's.


8. Brushing their teeth with Sleeping Beauty toothpaste. See #1.


9. Swimming.


10. Rummaging through my closet to put on my shoes. Gender roles, here we come.

The kind of stuff I think about....really

1. I know way too much stuff about the early years of the space program for someone who isn't 12 or a boy. I have a favorite astronaut (John W. Young, Gemini 3, Apollo 10, Apollo 16). I know the difference between the CMP and the LMP. I have In the Shadow of the Moon on DVR and have watched it, oh, I don't know. 10 times maybe?

2. Don't get me started on biographies about the above.

3. Gene Cernan's (Gemini 9, Apollo 10, Apollo 17) is good, by the way.

4. I keep wondering if anyone is going to do a biopic of Leni Riefenstahl, Sonje Henje, Amelia Earhart or Dorothy Fuldheim.

5. I am thinking of getting little business cards made about ASD to hand out to idiots who think I'm a nut because I walk through the grocery store singing to my children. The twins think it's funny, but Ellie really needs it.

6. I know I have a great book in my head, but I don't know when I will have time to write it. So I just write parts of it, or make plans for it, while I do other things. Pages 223-225 got done while I folded laundry today.

7. I miss my friend Sally Hicks, who now lives in Montana, and even my children miss her.

8. I miss my friend Lynn more, and she just lives in Baltimore, and I can't even talk about it sometimes, it's so painful.

9. I have a new idea for an ice cream: pretzel marshmallow fudge ripple.

10. Book club is just a few weeks away, and already I'm counting the days.

Karma is, as they say, a B.

Like most people, I have a few "where were you/what were you doing" events in my life.

1. John Lennon being shot. It was a breaking story on the news. I think John Chancellor may have been the reporter. My grandparents were over for dinner. My grandmother lit a cigarette and said, "Well, what do you expect? All those kids are on dope."

2. The Challenger explosion. I was in high school algebra. I think we might have gone to Mass. I know we watched it on the news and I remember thinking, that thing just BLEW UP. You have to remember that in my lifetime NASA had not had a major catastrophe. I wasn't born at the time of The Fire. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_1_fire So I was not used to things not going well for our space program. It was very upsetting for my mother, because she was very excited and proud of Christa McAuliffe.

3. 9/11, which I still can't talk about, really.

4. The OJ verdict. I was in my last year of graduate school and had just signed up to take the LSAT. I sat in my apartment and cried, cried, cried. I just thought, that's it. This pig of a person is going to walk around for the rest of his life knowing that he gave the finger to just about everybody. He butchered two people and he flirted his way through the trial and the jurors were too dazzled by his Heisman and his smile to see the truth.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/CRIME/10/04/oj.simpson.verdict/index.html

I guess OJ can interview all the guys he'll be locked up with and see if they have any insight into who the real killer is.