humor

Homeschooling With Dad…


Conversation I overheard between my nine year old daughter and her dad this evening as he was helping her understand some mathematical principles:

Dad: “You’ve got 1 Freaky = 2 Deaky’s; and 1 Deaky = 3/4 Artsy’s; and 1 Artsy = 5 Fartsy’s. Convert 23 Freaky’s to ____ Fartsy’s”

Daughter: “Um…mom doesn’t do it that way…I don’t get it.”

Dad repeats earlier sentence.

Daughter: “So you want me to tell you how many Fartsy’s there are?”

Dad: “Yes. Figure out how many Fartsy’s you get when you convert 23 Freaky’s using the mathematical equation I have given you.”

Daughter: “Um…Okay…well…I guess there are going to be 46 Freaky’s, which would mean I have to multiply .75 Artsy’s…no…wait, I have to reduce here…okay, so I reduce down and then multiply by 5 Fartsy’s…would it be….let’s see (furiously scratching on paper with pencil)….12 Fartsy’s?”

I guess he speaks her language.

An Open Letter to Low Cut Pants

Dear Low-Cut Pants,

I’m told that you feel grievously injured by my “radical” decision to buy you a size too large and belt you as close to my natural waist as I can get you, as if you were pants of a more reasonable design. I am aware that this makes your butt all bunchy and doesn’t look good. That’s why I’m compelled to wear a jacket with you, even if it’s really too hot for the jacket and I’m wearing a silk shirt and silk combines with my underarm perspiration in such a way that I end up bearing a striking olfactory resemblance to cat urine.

You think this is irrational, do you? You think I’m cutting off my nose to spite my face? Well, let me tell you something, Low-Cut Pants: you weren’t making me any friends when I was wearing you the way your designer intended, either. For instance, I kept trying to reach into my back pocket and then discovering that I had accidentally stuck my hand down my pants and grabbed my own a** instead. This is not a behavior I have ever found especially appealing in others, so I can only suppose that it was something of a social handicap for me as well.

Then, of course, there is the issue of my belly. I really have no interest in calling attention to it at this point, but you and your ilk relentlessly foreground it. With each passing year, you force more jiggling adipose tissue into public view; there seems to be no limit to how low you will sink.

One might be forgiven for asking why, in light of my recent weight gain, I chose to buy low-cut pants at all. But now we have reached the crux of the matter: I had no choice. We had a sudden week of warm weather, and when I took my light clothing out of storage, I found that I had outgrown all of last year’s pants. I had to have something to wear to the office the next day, so I went to a giant strip mall where all the stores are open late. I combed through the offerings of every clothing retailer there and was unable to find a single pair of regular waist-high pants. Low-cut pants had achieved total, hegemonic domination of the women’s-apparel market.

Do you think I’m the only 40-year-old woman who has recently gained enough weight to be discomfited by the prospect of wearing you? In case you haven’t looked at a newspaper in the last three years or so, there’s an epidemic of obesity in the United States. But I’m pretty sure you have looked at a newspaper. In fact, I find the curious coincidence of your rise to power with press coverage of the obesity epidemic very suggestive. It’s difficult to escape the conclusion that you are engaged in a vast conspiracy to expose the bellies of American women to the ridicule of a hostile world. After all, where do fashion trends typically begin? France, isn’t it?

Therefore, Low-Cut Pants, I have chosen the kind of tactic favored by those who are otherwise powerless to oppose the dominant regime, the fashion equivalent of a suicide bombing. Yes, I will belt you up high, and damn the consequences to me or anyone else! Millions of my sisters will stand beside me, butts bunchy, fists in the air, to make this solemn vow: the waist will rise again!

Sincerely,
Claudia Ginanni

Disclaimer – I, Karen, do not wear low-cut pants, but if I did…this is EXACTLY how I would feel! I found this here. Of course, I first read about it here, though.

Hands Free Cell Phone Holder

According to new State of Texas laws, you will no longer be able to use a cell phone while driving unless you have a “hands free” adapter. I have been driving and talking for some time, so I decided to do the right thing and get legal.
I went to Circuit City and they wanted $50 for a headset with a microphone for my cell phone. Having a friend in the cell phone business, I talked with him and was able to come up with an alternative, working through Office Depot. These kits are compatible with any mobile phone and one size fits all. I paid him $0.08 each because he bought in quantity. Then we tried it with Motorola, Sprint, Verizon and Nokia units and they worked perfectly.
Following photo is of my friend modeling our new headset:

You Know You’re A Homeschool Mom When…

~Author UnknownWhen a child busts a lip, and after seeing she’s okay, you round up some Scotch tape to capture some blood and look at it under the microscope.

You find dead animals and actually consider saving them to dissect later.

Your children never, ever leave the “why?” stage.

You look at every room in your home to try and imagine how to squeeze in another bookshelf.

You turn your china cabinet into book shelves.

When your teenager decides to take one community college course, and comes home and asks you why the teacher wrote “At” on his paper. (A+)

You ask for, and get, a copier instead of a diamond tennis bracelet for your wedding anniversary.

Your kids think reading history is best accomplished while lying on the floor with their head resting on the side of their patient dog.

Your husband can walk in at the end of a long day and tell how the science experiment went just by looking at the house.

You never have to drive your child’s forgotten lunch to school.

Your child will never suffer the embarrassment of group showers after PE.

The only debate about the school lunch program is whose turn it is to cook.

You never have to face the dilemma of whether to take your child’s side or the teacher’s side in a dispute at school.

If your child gets drugs at school, it’s probably Tylenol.

Your neighbors think you are insane.

Your kids learn new vocabulary from their extensive collection of “Calvin & Hobbes” books.

Your formal dining room now has a computer, copy machine, and many book shelves and there are educational posters and maps all over the walls.

You have meal worms growing in a container….on purpose.

If you get caught talking to yourself, you can claim you’re having a PTA meeting.

Talking out loud to yourself is a parent/teacher conference.

You take off for a teacher in-service day because the principal needs clean underwear.

You can’t make it through a movie without pointing out the historical inaccuracies.

You step on math manipulatives on your pre-dawn stumble to the bathroom.

The teacher gets to kiss the principal in the faculty lounge and no one gossips.

Your honor student can actually read the bumper sticker that you put on your car.

If your child claims that the dog ate his homework, you can ask the dog.

Someday your children will consider you to be a miracle-working expert and will turn to you for advice.

Your kids refer to the neighbor kids as “government school inmates.”

You can’t make it through the grocery produce department without asking your preschooler the name and color of every vegetable.

You can’t put your produce in your cart without asking your older student to estimate its weight and verify its accuracy.

You live in a one-house schoolroom.

Ah…a Clean House and a Day off with the Hubby…

So as you all know, I’m the perpetual procrastinator. Say THAT three times really fast.
You would almost think that I came up with the old motto “Why do today what you can put off until tomorrow?” Yes, I’m that bad. If it’s a project I have no interest in, or it’s cleaning…I put it off until I’m going completely nuts living in or around it.

Saturday, I was being lazy and just surfing the net…couldn’t leave my little corner of the world or I might see the chaos of the rest of the house. Never mind the kids had made a half-hearted attempt at cleaning (which really just meant, “here…let me smear that grape jelly so far into the fibers of the carpet you’ll NEVER get it out!”) or that my husband was getting off work at 11 p.m….I simply was not motivated.

Until I went to a function at our church. We were in the midst of a missions conference this weekend and it ran from Friday-Sunday night. Very cool getting to meet missionaries from all over — we had five families in and each was from a different country – Africa, Madagascar, Ireland, England, and Nehru. We even invited one of them to come over to our house on Sunday after the am service.

Which brings me back to my original subject….I cleaned my house after church Saturday night. The kids and I dragged in around 9 pm and after I got AJ and Abby bathed…Katie and I kicked some housecleaning bootay and got it done before dad got home at 11:15. Except for the folding of the laundry…which can just be thrown on our bed and the door closed. That’s what I’m doing today….folding laundry, my LEAST favorite household chore.

Isn’t it amazing what you can accomplish when you have the prospect of someone else possibly seeing how you live? Yeah…you don’t like it…you even hate for your husband to see it that way…but you and the kids…you could live in it like that for a bit….but you’d NEVER want anyone else to see the pigsty-i-ness of it all.

I think I need the pressure of company to really and thoroughly clean your home properly….either that, or your computer needs to go on the kaputz.

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