2008
apropos of nothing
maura @ 10:14 pm
This week was busy. Gus started school, so I spent a couple of hours there on the first day and meeting his teacher later in the week. Also the holiday! I kept thinking I wasn’t getting enough done, but there was less time than usual, duh me.
Today we had dumplings + shave ice for lunch, yum. For shave ice flavors I had plain coconut (because I’m boring like that), Gus had lemon + lime w/condensed milk, and Jonathan had passion fruit + green tea w/vanilla ice cream.
Last night we (=parents) watched “Everything is Illuminated,” which was really good. Tonight we (=family) watched “Pokemon: The First Movie.” It was not really good, and I hope it is Pokemon: my last movie. But I’d been crabby about the netflix subscription for a while because it seemed like we were letting movies hang out forever, so watching is good.
Why do we have so much stuff? Certainly we could have far less. Today was deal-with-Gus’s-room day, and a whole pile of little kid stuff, outgrown stuff, cheapo plastic birthday party favor stuff and random broken stuff was gotten rid of. Plus I finally went through the big pile o’ 1st grade stuff (that I’d been avoiding all summer) AND the big pile o’ kindergarten stuff (that I’d been avoiding for over a year!). It’s incredible how much paper these kids come home with, it’s like 1 linear foot per grade. No one has enough room in their home archives for that!
12 comments on “apropos of nothing”
There are tips?!
Oh no! Pokemon! Is the plot as confusing as the game? Luckily and by the grace of God and all that is good, we have not had to watch that movie. Perhaps it got bad reviews…he won’t watch anything that got bad or even mediocre reviews, not even “Bee Movie” which I thought might be OK on DVD.
(I didn’t tell him about the “Chipmunk Movie” reviews. Sometimes you just don’t look!)
(Hee, I accidentally typed “chimpmunk!”)
Em, that is awful that you get a tipsheet! Sheesh. We mostly get “work,” much of which is a few pieces of paper folded and stapled together with 1-2 pages filled out with whatever comic book Gus is creating during choice time. Except that there’s a new one every day…three cheers for recycling!
Yes, the “plot” (ha) is indeed confusing. Gus watched it 2x (call us bad parents) today and I still don’t understand it.
That’s hilarious that he won’t watch movies with bad reviews! A child of discerning taste. :)
What we do with school work is this (keep in mind that it’s Montessori so some of the timelines & stuff are worth keeping): keep most of it and go through it at the end of the year or term. Then we recycle (yay the truck takes office paper) things like spelling tests, math worksheets, etc. The really great stuff we keep, mail to relatives, and/or use in scrapbook pages (either on their own or cut up as a school background).
Most school notices are now online, in an account we have not yet signed into (and they are checking!). We still sign the vestigal usu. empty envelope each week.
p.s. This makes me sound like a scrapbooking fiend but I am **NOT** one of them! We made one for each grandma, plus Max has one we started when we moved. Just 3 ~ no more no less.
Yeah, most of it got recycled. I haven’t saved out anything for the grandparents in a while, thanks for reminding me! I took a bunch of it to work, too, to decorate my office. I try to go through the incidental stuff as it comes home, but that end of the year pileup really slays me. Hopefully we have turned over a new leaf with it!
I am jealous of your scrapbooking! It’s one of those things I would theoretically like to do, but there are too many other things ahead of it in the queue and only so much time. My secret goal is to do one housey thing each weekend until my whole list is done. Which, if Jonathan is reading this, I guess is not so secret anymore. :)
Don’t do it! Scrapbooking is a gateway drug!
Yeah, that J., such a blabbermouth! If he knows, he’ll tell everyone, then everyone will know that you are doing housey things!!!
Har, Jonathan *is* a blabbermouth! I just don’t want to bum him out by making him think that our weekends will be this horrible worky drudgery time… Which it won’t be, honest! Housework is fun, yeah!
“In every job that must be done there’s an element of fun!” (Credit Ms. Poppins, for those of you who haven’t seen this movie 800x.)
By all means, keep me happily ensorcelled. To quote myself, “I’ll never forgive, but I will forget.”
Can you believe we have never shown Mary Poppins to Gus? I’m not sure how it happened, because I love that movie. Though I used to cry about the Feed the Birds lady when I was little, softhearted child that I was.
Someone was watching a lexicographer give a TED talk last night, with all those big words.
Don’t tell me you’re getting rid of macaroni art in the name of organization! What happens if G. becomes a famous artist? You’re in on the ground floor of his early period!
I’m sure my Mom has macaroni art from 1976 still in the attic of our house. =)
If only it was macaroni art! Mostly it was worksheets, and drawings of video game characters (his usual choice for choice time :) ). We did pull out some of the particularly choice ones to save, and put a couple on his wall, too.
Come to think of it, I don’t think he’s *ever* done macaroni art! We all did so much of that, maybe today’s teachers are maxed out?
Though I tend to avoid going through stuff, I find tossing the cheapo plastic birthday party stuff and the school stuff that no one ever wants to see again very satisfying.
And I couldn’t agree more that far too much paper comes home. I don’t need a monthly packet from the school full of condescending tips on how to raise my kid.