I can't wait

School is completely entertaining from the vantage point of a parent. First grade seems to trivial to someone over the age of . . . well. . . eight. Once you hit second grade, first graders immediately become babies. It is a phenomenon in my book.

But to the seven year old that is trying to finish first grade ranking as low as possible on the social outcast scale, it can be a daunting task. That holds true for any grade. Kids can be so serious. I am sure I was a serious kid as well.

She was asked to bring in a glass jar for an unknown reason. What kind of teacher asks 18 first graders to bring in a breakable object to school? That is not the point, but it makes you wonder. I told Bailey that her empty, clean, de-labeled salsa jar is in her backpack. I reminded her not to sit on her backpack and if the jar were to break, please deliver it straight to her teacher and do not try to remove it from the backpack. Bailey got all serious and told me her teacher already went over the topic of bringing a glass jar to school and she was told not to swing her backpack. She still remembers what happened when she almost crushed the foam egg carton! I can't wait to find out what comes of this glass jar. It had better be a mother's day gift.

Bailey is also doing a project on plants at school. Her plant is the banana. She wanted the Venus Fly Trap, but it was taken so she chose the banana (the only fruit she eats in a non-pureed form). I don't know what kind of a project it is but it sounds pretty heavy. We were at the grocery store and Bailey wanted to examine the bananas for her "research". I showed her the plantains and she didn't believe that they were anything but giant rotten bananas. I asked her what she may learn while she studies bananas. She said she might learn who invented bananas and where they grow. I am also on the edge of my seat waiting to find out who invented bananas.

Pretty Please???

This is our table and chairs:

I want to sell them and get a new set.

Here are my reasons:

It is slate which is hard to clean.
It is round and will not fit well into our "dining area" in the house we are moving into.
The chairs have cushions which are dreadfully hard to clean.
I want a new table and chairs and I should get what I want.

Nick's reasons to keep our current table:
It is not broken.
He doesn't have to clean it so clean-ability is not an issue. (he didn't actually say this)
It will fit into our dining area-just not perfectly.
New tables cost money.
We can't sell our old table for $200 because Sarah says nobody will buy it.
Cushions feel good on your bum.


Here is the new table and chairs that I want:
I think Nick will come around eventually.

Rolling in Money

Bailey and I dropped off her toys at the consignment sale. Despite her attempts to keep 99% of the items we had tagged and ready to sell, she only held back 2 items. A bag of plastic jungle animals and a Wiggles DVD. Convincing her to let go of the Elmo DVD was pretty hard, but she eventually did it. I practically shouted at her "You are almost 8 years old! Elmo? Seriously?" in front of everyone.

This was a HUGE step for Bailey. For the past 3 years, I have been secretly selling the toys she no longer (or never) played with. This year, I got her involved and she did surprisingly well. The money factor is a great incentive for a 7 1/2 year old. She finally realized that all of the stuff we were selling was hers and she deserves all the money. I will probably give in if she can come up with something worthwhile to buy. I may just give her $10 to spend and make her save the rest.

This consignment sale thing bothers me a little. It is truly a LOT of work. Online inventory, tagging, printing pinning, cleaning, driving. . . trust me it is probably not worth it. BUT the Goodwill refuses to take children's toys anymore due to liability reasons so you have to get rid of it somehow. My method is to first attempt to sell and then donate/freecycle.

Another reason I am bothered is that these are toys that Bailey got as gifts. How dare I make money on them. But, I guess that is how it goes. I'm sorry Dad, the Go Diego Go Animal Rescue Center that you got Bailey 3 years ago just sold for $10. TEN BUCKS! If your item is kept nice, you can actually sell your stuff for a good price at one of these sales. Luckily, I enjoy keeping all parts together and even saving the instruction manual. With the Diego toy, I found a Diego lunch box to keep all of the figurines together so the buyer got a bonus.

I guess these sales aren't all that bad. At first, I felt just terrible that I priced 4 toys at $10 (three of them sold already!). I thought that they were worth it. You can't do that at a garage sale at home. You can price a couch at $1 just to get rid of it and some cheapskate gets mad at you when you say the price is firm. I hate haggling. One more good thing about consigning.

Wow. This got really long. I will quit rambling and go start collecting our household stuff to sell for a nickle in June when we do a garage sale. We are moving and I am determined to get rid of a lot of stuff.

Buy Our Crap

I am selling kid crap at a consignment sale in Lockport, NY this weekend.

I feel the need to advertise even though no one that reads this has any reason to go to this sale.


Friday, April 23rd from 10am - 5pm
and Saturday, April 24th from 10am-2pm

Special 50% off select items all day Saturday!!

Join us at the
Victory Christian Church
6886 S. Transit Road
Lockport, NY 14094

Bailey says that since this is her stuff she is selling she should get the money. I got a check for a whopping $25 last sale so I guess all of our sales will go to Bailey and her trading card/webkinz/candy fund.

By the way, Sarina is having a fabulous day today. She got some magic pills from the vet and is way more feisty as yesterday. She has also stopped having tremors for the time being. I haven't had to mop up a mess for around 36 hours I think.

Now I only have to find out what smells in our house. Sarina is not dead but it sure smells like something died around here. And life goes on. . .

Be careful what you wish for.

So I was purposely overusing the word "dookie" on Twitter last week. I was going out of my way to use the word dookie. I love that word just as much as I love the word cooter. Then Sarina became the ultimate dookie machine. And it has lasted an entire week. My dookie fest was over. I had enough.

Today it appeared that she is starting to recover, but only time will tell. I fed her regular dog food instead of my gourmet "sick dog feast" of boiled chicken and rice mashed up in the food processor.

I have never wished death on anyone than I did this week. She survived. Sarina must be part cat. I only can hope she is on her 9th life.

Speaking of dead animals, Jack the bird escaped from his cage over the weekend and flew right into a window. Twice. Jack has some visible beak damage, but he appears to be eating and nibbling on our fingers just fine. I do not wish death on Jack. He is a lucky bird escaping death twice in one day. After he tried to break his neck with the patio door, he appeared to be stunned and landed in a closet. Then Leroy, our killing machine cat decided to sit 6 inches away from the bird and sniff him. Leroy did not succeed in sniffing the bird to death and I returned him to the safety of his bird cage.

Pretty eventful weekend.

blah

poop poop cat fight poop poop baseball practice poop laundry poop poop sleep poop in the middle of the night poop dream about poop poop wash dog's butt poop poop laundry

Rest in Peace Shirley

God/Fate must have had a plan for us. Yesterday, Sarina was saved from the needle of death (again) and she is feeling much better. I had every intention of working today even though I already called off in anticipation of a nasty sick dog again. I suppose someone had to die.

As I was out walking with my friend at 6am, (yay me!) Bailey called because her fish Shirley passed away. It was really sad because Nick was in the shower and I was out walking and Bailey had nobody to give her a hug.

Shirley was a good fish. It was Bailey's first fish and she just wrote a book about Shirley at school. Bailey is taking the day off to mourn. This kid NEVER wants to miss school and I can't deny her the day off.

We buried Shirley in the front garden with plans to dig her up and move her to our new house in July. I prepared Shirley in such a way that we would be able to complete the task in a sanitary manner.

Click here to view the post when we first got Shirley.

Sympathy cards would be appropriate at this time from Grandmas and Grandpas. . .

Fluffy Puppy Photo Shoot

Here is Sarina my fluffy puppy. We love her even when she poo poos all over the kitchen. I think she kind of looks like a wolf.

Losing her fluffiness, but still loveable. Her head is completely normal especially her ears. We love her ears.

Not dead, just sleeping peacefully.

Best day of my life so far

Warning: This is gross.

I'm lying. Sarina was quite ill over that last 24 hours. Lots of pooing in the house and even some vomit. All of this lovely stuff happened after I wrote yesterday's blog post. I was completely ready to put her down. I was sad and bawling my eyes out, but ready. Then as I was cleaning up a pile of vomit I found a long, thin worm. Yup! Sarina barfed up a roundworm. I already had an appointment with the vet so I put the worm in a baggie and

just a minute. . . Sarina just barfed again. . .

Okay, where was I? I put the worm in a baggie. Yes, I dug a WORM out of vomit. I hate hate hate hate hate hate worms.

So I put the dog in the car and it won't start. THANK GOD I CALLED OFF OF WORK.

Then I put the dog in the other car. We go to the vet. Sarina is officially diagnosed with worms and also not ill enough to be put to sleep yet. She has explosive poo in the lobby of the vet (I didn't have to clean it up) and we go home.

Sarina throws up some more and we are pretty sure she vomited up her de-worming medication. She has vomited twice more since I was writing this.

Please shoot me and put me out of my misery.

Polly want a cracker?

We have the parakeets, but they don't speak. . . yet. Bailey is trying to get those poor little birds to talk even though she has read every book in the library on parakeets and they say it is tough with 2 birds. I am not exaggerating on the library book thing. She read them all.

What the books don't tell you is that the birds can read. Bailey suggested we write their names down and the birds can read their names.

Tough Decisions

Our fluffy puppy is starting to show her age. We have come dangerously close to making an end-of-life decision twice in the last year, but Sarina bounced right back.

Nothing drastic is happening at the moment, but Sarina is arthritic, deaf and going bald in places. She has lupus which can't be pleasant. On the other hand, she doesn't seem to be in any major pain and she isn't completely incontinent. She continues to eat and is maintaining her weight. Sarina is still up for a daily walk even though some days are much slower than others.

I wish I could read her mind.

This is a first.

We have had a HATEFUL relationship with our lawn. We hate it. We bought a nice used lawn mower, but the mower hated the lawn as well. Our grass is mutant and grows out of control in about 45 minutes after it rains.

In Ohio, the grass grows nicely for the summer and turns brown in August and you can take a break every so often. You have a leisurely autumn when you can concentrate on the leaf situation. Here in Buffalo, the grass starts growing out of control in April and continues at a break neck pace until November when it starts snowing.

We have a very lush and green lawn without even trying. It rained and rained last week. Then it snowed. Now the grass is a jungle and it is only the middle of April.

My wonderful father brought his lawn mower all the way to Buffalo (in his half broken down ghetto cruiser van) in the middle of winter. We finally got to use it and for the very first time, Nick and I fought over who gets to mow the lawn. The lawn mower is awesome.

Here is who won the lawn mowing fight. It is indeed a milestone in the Nerd household.

Our Neighbor Beverly

We lived above Beverly when we lived in Toledo. She was really nice. Super lady.

SMITH Beverly Jean Beverly Jean Smith, age 78, of Toledo, passed away Wednesday, April 7, 2010 in Hospice of Northwest Toledo. She was born May 27, 1931, in Toledo to Louis and Victoria (Leuletcka) Croniser. Beverly was a loan officer for the former Ohio Citizens Bank, retiring in 1986. She was a volunteer at St. Luke's Hospital and parishioner of St Patrick of Heatherdowns Catholic Church. The widow of Richard Smith, Beverly is survived by her loving family, daughters, Brenda Smith-Salvatore of Voorhees, NJ and Mary (Michael) Smith-Katafiasz of Peoria, AZ; sons, Jon (Joyce) Smith of The Woodlands, TX and Scott (Kellene) Smith of Sylvania, OH; 8 grandchildren and 3 great-grand-children. In addition to her parents and husband, Beverly was preceded in death by her brothers, Bob and Jerry Croniser. Family and friends may visit Sunday, April 11, 2010 from 2-8 p.m. in the Maison-Dardenne-Walker Funeral Home, 501 Conant Street, Maumee. A Funeral Mass will be celebrated Monday, April 12, 2010 at 10:00 a.m. in St. Patrick of Heatherdowns Church. Interment will follow in Resurrection Cemetery. The family requests memorial contributions to Hospice of Northwest Ohio. www.walkerfuneralhomes.com

Library Books

Bailey has expressed her displeasure with me posting things about her in this Blog. I have almost eliminated her from my semi-daily ramblings. I am going to invade her privacy today.

Bailey brings home one book from the school library each week. I am starting to wonder if her book choice says anything about her. She must have exhausted the sports section from the library and moved on to nonfiction.

Her last 3 book selections:

Ghosts
Graphic Novel about the Titanic
Thunderstorms

Do you want some Xanax with that book today?

You learn something new every day.

A healthy parakeet poops every 15-20 minutes.

I had no idea. . .

I got some "train tokens" from the Metro Rail ticket machine a few weeks ago. I paid with a $20 so I had a lot of them. Some of these so-called tokens were the Sacajawea Dollar Coins. The other ones had lesser known presidents on them like James K. Polk and Zachary Taylor. There was even a John Adams thrown in there.

I used several of my "train tokens" to buy more train tickets recently but I still had a few left. I had a sneaky suspicion that new dollar coins have been introduced. I was right.

http://www.usmint.gov/mint_programs/$1coin/index.cfm

Now I will feel like a douche trying to use my Presidential Dollar Coins on anything but vending machines. I only have 4 left but I doubt I will be trying to pass them off as real dollars at the gas station any time soon.

Pet Parade

Nina wanted to see some pictures of our pets. You know Leroy, Cheeseburger and Sarina (see above). Today I gave Sarina a bath and she smells fabulous this afternoon.

Here are our most recent additions. Kate (left) and Jack (right). Bailey named them and is not a fan of LOST. I was not trying to be artistic with the angles of the bird photos. I had a very small door to fit my arm with my scary camera. The birds were being camera shy and I was trying to get them to sit still at the same time avoiding the toys, perches and bars. Not an easy task.


Kate doing her supermodel pose. We are guessing at their gender. I suspect that both birds have the color mutation called recessive pied. After lots of research, we are making an educated guess because of course, their color mutation makes it most difficult to sex. I Googled "sexing budgies" a lot yesterday.

Jack giving me the evil eye.

Here is an updated picture of Shirley the fish. Shirley is very aggressive and likes to flare out her gills when you look at her funny.

Here is naughty Ruby. She is always trying to break into Shirley's part of the tank and bite her tail.

Our new additions

We adopted 2 parakeets from the SPCA today. I couldn't wait until Bailey saved enough for her own cage. They were too cute! We haven't named them yet, but Nick and I suggested Lunch and Dinner.

Dreadful News

Bailey may not be playing football in the fall. We got an informational letter stating that the team has re-organized the way they play and Bailey would have to play Pee Wee which is strictly instructional this year. NO SCORE. NO RANKINGS. And in Bailey's words: "NO WINNERS".

To say the least, Bailey is devastated. Her friends from last year would be playing "Freshman" because they moved the 8 year olds up. They changed the age cutoff to July so she will be playing as a 7 year old for the 2nd year.

For those of you that know Bailey, you can just imagine her disappointment.

Luckily, she gets to pick her baseball number and see her jersey tomorrow. That should lift her spirits a little.

Rodgers Quadrangle

In memory of Rodgers Quadrangle at BGSU. I lived there during the best year of my life. Now it is gone. I moved 5 times that year so all of the other places are still around. I won't cry. I won't cry. I won't cry. . .

Bad Weather

Warm weather makes me sad. The AC on the car is broken, we don't have central air and the neighborhood is crawling with children. At this very moment, Bailey is throwing a tantrum over taking a shower because she is up way past her bed time. It is 8:20pm and she is melting down (not to mention filthy).

I dislike the sun, the heat, bugs, worms, yard work, flowers, lawn mowing, children, shorts, swimsuits, the beach and I can go on and on.

Summer is on it's way! Oh how I miss you Winter and Fall. It seems like we skipped right over Spring, but I think this unseasonably warm weather is just a fluke.

The only good thing about it is that the overnight parking restrictions have been lifted and we now can park in the street at night. Yahoo!!