Category: Home Life

Kindness Challenge – Day 4

~ tahenryauthoress ~ Leave a comment

Day 4: Give money for each bed in your house to a homeless organization

I gave money to the Maple Valley Food bank, an Elves program for people displaced by the hurricane, and I gave my kid a dollar to put in every bell ringer’s bucket we came across. I’ll keep doing that last one all month.

And because I like to give until it hurts….

Ostrich Mentality is also a free download today. Consider this a little early Sinterklaas gift. Add your happy little review to these others…

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If you don’t know what I am talking about with the whole Kindness Challenge, you can find the calendar here. All normal posts will resume in January. Enjoy the time off. Enjoy the kindness. Practice a little yourself.

Kindness Challenge Day 3

~ tahenryauthoress ~ 1 Comment

Day 3: Leave a happy note for someone else to find.

 

I wrote this happy note for my son. I want to encourage him to continue his language studies. He’s really good at it and has been struggling lately with other formalized learning.

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In case you don’t speak Dutch it says:

Dear Kiddo,

I hear you have been studying Dutch this year. Good Boy! Extra candy for you.

-Sinterklaas

He’ll find this Wednesday morning in his klompen filled with candy.

 

If you don’t know what I am talking about with the whole Kindness Challenge, you can find the calendar here. All normal posts will resume in January. Enjoy the time off. Enjoy the kindness. Practice a little yourself.

Kindness Challenge – Day 2

~ tahenryauthoress ~ 1 Comment

Day 2: Make some homemade gifts to give away this season.

Too easy. I actually started crocheting in January for this. LOL.

Spoiler alert: all my friends are getting home made washcloths and yummy not-homemade organic soap. I took a small skein of cotton and a crochet hook everywhere in my purse this year. Every class the kiddo had, every dentist appt, every PTA meeting. LOL

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I am crocheting a scarf for my father in law’s girlfriend.

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And I am making two hippopotami for two boys who LOVE the Christmas Carol “I want a hippopotamus for Christmas.” It will eventually have legs, eyes, ears, and a tail.

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How about you? Do you ever make gifts?

 

Fiendish Friday: The Dark Side

~ tahenryauthoress ~ 4 Comments

Tis the Christmas season. My fam decorates Thanksgiving weekend. It became a habit before the kiddo came along and we kept it when we started throwing Sinterklaas parties. That’s always the weekend after Thanksgiving. It all made sense.

The kiddo wanted his own tree which he got a few years ago. It’s cute and small and fits on his book shelf. But it’s white. And this irritates my dark side loving child. So this year, Darth Vader makes an appearance.IMG_20171124_093230

Balance is restored in the Star Wars Christmas universe. LOL

Fiendish Friday: Public Service Announcement

~ tahenryauthoress ~ 1 Comment

The other day I was in a public bathroom and over heard a mother berating her child for peeing her pants. In the short time I was in the space I over heard two key phrases.

“You’re five years old and should do better.” and “I asked you if you had to go when we got here.”

Now I will not slam another mum, but I will say there is absolutely no research that suggests berating your child increases bladder control.

So here’s the public service part. I have a two part rule system regarding the bathroom.

A) If you are passing a bathroom, you use it. Saves time later looking for one.

B) If one person in your party is using the bathroom, everyone should. Saves time.

Yes, this is rather circular but if you start them young they don’t realize the circularness. And pretty soon they know Mom has to pee every flipping hour and “if I just go when she does, every thing works out just fine.”

Now why do I think this works? I have traveled extensively with my child, who has not peed his pants since he was fully potty trained at age 3. He’s eight and half now. And we’ve been lots of places where there are not public bathrooms on every corner like most of the US.

Just consider my two step plan and everyone will have dry pants. Smiles.

Fiendish Friday: The Internet is Down Again

~ tahenryauthoress ~ 6 Comments

A guest post on a blog I follow reminded me this morning of one of the funniest moment’s in my tech career. Lots of serious things happened over the years.

A server farm crashing enough disks that an entire 3 year research project was gone. (I got it back from tape.)

The CFO who asked me if I enjoyed spending my time on my knees under people’s desks. (yes, full ick factor there)

Collecting technology from their desks, while a 600 person division was finding out they were laid off. (that day needed a very long trip to happy hour)

But early on in my career when I was just a little baby tech geek….

I got a call early one morning from my boss. The CEO had just called him ranting about the Internet being down, again. (eyeroll)

Apparently the VP of Sales couldn’t get on-line for the third morning in a row. Why this woman couldn’t have just called me, I don’t know. I guess she needed to feel important, so she called the CEO at home. Should I throw in his wife had just had a new baby? LOL. So you can imagine what the CEO said to my boss….

To give Jason, my boss, his full credit, he was very restrained on the phone with me. He did not shout, scream, swear, or otherwise vent his frustration. This was the third day in a row and we had done everything under the sun. Including running fresh cable to her desk the day before and I don’t just mean giving her a fresh cable to plug into the wall. As in: up the wall over the ceiling, to the switch, from the switch to the server room, FRESH CABLE.

I walk to her office. She is steaming and ranting and all but throwing things. I take a look at her desk. Pick up the network cable and plug it into her laptop.

There is instant silence and then she starts to bribe me with things “Just don’t tell (CEO).”

ROFL.

Fiendish Friday: Halloween Funny

~ tahenryauthoress ~ 1 Comment

My kiddo has a lot of weird appointments this year so we find ourselves needing to kill 30 minutes here, 30 minutes there. We can’t always go to Half Price Books. Ok we could but that gets dangerous….

We found ourselves with 45 minutes to kill by a party store. The kiddo wanted to look at costumes and I needed to pick up some more toys for the fidget box I bring to my classes. We stop in the aisle with the Star Wars costumes on one side and a bit further down, wigs. Party wigs. Wild crazy multi colored wigs.

I’m looking them over.

This woman walks up and is looking as well. We share the brief smile you give people who are standing near you looking at similar things in a store. Come on, we all have one.

Anyway, I see her take a double look. Then she’s looking from my hair to the wigs to my hair to the wigs. Finally I smile and say,

“I need something boring for Halloween.”

I seriously thought she was going to fall over laughing so hard.

Enjoy the weekend!

Fiendish Friday: The Library

~ tahenryauthoress ~ 1 Comment

I love our library system. 50 plus branches and your one card will let you check out at any of them. You can return books to any of them. You can download ebooks and audiobooks from anywhere in the world. (Disclaimer, I have only verified this from multiple US locations, Germany, and Holland – but close enough right?)

But like all things, it has a flaw. You can order books from one library to another one. They email you when it arrives and you have one week to pick it up. So, let’s pretend you get a notice that says A Wrinkle in Time is waiting for you at X branch. Your hold expires on October 11th. How long do you have to pick it up?

A) Til closing time on October 11th?

B) Til closing on October 10th?

C) Til a random undisclosed time on October 10th? (earlier than 2PM)

If you guessed A or B, you would be wrong. For the fourth time, I went to pick up a hold the day before it expired only to discover it was already gone. Grrrrr. And no, I didn’t say anything this time because the last three times it happened, the library told me I was crazy, in short. Basically, no that didn’t happen. No, we didn’t. No, you’re wrong. Sure, I’ll buy that the first time. LOL. And it’s always the same branch. When I have books delivered to other branches, I have no problems at all.

Something is wrong at that branch. Something horrifying. I am being denied books. Oh, the horror.

Fiendish Friday: Nasty Surprise

~ tahenryauthoress ~ 3 Comments

The kiddo is doing a lot of new things this year. This week was his first survival skills class. I call it that because it’s complicated to explain and the actual title tells you jack. It’s a once a week, 4 hour long class, where the instructor covers teaches things most people don’t do anymore. Make a fire from nothing and keep it going in the rain. Go from tracks on the ground and follow them to the deer.  Built shelter with what’s around you. Find your way in the forest without gps. LOL

Anyway, I am on my way to pick him up from the first day and I’m a little worried about being late. It’s not like this is some school, where he can read a book if mommy is late. This is a trail head I’m collecting him at. So for once, I follow my GPS, which takes me past the high school.

Side Note: I NEVER go past the high school if I can avoid it because it has a 20 speed limit and I got two speeding tickets there the first 6 months we lived here. The problem is there is a stop light at the bottom of a hill and I always get stuck at the light and then accelerate to go up the hill and flash, 23 in a 20, 150 bucks.

But my GPS is insisting that the high school route is ten minutes faster than my usual route. So I go. And a cop steps into the street and makes me stop. Another cop is doing the same on the other side. Interesting. Oh they’re waving those five waiting school buses out into the street. Ok. No big deal. Why the buses can’t go out the stop light side if they need a protected left I don’t know but ok. Only after the five waiting buses go, they don’t let traffic go on the street. Oh, no. They hold us there until all 21 buses get loaded and leave the parking lot.

Anyone want to guess how long it takes for 21 buses to load up and pull out of a parking lot that they have to wind through because they’re all pointing the right direction to go out at the traffic light but aren’t using it?