Monday, April 5, 2010

A bunch of things

Lucy and I were together last week for our usual time together at The Little Gym. Our class isn't until 11:30 but I pick her up from Erin when she's dropping Emily off at school and then Lucy and I play for the morning  before class and sometimes all day.

We were in the car leaving school to meet Ban-ha (Johnnie) for breakfast. I looked in the rear view mirror and Lucy is clutching Monkey and waving him wildly in the air. 
Me: "What's Monkey doing?"
Lucy: "He shaking his booty."
How do you respond to that one? And where did she hear about shaking booties?

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Have you ever noticed when you drive past furniture that people have discarded at the side of the road how you decide if you would have lived with that furniture? Especially if it's been scratched up by cats or been used and abused. I check out the couches and love seats and mostly think "echhhhh - I would never have bought that in the first place." But obviously people have had these things in their homes for long periods of time. They just always look so sad sitting on the side of the road, getting wet from road spray, waiting to be picked up.

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There's a public service announcement that runs frequently on both of the radio stations I listen to during the day. It's about lead paint safety. The sentence that always perplexes me: "Any house built before 1978 could have lead paint, no matter where it's located."

Are they saying it could have lead paint in any room (no matter where it's located) or are they saying no matter where the house is located? Diagrammatically (I loved diagramming sentences in school), it would have the last phrase modifying the lead paint, not the house. But I really believe their point is that no matter where the house is located -- inner city, suburbs, rural areas -- it could have lead paint issues if it was built before 1978.

It's just a poorly worded sentence, I think. These are the things that give me headaches and give me pause. Sigh.

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We can always tell when the college kids are home in our neighborhood. The lawns in the area sport fresh lawn jobs: tire tracks across the grass. Apparently some kids were home for the Easter weekend because I saw new ones yesterday. They're out late at night and find their kicks leaving the road and decorating multiple lawns with their tire tracks. And inevitably more lawn jobs will appear during the coming summer. We've been lucky enough to receive our own lawn jobs requiring a couple hours of raking and reseeding. I've been tempted to stud the perimeter of the yard with large rocks to thwart them but haven't done it. We'll be glad when the peckerheads actually grow up and move away from the area.

2 comments:

Katie's Uncle Rick said...

Maybe the college kids are trying to make some work for when they are on summer break and get jobs doing landscaping. LOL

A. Nonny Mouse said...

She learned about the shaking her booty thing from me. Sorry. We let the girls dance to music sometimes and, well, it's cute when they try to shake their butts. So we encourage it. And then laugh.