Silly Bandz: Opinions?

http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/20100527/us_time/08599199179700

Saw this article today and thought it might make an interesting blog rant Haha

So...I'm sure anyone with kids or who works with kids are familiar with these things. Basically, they're rubber band bracelets that when you remove them from your wrist you discover they're actually shaped like something.



Kids all over are obsessed with them at the moment. Remember pogs? Slap bracelets? Etc Etc...yeah, well this seems to be the latest.

Personally, my opinion of them is that they're just plain stupid. I mean, the shapes are cute and stuff, but really, what a waste of money and honestly, they look so stupid on kids wrists because they're all strange shaped and stuff. It looks like they're wearing colorful garbage around as pretend jewelry. I don't know, from day one that I saw them I was annoyed by them.

As a nanny, I've watched my kids become obsessed with them and as their collections have expanded and more and more of the bandz end up adding themselves to their wrists I cringe a little more. They're also very easily lost and it causes very dramatic tantrums. Just last week my little 6 year old had a fit before school because she couldn't find the blue dolphin bracelet, and let me tell you how fun it is to search a cluttered playroom for a rubber band!!!! Hello needle in a haystack!

But, my opinion of the trend aside, I do get how these kid trends catch on and really matter when you're young. Heck, trends matter just as much as adults don't they so really who am I to talk in terms of not following the crowd. In that regard I get it. When all your friends have them and are talking about them you want to fit in and join the conversation and have something brag worthy to bring to the table. If all anyone at school wants to do is trade bracelets, of course you'd want to be in on the game.

From a teacher's perspective though, these trends are a big pain in the butt. I was teaching during the massive upswing of Pokeman and Yu-Gi-Oh! cards and I can tell you that as a teacher there was nothing I hated more! The problem with fad trading items is that there's no ownership to each individual thing. The idea is to trade them. For a teacher this is a nightmare because what always happens is that during the day kids are making underground trade arrangements when teachers aren't looking and during free times like lunch and recess. That alone is annoying to a teacher because often this takes place during class times when the kids should clearly be doing something else. But even if its only happening during the free play time, what then happens is that you never know which item belongs to which child and it becomes an epic battle of "he said/she said".

"But Miss Willis, that Pokemon card is MINE! She took it from me!"

"NO! He's lying Miss Willis! He traded me at recess! Its mine now!"

You don't know who's is who's, you feel like everyone is lying. Sometimes kids trade then change their minds and try to convince the friend they traded with that they didn't really "mean" to trade the card they did. Sometimes no trades were made at all and kids would just steal from one another and claim there was a trade. Once I had a little boy lose his ENTIRE collection of Yu-Gi-Oh! cards (and those things are NOT cheap people!) and I had his parent in the class yelling at me because "someone" must have stolen them and what was I going to do about it? The truth is, there's nothing I could do about it! If the cards were stolen, how on earth could I prove the cards had originally been his when every kid in the class had a collection of some sort and nothing was labeled with names.

Yes, trading items and classrooms DO NOT MIX! Trust me people! If you can't label it with a name then DON'T SEND IT TO SCHOOL!!!

I'm sure all kids and many parents are mad when a school bans such an item. You feel like the children's fun and friendship and creativity is being squashed. That its all just fun and games and why can't the schools lighten up. Well, just think about it from the teachers perspective for a minute. If I were still teaching, these bracelets would DEFINITELY be banned from my classroom, just as I had to ban the trading cards. It may eliminate some fun, but trust me, the teachers do NOT need the added drama or stress!

Good News, Bad News, Heat & Snow!

Good News:

My brother James was supposedly being sent to Korea with the military. We then got the news that he will instead be coming to be stationed at a base in upstate NY...just 5 or 6 hours away from me and only about 4 hours from Phil!!! GREAT WONDERFUL AWESOME NEWS!!!

Bad News:

I just heard from my mom that while he and family will be coming to NY, at some point he is going to be deployed to Afganistan...Lame lame, gross, yucky news! I am so grateful to the men and women who serve our country and I'm so proud of my brother for being among them, but selfishly, the idea of him being sent anywhere dangerous terrifies me :(

Heat:

Right now in CT it is so hot and humid that I feel like I'm going to melt and die! I can't sleep at night because its too hot and I have really bizarre dreams and wake up constantly. PLUS, thanks to the lovely humidity I also have a bunch of mosquito bites! So far its not as bad as last year, but there's probably about 10 on my body right now and they're driving me NUTS! Ugh! I hate bugs!

Snow:

Really Utah? Snow??? All my fam and friends back in UT are complaining about the snow. I can't say I blame them, it is pretty lame to get snow in late May, but honestly, given the heat, humidity and mosquito bites I'm dealing with now...I'll trade Utah anytime!!! Send some cold and snow please! Kill the dang mosquitos frozen, frozen, very VERY dead! And please oh please let me sleep tonight!!!

You Go Jo!

Its no secret to anyone who knows me at all that I love all things Harry Potter and that includes his talented creator, JK Rowling.

I came across something today that she wrote in April this year and had published in a newspaper: The Single Mother's Manifesto

Now, I won't begin to know the first thing about British politics (I don't even know much about US politics to be honest as the subject always seems to just greatly depress me when I start to really try to get into it) but I'm really impressed by the things Jo has to say in this article. I may have to do some more research on the subject, but it seems that someone running for political office is pushing a sort of "family values" platform and suggesting that single mothers are a serious problem. To give an "incentive", this man is proposing that young low-income married couples be given a 150 pound tax break (which I believe translates to less than $300 American...actually the calculator I just used online put it at $214 American). The bottom-line in seems: This guy is suggesting that single mothers run out and get married or that mothers stay in bad relationships for $214 a year. Lovely.

JK Rowling was of course a single mother when she was first writing the Harry Potter books and she lived greatly on government income. Since her success as an author, she could have moved to another country where she would not be so greatly taxed as she is now (it was stated on one Harry Potter podcast that she is taxed in a 50% tax bracket over there...I don't know if that is accurate, but honestly, can you imagine giving 50% of your income to taxes??) She states in this article that one of the reasons she has not done that is because she feels its her duty to her country to give back to the system that helped her when she was at rock bottom. I'm a huge supporter of family values and I certainly have an opinion of some single parents who do abuse the system, but I also know that many people can not help the situations they find themselves in and many things are out of their control. There are many single moms in this world who have left abusive relationships or been abandoned by their husbands. Many single mothers are struggling by their fingernails to balance parenting and trying to make a living and are barely scraping by and they are in need of government assistance to get them through a tough time. I really admire Jo for getting through her tough times and making an amazing life for her and her daughter and I admire her for standing up for what she feel is right.

You Go Jo!

Here are a few of the bits from the article that I really liked and I'll post the link to the full article below.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

From The Times April 14, 2010

The single mother's manifesto
J.K. Rowling

I had become a single mother when my first marriage split up in 1993. In one devastating stroke, I became a hate figure to a certain section of the press, and a bogeyman to the Tory Government. Peter Lilley, then Secretary of State at the DSS, had recently entertained the Conservative Party conference with a spoof Gilbert and Sullivan number, in which he decried “young ladies who get pregnant just to jump the housing list”. The Secretary of State for Wales, John Redwood, castigated single-parent families from St Mellons, Cardiff, as “one of the biggest social problems of our day”. (John Redwood has since divorced the mother of his children.) Women like me (for it is a curious fact that lone male parents are generally portrayed as heroes, whereas women left holding the baby are vilified) were, according to popular myth, a prime cause of social breakdown, and in it for all we could get: free money, state-funded accommodation, an easy life.

An easy life. Between 1993 and 1997 I did the job of two parents, qualified and then worked as a secondary school teacher, wrote one and a half novels and did the planning for a further five. For a while, I was clinically depressed. To be told, over and over again, that I was feckless, lazy — even immoral — did not help.

*******

Yesterday’s Conservative manifesto makes it clear that the Tories aim for less governmental support for the needy, and more input from the “third sector”: charity. It also reiterates the flagship policy so proudly defended by David Cameron last weekend, that of “sticking up for marriage”. To this end, they promise a half-a-billion pound tax break for lower-income married couples, working out at £150 per annum.

I accept that my friends and I might be atypical. Maybe you know people who would legally bind themselves to another human being, for life, for an extra £150 a year? Perhaps you were contemplating leaving a loveless or abusive marriage, but underwent a change of heart on hearing about a possible £150 tax break? Anything is possible; but somehow, I doubt it. Even Mr Cameron seems to admit that he is offering nothing more than a token gesture when he tells us “it’s not the money, it’s the message”.

Nobody who has ever experienced the reality of poverty could say “it’s not the money, it’s the message”. When your flat has been broken into, and you cannot afford a locksmith, it is the money. When you are two pence short of a tin of baked beans, and your child is hungry, it is the money. When you find yourself contemplating shoplifting to get nappies, it is the money. If Mr Cameron’s only practical advice to women living in poverty, the sole carers of their children, is “get married, and we’ll give you £150”, he reveals himself to be completely ignorant of their true situation.

How many prospective husbands did I ever meet, when I was the single mother of a baby, unable to work, stuck inside my flat, night after night, with barely enough money for life’s necessities? Should I have proposed to the youth who broke in through my kitchen window at 3am? Half a billion pounds, to send a message — would it not be more cost-effective, more personal, to send all the lower-income married people flowers?

********

I chose to remain a domiciled taxpayer for a couple of reasons. The main one was that I wanted my children to grow up where I grew up, to have proper roots in a culture as old and magnificent as Britain’s; to be citizens, with everything that implies, of a real country, not free-floating ex-pats, living in the limbo of some tax haven and associating only with the children of similarly greedy tax exiles.

A second reason, however, was that I am indebted to the British welfare state; the very one that Mr Cameron would like to replace with charity handouts. When my life hit rock bottom, that safety net, threadbare though it had become under John Major’s Government, was there to break the fall. I cannot help feeling, therefore, that it would have been contemptible to scarper for the West Indies at the first sniff of a seven-figure royalty cheque. This, if you like, is my notion of patriotism. On the available evidence, I suspect that it is Lord Ashcroft’s idea of being a mug.

Child poverty remains a shameful problem in this country, but it will never be solved by throwing millions of pounds of tax breaks at couples who have no children at all. David Cameron tells us that the Conservatives have changed, that they are no longer the “nasty party”, that he wants the UK to be “one of the most family-friendly nations in Europe”, but I, for one, am not buying it. He has repackaged a policy that made desperate lives worse when his party was last in power, and is trying to sell it as something new. I’ve never voted Tory before ... and they keep on reminding me why.

© J. K. Rowling, 2010

Link To Full Article:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article7096786.ece?token=null&offset=0&page=1

Happy Anniversary!!!

While Phil and I have only been "officially" a couple for a few months, we've actually known each other an entire year now! Last weekend I got to go up to Canada for another visit and to celebrate our 1st Anniversary of the day we "met" each other.

It was a very full weekend! I got the chance to meet Phil's parents, his 3 amazing and beautiful little girls and their mom Nicole. Everyone was so nice and welcoming to me for which I am truly grateful because I was VERY nervous to meet them all.

Last time I went to Canada I flew there (to the tune of about $300). This time I decided to be brave and try out the new Greyhound bus route from NY to Toronto. Depending on the bus schedule its anywhere from 10-15 hours! Yikes huh!? But its also a ton cheaper (like under $100 people!) so I decided it would be worth it. The good news is that there are schedules that drive through the night so I was able to pack my pillow, dress comfy and just sleep most of the time. Sure I was woken up every few hours for the scheduled stops and the dreaded customs visit, but at least the driving time went quickly while I slept inbetween stops.

I was so happy to see Phil waiting for me when I got off the bus on Friday morning! YAY!

That first day I spent time with Phil's dad while Phil had to work, then that evening I cooked dinner for the rest of the family I'd be meeting that evening. We had a really good time sharing dinner and getting to know each other. I really like all of them and hope they feel the same about me.

Phil's younger girls spend the night at the house on Friday so Saturday morning we all had a fun pancake breakfast together. Then Phil and I spent the day together window shopping at the mall and watching movies and enjoying our time together.

Sunday we went to church which I love! One of the toughest things about being in a family ward here in CT is that I'm all alone. It can get very lonely and depressing sitting there in Sacrament Meeting all by myself surrounded by all the families. One of my favorite things is sitting in Sacrament Meeting next to Phil and holding his hand. It makes me feel so at peace with everything, like I know I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be and with exactly the right person by my side. He makes me feel whole in a way I never have before. I am so blessed to have him in my life!

After church we had lunch together, Skype called my mom to wish her Happy Mother's Day, watched a movie, then after a tearful anniversary card exchange (I'm such an emotional baby sometimes! haha) I had to face the really tough part...packing to go home :( I was not a happy girl.

When I was all packed up, Phil and I drove to his Mom's house to visit her for Mother's Day, then it was off to the bus station. Saying goodbye is such a hard thing to do at the end of our weekends together. I want more than anything to just stay there with him. I have to remind myself how lucky we are that we can have these visits at all! For the past year it wasn't possible and now we're so lucky that my boss allows me the time off to go up there and that the new bus routes make the travel so much more affordable. Really we are so blessed! I need to remember that and focus on all the positive parts! Really our life together is just getting better and better! :)

Next trip to Canada is in just a few weeks and I can't wait! It will sadly be a day shorter than the other trips but its certainly better than nothing! I'll take 2 days over no days everytime!

Phil, thank you so much for loving me like you do and for making this past year so amazing! I'm so grateful we've found each other! You're the greatest!

XOXOXOXOXOXOX
Happy Anniversary My Love!