Gangsters and Fashion Designers co-existing!

Once a few years ago I was driving a student home from school, he was suspended and didn't have a ride home. The school was Title 1 and almost 100% of the student body was on free or reduced lunch. Basically a school that had a very high concentration of poverty.
The interesting thing about this neighborhood was that it was surrounded by some of our town's fanciest, priciest restaurants, upper end shops, and gourmet grocery stores. So, as we are driving we pass the backside of one of the fancy shopping centers. There is some graffiti spray painted on one of the brick walls. It was not very noticeable and I am sure I took it in as part of the background not really giving it any thought. The student I had in the car points at it and says,
"You see that? With those letters crossed out? That is why that guy was killed at those apartments last week."
He then went on to explain that a local gang had tagged a "threat" to a rival gang and when a tag is "crossed out" it means someone in that gang is going to get killed. Btw, the boy explaining this to me was only ten years old!
This got me thinking. There is like a strata in society, and I don't mean lower, middle and upper class. I feel like we are all occupying the same space, but in layers, strata, that are parallel to each other, rarely intersecting, except by accident or maybe force. I realized that on those same streets where all the nice BMW's and Mercedes are cruising there is also gang warfare, drugs, and crime operating on those exact streets! Just in a different layer, so to speak.
I wondered what else I was missing about everything that happened around there on a day to day basis. People who don't drive, or who use public transportation also experience that neighborhood in a totally different way than even I did.
Had this student not pointed this out to me, I would have never thought twice about it. Now when I drive around any neighborhood, I often look for clues about other "layers" that co-exist with me. I feel like a sociological detective around here.

"Any change, whether positive or negative, creates stress."

This is a (indirect) quote from one the kazillion books I read while I was in college getting my degree in Psychology. I am sorry, but I don't remember the author.
So, after 12 YEARS my hubs has finally had his work schedule change from swing shift to day shift! This is huge news since we have two young children, one in preschool and the other in first grade. I was basically a single parent all week and it was starting to take it's toll. Night after night after the kids would go to bed I would call my hubs at work and it would go something like this:

Him: Hello?
Me: Oh my God...(sighing loud to emphasize point)
Him: What happened?
Me: The kids almost pushed me over the edge/wore me out/drove me insane/ tonight!
Him: Why? What were they doing?

And so on! His questions were not that easy to answer. After all, they were just being kids, it's hard to explain what they were actually doing, ya know? These past few years I have a whole new respect for what single parents must go through every single day for the most part. It can be hard to juggle the needs of two kids from the moment I get home from work until they go to sleep, and that is on a good day! I realize that I am not the most organized person, this just adds to that stress, ugh.
BUT now the hubs is going to be home! I can go out during the week, even after dark! We can have dinner as a family, we can do more things together without having to wait for the weekend, I am so looking forward to all of that. The flip side? He is going to be home more than I have been used to for the last 12 years. Football will be on the TV on Mondays, and him being around means more of a chance for us to disagree about something, but I am done doing it solo, so hopefully it will all be good. I will keep you posted on how our adjustment is going!

The birds and the bees

Ok, so as you may or may not have noticed, my daughter has been asking me lot's of questions about body parts, where babies come from, etc. I wanted to give you an example of how this dialogue goes.
Dear 6 y.o. Daughter is laying in bed and I am laying next to her, we are talking about random things. Then:

Dear Daughter: Mom, what is a boy's peepee called again?
Me: It's called a penis.
Daughter: A peanut?
Me: No, not -nut, -nis!
Daughter: What? A nutnis?
Me: No, not a nutnis! Then I just started laughing.

I wonder what word she will come up with next? Maybe I will use that to talk in code...i.e. Yeah, my boss is being a real nutnis today!

Things heard around the house...

This weekend was pretty much like any other Saturday and Sunday. A bunch of plans crammed into two days! I am going to share some excerpts of of things I heard around here this weekend so you can see how my life is so full of intellectual stimulation!

Dear 6 y.o.Daughter to no one in particular: Brother has a big fat head!
Dear 3 y.o. Son: No! I don't! I don't have a big fat head!
Daughter: (whispering) Yes you do.
Son: (shouting) I DON'T HAVE A BIG FAT HEAD!!!

Ugh, so then I started to get a big, fat headache.

Dear Daughter to me: Mom, you are a fabulous weirdo! (giggles)
Me: (Trying to take a quiz on Facebook) Mmmhmm, that's nice honey.

At night I am lying next to Dear Son trying to get him to sleep. He keeps finding excuses to talk.
Son: Mom! Mom! I want to say something!
Me: Go to sleep.
Son: But please, please I want to say something to you!
Me: Okay! What do you want to say?
Son: (shouting) "You're my boy, Blue!!!" (we both laugh)

At dinner tonight. We are all sitting around the kitchen table. We are all just eating and talking, it's pretty uneventful.
Dear Son to my hubs: Daddy, are you freaking out?
Hubs: Huh? No I am not freaking out.
Son: Oh, Ok, I was seeing if you were freaking out.

He just goes back to eating like it was a totally normal thing to ask.

Earlier today Dear Son is almost bursting with anticipation when he come to get me out of the laundry room.
Son: Mom! Come here, come over here and sit down and rest.
Me: OK, I will sit down and rest. Where do you want me to sit?
Son: (the anticipation is killing him at this point!) Right here! Right here on this chair!
I sit on a strategically placed Whoopie cushion. A loud, flatulent sound emits.

He laughs so hard he can barely breathe! A well spent one dollar, I must say :)


And there you have just a small sliver of what it is like over here on a daily basis. If you have young children you know exactly what I am talking about, and if you don't have any I am sure you can't wait to have these kinds of cerebral discussion in your household!

Blast from the deprived '70's past

So today I was talking with my neighbor about the toys we used to have back in the '7o's. It was one of those kidsthesedaysdon'tknowhowgoodtheyhaveit...conversations.

I thought I would share with you one of the toys I brought up, the Lite Brite! Did we get in new in the box? No way! Not when there was a perfectly good one (with God knows how many of the color pegs missing) available at a garage sale for a fraction of the price! Who cares if the light bulb was missing? You could always find one in the house somewhere.

And the picture templates all used up? No worries, we just tore the pages out of our coloring books and Voila! A new template to plug into!

Oh and don't forget we were not wasteful back in the day, so we had to keep the lightbulb OFF while we were creating our latest design until we were FINISHED with putting all the color pegs into the Lite Brite! Wasting electricity, even if from one light, was forbidden.

So, I want to hear from you, what toys do you remember the most? Which ones were always breaking, or didn't quite work right, or which do you have the most fond memory of?