Ribbed, for her (birthday party) pleasure.

So, I was at the commissary earlier, and saw these.

I have nothing more to say about this.

Lunch Time Poll Topic #8675309

Yeah, so I have no idea what number Lunch Time Poll Topic we're actually on.

Today's topic was submitted by an old friend. As in, I've known her for a long time. Not that she's old. Anyway, she needs some feedback about a situation with the school, and we all know that you guys always have the best answers on the internet.

A couple of things to note:
1. She's a teacher, so the workload of a teacher is something very familiar to her.
2. Powerschool is a program many schools use so that parents can have access to their kids' grades and attendance on a daily basis. You can even see the grades for individual assignments and tests. It's like a report card every day that includes all graded work.

Without further ado, her letter:




Today I got a heavy-breather phone call from my 11 year old daughter. My cell rings after I put my students on the bus. It's not a number in my phone, so I don't know who it is, but it is local so I answer it. I hear, "Mom?"

"Yes, dear what's wrong?" More heavy breathing. . .So I ask her if she's going to talk or breathe in my ear.

Eventually she spills her guts about how she is with her teacher, and she is calling me because she wrote something not so nice directed toward a boy in her class.

Should I get that phone call? Absolutely. I am super disappointed in her for what she did. Though I am grateful that she used her pen, and not her mouth to express her sentiments about this boy. I am also disappointed that she was (insert sarcasm) smart enough to turn in the assignment that the words were written on.

But I digress. My real issue is this:

1st quarter her report card showed that she was failing science. We never got a phone call, so assumed that things were fine. I ask during conferences what's going on, and the teacher pulls up her grade book on the computer and says, "Well she just didn't do very well on the test that we took last week." As in, that was the only science grade in the book for the whole 9 weeks! And the teacher goes on to say something like, "It was just the first science test, lots of them struggled with it." So we go home and tell her she needs to be more diligent and take the opportunity to retake tests if she does poorly.

2nd quarter.
We assume she's doing better--we haven't had anything tell us otherwise. My husband works for the school district too, and this teacher sees him every day when she takes her students to lunch. This time when the report card comes, she is failing social studies and language arts, but her science is grade up. The middle school principal was out on medical leave, so I talked to the counselor. I asked her, "Isn't there some policy requiring some sort of parent contact when a kid is failing?" She listens to my concerns, says she thinks there is such a policy, and promises to talk to the principal about it when he gets back because other parents are having the same issue. We tell our daughter to get it in gear etc. . .

This week, 9 days before the end of the 3rd quarter, the counselor asks me if I knew my daughter was failing 3 classes? Ummm, no. Are you kidding me? I teach in this district too, last year this teacher taught in the class next door to mine (now she's in another building). We as parents are around, not hard to get a hold of. She has access to both our personal phone numbers, and email as well as our work ones. Like I mentioned earlier, she sees my hubby every day. We even go to church together.

So after my child is done breathing heavily into the phone, and done getting around to telling me about the bad thing she did at school, I ask to talk to the teacher. We discuss today's issue, and then I ask her why, since she knows how to get a hold of us, can't she let us know that our child is failing THREE classes?!? I got responses like: "Don't you check powerschool? I can't call all 17 parents (this is a regular 5th grade class). In the 5th grade I want to let them take on more of the burden of responsibility. I need to get them ready for middle school where they change classes every 45 min and can't turn in late work. Didn't you get the note/s I sent home? I didn't know she was that far behind. I really don't know where she is (meaning academically)."

So I answer: "WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU CAN'T CALL ALL 17 PARENTS!?!?!? They aren't all failing are they? I call parents all the time especially if their kid is beginning to fail. Obviously this kid isn't ready for this kind of responsibility. What makes you think she's going to give me a note if she isn't doing her work?" In my mind I'm thinking: BS, I turned in late work all the way up through college. If you really are keeping your powerschool grade book up-to-date, how do you not know she's failing? How do you not know where my kid (and all the others) are academically when the state tests are coming up in 3 weeks? It's her responsibility to know where they all are. Since I teach in this school I know that my daughter scores at the top of her class on the state tests. She knows the content. She just hasn't been turning things in. She's been known for hiding her homework under her bed, in her laundry hamper, behind her bedroom door, and who knows where else.

So my question is:
Who's responsibility is it to make parent/teacher contact when a child is failing? This is the first year she has ever failed a class.

*********
O.K., internets. What do you think? I'll weigh in with my opinion in the comments.

Sleeping with Vera Wang.

So, when you hear the name Vera Wang, what do you think of? Beautiful clothes? Gorgeous wedding gowns? Red carpets and fashion shows?

Uhhh....Mattresses?

Yup. Apparently Vera Wang now has a line of mattresses.

It just seems like an odd direction to go.

And it makes me wonder if her PR people really thought this through. Do you really want your label, which is associated with the elite of the fashion industry, being blasphemed by the owner of the Discount Mattress Barn in rural Kentucky?

"This week only at the Mattress Barn we've got Sealy, Tempurpedic, and Veee-rah Way-ang mattresses half off!"

And even better,

"C'mon down to the Mattress Depot for a Saint Paddy's Day sale! We've got Vera Wangs for rock bottom prices! That's right folks. Put Vera Wang in your bedroom for the best night of your life!"

Classy. I'm sure that's exactly the direction she hoped this endeavor would take.

The lies we tell.

I have a couple of friends who refuse to play along with the whole Santa/Easter Bunny/Tooth Fairy game. The reason? They believe it's lying to their kids, and how can their kids ever trust them again once they find out that mom and dad lied about Santa?

That's fine for them. And they're good about teaching their kids not to ruin it for all the other kids who have lying bastards for parents.

But you know, I think it's kind of silly and takes a little magic out of childhood (not to mention the fact that Santa threats are the only way to get some kids to behave anytime between Halloween and December 24th). I think it's safe to say that most of us grew up believing in Santa or the Easter Bunny or the Tooth Fairy or something like that--nearly every culture has some sort of mythical character taught to children. And I also think it's safe to say that none of us go around harboring lingering distrust toward our parents because of it.

And you know, mythical characters aside, sometimes lying to your kids is a necessity.

Case in point: This morning I informed Amelia that she was getting a hole in the side of her face and that her lips were peeling off.

The kid has a terrible habit of sucking on her blankets. Not just a bit of the corner in her mouth as she falls asleep--we're talking yards of fabric crammed so tightly into her mouth that I don't know how she hasn't choked to death in her sleep. Her blankets are soaked with saliva every morning, and if I don't wash them every other day, they stink like there's a rotting carcass in her room.

It's seriously messing up her teeth, and her lips and cheeks are constantly chapped due to rubbing on wet fabric all night.

I took all of her "blankies" away ages ago, but she just sucks on her sheet and quilt in bed. So, I bought her some blanket sleepers, turned up the heat a little and removed all but the fitted sheet from her bed. I hoped maybe a week or two without blankets would cure her. Instead, she pulled the fitted sheet off and had half of it crammed in her mouth the next morning.

Sometimes I go in at night and remove the blanket from her mouth while she sleeps. It's like those clowns who pull a hundred hankies out of their mouth. I don't know how she fits that much in.

ANYWAY. This morning her lips and cheeks were particularly dry, cracked and bleeding. Soooo, I took a closer look at breakfast, and in my most worried tone, informed her that I was pretty sure there was a hole forming on one of her cheeks. And that it looked like her lips were going to fall off. I got an added bit of credibility when after wiping her mouth on a napkin, there was a bunch of dead skin and blood left behind.

I told her it was from sucking on her blanket. I won't lie--she was pretty terrified. But if it works, it will be worth the therapy bills in the future. They'll probably be cheaper than the orthodontia she'll need if she keeps up with the blanket sucking anyway.

Another example was about a year ago. I would do laundry once a week, and Ben would only have one pair of underwear in the dirty clothes. Occasionally, there would be NONE. For some reason, he decided he wasn't changing his underwear anymore. Even after his shower, he was putting dirty ones back on.

He was "talked to" about it a few times, but the problem persisted. So, I told him that the reason we were so adamant about him changing his underwear every day was because dirty underwear could harbor bacterial infections, and if he got one, the only way to keep it from spreading throughout his body was for doctors to remove his penis.

Evil? Maybe. But he has changed his underwear every single day ever since.

I may have also informed my children that not eating vegetables would cause them to go blind and lose their ability to walk.

Sometimes you do what you have to do, moral quandaries be damned.

They were born this way.

Nothing to see here...just a typical Monday night at the Douglass house.

Born this way from Brandi Douglass on Vimeo.

Thursday Morning Confessions

This may as well be an "adult" store as far as I'm concerned.

1. Restaurant supply stores get me hot and bothered. I don't even know why--I don't really like cooking. But whenever I go into one, I get a rush of adrenaline and suddenly feel the need to own a 15 gallon stock pot, a 200 pack of cardboard french fry holders and one of those syrup dispensers like they have at IHOP. Oh, and a monogrammed chef coat.

2. The pattern in my counter tops occasionally looks like pubic hairs. We've lived here for eight months now and I still freak out and think there are pubes on my counter.

3. I had a really spectacular hair day yesterday, and the only person who got to see it was the cashier at Wal-Mart. I hope she appreciated it.

4. The plus size model on this cycle of America's Next Top Model is a size 8. I think I'll go kill myself now.

5. Yes, I watch America's Next Top Model. Religiously. Shut up.

6. The reason I was at the aforementioned restaurant supply store was to buy a pack of little one ounce disposable sauce cups with lids, and a pack of the also aforementioned cardboard french fry holders. I put baby carrots and bell pepper strips in the fry holders, fat free ranch dressing in the sauce cups and packed it in my kids' lunches. They now think I'm the best mom ever and they ate their veggies.

7. I couldn't find our headset/microphone combo the other day, so I had to Skype with Will using the Wii microphone from Lego Rock Band. I really had to fight the urge to bust out into "We Will Rock You."

8. I have a post that's been sitting in my draft folder for awhile now. I'm afraid to post it because no matter how many times I rewrite it, it comes off sounding kind of racist, which honestly is not my intention. Let's just say that my friend and I (in her big, red Mormon minivan) got caught up in a funeral procession coming from Boiling Springs Black Baptist Church of Clarksville. It was...an experience.

9. Sometimes I'm afraid if I think about things or say things, they'll happen just because I thought or said them. For example, I would never ever use the fake excuse of a relative dying because I'd be terrified that they really would die and it would be all my fault. As I was falling asleep last night I started thinking about what I would do if my plane was hijacked by terrorists and/or was about to crash. Like, who would I call if I could call--morbid things like that. Now I'm terrified that when I fly in a couple of weeks, it will crash and I will die while trying to make an international cell phone call to Afghanistan.

10. I'm so excited about my trip to Vegas I might throw up. I don't even care about the Vegas part of it. I'm just excited to see my friends and escape my children. Of course, if my plane goes down I'm going to feel horribly guilty for wanting to run away from them for a week. Yet, it's still kind of worth it.

What I'd do for free ice cream.

This could totally be me, for the low, low price of my soul.

So, does it mean that I've finally made it as a successful blogger when I start getting daily solicitations to review products and interview random people? Because if so, I HAVE TOTALLY MADE IT.

So far, I've been asked to:

-Review an advance copy of a book by some life coach, then interview the author and write a "favorable review." Yeah, they would only pay me if my review was favorable.

-Interview a doctor about how acne causes teen suicide, and then help said doctor with his fear campaign by promoting his acne product.

-Taste and review "Super premium, designer ice cream and probiotic frozen yogurt flavors." Again, payment is only offered for favorable reviews. I won't lie--I almost did this one. Odds are, I'm going to like the freaking ice cream. And fifty dollars is fifty dollars. Plus, you know, free ice cream.

-Try and review penis enlargement pills. This company was so sure of great results that payment was not predicated on a favorable review. There's just one problem: I don't have a penis. And the only penises (penii?) in my home right now belong to children. So, that's not happening. Can you imagine? "What, that? Oh, they were out of your Flintstone gummies. Just take this pill instead."

-Travel to Canada, interview a "sexuality and spirituality" guru, participate in one of his weekend retreats (which was accompanied by a warning that nudity and non-sexual but intimate touching would be involved) And then write a--you guessed it--favorable article about the experience.

And you know, I'm not averse to making some money from this blog. Heck, I wouldn't even be opposed to using and reviewing one product a week, especially if they gave me enough that I could give some away, too. (You're all coming with me to Canada for spirituality, nudity and non-sexual but intimate touching!) (That's way better if you read it in your best Oprah voice.)

But the problem is, these companies don't want me to say, "Hey--the company contacted me, sent me a sample, and here's what I think about it." Even if I honestly think good things about it.

They want me to write a post as though I just happened to try it, and I just happen to love it so much I want to tell you about it and provide eleventy million links to their site.

I'm not down with that. I've seen some bloggers who do that sometimes (coughNieNiecough) and it's so fake sounding. I mean, can you imagine what the blog post about penis enlargement pills would have been like? "So, my dear husband has a really small penis and we were looking for a way to remedy the situation. We found these super Penile Enhancement pills online, and let me just tell you about how GREAT they are!"

But you know, I really might reconsider that ice cream one. They have a Rice Krispie Treat flavor.