2007 November » Bookworm Broadcast

We went to our town Christmas parade last night and it was so much fun! My oldest son was in the parade, with his high school marching band. And there is an awesome coffee shop in the town square where we were watching it from. I had the most delicious chicken salad sandwich and a yummy coffee.

The theme of the parade was ‘A Country Christmas’ and there were all kinds of ‘floats’ entered in the fun procession! There were very dirty muddin’ trucks, a funeral parlor limousine, and even a miniature carousel. There was even a truck from the Coop – I’m pretty sure that’s where my mother-in-law buys her horse riding apparel. I just love saying it – ‘the Coop’. It makes me feel so country, like an official, bonafide small-towner! I just love it – but, I’m a dork like that!

It is really just so sad, but, lately no matter how early I go to bed, I can NOT read! I can’t stand it!

Last night I went to bed at 9:30 and I really wanted to read just this one little article in my magazine that had just come in the mail – Website Magazine. I wanted to read the article about the controversy that is brewing around the internet, more specifically the blogosphere, about a certain type of advertising.

And I could barely read the first few paragraphs without falling asleep! I don’t think I even read the first column without just completely conking out!

And here is where it gets really sad – about a week ago, I went to bed at 7:30. That’s right, folks – 7:30pm. I completely thought I would get to relax in bed and read for at least a couple hours.

Do you think that happened? Nope. I was out – like a light!

I want to read – someone un-sleepify me!!
Sleeping 2

The book, The Mailbox, by Audrey Shafer, sounds so good. I think I’m going to put it on my book queue with my new book club for the kids. It is about a little boy who lives in one foster home after another and just leads a really hard life. Then, at the age of nine, he is sent off to live with his old uncle. His uncle is quite the grump, but, he has some amazing stories to tell and a heart of gold. He is a good, stable person for the boy. Sadly, the uncle dies when the boy is still quite young. The boy is terrified and so sad, and so he doesn’t tell anyone that his uncle has died. And mysteriously, the body disappears and lots of cards start to show up in the mailbox. One of the big themes of this book is interconnectedness and I think the author uses the symbol of mailboxes to represent that.

Everyone seems to have a little bit of a different take on it, as with any book, really. But with every review that I read, I just want to read the book all that more!

Oh my gosh! My son just missed a week of school. And it was a short week, since Monday was a holiday. And he has SO MUCH MAKE-UP WORK!! Which to me is really weird, since I have felt that the boys haven’t had enough homework at this school. I guess that just means that they just jam pack the school day full of work!

I have to say I honestly feel like keeping him home another day just so he can get caught up! He is still slightly feverish. He has asthmatic bronchitis. I took him to a clinic yesterday to have him checked out and get an antibiotic. I really liked the clinic. It was clean and neat and upgraded. It didn’t look like an old doctor’s office from the 60′s, like so many we’ve been to.

The doctor that saw him was really sweet and attentive, to both Shawn and me. That is definitely a plus – when the doctor can easily and comfortably converse with the parent and the child. She was really cool. She even had on sexy boots that were black and fishnets! That was a surprise to see! She had the outfit put together tastefully, it wasn’t tacky at all. It just made me feel more comfortable with her, to know there really was a ‘woman’ under that lab coat – and a cool one, at that!

I also forgot to get the doctor’s note for Shawn to have unexcused absences. If you have more than five per semester, you need a note. I’ll have to see if my husband can go by there tomorrow.

Back to this make-up work, though, oh my! I don’t know how I’ll get this kid caught up. I’m sure it just looks overwhelming on paper, and once we get to working on it, and once we talk with the teachers – everything will be alright. All of the seventh grade teachers said at the orientation that they are willing to work with the kids. Some of them come to school early and some of them stay late, and all of them are willing to give their time outside of class if a student needs it. So I’m sure as long as Shawn and I and the teachers stay in communication, we will get him caught up! Darn his asthmatic lungs, though!

Well, I had fun, anyway. I think Sammie was a little frustrated. You see, every week she has to bring home her math test and we have to work through the problems that she missed. The first one that she missed this time was about pentagons. She was supposed to draw four of them and color in (shade) to show 3 1/2. She had drawn them all teeny tincy and squishy so it didn’t really look like it represented 3 1/2. I sat there thinking of how a pentagon looks in my head, so that I could help her, and all that my brain was supplying was a stop sign, which is six sides. So I knew that wasn’t right – so I headed to the internet. I found some cool websites with information on pentagons. And I showed her what a pentagon should look like. And then I went off to start dinner – or balance the checking accounts – or something…

And when I came back, she had definitely drawn five-sided shapes, but, the bottom lines on the sides were straight up and down – so it looked like when a child draws a house. And I was not sure her teacher was going to accept that, or even if that qualified as a pentagon. So I went searching online some more. And I discovered that her shapes were indeed pentagons, but, they were irregular pentagons. So they did qualify. I suppose we’ll see if her teacher accepts that or not. I stressed to her that they were irregular pentagons, so that if she discussed it with her teacher, she could point that out. Now – her teacher could obviously counter with, “Yes, but, I wanted regular pentagons.” In which case Sammie would have to do them again, but, at least she could have an intelligent conversation with her teacher about it. And being that Sammie is as polite as can be, I felt safe arming her with that information. If I had a child that would sass the teacher, or rudely argue with the teacher, I would never help her out in that way.

Anyway, so let me tell you about the sites online that I enjoyed so much. The first place I went to was Wikipedia. I just love Wikipedia and their page about pentagons definitely had some cool information! From there, we visited one of the links in the External Links section. And boy, did we have fun there! It is the Math Open Reference site, and we had tons of fun playing with the pentagons there!

You can work with either a regular pentagon, or an irregular pentagon and drag its corners all around to change the size and even the shape (of the irregular one).

Sammie had long since run off, and Patrick and I were left playing with all of the polygons on that site! I think we had the most fun playing with the undecagon and the dodecagon!

The highest polygon that I remember learning in school was the octagon, so I was just having a field day with these long, silly words! And Patrick got to, one more time, laugh at his poor ‘ol ma!

I think I asked him about fifteen times – “Have you changed your undecagon?” Haha!