conuly

So I made pizza for dinner, with buffalo mozzarella. And salad, of course, because it wasn't a very big pizza.

So now I'm wondering - what on earth does everybody put in (on?) their salad? It is time - for a poll!

( Poll! )

Due to the comments here, I have to ask: Do you peel cucumbers?

( Poll inside )

However, none on my butt or the front, so I figured that if I sat still we could still hang out at the playground we'd just gotten to and we'd be fine. No need to rush home, I had pads with me, I'd be just as bloody there as here, right? (Oxyclean got it right out. I mean, if you really get close and stare you can see there's some kinda stain, but anybody's that close to my crotch I'm gonna assume at this point that my pants are OFF and I don't very much care.) Of course, I kinda wished I'd brought my kanga, or that it was a little colder and I had a sweater, so I could wrap it around my waist. My mom interjects as I'm telling her this amazing story of Oxyclean with "Yeah, right, like anybody doesn't know what THAT'S all about, every woman knows that one!" to which I can only say "Yeah, maybe it is like saying 'I'm bleeding through my crotch, wanna make sumthin' outta it?', but is that really any worse than potentially showing the world your massive bloodstain on your pants?"

But then I got to wondering... do guys know what's up when somebody just randomly ties her jacket (or convenient kanga/sarong) around her waist?

[Poll #1449991]

(I finally set up my wireless again, so I'm totally upstairs while typing. This either rocks or sucks depending on how much computer time you figure I'll have...!)

Their mother hadn't sent Ana's vacation homework up with her, which meant I got stuck with it. That's all right, she just kinda plowed through it. (And yes, I *do* think vacation homework for kindergarten is silly, but I'm told that the other kids in her class have parents who want MORE homework. The mind boggles, let me tell you.)

One of Ana's homeworks (she only has three left for the weekend - the daily "what the weather is" picture, her "my favorite thing I did this week" picture and two sentences, and a math set (they're working with coins) that she didn't want to finish) involved rhyming words. There were four words in each row (in four different rows), three of which rhymed. This was pretty badly done as the non-rhyming word always made a minimal pair with a rhyming word - bug, rug, and rag, for example. It would've been more challenging if they hadn't. But I digress.

The final row had these four words: pin, pen, ten, hen.

Can you see the problem with that? Say the list aloud. If you automatically figure out the problem, gold star! If not, go here. As it happens, I have the pin-pen merger. I think I must have gotten it from my dad, as neither my mother nor sister has it and they used to tease me about it. (Because I didn't get enough of that at school, guys?) I remember sitting in speech (therapy) lessons as a kid, the only year I had actual instruction in those, working it out in my head how weird it was that there was no short-e before n, even when it's written in that way! I literally don't hear it when other people say it unless I'm listening for it, and I feel as though I'm twisting my mouth unnaturally to produce it myself.

So when I saw this I listened with great interest to see what Ana would do.

She carefully read the words (didn't have to sound them out!), and as soon as she got to pin and pen she stopped. Read them again, the whole list. Frowned. Sounded each word out carefully. "Connie, they all rhyme!"

So what do I do? Do I tell her to ignore her instincts and fill out the words that look like they rhyme? That's what she used to do when she was three. Do I let her fill out all of them and look like she didn't get it at all? I compromised by telling her that there's a good reason they put four rhyming words there, telling her to fill them all in, and writing a note to her teacher explaining this. Then, she she was done, I explained the pin-pen merger and talked her through the steps of a simple linguistic survey. We're totally stopping family members to see who has it and who doesn't today!

[Poll #1385210]

This isn't the first time I've had a language quibble with Ana's homework. Once she had to do "initial sounds that match" and one of the examples was a P word with a "pan". Except that I generally say skillet, and she generally says skillet, and when we don't say skillet we say frying pan. But she breezed right through that without a thought, proving that she understands very well how to do worksheets.

Once I was on a bus, and heard three boys in the back trying to alter the words to "Boys go to Jupiter to get more stupider" so as to insult girls. They kept failing. EVERY TIME. I LOL'd, I really did.

[Poll #1369115]

(Whoulda thunk I'd appreciate poll-making the most out of everything?)

[Poll #1341345]

[Poll #1323186]

[Poll #1256925]

For the record, I find algebra to be breathtakingly self-evident, while geometry is mindnumbingly complicated and foggy.

I've done it all my life
It makes the peas taste funny
But...
It keeps them on my knife!

I always thought this poem was strange as a kid - not because he eats his peas with a knife, but because if he's "done it all his life" surely he thinks that they taste normal that way?

Anyway, I have a poll:

[Poll #1211797]

See, I've had this recipe for watermelon salad with feta and mint floating in my mind for a while (and we always have plenty of mint), so I picked up some feta at the store today. But then, when I was googling to figure out how *much* feta goes in that salad with a whole or half a watermelon, I saw THIS recipe, and this one as well.

I grew up just grabbing a slice of (cold, refrigerated) watermelon and eating it on the fire escape in my room (did the same with gumbo. Everybody else ate in the kitchen, but for those meals I seem to remember eating them looking out over the backyard a lot, which normally I didn't do) and then coming back for more and more and more.

And in the comments to one of those recipes somebody posted that they normally eat watermelon with salt (SO not how I ever did it) like it's a normal thing, and I remember reading that in some areas, that *is* how one usually does it.

So - yeah, poll.

I happen to love cilantro, but I understand that to some people, it doesn't taste like cilantro-y goodness, but like soapy soapness.

Interestingly enough, a while back I was talking to somebody who is into healthy eating, and I mentioned guacamole, and she goes "I can't eat avocado, it tastes like soap to me!"

This reminded me of cilantro, so I inquired, and she confirmed that yes, cilantro also tastes soapy to her. Then I explained that it's a genetic quirk, and that it doesn't taste that way to everybody, which probably caused her life to make sense again if she'd been going around thinking everybody tasted it the same, but only she didn't like the flavor.

[Poll #1090171]

Or I think it's a quirk, anyway.

See, they insist that koopas, from Mario Brothers are really ducks, and they call them such. As in "I got killed by a duck" whenever somebody remembers how cool the original Marios were and re-downloads the old SNES emulator. (It seems, now that I think of it, that my mother was a real old school gamer. The computer, our old C64 was in my sister's room (which seems to have doubled as a family room, it was that big), and when my sister and I were going to bed, my mom would be playing on the computer, so it functioned as a nightlight for us, I guess.)

If you've forgotten, or if you've never seen Mario, this is what Wikipedia says about Koopas.

So, I promised them I'd put a poll up.

[Poll #1031305]

Thank you. Please remember to answer all questions.

She goes to the bathroom, and she poos... but she doesn't pee.

Isn't that weird? I honestly did not know that this was possible. I told Jenn, and her mind boggled.

So, now, guess what time it is! ( Pointless Poll Time! )

(I didn't name names, so it's possibly nobody I've ever posted about. Last thing I need is for this kid to grow up and find out I posted her embarrassing details all over the internet when she was a baby, right?)

[Poll #949319]

I forgot the clicky question, so just post clicky if it's that important to you.

Well, so long as I can tab down to post, I'm good. I guess.

[Poll #888305]

[Poll #715815]

Wow. Lots of people picking "other". I'm dying of curiosity, in a low-pressure kinda way. More like "not really dying, but still curious".

[Poll #667042]

Today, Ana was sitting in my lap with the baby. (And hugging the baby too tightly, then declaring "MY BABY!" when I forced her to stop, but that's another story.) She requested that I sing "The Wheels on the Bus" (or, as she calls it, "wown an wown"), so I start to sing, only to be stopped. No, she wants me to go directly to the part where the babies on the bus go waa waa waa. So I do... and she leans over to her sister and goes "Eva! Say 'waa waa waa'!" Not very cute, but it got me thinking....

( Read more... )

Thanks for playing!

[Poll #552692]

Edit: Yes, I know the song is properly "Next time won't you sing with me" (if you use that variation), but I couldn't say that and still be grammatical the way I had formed the question.

[Poll #535887]

I cut this poll short because there are just too many places in this world where everything is wrong.