iBeth

They even took her unfinished dissertation

Anne Rockafield just won her long battle with city hall.  The 76-year old former college instructor repeatedly annoyed her neighbors with various code violations.  When the city issued citations, she did her best to fix the problems.  Then one day, city inspectors went to her property and objected to what they saw: an overgrown yard, tattered furniture on the porches, and a broken screen door swinging open.  What did they do?

[O]n Aug. 20, 1993 -- while Rockafield was in Michigan visiting her sick father -- a crew with a small front-end loader dumped her belongings into a truck. The crew hauled away building supplies, sinks, bathroom fixtures, the antique chair and a pine chest containing a draft of Rockafield's unfinished doctoral dissertation.

The city is not sure how much stuff was taken because it didn't make a list.

"We don't normally inventory property we're taking to the landfill," [Orlando code-enforcement chief Mike] Rhodes said.

No surprise that she was still too upset to stick around to hear the jury award her $1,100 for her property and another $25,000 for pain and suffering.  Her home did not pose an "extreme and imminent" health threat, so the city had no business confiscating it.

Setting aside the obvious questions (why didn't Rockafield's neighbors or the city try to HELP her clean her property, rather than sneaking in and carting her belongings to the dump?), the whole story raises an important question about homeowner's associations:

If even a city government, with all its law enforcement powers, cannot effectively prevent repeat code violators, why do people think a volunteer homeowner's association can do so?  You'll notice that this woman was awarded $26,100.  If our hoa faced that sort of judgement, it would be special assessment time--all homeowners would have to pay.  On top of whatever the case cost us in legal fees.

Amelia Uses Past Tense

Amelia banged her elbow.  "Emmy kiss it!  Kiss elbow!"  she demanded.  So of course Emma complied.

"Emma kissed it," Amelia said.  I've never heard her use past tense before. 

Her sentences are getting longer, too.  Three-word sentences are the norm;  four-word sentences are not uncommon.  Last night, she wandered out to the family room, looking for her bottle, and exclaimed, "Oh! There it is!" when she saw it. 

Another time, I heard her say, "I love you SO much!"  She was imitating her toy phone (it talks!), but it was still very very cute.   

Missing Church

Today, I tried to go to church, I really did.  But then Emma said she really really wanted to go, and getting her ready took longer than planned (even though she honestly tried to hurry). 

When we left, it was pouring rain and a car accident happened right in front of us on the expressway: a speeding red sportscar spun out and crashed into the center divider.  I wanted very much to stop and help the driver, but I was four lanes to the right on an overpass.  To stop would have required me either to cut across three lanes of expressway to park along the center divider (where there was no shoulder) or to pull onto the right side, partly blocking the right-most lane, and run across four lanes of speeding traffic in the rain, and I was afraid to do either.   Not to mention, both options would have required leaving Emma in a car that partly blocked a lane of expressway traffic--very unsafe for her, too.  So I didn't stop, and I still feel terrible about that.  Fortunately, other drivers braver (or kinder?) than I *did* stop. 

Anyway, as you can imagine, I really felt the need of church after that experience.  But we were late enough arriving that the service had already started, and no parking was available either in the lot or along the nearby streets.   I didn't want to walk with Emma two blocks in the pouring rain through a part of town that has no sidewalks, only to arrive dripping wet halfway through the service. 

Instead, we went to a nearby bookstore, which my husband jokingly calls "The Second Unitarian Universalist Church of Orlando."  I wanted to buy a copy of Mary Poppins, since the movie and soundtrack have been such a huge hit with my girls, and since I'd failed to find it yesterday at the library.  Just one copy of one book--a quick in & out.  On our way in, I said to Emma, "Now we're only going to stay her for a little while. Understand?"  And she said, "Yes, Mama."

After only a few minutes in the children's section, we had picked out four books: Mary Poppins, two board books for Amelia (one for now, one for her birthday), and a book about snakes.  So much for our one-book plan.  Then, when it was time to leave, she said, "No, I'm NOT ready!  I'm NOT going to leave now.  I need to play with the trains a long time."

"Emma, remember how we agreed we were not going to stay a long time?  How we were going to leave really quick?"  I asked.

"No," she said, "I don't remember that at all, Mama."

It was all I could do not to laugh.  The other adults nearby also stifled laughs.  Fortunately, Emma fell for the well-I'm-leaving-now-start-to-walk-away ploy.  But inside, I was secretly proud of her for wanting to stay in the bookstore.  That's my girl!

Baking A Cake

I found this drawing [I hope you can see the details--if not, try clicking on it for a larger image]  on our kitchen table and asked Emma about it.

"It's a person making a cake," she explained, pointing to the drawing inside the heart at the bottom.  "She is using the mixer in the blue bowl, and her mommy is standing over there watching her.  And she is saying, 'It'll be ready soon.'"  [The word "readey" wraps around the inside of the talk bubble.]

What about the colors at the top? 

Emma said, "Those are the kinds of cake the person is making.  Not strawberry [strabey].  Not vanilla [vanila]. Not grape.  This flavor here [pointing to the yellow circle], that's the right one."

"Oh yes, I see it says 'rite' right there under that circle," I said.  "But what about where it says orange [orng]?"

Emma looked at me and said patiently,  "That says 'wrong', Mommy."

Great Writer, Rotten Speller

This article from the Washington Post is as hilarious as it is informative.  It's written by Steve Hendrix, a successful reporter who just can't spell:

Iteneriary is one of the dozens of words that bring me to a complete standstill. I can be typing along at a brisk pace when my brain feeds a word like itenirary down to my flying fingers, and they freeze over the keyboard like mummified buzzard claws.

Itinerary. I-T . . . E? . . . I? Pretty sure it's I. N is easy. Another E? or is it A? . . . R . . . Two Rs? A? A-R-Y. Itinerrary.

I once spell-checked a 2,000-word article I had written for the Post's Travel section and found I had spelled itinerary four ways, none of them correctly. It was a pitiful tally, made worse by the fact that it blinked at me in the middle of a newsroom filled with some of the best writers -- and spellers -- in the country. I could hear them all around me, blithely tapping out the 100,000-plus words that go into the paper every morning, most spelled correctly on the first go. People who write for big-city newspapers are supposed to be able to spell. The island of misfit toys, this is not.

 

I often remind students that terrible spellers are clustered in the highest and lowest ends of the IQ spectrum, so if they can't spell they're probably geniuses!  (But sadly, I don't have a good source for that factoid--heard it from a grad school guest speaker and have been meaning to look it up ever since.  That, and the Ben Franklin story.*)

Anyway, it's well worth reading.  And the html version has with a hilarious picture. (via Bookslut)

* Supposedly, the reason the U.S. puts commas and periods inside the quotes is that Ben Franklin did so.  And Franklin did so because he was a printer who noticed that the commas and periods were on half-sized pieces of type that tended to fall out.  Putting them inside the quote type pieces (slugs?) helped to hold them in place.  Even if this story is apocryphal, it helps students remember the U.S. rule for punctuation with quotes.   And even if the "high IQs are good spellers" factoid is apocryphal, it helps students remember not to condemn poor spellers as lazy or stupid.

Tennis ball sit

This morning, my husband took Emma to preschool while I stayed home with Amelia.  Amelia narrates everything: "Mommy brush teeth!  Mommy wash face!  Mommy take medicine!" etc. which provides such entertaining accompaniment that there's no need to turn on the radio.  But what made me turn around was this bit:

"Tennis ball, sit!" and then, "Melia sit!  Tennis ball sit!"

I turned around to see that the tennis ball (her favorite Christmas gift was a can of three tennis balls) was indeed sitting obediently on the ledge near the shower, right next to my cheerful youngest daughter.  They even posed for a picture.

Preschool Insults

Tonight at dinner, Emma told us about a preschool drama.  It seems that Emma told her teacher a "secret "about Chaney, something that Chaney did not want the teacher to know.  What was the secret?  That Chaney was saying mean things to Gabriel.  And what were those mean things? 

That Gabriel "smelled like a bee and a whale."

Preschoolers are masters of the cutting remark.

Like candida albicans, I presume?

My friend at a little bliss points out that this line of little girl panties has been given a rather unfortunate name:  fungals.

Amelia's 5-word sentence

Amelia said her first 5-word sentence today:  "Melia's stripey socks all dirty!"  And then a little later, "Emmy's stripey socks all dirty!"  Hard to believe she hasn't even turned two yet. 

Boobs for Prom

My friend at Peregrine's Pen has a mom who teaches in a local high school.  The mom reports that the latest trend among high school girls in our area is . . . boob jobs. 

Yes, girls want large breasts for prom, so their families are scheduling the surgeries now (so those distended globes will be ready to display come prom day).  And if that weren't nauseating enough, apparently if the girl's family can't afford it, sometimes the boyfriend's family will pay for the surgery. 

L.P.'s mom overheard a girl shouting at her mother, "I'm getting my breasts bigger and I'm having it done before prom" before hanging up the phone.  The daughter apparently was shouting because because the mother wanted her to wait three more months (till she turned 18) and would only pay half the price.

What is WRONG with these people?  Bad enough that these girls are signing up for completely unnecessary surgery to "enhance" their appearance at a meaningless one-time social event.  But they are putting their breasts under the knife.  Breasts are needed for feeding children!  Granted, not all of these girls may become mothers, but some surely will.  Why are doctors even performing this surgery on GIRLS?

Oh, I just want to take my daughters and move them to some other country.  Preferably a country that is SANE.