iBeth

Perfect Birthday Party

Yesterday, Emma and I went to the perfect birthday party, a party for one of her preschool friends (Jim - 5) and his sister (Abigail - 3). 

Emma was so thrilled to be invited that she rolled out of bed very early, put her own clothes on without dilly-dallying, and was urging me out the door 45 minutes before we really needed to leave.  When I told her we weren't leaving "until the clock on the stove says 10:15," she grabbed the present, pulled a chair in front of the stove, and stoically watched the clock, present in hand, reporting the time every couple of minutes or so.  Despite this delay tactic, we were still the first ones there.  ("Except Jim and Abigail," Emma would chime in at this point in the story, "since they lived there, but WE were the first ones who DIDN'T live there.")

These parents do things right.  Except a little gender stereotyping (I must be oversensitive on this point, as I am clearly in the minority), they had organized the perfect party. 

Everything was homemade: the invitations, the decorations, the party games.  The guests made crowns out of stiff paper, stickers, and markers.  (That's where most of the gender stereotyping came in: the girls made princess crowns and the boys made snake crowns.  When Emma's daddy asked her later why she chose a princess crown instead of a snake crown, she replied, "Only the boys were allowed to have snakes."  At the end of the party, the boys were given rubber snakes and the girls received pink or purple satin purses trimmed with maribou feathers.)

Then they played "find the green peanut" in a backyard scattered with peanuts.  They played limbo (twice).  They played freeze dance (Emma and Abigail would make "freeze" motions with their hands, like Frozone, as they froze in place). They ate pb&j or egg salad sandwiches, with cut up fruit on the side.  They ate homemade birthday cake, Abigail's decorated in pink and purple, Jim's shaped and decorated like the "strike" snake he invented (a strike snake is orange with one big blue polka dot, and it has very powerful venom, and it can even bite through the skin of an anaconda).  One guest with allergies to the cake got a special rice crispie cake, shaped into a heart, wrapped with waxed paper and tied with a beautiful pink ribbon. 

The highlight of the party was a pinata, also homemade, decorated with pink and purple dots (for Abigail), with a papier-mache coral snake coiled around it (for Jim). 

I could not imagine a more heartwarming party.  Jim and Abigail played well together and with their guests.  The house was clearly a "kid" house, bedecked with children's artwork and educational posters and family photos and (for the party) streamers and balloons inflated by mom & dad rather than store-bought helium.  Jim was wearing a t-shirt that he'd decorated himself with strike snakes.  When he blew out his birthday candles, he said his wish out loud: "I wish all my snakes were REAL."  Something tells me that I'll be receiving home-made thank-you notes from the children very soon.

Next birthday season, I'm going to try to organize parties like this one.  Or at least, I'll try to get thank-you notes in the mail afterwards.  (A brush with parenting perfection sure highlights my own imperfections and insecurities--but I'll save that for another post.)

The party ended before any presents were opened, as is today's fashion.  Because Emma was very disappointed to learn that she wouldn't get to see Jim and Abigail open the presents that she had brought them, I spoke to the mom, and she let us stay a little bit after the other guests had left so that Emma could watch them open the presents (make-a-plate kit and t-shirts with iron-on Violet and Dash decorations).  Emma sincerely enjoyed watching them receive their gifts, and I was proud of her for that.

Here are three good party game sites for any parents whose birthday season is still underway.

Note to Parents

Emma wrote this note to us on her magnadoodle.  A light bulb in the family room had burned out, casting her favorite hiding place (behind an armchair) into darkness, and her father had not changed it quickly enough.  Emma has written similar notes to us before, usually when she believes we are not treating her requests with sufficient urgency. 

Not long ago, she wrote us a forceful message on a piece of paper when we were singing to her sister and she (Emma) wanted peace and quiet. "Stop it!" the message said. 

Except that she didn't just write down the words, she drew a stick figure with a cartoonish talk bubble saying the words.  (Unfortunately, that pencil drawing did not scan.)

A Preschool Conversation

When I brought Emma to school this morning, her friend Chelsea rushed up to her.

Chelsea:  You know what?  I saw a truck crash yesterday!  It was a big crash!  The truck got hurt!  It was a blue truck.

Emma:  Oh!  Blue is my grandma's favorite color.  She would like to see it!   [pause]  I mean, before it got hurt.

Mysterious URLs Again

Awhile ago, I blogged about weird hits that were showing up in my referrer log.  The most popular thing on my entire site was an image of the food chain that I posted months ago.  Weird.  I don't know why that photo became so popular so quickly, but I didn't like it. 

Philocrites mentioned that a similar phenomenon on his blog was the result of a kid poaching an image off his server to use in his signature on message boards.  Philocrites put an end to the problem by renaming the image.  Prentiss Riddle suggested the same. .

Well, I finally tried that yesterday.  I deleted the original image and republished the post with a renamed image.  The popular link now returns a "404 not found" error.  But still, most of my hits are logging in as hits to that image!  Some visitors have hit that page 3 or 4 or 5 times just today.  How can that be? 

I guess that what the Typepad folks told Dylan must be true--that the entire post needs to be deleted and then republished, but I don't understand why deleting the photo from my account didn't solve the problem.

Even more bothersome, certain photos of my kids are starting to rise in popularity.  I don't mind people looking at these pictures, of course; if I minded, I wouldn't post them.  What I do mind is the possibility that people are republishing those pictures somewhere with out my knowledge or consent.  And in violation of my Creative Commons license. 

I'll tell you one thing: I think I'll stop giving my photos descriptive filenames.  That'll make them tougher to find on search engines.

When is my best time for "me" time?

Geeky Mom writes about morning vs night to schedule "me" time.  I realized I am having a great deal of trouble finding a good time to do things I want to do, vs have to do. 

Take research--I am having trouble finding sustained times in which to read and think.  My ideas have completely dried up.  In the mornings, I am inundated with student questions (I teach online), administrivia, etc., and I cannot seem to focus on my work knowing that stuff is in my inbox.  In the afternoons, I am frantically trying to accomplish even one item on my to-do list.  In the evenings, I'm tied up with dinner, kids, etc.  At night, I am so exhausted that even writing an interesting blog entry is often beyond me. 

Same goes for exercise.  In the morning I'm getting ready for work, plus there's that preschool drop off.  I don't want to exercise midday and get all sweaty and have to go back to the office.  Evenings = preschool pickup, dinner, kids.  etc.  Geeky mom gets up early, but between kids (we're having sleep issues again) and stress, I'm not getting enough sleep as it is.  Plus, when I *do* try to get up early to work on my computer, as often as not, one of the kids will wake up too, no matter how quiet I am, and then I've given up on sleep just to fetch cereal, answer questions, etc. etc.

There MUST be a good time in my day; I just have no idea when it might be or how to protect it.

I just reread the first sentence, and truth be told, I'm having trouble completing the "have to do" stuff too.  *sigh*  (Not to sound bleak or anything--I'm reasonably content, just very very disorganized and overwhelmed right now.)

Where IS me?

Amelia was happily playing with a large square scarf of orange silk. 

"Do you want me to put that on your head?" I asked, envisioning it tied under her chin, Red Riding Hood style.

"No, I'll do it," she said.  Then she threw the scarf over her head; it covered her almost entirely, like a ghost.  Giggling, she asked, "Where IS me?"

(Then she commented, "That was FUNNY.")

Why Were Telephone Operators Women?

While riding on Spaceship Earth yesterday, I started wondering about early telephone operators. Why were early telephone operators women?  Ordinarily, new jobs have been filled by men.  Only when men decide the work isn't suitable are women hired.  For example, early typists were men.  Telegraph operators were also men. 

So why were telephone operators women? Because of some physical attribute (women's voice carrying better, or women's fingers being better able to operate the switchboards)?  Because telephones seemed more private as opposed to public, more closely related to a woman's "natural" sphere? 

A quick web search turned up something interesting:  Apparently, the first operators were teenaged boys, who were, umm, not the most gracious operators imaginable.  So they were replaced with women, who were polite and docile.  The women had to be young, white, and unmarried; they had to put up with low pay and somewhat humiliating treatment.  This site has more details:

Because women were generally discriminated against, operators' wages were low. And operators seldom got the respect they deserved. The typical operator earned about $7 per week -- a small salary even in 1900. She worked ten or eleven hours a day, six days a week. If necessary, she also worked nights and holidays. An operator who got married was forced to leave her job. To many early telephone users -- most of whom were wealthy -- the telephone operator was just another household servant.

Still, the operator was the heart of the telephone system. She watched over a switchboard containing up to 200 phone lines, listening in with her clunky metal headset. Her main job was to plug callers' phone lines into the phone lines of the people they wanted to speak to. But she often acted as the town's information source, too. Operators were also expected to inform customers of election results, streetcar breakdowns, storms, train arrivals, and much more.

In 1900, the life of the rural operator was very different from her peers in the city. The telephone was a big hit with the farm families who could afford one. But there were rarely enough calls to tie a rural operator to her switchboard. To help pass the time, some women attached long cords to their headsets. That way, they could walk around their homes doing chores while they waited for the phone to ring. Rural operators enjoyed a lot of independence.

City operators, on the other hand, handled up to 600 calls an hour. To increase efficiency, telephone companies hired scientific management teams. These teams created rules for everything the operator did, from how she should sit to how long she should take to answer a call -- which was four seconds. They were forbidden to have conversations with customers. Supervisors watched over operators constantly, even secretly listening in on their conversations.

Like school children, city operators had to ask permission to go to the bathroom or to get a drink of water. Supervisors punished them for even the smallest break in the rules. For arriving a minute late to work, an operator was sometimes sent to sit in a punishment room -- a humiliating experience for a grown woman.

Emma Nutt, the first woman telephone operator, was hired in Boston on Sept. 1, 1878--a day that is now observed as "Emma Nutt" day.  She worked for the Telephone Dispatch Company for 33 years.

When I met my husband, he was working as a telephone operator, and while the job was adequately paid considering its level of difficulty (a union benefit), it still wasn't exactly a fulfilling career.   Now, of course, after so many layoffs, I wonder if any telephone operators are left anywhere.

Regalia Reflections

Many of my colleagues routinely skip graduation, not only because it is boring (sorry folks--40,000+ students mean you don't know most of them, and our commencement speakers tend to be county commissioners and the like, fine people but not a big draw) but also because they don't have their own regalia.  Sure, they can rent, but that's a pain.  Many of them show up in the cheap paper regalia worn by high school students or regalia borrowed from colleagues who managed to find an acceptable reason to miss the event.

I have my own regalia, a gift from a friend who bought a new set and gave me her old one.  She spent $1800 on her new regalia, and I am suitably grateful for the hand-me-downs.  She wears her regalia several times a year, since her liberal arts college requires faculty to attend matriculation and commencement ceremonies.

Sometimes I daydream about wearing regalia all the time.  No need to have a big work wardrobe.  Just throw on the regalia and the comfortable shoes.  Regalia can be hot, but surely we could get some in space age cooler fabrics.  Gain weight with impunity--who could tell?

If we taught in our regalia, would students respect us more, or would they think we were that much more ridiculous?  I'll bet we'd have more anonymity when we ran into them at the grocery store. 

Of course the "work wardrobe" isn't really a big deal when you're a faculty member.  We are probably the crummiest dressed people on campus.

Topiary Mickeys

We thought these topiary Mickeys, spotted recently at EPCOT during their Flower and Garden festival, were pretty darned cute.  My husband wanted to buy one, but I persuaded him to settle for this picture.  They're cuter en masse anyway.  I'm sure they are the perfect gift for someone, but I don't know who at the moment. 

Here are some nice photos someone else took at this festival--not sure which year though.  I love going to EPCOT for this festival.  This year we bought some after-4p annual passes, so I suspect we'll be there a lot.  (I know we'll go at least 3x to get our money's worth out of the tix.)

A Cute Princess

OK, I know I've been complaining a lot about the princess craze.  But this princess scene is cute.  I wish my husband, the photographer, had included this princess' dad in the picture.  (We don't know who they are; just caught the image during a recent trip to EPCOT.)