Health Care Reform Passes House!

Onward to the Senate!

Pupcakes

I love the way the Lone Star Baby still says "pupcake".

Party's Winding Down

The Lone Star Girl's birthday party started at 2pm today but it isn't quite over yet, although the ewoks are singing so an end is near.  They have been watching the three original Star Wars movies while snacking on cupcakes, popcorn and carmel apples.  The highlight of the party was definitely when the wonderful, wonderful Irene of YinYang Fandango catered a truly amazing number of crepes from our kitchen table for over an hour - delicious and fascinating! The kids loved it and so did I - I ate way too many. 

The kids are great and I think they had fun.  Yay!

Planting The Seeds of Community Service

Our Daisy Girl Scout troop's participation in this year's Project Undercover was so wonderful.  Project Undercover is a community service project that our Girl Scout Council sponsors every year in October to collect diapers, underwear, socks, etc. for children in the care of Child Protective Services.  This sort of thing is what I like best about Girl Scouting.  Please read my article in We the People News about planting the seeds of community service. 

More Flu-Dodging

After days (nay -weeks) of fruitless phone calls, I finally scored an H1N1 vaccination for the allergy-ridden and asthmatic Lone Star Girl this evening (they have them at the clinic by Hooters, people).  Injectible even.  I do rock.

V is For Voting (And Aliens)

I voted today between leaving school and getting to soccer practice which now is thirty minutes earlier (and which is shorter) because of the time change and the early dark.  Usually, I don't wait until election day, but vote early to avoid this sort of risky time crunch.  These constitutional amendments sort of sneaked up on me, though.  But I got it done.

Then, tonight, the Lone Star Girl and I had a V watching party!  On a school night!  And we had junk food!  And Jazz watched it with us.  (And I went to high school with that actress!) It was great.  I remember watching the original V miniseries as a middle-schooler, and then the other one, and then the TV show, and I read some V books while riding in a car that my dad was driving to Refugio for some sort of oil thing...I was really into it.  

Love My Kid

The Lone Star Girl trick-or-treated for UNICEF again this year.  She rocks  a lot.

Contested Hearings

Today the contested permit hearings on the TCEQ's permitting of Las Brisas began.  Many folks in our community are spending the next couple of weeks fighting for our lives in those hearings.  I have to go to work, but I am with them in spirit.  Pray that the TCEQ comes to their senses and does not allow our children to be sickened by this horrible coal-burning pet-coke plant.

Azucar

The Lone Star Baby this morning as she dances around, shaking her "booty-butt" at us and acting like a wild animal:

"I had four pieces of candy yesterday;  that chocolate, and another of those chocolates and a different chocolate and another chocolate and I had cake."

Happy Birthday to The Lone Star Girl!

She's fourteen, people!  Can you believe it?

Environmental Reader

When the Lone Star Girl was in kindergarten, her teacher liked to talk a lot about "environmental reading".  She meant stuff like recognizing the logo of certain golden-arched colonialist establishments and things of that nature when out and about.  She was disturbed that the Montessori-preschooled LSG's immediate label for a letter was its sound rather than it's name (but she can read, I'd say).  I was a little underwhelmed by the teacher's enthusiasm for "environmental reading" as the Lone Star Girl entered kindergarten reading at around second-grade level and left kindergarten reading at "right where she should be for the end of kindergarten".  I mean, that's a fine place to be at the end of kindergarten, of course - right where you should be - but not if you went backwards to get there.  Fortunately, by the end of first grade, she had discovered those saccharine Magic Treehouse books and she was hooked on reading again.


I am seeing a whole different kind of "environmental reading" with the Lone Star Baby and I love this kind.  Suddenly, over the past few weeks, she has started reading everything she sees around her - signs, labels, every piece of writing in her path.  She read "a world of opportunity" on a sign at the credit union the other day.  She took the (Spanish!) storybook her teacher was reading and finished reading it for the class on another day last week when her teacher had to take care of something.  I see her little finger tracing words and hear her voice sounding them out everywhere we are.  It's so exciting!

No Opting Out, Please!

Today, the news has been saying that the Big Controversial Public Option that Senator Reid has boldly included in the merged heath care reform bill...allows states to opt out.  

Great.  Just great.

Our governor is what we here in South Texas like to call batsh*t-crazy and often suggests that Texas just may secede from the Union (can you say "treason"?) to avoid federal laws, so...that's just going to be great for us here in the Lone Star State, I bet. 

Did I mention that we have more uninsured people in Texas than in any other state in the Union?

Pitcher Plant

We've been plagued by flies and mosquitos lately.  This weekend at the store, I saw a little display of carnivorous plants.  There were, alas, no venus flytraps, which look the coolest, but I got a pitcher plant for the Lone Star Baby and brought it home.  She is watching it closely.

Long Day

Our school was without lights from around 12:15 through the end of the school day yesterday in the storms - and there are not a lot of windows in the floor plan. It was dark.  Exciting stuff.

Then last night we had our first Cadette Girl Scout field trip of the year - to dinner at a restaurant and to a bookstore.  Their choice for their rededication "ceremony".  It was fun.  I kept hounding them  to "stay with their buddy" and I asked them if they needed first aid in the bookstore (just to be silly).  Not exactly camping, but fun and they did get some practice managing their troop money.

Sewing Machine!

I finished paying for the sewing machine that the Lone Star Girl is getting for her birthday this weekend!  I've had it on layaway since the summer - my first experience with layaway.  I'm so excited!