Too Much To Do and Too Little Time

I haven't posted for a couple of days, because I was involved in my real life. My real life is kind of boring and I'm desperately trying to find a way to make some money. I'm sure that a number of you are in this same position now and some of you may be getting there soon. The economy is rapidly disintegrating. The only stores I have visited in the past couple of weeks are Starbucks and Stop and Shop. We went to TGI Fridays tonight, because my husband had the Triple Stacked Burger for lunch and really raved about it. I am happy to say that it didn't disappoint us at all! Of course, if you're a woman you might want to share with a friend, because this is a big, big burger to eat by yourself. Imagine a cheeseburger with ham and on top of that 2 crisp pieces of bacon on a huge roll served with fresh made potato chips and a brand new sauce I've never tasted before. TGI Fridays is now our new favorite place to eat.:) Also watch The Ultimate Recipe Showdown for a really fun program. We love Guy Fieri so it was a natural to watch that too. Also check out Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives. Both are on The Food Network.

Now that I've got your mouths watering for this, I will put in this little disclaimer for the vegetarian readers of this blog. I am a carnivore, because I like eating meat and chicken, but I respect the dietary requirements of everyone. So if you are offended by reading about this dish, I apologize. 

By the way, I just found out from a Facebook friend that her 6 year old son has turned vegetarian. She says he's been leaning this way since he could eat food. I wonder if there is a reason why such a young boy would feel this way. I've always loved vegetables. In fact, when I was trying to lose weight I would eat whole cucumbers. It made some of my friends a little uncomfortable, but I love cucumbers! In fact, I love almost all vegetables except raw onions and raw peppers. But there's a BBQ restaurant here called Q's that make a potato salad that I love and it has both raw onions and raw peppers in it. So I guess it must be that the ratio of the potatoes, mayonnaise, peppers, and onions is exactly right! 

I'd like to talk about the endless time you have to spend on Applications from Facebook. I know that a lot of them are saving the rainforest or the ocean, but they take so much time and it requires sometimes over an hour to finish all the requests. I have one friend who I really like very much, who sends me these every day. This friend means well and wants to save the rainforest and jungle habitats. So I go along and send back the animals, and with the ocean ones, the fish, and with the sea garden one the plants. The pictures are cute and I like the idea, but I don't get to do what I want to do most of the time. If this happens to you let me know. Maybe we could figure out a way to do this without it taking up so much time.

I've been reading PW Daily and the job losses in the publishing world are staggering. I hope there will even be a publishing industry at the rate things are going. So far, I haven't seen anything about the publisher where my novel is currently sitting. I'm imagining my pages sitting there lonely and neglected. I'm hoping that I'll hear about this soon! It's driving me a little nuts.:) 

The films I'm going to see this weekend are probably "Doubt", "The Reader", or "He's Not That Into You". My guess is I'll probably see the last one first. My daughters want to see all three, but I have a feeling with all the drama this week around the passing of the Stimulus Bill and the uncertainty about our lives, we'll all want to see something a little lighter than the other two. By the way the Senate has passed the Stimulus Bill tonight

My daughter followed this like a soap opera all week long. To some degree with the constant interruptions of the Republicans and their amendments and the way they "chattered" on the news programs as President Obama said last night, it was quite a show. Really, we found ourselves watching constantly last night. CSpan must have gotten many more viewers, since they televised the whole thing. Every vote for every amendment and every Senator's talk. I couldn't believe that some of these Senators could want to cut things like Education and money for health organizations. It's amazing how little some of these Republican senators care about people. Cutting Head Start would be a big mistake.

In my past life I was a Reading teacher. Actually, I was a Literacy Specialist for Kindergarten and first grade. The funny thing is that the amount of attention and experiences a child has before they come to kindergarten the better their chances of learning to read. Children whose parents had put them either in pre-school or who had gone to a Head Start program were better able to follow the program and learn to read. While the ones whose parents hadn't put them in pre-school or Head Start had a difficult time, unless the parent had worked with them at home. Then there were the children who had language difficulties. If they didn't know English or English was their second language they had a big problem. The oral language has to be developed to learn to read in that language. But with Title I at a bare minimum many of these children had a hard time adjusting without any help. I was teaching in a charter school and the language teacher came infrequently. These children needed basic skills like learning their alphabet and knowing the parts of a story. These are things that most children know or that they learn in Head Start. When you are thinking about improving our education system you have to go back to pre-school and make sure that children have a good foundation for education.

It's like a house you are building. You want to make sure that you have a good, strong foundation so your house will be straight and last awhile. With education it's the same thing. You need to read aloud to children and show them attention to have a good foundation. They need to know the sounds of letters and be able to identify them. They need to be able to listen to a story and know the beginning, middle, and end of it. They need to know about the different styles of stories, fairy tales, picture books. They need to know the simple task we all know of how to read a book. All of this can be easily learned in Head Start. So I'm hoping they will keep that in the bill.

You can see I'm kind of passionate about this topic. Let me know how you feel or if you've had any experiences you want to share. I will highlight another blog, probably tomorrow or Sunday.

Until later, have a great weekend.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rooyt3ptNco

I loved this and wanted you to see it too!