Put your reading glasses on, I have a lot to say today...

Either my life is really boring or really busy since I seem to write only once a month. I have a month's worth of junk to talk about today though.

One of the valuable lessons my parents passed down to my sister and I was that if you were going to do something, do it to the best of your ability and try to do it right the first time. That way you don't have to keep doing it over and over. I am trying to do the good parent thing and instill this fine piece of wisdom into my children. They would, it seems just rather keep doing the same thing over and over. But they are still young, plenty of time to figure it out. The other problem with not doing something right the first time is that if you do it wrong and leave it, then someone else has to come around and fix it. Let me give you a hypothetical example ( no reference to any person is intended- purely hypothetical). If you were going to paint a room that was wallpapered, the right way to do it would be to strip the wallpaper, patch and sand the walls, and then paint. Yes, that is a pain, but in the long run wouldn't that be better than having the wallpaper peel of the wall when it got wet from the paint. If you are going to put up a border, you should remove all of the old border before putting up the new one. If you don't do these things correctly, leave them and move, the new occupants of your home may have some not nice things to say about you. They are left to clean up a mess that they didn't create. A task that they thought would be simple, like redecorating, ends up being a backbreaking, fingernail cracking, headache. What would have been an extra couple of hours for you, ends up being an extra couple of days for them. The point of all this rambling is that if you are going to complete a task, anything from making your bed, to cleaning the kitchen, to room improvement, take the time to do it right the first time and save everyone else a headache. ( yes, I read what I wrote and realize I need to take my own advice more often.)

Next topic: Parenting Dilemma (Again purely hypothetical - -no reference to any real person is intended)

Let's pretend there is a young girl who lives on our street and rides the bus with my children. Let's also say that this girl has a very flowery vocabulary. She knows a lot of very bad words, words that I have worked very hard so that my kids do not know. She also is quite creative with derogatory adjectives. She prefers to address people by these rather that their names. Let's say that my kids first of all are very confused as to why a young child would want to or be allowed to speak this way, second of all said they didn't want to walk home from the bus with her anymore. A good mom would want to protect their kids from this and pick them up at the bus stop. I , who have never claimed the title of good mom, only pick them up sometimes. One of the times I met them in the driveway, not at the bus stop, my oldest son came running down the driveway,no backpack, and out of breath. My paranoid mom instinct kicks in and I wonder who got run over. He says I need to come quick, this girl has told his sister, who is 5, to swear at him and she did. After first taking a deep breath realizing that everyone was still alive, I ask what she said. It's too bad to repeat he says ( she called him a piece of ****). Now here is the dilemma: The girl knew what she did was wrong. She whispered into a 5 year old's ear and said, tell your brother this, then laughed when she said it. The 5 year old thinks this older girl is cool and has no idea what she said. The brother is hurt by what his sister said and angry that this girl is making his nice sister do bad things. Do I need to talk to this girls mother? I hope the answer is no. I have never met her before and don't like confrontation. I told my kids I would do my best to be at the bus stop everyday, but if I am not , they are not obligated to walk with her or talk to her. They should try their best to avoid her. I know I can't shield them from everything, but I really don't want them thinking this kind of language is ok. I am already having a hard enough time gettting them to understand the value of kindness.

Last thing: I, thanks to the kindness and generosity of my brother- in- law, was able to attend a dinner last night and hear Zell Miller speak. I am not very involved in politics but I thought he would be interesting to hear. I was very surprised and impressed with his openness and honesty about his personal beliefs. It was an incredibly moving and accurate speech about the children of our time, where our nation came from and where it could go if we don't do something soon. A quick fix would be to donate to the school he was doing the fundraising speech for.( sorry Splitcat) Really, even with the commercials for the school , it was an amazing speech. If all of our politicians were as honest and passionate about things as he was, the country would be a much better place. I'd vote for him.