It's Not Unusual

So this horrible pun was posted on one of my boards:

"Doc, I can't stop singing 'The Green, Green Grass of Home.'"

"That sounds like Tom Jones Syndrome."

"Is it common"?"

"Well, It's Not Unusual."


Which caused me to get this stuck in my head:

Freyja's Personal Dialect

While showing Freyja the video Karrie posted of Max drinking hot tea, here is the conversation we had:

Freyja: Hey, a boy! Whas him nayme?
Me: that's Max!
Freyja: Mak? I go dah park wid Mak, ok?
Me: You can't, he lives too far away.
Freyja: Ok, we go in dah caaah intead.
Me: It's a fourteen hour drive, honey.
Freyja: OOOOOOOOOH we go uppa kye in uh airpane when we win da lotto? Mumma you go uppa kye sooner?

she still can't do "sk" "x" and "th" sounds, and "l" within words.
anything with a dipthong she sounds like a down-home Alabama girl
and she says "car" like she's from Boston - caaaaah.

In addition, "uppa kye" is "up in the sky", "sooner" is "later" - she won't say later, I think she thinks if she says "sooner" it will be as she says and happen "sooner". Also, whenever she asks for anything pricey or outrageous we tell her "ok, use your Baby Magick and win us the lotto, then you can have it".

She also remembers anything we ever said to her and works it into conversations constantly. I'm not going uppa kye until late Feburary, but she talks about it all the time. I fear the teenage years.

Miscellany

So our electric bill and gas bill got paid on time and in full this month. I know for most of you that's not an uncommon occurence, but it is here because we're poor and we have a long commute with a car that is NOT gas-efficient - often we have to wait, or only pay a portion because we need to get to and from work. It also means that I can enroll in the budget plan for both electric and gas - making my payments easier to manage and schedule. Whee! Even coming up on the holidays, I can afford to pay my utilities in full. This is awesome. I feel a little more grown up now.

Our DSL that I ordered two weeks ago has been activated, but it's not working. We've been without internet at home (except for stolen wireless from a neighbor who doesn't make his network secure and continues to pay his stupid tax which we can only access through our back bedroom window anyway) since mid-august when we got rid of Charter because they kept raising their rates - then we couldn't afford it for months - and now we have DSL. The only problem is there's faulty wiring somewhere. We only have two phone jacks and neither of them are giving me a reliable signal. I was all ready to hop online and do some serious holiday shopping last night once I got it set up, but NOOOOOOO. So now Verizon has to come out, check their wiring to wherever they check it to, and then if that doens't work, I have to bribe my dad to come out and check the wiring under the trailer.

Deal of the day - KMart has basic 800 pc Lego and 120 pc Duplo sets on sale, today only, for half price, $12.97 or somesuch. Since Duplos were the main thing I wanted to get for Freyja this year (after my mom stole my damn thunder and bought her the Fisher Price Little People Castle), that was a STEAL.

sick

The past two weekends, I've been sick. This irritates me, as weekends are supposed to be my down time, relaxing time, not be at work and stressed out time. Last weekend it was a tummy bug, and this weekend it was the achey, shaky, sky high fever and sore throat bit. I felt like somebody beat me with a baseball bat! The aches, shakes, and fever are gone now, but the sore throat lingers on. Will I be lucky enough to have it be strep so I can get an antibiotic and feel better in a couple of days? Or will it be viral, and I'll have to wait it out? Oooh! Stay tuned for the next episode of "Why Do I Still Have My Tonsils".

Giftmas

I'd like to just do donations to a charity for my cousins and such.

I brought up the idea to a couple people who thought it was stupid. Yet I haven't gotten any lists or suggestions from the people whose names I have. Wouldn't you rather $15 get donated to a great cause rather than spent on junk you don't really want, which is always what happens to me? I almost always get crap I don't want and won't use. I'd much rather that $15 went to Planned Parenthood or the Make A Wish foundation, or something like that.

Maybe I'm the only wannabe philanthropist in my family.

WTF

My husband is such the asshole. That is all.

So What's this AmeriCorps thing, anyway?

Since I don't have anything else to post about today (except that you should GET OUT AND VOTE!), and I got a comment from a former AmeriCorps member who found me via NaBloPoMo randomizer (stellar job I'm doing of that, huh?), I figured I'd just tell you all what I do while I'm at my service site.

So. I serve in the Michigan Primary Care Association's AmeriCorps HealthCorps. What does that mean? It means that I'm enrolled in a State level program, versus a National level program. The Michigan Community Service Commission (The Commission) admininsters to my program a grant from the Corporation for National and Community Service (The Corporation). For National Level programs, the grant is adminstered directly to the program from the Corporation. Confused yet? Unless you decide to enlist, I wouldn't worry about it. There are many, many different AmeriCorps programs under three different headings. The first is the program I'm in - where I'm placed in my community to serve the underserved. The second is AmeriCorps NCCC (enn triple cee)(National Civilian Conservation Corps). They are stationed at five regional campuses, in dorms away from their original communities. They are often the first people mobilized after disasters like 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina. The third is AmeriCorps VISTA (Volunteers in Service to America) - VISTAs are similar to what I do, but they do behind the scenes stuff that I'm not allowed to do, like fundraising, grant development, voter registration, etc.

Members typically serve in one of these areas: enviromental/conservation, health care, housing, education, youth development, and disaster preparedness.

My service site is a FQHC, or federally qualified health center, in SW Lower Michigan. We serve medicaid, medicare, uninsured, and under-insured patients with family-practice style care. We do obstetrics. We have a dental clinic as well. As for what I do, well, I do a little bit of everything, from attending outreach events where we have a table and telling folks about our services, to inreach activities like getting kids in for immunizations and women in for well care, to serving as a DONA-trained birth doula (I'm special, not everybody is a birth doula) to moms with little or no support. I have to serve 1700 hours over 10-12 months. I do get paid, and while the Corporation thinks it's enough to live on, if I were single and trying to hack it on my own I'd be screwed. As programs renew their grants, they are able to pay more. I did get more of an increase in my living stipend this year (my second term) than I expected.

It's better than standing all day and working in retail. I've met some neat people and I love getting away for a couple days every 3 months for training sessions. It's a lot of sitting at my desk and reading charts, but I know how to use so many programs now that I could get a job at any doctor's office. I hope to doula for a living once I'm done with my second term.

Any questions, feel free to ask. This is just a basic overview.

St. John's Wort

I finally bought some SJW on Friday, since Meijer had all their vitamins/minerals buy one, get one of equal or lesser value free. Made sure to take it all weekend (1 tablet, 3 times a day). Got up when my alarm went off this morning, and I was alert and awake - ready to face the day. Granted, it may all be psychosomatic at this point, but I'll take what I can get. I already feel a little better, and no weird side effects thus far. Hooray!

Buzzkill

Had a rare night out last night. Freyja stayed with Grandma, since Grandma is on vacation this week, and Kerwin and I went out for dinner and a couple of drinks at Old Boys' Brewhouse once he was done with class and I was finished with an evening outreach event. The food was great, the beer was even better - and better still was the fact that I either flirted the right way with the waiter, or the bartender wasn't paying attention and made them twice - we got free "refills" on our respective microbrews. Oktoberfest for Kerwin, and Golden Sour for me. Very tasty!

We're driving home, I've had two pints and I'm just nicely buzzed. Kerwin getting laid is a gaurantee, with no further work on his part if he doesn't kill my buzz. So what does he do? Starts ranting about political bullshit. To understand, you have to know that this is his very favorite pastime. He's a Political Science - Public Administration major. I don't mean to imply that I'm woefully ignorant about political intrigue. When sober and having nothing better to do in the car I'll happily go back and forth with him - but not when my belly is full and my head is just slightly light. And he knows better.

I glared at him. "You're killing my buzz," I stated. "Were you NOT interested in sex?"

He shut up. For two minutes. And then started again. Not on political intrigue this time, but on the (supposed) fact that when I wear makeup, I act bitchier than normal (For the record, I was wearing makeup because of the outreach event so I looked "professional"). I let it lie. I didn't rise to the bait. I just glared at him until he got the hint that he should probably just shut the hell up and try to grope me.

When we got home, I made him empty clean dishes and load the dirty ones as his pre-nooky penance. I still stand by my 1.5 rating - but I hate that he pushes my buttons so much!

Does anybody even like DOTS?

What.The.Fuck.

Seriously. What compels people to sit and pick through the bowl of candy on their lap, which is full of nice chocolate things that are definately OK for a two year old to eat, only to plop a tiny-ass tootsie roll and a little box of Dots/Jujyfruits into the eversmiling pumpkin bucket? My kid can't eat those things! Nobody even LIKES Dots. I understand that Dots are cheap, my fellow trailer park dwellers - but nobody likes them. Stop buying them. Buy a $3 bag of DumDums instead - EVERYBODY likes DumDums.

After picking through Freyja's pumpkin bucket, over half of it was stuff she can't have - tootsie rolls, dots, bubble gum. Hardly any MnM's, Kit Kats, Reese's Cups and definately NO Take 5's. Why bother giving out crappy candy that nobody will eat?

It must be schadenfreude - and although I am a major propoent of that phenomenon, I think it's cruel to apply it to cute little 2 year old witches out for a chocolate haul.