Velcrometer
Throwing stuff at the internet to see what sticks
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M. Giant's Velcrometer Throwing stuff at the internet to see what sticks |
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Monday, March 31, 2008 Spring Has Sprung There's nothing quite as magical or wonderful as the end of winter in Minnesota.  On Saturday night I dragged the Weber out of the garage, fired some dinner, and left the grill in the spot on the patio where it will sit (and, on weekends, cook) well into October.  Chao and his girlfriend are officially moving up here to the Twin Cities starting next week, which meant they needed to store a trailer full of stuff in the garage. I couldn't have been happier to hear this. Why? Because all winter long, whenever something needs to go from the house to the garage, it's too cold and dark out there for me to spend any time putting it in anything like the proper place, so I just kind of throw stuff in and dash back inside, leaving it in rather a state when spring comes. But Sunday, their need to store stuff meant we had two extra sets of hands when it came time to clean it out. Score! I basically just stayed out of their way, and instead busied myself with taking the patio furniture out of its long hibernation.  It was so nice, in fact, that Trash and I stayed out until it was time to make M. Small's lunch, raking and bagging leaves that had been buried under the permafrost since November.  We talked about putting down some grass seed early, but decided to give it another couple of weeks. And now this. What the fuck, Minnesota? April Fool's Day isn't until tomorrow, asshole. posted by M. Giant 7:51 PM 11 comments 11 Comments:
Oh, WORD, M. Giant! I sent photos of the scene outside my office window today because no one would have believed it otherwise.
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Oh yeah, word indeed. I blogged about the same, exact situation last week (with pictures, too) so I definitely feel your pain. Nothing worse than waking up on a "spring" morning to see everything outside looking like an Ansel Adams winter landscape.
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After the last snowing debacle, I decided to superstitiously refuse to put my chairs back out on the porch, since clearly when I did so, it snowed.
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Oh... HA HA HA ha ha ha ha, wait... what?
By Michigan didn't get the memo either.
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In Colorado, our snowiest months are March and April. It's not unusual for it to snow well into May. On Mother's Day a few years ago, we got eight inches of snow, and it's not unheard of to get snow close to Memorial Day.
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I don't care; I still miss MN and those psycho-crazy almost-spring days that made me vow, every year, that I was "outta there". Now that I've been gone nearly 8 years, I still miss it - but your story and knowing what the next picture would inevitably show just made me laugh harder and harder!
By @Katie - Oh, it's still out like a lamb...you know, white and fluffy.
By Wow, and I thought it was cold out here when the daytime high was 67
By It's not Minnesota's fault! It got confused by the leap day. Nature doesn't have leap days. As far as that snow is concerned, you'll take its April Fool's gag and you'll like it!
By I was visiting the Twin Cities for a library conference and some quality time with my sister. The snow was a surprise -- and my shoes got all wet trying to walk around the U! Good times!
By Friday, March 28, 2008 Ramblin' Guy I don't really have any one thing that happened this week that could be molded into an entry, so I'm just going to babble for a bit. Feel free to click on one of those ads on your right if you get bored. It's been a stressful week. A work project kind of blew up on me (think about that beastie in the beginning of Men in Black who gets shot by Tommy Lee Jones and leaves sticky blue goo all over the state trooper, except I'm the state trooper), and I had to weecap five hours of television. Okay, 4:55, if you don't count the five minutes of Sunday's Big Brother that got horked up by my TiFaux, which just proves that it has more scruples than I do. What made it worse is that the stressful week followed a fun weekend, which always makes me feel like I did something wrong on Saturday and Sunday that I'm getting punished for. We had visitors in from Chicago (Bitter and her boyfriend, whose Internet nickname I don't yet know), the Quad Cities (Chao and his girlfriend, regarding whose Internet nickname please see Bitter's boyfriend), and even Mexico City (BuenaOnda and her husband English, whom M. Small insisted on calling "Anguish" when he met the man at age two). M. Small and I went to a movie, and BuenaOnda accepted Guitar Hero III as her personal savior. And I became reacquainted with another old friend I haven't spent much time with in years, one I call "my third beer." Good times. I may have even had a couple of third beers on Saturday night. Adding to the week's weirdness was the fact that our schedule was off. M. Small's day care lady's mom died over the weekend, so she took off for Florida for the week. I knew my boss would be understanding when I asked him if I could work at home for a couple of days this week (he always is), but I wasn't expecting him to be so bummed out at the news. He was, like, actively saddened, and almost as sympathetic as if I'd told him my own mom had died. Afterwards, I told this to Trash, who said, "Yeah, my boss too!" She was just as surprised as I was. Obviously we felt bad for the woman who spends more hours with M. Small than we do on Mondays through Thursdays, but we never expected our bosses to feel as bad or worse about it than we did. And of course even our bosses' understanding is overshadowed by that of my parents, who ended up taking M. Small for the better part of three days. I knew the week was kicking my ass when Tuesday night came around and we had the house to ourselves and couldn't bring ourselves to do a damn thing about it. Anyway it should be another good weekend, because we're getting another visit from out-of-town friends. I'm not sure how much I'm allowed to say yet, but I think I can reveal that we're not expecting them to be out of town very much longer. Yay! Friends who move closer instead of away! Okay, I'm done now. I'm tired and I have a headache and I suspect I'm getting another sinus infection, which I was given to understand that neti pots are supposed to prevent. Maybe I made a mistake in not following the instructions to the letter, but who has a jug of distilled water handy in their bathroom, anyway? I just dunk the pot in the toilet and go to town. It may not be hygienic, but you can't beat the convenience. posted by M. Giant 9:09 PM 2 comments 2 Comments:
Man, you're not kidding about BuenO. She and English were here in Chicago, and we were disturbed to realize it had been about TWO YEARS since we'd seen one another. And then we played Guitar Hero.
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Never say dunk the pot in the toilet again! Thank you.
By Monday, March 24, 2008 Roll Credits M. Small went to his third movie in the theater this weekend, and he actually made it to the end of one for the first time. He was really good and attentive and quiet and, most importantly, stationary. He did ask a few questions in full voice, but since this was a Saturday afternoon kids' movie, he was far from the only one. I wasn't going to try and hold him to the standards of behavior expected in a subtitled foreign film at our local art house. That's next week. I also told him that if he wanted to go home at any point, he just needed to tell me. But he didn't. In fact, I think he could have gone longer. "Why did it stop?" he asked when the credits rolled. During Ratatouille, we were the first ones out of the theater. After Horton, we were the last. I let him lead me up the stairs to the back of the auditorium, thinking he wanted a better look at the projection window. Then we got there, and he was like, "How do we get out of here?" He thought I'd gotten us lost. Thanks for the faith. But his favorite part of Horton Hears a Who was the trailer for WALL-E, the Pixar movie that's coming out this summer. I think he's been looking forward to seeing that since the first WALL-E trailer he saw before Ratatouille, almost a quarter of his life ago The first thing he clapped eyes on in the theater lobby was the giant WALL-E banner hanging from the mezzanine, and he simply did not want to unclap them, even to go into the movie. So you can imagine the effect the trailer had on him. "How was the movie?" Trash asked him when we got home. M. Small summarized, "WALL-E's an old robot and there was a white robot flying around and WALL-E wants to be friends but was shy so he hid behind a rock and he made a noise and the white robot sprayed the rock and WALL-E was shy because he never met a robot before and he was pressing the button to make the rocket go and he made it go reallyfast." "What did you guys see again?" Trash asked me. I was reminded of the first time I saw The Matrix, preceded by the Phantom Menace trailer, which overshadowed the feature for me as well. This is cool but the Star Wars movie is going to be even cooler! I kept thinking. God, what an idiot I was. Don't let my kid down, Pixar. * * * As happy as I am with my neti pot, is it possible for one's sinuses to be too clear? I ask because on the way home from Easter at my parents' last night, I suddenly found myself having a full-on sneezing fit a few blocks from our house. Feeling betrayed by my neti pot, I wondered just what the hell was going on here that had caused my allergies to come roaring back like that without warning, hours after I'd last seen the cats. I got home, rushed inside, and blew my nose. Some morbid impulse caused me to look into the Kleenex afterwards, where I found a fragment of crust from my mom's pecan pie about the size of my pinky nail. Now, to be fair, I bite my nails so it wasn't that big, but whoa. That never happened before. I should add, as a compliment to my mom, that the crust was much flakier and tastier the first time. posted by M. Giant 8:48 PM 9 comments 9 Comments:
I feel your pie crust pain. I snarfed some pepperoni into my sinuses somehow last week, and it was the worst coughing and sneezing fit I've had in my life.
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Dude, you should always look at the tissue. And the toilet. The random disgusting stuff that comes out of the human body gives all kinds of insight into what the heck is going on in there.
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Our local movie theater has a 3D WALL-E outside. It's driving my kids nuts. Plus I made the mistake of showing them some WALL-E trailers on YouTube and now that's all they want to see.
By Okay, I don't care about the blog anymore; I just want to listen to Feb talk about how to keep my Chi from going sideways by maintaining an adequate supply of snot.
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As a short-term measure, just periodically tilt your head a little sideways, like a dog that just heard the word "bacon."
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You should start recording your son doing movie reviews and/or descriptions. Now I want to see WALL-E when it comes out.
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I found this blog on March 3, and obsessively read all of the archives...this is something I do when I find a new blog.
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My friend once sneezed out a chunk of pepperoni (or some sort of ham... we couldn't figure it out at the time) and she was freaking out. I do believe we had to convince her it wasn't part of her brain and she wasn't about to die.
By Thursday, March 20, 2008 Neti Gain Confidential to Trash: don't read this. My cat allergies have been getting out of control lately. Yes, we technically only have two cats instead of three now, but Excavator is long-haired enough and aggressively affectionate enough that he counts as four or five felines, histamine-wise. I bought him a shedding comb, but he refuses to use it, the lazy little fucker. It's gotten to the point where it's affecting my home life. We have to have a box of tissues in every room at all times, and Trash begins to get annoyed when we're in the middle of doing something and I have to drop what I'm doing to blow my nose. Which becomes a vicious cycle: my nose itches, causing me to sneeze, causing me to have to blow my nose, which makes my nose itch all over again, which triggers another sneeze, which requires further nose-blowing, which leads to more sneezing and eventually divorce and even more nose-blowing as a result of crying all the time. So I asked my doctor for advice at my physical last week. Could she give me stronger medication? More of it? Perhaps refer me to a reputable specialist who could perform a radical rhinectomy? But she simply suggested getting a neti pot. Everyone knows about these by now, thanks to Six Feet Under and Omar, and I was beginning to think that one might be in my future as well. But I had been hoping to avoid it, since the one thing I hate most about swimming (aside from being legally blind without my glasses and publicly exposing my pasty doughboy physique) is getting water up my nose. Why would I want to pursue that sensation without any of the attendant benefits? But then I got home and told Trash what he doctor had said about the neti pot, and she told me that lots of her coworkers use them. "They say you get used to it," she assured me. Maybe she was only saying that because she didn't want to have a repeat of the situation when I had to drop my end of the grand piano we were carrying up a ladder to reach for a Puff Plus, but suddenly I couldn't wait to try it. Trash only had one rule: "Don't do it in front of me, don't tell me about it, don't do it when I'm home, I don't want to know." That's only one rule, right? So on Sunday night, when I went to the drugstore to pick up my grocery bag full of new prescriptions, I was all ready to go look for one. Except they had a stack of them right there on the pharmacy counter. "One of these, too," I told the cashier, and spirited it home to hide in my bathroom cabinet. After Trash had gone upstairs for the night, I gave it a try. And while it was a little weird to pour water up my nose on purpose, and to be standing at my sink in Minnesota with the taste of warm seawater welling up in the back of my throat, the thing really worked. So I didn't just get used to it. I'm fucking addicted. I did it again on Monday morning, and instead of spending the day at work trapped in my typical miserable cycle of cubemate-annoying sneezing and blowing, I sat there reveling at how uncongested I was. It was like having the sinuses of Sarah Jessica Parker without all of her haters. The doctor told me to use it twice a day, and I'm considering calling her to ask if I can make it three. I just wish that doing it repeatedly had some kind of longer-lasting cumulative effect, like exercise and flossing do (I've heard). I had to skip the neti this morning because I was running late, and now I’m feeling as bereft as M. Small without his Rocket. And almost as nose-runny. I'm considering calling Trash before I get home so she can have it waiting for me at the front door. Yes, I know that violates her one rule, but she already found the neti pot yesterday. I tried to claim that I was only using it to stash illegal drugs, but she didn't buy it. Fortunately she's too pleased by the change in my nasal status to mind too much. I considered offering to let her try it out, but I didn't want to push my luck. posted by M. Giant 2:09 PM 15 comments 15 Comments:Ah, another convert! I swear my neti pot is the only thing that gets me through my spring pollen allergies.
By I, too, love mine with a passion bordering on desperation.
By Dang it, I was hoping you'd say it was voodoo hokum, because my mom wants me to do it and I'm insisting a)it can't work and b)its just a wrong thing to do.
By I read the DHAK blurb, and I was like, "Oh, sweet Jesus, they got another cat."
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I've been considering trying those things. Perhaps I will now.
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I bought a neti pot in 2003. Finally used in a year ago when I was pregnant and couldn't take allergy meds. It was glorious! I didn't get the dreaded swimming headache at all. I adore my neti pot now.
By My boyfriend has a neti pot. I've always wanted to see him use it but I am not allowed. Ever.
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It's one of those weird things that I brought into the house because a friend at work recommended it, and now Rebecca uses it much more than I do. We have separate ones. Mine is blue.
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OK, I thought I was the only idiot who is severly allergic to cats, but owns two of them.
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I use a squeeze-bottle version of the neti pot, because I'm a wimp. And my husband's not allowed to watch me use it either. I highly recommend rinsing your sinuses, blowing your nose THOROUGHLY, and then using a prescription steroid nasal spray, such as Nasonex. This is pretty much the only way I can avoid chronic sinus infections.
By Like another commenter I got one when pregnant and avoiding cold medicines, after putting it off for years, and found it was like a spa for my nose.
By One of the neti pot makes also makes something like a squeeze bottle which allows you to rinse your sinunses without tilting your head and also allows for a bit of pressure behind it. It's supposed to be more effective. My wife loves it compared to the neti pot.
By I've never used a neti pot, but in the throes of a wicked cold this past December, I finally caved and started using the nasal saline I've been recommending to patients for years. I. could. not. stop. In addition to the amazing lack of congestion, I was sort of obsessed with what came out of my head. Not that I stared at it for minutes on end. That was someone else.
By Interesting to read all the praise for the neti pot. I got one a few weeks ago because I had a ridiculous head cold and am pregnant. I tried it twice but found that it not only didn't help, within a couple of minutes of use I was blocked up even more solidly than before (and I didn't think that would be possible until it happened). It never actually rinsed my nose out though - I never got that flow down my throat or out the other side. Maybe you need to start using it before your nose gets so blocked up that the saline can't actually flow freely?
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My mother used a neti pot for about a year and then they discovered fungus growing in her sinus cavities.
By Sunday, March 16, 2008 Learn and Earn M. Small earned a big reward this weekend, but when Trash and I were at Target and I was with him in the toy section, all he wanted was a three-dollar set of plastic sand shovels. "Seriously?" I said. "That's all?" "Yeah. And that," he added, pointing out another, similarly priced item. "This is for that, and this is for getting potty trained," he bargained, as though he was really pushing the envelope. He was already getting a reward for potty training later that day, but I didn't feel the need to press the point. Later, when he and Trash made a pass through the section again (because damn, how cheap did I look?), this Little Einsteins "Rocket" toy caught his eye, and nothing else would do. Forty bucks was a little more than we wanted to spend, especially for something that we didn't think he'd play with beyond this afternoon. "How about the smaller one? You can take it in the bath." "The big one." "If we get this, then no other toys today." "Okay." "You can't take it in the bath." "Okay." "Or outside." "Okay." "Or out of your playroom." "Okay." "Or out of its box in months with an R." "Okay." Finally we realized we weren't going to find a deal-breaker, and it ended up coming home with us. Fortunately it was secretly on sale for $27, or else I would have been kind of grumpy when I found that Amazon link. Anyway, he was totally enraptured with it, until it was time for he and I to go for his other reward. We had taken him to the indoor water park last summer, and had promised him that we'd bring him back after he was fully potty-trained. Fortunately we didn't say as soon as he was potty-trained, because that happened months ago and between one thing and another we didn't actually make it to the water park until today. He didn't resent the delay, though. He had too great a time there, running around and splashing and floating and pointing hoses all over. Since Trash had other plans, it was just the two of us, and we ended up staying for almost five hours, which is longer than he ever does anything besides sleep (and sometimes not even that). Finally, as dinner time approached, I could see that he'd had about enough. Not that I expected him to admit that. But when I asked him if he was ready to go home, he surprised me. "Yeah," he said sadly. "I miss Rocket." Later I told Trash about that to make her feel better about buying it. It didn't work as well as I thought it would. posted by M. Giant 7:35 PM 8 comments 8 Comments:
My hubby stopped at Target back in Feb to pick up "something small" for our kiddo as a Valentine's present. I thought by "something small" he meant chocolates in a heart-shaped box, but he came home with that LE Rocket (which had been on sale - whew), thereby permanently earning Favorite Parent Ever status in our daughter's eyes. I'm forever encouraging her to have Rocket fly as low to the ground as possible, just to keep the "diminuendo" setting in full effect... It is a pretty cool toy, though, especially for a child who is as Little Einsteins-obsessed as ours!
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Dang, I was going to suggest it this Friday when I'm there, but maybe I'll just ask him about it instead. We had a good time when we went last year... sigh...
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My son got that Rocket toy from his grandparents for Christmas, despite the fact that we'd been planning to get it for him as a reward for -- you guessed it -- potty-training. (Welcome to Excessive Prepositional Phrases, population: that sentence.) I have no idea what we're going to use as motivation now, because it seems that Rocket has fulfilled all of the kid's fantasies for the forseeable future. (And there's some alliteration for you.) There are days when I'm convinced that Einsteins are taking over the world, and I can-NOT be-LIEVE it!
By Sooooo, are you quitting TWOP, too? I mean, Sars, Glark, Tara, now Miss Alli? Keckler isn't covering Top Chef... Please tell me that my favorite recapper isn't leaving 24. I hate change.
By Don't say that, Michelle. I'm already in mourning about the gutting of TWoP, I don't need to know any more.
By I'm a little worried by M. Giant's lack of response. So many people are leaving! Keckler, Miss Alli, the big three. Please say you are staying, M. Giant.
By Not to be all Jennifer Hudson here, but I don't have any plans to leave TWoP.
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So, you're telling us that you're not going? We're gonna LOVE YOOOOOUUUUUUUUUUUU....
By Thursday, March 13, 2008 Awakenings One day last week, a rare and magical thing happened. The stars aligned and circumstances conspired in such a remarkable way that I did something amazing. I woke up. What's so amazing about that, you might wonder? Surely you would assume that I wake up almost every day, or at least on the days when I post (unless you disagree, in which case don't make me disable the comments on this entry). What's the big deal? The big deal is the difference between subject and object. Or, to put it in a less grammar-geeky way, the difference between waking up and being woken up. Catch my meaning? As a person with two jobs, a preschooler, and a thirty-eight-year-old bladder, it's vanishingly rare for me to awaken on my own without some kind of direct or indirect cue from one of the above. It could be the alarm clock going off at seven to tell me it's time to get ready to go to the office, or it could be Trash calling upstairs to let me know that three hours is plenty long for a Sunday afternoon nap, or it could be a three-year-old at four in the morning suddenly saying "I'm hungry" two inches from my head. But last Tuesday evening, M. Small was still at the home of his grandparents for an overnight stay. This was the first such visit in over a month, since my parents had left for Florida at the end of January. Yes, he also got to visit them down there, but so did I, and I'd decided to share a bedroom with him while we were there. Nuff said. But on this particular night, he wasn't expected home until eight p.m. or so. I didn't have any writing projects due. And the house was pretty clean. So after work, Trash and I crawled into bed for a nap, making sure to set the alarm for seven. 4 Comments:My 17-month-old slept in one morning a few weeks ago, and I got to wake up of my own accord. You're right -- that is the awesomest feeling in the whole wide world! Nice to know I only have to ship him off to the grandparents to get that feeling again...
By That happened to us on Sunday. Yay for the time change. My 20 month old slept all night for the first time in his life and my 4 year old slept in! It is indeed a nice feeling.
By A friend of mine calls this "natural rising," and it's very nice indeed.
By Ohhhhhhhhh, man >Homer Simpson lusty gurgle<. Can you bottle o' that and send it to me?
By Monday, March 10, 2008 Reality Check I'm not an anti-reality-show snob, but there aren't a lot of them that I like. I've figured out a key predictor as to whether I will like a reality show. It's this simple question: Can I see myself doing this? As a result, I like very few reality shows, because so many of them seem to revolve around things I can't ever see myself doing. For instance, I can't imagine competing against twelve to twenty other people for one person's love, which carves a big subgenre out of the running right there. Maybe it's because I've been married for so long, or simply because I have a shred of dignity, but I can't picture myself going on anything from The Bachelorette to that Tila Tequila show. Okay, Flavor of Love, maybe. Maybe. Tell me you wouldn't hit that Flav. Same with any show that expects you to eat gross stuff. I have a hair-trigger gag reflex that prevents me from eating things that are actually good for me, let alone maggot-infested live squid heads. So much for Survivor and Fear Factor. But it also applies to shows in which the competitors have some skill I actually respect, if it's something I'd never be able to do. I'm not saying "understand," mind you, I'm saying "respect." I follow Project Runway just closely enough to be able to imitate Santino imitating Tim Gunn (you know, like everyone else in the world), but I accidentally caught the last five minutes of this season's finale and Christian's clothes just looked to me like the wardrobe of a Much Ado About Nothing remake directed by Prince. I said that to Trash and she said she thought that joke was "fierce." I was like, "Why are you quoting Tyra?" Which is a whole other thing I'll never get into. I did get into Rock Star when I was recapping it, because I have sung lead with a rock band, albeit only a few songs per gig (vocally, I was our band's George). We played to smaller audiences, but unlike the ones on Rock Star, none of them were paid to be there (other than in beer). And I used to like Trading Spaces, because, hey, I've been known to paint a room now and again. And I like camping and visiting New Mexico, so recapping Kid Nation wasn't the chore it could have been. Finally, despite my normal disinterest in competitive dating shows, I got hooked on one season of Average Joe, being a dorky guy with a hot wife and all. And The Amazing Race? Don't even get me started. I've been lost everywhere. Same rules apply to game shows. I could see getting into it with Anne Robinson, but the "no deal" part of Deal or No Deal for me would be pretending I had any idea what briefcases to choose. I'd just let Howie pick them for me until I get a six-figure offer I can accept. And if he refuses? I threaten to lick his head. So where does that leave me in regard to my current gigs for TWoP? The ones that occupy four nights a week of my schedule? Well, let's just say I have trouble picturing myself kissing Donald Trump's ass, or choosing to be stuck in a house filled with cameras and assholes for three months. Which is why this is the first season I've ever actually watched either of those shows. They can pay me to watch them, but they can't pay me to like them. Good thing I don't have to like them to write about them. posted by M. Giant 8:14 PM 6 comments 6 Comments:Amen, brother. I have been almost completely weaned off TV by the writer's strike. I don't like most of the alleged-reality stuff, so TV really doesn't interest me much anymore. I will admit to a certain fascination with Ninja Warrior (aka Sasuke), however.
By I couldn't make it past the first two episodes of Celebrity Apprentice, but I do enjoy your recaps, M. Giant. Thanks for watching it for me, and making it many times more entertaining.
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Maybe that's why I have been digging "Celebrity Rehab" so intensely. Not because I loves me some whisky, but because I would seriously do an Addiction Medicine rotation in Pasadena with Dr. Drew. (If anybody knows how to set that up, holla back.)
By Being from Minnesota you should be able to get into "rockstar curling". You can even sign up for a tryout.
By Personally, I'd compete against twelve to twenty people for a really good sandwich. And what was so bad about Kid Nation? It was like Lord of the Flies, only with children.
By I can't watch these reality shows. I have a hard enough time watching the news.
By Friday, March 07, 2008 Young Reader Trash and I have been worrying for a while about how we're going to start teaching M. Small to read. Both of us were pretty much able to read by his age, and it really gave us a head start in school and life (more on that in my case in a minute). Of course we want to pass that on. So how do you teach someone to do something? You remember how you learned yourself. But we can't do that because we were too young to remember. Two stories about our literate preschool years: One of us (I'm not saying which) had grandparents who didn't believe in the amazing three-year-old reader, until they came for a visit and the tot looked at their car and asked, "Grandpa, do you have a Con-tin-en-tal?" And the other one became frustrated during a 1973 play date with other three-year-olds and said, "Mom, these friends are dumb. They can't even read. Get me some new friends." Alas, we were living in separate states at the time, or perhaps we would have gotten married even younger. Neither of us remembers those stories, but they've been told to us so many times by people who do remember them that they must be true. I know I learned a lot about reading from Sesame Street, The Electric Company, and Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood. Trash did too. And if those were still on the air in an afternoon block, we'd be all over it. M. Small does get to watch some "educational" videos, but the problem these daysg is that in order to be marketable to an international audience, everything from Dora the Explorer to Curious George goes out of its way to exclude written words of any kind. This is particularly egregious in the case of the Blue's Clues episode where Blue and Steve put together a "newspaper" that tells all its stories in pictures, resulting in a travesty of print journalism that makes USA Today look like the pre-Murdoch Wall Street Journal. Fortunately, he lately seems to be most drawn to those few videos that do seek to teach reading. Around Thanksgiving, for example, he became addicted to the "Grammar Rock" video Trash and I bought for ourselves back in the early 90s. He just about wore out his "Richard Scarry's Best A to Z Video Ever" (a title that makes me fear one day encountering Richard Scarry's other A to Z videos). More recently he's always asking to watch his Leapfrog DVDs about learning to read, and he never takes a bath without his floating letters. So he knows the alphabet, and the sounds all the letters make, and everything. And we read to him all the time. But so far the only words he can read for himself are "cat," "no," his name, and "USA." How is he ever going to catch up? But enough about him; let's talk about me. I remember when I got to kindergarten, the teacher didn't know what to do with me when it came time to teach the other kids to read, so I got to crawl into this cardboard box in the corner of the room and devour books on my own. It was a pretty sweet gig, too, especially on the days she forgot about me until the end of the day. But then I showed my mom the box when she came for parent/teacher conferences, and the jig was up. But I still think it was a valuable learning experience preparing me for real life. I mean, now I spend most of my day sitting in a box reading stuff. Yes, they like me to call the box a "cubicle" and I'm reading bidding and marketing materials instead of Beverly Cleary, but I clearly have the right temperament for it. Formative years and all that. How can I deny that to my child? posted by M. Giant 1:44 PM 41 comments 41 Comments:
I learned to read sometime between year 2 and 3, and my parents tell similar stories (I would read product labels out loud at the grocery store as we rolled by them in the cart -- kind of like a much smaller version of the guy in Forget Paris).
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My parents parked me in front of the same PBS rock block. The local stations would really be doing parents a mitzvah by reviving that.
By I learned to read before kindergarten thanks to the book-and-record sets that were big at the time. When my sister was little, they were book-and-cassette sets. Now I assume you would just sign M. Small up for a podcast.
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I'm a blog stalker and I love you guys, but really? You can't seriously be worried about him not knowing how to read yet right?
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I promise M. Giant and I are not seriously concerned about this - we're impressed that he taught himself the alphabet (no lie - totally without our help). He even chooses the reading videos, because with the exception of Grammar Rock we would not pick ANY of the other ones, because damn but that's bad writing. And acting. And everything.
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I learned to read when I was around three to four, and I do remember that it was something I desperately wanted to be able to do. If a pre-schooler can be driven, I was. And I had to do it without the benefit of Sesame Street, since we are talking about 1967-68. But I remember an endless repetition of "What's that word, Mommy?", and hearing books read aloud to me until I was reciting them along with my mom or dad.
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I also was an earlier reader (Sears! - I knew that one VERY early). I was worried that I wouldn't know how to teach my children to read, but it turns out they must have learned exactly how I did. They just picked it up. My 7 year old started reading at 3. He's in kindergarten now (we held him back a year) and is light years ahead of the rest of his class in reading and writing (math too). But his autism puts him a couple years behind socially, so it all works out.
By I'm-a have to go annonymous for this, because I'm going to sound like a twerp, but I did not know how to read when I was in kindergarten, I was still at the reciting books stage. However, I can remember desperately wanting to know how to read, and when it was taught to me in first grade along with all the other kids it clicked right away and within a few months I was caught reading Heidi under the covers at 10PM. By the end of the year the terrifying nun I had for a first grade teacher had me read from a big kid book to the fifth and sixth grade teacher in order to show off my mad skillz. So even if he doesn't get it the reading thing for years there's no reason to think he can't excel if he has a natural love of it.
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I would have missed the cutoff for kindergarten (my birthday is in January), but my mother kindly had me tested in, so I could start a year early because I could already read, and sent me to private kindergarten. I was still light-years ahead of the other kids as far as reading went, and was also thus a year younger than everyone else in my grade forever.
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Like Catherine (the first commenter), I was also reading by age 3 starting by memorizing the books my parents would read me until I could first "read" (recite) along and then apparently I matched the words up with what was on the page. PBS-wise, I was a diehard fan and faithful viewer of Sesame Street and Electric Company, too. (Never was a big fan of Mr. Rogers, though my sister was so we watched him daily.)
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I'm afraid I've got to agree with the first anonymous poster above. I love your blog, M. Giant, and while it's wonderful that you and Trash were able to read at 3, it is also, believe it or not, really somewhat abnormal. The fact that M. Small is able to recognize his name, "no," "USA," "cat" and knows the alphabet sounds at 3 is actually quite impressive! I know that you're joking around about wanting him to be able to read, but he'll be fine, ultimately. He sounds bright, and take it from my experience: I was a precocious young kid in every sense of the word (I came home furious on the first day of kindergarten because they didn't teach me how to read THAT VERY DAY) who nevertheless was not literate at 4, and I caught up mighty quick, reading on a college level by the 5th grade. If I could get there from where I was, imagine M. Small's potential! There's actually no set, universally-accepted method for teaching pre-K and kindergarteners to read, so don't feel down on yourselves. The number 1 predictor of success in school - and literacy, obviously - is living in a home where read-alouds are frequent and there is ample access to books and other print media. M. Small is not behind the curve: he's actually slightly ahead.
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"Sesame Street Old School" is out on DVD. I know this because I am 38 years old and asked for it for Christmas. (I, too, watched the same 1-2-3 punch of Sesame Street, Mr. Rogers, and the Electric Company--and then, later, 321 Contact, with its funkalicious theme song--and I read at 3. What is it about us 1970 kids?!?)
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P.S. I think I learned to read quickly because (a) my parents read to me lot and (b) I was a quiet, coziness-motivated kid to whom the idea of sitting and looking at books appealed. I'm not sure how much Sesame Street really had to do with it, though it couldn't have hurt.
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I have the same problem of not remembering learning to read. One really cool thing we found was starfall.com
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I loved reading this because I am in the exact same boat -- learned to read so early that I don't remember /learning/, I only remember /knowing how/ -- and I've been wondering how to teach my son. And? I thought I was excessively weird for wondering so early, so thanks for letting me know that you are also excessively weird.
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Y'know, i actually DO have a memory of learning to read. The timing is not precise. It was before i went to kindergarten, but since i have a Nov birthday and wasn't tested in, i was nearly 6 before i started kindergarten anyway so that isn't saying much.
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I teach reading and about to go on a technical dork-out.
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naginata beat me to it, but I have to echo huge kudos for starfall.com. It is a GREAT site, run by a non-profit, that my 2 year old adores.
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"...the teacher didn't know what to do with me when it came time to teach the other kids to read, so I got to crawl into this cardboard box in the corner of the room and devour books on my own."
By I'm not sure how old I was, but I do vaguely remember sitting on my dad's lap picking words I recognized out of the Time magazine. I guess I was probably 4? Or thereabouts. And that was in 1967 probably.
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I couldn't read when I started kindergarten, but when I found out there were other kids in the class who could read, my mom says I forced myself to read in about 10 days. (That gives you a little insight into my competitive nature.).
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Okay, I'm going to sound like a complete underachiever here. I learned to read in kindergarten. But I didn't learn reading comprehension until I was in second grade. I remember vividly the first time I realized that the sentence "the cat is on the mat" meant that a cat was on a mat instead of just six words that I knew how to say strung together. It's was revolutionary to my seven-year old brain. The stories suddenly made sense! The stupid worksheets made sense! I can read!
By PBS has some fantastic shows for the preschool age kid. Sesame Street is still on the air, but at odd times. Anything you can do to encourage your child to read is a good thing! If he sees his parents enjoying books, he'll (hopefully) follow in your footsteps!
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I really liked reading both this post and the comments, because I enjoy learning that it's not just me.
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Re: Heather, upthread:
By Man, are there any grandparents in the world who didn't have Continentals?
By I learned to read at an early age with no apparent effort made by any of the grown-ups in my life. Therefore, my parents thought that teaching a kid to read was pretty easy. Then my sister, who was a perfectly intelligent kid with no learning disabilities required a lot of work from both my parents. My mom says that if she could redo one part of her parenting, she would like to teach my sister to read again, and try to enjoy it more, rather than being impatient and frustrated. Finally by around Grade 2/3my sister could really read, but it was such a challenge for her that she had a hard time believing that she was smart after that. I know it's irritating when people talk about self-esteem but she really did have a crisis of self-confidence that lasted for many years and she thinks it started when she couldn't learn to read as easily as everyone assumed that she would. She now has her B.Ed and is a high-school teacher so obviously the rough start in reading did not have long-term educational effects. My mom wishes she had worried more about the long-term confidence situation and not put so much pressure on her. Also, because it was a negative experience, it wasn't until she was in university that she started to read books for non-educational purposes and consider reading to actually be something that she could enjoy. Not to be naggy to everyone who reads this blog and has commented but since I have a few kids of my own now, I'm always interested to know what parents of grown-ups wish they had done differently. So, enjoy the process, remember it's not a race and they'll all learn to read eventually. But only the ones who have a good learning experience will actually love it and life without loving to read is a sad state to end up in.
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I remember learning to read because I was the nerd who demanded to go to kindergarten at three when my sister started first grade.
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You know, kids seem to vary wildly as to when their brains are ready to read. I started reading before I turned 3 (full disclosure: I'm another early '70s baby), as did one of my first cousins. My first memory of learning to read is a cloth alphabet book in my playpen. Other than that, I don't remember ever being "taught" to read. My younger sister, who is arguably smarter than I am and unquestionably has a better memory than I do, learned to read at school when she was about 6. One of my friends has a child, a bright, personable girl, who didn't really read until she was about 9. Now, a few years later, she reads above grade level.
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@ anonymous upthread: Kindergarten sure would've gone a lot more smoothly (elementary-high school overall, actually) had G&T stood for gin and tonics... Alas, it stood for gifted and talented program, and before anyone starts thinking that I'm boasting about what a freakin' genius I was by the tender age of 4, well let me reassure you, it wasn't the case. Otherwise, my fellow "geniuses" and I would've known that what the teachers were saying was G *and* T and not G N T.
By I learned to read at age 3-ish, and have been a prolific reader ever since. My two children, who are now 10 and 11, didn't really learn to read until about age 6, and are both ravenous about books, especially my 11-year-old son. Don't worry! He's already totally rocking on the reading thing.
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Here's what worked for my little reader, who is now 4:
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Long time listener, first-time caller checking in here...
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I was visiting my brother this weekend and we were talking about just this thing. My brother was reading on a fairly high level by the time he was 3, I learned mostly in school when I was 6. As it turns out, my delay was due to Dyslexia (which I still have problems with...see all spelling related issues and please don't judge).
By I started reading at three thanks to the Letter People and my grandmother's Little Golden books. She would point to each word as she read it. Eventually, she asked me read the smaller words, and then the bigger ones a while after. I had to sound out the bigger words for a time, but I got the hang of it before I was 4. I remember feeling like a badass in kindergarten because I was the only kid who could read a whole book.
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Have to put in a good word for "Word World" here.
By Way late of this thing, I know; but a practical suggestion: Yo? Yes! and Ring? Yo! by Chris Raschka. The words are simple, and he can spell them out. Doing it the hundred billion times, like you will if he likes them, will probably help him realize that hey, when you put those letters together in your mouth, they sound like words. Oh, they ARE words! My four-year-old even learned punctuation from these, although he refers to it as an "escalation point."
By "Escalation point"! So utterly awesome. I'm going to start calling them that from now on.
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Perhaps think of yourself as less of a teacher and more of a coach. Yes, kids need instruction and correction, but they also need endless guidance, motivation, patience and support. It's no good being the most precise reader in kindergarten if the very sight of a book makes you want to bite your teacher in anger.
By Heh. Or you could get him a sibling. I learned to read by reading aloud to my little brother... and consequently taught him to read as well!
By I have done some time as an adult literacy tutor and was interested to find that you teach an adult to read the very same way you teach a kid, and you reinforce it with auditory, visual and sensory repetition. I learned to read before I started school, so I had no recollection of the learning process, so it was pretty interesting learning for myself about what the rule is for doubling the trailing consonant before adding -ing, or All About The Schwa. If you want to learn how kids learn to read, get your mitts on a kindergarten or first grade textbook and follow that. A word of caution from my own formative years, though: being ahead of the class is not always good. Sometimes a teacher, having no idea what else to do, and not being able to provide individualized attention, will just have an advanced student work on things they already know, which is of course boring and also demotivating.
By Monday, March 03, 2008 Scenes from a Marriage "Whoa, did you fart while I was in the other room?" "No." "Because it didn't smell like this before." "Maybe there's something in the trash." "Why would you fart in the trash?" * * * [Misreading news headline on Yahoo!'s homepage over spouse's shoulder] "Why did Angola plot to kill Mick Jagger?" "It says Angels. As in Hell's Angels. That would have been awesome, though." "Angola says, 'This will totally put us on the map!'" "Would that be the Asian map, or the South American map?" "Who cares? Either way it's a step up." "Of course Angola abandoned the plan after The Knights of Prosperity got cancelled." "But look out, Paul McCartney!" * * * "Who is this Tequilaberry chick, anyway?" "You mean Tila Tequila?" "Whatever. Sounds like dingleberry." "And what's a tequilaberry?" "I don't know. Isn't there such a thing as a tequilaberry?" "I don't know either, but if you don't know the difference between a dingleberry and a tequilaberry, I'm never letting you make me a margarita." "Oh, come on? Who wouldn't love a dingleberry margarita? With kitty litter around the edge of the glass?" "I think you just made us rich." posted by M. Giant 7:44 PM 9 comments 9 Comments:
That would be the Africa map.
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I found you through the Damn Hell Ass Kings feed, and you just made me spit coffee. This is why I want to marry a writer, to have witty banter like yours.
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But...... which of you said what, exactly? I think faithful readers are dying to know whether it was you or Trash who came up with the dingleberry margarita!
By I don't know who said what, but I do remember reading that Trash tends to screw up names. That might be a hint.
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Okay, you didn't make milk come through MY nose.
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I didn't expectorate, regurgitate, or aspirate anything, but that's just because I'm used to it.
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Is it a MN thing? Because I dearly miss having hysterically funny conversations like these - and they always happened in MN. Does the cold just make some brains work harder and therefore have more fun with words?
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"Why would you fart in the trash?"
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Oh no - I just came over here from Tomato Nation. Now I will surely waste all of my time reading your archives.
By Saturday, March 01, 2008 Fixed We took Excavator (now known around the house as Exie) to the vet to be neutered about a week ago. Since we were taking him to our vet-friend in Prior Lake rather than the neighborhood vet eight blocks away for the procedure, he and I had to leave the house at around 6:30 that morning. Before M. Small was awake, in other words. We probably should have given more thought to how a three-year-old would react upon waking up and discovering that a third cat since October had gone to the vet and wasn't coming back that night. That said, he took it like a trooper, and didn't freak out even a little. He did, however, insist on joining me for the 45-minute drive to Prior Lake the next morning before he would let me drop him off at day care. He was quite happy to see Exie again, and even the plastic cone around the kitty's neck didn't seem to freak M. Small out that much. Strat had needed to wear one for a week after his ass-cancer surgery, after all. This was on a Wednesday. They gave him painkillers and antibiotics and special paper cat litter for him to crap in, and told us we could take the cone off after seven to ten days. Exie wasn't exactly himself yet, but I was pretty sure that he was going to be wearing it for the minimum period. I was a guilty combination of sympathetic and amused when we got home and I let him out of the kennel, only to watch him back all around the room to try to leave the cone in the floor in front of him. And the first night was kind of funny, with him sprawled on my chest in bed, his already loud purring amplified by the cone whose edge was positioned right next to my ear in some kind of reversal of "His Master's Voice," but beyond that I think we all got tired of it pretty quickly. So six days after the surgery, this past Tuesday, M. Small and I were home alone, since Trash was teaching her university class. We had just finished M. Small's bath, when I heard a scary noise from the hallway outside. I opened the door to discover that Exie had somehow gotten into a fight with his cone, and he seemed to be losing. He was thrashing around, growling and spitting…and bleeding. Somehow the loose end of the gauze strip had gotten inside the cone with him, and he'd decided to try grabbing onto it with his teeth in a bid to finally yank the whole thing loose. I snatched him up, rand into the kitchen, put him on the table, and snapped through the bloody strap of gauze with the scissors. The red-smeared cone came off half a second later. I tried to figure out where the blood was coming from and I asked M. Small, "Can you put your own pajamas on tonight?" Finally I satisfied myself that Exie had merely bloodied his gums in combat, and he was going to be okay. In fact, the red liquid's main ingredient had been drool. He was even more calm than I was, and rather suspiciously comfortable on that kitchen table. Meanwhile, my poor naked (but dry, at least) son had gamely tried to meet me halfway on my request to him, bringing his PJs to me in a pile and saying, "I need a little help." So the good news is that Exie's fine, and back to his old self, only without the pheromones that I thought were what was irritating Phantom (now it's merely his existence that does that). The bad news is that since Exie has been to the vet, been gone overnight, and come back, M. Small has begun wondering again when Turtle and Strat are coming home. Awkward. posted by M. Giant 3:13 PM 0 comments 0 Comments:
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