Who Wants To Help??

A blog/board friend of mine's husband is in Iraq right now and he will be overseeing the renovation of 2 schools there. The kids and I are collecting school stuff to send so the schoolchildren will each have a decent set of supplies. Who wants to help?? This is a great opportunity for my kidlets to learn more about Iraq, and it makes it more personal to them when they see that they are helping other kids. And they get to practice their sewing skills cuz we're going to make zippered pencil cases. :o) Win, win situation!! Anyway, check out my friend's blog post on this and if you want to help, you can email me at:

milkmaiden at sbcglobal dot net :o)

If you would like to help, please avoid anything with religious slogans/symbols, piggies, Barbies/Bratz or similar.

While we're on the topic of religion (sorta) it's Paczski time again. Say it with me now: "PUNCH-skee." LOL! I had never heard of these before we moved to MI, but they are BIG here because of the enormous Polish population. By that, I don't mean that the Polish people here are enormous (though maybe they are if they eat Paczskis!!) but that there are a lot of them. In fact, when I called the gas (or electric?) company one time, one of the menu options was to listen to it in Polish. I kid you not. I shoulda just for fun. It certainly would have been more entertaining than the English version. We also have the largest population of Middle-Eastern natives ouside of the Middle East. Remember the big stink about the changing of the noise level limits to accomodate the call-to-prayer loudspeakers in Hamtramck? (Yes, that's a Polish name.) I don't think the utility menu was offered in Arabic though. Or maybe I didn't listen long enough.

Anyway, why not try a paczski today and die happy? It's got enough fat to basically blow an ekephant's weekly fat requirements, so you know it's gonna be good. ;o)

John got a table at Sam's today for the Linux machine for $58 and it came WITH a chair. It went together exceptionally well and looks fantastic. Naturally, I'm just waiting for it to self-destruct, cuz that's way too good to be true.

Today we worked on "Bribe Your Way to Homeschooling Success" - a technique I learned from another hser. Normally I'm not into bribes (except for dh, maybe, like the TV deal) but for multiplication tables it makes ALL of our lives easier, so I do it. The deal is that they have to be able to do all of the Mathtest (free download) times tables on the "more time" setting with a perfect score, and then they get the toy we agree on. Sluggie (8) is working for an $80 Harry Potter Lego set that I scored on Ebay (new in the box!) for **20 bucks!!!** Woo hoo!! Fishy (6) wants to work for Bionicles, or maybe something from Lego Exo Force. Sluggie's been doing multiplying for ages, but needs to get them perfect with the time limit, so today she got serious and was able to check off the 2s, 3s, 4s, 5s, 11s and 12s. Obviously the 10s won't be a problem, so she doesn't have many left! (1s aren't on there - too easy!) And Fishy was able to check off 10s and 11s today. Yay!!

I taught my 4th private lesson today. Wow! We're having quite the influx of new students. In our class, we got to do back and forth across the room kicking today (my fave) and then worked on a drill with partners for sparring. I was wringing wet when we were done. Eew. :oP But it feels good to work hard. My partner was a guy with incredibly long legs, and try as I might after my pulling step round kick, I simply could not get out of the way of his spinning back kicks. So the Master showed me how so step my front foot back as I turned for maximum backing. It was better, but still hard. I swear the guy's legs are telescopic, LOL! And of course HE traveled backwards very far when *I * was doing the spinning back kicks, so I was on a sort of running offense, LOL! But it was fun. And it felt really good to wash all the salt off my face when I got home.

Last night something bad happened to my back. I was simply scooping up toys on my hands and knees and suddenly *PAIN* in my back. Argh. I was worried about teaching and class tonight, but fortunately it was one of those "better-with-exercise" sort of things. Whew!

I think I had some sort of pics to post, but I'm too lazy to go to the other puter, plus I need a soak in the tub, so maybe tomorrow.

Wow - I think that may be my most diverse post yet! :oP