How old am I anyways?

I think it happened at 26. I just started to forget how old I was. Age was such an important thing when I was a kid. How old are you? The answer never was I'm 7. No it was I'm 7 and a half. Or I'm 7 and 3/4's. And I always knew. Somewhere in my later 20's I just started to forget. I pick 26 because I got married when I was 26. I moved across the country at 26. It was a real adult experience year. Ask me how old I am now and I have to think about it. (I'm 33).
So today I read an article about Pac-Man. Pac-Man was such a marker of my childhood. A recognisable symbol. Everyone knew pac-man. We played Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man...collected Pac-Man cards and stickers...even watched a Pac-Man cartoon. Do you want to know how old Pac-Man is? Almost 30. That's right, next year is the 30th anniversary of Pac-Man. Right there in my face an age marker.
So I started to wonder about other age markers.
Here's some of the pop-culture items that mark my past.
Cabbage Patch Kids: ahh the frenzy of 3rd grade. Having a Cabbage Patch Kid was like a marker of the great mom that you were sure to be one day. Cabbage Patch Kids were 1st mass produced in 1982, making them 27 years old.
Tetris: what a computer addiction Tetris was (and is, I've recently rediscovered in Tetris Friends on Facebook) - 1985 was the design date on this one making it 24 years old.
Strawberry Shortcake: orginally designed in 1977 making her 32 this year.
The Dukes of Hazzard: How I loved Bo Duke and how my brother and I tried to enter and exit our parents Red Ford through the rolled-down windows. John Schneider who played Bo Duke is turning 49 next month folks. The Show originally aired from 1979 to 1985.
Underoos - the fun dress up underwear. I had Wonder Woman. 1978 Fruit of the Loom started to produce these babies.

The Facts of Life: What girl didn't love this show? We even pretended to be these characters. FYI - This year Blair will be 46, Jo and Natalie will be 43, and Tootie will be 40...or at least the actresses who played them.
Monchhichi - does anyone else remember these? I really, really wanted one when I was 7. They were a Japanese toy/cartoon that spread throughout the western world in the late 70's/early 80's.
Star Blazers: for a long while I thought my brother and I were the only ones who remembered this show. Then sometime back in my early 20's we found someone else who not only remembered it, but could sing the theme song with us. Then we found someone who not only rembered it, but owned the DVD release. Ahh, my sanity was verified. For those of you not in the know, or racking your brain, Star Blazers was one of the first true Anime English dubbed cartoons to do well in North America. The premise was that the crew travelled in a big spaceship (the Argo) that looked a lot like a sea ship with a big red bottom on various missions to save the planet earth. The charcters included Derek Wildstar, Nova, and my favorite Queen Starsha.



Star Blazers Closing Lyrics

We're off in outer space
Protecting Mother Earth
To save the human race
Our Star Blazers

Danger lurking everywhere
But we know we've got to dare
Evil men with evil schemes
They can't destroy all our dreams

We must be strong and brave
Our home we've got to save
We must make the fighting cease
So Mother Earth will be at peace

Through all the fire and the smoke
We will never give up hope
If we can win the Earth will survive
We'll keep peace alive
With our Star Blazers

Sorry, I went off on a nostalgic tangent there. Back in my childhood memories. You know what's sad? and kind of contributed to this nostalgia today? One of my gr. 8 lessons this week was based on TV music. The CD clips that were in the lesson were to me really, really easy. (and yes, I know these shows were already running in re-runs when I saw them the first time around, but...) But I couldn't believe that not one person got all 7 of them. And only 1 student (out of 2 classes) got 6. The themes were": The Flintstones, The Jetsons, Sesame Street, The Andy Griffith Show (not a single one got that one), Mission Impossible (some got it thanks to the movies), the Addams Family and Gilligan's Island (some in one class got this one, nobody in the other class figured it out). Gilligan's Island people! I know it still runs in re-runs or Deja-View. And I've seen the DVD's out in the stores. The other thing that was a marker of my age was in the discussion we had on family sitcoms and the music for them. When I think Family sit-com my first thought is The Cosby Show. That name never crossed a student's lips. Their family sit-coms are the Simpsons (granted it's been around for about 20 years and I probably would list it too), the Family Guy (only ever watched one episode), Everybody Loves Raymond and My Wife and Kids. But then when I got to think about it, they hey-day of the family sit-com really doesn't exist anymore. It was a staple of my generation (Family Ties, Growing Pains, Full House, Who's the Boss?, Mr, Belvedere...) and the generations before (the Brady Bunch, the Partridge Family, All in the Family...) but what's on like that now? It is The Simpsons and the Family Guy.

lists, lists, lists

I call it the celebrity complex. Certain people (and I am one of them) love to fill out questionnairres. We used to read them in magazines about our favorite celebrities and now, thanks to the internet, we read them about our friends. All the little weird trivia things that make us tick.
These used to come in email format (which seems to be going the way of snail mail) and now, thanks to Facebook, they are in our notes. I find these pop up every so often and people get hooked. Not for a long time, but for a bit. The latest wave started with the 25 (or 30) random things. The appeal to that is wide enough to hit a lot of people. List 30 random things about yourself and so on. Then they all started to come around, the one I filled in today was a yes or no only survey. I've also done book surveys, movie surveys, music surveys. There's the list things beginning with the letter of your name, odd things, kid interview (cute for a keepsake), the google "your name needs..." etc...
I like these while they last, but I think they are starting to die down again, which is fine with me. It kinda makes me wonder why are we so apt to share something about ourselves oneline? I learn a lot about my friends, the irony being that I communicate with a lot of them more online than person to person. Are we really so busy that we can't spend time with each other?

Entertaining the boys

It's a long winter in New Brunswick. It would be great if it was just snow. Snow I can handle. It's the cold, cold, cold of it all. Saint John has this freeze/thaw thing going on. It freezes like a deep freeze and then warms up enough again to snow, or rain which just freezes back into ice. Today for example is a royal mess. It's raining which is melting all the snow that fell last week, but the drains are covered over and the roads are flooding and the temperature is dropping again tonight which means we'll be in an icefield once again. I had no idea growing up out west that the rest of the country lived like this.
The trickest part about winter here is that it lasts so long and the kids get stir crazy. When the snow is nice play snow and it's not 40 below it's fine. We can go outside. We can go skating, or sledding, or build snowmen or just have fun in it. I wish it was like this more, but it's not. So we are housebound. So what do you do. Here are some ideas of things we have done to keep the boys happy, burn off some energy and keep them focused on something besides the fact that we are stuck in the house.
1 - they run...races up and down the hallway. They love it
2 - hide and seek. A classic.
3 - sock basket ball - take pairs of balled up socks. Set the laundry basket up as their target and let them shoot baskets
4 - hotter/colder treasure hunt - this works best with Elijah, Jeremy's too young to really get it yet
5 - play-do, never underestimate the energy they get out with this activity
6 - basement hockey
7 - basement baseball
8 - basement golf
9 - basement soccer (do you see a pattern here? - always good to have a place where there aren't any breakables around)
10 - mini car races in the hallway
11 - build the tallest duplo tower and then knock it over - or, just build a duplo village
12 - Simon Says
13 - dancing
14 - pretending to be something else, usually dinosaurs or elephants or cows

And then there are quiet things too

1 - create a craft
2 - baking
3 - reading stories
4 - make up stories
5 - looking at old pictures and telling their stories
6 - puzzles

and let's not forget the plethora of toys available to play with. The kids are great into pretending with toys right now. They love to play airport, cars, firefighter and rescue heroes.

We're trying to keep the TV off as much as possible, so having it on becomes a treat. Last night was a great example. The kids were cranky and I knew that I had to think of something interesting to keep their attention until betime. So I cooked a relatively neat supper, laid down a picnic blanket in the living room and called them in for a dinner and movie picnic. We watched Ratitouille which I'd never seen all the way through and the kids had only watched once before. After supper I popped some popcorn and made hot chocolate. It made for a really nice cozy evening. I know Elijah especially liked it because while I was making supper tonight he suggested that we do it again.

Who would you have dinner with?

Simple question right? or maybe not. This was a question I posed to my grade 7's in an introduction lesson. If you could have dinner with any 4 people who ever lived, who would you choose?
At first they couldn't believe that I wasn't specifying music related folk. Anybody was acceptable. Of course getting them to say music related folk was my whole point. But they didn't need to know that. I was genuinely interested in who they would say.
The lists were interesting. They ranged from sports heroes (Alexander Ovechkin) to politicians (Abe Lincoln, Barack Obabma, King Henry V) to writers (Shakespeare, Stephenie Meyer) to actors (Meryl Streep, Robert Pattinson) to Bible Heroes (Adam and Eve, Moses) to real people they know. Some picted historical figures such as Rosa Parks and others picked talk show hosts like Ellen. The musical figures ranged from Beethoven to Jessica Simpson (remember that I'm having 12 year old boys answer this question).
So who would I pick? Ohhh, I don't even know if I could answer my own question. I think I would pick the apostle John, King Henry VIII, Elvis Presley and Oprah Winfrey. They are all people whose lives have fascinated me. Who would you pick?

I don't often do this...

...but...
I don't write about my job very often. It's one of those professional courtesy things. I don't want anything to print that could haunt me later. But sometimes the kids say or do things that are really funny. This one struck me as funny and quite harmless to write about. It was answers on a quiz to the same question. Many of the kids did get this question right, but I had to hand it to these few that didn't but were very creative in what they did put as their answer.
The question was to tell what D.C. meant. (I teach music, so D.C. refers to the music symbol meaning to go to the begining and play again). Here are a few of the more creative answers:
-the DaVinci Code
-DiCaprio (as in Leonardo?)
-my initials
-don't copy
-Washington

They're back...a week later

I know, I'm full of tales, just not inspired to actually write them down. Jonathan and Elijah did make it back (and on time thanks to a lot of prayer) and both Jeremy and myself were very happy to see them. I think I had my very best Elijah hug ever when he walked through the door and saw me.
As for Jeremy, I think it has taken him a while to really know that his dad and brother are really here and staying. In fact he is following Jonathan everywhere and needs his dad for everything. I used to be the one to put Jeremy to bed...apparently that's changed. The cutest however was the first night the boys were back. Elijah crashed at 7pm. Jeremy was having none of bedtime. His dad was back and he was celebrating. Part of his celebration included checking in on his brother. He kept sneaking down the hall to his brother's room and looking in, just ot make sure he was really there. He did actually make it as far as crawling in his brother's bed to cuddle him. It was very cute and fortunately, Elijah slept through it all...that was my biggest fear (Elijah waking up). But we've settled back down into our regular routine with ease and we're happy to be altogether again.

Just me and my baby

Today marks one week of just me & Jeremy. Jonathan and Elijah are away visiting family in England...they will be home in a few days. It's been really quiet around here and I've enjoyed the one on one time with Jeremy (something that becomes increasingly difficult when the both of them vie for my attention).
I did miss my 4 year old though. We have talked on the phone pretty much every day that they have been away. It's pretty funny though, usually Elijah wants to talk to Jeremy to tell him all the things he's been doing. Their coversations go something like this (I put Jeremy on speaker phone so I can hear and help translate Jeremy's words)
Elijah - Hi Jeremy
Jeremy - Hi brother
Elijah - I'm in England
Jeremy - huh?
Elijah - I'm in England, but I'll be back soon
Jeremy - ok
Elijah - baby Sadie is here
Jeremy - firetruck (pointing to his truck as if to say, why aren't you playing firetruck with me)
Elijah - I played with Eva
Jeremy - play-do
Elijah - I played play-do with Eva(this being the amazing co-incidence of their conversation, Jeremy loving play-do and Elijah and Eva playing play-do together in England)
and on it goes until I get the phone back.
Jeremy's conversations with his dad are just as good, except then Jeremy runs away from me and hides so I can't have the phone back to talk to Jonathan myself, he gets quite preturbed that I would talk to his Daddy.