I Pledge a Lee Gents

I'm not the type of mother that easily shrugs away parental duties, at least not on purpose. But I suddenly became aware today that I had so far failed to impart any civics lessons whatsoever unto my child.

"I can say the Pledge of Allegiance," Lily announced out of nowhere earlier today.

"You can?" I responded, triply suprised, proud, and grateful to the school system for picking up my parental teaching slack. Or to be more precise, I thanked the pre-school system.

I then eagerly awaited what I fully expected would be a mangled recitation of the pledge, something along the lines of:

I pledge a Lee Gents
To the flag of the
Night and Skates of America
And to the Republican
For witches stand
One nation,
Under God, invisible,
With liver teeth and juices for
all.

Instead, my articulate daughter recited the pledge near perfectly. With one exception. She left out the words "under God."

I thought at first maybe she had just forgotten to say them, but when I attempted to insert them on her behalf, it didn't ring any of her bells.

Then I realized I'd just had an up-close-and-personal encounter with Church vs. State.

Do you realize if you Google the words "kids, pledge of allegiance, and controversy" you'll end up with a whopping 76,500 results? The key words "pledge of allegiance constitutionality" generate 319,000 results. A quick scan of the results leads me to believe that nearly every school district in every state in the country has grappled with this issue. And at least one federal circuit court in the US has ruled the mandatory recitation of the pledge in public schools is unconstitutional owing to the inclusion of the phrase "under God."

Anyone who knows me well knows I'm not what you'd call an active religious practitioner. Neither am I an atheist, or a non-theist, or whatever the politically correct term is these days. I can read about and understand the mostly intellectual but sometimes emotionally charged arguments from people on both sides of the pledge issue.

What I have trouble understanding is what all the fuss is about. Kids will ultimately grow up and develop their own religious and spiritual beliefs, hopefully influenced more by their parents than by the schools they attend. Whether or not they say the words 'under God' while reciting the Pledge of Allegiance won't be the ultimate determining factor of their personal religious creed.

So I guess what I'm saying is don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. Say the pledge, with or without the two controversial words. But we shouldn't let two charged words, a mere three syllables in total, stop our schools from helping to instill a sense of national pride and patriotism in our children.

Gosh, it seemed a lot less complicated when I was a kid.

Is this a great dad or what?

Anatomy Lessons

So the other day when I drop off Lily at school, her teacher Ms. Heather comes and asks me if I saw the drawing Lily brought home from school yesterday.

Now, I look through ALL of Lily's drawings, but honestly, since she produces them at an astonishing pace, I can't say I spend more than a couple of seconds looking at each. And for the most part, I promptly forget about them immediately afterwards.

So I quickly rack through my recollection of yesterday's artwork, murmuring a muted "uh-hum" to the teacher, all the while wondering if my precious daughter just happened to illustrate something that would ring the alarm bells of school psychologists.

"Did she tell you what it was?" Ms. Heather asks.

"No," she didn't, actually," I respond, which is unusual, because Lily typically likes to describe her creations in graphic (no pun intended) detail. "What was it?"

"She drew a uterus for the class."

Oh boy.

Or in my case, oh girl.

Did I mention Lily's excited about becoming a big sister?

Yes, apparently Lily had drawn said anatomical part, knew the exact pronunciation, and told all 31 of her classmates what it was. Considering I've been getting many pats on my stomach from said classmates, I'm surprised none of them came up to me and asked me about my uterus on that day.

Ms. Heather was amused, to say the least. She's the type of teacher who would probably turn the uterus drawing into some sort of learning opportunity for the kids.

I'm just relieved she didn't ask me to come in and be a guest speaker on the topic.

Shout Out

Just want to give a shout out to another friend's blog, one I probably should have known about a while ago but for some reason just discovered. Anyway, check out There....I Said It by the inimitable Jane Kovacs. http://kovacsjane.wordpress.com/

Dr. Mom

I feel like I passed a major "Mom" milestone today. I successfully removed a splinter from Lily-bug's hand and she said it didn't even hurt. Blue ribbon for Mom!

On a completely unrelated note, thanks to Susie http://constantlyrelocating.blogspot.com/ for passing on a fun "to do" today. Google your first name and then the word "needs"and see what comes up. Mine was the following:
1. All Cathy needs is a big feather to fan him and feed him peeled grapes.
2. Cathy needs a Senior HR Mgr from IBM to come talk to her about organization.
3. Cathy needs an angel.
4. Cathy needs chocolate (ain’t that the truth!)
5. Cathy needs a cabaret agency in Sydney.
6. Cathy needs your help.
7. Cathy needs a bathy.(no misspelling here)
8. Cathy needs a wheelchair.
9. Father Cathy and her family need your healing touch.
10. Cathy needs Vicodin.

The Puffier and Fluffier the Better

What is it with girls and their fascination with bubble letters? You know the kind I mean - the cloud-like letters with scalloped edges and hearts over the letter "i" where ordinary dots would ordinarily appear. Have you ever known a girl who didn't go through a bubble-letter writing phrase?

For me, bubble letters bring back memories of passing notes in 7th grade - all the other girls of course, never me - or of logging a "So & So loves So & So" in a Chandler's assignment book.

The bubble letter fascination has appeared to have struck Lily early. This week it's been bubble letter this, bubble letter that. Personally, I think the bubble letters just give her a reason to indulge in her favorite pastime - coloring. At this rate, she will have bypassed the bubble letter phase by 7th grade and be on to something entirely different. Hieroglyphics perhaps?

But for now, bubble letters it is. And since Lily's been helping me pack this weekend for the upcoming move, the movers will be treated to seeing words like "Bar" and "Bath" spelled out in bubble letters on the sides of the boxes. I guess there's a first time for everything.

I've Slapped Myself on the Hand

Racked by guilt = working from home on a Sunday aftenoon to receive an email from a work colleague from another company who you barely know who tells you that she's impressed that you find time to write a blog and you're thinking 'how does this person even know that I write a blog?' and then you think 'gosh how long has it actually been since I wrote in my blog?' and then you look it up and find it's been 3+ weeks!

BREATHE.

All while your child is also writing what appears to be something approximately the length of a "War and Peace" and because she can't spell you end up reciting every single letter of every single word in response to her "How to spell dragon?", followed by "How to spell clown?", followed by "How to spell wing?" ad nauseum, ad nauseum, ad nauseum....

BREATHE.

And it's been like that for the last three weeks, or at least it feels like it. Abominably, overwhelmingly crazy. Between the work weeks that have crept up from 40-45 hours back into the 45-50 hour range, and you can't slack off (not that you ever did) because layoffs are coming, to the endless parade of birthday parties (see blog entry from almost exactly one year ago), from selling a house to buying a house, from the maddening array of paperwork requiring initials and signatures for aforementioned house selling/buying to gathering other, yet similar paperwork for 2008 taxes, from having Pete's car repaired to having my car repaired, from swimming lessons to summer camp registration, from having to cook multiple meals in one night to try to salvage the food from the garage freezer that unfroze when the housing inspector forgot to flip the circuit breaker back on to, oh, I don't know. Oh, wait a minute, yes I do. Back to work. So now, in addition to doing real work, we're supposed to fully immersed in our social media tools, and Twittering, and Digging, and Yammering (the AMD company version of Twitter), and don't forget about Facebook and Mogulus. So when the heck are we supposed to be blogging?

BREATHE.

So THAT'S why I haven't written a blog entry in three weeks. Sue me.

Yet with all the madness, I think of the wide-eyed, grinning face on Lily when we suprised her the other night and took her to see Elmo's Green Thumb live show, and the unexpected pleasure from going to the grocery store this morning and finding the Oscar Mayer wienermobile parked out front, and the enjoyable Valentine's evening out listening to jazz pianist Ramsey Lewis with P. Daddy, and the upcoming gal pal trip with old college friends in Las Vegas, and how P. Daddy braved the "despicable" (say it in a Daffy Duck voice) crowds to satisfy his pregnant wife's desire for a mighty fine vanilla milkshake from Mighty Fine Burgers, and I can't help but think of one of the songs on a CD belonging to Lily.

The tune itself has to to be one of the most annoying melodies known to man, sung by a chorus of extremely irritating voices. But oh....the sentiment. With that they've hit the nail on the head. The song title: "I'm Happy in My Heart."

Funny, I think I can breathe again now.