Tuesday, January 10, 2012

Re: New email - disregard ALL email from bellsouth account

Oh, you crazy fragrance-selling, viagra touting girl!

On Tue, Jan 10, 2012 at 9:07 AM, Kim Tabler <kimtabler@gmail.com> wrote:
Please accept my apologies for the spam you are receiving from my bellsouth account. I am working to fix the problem.

I am also switching to a gmail account (this address) to hopefully avoid any other issues.Please email me at this address from now on.

Sorry again -
Enjoy your day!
Kim Tabler

New email - disregard ALL email from bellsouth account

Please accept my apologies for the spam you are receiving from my bellsouth account. I am working to fix the problem.

I am also switching to a gmail account (this address) to hopefully avoid any other issues.Please email me at this address from now on.

Sorry again -
Enjoy your day!
Kim Tabler

Sunday, May 23, 2010

Well, you know...

This is the first road trip I've ever taken when I had the car looked at before we left. And also the first time the mechanic said there was nothing wrong! Drive it to Michigan! And so we did.
We drove to the church yesterday and I mentioned to Mark that the steering wheel was kind of shaking and feeling a little funny. He couldn't feel it as a passenger, and we just shook it off. When we got to the church, the air had a really weird smell. When we got back to the hotel, THAT air had the same really weird smell. Curious. Was the smell following us?
Mark smelled around the tires and figured out it was actually us that was smelling. Duh. He drove to WalMart, where they could not look at it and would be closed Sunday. But he talked to Sears and they'd be ready to look at it first thing in the morning.
After some detective work it was determined that a brake pad had gotten stuck, causing so much heat that the rotor warped and the calipers fused together. Nice.
Of course there are no calipers to be had in Saginaw on a Sunday morning. They did have everything else, though, so they were going to try to get the calipers apart and see if it was drivable then. They used compressed air and mechanic mojo and got them apart, and cleaned them really well. Everything else was replaced.
They are 100% positive we are safe and able to get home. That's from the mechanics at the Sears in Saginaw, if that ever needs to be documented!
We'll be making our way home shortly and I'm sure it will be uneventful. Hm.
Sent on the Sprint® Now Network from my BlackBerry®

Thursday, May 20, 2010

IMG00097-20100520-2220.jpg

So we are all settled in! We made it in 8 hrs and 3 minutes, having gotten started at 11:09 and stopping THREE times!! Ahhhhhh!!! Weak-bladdered travelers - sheesh!
My aunt (mother of the groom) that we haven't seen for 20 years pulled in right next to us at the same time! That was really fun. We haven't seen anyone else yet but that should all get underway tomorrow.
I got a call from my back up doula that my June 1 client went into labor around 7:00 tonight so I won't get to be there for her birth. I was her doula for her first birth and she chose me for the second time too - I can't believe I won't be there :( I am really bummed about that. She is in fantastic hands, so all is well. Who really needs income anyway?!

The trip was mostly uneventful. The girls did great and entertained themselves almost the whole way. They got a bit antsy the last 45 minutes or so, but I think we all did. It was a long 45 minutes!
I think they were most impressed by the various (to them) interesting things you can see in gas stations. It was really funny to watch them walk around wide-eyed on their way to the bathrooms. Glittery dragons and jelly doughnuts and barbecue potato chips IN THE SAME STORE?! When you have never been inside a gas station, who needs Disneyland?

More tomorrow!
Sent on the Sprint® Now Network from my BlackBerry®

Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Worth a post . . .

Alright - so LOTS has happened that has been worth a post. But I have 1 hour before I pick up Jillian and this is driving me crazy. So I am posting.

I try very hard not to talk too much about the public school system around here (JCPS) because I do not want to sound judgemental toward those who send their children to publics schools. We have chosen not to send our girls there, and I do not want to come across sounding elitist - or whatever - about that decision. But this is my blog so I get to say whatever I want.

About a month ago, I got so ticked off about a quick news story concerning the school board needing to have a session regarding the budget. They were having to create at least twenty new bus routes for next year to meet this new goal : No child would have to ride the bus for more the 75 minutes. WHAT ?!?! Where do I even begin? First of all, what the hell kind of goal is that? 75 minutes? they are hoping the possibly no child would be on a bus for more than one hour and 15 minutes? That is just totally insane to me. Granted, it is better than the kindergarteners that get off the bus in our neighborhood at 5:30 or later. But it is not a goal to be proud of. It is ridiculous. Secondly, it is proof positive that JCPS had lost site completely of the issues they have created for themselves. The problem is NOT that there are not enough bus routes. MAYBE we should not be bussing children all over creation to send them to school. I pass three public elementary schools on my 20 minute drive to Erin's school. Yet there is a really good chance that she would not attend ANY of them had we chosen public school for her. Most of the buses in our neighborhood do not go to those schools. The more times JCPS tries to fix this, the more convoluted, complicated and absurd the problem gets. It just blows my mind that this is not abundantly clear.
NEXT:
Two weeks ago, standardized testing began across the county. Now anyone who has ever had this conversation with me knows my stand on this issue, and it's another blog entry entirely to discuss it. Let's just say for now I don't like standardized testing. At all. So anyway, all across the county kids in public schools are taking standardized tests to prove what they have learned and how good their schools and teachers are. Schools and teachers can loose funding if their scores are consistently not good enough (that makes sense - let's take money away from the schools that aren't doing well), teachers can loose their jobs and schools could be closed if students consistently do poorly enough on the tests. So on the Monday of this big testing week, the local news does a peice: "Be sure your kids are eating a healthy breakfast and getting plenty of sleep. It's testing week!" OH MY GOSH!! Are you people serious?! First of all, has the news ever once mentioned before that kids should eat a healthy breakfast and get enough sleep? NOPE - not until testing week! And HELLO?!?! Should kids be eating a healthy breakfast and getting enough sleep BECAUSE it is testing week, or because it is GOOD FOR THEM EVERY SINGLE DAY?!?!? Good freakin' grief.

And then last night, JCPS just sent me over the edge. Really.
A day ago, the superintendent announced that one middle school would be closed based on their consistently poor testing scores (see previous rant.) So the news interviewed a representative of JCPS who clearly thought that this school should stay open. Please understand that this is someone who represents JCPS, who was allowed to talk to the media on the behalf of JCPS. She said that the Frost Middle School has 90% free/reduced lunch kids, many of them are homeless, they come from broken homes. They just can't expect these kids to make the same test scores as kids from other schools.
AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
WHAT?! I could barely pick my jaw off the floor. Ok - if I was going to give that quote the very reaches of the benefit of the doubt . . .if the standardized tests do not measure what ALL kids can learn, then OBVIOUSLY they are not an adequate, reliable, appropriate measure for the success or failure of a school.
However, that is not my problem with this statement. My problem is that this statement epitomizes another example of the way JCPS has completely lost site of the CHILDREN it is supposed to be serving. If you serve a population that are facing those kinds of challenges, and you believe that they cannot succeed the way other kids can succeed, than they are absolutely not going to. Of course that school is not 'successful'. It is not expected to be. And it is not just that school, it is the overall attitude that that's how it works that just burns me up.
(The superintendent has since decided that rather than closing the school he would fire a bunch of teachers and the principal. I don't think this really changes my point at all. I just thought I should include it.)

I really don't like to rant and rave about something without coming up with a solution. But this system is too big, and frankly too broken, for me to fix (God grant me the serenity . . .) All I can do is continue to go broke (and let my dad go broke!) sending my children to a school that is not part of this screwed up system.

Sunday, March 21, 2010

Catch up . . .

Does it count if it is really the next day in my mind?? When I woke up this morning I realized I hadn't blogged since Wednesday, but it didn't AT ALL seem like it had been a little over three days. SORRY . . .I just haven't been able to stay awake long enough!

THURSDAY:
Birth went great, exactly as planned, awesome family, healthy baby and actually positive experience at Suburban (which is rare.) I won't go into it here as most of my readers aren't all that interested in the details. Let it suffice to say that newborn care (and really even labor and delivery) at Suburban all of a sudden has taken a MAJOR turn for the better in the last few weeks and I hope that it wasn't just a fluke. I got home about 6:00pm, but with a splitting headache (which I usually have after a birth, regardless of how long I am gone.) So I ate and went to bed. I purposefully do not have any clients for April. Although I will miss the income very much, I have to build in some down time or I end up hating babies and their stupid pregnant mothers. :)

FRIDAY:
I chaperoned a field trip with Erin's class to see "If You Give A Pig A Party" at Stage One. This was super cute, very fun and the kids enjoyed it. We were back to Chance by 11:30. The funniest part was when the two girls I drove in my van (along with Erin) got in, they asked me if I could turn on some music. I asked them if they were in their car, what would they be listening to? In unsion, they both yelled, "LADY GAGA!!!" Seriously?!? They are 6! I apologized that I was not cool enough to have any Lady Gaga on hand, and resisted offering some good Music Together or Harry Connick, Jr. We just listened to the radio instead. After that, I had a fabulous afternoon of QDoba in the sunshine with Helga. After lunch, she said, "Now we need ice cream! Is there ice cream around here?!" We were in Westport Village and I couldn't believe she had not even heard of The Comfy Cow! I couldn't throw away my trash fast enough, and I practically galloped there. Apparently all special times lead to Comfy Cow, because when we walked in we ran into Mark and Jillian, who had just come from Hounz Lane park. So we had ice cream together before I went to pick up Erin. Next, I finished all accounting for the Girl Scouts, got the cshier's check and turned in our final payment for cookies. For the most part, 2010 cookie sale is OVER!!!!!

SATURDAY:
Erin and I spent the entire day at Camp Shanituck, the Girl Scout Camp in Shepherdsville, with 9 of our other Daisy Scouts and 6 of their parents. We did crafts, took a hike, did a princess obstical course, took out the trash for the camp, beaded braclets for autism, played games, ate lunch . . . a major day of fun and scoutin'. All the girls really enjoyed it, and I did to. I was glad the weather held out - it turned out to be a gorgeous day. Now I feel like I know my way to and around camp. This will be where we go each day for a week this summer (July?) so it was a good preview.

TODAY:
YEAH birthday breakfast for Brian!! Now the girls are palying outside and I am trying my darndest not to do anything. Maybe knit, eat a bowl of ice cream, not much more than that.

There - does that count for three posts in one??

Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Well, I will be heading to a birth in the morning (she has decided to be induced and is going in at 5am.) So I should be asleep. The computer is already shut down for the day, so I'm emailing this from my phone before I go to bed.
Today Mom came over for awhile and played with the girls outside. Erin decided they would have a club. The purpose of the club was for them to design outfits and hair accessories for me to knit so they could take them to poor people. So they sat at the itty-bitty picnic table, drawing pictures with markers of dresses and fun ponytail holders. Then Erin would run them inside to me and see if I thought I could knit them according to her design. She also said some of the things would be woven with things from nature. Then they would take all our handwork to poor people.
Now, where did all that come from?!
(Pics to come when I don't have to get up before dawn!)
Sent on the Sprint® Now Network from my BlackBerry®

Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Secret Message (7 of 21, I think . . .)


I don't know how well you will be able to see this . . .Hopefully if you open it in it's own window it will be a bit darker.

"MokIBETYooHADAFUNDA ?"

Jillian wanted to leave this on the table by the door one day as a surprise for Mark to find when he got home . She was sure he'd never know who it was from, hence the question mark at the end.

And yes, she came up with the idea and sounded it all out by herself!!