Grover informed me Friday that she feels like a maid. Not as in the old-and-unmarried type, but the clean-the-house type. This revelation came in the wake of my whirlwind cleaning spree in preparation for Ollie's birthday party today. It's not like I forced her to help me - I didn't threaten to withhold food, water or oxygen - but I may have promised her a small reward in exchange for completing some relatively easy housecleaning tasks. I think all she actually did was pick up the stuff off the family room floor (mostly hers anyway) and dust a few pieces of furniture. Meanwhile, I had taken the car in for oil change/tire rotation, went grocery shopping, did four loads of laundry, picked up & found homes for multiple piles of miscellaneous crap, polished the dining room furniture (which I'd like to add looks abso-smurf-ly smashing), dry-mopped the wood floor, weeded one of the flower beds, picked tomatoes from the garden, made and took a lasagna dinner w/ dessert for my neighbor whose husband finally came home from in-patient rehab (not drugs, he was in an accident two months ago that left him with brain and spinal cord injuries) and finally, fixed dinner for us. And SHE feels like a maid. Yeah, okay.

Well, day camp came and went. No blistering heat-induced migraine this year, but there was a girl with strep throat who kindly shared it with us. Yep, Grover, Ollie & I all came down with it. I haven't had strep since I was a kid and had forgotten how awful it is. It didn't help that I had an ear infection on top of it and then came down with a cold. Antibiotics cleared up the infections, but the cold lingers on. I feel like someone sprayed that foam insulation inside my head.

The Shrinky Dinks were a big hit at camp with kids and adults alike. If you're into crafts or have kids at home, I highly recommend buying some. You can make all kinds of stuff with them, including little doodads to decorate your Crocs (my kids' favorite activity).

Speaking of crazy fashion trends, that reminds me of crazy toy trends. Grover got a Webkinz a few weeks ago. Have you seen these things? I hadn't seen them until I looked online - they're sold out everywhere in Raleigh and impossible to get unless you mail-order. At first glance, they look like regular old stuffed animals. Actually, at every glance that's what they look like because that's what they are. The appeal lies in the "secret code" that comes with the regular old stuffed animal. This code unlocks the magic of the Webkinz website where your child can adopt the animal (henceforth referred to as "pet") and care for it. I suppose it can be characterized as educational because in order to feed and clothe and otherwise entertain said pet, you have to have money to buy food, clothing, rooms for its house, toys, furnishings, etc. Not real money, thank heavens, but "Kinz Cash" which you earn by getting a job (at which Grover was less than successful - she didn't even cut it as a fry cook) or playing games. Yeah, that's where the problem lies... the games. The many, many games. We who have staunchly defended our refusal to buy any sort of video game console in favor of mind-expanding methods of entertainment now find ourselves addicted to playing Cash Cow, Polar Plunge and Quzzy's Word Challenge. Of course, it's all rationalized by the fact that we're earning money to properly care for our virtual (read: imaginary) critter, which by the way is a platypus. As if I don't spend enough time on the computer...

I've been inside working on day camp stuff all day - 'cause lord knows it's too hot and humid to be outside - and I took a break to do something to be filed under the "Activist" portion of my job description. Recently a young woman was murdered in Raleigh while delivering USA Today newspapers along her route. As if her death wasn't tragic enough, leaving a husband and two young children, she was 8 months pregnant. Unless you live under a rock, you've heard about the Ohio man who is in jail on $4.8M bond charged with two counts of homicide for killing his pregnant former girlfriend. Unlike Ohio, North Carolina does not recognize the death of an unborn child as a homicide. The current law only allows for a homicide charge if the child survives the mother's death to be born and then dies. There are bills in the state house and senate that will change the law but both are stuck in committee, dying a slow death.

So what's my point? My point is that I strongly believe the law should be changed so I wrote letters to my state senator and representative in the N.C. General Assembly urging them to get these bills moving and pass them. I then emailed everyone on my email list that lives in lives in NC asking them to do the same.

If you live in NC (and I haven't already emailed you), please visit the General Assembly website through the above link to find your representative and/or senator and write or email him or her regarding this issue.

Thank you,
poppgrrl

My husband: Grover, go get me another beer.

Grover: I will not get you another beer. I'm not your servant.

Remember those? I get to play with them today. I volunteered to make name tags for Day Camp (yes, I'm doing that again despite the horror of last year). This year's theme is Art Smarts so we thought we'd let the little monsters decorate create their own name tags on Shrinky Dink film, then bake them (the tags, not the kids) and string them on lanyard string. To save time, I'm making all the staff nametags and writing the younger kids' names on theirs.

I haven't made Shrinky Dinks in forever, so this should be fun.