Category: Uncategorized

I got #4 on yesterday’s Top Five list . I love making the list. Lately, whenever I get off my lazy butt and submit, 90% of the time I actually make it to the big list (i.e. Not the runner’s up or honorable mentions). Do you think that would incent me to contribute more often? No. But I am trying to be better. I’m also trying to be better about contributing to the Probe. What is it about this time of year that gets my ink flowing? Do I miss going back to school? I don’t think so. I do miss sitting in the back of the room and writing poetry instead of taking notes. You just can’t do that in a staff meeting. Not that I’ve tried, but when it’s 6 of you sitting around a little table, someone might notice.

So go sign up for your own subscription. If you get the paid one (c’mon, I know you have the money) you’ll get a new list every weekday, and you’ll get to see when I make the runner up list. If you do subscribe, tell Chris Jody sent you. It’s always good to suck up to the boss.)

With all the woodpecker excitement on Sunday, I don’t think I appropriated enough coverage to the big news of the day:

I wiped up the minigolf course with my family. I scored 1 over par. I have NEVER scored close to that before, not even back when I’d cheat. There were 5 of us, and Junior came in 3rd! We rock.

One week from tomorrow I get to bundle Junior up on the bus that will take him to first grade. I can’t even believe he’s old enough, until I look at him and realize he’s a big kid, and he’s ready to head out and do big kid things. And so the letting go continues. I have to hope he has good school experiences because unless I want to step in and homeschool him, he’s under someone else’s care for seven hours a day.

And might I just tell the Leominster school department that I think they do a sucky job of preparing parents and students for this big transition from kindergarten (half day and one school with only other kindergarteners) to first grade (elementary school, K-4). I have no idea what he needs to bring with him, if I’m supposed to give him a name tag, nothing. School starts one week from today, and the bus routes have not been posted anywhere. You have to call and ask. Hello, is this effective? What the hell is your web site for?

The aftercare portion of the website is also content-free. No price information. No information about how to sign up for it. Once again, I had to call, and they tell me that registration is tomorrow and Thursday during the day. Let me just point out something really simple to these folks. The people who need aftercare need it because they are working. Working during the day. During the day, which is when you expect us to go to your office and register. The only people this is convenient for are those who don’t need aftercare. At least put the danged form on the website so I can fill it out ahead of time. Sheesh.

It’s like the music classes my sister is trying to sign my nephew up for. They offer three different times for the 5 to 8 year olds. The Saturday morning class is full. The weekday class at 1pm and the one at 3:30 are not. My BIL politely pointed out to them that at 1pm, all 6-8 year olds and many 5 year olds will be in school. So maybe they’ll get the AM kindergarten 5 year olds who have a parent who can take them. Once again, if parents work, they are out of luck. And if school in that town lasts until 3:15, you’ve got to haul butt to get to the 3:30 lesson. How do people like this get to own their own businesses? And who suffers? All the kids who want to take music classes who, unfortunately, didn’t get in to the Saturday class.

I can’t even tell you how many working parents I know. And this stuff happens ALL the time. The Church we belong to has religious ed classes scheduled for Monday afternoons. HELLO? How do you expect these kids to get there? This isn’t the 1950s any more. Of course, if it were, we wouldn’t be able to get him to those classes anyway because the stay-at-home mom didn’t have a car at her disposal.

Okay, I guess that’s enough of a rant for today. And if you are part of the Leominster School Department, consider your grade a C. And that’s being generous.

I forgot to mention that Junior asked yesterday if he could keep the woodpecker as a pet bird if we couldn’t get it out of the house. Um, no. No wild birds. “He’d peck you on the head looking for bugs.” “Ewwwww!”

Let’s face it, it would just be one more animal he named after himself. Which is really funny, when you think about it. It’s like me calling all my pets (real and stuffed) variations of Jody. Well, there’s Little Jody, Jody-kins and Jody the Fish. We could have Jody The Bird.

Not.

Wanted to post an update for the bird lovers out there. Junior and I successfully got Woody out of the house. And I am happy to say that while I was in the driveway scrubbing down the spark-guard-thingy, I thought I could hear a woodpecker over in the woods. That made me feel very happy, by the way. Before we were able to let him out I did put some grapes in the fireplace for him.

If someone knows woodpeckers, there was a slash of red on the back of his head, his wings were spotted, and the underside of his tail was bright yellow. Like I said earlier, he was just beautiful. And huge. I suspect that he was too big to actually fly straight up in as small a space as the chimney flue. Poor guy.

And poor me. Teach me to leave some ashes in the fireplace…do you know what beating wings do to ashes?