Shameless Attempt to Win Very Cool Giveaway

I know, I know....using my blog to let someone advertise so I have a chance to win an iPad Mini.

Selling out to commercialism?

You bet.

Sacrificing Pride and Integrity just so I spend a little less on gadgets for the Gadget Needy family?

Right on.

Doing everything I swore at 21 I'd never do?

Guilty as charged.

Also, I sooooo don't care.  See that's one of the perks of growing up I guess, change and evolution.  Yes, I can make some changes and compromise and realize that I'm not selling ownership of my soul, at least not outright. I have a voice here on my little blog and a few people listen. 

So here goes.
http://www.theimum.com/

http://www.theimum.com/2012/11/the-imums-give-away-12-ipad-minis-in-mini-madness-campaign/

Here is a link to their giveaway of Ipad minis.  The counselor at my kids school had this website on a list of places to check out information about kids and IT.  Tessi's recent diagnosis of Dyslexia has opened up another tunnel for us to find the light at the end of - so I have been in need of information on help to get for her.  TheImum.com is for parents looking for information on tech, gadgets,apps, anything of that ilk and how it can be useful for kids.  Only when these gals write about it they speak normal parent language, not hard-core geek.  Very helpful to use mere mortals who play on computers but don't give a flying rats tush how to program them.

Because they have kids and they know that kids are expensive they have partnered up with many, many sponsers and are offering the Giveaway.  So please, check them out.  If you have kids and they like technology that's further advanced than the pencil and the abacus (I'm not being disrespectful, they are both fine objects) then you need this site to help you figure out what's going on.

Enjoy!

Decisions, Decisions

  I took the girls to a dentist appointment after school. There I learned that I had rescheduled the appointment and we were 9 weeks early. Obviously I felt thrilled about this and drove home in a foul mood. Getting all 3 situated at the table to do their homework, I threatened all with slow painful extremity extractions if anyone ate Halloween candy, fought, cried or whinned while I went upstairs to take a shower to soak my head.  Sometimes all I have left is to wash anyway the anger, annoyance and general pissiness I feel when I stuff up my job. I've had quite a few stuff ups recently and while the co-owner swears he is not looking to restructure the organization, no matter how much I plead, I've been feeling really down lately and needed to quickly alter my mood.

While in the shower I opened the window so I could listen outside to downstairs for indications of anarchy and chaos. Some quite mutterings of "Kill you while you sleep" and "I'll tell everyone at school who you're in love with" floated up to my ears. This is a good thing. As anyone with a kid old enough to crawl will tell you, silence is never to be greeted cheerfully. Silence means they are actively trying to keep quiet so they can cover somethg bad up.  You drop and run when its quiet. The other end of the spectrum is total blood letting and keening, that's not good either.  It's painful on the ears, a bugger to clean up and the neighbors can get peckish.

This playful preamble to war is exactly what I need to hear to know that I still have 10 minutes until First Blood is drawn; plenty of time to do a hair treatment!

When the shower ended I was reminded again of the power of Mother Nature though.  I turned off the water and reached down and picked up my towel. I am not legally blind but I'm close. My vision is 20/400. Well in the US it is, I have no idea what the measurements are in Australia- damn metric system. Hold your hand up in front of your face and pull back about 6 inches (Aussies, use the many free conversion apps available to see what that is in centimeters) at about 6 inches things get fuzzy and beyond that its all blurry shapes. 

However I can see well enough in my light-colored tile bathroom when a black, fuzzy shape the size of a sausage roll goes scurrying across the floor and out the door into my bedroom.

I find that in situations like this while screaming doesn't help per say, it can be cathartic. If nothing else I exercised my lungs fairly nicely. When I stopped screaming and the sobbing subsided a bit I was able to crawl out of the tub and find my glasses and put them on. Ironically the cat chose that time to saunter in and demand supper. He and I seemed to have a failure to communicate as my stuttering, hiccuping, sign language gestures pointing him to my room didn't convey the proper message.  He took it to mean,"Crazy broad isn't pouring the kibble now, I should probably groom something" Ever eager to please, Monty began beautifying himself.  My hero.

I moved a few things around and made a half-assed attempt to find the creature...lizard, mouse, rat, land shark, whatever the Hell it is.  I couldn't see it. So as the only responsible adult in the house I did the only socially acceptable thing.

I went downstairs, found Teddy and made him go look for it. Sure some of you do-gooders might balk at me sending in a kid to collect something that scares the Hell outta me. You might even be a bit judge mental and say that I should handle it on my own, like an adult.

Whatever.

I sent my first born up the stairs and turned my back on the whole mess. I give him credit, he didn't flinch. Of course by this time he'd have walked across broken glass surrounded by all the Year 6 girls screaming One Direction songs in order to get away from his sisters. Yes, I took advantage of that. Judge all you want. I'll sleep just fine. Or at least I would have if another, fundamentally more problematic.

He didn't find anything. No creature at all. This creates a real difficult situation for me.

My dilemma isn't that he couldn't find it.  I can just sleep on the couch tonight until I'm sure the little bugger is gone, no problem.  No, my problem is figuring out whether or not to tell the girls about my intruder.  If I do, Connor will become hysterical and will be terrified that whatever is up there will get her.  She will fixate on the creature not being located.We are looking at least 3 or 4 nights straight of her waking up sobbing, which will slowly dissapate over the next few weeks. No one is going to be sleeping well for a very long time.

On the other hand...she will never set foot in my room again and my 6 am "Just wanted to say hi to the cat" wake up calls will stop. I will be able to take a shower without one of them barging in to see what I'm doing that's taking so long. I can go into hiding on the weekends with my iPad and not be interrupted every 30 minutes with," I miss you Mommy, I haven't seen you in weeks," My bedroom will become my own sacred DMZ.

As God as my witness I don't know what to do.