Weekend Wrap-Up

So it's official: I've been elected the Secretary for the PTA Board at Riley's school. I seriously never thought I'd join the PTA. My sister's already making fun of me because I'm planning on going to the PTA Convention in a couple of months - she says I never do anything half-way, which is probably true. But I'm hoping to get into the more political seminars about what's happening in Sacramento and Washington, and my veteran readers know that education has always been one of my passion topics so it seems a good fit for me.

Sylvia's doing slightly better. They had therapy this week, and we'll probably be making another appointment for Sylvia and I to meet with the therapist together.

I also had the parent-teacher conference at Riley's school this week. She's doing much better - and actually passing PE now :) I'm having a bit of my old frustration with the system as the teacher explained that Riley's writing issues all sound like things which could be helped with an outline, which they discourage for testing because of the timing. The way I see it, it's worth the 5 minutes to put together an outline to keep from straying from your topic (and as evidenced by my writing, which doesn't follow an outline). So I get to teach her.

I'm toying with the idea of giving the girls their own space to blog in order to make writing fun for them, but not quite ready for them to join us here in the blogosphere. Instead, there's an app on Facebook which I may have them use, but I haven't discussed it with the girls yet. That was on my mental to-do list for yesterday, but there were school projects galore for both of them to work on yesterday for the upcoming Open Houses next week.

Yet one last school note: Riley got an award on Thursday for "Most Improved." We're trying to motivate her to go for Honor Roll next trimester.



Oh, and Riley's also joined the Boys & Girls Club soccer team - a soccer mom AND PTA? Some days, I just don't know who I am anymore!

I also was following the Jon Stewart/Jim Cramer smackdown on The Daily Show all week. I really wasn't sure what to expect from their Thursday night face-off, but I was not disappointed. It's not very funny, but I love the points that Stewart brought up - most particularly, the lack of investigative journalism not only from CNBC, but from most finance journalists.

It's worth the half-hour to watch this if you haven't seen it yet.

There's a couple of things that gall me about the feedback. First of all, I'm astounded by the amount of commenters that claim that Stewart is all about protecting Obama. Obama's name comes up once, maybe, in the un-cut version, but Stewart was talking mostly about Wall Street and finance journalism. It didn't seem to be a partisan thing to me.

The other thing that bothered me was all the talking heads on This Week w/ George claimed that Cramer should never have been taken seriously from anyone - really? Then why is he not on Comedy Central instead of CNBC, which is supposed to be a serious finance news network? As Stewart said, at least he sells his show as snake oil. I did agree with the talking head that mentioned that Stewart's greatest moment was when he said that we should recognize that the wealth in this country should be based on work.

I had a comedy of errors myself this morning. I dropped the girls off to go bike-riding with my parents and went grocery shopping...only to find while in line to check out that I had forgotten my wallet. They were very nice about it, but I was SO mortified!

After I drove home, got the wallet, paid and loaded the groceries, I went to get gas. Slid my card in, went to pump, and couldn't get the pump out. It was padlocked. The gas station was closed. Okay, maybe this happens in other parts of the country, but I've never noticed any gas station closed on a Sunday before!

In the end, got my groceries, got my gas, and decided I needed another dose of my West Wing reruns.

Last night, I watched Changeling. Any parent will be absolutely horrified to watch, but most especially mothers, as apparently, so many people decided it was okay to decide that women are too hysterical to know their own children! I couldn't sit still for most of the movie because it was so disturbing, but it was very well done.

I also watched ER this week, which I haven't watched in years. It was great to see so many of my old favorites back on. (Of course, this coming from the woman who can't get enough of West Wing.)

And I made a decision. I'm giving up my health club membership. I know, I know, I remember what I said, but it's just not working out for me. They don't offer the classes I want at a time that I can go (because of the girls), and the weight training, while it was good, simply wasn't enough for me to justify the cost. I was spending more time feeling guilty for not going, and I've decided that I have enough real worries and concerns to forgive myself this digression.

Oh, and I lunched with Jessica Gottlieb on Friday! I'd met her once before, but this time, it was like greeting an old friend. She made me laugh often, and we talked about anything and everything. I hope to be enjoying her company as much as I possibly can in the future.

And now the girls are back from their adventure in Chinatown. Hope you all had a great weekend!