Apparently It Pays off to Set a Goal

It looks like setting a goal pays off.  My great family and friends have been showering me with well wishes on my new "major lifestyle change" (as one friend put it.)  My birthday netted Vegan cookbooks, snacks, a sprouter and a magazine subscription to keep me on track.  No one has better friends than I do--except probably you.

Which brings me to the important stuff.  Set the goal and tell everyone you know about it.  You will get truckloads of encouragement from the people around you.  We always assume that if we tell someone that we plan to exercise everyday for a year, or finish the book we've been writing since High School, or become a vegan that we'll be dubbed the "crazy poached spinach lady," and laughed out of town.  But it's not true.  I promise it's not.  Your real friends want you to succeed and you'll be pleasantly surprised at how many real friends you have once you open your mouth and share your dreams.  Just do it.

DIY Halloween Costumes

I'm using my family and friends to demonstrate that the best costumes are often the cheapest. They just require a little imagination and, to keep them as inexpensive as possible, be on the lookout year round for things you can pick up for pennies at garage sales that could be a costume contest winner once you put your spin on it.

FLOWER POT: So clever. She put a plastic cup on her head, poked a hole in the bottom for the flowers, then wrapped her ponytail around the cup. Add a cardboard flowerpot to hang around your neck and you have a clever costume that took more time than money.

RED NECK: This would be an easy costume to pickup at a garage sale. Old hunting gear and a mangled wig. So easy.

VIKINGS: These take a little crafting skill, but were pulled together using fake fur fabric, cardboard and aluminum foil (gotta love aluminum foil).

MALIFICENT: This is where found items meet store bought. She purchased the dress at a thrift store. It was a prom dress. The head dress was a sewing miracle (the talent part) to create an amazing costume for $30. The best part? She plans on selling the head dress on ebay. My bet is that she'll be ahead money in the end.

I Had No Idea My Child Was This Exceptional

I about had a heart attack when I received a notice in my son’s backpack declaring that, because he tested so highly on his CRT’s (not sure what that stands for exactly), he is eligible for the Gifted and Exceptional Student Program.  Bear in mind that this notice was marked “Third and Final Notification”, which means that my son’s backpack ate the last two notices, and that the paper was wrapped around a dirty sock that he was carrying around in his bag.

This is the same child that got worked up about doing a Science Fair project last year.  He was so excited that I honestly believed that some fabulous teacher had finally sparked an interest where one didn’t exist previously, and so I rushed out and bought stick on letters, poster-board and other stuff totaling $35 earmarked for “higher education.”  We worked on the project for a couple of nights before my husband casually asked his son why he was so excited about doing the Science Fair this year.  Our son beamed from ear to ear and said, “Because my teacher promised us a 2-litre bottle of any soda we want if we enter the Science Fair.”  My husband laughed and said, “I’ll buy you any soda you want, you don’t need your teacher to buy it for you.”  Needless to say, we didn’t enter a project that year because his interest evaporated faster than a bottle of Root-beer.

But if the school thinks he’s exceptional, then who am I to disagree?  The questionnaire simply asked me to site specific examples of times when my son showed an unusual affinity or enthusiasm for an academic project that was unusual for his age.  It gave examples such as, “has your child gotten so involved with a project that he gives up other pleasures in order to work on it?”  Unless you count the time that he sat through the entire Lord of the Rings Trilogy without so much as a bathroom break, I couldn’t think of an example.  As a matter of a fact, I couldn’t come up with any examples for any of the questions asked.  The bottom line is that my kid isn’t gifted.  He’s just a typical kid with a strong competitive streak.  If you turn it into a competition, then he wants to win—and tests are just competitions.

I thought about lying to the school.   I daydreamed about hanging out with the other football moms and casually mentioning a few thousand times that, not only did my son just make that amazing tackle, but he’s also an exceptionally gifted student.  I’ve never had anything to brag about in the circle of moms before.  They brag and I’m generally left to tell some ridiculous story about how I ended up in the emergency room after my brilliant offspring engaged in a “rock fight” and had to have $695 worth of stitches.  

I almost did it.  I almost made up a few phenomenal stories, but I just couldn’t do it.  We are boringly normal.  I don’t need CRT tests to tell me that.