This is so amazingly cool, I am so excited about it! It’s called Scratch, and it comes from MIT! You can have your munchkins working on a program out of MIT - totally awesome! Well, yes, the fact that it is from MIT is really super-cool, but, the really amazing part about it is that children can write their own computer programs without learning a bunch of very complicated computer languages! I read about it in the back of one of my mom’s magazines, I think it was Discover or something similar. And I just couldn’t wait to get home and try it out! I am looking at the website right now, but, I haven’t signed up yet. But I just couldn’t wait to tell you about it! So everyone go get signed up, and we can meet back here later and share our experiences! Okay?

NOW GO READ A BOOK (or an MIT webpage!)

Just what does TMJ stand for, anyway? I have often wondered that myself. Well, it stands for tempromandibular joint. How is that for a mouthful? (Little funny unintended pun - I love it when that happens!) Anyway, I was reading about TMJ and all about TMJ treatment, and I was really surprised to find that a lot of the symptoms and problems associated with it, are things that I live with all the time! Some of the things I attributed to my weight problems, like the snoring and restricted airway. And some of the things I have always attributed to my genetics, like my teeth grinding and my migraines. Wouldn’t it be crazy if, through three generations of migraines and ground-down teeth, we’ve been calling it ‘just genetics’ when all this time it’s been TMJ disorder and we could’ve done something more about it? AGH!

Well, for this disorder, I would need to see a neuromuscular dentist, and on this dentist directory, I found one that is only about an hour away from me! I might just need to check into this! I was doing some more reading on TMJ/TMD at Wikipedia, and I found out that there are many different ways to approach treatment for such. I have always wanted to get some type of mouth guard for at night when I sleep, because of my teeth grinding. The last time I went to the dentist, he showed me how much damage I had done with my grinding and it was scary! But some people actually have caps put it to get their teeth properly aligned to help with their symptoms. I also read that braces can help, if your teeth are healthy enough. It’s all quite interesting and eye-opening and has really gotten me thinking!

GO READ A BOOK!

My daughter got a fishtank and some fish with her Christmas money. She really enjoys them. She and her father take care of them together. I don’t like the work that comes with being a pet fish owner, and I kept telling her that she couldn’t have any (mean mom) - so she went with her father and bought some with her own money, with his agreement to help her take care of them. There are a lot of helpful books for children on the subject, one of them is Taking Care of Your Goldfish (A Young Pet Owner’s Guide) by Helen Piers. My little bookworm has been reading all about how to make sure that her fish are healthy and happy. The biggest responsibility, I think, when it comes to fish ownership, is cleaning out the tank. I had a tank when I was younger, and I really didn’t enjoy that part. But Sammie and her father just get to work, like there’s nothing to it. They use my old fish tank as a transfer tank, while they are cleaning out the tank the fish actually live in. I think it is actually turning into a good father-daughter bonding experience. So she is learning responsibility, spending time with her father, and receiving the joy that comes from taking care of another one of God’s creatures. And to think I was holding her back from all of that!

GO READ A BOOK!

My bookworms, those offspring of mine, are so computer-savvy! It really just blows me away! A lot of the time, one of them is helping me figure out something! And being back here at my mom’s house, right across the street from my elementary school, makes me think of my first exposure and experience with IBM computers. I was in the sixth grade, and the school got a bunch of computers, and set up a computer lab. We were supposed to get to go in there once every couple of weeks, but, I think we kind of got stiffed on that a little bit. Well, those computers were in high demand - everyone was so excited about them! We all just thought they were the coolest things ever! I wonder, though, how much IBM memory they actually had. I’m sure it was like peanuts compared to what we all work with today! But we sure had fun working on them!

GO READ A BOOK!

I mentioned briefly in another post that I was going on a trip. Well, actually, I am already on that trip. The bookworms and I, and their father, have travelled ‘home’ to Texas to visit family and for Daddy Bookworm to do some remodeling work. I am so excited to be here, and I know it is going to be so hard to leave my family behind and go back to Alabama. I do love it in Alabama, but, I also love my family and it is so hard with all of us not living near each other. My mom came out to visit us first, in Alabama, and then, when she returned to Texas, she took my children with her. So Daddy Bookworm and I had a few days together alone. And you can bet that we did a lot of reading, because reading is good for you! Then Daddy Bookworm, Puppy (who weighs in at a svelte 100 pounds), and I packed up the minivan with groceries, our bags, everything Puppy needed, and also, tools for remodeling. It is already a tight squeeze, and on the way back we have to add three kids to the mix! Yikes! I let Mark pack up the van, because I knew he would be better at getting it all in there in a neat and organized way. And I didn’t want to mess with any of his work stuff. The only thing that I really worried about with giving him the reins on this was my makeup stuff. I wondered if I should pack it in some special way so that none of the powders or Makeup Mirrors
would get broken. I think it will be even worse on the way home, with the kids and all of their stuff having to fit in there. Maybe I will put my makeup bag in my purse and just keep it with me. And I sure hope we don’t have to strap any bookworms to the roof!

GO READ A BOOK!

My family and I love to hike and explore mountains. Driving through them is fun, hiking them is awesome, and my brother loves to take motorcycle rides through them. And we were all checking out the book, Hiking the Blue Ridge Mountains by Randy Johnson the other day. Being from the Rocky Mountain area, none of us have ever hiked or explored the Appalachians. We’ve read lots of books about them, though, and this one was really great. It had a ton of topographical maps in it, and you could tell the author had a lot of love and respect for the area and the people that live there. It all sounds so amazing and so beautiful, it makes me want to look into blue ridge real estate and actually consider talking everyone into a family migration!

GO READ A BOOK!

My oldest son is a total reincarnation of Alex P. Keaton, minus the suits. He is money obssessed! If you remember, in this post, I talked about helping him with his MySpace page. Well, I noticed that he used “Money makes the world go around” for his tag line! And I keep teasing him about not wearing suits, but he just doesn’t get it. He really despises dress-up clothes, but, I explain to him that if he is going to be “Big Money”, he is going to have to dress like “Big Money”! I need to find him some old episodes of Family Ties, just so that he can see what I am talking about when I am constantly calling him Alex! (And maybe so that I can revisit my old crush!) For now, he just relates very strongly to Mr. Crabs on Sponge Bob, who is also highly money-obssessed! I found a book that would be really great for him, though, and would use his obssession for good! It is called, Snap-Together: Coin Sorter by Frank M. Young. This book not only teaches physics, in how the coin sorter
uses centripetal force to sort the coins, but, also it teaches all sorts of things to do with money! It talks about bartering, the World Bank, hidden symbols and images on today’s bills and coins and even includes a 50 states quarters folder, for collecting those coveted state quarters!

GO READ A BOOK!

Ok, well, we all know what happens to our adult brains as we get busy in our adult lives. Parts of them get rusty. And some parts of them get really rusty! I don’t know, but, maybe if you were a scientist, say - a nuclear physicist, you’d still be sharp as a tack! But perhaps your geography skills would falter, or your grasp of the literary arts would dwindle. Well, in any case, our lives get busy, and we just don’t have time to fill our brains up with all of that knowledge we were so begrudgingly forced to ingest in our schooling days. And now we long for it! Funny how that works, eh?

Well, my two new books are going to oil up my brain and refill it with all sorts of groovy knowledge! Totally cool!

The first one is called ‘Isms & ‘Ologies - The 453 Basic Tenets You’ve Only Pretended to Understand by Arthur Goldwag. You know how it is - you’re in a gathering and people start talking about some topic of which you know little, and you feign understanding. Ugh - I hate that. The back of the book says, “It’s time to stop nodding knowingly while inside you feel like a jerk.” Oh boy, can I relate to that! The author says, “‘Isms and ‘ologies can serve as invaluable intellectual and social shorthand.” Totally awesome - I can’t dive into this book fast enough!

The second book is rather cool, because, as a person in recovery - I adore daily meditation books. I have generally only seen these books as spiritual, religious, or self-help in nature. Well, this is self-help - just of a different form. It is self-help of the intellectual variety. It is called, The Intellectual Devotional - Revive Your Mind, Complete Your Education, and Roam Confidently with the Cultured Class and it was compiled by David S. Kidder and Noah D. Oppenheim. The book travels from Monday through Sunday for 365 days and each day of the week a different field of knowledge is discussed. They are as follows … Mon-History, Tues-Literature, Wed-Visual Arts, Thurs-Science, Fri-Music, Sat-Philosophy, and Sun-Religion. So you are getting ‘bite-sized bits’, nothing that is too hard to swallow or digest, and you are expanding your intellectual horizons. Now doesn’t that sound like fun? Today I read about the origins of the alphabet - and it was very interesting. The letter ‘B’ actually comes from the ancient Egyptian character for the word ‘house’. I bet you didn’t know that, did you? Neither did I …until this morning!

GO READ A BOOK!

I am so excited - I got two of the coolest books in the mail from my book club. I actually hadn’t ordered them, but, I had forgotten to turn in the ‘I don’t want any books this month’ paper - so there they were in my mailbox. And I don’t recall if I had chosen categories with my membership or not, but, I love these books they sent me! I opened the package, without knowing what the books were, because, I was hoping they were novels, because I was going on a trip back home to Texas and thought it might be nice to have a couple of novels with me. Well, they weren’t novels - but, they are totally awesome books!!

I promised my son that I would help him with his MySpace template, so I’ve got to go do that, but, then I’ll come back and tell you all about my new books!

GO READ A BOOK!