Lately, 26 month old C has taken to exclaiming randomly, and with great gusto, “I have an idea!!!!”
Unfortunately, and despite our best efforts, none of us has had any luck getting her to elaborate beyond that…
Monthly Archives: September 2009
Social Media + Amber Alert: help find baby taken in violent kidnapping
An Amber Alert has just been issued in Tennessee and across the region after the violent kidnapping of a Nashville newborn.
The details are particularly disturbing. A woman posing as an immigration official came to a Hispanic woman’s home and demanded that she hand over her baby. When the new mother refused, the kidnapper stabbed her at least eight times and disappeared with the baby. You can find identifying information and more details by visiting the Amber Alert website, and I am sure there will be Nashville-area reporting and blogging within the hour that will offer more info that might help find this baby.
CASE FACTS:
A TN Statewide AMBER Alert has been activated by the Metropolitan Nashville Police Department for 4 day old Yair Anthony Carrillo. He is a Hispanic Male with black hair and brown eyes he is wearing a blue and white striped onsie.
The child was taken by a white female who was posing as an immigration worker. She had come to the residence and demanded the mother give her the baby. When the mother refused to comply she stabbed the mother approximately 8 times. The subject is approximately 30 years of age and 5’4” tall and is heavy set. She has blonde hair and it is pulled back into a pony tail. She is wearing a black blouse and blue jeans. The female was driving a black 4 door sedan that was described as looking like a police car.
If you have seen the suspect, vehicle or child, please contact the Metropolitan Nashville Police Department at 615-862-8600 or TBI at 1-800-TBI-FIND.
Please spread the word about the Amber Alert on your own blog, Facebook page, Twitter feed, etc. Social media should be playing a bigger and bigger role in the already proven effectiveness of the Amber Alert system, and we all have a role to play in making that happen.
-Katie
Hubris gets a much-needed takedown
ME (rather dramatically explaining my urgent need to get better organized and improve my project planning/documentation processes in light of exploding workload from -YaY!- lots of new agency business): “If I suddenly dropped dead tomorrow, I’m afraid no one would know where to pick up my projects where I left off ,or figure what needs to be done next with the stuff I am working on !!!”
LONG PAUSE as I await expected empathetic response to my obviously important declaration…..
Wise elder statesman co-worker, calmly and matter of factly: “Katie, you would be DEAD. This would no longer be your problem. And in case no one has ever explained this to you, you can no longer be a CONTROL FREAK after death.“
(Have I mentioned that I love, absolutely love this particular coworker?)
First fall weather makes me dream of Seventeen Magazine’s 1983 Back to School Issue
Tonight feels like fall, and when I was a teenager – between the ages of about 13 and 17 – that first hint of fall weather meant only one thing: the arrival of the much-anticipated Seventeen Magazine Back to School Issue. The magazine, which would land in our rural Tennessee mailbox each September, was a wondrous thing that represented all the yet-to-be-revealed, but undoubtedly exciting possibilities for my life ahead.
This particular issue of that magazine during the 1980s was as ponderously and gloriously heavy as a giant, glossy phonebook. Its heft came from the enormous ad revenue that packed its pages, an abundance of riches that the downsized print media industry can only dream of today. But those were the glory days of magazine advertising, with Guess, Fiorucci, Esprit & Bennetton all vying for my adolescent attention.
My sister and I would linger longingly over every square inch of every page of the magazine as soon as it arrived, savoring each fashion-forward image. We generally spent the most time with the full-page Ralph Lauren ads, with their P.G.-Wodehouse-meets-Bret-Easton-Ellis tableaux of bored-looking 20-somethings (so 80s fabulous). Some of these Lauren ads ended up adorning my bedroom walls.
The Laura Ashley ad pages somehow smelled exactly like the actual Laura Ashley Shoppe -surely it had an extra “e” on the end? – in Nashville. I’d love to figure out what marketing magic Laura Ashley’s American advertising agency employed in the 80s. It was some kind of masterfully persuasive sleight of hand (subliminal, maybe?) that somehow managed to convince an entire generation of 15 year old girls that they really did want to dress exactly like explosively floral tea cozies or alternatively, just like Victorian toddlers removed temporarily from the nursery to enjoy a gentle stroll around the garden with Nanny.
I loved, loved, loved my bright red cotton, Laura Ashley dropwaist middie sailor dress, which I honest-to-God wore in public with a straw boater hat, complete with grosgrain ribbon flapping behind. All I needed to complete the look would have been an absurdly oversized lollipop (and had the Laura Ashley advertisement in the pages of Seventeen Magazine suggested that such a thing would be the perfect complement to my boldly ambitious attempt at Sloane Ranger chic, I would have happily carried giant candy on a stick wherever I went.)
Today, fall means something else to me: cold weather coming soon (hate it), Christmas shopping to plan (and afford), less daylight to get things done… But I do sometimes enjoy remembering back to a time when that first cool day was all it took to open me up to the gorgeously photographed possibility that corduroy knickers – perhaps paired with argyle socks and suede oxford saddle shoes from Bass – could make all my dreams come true.
The school sick day dilemma: should they stay or should they go?
From my latest Babble blog post:
As a result of my parents’ draconian position on missing school for illness, I rather predictably veered strongly in the opposite direction when my eldest started kindergarten. My lax sick day policy with my own kids was certainly reactionary, but it was also based on my carefully considered views regarding some of the fundamental problems with how our school system is organized. I felt (and still do feel) that American children spend too many hours each week in the classroom, and too many hours doing homework, and that they do not get enough time to play or to explore what they do learn in school on their own, outside of class.
H, J and E – all 3 legitimately sick at home with a virus a few years ago, all on the same day. They all passed out on top of each other on the futon, like a bunch of sleepy puppies. Note that E is wearing giant gloves. He swore they made him feel better, so he wore them until he was well.
So for many years – and this was possible mainly because I worked from home almost exclusively during that period – I had no problem with letting my three older kids miss school for even the mildest expression of unwellness, or even when I simply felt that one of them needed a mental health day. And like so many parenting missteps I’ve made along the way (and from which I like to think I have learned, and continue to learn) I can only say now that, well, it seemed like a good idea at the time!
READ THE WHOLE THING OVER AT BABBLE.
My birthday: what I’ve learned
So today, I am 42 years old. And that’s old enough to start inflicting “what I’ve learned” blog posts on all of you. So here goes. Here’s what I have to share with you after exactly 42 years on the planet – these are the fundamentals, as far as I’m concerned. Take what you like and leave the rest.
(And of course, let me know your own hard-earned rules for life.)
KAG’s Rules For Living
-Don’t be afraid to throw a lot of spaghetti at the wall.
-Bass players are for fun. Trombone (or clarinet) players are for life.
-Never eat pizza off the floor.
-Many – or maybe even most – worries and anxieties can be put to rest by asking yourself one simple question: “what’s the worst that could happen?”
-Your children really won’t sleep with you forever. Enjoy it now. Breathe in the smell of their hair. Pat their backs. Sing them to sleep. Repeat.
-The whole “birth experience” thing is kind of overrated.
-When you are 25 years old, and deciding what career to pursue, don’t leave income potential out of the equation. Money stress is a real bummer.
-Be nice.
-Endeavor to avoid inviting drama.
-Gutcheck before hitting “send.” Let your sister look at it, too.
-Never drink tequila, eat oreos and do live radio all at the same time.
-Lower your head modestly in passing and you will harvest bananas.
-Own your own stuff.
-Courage matters… a lot.
-Gossip is best confined to your sister and Dr Neighbor. That’s your gossip safe zone. Don’t venture outside the safe zone. Bad things happen there.
-If you get a do-over, don’t do the same thing over.
-They can’t eat you.
-Send thank you notes.
-If anyone ever refers to you as his “soulmate,” consider yourself warned.
-Go with the bagless, upright vaccuum.
-It’s just stuff.
-If a relationship takes work or struggle in the first six months, it isn’t going to work out.
-Finding the ongoing balance between necessary routine and Big Life is the key to everything. Seriously, that’s the whole thing.
-If you string lights up on your front porch, you will never be alone (unless you want to be).
-Wearing cute lingerie, even if no one sees it but you, makes a bad day better. Similarly, well-groomed eyebrows mask a multitude of other lapses.
-Feminism matters. Raise your daughters to stand up and speak out for their sisters.
-Children should be bored sometimes. It’s good for them.
-It’s all fun and games, ’til someone loses an eye.
Robert Frost’s poem about working motherhood
Last night E had to memorize a poem for school, and he pulled it up on my laptop to print it out. So this morning, when I sat down to work, this Robert Frost poem was still there, on my screen, and I was amazed to see how beautifully it describes the juggle that makes up my days during this phase of my life. I thought you might see some of your own life captured in the poem, too. So I’m sharing it with you.
THE ARMFUL
Robert Frost
For every parcel I stoop down to seize
I lose some other off my arms and knees,
And the whole pile is slipping, bottles, buns,
Extremes too hard to comprehend at. once
Yet nothing I should care to leave behind.
With all I have to hold with~ hand and mind
And heart, if need be, I will do my best.
To keep their building balanced at my breast.
I crouch down to prevent them as they fall;
Then sit down in the middle of them all.
I had to drop the armful in the road
And try to stack them in a better load.
“The Opt-Out Revolution” has become “The Please Let Me Opt Back In” Recession
I don’t know if you saw yesterday’s NYT story about well-educated women (lawyers, bankers), “opting back in” to the world of paid work after years at home, but that’s what I’m blogging about (with just the merest hint of “I Told You So”) over at Babble today.