It’s Bad Habit Friday!

Welcome to the first installment of Bad Habit Friday. This is a section where I’m hoping to self-flagellate and embarass myself into substantive behavioral change. After all, shame does a body good.

My name is Marge, and I’m a volunteer-aholic.

More on math

Here’s today’s follow-up story in the R-J on the math test. More interesting than the article are the comments below it. I love how “Proud Parent” has a typo. If you can’t use grammar correctly in your rant about teaching, I have little faith that his/her “homework help” isn’t doing more harm than good. I appreciated the feedback from “Richard” who is apparently a math teacher in the district. His comment illustrates the nearly insurmountable challenge we put our teachers through, expecting them to succeed.

Vegas kids hate math.

I hate math. I think nearly all kids hate math.

Today’s Las Vegas Review Journal posted a story on the more-than-dismal pass rates of our local high school students on final exams for math classes. I skimmed through it and thought, “How could our kids be THAT bad?”

I’m no rocket scientist. Hell, I was a liberal arts major partly because it was a program that required the least amount of math classes. But jiminy christmas – 91 percent of Clark County high school students failed their Algebra I final exam last semester?

Going Commando

Or: How Boo nearly got kicked out of Catholic School before her first day of Pre-K

Okay, this isn’t the same commando that I was talking about, but the tag line’s the same (“Somewhere, somehow, someone’s going to pay.”)

This is one of those stories that made me want to enter the blogosphere again. It was too good not to share. Here goes.

Wednesday was a crazy morning. Homer usually takes Boo and Doodle to day care and I pick up. Homer had to be to work early, so I had morning duty. I got Boo up, asked her to get herself dressed while I took care of her brother. (She’s 4 and can usually do a decent job when she’s motivated). I did her hair. We loaded up. Off we go.

Fast forward to 2:30 p.m. I had rushed from the office across town (which in Vegas is no easy feat thanks to suburban spraul and crappy transportation planning) to pick the girl from daycare to take her to meet her Pre-K teacher at the Catholic School she’ll be attending next fall. Nothing serious – just a meet and greet to show her where she’ll be going, reduce first-day jitters, have the teacher download the ins and outs of the curriculum so we don’t screw her up over the summer by teaching her a bunch of stuff the wrong way, etc.

Anyway, when I get to daycare, I find that she’s still asleep and has changed from the dress she started the day with into her tinkerbell sweatsuit that we keep as her “backup outfit.” I thought nothing of it. Boo’s a rough and tumble girl. She loves water and has my sense of grace and poise. Besides, I had packed an extra dress and a comb to make sure she was clean and well groomed for her appointment.

I sweep her up and haul her out to the car to get her changed. Off comes the jacket. Hmmm. No t-shirt? Crap. Bad mommy for not packing one in her bag.

Oh well. Unzip. Pull it off. Pull dress over head. Remove shoes. Untie sweatpant bow. Pull down pants. HOLY CANNOLLI! The girl’s got no underwear.

Yes, my daughter is apparently Britney Spears. I sent her to school in A DRESS without underwear. BAD MOMMY!

We rushed home, grabbed undies and got to the school. We were late, but it had to be done.

This one gets filed away with the stories that we’ll tell at her sixteenth birthday party, her graduation, her wedding, you name it.

Lesson learned: Never assume your kid’s got his/her junk in his/her trunks.

Eating on the cheap

Now Vegas used to be notorious for cheap eats. Shrimp cocktails, hot dogs, 99-cent breakfasts from 11 p.m. to 4 a.m. (one of my favorites during college) – you name it, you could get it any time and probably for less than it cost to make it. Those were glorious times.

Now Vegas has become a food mecca. Don’t get me wrong. My taste buds have matured and I would much prefer to dine on crispy sea bass with delicate spices at Restaurant Guy Savoy. However the MWAP lifestyle doesn’t afford many opportunities (if at all) to enjoy such luxuries. In fact, Homer and my definition of a “fancy date night” consists of going to a restaurant that doesn’t have crayons.

We haven’t had too many of those. Finances are craptacular. MM’s been unable to watch the kids and we’ve had to pull in our second string of babysitters (which usually means additional costs). We’ve all but given up.

Now there’s hope. The New York Times ran a story about how you can, with some creativity and culinary skill, actually eat passably from your local 99-cent store. Granted the author is in NYC and I have no great designs that any Vegas location will have anything resembling gourmet, but it could be an interesting experiment. I’m going to shop for a meal for this weekend. I’ll let you know how it comes out. If you’re lucky, they’ll be pictures.