Almostgotit.com

Last year I totally forgot to send out Christmas cards, so I made valentines for my loved ones instead.  This year, I had the pleasure of attending a “Make Victorian Valentines” fundraiser — what fun!

Making Valentines

In addition to a refreshment table with coffee, hot chocolate, and lots of cookies, organizers set out lots of fun stuff to use in our valentines, much of it purchased from thrift-stores or at deep discount the year before. 

Our choices ranged from vintageladies’ handkerchiefs to doilies; from beads and sequins to bits of lace. I loved what everyone made, but secretly loved the children’s valentines the best– big, lopsided construction paper confections with childish hand writing, “I lovE you mommY”. 

Victorian Valentines

I thought it was a WONDERFUL idea, and how many of us get valentines anymore, much less home-made ones, glue and real handwriting and all?

Hand-made valentines

There’s still time.  Go get your scissors and paper and make someone you love an old-fashioned valentine, too!

Be mine

Christmas came early for the Almostgotit family this year!

Our best present was having our daughter survive, and relatively unscathed, being hit by a car as she was getting off a school bus a few weeks ago.

The second best was attending yesterday’s news conference, in which Knoxville police department chief Sterling Owen outlined a new enforcement patrol that will target motorists who fail to stop for school buses.

One of our new friends who is a fab reporter (Hi, Wendy!) emailed me later to ask what we had done to get that sort of attention from the KPD. I had to respond that I didn’t exactly know, but that I certainly couldn’t take all of the credit. It seems like it was a sort of “perfect storm” – Knoxville’s Safe Kids Coalition HAD already been talking this fall to the KPD and others about school bus safety. The problem of drivers ignoring school busses truly seems to have gotten worse, recently, too, as it is my understanding that other parents have been complaining about it too.

Also, the kid who got hit happened to survive to talk about it, thank God.  She also happened to be one who lived in a politically-savvy and educationally-empowered community containing such people as my writer-friend Jenny (Hi, Jenny!) who joined me in writing letters and contacting the mayor, members of city council, school prinicipals and the like. I wrote a letter to the local paper as well, which caught the attention of a local television station (which screened a nice interview with us) as well as the interest of the Safe Kids Coalition, who also contacted us (Hi, Susan!).

I am newly impressed by the power of persistence as well as the power of the pen. I used to believe more in those things than I do now, so it was a good re-affirmation in my old(er) age. All those things we tell our kids but secretly lose faith in ourselves?  Turns out they may be true:  Speak up! Keep trying! Go to the top!

And stay in school & read a lot of books so you’ll know how to write a compelling letter when you REALLY need to!

I am on my soapbox today, and today I am entitled.  

My daughter was hit by a car yesterday just as she was getting off the school bus.  May you never get a phone call like that at your house.

She is fine, thank God, but  I hope you will hear three things that this Mom has to say today:

(1) Drivers must yield (which means STOP!) when a school bus is also stopped.

(2) Children need to be very careful when they exit a school bus, even if the bus has employed its stop signs and flashing lights.  It’s important to keep re-enforcing these 1^st grade rules, because even an 8^th grader will be distracted by a bus driver’s frantically honking his horn at an oncoming driver.

(3) The degree of impairment caused by talking on a cell phone while driving, (even when using headsets) has been proven in several major studies to be the same as driving drunk.  Driving with cell phones is not yet illegal in our city as it is in more and more others, but we don’t need to wait for a law. It is VERY IMPORTANT to limit this very popular distraction. 

Thank you very much for listening. 

- Almostgotit

Nine days.  That’s how much longer we have as a family of four sharing the same house.  I’m not ready.

I still haven’t made him that giant flannel bulletin board I was planning, the one on which he could arrange little felt roads and cars and houses and trains to his heart’s content.  I still have a couple of toddler-sized overalls in my mending basket too (because, who ever actually MENDS, anyway?) 

And what about that cross-country train trip we wanted to do at some point?  We totally forgot to do that!  Never made it to Disney World, either.  I guess I’m not too broken up about Disney World, but Universal Studios might have been fun. 

Bear-bear is still wearing the pajamas I made him, though, and they still look new.  They should, as they were part of the matching set of pajamas I made for both of them just last Christmas, when my son was seven.   

This summer we’ve managed to teach him how to make a bank deposit, at least, and last year he finally learned how to do laundry.  Sometimes he even remembers to close the front door after he’s used it, too.

And today, he’s gone in to vote in the county elections.  They let seven year olds do that now? 

I guess I don’t know very much about anything, any more.