26th Annual Bulwer-Lytton contest winners

“Theirs was a New York love, a checkered taxi ride burning rubber, and like the city their passion was open 24/7, steam rising from their bodies like slick streets exhaling warm, moist, white breath through manhole covers stamped ‘Forged by DeLaney Bros., Piscataway, N.J.’”

“‘Toads of glory, slugs of joy,’ sang Groin the dwarf as he trotted jovially down the path before a great dragon ate him because the author knew that this story was a train wreck after he typed the first few words.”

“Like a mechanic who forgets to wipe his hands on a shop rag and then goes home, hugs his wife, and gets a grease stain on her favorite sweater — love touches you, and marks you forever.”

'Hmm...' thought Abigail as she gazed languidly from the veranda past the bright white patio to the cerulean sea beyond, where dolphins played and seagulls sang, where splashing surf sounded like the tintinnabulation of a thousand tiny bells, where great gray whales bellowed and the sunlight sparkled off the myriad of sequins on the flyfish's bow ties, 'time to get my meds checked.'"

Leopold looked up at the arrow piercing the skin of the dirigible with a sort of wondrous dismay—the wheezy shriek was just the sort of sound he always imagined a baby moose being beaten with a pair of accordions might make."

"Joanne watched her fellow passengers—a wizened man reading about alchemy; an oversized bearded man-child; a haunted, bespectacled young man with a scar; and a gaggle of private school children who chatted ceaselessly about Latin and flying around the hockey pitch and the two-faced teacher who they thought was a witch—there was a story here, she decided."

"Bryson the Plainsman seldom spoke a discouraging word but he did when he filed for divorce after discovering his dear and an interloper played."

"Special agent Mark Park's strong chin and firm mouth showed that he was a man to be reckoned with, while his twinkling blue eyes revealed surprising depths of kindness and humor, the scar on his cheek a past filled with violence and danger, and his left ear a fondness for M&Ms, but only the red ones."

A lovely article I found about what your child (and you) should know

What should a 4 year old know?
1. She should know that she is loved wholly and unconditionally, all of the time.

2. He should know that he is safe and he should know how to keep himself safe in public, with others, and in varied situations. He should know that he can trust his instincts about people and that he never has to do something that doesn't feel right, no matter who is asking. He should know his personal rights and that his family will back them up.

3. She should know how to laugh, act silly, be goofy and use her imagination. She should know that it is always okay to paint the sky orange and give cats 6 legs.

4. He should know his own interests and be encouraged to follow them. If he could care less about learning his numbers, his parents should realize he'll learn them accidentally soon enough and let him immerse himself instead in rocket ships, drawing, dinosaurs or playing in the mud.

5. She should know that the world is magical and that so is she. She should know that she's wonderful, brilliant, creative, compassionate and marvelous. She should know that it's just as worthy to spend the day outside making daisy chains, mud pies and fairy houses as it is to practice phonics. Scratch that-- way more worthy.

But more important, here's what parents need to know.

1. That every child learns to walk, talk, read and do algebra at his own pace and that it will have no bearing on how well he walks, talks, reads or does algebra.

2. That the single biggest predictor of high academic achievement and high ACT scores is reading to children. Not flash cards, not workbooks, not fancy preschools, not blinking toys or computers, but mom or dad taking the time every day or night (or both!) to sit and read them wonderful books.

3. That being the smartest or most accomplished kid in class has never had any bearing on being the happiest. We are so caught up in trying to give our children "advantages" that we're giving them lives as multi-tasked and stressful as ours. One of the biggest advantages we can give our children is a simple, carefree childhood.

4. That our children deserve to be surrounded by books, nature, art supplies and the freedom to explore them. Most of us could get rid of 90% of our children's toys and they wouldn't be missed, but some things are important-- building toys like legos and blocks, creative toys like all types of art materials (good stuff), musical instruments (real ones and multicultural ones), dress up clothes and books, books, books. (Incidentally, much of this can be picked up quite cheaply at thrift shops.) They need to have the freedom to explore with these things too-- to play with scoops of dried beans in the high chair (supervised, of course), to knead bread and make messes, to use paint and play dough and glitter at the kitchen table while we make supper even though it gets everywhere, to have a spot in the yard where it's absolutely fine to dig up all the grass and make a mud pit.

5. That our children need more of us. We have become so good at saying that we need to take care of ourselves that some of us have used it as an excuse to have the rest of the world take care of our kids. Yes, we all need undisturbed baths, time with friends, sanity breaks and an occasional life outside of parenthood. But we live in a time when parenting magazines recommend trying to commit to 10 minutes a day with each child and scheduling one Saturday a month as family day. That's not okay! Our children don't need Nintendos, computers, after school activities, ballet lessons, play groups and soccer practice nearly as much as they need US.

They need fathers who sit and listen to their days, mothers who join in and make crafts with them, parents who take the time to read them stories and act like idiots with them. They need us to take walks with them and not mind the .1 MPH pace of a toddler on a spring night. They deserve to help us make supper even though it takes twice as long and makes it twice as much work. They deserve to know that they're a priority for us and that we truly love to be with them.

I love this idea and I'd like to try it out one day...

Knee Play 4
Social Studies
I thought that if I ate the food of the area I was visiting
That I might assimilate the point of view of the people there
As if the point of view was somehow in the food
So I would make no choices myself regarding what food I ate
I would simply follow the examples, of those around me
I would study menus very carefully
Making note of important differences and similarities
When shopping at the supermarket
I felt a great desire to walk off with someone else's groceries
So I could study them at length
And study their effects on me
As though if I ate their groceries I would become that person; until I finished their groceries
And we might find ourselves going to the same places
Running into one another at the movies
Or in a shopping mall
Reading the same books
Watching the same T.V. programs
Wearing the same clothes
Travelling to the same places
And taking the same pictures
Getting sick at the same time
And getting well again simultaneously
Finding ourselves attracted to the same people
Working at the same job
And making the same amount of money
Living identical lives as long as the groceries lasted

Able was I ere I saw Elbaaaaaaaa!!!!

This is going to be rather random, but who will read this, anyway? So I'm gonna go all DADA on this post.

Idea for Radiohead's 15 Steps video: Child playing with yoyo on steps, yoyo turns into sufi dancer. Sufi dancers mutiply and then strings of sufi yoyos snap, sufi dancers whirl off into space.

Pretty silly, eh?

Too simplistic for Mr. Thom Yorke and Co.

Here are the lyrics for 15 Steps:

How come I end up where I started
How come I end up where I went wrong
Won't take my eyes off the ball again
You reel me out and you cut the string.

How come I end up where I started
How come I end up where I went wrong
Won't take my eyes off the ball again
First you reel me out and then you cut the string

You used to be all right
What happened?
Did the cat get your tongue?
Did your string come undone?
One by one
One by one
It comes to us all
It's as soft as your pillow

You used to be all right
What happened?
Etcetera Etcetera
Thanks for whatever
Fifteen steps
Then a sheer drop

How come I end up where I started?
How come I end up where I went wrong
Won't take my eyes off the ball again
You reel me out and you cut the string.

Goodbye, my sweet puppy

You were five weeks old when I first held you in my arms. A little ball of Boxer, you only weighed 5 pounds. You fit in your Dad's shirt pocket. It didn't take long for you to grow into a fun-loving and mischievous Big Brown Dog. Who cares if you were really brindle, you were Big Brown.

You chewed up the baseboard in our apartment. You chewed up our couch cushions and had farts that were deadly. You quickly laid waste to every toy we got you and you were hungry for more. Rawhides never had a chance against your powerful jaws. And yum, you loved kitty cookies in the litter box. So much so that we had to move it
to where you couldn't get to it. We bought you the sturdiest kick ball we could find, but you deflated it 15 minutes and then you found a way to sneak out the door to toss it around some more. And oh dear, we pulled quite a few long blades of grass out of your butt, and you almost seemed embarrassed. When I was 7 months pregnant and exhausted, just wanting to rest, I came home to a mountain of styrofoam balls and a former bean bag chair. Oh the fun you must have had! After our daughter arrived, you would sometimes feast on wipes and dirty diapers. I realized what you had been doing when I would find regurgitated wipes on the floor. At first I had no idea what it was, but then I caught you checking out the bathroom garbage can for "goodies." Silly dog.

I knew it wouldn't be long before I had to do it, to tell you goodbye. Your tumor which had been benign for so long started bleeding profusely and when it was removed, Dr. E. said cancer had gone everywhere. Tumors popped up all over your body. We tried chemo once, but it didn't do anything. We tried so hard to make you better. I knew I had to bring you to end your suffering, but I wanted to make sure it was the right time. You were never going to get any better, as ravaged as you were by that damned cancer. Still every time I looked into your big sweet brown eyes, I hoped that day would not come.

Yesterday I knew it was time. You were bleeding so much, lethargy had taken over your once playful and indominatable spirit. I didn't want to see you this way anymore and I don't think you were having any fun just laying about, or licking your sores that would never heal. I was giving you palliative care- Benadryl, Pepcid, Prenisone to counteract the side-effects of the cancer, but what kind of life was that, considering how joyously you once had tackled your life. This goddamned illness had taken away your zeal and what we called your "butt-wiggling excitement."

Blood pooled in the back seat on the way to the vet, a kind woman who tried so hard to prolong your life with the best quality possible. Evn she knew it was time this time. There was no going back. She and her assistants helped you up onto the exam table which I regretted was so cold and sterile, but how else could it be? You lay there, panting and bleeding, and you had no idea what was happening. Just a few hours earlier you were laying waste to a mega rawhide we bought you. And I had been spoiling you by feeding you everything you wanted: meat, cheese, crackers, cookies. You looked at me with that sad, silly face and I was gone. You got whatever you wanted.

And I felt that somehow you wanted me to end your suffering. If you could have spoken, you might have asked us, "What took you so damn long?"

I cradled your head in my hands and I kissed you over and over and thanked you for being such a good dog. I drank in your doggie smell so I could never forget it, and as the medicine took hold, your panting faded away. Slowly, slowly.

Then it was over.

The finality of it was what broke my heart. No more big silly grins during the day. No more "happy fun teeth." No more playing "feet" or "pocka pocka" or "glue mouth." No more seeing that urgent "I have to pee NOW" look. No more wagging of your short tail. No more sleeping back to back with your friend, Mazie.

But also no more panting. No more constant licking and scratching. No more bleeding everywhere and trying to lick it up. No more pain. No more worrying if I would come home and find you in a pool of blood or worse, hear you crying out in pain or going into shock.

Dr. E. said that very little drug was needed to help you on you way out. She said that was a sign that you were very near the end anyway. That was a great consolation. I wanted to be sure that it was the best, most humane thing to do. She assured me it was.

I sat there with you, still holding you, stroking your brindle coat, still crying. But I was relieved that you were at peace, and the absence of your labored breathing made me feel even more comforted.

It was time to let you go, my sweet Brules. We'll always remember you as the robust and glorious dog you were. Nothing can ever take that away.

We told our daughter that you had to go to the moon when she asked where you were. Whenever she wanted to see you, all she had to do was look up at the night sky. She was satisfied with that explanantion, and to tell the truth, so was I.

We love you, Big Brown Dog.

Quotes about religion and tyranny

"A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion. Subjects are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider to be God-fearing and pious."
-- Aristotle, 343 B.C.

From a diatribe on Advertising and Bullshit by George Carlin:

"...But in the Bullshit Department, the businessman can't hold a candle to a clergyman. 'Cause I gotta tell ya the truth, folks, when it comes to Bullshit, big time, major league BULLSHIT, you have to stand in awe, in awe, of the all time champion of false promises and exaggerated claims: RELIGION! .... No contest, no contest!!

Life is sacred? Who said so, God? Hey, if you read history you'll realize that God is one of the leading causes of death...has been for thousands of years. Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Jews, all taking turns killing each other because God told them it was a good idea.

Instead of school busing and prayer in schools, which are both controversial, why not a joint solution? Prayer in buses. Just drive these kids around all day and let them pray their fuckn' empty little heads off.

I've begun worshipping the Sun for a number of reasons. First of all, unlike some other gods I could mention, I can see the Sun. It's there for me every day. And the things it brings me are quite apparent all the time: heat, light, food, a lovely day. There's no mystery, no one asks for money, I don't have to dress up, and there's no boring pageantry. And interestingly enough, I have found that the prayers I offer to the sun and the prayers I formerly offered to God are all answered at about the same 50-percent rate."

Quote about Enlightenment

Enlightenment--that magnificent escape from anguish and ignorance--never happens by accident. It results from the brave and sometimes lonely battle of one person against his own weaknesses.

-Bhikkhu Nyanasobhano, "Landscapes of Wonder"

Radiohead and Thom Yorke

I love the Beatles and I always will, but DAMN I love Radiohead. I could listen to Thom Yorke's voice all day. Actually, I wouldn't mind having a cup of tea with him and just looking at him, hearing what he has to say about life.

My favorite songs are 15 Steps, Bodysnatchers, Jigsaw Falling Into Place, Paranoid Android, In Limbo, National Anthem...but really all the songs are gorgeous. OK Computer, In Rainbows and Kid A are incredible albums, and I like The Bends, but I guess it wasn't weird enough for me. I didn't really care for Pablo Honey. I haven't heard Amnesiac, Hail to the Thief yet. So how can ya be a fan if ya ain't heard all the tunes, Jen? I just am!

Gee, how many other Radiohead fans have typed the exact same thing as this? I don't really care, I just had to write about it!

One of the few things I enjoy lately...

Not so long ago, I realized that I wanted to start recycling. Our bin was stowed away at the side of the house and it was filled with dead branches. I wondered "How much time and effort would it take to start recycling? Probably too long..." It started off small enough: a few tin cans here and there. Then I began looking closely at items for the ubiquitous recycling symbol, and I was mesmerized by just how much I could keep from going to the dump, only to decompose (or not)over a very, very long time. It's amazing how much you can recycle! Every Friday I fill the bin to the rim and this last Friday, the bin was filled to capacity, plus an extra 6 inches over the top! I like it so much, that I have noticed a bit of a sanctimonious feeling come over me when I see a lack of bins out on Fridays, or ones that are not filled all the way. I would think, "Come on people, you can do this!" But this is the first thing I have been really stoked about in a long time because I feel that in some way (no matter how miniscule), I am doing something for the environment.

I'm going to hug some more trees now. Our oak tree in the back yard looks a little forlorn...:)

Here there is no why

I would like to know why I am the way I am: full of self-doubt, fear, anger, sadness. Maybe I already do know why. Genetics? Childhood? And does it really matter WHY? How do I escape from myself? I'm always there in the shadows, lurking. No matter how normal I try to be, the dismal specter is always there, compromising my efforts. I've tried just about every (legal) psychotropic pill made on Earth, and I have not been able to find the right combination of serotonin and dopamine uplifters or downshifters, stabilizers, sanitizers or equalizers! I seem to have a toxic stew of neurotransmitters in my brain that would send the witches in Macbeth in a tailspin. Too bad I can't throw some eye of newt into the mix! Wonder what it would do?

Anyway, what else is there that could help me to feel better? ECT? With my luck, I would end up like Randle McMurphy at the end of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. But of course, he had a lobotomy as a final measure to quiet him, not ECT. I just want to feel NORMAL! Is that too much to ask?

I'd donate my personality to science, if they could extract it from me and give me a shiny, happy one!

Or...if this is even possible, how can I ever accept the way I am and learn to even like myself, despite my shortcomings?

December 2006- March 2007

Friday, February 23, 2007

Nice, but not home
Current mood: nostalgic
Category: Life


I like Katy, Texas. It's clean, there is a lot to do (esp. with Houston nearby) and a hell of a lot of pride in the state and just in general. But there is something missing. It's not home. Mardi Gras came and went and you would never know it here. I'm not a huge fan of parades, but it's nice to see a bit of revelry occuring just for the hell of it. People here are nice enough, but a bit distant. In Louisiana, you can say hello to a stranger in the grocery store and they would return the same greeting, often with a smile. Here, they act surprised if you are friendly, like you have something wrong with you. I miss the gentility, even if it means that I am flawed and weak for needing it.

There are a lot of things I like about Texas. But there is no place like my home sweet home, Louisiana. As imperfect as you are, I love you. We'll be back some day.

January 2007

Saturday, January 20, 2007

Ava's words
Current mood: chipper
Category: Life


She can say baby, bus, puppy, doggie, bus, owl, kitty, ball, teddy, bunny, dog, bee, pea, pop, stinky, pio (1st Spanish word!), queue (1st French word!), mama, daddy, apple, purple, elbow, done, Jen, go, pretty, knee, key, cook, toe, two, my___, it's a ____, that's a ____, dumb, bye-bye, blue, yes, no, tea, yay, hi, thumb, up, ice, cold, bad, poor, good, bus, pee-pee, poo-poo and pow. There are others, but I can't think of any more! She knows how to get her point across, though...If she is sleepy, she'll start making a snoring sound.

She really didn't start talking until right after her 2nd birthday. Now she babbles like crazy and is starting to use more 2- and 3-word phrases. It's so cool to see her language use flourish! She LOVES books and I am also reading books to her in Spanish and French. I hope she loves languages like I do.

*She is learning a new word every day. Sometimes two! Go Ava!*

Random Blatherings I've Found

Sesquipedalianisms
Received Fall 1987. Date written unknown. By Professor Thomas Hon @ Northside High School, Fort Smith, AR.

In promulgating your esoteric cogitations
or articulating your superficial sentimentalities
and amicable or psychological observations,
beware of platitudinous ponderosity.
Let your conversational communications possess
a clarified conciseness, a compact comprehensibleness,
a coalescent consistency, and a concatenated cogency.
Eschew all conglomerations of flatulent garrulity,
jejune babblement, and asinine affectations.
Sedulously avoid all polysyllabic profundity,
pompous prolixity, psittaceous vacuity, ventriloquial verbosity,
and vaniloquent vapidity.
Shun double entendres, prurient jocosity,
and pestiferous profanity, obscurant or apparent;
and, above all,
don't use big words.



Linguistics joke

A Midwesterner arrives in Boston for business, and decides that while he's in town he should try some of the seafood for which New England is famous. So he gets into a taxi and asks the driver, "Where can I get scrod around here?" And the taxi driver responds, "A lot of people ask that, but you're the first to use the pluperfect subjunctive."

(Scrod is the pluperfect particle of "to screw". And scrod is a type of fish)

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHahahaha...hah..ha..oh well...I liked it, anyway!


Latest Ava quotes
"I weird!"

"I want to see Cars again and again!"


"Daddy throw Ava on the couch!" --what the...??!!??

"Turn on the light on."

"Silly bad cars."

"Mommy sit on the couch and watch Cars with Ava."


Spelling Bees in other languages

Bees Overseas
How do spelling contests work in other countries?
By Michelle Tsai

Close to 300 boys and girls will be stepping up to the mic at this week's Scripps National Spelling Bee. They hail from across the United States, as well as from countries like Germany, Jamaica, the Bahamas, New Zealand, and Canada. Wait, do non-English-speaking countries have spelling bees, too?

Not exactly. Spelling bees are a particularly British and American phenomenon. The orthography of some Romance languages, like Spanish, is so regular that one can easily figure out the spelling of a word just by hearing the way it sounds. English, on the other hand, contains Latin, Greek, Germanic, and other roots, not to mention whole words borrowed from other languages. That's why an American schoolchild might get stuck with tricky words like ursprache and appoggiatura.

Francophone nations aren't satisfied with mere spelling; they test for correct grammar, too. French speakers around the world enter Quebec's Dictée des Amériques, an international competition started in 1994. Contestants take a local multiple-choice test on grammar before moving on to the next rounds. At the finals, they'll hear a passage—composed for the contest by a famous author—read aloud four times. Each contestant must scribble down the text of the passage (word for word) in about an hour. Each mistake is a point, so zero—the score of Bruno Dewaele, one of the 2006 champions—is the best possible outcome. (Who says Americans are monolingual? The United States sends about 10 finalists to the dictée each year.) The Canadian dictée takes after France's Dicos d'Or, a contest that was discontinued a couple of years ago after more than two decades. The televised contest was so popular in France that families often took the dictée together. The Dutch also have a similar contest called Het Groot Dictee, which pits 30 regular folks and 30 celebrities against one another.

Nonalphabetic languages have their own competitions. Chinese kids join dictionary contests, where they look up words as fast as they can. Unlike English, you can't completely decipher a Chinese character's pronunciation just by looking at it, and characters can have many components. Thus there are several ways to find words in dictionaries. Students can look for the character's radical, or semantic, root and search by the number of strokes in the character. If they know what the word sounds like, they can choose instead to look up the pinyin, or Romanized version, of the character. A third way involves a sort of Dewey Decimal System of words: By examining the strokes in the four "corners" of the character, expressing each corner as a number (a square is a six, for example), they can then use the resulting four-digit code to find a word in a special dictionary. Students also enter typing contests, where again the complexity of Chinese characters poses challenges.

In Japan, where Chinese characters known as kanji are part of the language, you might see entire families entering the Kanji proficiency exam, known as the Kanken. There are 10 levels, each testing for skills like writing, pronunciation, and stroke order. Level 1 is the hardest and requires knowledge of about 6,000 kanji; in 2000 just 208 people passed this test.


Great semi-quote about hs graduation


"highly inappropriate messages (such as "Thanks, Mom & Dad") were placed on mortarboards, etc.. Then we looked at the administrators, who had become nothing more than giant, pulsating forehead veins..."

Ode to Pharmaceuticals

O Lovely Lamictal
Soothes my seething soul
Sweet Cymbalta
makes me forlorn no more
And Klonopin, kind Klonopin
makes the world to me a friend...

This is god-awful poetry, but these things sure do help me to feel better!

It just happens...

But I guess it's okay.

No matter how hard I try to be "normal," I end up feeling like the oddball, the black sheep, the weirdo.


I don't know if I come across as being as strange as I feel inside.

But suffice it to say, I feel like a weirdo, especially out in public.

You can easily spot someone who feels socially awkward, can't you? The one whose face gets a bit too red too often, who maybe laughs nervously or doesn't know what to say. The one who is self-conscious about their appearance, their clothes, the way they walk or speak. The one who worries about whether what they just said was stupid or not.

I'm sure I'm not the only one who has felt this way.

If you have ever felt like this, drop me a line.

If not, congratulations.

Thus Spake the Critics

What Critics and
Writers Are Saying
About My New
Book of Poetry,
The Doberman Plot.
BY SEBASTIAN BITTICKS

- - - -

"Spectacular in the sense of existing somehow. Thought-filled, word-filled, sentence-filled verse."

"The Doberman Plot strikes a match on your eyelid and, before using it to set the cuffs of your pants on fire, asks you to consider the color of the flame."

"Sebastian Bitticks goes on record as not being a child pornographer, and, in doing so, goes on record for all of us, who are also not child pornographers."

"Slick, rain-proof stuff. Poems to paper your house with, poems that could survive a shipwreck and a plane crash."

"[Sebastian] stands alone among poets of our age in his enacting of interventions into the capitulations we each one posit as our response to something or other."

"The Doberman Plot belongs at the vanguard of the new aesthetic. You know, the shitty one."

Anyone for lists?

L I S T O F I D E A S F O R
I D E A S F O R L I S T S .

BY BILL WASIK

- - - -

Lists that take notice of the fact that a thing has a silly name, and go on to extrapolate other silly names for that thing

Lists that take notice of the fact that certain phrase is silly, and proceed to come up with other silly phrases, ones that are cleverly parallel to the first phrase that kicked the whole thing off

Lists of things that pertain only to my own life; but unimportant things, so that people reading the list are amused by my feigned narcissism

Lists that allow me to say some things which are themselves funny, but less funny than the fact that the things don't have much to do with each other

Lists that repeat something over and over again, past the point where a lesser humor-writer person might have stopped

Lists that are the unedited dumping-ground of my unconscious

Lists that trivialize the serious

Lists that elevate the trivial

Lists that are, upon reflection, perverse

Lists of reasons why a certain sensibility is squandering the talent of an entire generation of writers

Lists that absolve even as they damn

Lists on a bus, lists on a car

Lists to make you a superstar

Lists to win and lists to lose
But these here lists will rock your shoes

And these are the lists
List it up, list it up, list it up!

Sadness, etc.

I can't sleep, so I am up trying to get my mind off of whatever it is that is bothering me. I don't even know what it is. Just bouts of sadness and anxiety that keep passing through my mind, unwanted thoughts. Aaron and Ava are sleeping, and I'm left alone with my thoughts. Since we moved, I feel so isolated and alone. It's nice to have a bit of psychological space from my folks, but to not have any friends or relatives nearby really sucks. This is pointless typing about it because I cannot stay focused. Screw it.

Ava's Evaluation

Ava was evaluated today in all areas of development, and was found to be significantly delayed in ALL areas…

UNTIL I noticed on her eligibility determination sheet that they had written her age as 31 months. I asked the team about it and told them that she is only 19 months, at which time they apologized profusely. They then said she is not significantly delayed in any area, and only slightly delayed in adaptive skills.

Her age level at the different areas of development follows:

Cognitive 19 months
Expressive communication 19 months
Receptive communication 19 months
Motor 19 months
Social/Emotional 18 months
Adaptive (feeding/eating, dressing and sleeping) 16 months

Remember, they thought she was 31 months old, so the above numbers would have reflected a serious delay if that was her age.

I’m relieved! She’s going to have a hearing test and I’d like to get her tested for anemia.

That’s all for now!

Bring back Melanie to the Good Night Show!!

Who cares about her silly videos she made in college?

Please PBS, bring her back, but leave Star where you found it!!