http://debralegg.com 9to5to9: A working mom's mad adventures in boy land Thu, 18 Mar 2010 02:47:20 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.1 en hourly 1 http://debralegg.com/2009/08/18/dads-story-a-turd-in-the-fourth/ http://debralegg.com/2009/08/18/dads-story-a-turd-in-the-fourth/#comments Tue, 18 Aug 2009 20:34:45 +0000 Debra Legg http://debralegg.com/?p=6756
There's a chance the soldier took his protective goggles off briefly during training in The Box - 1,000 barren square miles at Fort Irwin where soldiers prepare for desert warfare.

Then again, maybe he did it routinely and finally got busted when the post's commanding general happened by and saw him.

Whether it was a momentary lapse or a sloppy habit, the attention he drew from the top was enough to earn his entire unit - Dad's unit - The Turd of the Week award.

Dad says there's a trophy to go with the award. The way he describes it is about what you're imagining. What a way for Dad to mark his fourth week here.

Joking and Turd of the Week aside, eye safety is a serious issue. The wind can be brutal at times, whipping up dirt and dust in the housing areas. It was so bad our first two days on post that Big Guy swore Boots had pink eye. It's even worse in The Box.

There are stories - I can't verify them, so they could be urban legend - of a soldier blinded after wearing contact lenses in the box. I cringe just thinking of the pain of all those tiny projectiles nailing a lens to an eyeball.

At least the pain of the Turd of the Week is nothing more than slight embarrassment. Or maybe major embarrassment in this case.

Copyright 2009 Debra Legg.Similar Posts:

• Dad’s story: The decision
• Dad’s story: Graduation
• Dad’s story: Training gets real
• Dad’s story: The departure
• Dad’s story: Views on the news change

]]> http://debralegg.com/2009/08/18/dads-story-a-turd-in-the-fourth/feed/ 2 http://debralegg.com/2009/07/24/let-him-eat-cake-from-the-vietnam-war/ http://debralegg.com/2009/07/24/let-him-eat-cake-from-the-vietnam-war/#comments Sat, 25 Jul 2009 04:47:59 +0000 Debra Legg http://debralegg.com/?p=6705 So there I was last month, stressing until 2 in the morning over Dad's "welcome home" cake, worried that it would be ugly or dry or have the wrong color stars.

Silly, silly girl. If I'd know how easy soldiers are to please, I would have just served up a Sara Lee. Still frozen. It wouldn't have mattered.

For retiring Army Col. Henry Moak, that would have qualified as high-falutin' fare. For his party today, he ate a 36-year-old pound cake. It was originally served when he was serving in Vietnam, and he'd saved it all these years.

Though the cake - simple and yellow, no frosting - was his favorite in what then were known as C-rations, he'd kept one in reserve for his retirement party.

"It's good; it's still kind of moist," he said.

Copyright 2009 Debra Legg.

Similar Posts:

• If a general can blog, so can a CEO
• Everyone just back the heck off Fort Hood
• Why NOW is wrong about pregnancy and soldiers
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]]> http://debralegg.com/2009/07/24/let-him-eat-cake-from-the-vietnam-war/feed/ 0 http://debralegg.com/2009/06/12/its-a-ballerina-its-a-fairy-its-easy/ http://debralegg.com/2009/06/12/its-a-ballerina-its-a-fairy-its-easy/#comments Fri, 12 Jun 2009 19:05:49 +0000 Debra Legg http://debralegg.com/?p=6368
But if I did, I'd be all over the tutu tutorial - say that 10 times fast - that Tara at Feels Like Home has created.

It's three layers of fluff and stuff designed to appeal to the inner ballerina or fairy in any young girl. Except, of course, for Tara's daugher, who promptly rejected it. Isn't that the way it goes? I know that happens here all the time. You lovingly create something, smiling to yourself as you imagine how much you love it, then they crush you to the core.

For people other than my guys or Tara's daugher, though, this is a great option to pricey prefab costumes. Check out her easy step-by-step guide.Similar Posts:

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]]> http://debralegg.com/2009/06/12/its-a-ballerina-its-a-fairy-its-easy/feed/ 0 http://debralegg.com/2009/05/30/lipstick-or-complaining-which-will-it-be/ http://debralegg.com/2009/05/30/lipstick-or-complaining-which-will-it-be/#comments Sat, 30 May 2009 15:17:35 +0000 Debra Legg http://debralegg.com/?p=6226 Poor Boots. He wakes up every morning chirping with the birds and with a cheery greeting. "It's a beautiful day!"

Somewhere along the line, though, the grind of the world beats the beauty out of it - usually somewhere about nap time - and the grumps take over. It's a downhill slide from there, and not in a good way.

I, on the other hand, wake up if not grumpy, then at the very least dazed and out of sorts. Big Guy can go either way, though he usually lists toward pessimism.

It's a burden carrying all that growling, grumping and griping through a day. So that's why I've decided to give it a rest for a week. I can do anything consistently for a week, right?

Enter Mrs. Fussypants and her "Just Pick One Thing This Week" challenge. I could have picked No. 4, wear new lipstick except that's always a traumatic experience. I tend to remain addicted to certain shades long after they've ceased to be fashionable and readily available at stores.

Instead, I selected No. 5: Work really hard to have a complaint-free week.

Now that is going to be a definite challenge, because it reaches a point where complaining just about becomes second nature. I complain about socks on the floor, underwear that never reaches the hamper, noises louder than they need to be.

And complaining, of course, begets more complaining.

By Wednesday, I might well be in the emergency room having my tongue sutured from trying to self-edit my gripes into less-grumpy requests.

But we'll see how it goes. I'll let you know next Saturday.

Copyright 2009 Debra Legg. All rights reserved.Similar Posts:

• Goofy is fun … when it’s not annoying
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]]> http://debralegg.com/2009/05/30/lipstick-or-complaining-which-will-it-be/feed/ 0 http://debralegg.com/2009/05/21/falling-with-style-if-bots-can-learn-it-why-cant-i/ http://debralegg.com/2009/05/21/falling-with-style-if-bots-can-learn-it-why-cant-i/#comments Fri, 22 May 2009 06:18:31 +0000 Debra Legg http://debralegg.com/?p=6101
Somewhere between my step backward off a three-foot ladder last summer and hitting the ground, I forgot all that. Ouch!

Scientists in Chile, though, think they can program the skill into robots. Soccer-playing robots no less, which means they also should work on the code to make the bot willingly take a blow to the head from a ball.

It's all in the math, according to an article at newscientist.com: The robot will calculate how much damage a fall is likely to cause, given the speed with which it crashes, the forces and torques the fall would create in its joints and its position relative to the ground. The robot then would pick the best way to fall - the one that would generate the least damage.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know all that from my misspent youth in the theater and learning how to take a tumble on stage. I just can't remember it under the deadline pressure of zeroing in rapidly on the ground below. Bully for the bots if they can.

Because they're soccer bots, though, the development triggered a discussion on slashdot as to whether the more important skill is knowing how to fall or knowing how to fall and pin the blame on someone else.

Copyright 2009 Debra Legg. All rights reerved.Similar Posts:

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]]> http://debralegg.com/2009/05/21/falling-with-style-if-bots-can-learn-it-why-cant-i/feed/ 0 http://debralegg.com/2009/05/20/epiblogue-now-he-looks-like-the-karate-kid/ http://debralegg.com/2009/05/20/epiblogue-now-he-looks-like-the-karate-kid/#comments Thu, 21 May 2009 04:03:01 +0000 Debra Legg http://debralegg.com/?p=6069 There's often a reason why Big Guy does the seemingly quirky things he does. A reason that makes sense only in his 5-year-old brain, but a reason nonetheless.

I usually don't question, because if it's genuinely just a quirk I don't want to give him a reason to dig his heels in deeper. In the case of the karate uniform, I wish I had.

Big Guy was sick the night he got the uniform and agreed to wear it only briefly. He dissolved into tears midway through class and we left early. He refused to put on the uniform for months afterward.

Until today when, still basking in the yellow-belt glow, he hasn't wanted to take it off. He agreed to change for baseball practice and reluctantly admitted that I was right when I said the jacket wouldn't work as pajamas.

"But it's so comfortable," he said. "Not like the first time I wore it, when it squeezed me so tight I couldn't breathe."

Huh?

And then I got it. The day after the miserable class, he wound up at the doctor's office with a 104-degree temperature. It wasn't the uniform squeezing him; it was bronchitis.

Now if only I could figure out why he won't wear his baseball pants.

Copyright 2009 Debra Legg. All rights reserved.Similar Posts:

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]]> http://debralegg.com/2009/05/20/epiblogue-now-he-looks-like-the-karate-kid/feed/ 0 http://debralegg.com/2009/05/20/nut-warning-on-general-mills-cereals/ http://debralegg.com/2009/05/20/nut-warning-on-general-mills-cereals/#comments Wed, 20 May 2009 17:18:23 +0000 Debra http://debralegg.com/?p=6059
Luckily, he's not the child who's allergic and Big Guy is at school. Kind of disquieting that the  warning has been floating around the food allergy community for months but General Mills just now is changing its labeling to say that several products contain nuts.

Disquieting but, sadly, not unusual. "I'm sure we'll all check our cereal boxes now!" blogger Nut Free Mom wrote.

Funny thing about Big Guy and Cocoa Puffs, though. He ate them once and only once then wanted nothing to do with them. I've always believed that on a certain level the body knows when something is harmful to it, and when a certified choc-o-holic won't touch chocolate cereal, it says something.

Read more at Nut Free Mom.Similar Posts:

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]]> http://debralegg.com/2009/05/20/nut-warning-on-general-mills-cereals/feed/ 0 http://debralegg.com/2009/05/19/reason-no-3542-the-brits-are-bonkers/ http://debralegg.com/2009/05/19/reason-no-3542-the-brits-are-bonkers/#comments Tue, 19 May 2009 07:56:44 +0000 Debra Legg http://debralegg.com/?p=6038 censor the Internet worldwide in the name of protecting its children comes another bizarre project, also in the name of "protecting children"

The British have launched a database, at a cost of 343 million American dollars, that will list all 11 million children in the country. And each child's date of birth, address and parents' names. Not to mention the names of doctors and schools.

The launch came even though auditors warned the government two years ago that the database, which 390,000 people will be able to access, could never be totally secure.

Cradle to grave tracking, anyone?

The system was proposed after the death of an 8-year-old in a case where agencies ranging from police to hospitals to social services missed dozens of signs of trouble.

I worked on coverage of a not unsimilar case as a newspaper editor. Tragic and disgusting don't even begin to describe it. I was pregnant at the time and would go home and cry after hours spent shifting through page after page of reports of missed opportunities, of grotesque abuse.

But tracking every child in the United States would not have prevented that death. Tracking that particular child would have - her mother was a convicted druggie who later died of an overdose, so the child had been on social services' radar for years. Or should have been.

It seems a shame to spend hundreds of millions on a database full of potential invasions of privacy when the money could instead go to training people to better enforce existing laws, beefing up laws where we need to and making sure there are enough social workers to do the job properly.

Copyright 2009 Debra Legg. All rights reserved.Similar Posts:

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]]> http://debralegg.com/2009/05/19/reason-no-3542-the-brits-are-bonkers/feed/ 0 http://debralegg.com/2009/05/18/epiblogue-snow-cone-syrups/ http://debralegg.com/2009/05/18/epiblogue-snow-cone-syrups/#comments Tue, 19 May 2009 06:38:14 +0000 Debra Legg http://debralegg.com/?p=6034 difficulties of finding dye-free snow-cone syrups.

I went to a Middle Eastern market today to pick up some hummus ingredients and ran right into the solution. Or, at least, Boots did, and I'm dang happy the display didn't topple.

It's Adriatic syrups. No dye, no preservatives, no high fructose corn syrup, $3.99 a liter. It's a little thick to easily pour over a snow cone, but it's a breeze for slushees. And it tastes a heck of a lot better than the brightly colored antifreeze of normal snow cone fame.

The market I visited stocks sour cherry, blueberry, raspberry, black current and, yes, even pomegranate. And to think I spent much more than that for a smaller bottle of pomegranate syrup with evil Red Dye #40 in it.

The down side for the rest of you: I'm having trouble finding it online. I did track down one site that carries the sour cherry, black current and blueberry, though I've never ordered from it and can't vouch for its reliability.

If you happen to live near a Middle Eastern market, though, check it out. Maybe they could order it for you if they don't carry it already.

Copyright 2009 Debra Legg. All rights reserved.Similar Posts:

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]]> http://debralegg.com/2009/05/18/epiblogue-snow-cone-syrups/feed/ 0 http://debralegg.com/2009/05/16/party-on-dude-a-kiddy-luau/ http://debralegg.com/2009/05/16/party-on-dude-a-kiddy-luau/#comments Sun, 17 May 2009 03:16:46 +0000 Debra Legg http://debralegg.com/?p=5996 Parties in the park seem to be the rage around here of late - a rage that will be over by the time Big Guy's birthday rolls around in 103-degree July - and today's was a great example of low-stress but big fun.

The location was a local splash park and the theme was a luau. There were the requisite birthday cakes - two tasty layers, one with Nemo decor. If you're into making your own cakes, a beach cake is fairly easy with minimal piping required. Or you could let your Teddy Grahams chill out on a raft or create an easy clownfish cupcake.

Snow cones prepared on the spot replaced ice cream. The parents used a big honking cooler of ice and a manual snow-cone maker, available for $15 or so at Target and definitely a purchase that will come in handy through out the summer.

Other refreshments included Gold Fish, of course, fruit kabobs and fishing pools made from big pretzels, string licorice and gummy worms. My favorite snack was the blue Jello with the gummy shark at the bottom. These and the fishing poles also doubled as table decorations.

With the splash fountain nearby, not many organized games are needed, though the kids played limbo and musical beach towels.

In this case, I think the ease of cleanup, combined with how much fun the kids had, outweighed the hassle of trucking the whole party across town to the park.

If you have room in your back yard and a tolerance for wet carpet, a slip and slide or kiddy pool easily could serve as the site as well.

Copyright 2009 Debra Legg. All rights reserved.Similar Posts:

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