Hubby goes to Arizona this weekend for his brother's university graduation.  Next weekend is May Long Weekend.  Then for the following 6 weeks we will be systematically destroying and rebuilding parts of our house. 

This afternoon I go get my shot, so this morning is it.  It is the only peace I have for the next couple of months. I'm declaring it an official without pants morning. Go away world. Shoo.

My oldest guy was so brave.  Got 2 root canals with 2 metal caps this morning.  He totally could have done more, it was the dentist who wimped out and wanted to take a break!  LOL!  

I'm trying so hard not to hate the foster parents who gave him chocolate milk sippy cups at night for two years and did this to him.  Only 2 more dental appointments left to go.

We woke up to snow this morning after running around in short-sleeves yesterday!  As I was getting the kids dressed, I heard this strange cracking noise.  The front tree had cracked and crashed over into the neighbor's yard.  I'm so glad it missed their porch, but it is in the way of their front stairs.  Ain't nothing gonna be done about it today as it is a wet miserable blowing snow out there.  So much for the cute little flowers I had put in that planter.  They look pretty funny with their dollops of snow on them.  I should know better than to plant anything before May long weekend!

There is a facebook page called IF I SPOKEN TO MY PARENTS HOW KIDS TALK NOW DAYS I`D BEEN KNOCKED OUT[sic]. Several of my friends have joined, and I'll tell ya, this is a big issue for me.  Now, I don't promote the old adage "Children should be seen and not heard," but I definitely believe children need to learn to respect grownups.  This isn't about adult power-tripping, it is about basic safety and respect for others. 

All too often at the grocery store or the mall, I see kids running out into the parking lot unfettered, kids that hit their parents in a tantrum, kids that scream for attention when their grownup is talking to another grownup.  And you know who is power-tripping?  The kids. Parents are being manipulated and controlled.  I don't understand why.  Are parents afraid to look like the bad guy to their kids?  Do they feel inadequate? Are they just too tired to bother with discipline?  Maybe they never were exposed to safe boundaries as a kid? Who knows.

Since I've managed various childcare settings over the years, I'm not anti-daycare by any means.  But when we've got a whole society of children being raised in daycares and then they go home to overly permissive parents, is there the possibility we are raising a generation of sociopaths?  When you have children in an environment of high child to adult ratios paired with high staff turnover, you have to admit there isn't a lot of strong emotional attachments happening.  Then the kids go home with permissive parentals who often aren't giving them the attention, boundaries and morals that little minds crave.

And this is beginning to translate into the workplace.  Brent Knowles had a recent blog post about people using portable electronic devices during meetings.  It is a great example of how people don't respect each other and no one takes the responsibility to say, "STOP IT!"

The "hierarchy-less" workplace culture is starting to pervade business environments because people never learned to accept authority.  Many places no longer will name bosses or make organizational charts because people don't like to be managed.  If people could be trusted to be self-disciplining or self-regulating individuals that might be okay, but in many circumstances people just never learned self-control or have never been exposed to the notion that the world doesn't revolve around them.

Whether you are a Mom talking to a 3 year old, or a person facilitating a meeting of grownups, teaching respect just starts with a simple NO.  Is it really that hard?

from twitter: LoganCDN @empireave ties  into your facebook, twitter and blog to help give you a virtual  mini-game stock value for your soc media influence #gamepub

When I first heard about the Edmonton based-startup Empire Avenue, I read their splash page and got the impression that it was yet another popularity contest on the web. Then, a couple of days ago, their Twitter guy messaged me, "Hey Margaret! Let  me know if you'd like an invite to EmpireAvenue.com. Might be a way to  waste away those dayhome days "

I immediately gave him the benefit of the doubt, assuming the guy was one of those white-collar 20-somethings who know nothing about kids.  However, he corrected me saying he works at home with his kid.  I'm hoping he has a nanny too?  Because neglecting your kid all day while you work, doesn't impress me.However, I gave the guy a chance as I can't expect people to know the education and regulatory hoops I've gone through for my family daycare (aka dayhome.)  After all, the process of  cold-calling, reaching out to someone you don't know, is one of the weirdest and most awkward aspects of marketing, at least for me.  Plus, I still have a soft spot for social media startups after  Fashion Mash (yeah, kinda wish I hadn't sold it!).  And they are local to #yeg.  So I signed up and found it fun to explore the new site and overall a bit addictive.

At least for me, as a reformed WoW addict, I see any online achievement system as mission objectives.  Empire Avenue does a good job of giving you lots of achievements early on, so that you feel like you are making progress.  But after a couple of days, not enough of my friends are on board for me to interact/compete with and since I'm done with the easily obtainable achievements my interest is dampening.Initially, I thought the Facebook and Twitter integration were going to be neat, but the lack of a tool to add from your list of Twitter followers or your  Facebook friends could really hamper this new site.  The other issue I have with the implementation of this Twitter and facebook integration is that it kind of creates this double-reading task of content showing up across platforms.  

Empire Avenue lets you invite people via email, but the way the invites  are metered out seems mystical. When I asked "How often do we get  more invites?" The reply was, "You could certainly just ask us . As of tomorrow  you'll be able to earn more invites via achievements!"Because apparently my  question didn't indicate my interest for more?  Or they just like you  to get on your knees and beg?

Strange PR tone indeed, but maybe the guy can only say so much in the 140 characters allotted by twitter.  Anyways, more invites showed up on my account quickly, but then I wasn't sure if was from an achievement or if they just gave me more for whining.  I understand that its a known marketing hype technique of an invite-only beta to be all elite and exclusive.  But that elite and exclusivity attitude on top of the inherent ego-stroking virtual stock market on the site aren't really that appealing to me, but I'll bluster on and see if more people I know join and if I get more out of it.

Okay, now, back to my kids.

[UPDATE: And no I don't have any Empire Avenue invites at the moment. Sorry.]

BEFORE:

AFTER:

One home-improvement project down, many left to go. Not exactly how I wanted it, but hey, its better than the rotten wooden deck that had holes in it. We did it the weekend before last, tearing down the old on Saturday and setting up the wood frame.  Then we were rushing to get the pavers in on Sunday before it was supposed to rain.  We had a super concrete deadline for completion because the adoption worker was coming Monday and we wanted everything to look kid-safe.  Not to mention my family daycare agency lady was overdue for one of her surprise visits and my brother-in-law was coming to visit the following week.

Sunday morning, we rushed out & bought as much pavers & sand as the car could hold.  We started throwing them down on top of the leveled gravel and sand.  We weren't really leveling the pavers themselves much as we were thinking we can come back later to fix any really bad ones. Once we got them all down, we sprayed them off with water.  Some of the sand pooled a bit on the end of the patio as we had sloped slightly away from the house and I thought, "I'll give that a quick sweep-up tomorrow when it dries."

The next day when I showed up with my broom, the sand was hard.  "What the heck?!" I thought.  We had one bag of sand left in the garage and so I went and looked at it.  And I found "Stone Mason Magic Sand".  Yeah, NOT regular sand!  It is like a mortar.  So I spent most of the day re-wetting it down and scraping off as much of the extra sand as possible. So much for re-leveling!  And some of the pavers will forever remain looking as if they were sand-blasted. Life-lesson learned the hard way: READ ALL THE PACKAGING.

Want to make your own puppet theatre? Here are the materials I used:
Cheapo clothing rack, spare curtains, curtain rod and a blanket.  Happy Puppeteering!