the misadventures of squirrel girl

My younger daughter is a squirrel. She has gotten into the avocation of wandering around the house and grabbing little things, putting them into bags or purses or pouches or sacks or boxes, and then putting those little treasure packages in strategic locations. It's an odd habit for a three year old; I suppose it would be odder if she were thirty.

Now there seems to be no rhyme or reason to the objects that she squirrels, at least none that my husband and I can determine: dolls, combs, barrettes, bottle tops, forks, paper, stickers, tampons, rocks, dried up pieces of food . . . This was amusing for a while but has now become somewhat problematic.

The three items of some import that we (her family) just couldn't seem to find, and that she claims to have no knowledge of squirreling are as follows: a shaker of pepper, a bottle of honey (shaped like a teddy bear), and my small jewelry box holding my diamond necklace.

Now here's where the plot thickens. I hired a new cleaning service this week. They were machines. They really cleaned our house, even removed the dusty bunnies from atop our fridge. A day or so after they did this thorough cleaning, the honey and the jewelry box came up missing.

One could easily and rationally assume that these maids made off with my diamond necklace, were it not for the nagging little fact that we have a habitual thief and hoarder living in our midst, as well as the fact that it taxes me to intuit what in the world they would want with a bottle of honey.

So I haven't called the maid service to ask them if they have seen my jewelry box with the diamond necklace inside it or to blatantly accuse them of it, because I feel certain that said object of value is in our house somewhere - hidden away in a place that my daughter herself has either forgotten or intends to sequester for the duration.

I have hope that I will eventually find it, however, because as I was madly searching for the jewelry box yesterday, I came upon a new hoard: stuffed to bursting inside a plastic Dora the Explorer backpack, jammed under my bed, was a host of lost paraphernalia which included . . .

a shaker of pepper.

reviving the 80s

Everything old is new again.

I was commenting to my Expository Writing class on the interesting turn that entertainment frequently takes - namely when the television and film industry creates remakes of old favorites.

So, I couldn't help myself; I had to watch the new Knight Rider on NBC.

It's the familiar set of archetypes: good versus evil, man versus technology, boy meets girl, boy supplants father, boy gets an amazing set of wheels . . .

It's fun to see the 1980s come back to life. Our music is being recut. Our shows are being revisioned. Our fashions and hairdos are starting to resurge (though God forbid, I will NEVER feather my hair - never, never, never). All of this is because those of us in our thirties are financially solid at this point; we are spending, and the industry markets to us - all the while betting on our nostalgia.

I would be interested to see how less-than-25-year-olds respond to this phenomenon, when in ten or fifteen years, their music, TV, and movies get recreated and repackaged.

As Quietdrive, I mean Cyndi Lauper, said: "if you're lost, you can look, and you will find me - time after time . . ."

my daughter is addicted to Webkinz

I have to hand it to the Ganz company in their creation of Webkinz World. Many of you in the technical community know what that is, although if you don't have small children in your life, you might not be familiar with the phenomenon.

Webkinz World is essentially a social networking website for kids. You buy a stuffed Webkinz toy, and it comes with a pass code. Then you go online to Webkinz World and sign the code in to create your account and adopt your pet.

Once my daughter discovered Webkinz World, a number of amazing things happened. She became computer literate overnight. She got much steadier with a mouse, clicking, dragging and dropping, using menus and toolbars and typing in text. (She started when she was six. She's seven now, and she's a pro.) She learned about emailing and chatting. If you know your friend's usernames, you can send them messages on Webkinz and play with each other virtually.

Webkinz also has about five hundred million games, many of which are vaguely educational in nature. It is also an infantized version of virtual reality gaming using avatars. My daughter picks out furnishings, clothes and food for her pets and earns kinzcash to pay for them.

I do have to make sure she doesn't spend too much time on there and that she doesn't let her face-to-face interpersonal skills atrophy. I guess that's my biggest fear - that her generation of learners doesn't know how to translate virtual social skills into real interactions. (Not to mention the fact that she will need to stay physically active for her health and well-being.)

So let your child play with Webkinz with the caveat that it is very clearly a gateway to total online submersion, and be sure to make her log out from time to time to feed and care for her real pet . . .

there is providence in the fall of a sparrow

I have a student with a 7 year old son who tried to kill himself last week.

I don't really know what to do with that information. I hear about the life situations of many of my students, and frequently I am disturbed by them. Often, I feel motivated to prayer. This student of mine has more baggage than I could ever tote. She is struggling with more stressors than I can comprehend - a past that includes rape and financial difficulty. She is trying to better herself through college. She is extremely bright and well-spoken. But now she has reached a precipice of anxiety and pain.

I don't have a rope to throw her other than to tell her that I'm thinking of her and am available to talk.

I have told all of my friends and relatives that I am at a point in my life where I am the most stressed I have ever been. I have overextended myself. I have taken on a number of responsibilities, that, in conjunction with my job and my family, have officially rendered me panicked.

But I have an enormous cushion of fortune to land upon during this time of panic. I have a loving and ideal childhood. I have two living, senior still-married, parents. I have three beautiful brothers. I have a strong husband. I have two healthy daughters. I have friends and colleagues who value me. I have my education, my career, my minivan, my house, my clothes, my food, my coffee, my Sting music, my books, my TiVo.........

I am lucky. My student is not.

How can a 7 year old crash and burn from a depression so strong that he takes a knife to his own throat? How can a mother survive such an experience?

How can I help her? Right now, all I can do is blog about it. I pray to God that she finds a cushion of her own to land upon.

"providence in the fall of a sparrow" - A line from the play Hamlet, by William Shakespeare, suggesting that a divine power takes a benevolent interest in human affairs.