Lunches, Jim’izms and a silly little toy, the light and fluffy, make you smile blog, about the life and times of the Carr family for week 7
Back on schedule
This blog started as a Friday post to wrap up and talk about things going on in the life and times of my family any given week. A Friday post, makes work week sense to wrap up things, but quite often, either I am too busy or too lacking in content to hit my self-imposed deadline. So, over the last year there have been many late posts and even some missing ones. Now, I am not making any promises, but it looks like after a bit of a week off, I am back on track. Well almost, on track because Sunday is so close to Friday.
Lunches
As I pointed out a whole bunch of months ago I am the hub in the Carr household, with respect to mornings anyway. I rally the troops by shaking the beds, pulling covers off and doing whatever else I have to, in order to get three ladies that all hate the mornings, out of the door to start their day. Over the summer, my approach was a little different, by sheer fact of the time. It is far easier to wake the little ones when the little hand is pointing to a double digit. But here we are in the third week of school, and things in the mornings around the Carr house are starting to fall into place. I have even impressed myself a little by making lunches that involve a little more than unwrap and pack.
Chicken strips a couple of times, fish sticks, all involving the oven. For now I am not aiming for the father of the year award, but I am happy that the girlies have noticed, by saying, “thank you daddy for our lunches”. And if there is such an award, I would be happy just to be nominated!
Silly bandz
When we visited Key West in the summer, at a shopping stop in the Jimmy Buffett owned, “Original Margaretville” gift store, there was no shortage of stuff to catch our eyes as we walking the tinny isles. We got 8 plastic cups for use poolside, a set of foam beer coolers as a souvenir gift for a friend, and almost made it out of the store for under $20 dollars, but found something else at the check out. “These are going to be very popular with the kids”, the sales lady said, pointing at a package of “Margaretville themed Silly Bandz”.
They are tiny rubber wristbands in different shapes and colours, apparently great for collecting or trading, and best of all driving your parents nuts. When we got back, we noticed they already started showing up on the wrists of little ones in our neighbourhood. So we added to the original sets, with a trip to the dollar store and aside from the large handful that ended up being sucked up in the skimmer in the pool, the girl’s collection was doing well.
Doing well, until Jordyn brought all 24 of hers to school and in her words “traded” them with other kids. I say her words, because she must have a misunderstanding of what the word “trade” means, because she came home with 4, and she proudly told Nathalie about it, and even asked to go buy more. Nathalie pointed out that if she wants to give away her bandz, that is one thing, but buying more is not on the table, and more importantly, trading is 1 for 1 or giving something, but getting something equal value in return. The big problem is that Jordyn is a giver, and as such is easily taken advantage of by so called friends and that makes us a little mad. We can only hope that she catches on at some point and learns that giving is cool, if it makes you feel good, BUT sharing is always makes you feel better.
Bedtime
For the last 10 years or so, my favourite time of the day, is bedtime, but it is not what you may think. Yes, I like my sleep, but the time of the day, I feel the most in control, is when the kids have gone to bed. Maybe it is that when they are sleeping, dreaming their dreams and doing what little girls do when they sleep, I feel like they are finally safe for the day. In my house, under their blankets cuddling their respective stuffed animals, protected from schoolyard bullies and classmates posing as friends to gain or anything else evil. After prayers and kisses good night, both Nathalie and I, always walk a little taller and feel a little better because for at least a couple of hours, know one can harm our little girls.
In closing
My little twin sister made me proud and laugh this week, when she told me that, “I inspired her!” You see on her trip here two weeks ago, she had the chance to come to my school, and sit in on one of my first semester classes. The lesson of the day was their first about mixing music, and I introduced my world famous (in my head) Jim-Izms – “Start the Pot Hot”. In simple terms, it is used to describe the best way to transition from one song to another. The “pot” reefers to the volume control on the second song, and by “starting it Hot” I mean starting at full volume. It comes from listing to too many people who mix music, by fading one song out and fading the second song in, and although it does cross over, the overall volume will “dip”. My technique addresses this horrible, unforgivable absence of sound.
In class I talked about it, then demoed it, and then made each and every student, show me that they understood the process, by doing it themselves. It rubbed off on Janey, and although, I did not make her do it in class, after returning home and being needed to DJ a wedding last Saturday night, she got a lot of chances to “start the pot hot” for herself. When we talked this week, she laughed about her newfound technique, and told me she was very happy to have learned it from her big brother in his production 111 class.
Thanks for reading and have a great and safe week.
Jim
