Brushing up on my Grammar Skills

1.Don't abbrev.
2.Check to see if you any words out.
3.Be carefully to use adjectives and adverbs correct.
4.About sentence fragments.
5.When dangling, don't use participles.
6.Don't use no double negatives.
7.Each pronoun agrees with their antecedent.
8.Just between you and I, case is important.
9.Join clauses good, like a conjunction should.
10.Don't use commas, that aren't necessary.
11.Its important to use apostrophe's right.
12.It's better not to unnecessarily split an infinitive.
13.Never leave a transitive verb just lay there without an object.
14.Only Proper Nouns should be capitalized. also a sentence should
begin with a capital and end with a period
15.Use hyphens in compound-words, not just in any two-word phrase.
16.In letters compositions reports and things like that we use commas
to keep a string of items apart.
17.Watch out for irregular verbs which have creeped into our language

Happy St. Paddy's Day!

Advice, anyone?

As if it wasn't enough to be Primary President, I am also PTA President-Elect. Yes, I am trying to take over the world, starting with the kids...

Today I have a meeting--or, more appropriately an ambush--by the State PTA President, the District PTA President, a representative of the State PTA, the School District Supervisor, the Principal and the current PTA president. They want to pressure us into changing our plans to form a PTO. They have hounded the poor school PTA president for DAYS. She's about ready to pull her hair out.

I am kind of excited for the "confrontation." I figure I haven't done anything wrong. I don't have an agenda. I was approached by parents AND faculty who suggested the change and I have had nothing but positive feedback about it. THEY are the ones with the problem. I plan on being calm and non-confrontational. My only concern is the Principal has had a ton of pressure put on her to talk us out of the change by the district. My question is why is the district involved? It seems like such a conflict of interest to have the district so invested in the PTA. Of course I know WHY they are so invested... The PTA had pumped millions of $$ into lobbying in behalf of the district. When is the PTA going to spend $$ on lobbying in be half of the parents? Just last week the PTA spent MY PTA money fighting the bill to require the district to allow open enrollment. They didn't ask me if I wanted or didn't want open enrollment, they just spent my money on what the district wanted. And the national is even worse. They have sponsored a scholarship for gay and lesbian students. Where is the scholarship for heterosexual students? It's my money! I support scholarships but not ones based on sexual preference. Why not a scholarship based on color preference? crunchy or smooth peanut butter preference? Whatever!

Anyway, I have THAT to look forward to today!

Oh, What a Relief!

What a horrid two days this has been! I have been so worried about H, I haven't been able to do a single thing except wander around the house. I really thought her leg was looking better last night but I had her sleep with me anyway, just so I could keep an eye on her. Sometime after 4 a.m. I checked her leg and saw the infection had spread. It hadn't climbed any higher vertically but it was more swollen and the red had grown about another 1 1/2 inches wider than the day before. I FREAKED. I got up early and got the newspaper and the headline read, "Local Woman Dies from Rare Infection" That didn't do a lot for my mental health.

I called my mom to come with me to take H to the dr. because I knew I would pass out if the news was bad but the temple, which had been closed for two weeks, was open again so they were supposed to work today. Fortunately my MIL was able to step in and be my support. The appointment was at 1, so in the meantime I annoyed my doctor-BIL, Michael Keaton, with my freaked-out questions. He has such perfect Ford-sister-bedside-manner. Hmmm... did he learn it by living with one for 25 years? Anyway, he assured me we were a long way to flesh-eating. He got me through the morning.

By one it was evident the swelling and the redness was receding. I felt stupid that MIL came with me, but it was sure reassuring to have her there! The dr. looked at her foot and said it appeared to be working but to be sure, he had us go back to the hospital and draw more blood. The reports came back a bit elevated so we are to go back on Thursday and test her blood again. But in the meantime, take it easy and keep an eye on it. It looks good tonight, so I am breathing a bit easier now. The hardest part is keeping her down. She is so anxious to get back to school and she is so bored with watching TV. She's almost finished reading Harry Potter 5 (she's only in 3rd grade but reads like the devil) so she's antsy.

All of this wouldn't have bothered me if Dilbert had been in town. Poor guy... His flights yesterday were canceled so he had to do the "tourist" thing around the beach in San Diego. He said he got a headache from the sun and wind. Poor, poor Dilbert. Just kidding. It has been so hard for him to be away and hear how freaked I was. Today he was flying so as soon as he landed he called. Oops... my bad. I forgot to call him and tell him things were okay. As soon as I am okay, I forget to let him in on the news and relieve his worries. I'm a bad wife sometimes.

Now that is passed, I get to focus on Primary and PTO. Tomorrow is the PTA meeting where we are supposed to vote on the new board--which I haven't got assembled yet because I have been focused on other things--and it is the Priesthood Preview where we are supposed to do refreshments and the music and set up except no one knows when or where it is. Ahh... THIS is the kind of stuff I can handle.

Finally!

You guessed it! Dilbert has been back in town. Thus no blogging for a while. But he is gone again so here I am AGAIN. I spent Saturday sick in bed with the sore throat gumbo. Thankfully I was able to pull myself together and take a handful of Advil and make it to church. I pretty much had to go.

I can finally say I have been called as Primary President. We were finally sustained yesterday. I was so glad Dilbert was here to help in the setting apart. I am overwhelmed by it all. I am a great grunt but I am VERY uncomfortable with being the boss. I can't shake the urge to apologize to my councilors for having to heap responsibilities on them. I keep fighting the urge to do it all myself so I don't burden them.

But I have FANTASTIC councilors so I am not completely worried about being able to do this. I just know what an unorganized flake I am. The PP I am replacing came over and handed over the books today and I was dying at what she had already done to prepare for the year. It is going to be an easy year, thanks to her.

I'm so over today and it is only half over!

H woke up during the night Saturday (or, more accurately, Sunday morning) and said she couldn't walk. I looked at her foot and couldn't see anything wrong with it but I let her stay home from church. She took some ibuprofen and could walk on it a bit so I figured it was just a pulled muscle or something. Well, this morning she crawled into my room and showed me her huge, red, hot ankle. I knew it wasn't a sprain. I called the dr. and got right in first thing this morning. I wasn't too worried until he took a look at it and got a worried scowl on his face. He sent us right over to the hospital for blood tests and x-rays. It was a pretty freaky few hours. Finally he had the results back and they all looked good. The x-rays showed no infection in the bone and the blood tests weren't unusually elevated showing the infection hadn't spread throughout her body. And she said she felt fine. She didn't even have a fever. So he drew a cute line around the redness on her leg and gave her a prescription for some massive antibiotics. I called our neighbor to come give her a blessing since Dilbert is back in CA. I have to take her back tomorrow to have it checked again but it already looks much better. It wouldn't have been so bad except I have been reading this book (alert--this is a good book filled with amazingly complex gray-area moral battles but the language is strong) My Sister's Keeper and it deals with a family whose daughter is diagnosed with leukemia. They conceive another daughter to be a cord blood donor. That puts the sick daughter into remission but the cancer comes back. The younger daughter keeps getting asked to donate more bone marrow and other blood products until finally she is asked to donate a kidney and she decided she has had enough and sues for medical emancipation, effectively condemning her sister to death. It has been so fascinating (the woman who wrote it had a child with cancer so the feelings are very raw). Anyway, it was a little much to be sitting there with H with this book in my hands. I'm much better now and, most importantly, so is she. Oh yeah, she was reading "Unfortunate Events" which wasn't that cheery, either.

CTR 5's are Wild

With Dilbert out of town, it was going to be a hard CTR 5 day today, I could tell. I even called and got an assistant who has a degree in elementary education. She was speechless at their antics. But they were just being 4. The crier was okay today but it was because his dad came in with him again. But he ditched him during sharing time and the crier was okay. He kept asking where his dad was but I convinced him to stick it out. The twins and the smarty-pants were teasing each other through the whole thing. The ESL girl was in la la land most of the time until I took out the stickers. But we survived...

BNLFan and I were singing the RS song in the other ward so we ditched out sacrament meeting and went to Valley View's. I heard about it from the bishop, though. He said he recognized BNLFan for her advancement from Mia Maids to Laurels but we weren't there. Ooops. I told him where we were so he didn't think we were total slackers...

Frank Zigmunt came home for a few hours today. I fixed roast beef with all the trimmings to celebrate. N is making cream cheese brownies now so he will have something yummy to take home with him. He's doing so well. I am a proud mom. He brought his mission papers home with him for the bishop to sign so he can do his interviews in Provo. He puts in his papers in 30 days. Boo Hoo! I am so pleased he is wanting to go on a mission, but I am going to miss him soooo much.