No Two Birthday Cards are Not on Fire

While away on placement I celebrated a birthday and received a magnificent card from Hi-C.

First watch this StrongBadEmail.
Warning: many of the following jokes are speech-language pathology related. I will translate.

*Males are much more susceptible to almost all communication disorders. Autism averages 4:1 for males. Stuttering: the ratio of boys to girls is about 1:1 early in life but males are much more likely to persist in stuttering (vs. spontaneously recovering with development). Just for a few examples.

Focused Stimulation is a therapy technique that facilitates language acquisition by choosing a specific target and modeling it repeatedly while interacting with a child.
There is no Wawa Way. But I did live on Maple St. And there IS a general store. That's where the moose is.
Birthday Katie nor regular Katie can handle such intense heat as in hot yoga.

Veinte-cinco

For my quarter-century marker tomorrow:

I will be assessing the language development of 3 children (some of them might cry, run away, scream....the possibilities are endless)
I will be leading the group time for a social skills group.
I will be eating dinner and a nice restaurant with librariMan.
There also seems to be something else happening after dinner but I haven't been able to figure it out.
I will be trying to find a toy snail and a toy squirrel. Anyone?

An early birthday gift: Stuart McLean LIVE. CBC Radio's storytime funny man. He was accompanied by the Good Lovelies. It was unnerving to hear his voice coming from a person instead of car speakers. It was a whole 2.5 hour smorgasboard of music, story and audience participation.

F-Bag (CrapBag's second cousin)

LibrariMan and I headed over to the Dollar-twenty-five-arama* to make an f-bag. That is, a bag filled with 10 trinkets that all start with the /f/ sound. Yes, /f/ with a PH counts. Sounds easy but there are some criteria:
1. Must start with F (unfortunately there are no fcows, fplaydough or fspatulas)
2. A preschool child must be able to identify the object without help (that means fedora is out)
3. It must fit in a little bag (approx. 8x8).
4. The word should (preferably) NOT start with a consonant cluster (thought you were clever with frog, right?).

It was a challenge to say the least (although a fun one). So far the bag contains (with rule #4 being broken a few times):
Feather
Frog
Phone
Flower
Fish

Still on the lookout for: fairy, firetruck, (a toy) fence, foot (hopefully one that doesn't scar the children), finger (ditto previous), fan, flag

I can't wait for garage-sale time to really get making my sound bags!

*Yes, dollar stores too must cater to inflation. But don't feel too bad for them! Inflation rates in Canada are traditionally 1-2% per year (thanks to iron-fisted control from the Bank of Canada). In 10 years we're talking 10-15%. When Dollarama adds a quarter to their prices that's an automatic 25% compensation. Sneaky.

Happy List

The lovely miss Nadine Bells (talented blogger and other-types-of-writing extraordinaire) tagged me as a blogger who brightens her day. At my recent rate of blogging I am more likely to brighten her week or possibly fortnight.

So I do this:

1. Copy the image and display it on your blog.
2. List 10 Things that make you HAPPY!
3. Try to do at least one of them today.
4. Pass on the award to 10 bloggers who brighten your day.

A list:
1. talking on webcam with good friends who are too far away
2. going to bed early enough to read
3. an evening with my librariMan
4. getting snail mail
5. the smell of spring/wearing a spring coat
6. friendly kitties
7. a new haircut
8. completing a project
9. watching things grow (especially things that I have planted)
10. children's books

Most people who brighten my day via their blogs have already been tagged by other friends.....so I'm sticking to my strict anti-tag, anti-forwarding emails stance.

Nuts

There are big-lettered BOLD signs on all the doors into the children's centre where I am doing my first placement stating that NO NUTS are to be brought into the building.\

The lunch I brought on the first day included a peaNUTbutter & jam sandwich. That is my reserve lunch. My back-up in case of laziness. No one noticed but I won't be able to make that faux pas again. What to eat for lunch?????

Another First

Tomorrow is the first day of my first placement. I am terrified. This week off went by so quickly. I had better find some confidence my the 'morn. Apparently they want us to have some experience when we are sent out as real speech-language pathologists. This first placement is developing language (ie. children). This is going to be my life for the next 8 weeks but I likely won't be able to reveal much as per confidentiality.

Selective Reading

As mentioned a few posts ago, book club is up for its second round. The selections being voted on now are (in alphabetical order; I won't reveal which I am supporting ;)

Bean Trees, The (Barbara Kingsolver)

Brief Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao, The (Junot Diaz)

Good to a Fault (Marina Endicott)

I didn't really agonize over the choices this time but I'm much more satisfied with them. I'd be happy to read all three. With Oryx & Crake (Atwood) the themes were fairly transparent and somewhat cliche (I liked the book but she isn't known for concealing her opinion). The hope with the next novel is that it provides richer themes, stronger feelings and a wider range of emotion. We'll never know until we try one though :)

Cleaning House

Moving back from TO for two months (to do my first SLP placement in child language) I ended my lease and brought all my things home. There is barely enough room to walk around. I'm 24 and still moving back home between stints away at school. There is need to purge in anticipation of actually moving out of this place some day.

I'm doing an intensive "no regrets, no looking back" clear out of everything I own. If I don't use it I don't keep it.

The pink and yellow hair straightener is going. I've held onto it this long because where else can you get a hair straightener with exchangeable metal plates that let you emboss HEARTS! and STARS! on your hair???? All of my instincts say: what if you decide you want STARS in your hair next year and YOU JUST CAN"T DO IT???

The VHS movies are also going. The films themselves are a good representation of my favourite-flicks-of-all-time; unfortunately I don't have a VCR to actually view said movies. Maybe it is time to go digital.

Bye bye movie collection [its a short list]:
The Secret Garden "I've got a lump in my back, I've got a lump in my back!"
Ever After. Drew Barrymore at her best (exept for The Wedding Singer).
The Joy Luck Club. Who doesn't love a good generation-spanner?
Miss Congeniality. "Eyebrows: there should be two!"
About A Boy. I heart Hugh Grant even if he is dreadful in real life.
Beaches. Mini-Mayim Bialik, watch it!
What's Eating Gilbert Grape.
Ferris Bueller's Day Off.
Rushmore. This one is somewhat out of place because, well, I have never watched it. I went through a buying-vhs-at-garage-sales phase a few years ago.

[ETA: More proof that I was a weird kid. In my sorting I found an old photo album with those sticky-sheets. Apparently I was trying to make some sort of time capsule because I cut out old newspaper articles and images of toys and clothes from old Sears catalogues. I had a pretty interesting idea of what was relevant at the time in terms of news: "Fishers incensed as Canada makes sockeye deal with Washington State". Armageddon was playing in theatres at the time. So was "Out of Sight" with George Clooney. I guess it wasn't very memorable.
That should also give you a timeline for when I was making this. Go being a little too old to be making something like that. This album also reminded me of one of my odd obsessions as a young child: cutting out pictures from Sears catalogues. I would do it for hours and had a bag that I kept them all in. My parents should have had me playing more sports, or an instrument.]