Good News!

Graduating from anything is a big deal, but for my children graduating from college is monumental because they each have a moderate hearing loss. The statistics on graduation from a university for people with hearing loss aren't very good. Like less than 30% of deaf individuals who enroll, graduate from a 4 yr. school. It is no easy feat to pull off, so in honor of the fact I am within mere weeks of celebrating two of my kids graduating from college, Ezra and Hadassah: A Portrait of American Royalty on all ebook platforms is ON SALE for 99 cents!
Let's all celebrate this wonderful academic achievement in the best way possible, by getting our educations on and reading my book.  From now until my kids graduation day on May 16th, 2015, in the ebook platform of your choice, the book is 99 cents!
Yay! Yay! Yay!

Kiss, kiss, love, love and many happy tears from my family to yours. 

Our Gang
(L to R) Ty, Rob, Flat Jennifer,(she wasn't present for photo in person) Heather and Elise

How to Get Your Kids to Eat Vegetables

One of the hard things to deal with is a kid who won't eat good food, formally known as vegetables. Many adults won't eat them either (like Pres. George H.W. Bush who hates broccoli. Do you remember his dust-up with the Broccoli Association? Apparently US presidents are supposed to suck it up and eat their vegetables, no matter what. ) The problem with vegetables is they don't have a good advertising campaign. Kool-aid has the Kool-aid man, Tang used to be "the drink of Astronauts!" and who doesn't love Tony the Tiger and his Frosted Flake cereal? Who is standing up for the lowly Brussels Sprout? Not a soul.

The only vegetable in America that had widespread success in being eaten by children during the 1960's and 70's was spinach. Of course, it wasn't just any old spinach. No one ate it raw on salads back then besides my hippie next door neighbors who were vegetarians. I loved hanging out with the free-range hippie kids, but I rarely stuck around at meal times. I preferred hamburgers to plates of beets, celery and dandelion roots.

I happily ate spinach (only from a can, the way God intended it) because I was an avid watcher of the world's most subversive cartoon ad campaign for that veggie. Popeye the Sailor man ate spinach to give him extra strength before fighting his evil nemesis, Brutus. What scrawny kid looking to protect themselves from older kids, wouldn't investigate the wonders of canned spinach after watching Popeye pop open a can of it, gulp it down and then stop a moving train with his bare hands? I was sold.

Genius. Sheer genius.

I maintain Popeye the Sailor Man still holds up well today as a ringing endorsement of eating your spinach. You can find Popeye spinach (it comes frozen, too)  if you look for it. I have a can in my kitchen cupboard right now. Show your kids the cartoon and let Popeye do his job. He's good at it.

 As Mikey for Life cereal would say, "Try it! You'll like it!" Meanwhile, enjoy the Popeye cartoon  episode, Spinach vs. Hamburgers on me. For the record, just like the children in the cartoon,  I eat both. I am sucker for good advertising

 

 

 

Bedknobs and Broomsticks

When Rex and I left the foster home our clothes were packed in brown paper grocery bags. Nowadays foster kids use black plastic trash bags. Such is progress.

We were allowed to pick two personal belongings from our childhoods to take with us. Imagine permanently leaving your home with only two possessions. Since I was 7 yrs. old and had no understanding of what was happening to us, it was a miracle I picked the two things that actually meant the most to me. I have never regretted my choices.

The only thing I still have in my possession (my beloved Mrs. Beasley doll was taken from me and given to another child, remember?) is the long-playing record and read-a-long storybook from the Disney movie Bedknobs and Broomsticks. I still remember the day Ralph and Claudia took me to the theater to see my first movie,  B & B.  My love of movies and Flicks Chocolates began that day. 

They don't make them like this anymore. 

I think I had nice handwriting as a child, considering my chicken-scratch writing now. 

The funniest part of the story is their bed being fished out of the lake by a bear. Still makes me laugh. 

I can hardly wait to share this story with my granddaughter Eleanor. My own kids preferred watching the movie, but Eleanor is an old soul and she will get it how cool listening to the story and looking at the pictures is. 

Be Nice to the Little People

My hair was my attempt at fashion, cira 1985

1985 was a good year to graduate high school. I was slightly amazed I made it. On my first day at Maryvale High I was sure that I would never finish because 4 years was forever long and the world would surely end before I was done serving my high school sentence. Good thing I decided to hedge my bets and act like the world would carry on past the '80's.

During the first weeks of high school I attended a mandatory freshman class assembly that was supposed to get us excited about our next 4 years. The inspirational speaker told us that our years at Maryvale could be the best ever, if we chose to get involved and make our marks. I am a sucker for inspiration, so I decided to start off with a bang. I convinced my best friend, Stephanie Hauger that we should run for Freshman Class Presidency. I would be president and she would be vice president. We could be popular and involved from the very beginning, thereby guaranteeing we wouldn't "waste a moment of this precious time of your lives!" as the inspirational speaker exhorted.

Yeah...that didn't go so well. It turns out in a freshman class of over 800 students (Maryvale was an urban high school with over 3,000 students in total. Crazy big.) where kids came from at least 3 junior high schools, there was no way a freaky girl with weird hair, bad skin, a gap between her front teeth and thrift store clothes was going anywhere but straight to ridicule. My biggest regret about that disaster is that I dragged Stephanie along for a ride on the Public Humiliation Train. She had no interest in making her mark or being the center of attention.  She only agreed to the stupid campaign because she was my friend. Trust me, it never happened again.

Anyway, all that to say I started off my high school career off in a spectacular spectacle of shame. I learned to keep to my lowly station in the social order and didn't run for any popularity contests again. The people had spoken and they yelled quite loudly.

Everything was quiet on the "making my mark" front until the last weeks of school my senior year.
At the beginning of the school year, our class voted on the Senior Mosts. You know, like Most Likely to Succeed, Cutest Couple, etc. The voting happened well before fall holiday season because the winners pictures were going to be immortalized in our final yearbook and that had to be wrapped up so it could go to the printers. I felt a twinge of sadness when I not only wasn't a Senior Most, I wasn't even in the yearbook for anything besides being an inmate at the asylum. I hadn't made my mark. I hadn't made ANY mark. High school was another nothing experience in my life. That inspirational speaker my freshman year was full of crap. Graduation couldn't come soon enough for me.

I held those bitter thoughts until May 24, 1985. That was the day my attitude towards Maryvale High completely changed. I was reading the weekly school newspaper before English class when I saw it. I reread it at least 10 times before I reacted. How Could This Be?  I didn't know anything about it. No one told me it was even going on. Maryvale High was big enough that stuff was always going on that I didn't know about, but how did I miss this? I completely missed it. Right there, on page 3, I made my mark without even knowing about it.

The day never to be forgotten

It turns out the headline for this fabulousness isn't quite true. The Senior Mosts that were voted on in the fall, for the yearbook were tabulated from only seniors votes. I didn't have a chance in Hades of being in the yearbook because everyone in my class knew I was goober. But the Spring Senior Favorites were voted on from students in the whole school.  And that is where I made my mark.

Unlike other seniors, I was nice to the underclassmen. I didn't close doors in their faces, I didn't trip anyone and more importantly, I talked to them. I don't know if it was an organized thing by a few students or what, but the underclass students propelled me to my moment of greatness. I actually was voted Most Likely to be President! Can you believe it? Kelly Cantele certainly couldn't. She said to me, "I don't know how you won. I expected competition from Judy Milam because she is so smart and pretty, but not you." I nodded, knowing exactly what she meant. How could I be deserving of such attention? I was in only one honors class (unlike her), didn't hang out with the popular kids (unlike her) or drive a nice car (unlike her). I had nothing, except I had friends in the freshman, sophomore and junior classes.

That is the life lesson for you, my friend. Always, always, be nice to the little people. You never know when they will rise up and vote for you.