Bound to Happen

Well, it happened. I got my first nasty anonymous comment. I got it on yesterday's post about entering the attendance at my church.

Just so you know, Mr. or Ms. Anonymous Nasty Commenter, I was simply venting and I would never ask anyone to follow my silly 8 rules because that's what they were: silly. I'm sorry you took them seriously because I sure didn't. I know that everyone is going to keep signing their name however they want. I'm certainly not stupid. And while, yes, I may be a perfectionist in certain areas of my life, I do realize that not everyone feels the same way and I don't expect them to.

This is my blog and if you don't like what I write or my personality or whatever then do everyone a favor and please stop reading.

Thank you.

8 Simple Rules

As someone who volunteers to enter Sunday's attendance for a very large church, I find myself bewildered at the number of members who cannot be identified in the church's database. And while I wish the following rules (that I made up today after another morning of frustration) could be plastered inside the attendance books, I know I'll just have to be happy venting here. So if you go to a large church, please heed the following requests:

1. Please print your name legibly. If you write in cursive, you tend to just sign your name like you would any other document and while the enlarged first letter of your last name is legible, the other six or seven letters that have been turned into a squiggle or straight line are not. I cannot stress the importance of this; in fact, most of my problems would be solved if everyone followed just this one rule.

2. If you have a very common name, please write your address or some other type of identifying information along with your name. Our church has 8,000 members. Do you know how many John Smiths and Nancy Andersons we have on our rolls?

3. On that same note, please don't write "The Taylor Family" and expect me to know which of the ten Taylor families pertains to yours. Adding an address or first name would be a great help.

4. Please write down your first and last names. Writing "Ivy" or "Porter" is not helpful. Who do you think you are? Cher? Madonna?

5. For the elderly ladies: I understand that you were raised to always think of yourselves as wives instead of individuals, but the database does not list you as "Mrs. Bob Dawson." It lists you as "Edith Dawson" and I have a very hard time finding you. If you're embarrassed by the Christian name your parents gave you, please don't be. After several years of teaching, very few first names shock me. Besides, Eunice, Agatha and Mildred are all lovely names. Please use them.

6. On the other end of the age spectrum, please do not allow children who do not write legibly to be the sole attendance recorder for your family. I understand that children want to practice their writing skills (having a five year old who insists on recording her own attendance), but I would ask you to check their work and either fix it or rewrite whatever it is that they attempted to record in the book.

7. I realize that I attend a very WASPy church, but would it kill you to name your children something other than Robert White IV or Charles Brown III? Don't you think they'd like a name of their own, instead of spending their entire lives explaining that they are not Charles Brown Sr. or Charles Brown Jr., but Charles Brown III? And giving them cutsie nicknames like Deuce, Trey or Tripp doesn't really help me, either.

8. And finally, the nicknames. If you go by an unusual nickname, please write your given name along with the unusual name. I'm a pretty smart person, but please tell me how I'm supposed to know that "Mack Jenkins" is actually "Joseph Jenkins"? I can understand Joe, Joey and even Seph as nicknames for Joseph. But "Mack"? Really?

Thank you for following the guidelines. You just made a volunteer's life much easier.

25 Things

RachelAnn over at Life of a Single Girl awarded me the "I Love Your Blog" Award AND tagged me for a 25 Random Things About Me meme. I'd post the award but I don't know how. (I guess I ought to figure those kinds of things out, huh?) A big "thank you" for the award, Rachel, and without further ado, here are my 25 random things. (Sorry it took so long, but I just did something similar on Facebook and it took me a while to come up with 25 more things!)

1. I worry about money way too much.
2. I can't stand to listen to people eat.
3. My eyes are blue.
4. I think "Friday Night Lights" is one of the most underrated shows on TV. And if that doesn't get you to watch it, I will remind you that cutie pie Kyle Chandler is one of the stars of it. Sigh.
5. I played the French Horn and trumpet in high school.
6. I don't really like the color pink, but it looks good on me so I wear it.
7. I'm allergic to olives.
8. I really regret not traveling abroad while in college.
9. My first car was my parents' old Camry wagon. I loved that car.
10. I enjoy the idea of skiing more than actually skiing.
11. I have a degree in history, but I don't like American history.
12. I am completely frazzled by trying to plan a wedding shower in three weeks.
13. After having a laptop for several years, I never want to go back to a desktop computer.
14. I enjoy washing the dishes after dinner. No one wants to help me so washing dishes gives me 20 minutes of alone time.
15. I'm a Christian and I'm often ashamed of how other Christians act.
16. I used to drink Dr. Pepper all the time and now I think it's too sweet.
17. I enjoy searching for new recipes and using my family as guinea pigs.
18. I'd love to try out for "Jeopardy!" but I'm way too shy.
19. I found a cute pair of black shoes last week, but they were Hannah Montana brand and I couldn't bring myself to buy them.
20. I like reading bumper stickers on other people's cars, but I won't put them on my cars.
21. I have reading glasses. I'm old.
22. I think cottage cheese is gross.
23. I don't like dogs at all. Not one bit. Go ahead, you can hate me now.
24. When I read for fun, I only read fiction. I got enough non-fiction in college.
25. I'm excited about getting a new digital camera for my birthday next month!

Tag! You're it! Write 25 random things about yourself and tag others to do the same. It's a lot of fun.

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P.S. Thanks to everyone for the advice on my student's friend request on Facebook. I ignored the request and I figure if she ever sends me a message to ask why, I'll be honest with her. Better safe than sorry, right?

My Tiny Teenager

Three verbal gems from Sydney this past week:


"Is that what you're wearing to the bus stop?"

Apparently you can embarrass your children well before they hit adolescence.



"Mommy, you're old. You have lines on your forehead."

Solution? A new wrinkle cream. Also: muzzle for child. (Just kidding about the muzzle. Maybe.)



"Whoa, those are big jeans."

Gee, thanks. Now I have motivation to get exercising again.

What to do?!?

I knew I was taking a risk by joining Facebook. A lot of my former students are on Facebook and while I liked most of them well enough, I don't know that I want them to know where I live or have access to my kids' pictures.

I set my profile and pics to "private" and have been very careful about who I "friended". I deleted my blog address on my profile and I even chose to not join my high school's group (I taught at the same school I went to).

But one of my students found me through another contact and has requested that I "friend" her. She was a sweet, smart kid and I don't mind having contact with her, but a lot of her friends are my former students, too. Which means they might make the same request. So it's the old snowball effect.......

So do I "friend" her or ignore her? I don't like being mean, but I don't want to have too much contact with my other students, either.

Help!! Advice, anyone?

Letters

Dear Stomach Virus,

Please leave my daughter's body. And while you're at it, leave the rest of us alone, too.

Thanks in advance,
Jana

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Dear Sydney,

If you're too sick to go to school, then you're too sick to watch TV all day. Be prepared to take a nap.

Love,
Mom

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Dear Pharmacy,

If you only have one register open and have seven people waiting in line for that one register, you might want to think about moving the clerk at the completely unused cosmetics register to the second one in the pharmacy. I'm just sayin'.

Thanks,
Jana

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Dear Lady in Line at the Pharmacy,

Socks with high heels? Really? Is there a new trend that I'm unaware of?

Totally out of the fashion loop,
The lady in line behind you

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Dear Liam,

If I survive your toddlerhood without getting any gray hairs, it will be a miracle. I love you more than life itself, but, Dude, the tantrums have got to stop.

Love,
Mommy

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Dear Snotty Moms in my Old Neighborhood,

The world does extend beyond the Loop and even the Beltway. And the world does not revolve around you and your opinions. Get over yourselves.

Sincerely,
Jana

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And lastly, a real/non-sarcastic one:

Dear Ms. School Nurse,

Thank you for being so sweet to my sick little girl and taking care of her for the two hours she was in your office. I hope all of my kids get to have you as their school nurse.

Much appreciation,
Sydney's mom

New Links

I may be taking a bit of a blogging break, but I thought I could at least muster the energy to update my blogroll off to the left. Stop by and take a look at some of my new favorites:


You can find RachelAnn at Life of a Single Girl. She's a real life Carrie Bradshaw who lets me live vicariously through her. She gets to take business trips to NYC and even has her own Mr. Big. I'm quite envious. Of course, the horrible blind date she wrote about today makes me glad that I'm done with dating.

My friend Shiran became a dad six weeks ago (has it really been six weeks already?). You can read about parenthood through a new dad's eyes at hipdad. I love mom blogs, but his perspective really gets me thinking.

You can find Sherri at The Sakson Family. Sherri and her husband, Will, are real-life friends of ours. Their daughter, Zoe, is pals with Sydney. Grab a glass a wine and check out her funny take on life. :)

The "Blog" of Unnecessary Quotation Marks makes fun of signs that use quotation marks all willy nilly. It's a must read if grammatical errors are a pet peeve for you like they are for me.

Cake Wrecks shows pictures of cakes gone wrong. Having created a few bad cakes of my own, I find this one pretty funny. If you're a fan of cupcake cakes, you might not want to follow this one since the author seems to have a personal vendetta against them. Also, some of the cakes are not meant for little eyes, so please be advised.


Anyway, hopefully I'll get some bloggy inspiration soon. Until then, I hope you'll check some of my new reads. Happy reading, everyone!