Mary Robinette Kowal is an author who has created a challenge to send something in the postal mail every day in February (well, every day the post office is open, so in the US that’s a 24 day commitment…).

Month of Letters

Letters, postcards, newspaper clippings, etc…photographs, maybe!

I can see this as being a source of inspiration for taking photographs, too.

I’m challenging myself to participate — I have a ton of fabric postcards that are partially made, I could finish up some of those, plus it might be nice to send some handwritten letters to old friends, maybe even to my own children.

I was also introduced to several apps that will let you turn your photos into postcards:

http://itunes.apple….d293657764?mt=8
http://postagramapp.com/
http://www.thepostcardapp.com/

Would you like a postcard from me in February? Send me your address and I’ll add you to my list! (I have a limited number of postcards and time, so it’s first come first served…)

Does this sound like something you might challenge yourself to do in February? And you need someone to send something to? How about me!

Suzanne Earley
604 West St
Traer, IA 50675

It is trivial to find my mailing address on the web, so I don’t have any qualms about posting it here. If you want me to mail to you, though, and you don’t want to post your address, you can post a comment and I’ll reply with an e-mail, or you can e-mail me directly.

About two weeks ago, the boys went to a friend’s house to hang out. They were outside for awhile, and then ended up inside, to play video games. The friends they were with originally pulled out a game that was rated “M” (mature) — my boys said they weren’t allowed to play “M” games, and wondered if there was something else they could play. A “T” (for Teen) game was found, they played it, and everything was fine: and they even told me about the situation.

I was pretty proud of them, and told my Facebook friends about it.

They went over to the same friend’s house today and after being outside for awhile, they went in again…and this time, the friends refused to play any other game but the one rated M.

My boys were told “You’re just scared, your Mom will never find out.”

Guess who choose to come home instead of stay in that situation??

The friends were right, they could have stayed and could have chosen to lie to me later about what they did. It’s entirely possible that I would have never known. However: my boys are not very good liars. As soon as I asked what they did, they would have had to try to make something up, and they have faces like mine: I would have been able to read them like a book.

(It also turns out that they didn’t really care to play the game in question anyway…)

I want to make sure I’m fighting the right battles, but I’m pretty comfortable that this is a limit that’s appropriate to enforce. They are 12. The ESRB rating system says that games that are rated M are for audiences 17 and above. Even the Teen games they do play are supposedly “13 and up” — and I’m not always thrilled with the level of violence and language in those games. I can’t imagine what a game must be like in order to warrant the M rating.

I can’t help but think ahead and feel the tiniest bit hopeful about future situations, that if they are willing and able to follow the rules in a situation with video games, maybe they’ll be OK in harder circumstances. And believe me, we have talked about it: that the kind of response they had in this situation is the exact same kind of response they need to have some day when they are presented with drugs or alcohol or anything else illegal.

And I’m just fine if they blame it on me, I’m OK with being the bad guy. I think more parents need to be willing to set and enforce some limits on their kids.

Because I know you are all just dying to see what my office looks like:

I think I need a fresh flower budget. Or at the very least, I probably could use a live plant, I suppose. Assuming I could keep a plant alive.

Why, yes, it is a bit snug and cozy. Some might even call it claustrophobic.

Some days, heck, some weeks! — being the school secretary is really wild and I wonder what I’ve gotten myself in to, but for the most part, I’m really enjoying my job. I try to remind myself every day, that for some students (and even teachers…) I might be the only smiling face they see that day, so I try really hard to be friendly, even to the ones that I would like to give the stink eye.

I wait until they are gone to make my angry face…

Blue and Black.

It’s going to come down to a difference in taste, because I probably wear combinations that some of you wouldn’t be caught dead in (and vice versa) and that’s OK…

But I’m thinking I wasn’t clear about what I meant in regards to blue and black together. I was specifically referring to NAVY blue.

Light blue or bright blue? I can totally see pairing those with black.

But to me, personally, Navy Blue and Black do not work well together.

In the case of the combo one of the boys was trying to wear, the shirt was Black, Red and Grey. There were already 3 colors in play, and while I might have let him get away with khaki pants, and jeans would have been fine, I did not think that the shirt would look good with a pair of Navy Blue pants.

Especially when I knew he owned a pair of black pants…

Of course, I had to take a picture and wouldn’t you know, as I look at this picture, it doesn’t look nearly as egregious as it did in my head, but I still wouldn’t let him do this.

And really, the point of yesterday’s post was more about me almost being a hypocrite, than anything.

(Plus, my Mom says that I could have worn a black skirt with that sweater and it would have been just fine. The navy blue in the sweater is pretty subtle…but I would have known, and I try not to be too much of a hypocrite…)

The boys have to dress up on the days they have basketball games — nice pants (no jeans!), and a shirt with buttons.

Some of the 8th graders conned the coach before the first game “I don’t have any nice pants,” they cried. So he allowed that if they wore nice jeans, that would be OK.

At that game, a few parents were discussing this, and were more than a little annoyed, because we’d all gone out and bought new clothes for our players. As we talked, it occurred to one of us that at least one of the players that complained is in band.

Band members are REQUIRED to wear black pants at concerts.

At the next concert (which just happened to be within a week or two), we were all very interested to notice what these players were wearing. Sure enough: black pants and a dress shirt were spotted on several of the complainers.

The topic came up again at a practice and the cry was the same “We don’t have any nice clothes!”

And Mark looked one of them in the eye and said “I sat next to you not 2 nights ago, and you were wearing black pants and a dress shirt.”

The tune changed “But I didn’t know we could wear black pants. I thought you said it had to be khakis.”

Another young man said “I don’t have any nice clothes either.”

Mark looked him in the eye and asked “What did you wear at the concert the other night???”

His answer was “I burned those black pants.”

As I mentioned above, some of us went out and bought some new pants and shirts for our children, since they were woefully lacking in the nice clothes department. Every time they go to get dressed, though, my boys keep trying to pair BLUE pants with shirts that have BLACK as a predominate color.

They also wear white socks with their black pants and black shoes.

I kept telling them that particular combo was not acceptable, but they kept trying, in part because one of their pairs of black pants was buried in a closet under a metric ton of clothes they no longer wear.

This morning, as I was getting dressed in one of my brand-new sweaters, I really wanted to wear a skirt, and the skirts I have are black or grey.

The sweater reads primarily as what I would call turquoise, but if you get up close to the ribbing, you can see that it is mixed with, you guessed it, Navy BLUE.

I decided I could not, in good conscience, wear it with a black skirt, and stuck on my navy blue dress pants.

I thought I was pretty cute, and I didn’t have any guilt about pairing black with blue.

I’m still waiting for my sister to notice how blonde I am, though.