AZDana

I only show my age in my ears

04 Oct 2007 Leave a Comment

by AzDana in Family

I borrowed one of my son’s music cds and am listening to it right now. All I can say is I’m glad it’s his and not mine. I’ve never tried to influence his choice in styles of music and this cd definitely reflects that. I set rules about content because I am dead set to any cop-killing lyrics, whether they’re sung by rappers or Barry Gibb. But I feel that music genres are an individual taste and I just don’t think its a good idea to argue over matters of taste, even if the parent doesn’t like what the kid likes.

It seems that the older I get, the slower I like my music. Recently, I’ve been enjoying some old southern gospel classics from the 40s that I stumbled across on youtube. I never thought of youtube being a great archival resource, but many are using it for that purpose. The funny thing is, I probably wouldn’t have listened to the old southern gospel songs five years ago. Interesting how tastes change, eh? Who knows, maybe in five years I’ll appreciate the music that’s playing on the cd right now:

Midnight Confessions

25 Sep 2007 Leave a Comment

by AzDana in Family

Well, I was asleep, but then one of the cats decided to dance on my head to wake me up. So I’m now wide awake and decided to blog a bit till I got sleepy again. I figure this late hour is the perfect time for me to open up about one of my family’s secrets that’s been going on for decades.

Well, here it goes: For several generations, the women in my family have been known to go bonkers over office supplies. That’s right, we go ga-ga over gummy labels, insane over ink cartridges and get punchy over pen sets. I’m embarrassed to admit that my sister and I have had several heated debates over 88 bright versus 92 bright paper. Sad to say that it’s affected the younger generations as well. When it comes to mechanical pencils, my daughter can hold her own on the subject and is liable to talk your ears off about the characteristics of various leads. You see, other families exchange items like baked goods, or fruit baskets. But in my family, we give each other things like calendars, file folders and tape dispensers. Maybe we’re crazy, but the women in my family love label makers more than bottles of the latest and trendiest perfumes. Looks like an office supply site is a great source of presents to please everyone in my family.

I think I can, I think I can…. but not for eighty five bucks

24 Sep 2007 Leave a Comment

by AzDana in Family

I found a book on sale at Amazon, The Little Engine That Could (Oversize Gift Edition) by Watty Piper. It is currently on sale for $17, the original list price is $85.00. Yes indeed, you read that right, and further more, bn.com also has it listed for $85 too. To be fair, it is a giant sized hardcover edition and it comes packaged in a “lavish deluxe collector’s gift box.” According to Amazon, its dimensions are 17.8 x 15.2 x 1.4 inches.

Personally, I think seventeen bucks is a fair price to pay for the book, and it would probably be a great addition to a classroom or Sunday School room. But the eighty five dollars seems kind of crazy to me and I would never spend that much money on a book for a small child. I can understand spending money on a boxed book set for an older kid, but at that age, they’re still using peanut butter sandwiches as bookmarks. I would much rather buy the small version of the book for five dollars, a set of markers and a giant art pad, and ask the kid to make his own giant book. Or better yet, turn it into a family project and work on it side by side. I think the final result will be cherished a lot longer than anything you’ll find online and you’ll be able to create some terrific memories along the way too.

I am so proud of my daughter

09 Sep 2007 2 Comments

by AzDana in Family

You know, when you’re raising your kids, you don’t know for sure how they’re going to turn out, until they’ve turned out. Well, my daughter, MP, is over 18, and I couldn’t be prouder of the person she’s become, especially growing up in a single parent home. I respect her integrity and her fairness, and her ability to keep a cool head in a stressful situation. She’s a beautiful, bright and intelligent young woman.

Now that she is an adult, she prefers not to be known as “Dana’s daughter” online, because it makes her sound like a kid, and she’s not. I can’t blame her for feeling this way, and I respect her wishes to forge her own identity, instead of being a “mini-me”.

Awhile back ago, my daughter offered to host some people’s blogs on a domain that she set up for that purpose. While I know some of the people that she hosts, those people don’t know that she is my daughter.

Recently, I was reading the blog of someone (we’ll call her Agnes) whose blog was on my daughter’s domain. Normally, my daughter runs her sites her way, and I run mine my way. However, after reading something that “Agnes’” posted on her blog, I am the one that insisted that my daughter take it down. I’ll put it this way: If someone had said to my face what Agnes posted, then I would report that person to the authorities. When it comes to other people’s blogs, I am pretty lenient and carefree about what I read. But after reading Agnes’ post, I am very concerned about the way she treats her child.

I actually wanted my daughter to remove everything that Agnes had ever posted, and ban her on a permanent basis. My daughter, trying to be fair and less hot-headed than myself, gave Agnes a two week suspension.

Well, Agnes doesn’t seem to like MP’s decision and has been posting about it publicly on a message board that I frequent. Agnes has been trying to lead a witch hunt and stir up bad feelings towards my daughter.

I really didn’t want to get in the middle of such childish and juvenile behavior, and I am shocked by those that have been part of the mob mentality. I just have a few words to them, and then I am done with those that chose to hurl epithets and hateful words without knowing the entire situation:

• If you don’t have proof of the emails exchanged between Agnes and my daughter, then you’re only seeing one side of the picture.
• I am the one that caused Agnes’ post to come down and if I had to do it over again, I wouldn’t change my opinion. Her post was so over the top that the situation couldn’t wait till Agnes got back from her grandmother’s funeral.
• If you are going to post mean hateful things in a public forum about someone, I’d prefer you know who you should be “blacklisting”. (I think that’s the word I saw last night, I don’t plan on going back to make sure.)

Again, let me say that I am proud of how my daughter handled this situation. She and I both discussed the ramifications of taking any action before it was taken. She knew that there may be some repercussions that came about because of this, but sometimes, what’s right isn’t popular, and being popular isn’t right.MP doesn’t really care what others say about her when she knows she’s done no wrong.

What REALLY REALLY bothers me… the one that ends up the big loser in all this… is Agnes’ child. I had hoped that the suspension would give her a wake up call about how she treats her daughter. I guess that’s not going to happen. My daughter is big enough to handle anything that Agnes can dish out. Sadly, I can’t say the same thing about Agnes’ little girl.