Deanaland

Wednesday, December 12, 2007

December Excitement

Yesterday after both girls were home from school, Julia went bike-riding while Jenna and I worked on getting the rest of our tulip bulbs in the flower bed. Julia had been gone from the house for a few minutes when I heard a distant "Mom!" I looked down the street and there she was, crumpled under her bike in someone's front yard. I ran down the street to her, expecting the worst, but she wasn't hurt at all. The shoelaces on one shoe had wrapped around the pedal, so she had steered over to some grass and fallen over on purpose. (This brought back a flashback of my brother Brian, who broke his elbow the same way when we were kids.) Julia said the laces wrapped around the pedal in just a few seconds. They were so tight that I couldn't get them untied, so I ran back to our house to get my scissors out of my gardening bag. While I was extracting Julia's foot from her bike, a car pulled up. It was Julia's friend Elizabeth and her dad, wanting to know if everything was OK. It's always fun to explain why you are cutting your child out of her bike with a pair of scissors.

All that excitement was over, so we went back to the house. Jenna had to pee, and she's new enough to being potty-trained that we try to make sure she gets to the potty in plenty of time. But we got to the house to find all the doors locked. Our garage door was up, but the door going into the house was locked. (The neighbor kid from across the street said Jenna did it, but I think it may have been the neighbor kid.) So Chad raced home to rescue us, but not in time for Jenna. Fun times.

Another apostrophe abuse report. I'm trying to get Jenna into an MDO that's closer to our house. While I was there to meet the director and tour the place the other day, I passed a bulletin board in the hall that said "PARENT'S." I guess they mean the info on that board is for parents. The offending apostrophe was hanging up there by one staples and I'm telling you, if I didn't really want Jenna in this program -- and if the director hadn't been standing right next to me, I would have torn it off. It's time to fight back against apostrophe abuse! Who's with me?

Thanks for all the previous comments about the monkey shirt. I have read "Eats, Shoots and Leaves." It should be required reading in junior high/high school, and maybe our schools would produce more people who can function in the English language. Just my opinion.

Back to the flower bed. I'm stoked about our 40 daffodils and 40 tulips coming up in the spring!

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19 Comments:

  • At Wed Dec 12, 06:57:00 AM, Blogger courtney said…

    I'm SO with you on the movement to stop apostrophe abuse! I have a co-worker writes " 's " for any word that ends in "s". The other day she sent me an IM that said, "my daughter has an infection in both eye's." Ugh!

     
  • At Wed Dec 12, 07:02:00 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    I'm a Baytown girl that reads your blog from time to time and I wanted to share that the same exact thing happened to my 7 year old son two days ago. We took his shoe off his foot and were able to unwind the string without cutting. We laughed about it (after making sure he was OK).

    We laughed even harder when he got in the truck and said, "Well, that was a situation!"

     
  • At Wed Dec 12, 07:12:00 AM, Blogger elizabeth said…

    It looks like the information is for one parent only. Are there lots of single parents in the MDO program? Shouldn't it be Parents' Information?

     
  • At Wed Dec 12, 07:44:00 AM, Blogger Mary Beth said…

    Deana,
    I'm with you on the apostrophe abuse! It drives me crazy. Something must be done!

     
  • At Wed Dec 12, 09:40:00 AM, Blogger Kelly said…

    I'm with you! Can the first item on the agenda be to cure the it's/its'/its epidemic?

     
  • At Wed Dec 12, 12:15:00 PM, Blogger Winston said…

    Conceivably the apostrophe could be done away with entirely ... example:

    Let's say it's time to go ... or
    Lets say its time to go ...

    The reader should be able to go by context as to the real meaning ...

    example:

    The Parents' General Meeting's location hasn't been changed to Bill's Cafe ... or

    The Parents General Meetings location hasnt been changed to Bills Cafe.

    I say Down With The '

     
  • At Wed Dec 12, 12:31:00 PM, Blogger Deana Nall said…

    My dad (Winston) proposes an interesting solution. A few major companies (Dr Pepper, for example, and Quiznos, more recently) have done away with periods and apostrophes in their product logos because they got to be too much of a headache with logo design, etc.

     
  • At Wed Dec 12, 12:33:00 PM, Blogger Deana Nall said…

    Elizabeth -- if the board means "PARENTS" as in "Hey, parents, look up here at this board because this information is directed at you," it needs no apostrophe. If the word "INFORMATION" were also up there, it would indeed need the apostrophe after the "S" in "PARENTS." Unless they were just directing the info at one parent. And in that case, shouldn't they just send that parent a letter?

     
  • At Wed Dec 12, 07:15:00 PM, Blogger Unknown said…

    I've signed up so I can get in on the fun ... no comments right now; just checking it out.

     
  • At Thu Dec 13, 06:48:00 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    My copy of "Eats, Shoots & Leaves" (second or later printing?) comes with two pages of stickers for helpfully correcting (defacing) rule-breaking signs. The stickers include a variety of punctuation marks and some cover-up stickers emblazoned with "The panda says, 'No.'"

    So tempting.

    Jeff W

     
  • At Thu Dec 13, 08:59:00 AM, Blogger SG said…

    Spoken word grammar has never been an issue for me.. the written word is a totally different story. I don't know if the dyslexia gene has anything to do with that or not.
    Anywho, I agree that the apostrophe could be done away with entirely. Our last name is Grosz. You have no idea how many Christmas Cards come to the Grosz's or Groszs' or sometimes Grosz'es. I just write "The Grosz Family" to avoid the whole plural/possessive z thing. And it always makes me chuckle like a 5th grade boy... the GROSZ family. My poor children.

     
  • At Thu Dec 13, 02:22:00 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    Wow - I actually remember back when Brian broke his elbow. It was a huge deal at the time. Maybe he was just the first person I knew that broke a bone. Not sure.

    So thanks for the flashback!

     
  • At Thu Dec 13, 04:57:00 PM, Blogger Lauren said…

    Abuse of the apostrophe is one of my biggest pet peeves. I am so with you!! I am always amazed at what people come up with. I think they try to make using the apostrophe harder than it really is.

     
  • At Fri Dec 14, 11:30:00 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    My most hated apostrophe abuse is:
    ya'll - WHAT? Come on people, sound it out.
    I must admit though, that I have problems with commas. I put them in, just in case.
    Cecille

     
  • At Fri Dec 14, 01:11:00 PM, Blogger elizabeth said…

    Oh, Deana, I thought about you last night. Our neighbor across the street put up a HUGE sign in their front yard with a spotlight on it that says, in letters about the size of me:

    Happy Holidays!
    The Smith's

    (Name changed to protect their identity.)

    My Dad noticed it first and said in a booming voice, "What is wrong with this country!"

     
  • At Fri Dec 14, 01:15:00 PM, Blogger Winston said…

    Well you know, actually I think that ya'll is a contraction for you all ... but that's just in southeast Texas ... but yall would sound just as good to me ... and as far as commas go, I'll leave it to Deana if she wants to tell about my thing with that little mark ...

     
  • At Fri Dec 14, 01:34:00 PM, Blogger Deana Nall said…

    Hey, Dad -- "ya'll" is incorrect because the apostrophe is supposed to take the place of the letters that are missing in the contraction. So it should be "y'all" because the letters missing are "o" and "u."

     
  • At Fri Dec 14, 03:10:00 PM, Blogger Winston said…

    Good grief ... you''''re right ...
    what was I thinking?
    I'm just red-faced that someone from Arkansas had to straighten me out ...

     
  • At Mon Dec 17, 04:12:00 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    True confession of a blog eavesdropper - I pulled the apostrophe off my daughter's preschool bulletin board, and I crossed one out too that was unpulloffable. (This was 10 years ago!) I've also called the "Maturnity" store and the "Photagraphy" shop to let them know their permanent signs were spelled wrong. That was before I had children... Now I have more pressing issues, but it does drive me nuts!

     

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