Aborted Apostrophe Rescue Mission

I really appreciated all the comments on my last post. It was nice to hear from other people experiencing the same thing. Too bad we don't all live in the same town, huh?

Jenna's out of school for the summer, which isn't easy for either of us. I miss being able to mop the floor uninterrupted, and she asks "Am I going to school today?" every morning. Julia goes until June 4 (thanks to snow and tornado days that pushed the date back) and then we leave for Houston the next day. We're looking forward to seeing our Baytown friends at a certain wedding on June 7.

From the apostrophe abuse department: Every Tuesday/Thursday at Jenna's school since January, I've been walking down the hall past a bulletin board that says "PARENT'S" on it. Nothing after it, just PARENT'S. Meaning, I guess, that the information on that board is for parents. Which means the apostrophe is completely unnecessary. (Unless the board itself actually belongs to a parent. In which case, why is it hanging there?) All semester, I tried to get up my nerve to reach up and rescue that poor piece of punctuation from its incorrect usage. I never did. As far as I know, it hangs there still. I just really like the director and I really, really appreciated her getting Jenna into the school there (because I had just had a negative experience at her previous school and didn't want to take her back there. For what it's worth, the incident had nothing to do with punctuation.) I hope to keep Jenna in this school for the next two school years, and I think the director NOT thinking I'm an obsessive psycho freak would work to my advantage.

Also related to abuses of the English language, we received some coupons (yay!) in our paper yesterday that have "Stock-up on savings!" printed across the top of the page. Why is "stock-up" hyphenated? I'll tell you why. It's because Americans are losing their grip on their native language. I wonder if this is happening in other countries. Are people in Japan forgetting how to read, write and speak Japanese? I know the world has other problems, but it's troubling nonetheless.

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!

Apostrophe abuse report!

Just got the Justice catalog. It's a store with cute clothes, etc., for tween-age girls. There's a shirt that I thought was cute with monkeys on it. Then I looked down the sleeve and saw "I LOVE MONKEY'S."

AGGGHHHH!!!! This drives me crazy!!