Thing-a-day.com

Today’s thing is a little post about my son and his linguistic habits.  Though we live in New Jersey, neither of us is native to the state (or the region) and so we sometimes speak in a manner slightly different than the locals.  These differences always amuse me and today brought this gem of a moment.

My years living in the South imprinted one thing on my brain: all soda is called Coke. From there, one distinguishes as to what kind of Coke, as in the following conversation:
Question: “Would you like a Coke?”
Answer: “Yes.”
Question: “What kind of Coke?”
Answer: “Dr. Pepper.”

So it is that all soda in my home is called a Coke. And, in fact, mine is a Coca-Cola household so, when you ask for Coke, you get…….Coke. All of this was made perfectly clear as JT and I drove to school this morning.

Just past the first Dunkin Donuts on our 8 mile drive (there are 3 directly in the way to school…..you gotta love Jersey), a Pepsi truck pulled out in front of us. It was giant with PEPSI written all over it. And what did my son say?

“Mama, do you think that Pepsi truck will just drive on over to our house and drop off some Coke for us?”

“Maybe so,” I responded with a smile.

I made pancakes for supper tonight. That might not seem creative to most people, but it’s creative for me.
Ever since I became a single mama, my sister has been steadily advising me to lower my standards. In the (obviously imaginary) ideal world of Sassafras Mama, a tasty homemade supper is put on the table each and every night. As the Sassafras Sister and any number of reasonable people have often suggested, it’s perfectly acceptable to fall short of this bar.

There was a faculty meeting after school today and it ran a bit late. Then JT’s homework sucked up more time than usual (geometry is kicking my bootie). It is true that I could have skipped my workout and made the planned supper (homemade pizza) but that would cause the earth to spin off it’s axis and so…….pancakes it was.

They were tasty and the boy was most delighted by this turn of events.

So I guess that everybody won.

My second grader has just started a math unit on shapes and fractions. To get the children thinking spatially about shapes, they were asked to cut out some paper patterns and put the shapes together. Since the instructions specifically told us the children would need our help completing the assignment, I knew the task would be a challenge.

The assignment came home yesterday, the day that JT sees his other mom, and so I sent it off with the two of them hopeful that she would get the project started. Not surprisingly, that was a futile act of hope.

So tonight, we got started. Honestly, though I feared that it would be unpleasant it turned out to be fun. First we looked at the pattern.
Then we put our little cone shape together. We’ve got four more shapes to make before the project is due on Monday. Expect final pictures later this week.