TGIF!

I am SOOO glad it is Friday. This has been a long week, arriving early, finishing late, taking work home, etc. Big training session coming up, and so many regs have changed, I'm having to re-do all the material. I think I'll be done Monday, fingers crossed.

Do kids still do that? Cross their fingers for good luck? Probably not. I bet they don't 'touch wood' either, or carry rabbits' feet (Ewwww, now that I think about it). They probably don't rub the heads of red-haired kids, or carry a lucky penny, or throw a pinch of salt over their shoulder when they spill salt. I did this last thing when I was making bread last weekend, and daughter R happened to be standing behind me and got the full benefit. She hollered, "WHAT are you doing!!?"
and I tried to explain, but it really doesn't make much sense, does it? I think it only confirmed that her mother is a little wacky.

I had occasion to crawl up in the attic last weekend too, someplace I haven't been in years (thanks to a strong agile son). Ours is a half-attic, with pull down stairs, but you have to go through it on hands and knees, or walk WAY bent over. That attic is STUFFED! With tons of junk! I didn't remember what I was looking for was packed in, so I had to check every box, after I made my way past crib, high chair, bassinet, playpen, youth bed, dining table and appliances. And I couldn't belive how many boxes of old clothes, lots of empty boxes saved "in case", and boxes and boxes of books. This is in addition to the 3-4000 books we have downstairs, and that after donating 700 to the local library. Most of the ones in the attic are hard-bound, and some of them are OLD textbooks from the early 90s, when I was getting my Med Tech degree. It's ridiculous, I mean, are we going to crawl up in the attic for a little reading time, there amid the cobwebs and dust, just curl up in a handy broken chair and relax with a good thriller from 1960? I think not. So one of my projects after I retire is to clean the attic out, stem to stern, and either trash things, donate them, or do a flea market thing. I kinda enjoy selling junk at the flea market, although having someone walk off with your stuff always makes me wonder, did I really want to get rid of that? I guess the merchandise always does look better in the other customer's hand. But clearing out the garage? It's hopeless, I think when the time comes to move out of this house, we'll just saw the garage off and set fire to it.

I was reading DOOCE's Blog from a few posts back, about the correct pronounciation of certain words. I'm with Jon on this one, crayon IS pronounced 'cray-on' and not 'crown' (unless you call all crayons regardless of brand as crayolas). When I started working in California, I was quickly corrected anytime I said certain things. For example, I used to say insurance as INsurance instead of inSUREance. I pronounced Washington D.C. as WaRshington. But nothing compared to what I would routinely hear after moving to West Virginia. Here, you don't bathe the baby, you 'bath' the baby. The use of 'went' when 'gone' should be used ("I had already went to the mall when she called me"). There are lots of these regional usages of words, I'm going to have to ruminate for a while and do another post when I come up with more.

Meanwhile, enjoy the weekend!