Interesting choice, as some may say a key line from the song, "everybody's free to fail", highlights the difference between the actual right to "pursuit of Happiness" and a supposed right to be happy.

The whole song is like that, isn't it, with the head-jerks, both explicit and implicit. I especially like how that line is a face slap after "don't be scared you won't prevail".

Exactly. The very premise of assassins considering rights, when the first of the unalienable rights is Life...

I just remembered this- around Valentine's Day I got my DD7 a balloon. Well as all balloons do, it lost its float after a while and so I asked her if I could throw it away. She said no you can't throw "Sally" away. Then she proceeded to tell me she wanted to have a funeral for Sally… she insisted on bringing the kids table and chairs outside, put different types of food on the table, etc. She then made me and her brother sit on the chairs and she said a eulogy for Sally the Balloon, describing how each food item somehow related to qualities of Sally (the pickles were sassy like Sally, the cookies were sweet like Sally, etc.). She made a little tombstone out of popsicle sticks, and insisted on burying the balloon. Sally will be missed.

DS is 5. He's so vastly different from his older sister that I sometimes get into that state where I wonder if I'm just fooling myself, maybe he's really quite happily average and not very G at all...yadayadayada self-doubt etc.

So yesterday I found a note in DS's handwriting, taped to his bed, in which he used a hyphen on a line-break, proper capitalization, and two possessive apostrophes. Everybody else swears they didn't have anything to do with it, he wrote it all by himself.

You can never go wrong with Sonheim!

LAF, my condolences That is too much!

Aufilia, how awesome! I relate: the librarian today called DS4 precocious and I felt the same, that DD was so advanced a reader at this age that we don't probably give him credit... I get into that state about DD8, too, until DH laughs at me. Anyway, that punctuation eludes many of my high school students!

LAF, that sounds so much like my DD. I cruelly insisted on throwing away the glow sticks we'd had for the 4th of July on the grounds that if we kept everything, our house would be full to the rafters, and these things Are Not Useful anymore. There was quite a bit of crying as she told me how she just so, so sad to think about them going into the garbage truck and getting crushed up and then buried in the landfill forever.

It's not every 16yo who campaigns passionately and with the ferocity of a masterful litigator for a third-party presidential candidate, extolling the virtues of this person to a skeptical and only moderately interested (but VOTING) parent while undergoing emergency treatment for a massive and out of control asthma flare. Yes, she whipped out her smart phone and gave me quotes and everything-- voting record, even. I'm awed that she even knew to LOOK.

But hey-- she was pretty persuasive and impassioned re: healthcare as a human right during this process. She didn't like the candidate's immigration views or stance on nuclear energy, however. But on the other hand, she was talking to me more about politics much more coherently than 90% of other voting adults I've known in my life, quite honestly.

It was funny when she sighed deeply (thanks, nebulized meds, for that at least) and informed me that it is deeply unfortunate because there's little chance that such a person CAN be elected given the electoral system as it stands, however...




I'm not even going to bother noting WHO this candidate is, since the unrepentant socialists among us (my DD included) probably already love him, and everyone else won't care. Besides, the anecdote isn't really about the person's politics so much as the tenacious and precocious behavior of my DD under fairly bizarre circumstances.



I'm laughing out loud at the Sondheim gem above. Wow. Who knew that my DD had so many kindred spirits in the world?


I also routinely throw away glow sticks that have gone to the freezer for a little "R&R" in the morning. Usually she forgets about them in about a month. They will sometimes last for as long as a week if you keep them cold, though. Just noting.

So we're not the only people with a freezer-full of partially used glow sticks! Which, btw, last much longer than a few weeks at -20C.

Well, the way my kids use them, anyway, which involves brief uses, only in complete darkness, followed by rapid restoration to the freezer.

Ten year old Son spent two/three days cleaning his really trashed room. All by himself. Bags of garbage, items removed for donation, go to lowes and buy some storage containers, broom and dust pan level cleaning. Now he can play Legos. After he finished dinner he said "off to build (some Lego item) with my eyes closed". Lol okay you do that.

I remember as a kid getting so good at Perfection that I learned how to do it with my eyes closed because I loved the game but needed to up the challenge.