Thanks so much

Thank you to everyone who voted in the Pepsi Refresh Everything contest for the Kent Island Discovery Zone. We won!!!! WE WON!!!

So, this means my friend Kim will receive grant money to reopen the Island Secret Garden as the Kent Island Discovery Zone this year. It's going to be a long arduous process, and Kim is going to have to document her progress every step of the way to the good folks at Pepsi. I have no doubt that she will prevail. So for a little while we are just going to soak in it:

WE WON!

I imagine Kim has been sleeping since Monday night at midnight. I happen to know for a fact that she has been up pretty much 24 hours a day for the entire month of May trying to make this a reality. She checked on her progress every hour on the hour for 31 days. Kim, I hope you are taking the week off and enjoying a nice long rest.

So, I am now off duty as far as online cheerleading goes. I can hang up my virtual pompoms and kick off my keds in triumph. Uncrimp my hair and discard the team colored cyber-scrunchi. Tomorrow I will be back with a doozy of a story, one that could only happen in a small seaside town without a bowling alley.

So stay tuned!

vote for the children of all the Chicken-necker moms

Exciting news out here on the shore! In the Pepsi Refresh contest, the Kent Island Discovery Zone has finally reached #10. As I explained in an earlier post, the top ten winners win $25,000 to further their cause.

I wish I could say that we could all relax, but we can't. The contest runs until May 31st, so other organizations have 5 days to try to kick us out of the top ten so they will have a shot at winning money too. I wish everyone could win. I have read through the other entries, and they all sound like worthy causes. Unfortunately, winning this contest may be the only chance we have to rebuild the indoor playground/children's center that was destroyed by that act of God otherwise known as Winter 2010.

Now I really have no idea how many readers I really have. I have a read count, but for all I know it could really be the three lonely followers I have just reading over and over. But on the off chance that I have more readers than that, please take this opportunity to vote for our center to receive the funds we need to reopen for the children of the Upper Eastern Shore. Get all of your friends and relatives to vote also. Details can be found at the bottom of this blog, so scroll down and check it out.

The sooner we get through this and win, the sooner I can get back to writing about parenting in a tourist town. Summer is coming, and with that the promise of adventures (and misadventures). And if you are a regular reader, please become a follower so I know you are out there. Much love to you all, and help us out and VOTE!

Deja-vu, all over again, and again, and again!

Wow!

That's all I can say at this point. Wow!

It has been way too long since I have been on here. I almost couldn't remember my password, it has been so long.

Things have been really busy. Sometimes I feel like that proverbial chicken with her head cut off, or at least running to keep her head from being cut off. (That's a really gross saying, now that I think about it. But all the really busy descriptors seem to be) I found an extra curricular activity for my daughter that requires the appropriate shoes (soccer) and I found, and then lost, and then almost found a job again before I even started going back to work.

Did that sound confusing? I wish I could say that the news was better, but I can't. My fabulous tutoring job for the fall, the one that fit perfectly with my life, is in serious jeopardy. I was supposed to teach a class of homeschooled eastern shore middle and high schoolers about American History. The hours fit perfectly with the very popular preschool that I already enrolled my son in, and it was going to be my entry into secondary education (which is where I really want my career to start to move towards). Sadly, the school did not enroll enough students to justify my position.

I wish I could say that this is the first time this has happened to me, but it isn't. The private school where I taught second and third grade had a similar situation about 5 years ago. I got to wait all summer for word on whether my class would even exist for the fall. The first year they didn't enroll enough children and I had to go work at a job that I absolutely hated. The second year luck worked in my favor and I was able to teach my class again.

So, here it is, 5 years later, and it's deja-vu all over again. Everything old is new again, and I get to wait all summer to see if the fates will work in my favor. The tutorial said they would keep registration open all summer in the hopes of still having my class. All I can do now is pray, and have a lot of faith that things will work out in the end.

So, if you know of any high school home schoolers in the Queen Anne's County area who are dying to take an American History class with a FABULOUS teacher, please send them to Bridges Christian Tutorial in Centreville, MD.

If you don't, I am probably going to have to work at the mall. Yikes!

Oh, and don't forget to see the bottom of this post to vote for the Kent Island Discovery Zone to receive money from Pepsi to reopen it's doors. Help my friend re-open our beloved center, and give local kiddos a safe place to play!!

Save our Indoor Playground!

I don't usually do this, but we on the Upper Eastern Shore are sort of desperate. We have lost something that we held near and dear to our hearts, and are finding it hard to live without. Those of you with small children will certainly feel our pain.

I don't know if you heard at all, but the east coast of this country has had a pretty hard time of it this winter. We suffered snowstorm after snowstorm. Two of them were blizzard condition storms and occurred about 4 days apart. The Federal Government was forced to shut down for 4 days, and many houses, buildings, and structures were damaged beyond repair. Many businesses needed to close their doors forever. There is an outlet mall in Queenstown that lost half it's stores and may never be restored to capacity. On the other side of the Kent Narrows Bridge was a little place known as the Island Secret Garden.

The Island Secret Garden was a fabulous indoor playground. It had tons of toys and climbing structures for children to play on and with. It had a comfortable parent area with couches and rocking chairs for quiet parent time while the children played. It offered enrichment programs for preschool children in science, reading, math, and gymnastics. But most of all, it provided a place for children to go when the weather was bad.

The ISG was forced to lose it's space in the old outlet mall in Kent Narrows after massive amounts of snow collapsed the roof. Without help, we will probably never get our beloved indoor playground back again. If my story has moved you at all, or if you are just looking for something to, please see the very bottom of this post. There is a link to click on to vote for our beloved indoor play area, now renamed the Kent Island Discovery Zone, to recieve a generous gift from Pepsi to get it's doors open again. Please help us! It is a very worthy cause, and costs you nothing but the two seconds you use to click a link!

Would That Really be the Worst Thing in the World?

?I had a strange conversation with my 6 year old daughter today. I can't for the life of me decide if I am okay with how this conversation ended. It was just weird, especially when you consider that I NEVER had anything like this discussion with my own mother, ever.

I know my daughter has lofty plans. Last year, whenever you would ask her what she wanted to be when she grew up, her answer was always,"I want to be everything". More power to ya, babe. I have always told her that she can be anything she wants, so I really liked her attitude about it.

This year, she is adamant about wanting to be a veternarian when she grows up. For 6 months now, that answer hasn't wavered. She loves animals and she wants to help them and take care of them as her career. I think she would be a fabulous vet, and I will do anything I can to encourage this lofty goal.

Today she told me that she is never getting married or having children. This kind of struck me as odd, since she has also told me before that she someday wants to be a mom. I am now wondering what changed her mind. I asked her why she doesn't want to get married someday, and she replied, "because I want to be a veternarian instead." So,now I am wondering if I have something to do with this attitude change. Does she look at me and think that you can't have children or a husband and have a career? I always thought I was being self-sacrificing and noble by staying home to take care of her and her brother full time, but instead did I give her a skewed view of how life works? And, even worse, is she sensing and responding to the deep dissatisfaction I felt with my life? Has my frustration and sadness about not having a car for almost 18 months taught her that to be a wife and mother is to be trapped? Is she trying to avoid becoming me?

Then, I figure that she is only 6 years old, and her opinions and attitudes will change many many times in the coming years, and she will probably change her mind many times about how she sees her life turning out. After I go back to work, she will be seeing a very different version of me, and her opinions will probably change accordingly.

But then, I wonder, do I even want her attitudes to change? Am I really believing that marriage and children is the only path to happiness. Would my beautiful intelligent daughter be just as happy as a single career girl. I know for a fact that my heart would break if she grew up believing that only through a guys love and acceptance would she have validation, but here I am worrying that she might miss out on that very experience. What the heck is wrong with me???

Daughters are hard. Especially in this ever changing and complicated world. I wish I knew exactly the right thing to say in every situation, but I really don't. So, I am letting her have her opinions. If she has decided right now that she never wants to get married, then I am totally on board with that. Whatever makes her happy.

Okay, that was sort of embarrassing. . .

Last post I talked about my efforts to use 411 to find a phone number so that I could possibly pursue a business opportunity. I finally did find the number in the actual paper phone book, only to be thwarted by a busy signal. I proclaimed that I was not to be deterred. . .

I was deterred!

I, in fact, did completely misunderstand what the woman in question was talking with me about on the side of route 50. If I had ridden home with her in her truck, I would have found out that she was just making polite conversation with me while waiting for my friend to gas up the car. I called her today and had one of the most uncomfortable conversations of my life. She never planned on asking me to do anything, and the whole conversation came off like I was trying to ask her for a favor. Which I certainly was not. Luckily I have a small child, so I am never lacking for a good reason to make a quick exit from a phone conversation.

Now that I am off the phone and can put a little distance from my embarrassment, I find that something else is bothering me about the whole affair. I had always believed that things happen for a reason. People come into our lives for a reason also. The guy that I was briefly engaged to almost 10 years ago came into my life so that my brother could meet his sister and get married. And so on. I supposed that we ran out of gas the other day so I could renew my aquaintence with this woman and could be given this imaginary opportunity. Now I suppose that we just ran out of gas for no reason. And my friend is the last person to ever run out of gas on the highway, so I really figured that there was a greater force at work in my life. But maybe there really are just accidents. Maybe not everything has a reason and a purpose.

Something to ponder for the moment. . .

Dial 1 for Absurdity!

I was just last night presented with a possible business opportunity that I may not be able to pass up. I have been thinking about it all night since I had the initial conversation on the side of Route 50 on Kent Island. (I would tell you why I was standing on the side of the highway, but I don't want to embarress the person who's truck accidentally ran out of gas. And no, it wasn't me) The woman who came to bring us a couple gallons of gas and rescue us from having to walk home started a converation with me that sounded a lot like she was pondering a business arrangement with me. I don't want to say too much right now, in case I misunderstood her, but it was very interesting and right in my wheelhouse.

Sadly, I didn't do the smart thing and ask to ride home with her and continue the conversation. I also didn't get her email address or phone number. All I got was her husbands name and her address.

I had planned on trying to get in touch with her early next week, but my curiousity and impatience got the absolute best of me and I decided to call her today and try to set up a lunch where we could talk. Getting up to get the phone book seemed like too much trouble, so I picked up the phone and dialed 411. I connected to Vonage 411 and the computer voice directed me to "press 1 for English". Well, I pressed 1, and the system HUNG UP ON ME! Not to be deterred, I tried again. This time, when I pressed 1 for English, I could hear the system click me over to another line and start ringing. I counted the rings, and 17 rings went by with no one picking up. WHAT IS THIS COUNTRY COMING TO??? Seriously? Vonage cannot find English speaking telephone operators on a Sunday?? Thank God I wasn't trying to dial 911 or anything. I would probably be dead by now!!!

Do you know what I ended up doing? I got up and found the trusty old phone book. Already written in English and guarrenteed never to give me attitude about it!! I quickly found the woman's number and dialed it.

Busy Signal!

No matter, I will not be deterred!