The girls each have a large three-ring binder in which they are to keep all of their school paperwork organized. Kallan works in hers every night, and I have to sign her binder calendar every night indicating that she has done her homework. Maj keeps hers to herself, and only brings me individual assignments that she has carefully removed from the binder for me to check. I noticed several days ago that she had a half-sized manila envelope stuck in the front pocket of her binder. Thinking it was some sort of note home from the school, I asked her about it, and she said that she was using it to hold little bits of paper that would otherwise escape into her backpack. Fair enough.
Kallan came home yesterday with good news and bad news. The bad news was that there were more cell-phone issues (I’ll share that another day). The good news was that she had gotten three “Positive Puma” slips! She handed me the three small gold slips of paper proudly. Why these slips are called “Positive Pumas,” I have no idea, because the image on the paper is of two happy frogs, but whatever. Kallan’s face glowed as she described the teacher’s recognition of her good behavior and excellent classwork. She happily described how she had been called up to the teacher’s desk to get her “Positive Pumas.”
Kallan was in the middle of excitedly describing how she gets to trade these three “Positive Pumas” for a small prize when Maj walked into the room. Maj went to her backpack and pulled out her binder, from which she took the manila envelope I had noticed earlier. “We get to trade these for prizes?” she asked as she shook the envelope, from which rained 30-40 golden “Positive Puma” slips of paper. “I get these all the time, but I was just keeping them because they have frogs on them. I didn’t know they were good for anything.”
Poor Kallan.
In other news regarding slips of paper of questionable value, we had a visit from the Lake Oswego Welcome Lady yesterday. How crazy is that? She was a very nice older woman with a big purse and a huge smile, and she came with a bulging envelope of coupons to area businesses Mark and I are unlikely to patronize. We now have a coupon for “$300.00 off the sitting fees for a family portrait” at a local photography studio. How much would that family portrait end up costing, do you think? Geez! The brochure has a photo of Walter Cronkite on the front (which confused me at first, because I assumed that it was a picture of the photographer, and he looked so much like Walter Cronkite).
And another for a $45.00 bike cleaning and check-up (marked down from $79.00) at the area bike shop. I think that coupon is meant for a family who takes their biking much more seriously than we do. Our bikes are outside rusting under the lean-to, and before our next bike ride, our maintenance will be limited to wiping off the spider webs and pumping some air into the tires. It would be funny to see their faces, though, if I wheeled Maj’s dirty, rusty, slick-tired bike into their shop for a “cleaning and check-up.”
The Welcome Lady was lovely, despite her useless coupons. There was one awkward moment in the middle of a discussion of a local optometrist’s coupon when she looked at Mark and admired his glasses, pronouncing them to be “handsome and manly.” But other than that one weird moment of inappropriate Grandma flirting, all went well.
Speaking of inappropriate Grandmas, I remember when we first bought the house in Vallejo, many years ago, and I called my Mom excitedly to tell her the good news and to pass along our new address. She was full of good wishes and congratulations, and we talked for about a half hour. I was so proud and so happy to be able to share our news with her. At the close of our conversation, my Mom wondered aloud if I would be visited by a welcoming member of the local Women’s Organization . . . “You know, the Val-lay Hos.” My mom is hilarious. She thought so too, and she went on to suggest that perhaps that would also be a good name for the cheerleading team she imagined the girls joining as teenagers.
I should have known right then that Vallejo was a bad idea.
You know, I have known one other person from Vallejo, and he was almost as funny as you. I wonder if that is a prerequisite for living there.
Having a sense of humor definitely helps if you are going to live in Vallejo. But it’s not a requirement . . . there is a lot of serious unfunny going on in Vallejo.
Val-lay Hos… HAHAHA. Wow. That’s awesome. So I have to tell you a little morbid mother story. You read the post about my brother’s passing right? Well during that whole ordeal I pretty much became my mom’s right hand man as she dealt with the details and his estate. Well my brother’s wish was to be cremated. From about two days after his passing until the dead was done my wonderful mother refered to this event as the Monty-Que (We always called my brother Monty). Que uneasy, morbid laughter. It’s okay, I did.
OK, your mother sounds like my mother.
Just saying.
That’s might not actually be a compliment, in case you were wondering.
Ahem.
My mother is what I call special. I think she was born without that filter that says “hey that’s innapropriate!”.
We are possibly related!
My mom is just like that!
Yay!