Pictures, Steph!

Untrue! I never had a sore throat.

I should probably blame it on the suddenly!spring weather. On the other hand, 85% of the snow is melted, which is awesome.

Lee, I have a rain barrel.

What kind do you have? That sounds pretty much like how I am going to use it.

Guys, why are the McDonald's filet-o-fish commercials around Lent SO AWESOME? I love the one in the submarine. It makes me laugh every time.

Ditto! And my mother thinks I'm a genius for pointing out that they pop up at Lent.

I actually kind of like a filet-o-fish once in a while. The sandwich, not just the commercial.

For no real reason, rain barrels always make me think of the itsy bitsy spider.

Because she went up the water spout? I always pictured a rain spout.

Did you wonder, for just a second, if the Doctor was finally coming for you?

I did. And then I thought I'd better get in shape for all that running away.

I have done the mosquito rings, though I stopped when I had bees. If I see larvae in my pond I'll toss a quarter of one in, they seem to be quite effective. In a barrel, you could also do mosquito fish. Check with your local vector control/mosquito abatement department, you might be able to get some for free. And then they might get eaten by racoons. The circle of life.

What kind do you have?

That is a good question. I will have to do some research to figure that out. I bet I kept an electronic receipt somewhere... the not specific brand answer is green plastic with a mesh cover and optional hookups so you can have several barrels in series.

Or I could just search gmail (that was easy). It's this one [link]

So, reality check. Casper has played soccer the past 3 seasons with school. Her birthday falls after the cutoff, so she can "play up" (with the kids in her grade), or "play down" with the kids who are the same actual age as she is but the lower grade. Last spring she played down and didn't like it much. In the fall I pushed for her to play up and she enjoyed playing with her classmates. The league fields girls' and boys' teams, but our school is small so we've had co-ed teams (that play against all-boys' teams). Casper has always been one of only 2-3 girls on the team, and she's actually kind of crap at soccer, but she likes to do it and gender has never been a problem.

This spring there are 18 kids signed up for the age group, which is too many for one team and not enough for 2 (and also we lack coaches for a second team). The sports coordinator decided to ask the two girls who signed up if they'd be willing to play with the girls' team at Kilgour, the school Casper went to before the current school. The other girl is willing to do that, but Casper wants to play with her friends, so she has decided not to play soccer at all.

While this is a relief in some ways, from the parent scheduling perspective (and also watching your kid be bad at sports during games perspective), I'm pretty pissed off. Why were only the girls asked to go to another team? Why couldn't boys have been offered the option to play for another school that was short players? I feel like my daughter has been asked to sacrifice and not play with her friends simply because she is a girl. As a result, she is dropping the sport. I'll note that these kids are 10-11, largely pre-pubescent, and in fact Casper is taller than lots of her male classmates. (She's not sporty, but that's at least as much due to genetics as gender.)

Should I say something to the sports coordinator, pointing out his sexism? He has two sons, both under 6.

The hazards of driving in the West--having tumbleweeds bounce off your car during evening rush hour. There's a heck of a wind out there, and I guess all their roots are weak, because the damned things are everywhere. I always thought they only rolled dolefully around deserted old towns, but no, major roads, giant tumbleweeds. One was taller than my hood, and I had to drive straight over the damned thing. And the one that bounced off my driver's side window was startling. Fortunately I saw it coming and realized it wasn't going to stay in its own lane.

Does anyone here live in Arkansas? I have weather questions.

Should I say something to the sports coordinator, pointing out his sexism? He has two sons, both under 6.

Yeah, I think so. If they could do two teams, would they be a boys' and a girls'? If there were an all-girl team, do you think more girls would have signed up?