Harrison Farm

Here are some recent hits we found at the library:

Supersister by Beth Cadena, illustrated by Frank W. Dormer - a little girl appears to be full of herself — until you get to the sweet ending.

My Abuelita by Tony Johnston, illustrated by Yuyi Morales - from a child’s perspective about living with her larger-than-life grandmother.  Spanish words sprinkled throughout.

Mercy Watson series by Kate DiCamillo, illustrated by Chris Van Dusen - my 3 reading children think these books are hysterical.  Silly, silly, silly with cute illustrations.

Inkheart by Cornelia Flunke - this one was a big hit with my 12-year old son.  Almost as intriguing as Harry Potter.

My third-born, Doodle, is about to lose his first tooth!  It is uncomfortably loose.  And he has 3 other slighly loose teeth that will follow the first one before too long.

I took this photo yesterday because it may be the last one I get with his baby teeth.  Time is ticking quickly, folks.  I can’t believe he’s at this stage already.

When commenter and fellow Ralph Moody fan Gregg Green wrote and offered me copies of a couple of personal letters from Moody, I jumped at the offer.  At age 8, Green had become a fan of Little Britches and Moody’s books.  Being a fellow Maine resident and an ambitious young lad, he penned a letter to Ralph Moody.  To his delight, he received a personal response.  The two became sort of pen pals, exchanging a few letters and Christmas cards.

And lucky me…Gregg found this blog and has given me permission to share some items with you.  Here is a word from Gregg:

…I have a couple of letters and a picture that Mr. Moody sent back in the late 60’s. The typed letter was a response to the first letter I ever sent him, and the handwritten letter came with the photo a year or so later. We corresponded for a few years after that, trading Christmas cards and such, but unfortunately I never did have the good fortune to meet him. The scans came out really well and you are welcome to use them on your website if you would like…

So, here they are, friends.  That Moody took the time to write to a young boy…well, it says a lot.  Clicking on the photo and letters will enlarge them.  If you’re on dial-up and don’t want to wait for the letters to load, I’ve typed them out.  Here’s the typed letter, and here’s the hand-written one.  Enjoy!

Happy belated Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year, and Groundhog Day.  The ol’ blog grew terribly cold, right along with the weather.  And while the blog grew cold, our little drawer organizing business continued to grow (we’re just thrilled); we had snow; Sudoku and I continued to follow Sheena and gawk at her creative wraps, just to name a few.

To help me get motivated about blogging again, I changed the theme - again.  Pretty sparce looking, huh?  I like it.  Gregg Green, commenter on one of my Ralph Moody posts, gave me an even better reason to blog again.  I have some treasures he sent me that need to be shared.  They are for you fellow Ralph Moody/Little Britches/Bud fans.  The next post is for you!  Stay tuned.

My kids won’t appreciate it — at least not for a while. But my aim is to become a Viola Ruffner to them.

Booker T. Washington credits Viola Ruffner for instilling in him the work ethic for which he is famous. Upon being freed from slavery, Washington held a few different manual labor jobs, primarily working in mines. Determined to do something better, he was hired as the houseboy of Viola Ruffner who was known for being able to keep only temporary help because of her high demands and expectations.

Washington lived with the Ruffners and worked for Viola for a year and a half, and in that time was instilled with a deep appreciation for hard work, a job well done, and honesty. He claims that after being in her charge, whenever he saw a broken gate, he wanted to mend it. When he saw trash, he wanted to pick it up. When he saw weeds, he wanted to pull them.  (Now, I’m not really after that result with my kids - just some thoroughness in tasks around the house.)

Mrs. Ruffner encouraged Washington to further his education, was one of his benefactors, and he held her in extreme respect, calling her “one of the best friends I ever had.”

I want to be a Viola Ruffner for my kids. (They’ll cringe when they read this post, but they know I love them.) I’m terrible with follow-through on chores I give them to do, and I fear I’m letting them get away with half-baked work. My becoming a Viola Ruffner would be good for all of us.

But how am I going to become a Viola Ruffner? I think I should start with one task and hone it, hone it. I’m thinking of going for the jugular: kitchen clean-up. I have this rule in the house — whoever makes a meal shouldn’t have to clean up. (There is a lot of gray here, because in truth, many meals are partially prepared days in advance - bread, lacto-fermented items, etc. But the person assembling the meal doesn’t have to clean the dishes or put left-overs away.)

While it’s true that the kids are in the mode of handling clean up in the kitchen, it is almost never up to my standards, but I say nothing. Nothing. Isn’t that they’re doing it enough? Well, for a while that was enough. But now that the work routine is in place, the mechanics are lacking.  Sorely lacking.

So now I’m thinking about inspections, checklists, points, etc. What incentive to give for them to get it right the first time. Speak to me, Viola!

What about you? Do you have a system for follow-up of daily chores? Do you spot check? Have a check list? Is it working for you?

I’m off to make a checklist of frequently neglected jobs associated with kitchen clean-up.

“At such moments I don’t think about all the misery, but about the beauty that still remains. This is where Mother and I differ greatly. Her advice in the face of melancholy is: ‘Think about all the suffering in the world and be thankful you’re not part of it.’ My advice is: ‘Go outside, to the country, enjoy the sun and all nature has to offer. Go outside and try to recapture the happiness within yourself; think of all the beauty in yourself and in everything around you and be happy.’

I don’t think Mother’s advice can be right, because what are you supposed to do if you become part of the suffering? You’d be completely lost. On the contrary, beauty remains, even in misfortune. If you just look for it, you discover more and more happiness and regain your balance. A person who’s happy will make others happy; a person who has courage and faith will never die in misery!”

– Anne Frank, The Diary of Anne Frank, March 6, 1944

I read this quote a couple of months ago at Gretchen Rubin’s Happiness Project blog, and it keeps coming back to me.

Yesterday was a gorgeous day here.  After a couple of weeks of gray skies and rain nearly every day, the sky started clearing over the weekend, and was beautiful yesterday for Doodle’s 5th birthday.

A benefit of homeschooling and being self-employed is that you can take the day off if you want to.  We wanted to yesterday, and though we didn’t take off the whole day, we went to our River Park for a walk/bike/skate outing.   Rosebud and I strolled along.  Most of the time, it looked like this in front of me.

Occasionally Rosebud would get out of the stroller, and it would look like this.

And for a few fleeting moments, I saw the rest of my crew having a grand time.  Like this…

And no, I didn’t mind walking with just Rosebud. The quiet was heavenly.

Later we had cake and opened gifts.  Carman and Sudoku gave Doodle cards that he had to read to find his gifts.  They all had fun with that.

Hope you had a great yesterday too.

We decided to bite the bullet and get UPC codes for our drawer dividers when I found that we could purchase legit codes for $6 a piece. That way we can get our products into the Home and Garden store at Amazon (where a UPC is required) and out of the Office category (where a UPC is NOT required).

So, if you’re thinking of selling a product in a retail establishment that requires a UPC code, don’t take Amazon’s support’s their word that a single code will cost around $89.  By shopping around, you’ll find that you can spend hundreds of dollars on a single UPC through GS1 (formerly the UCC, Uniform Code Council) or much less through a UPC reseller.  According to George J. Laurer, the inventor of the UPC, GS1 has grown too big for its britches (my paraphrase), and is now requiring initiation fees and yearly dues in addition to UPC purchase fees (which are determined by the answers you provide to their nosey questions about your projected earnings, etc.)  Sheesh!

Luckily for little guys like you and me, some forward thinking individuals/companies made bulk UPC purchases years ago, and their numbers do not fall under these post-2002 guidelines and extraneous fees. They are available for a single low purchase price, with no annual fees, no questions, and the numbers will be yours for keeps.

I know, I know. I was skeptical too until one supplier pointed me to Laurer’s personal website where he explains the whole messy situation and links out to legitimate resellers that he has personally checked out.  That’s how I found Bar Codes Talk, Inc.

After making my purchase, I was supplied with my UPC numbers and a copy of my supplier’s certificate from the UCC.  More importantly, Amazon is recognizing my numbers as legit.

A downside of all this is that switching stores within Amazon will make us lose our reviews and the beloved buy box.  Concerning the buy box, I’ve been told that we should win it back within a month at the most.

Yes! We won the buy box for our drawer dividers - all 3 sizes - at Amazon! (Did I tell you we added another size? Customer feedback requested a medium height, so now we have 4.5″ high ones available too.)

I thought I might get a congratulatory e-mail from Amazon. But no. We just *happened* to view our listings last night, and there they were, shouting their eligibility for Super Saver Shipping in beautiful bold font. I had checked our buy box status just a couple of days ago, so this must have happened very recently. Bring on the orders!

The speech club was a couple of weeks ago. This was our line-up:

Sudoku - “Post Haste” by Patrick Winstanley
Doodle - “A Wise Old Owl” nursery rhyme
Carman - “Tell Me a Story,” the suspenceful introduction his Opa gives every time he shares one of his Native American tales.