Expressions

I am really liking this new Expression layout with the 72 themes. It’s not perfect, but it promises to be amazing. The fact that I had trouble choosing between a couple of the themes should say something, right (and for the record, it was between Playful Robots Red, Playful Sushi, and ultimately Urban Sunset)? It is all controlled via CSS which means that I may actually take a crack at making a layout for the first time in years. For more info, go to lj_design.

Today was the last day of Sea Squirt Camp. It was only three days, for three short hours, but those little runts wore us down. We had 19-21 kids (depends on the day, some didn’t show). They are wonderful at that age though, they attach to you like velcro to yarn in the span of a day or so. It wasn’t without its headaches though. There was a kid who was severly allergic to peanuts. So, hysterical-control-freak-mom wants to make sure her daughter is going to live through this, which is fine. She is told that if she needs that much supervision, she should send a sitter along. Oh no! She can’t do that, it’s too expensive! Well, because we like to bend over backwards and take it up the wahoo here at the AoP, supervisors, managers, directors, and VP’s all got involved with the legal and practical just so this girl could come to camp because mom didn’t want to invest in a sitter. So the other teacher and I went to get Epipen trained last week (uhm, just open the damn thing and jab it in her thigh, is pretty much the gist of it), and the entire department prepares the classroom to make sure it is a peanut-free zone. Even the wonderful housekeeping department is in on this and feels bad for the girl, so they come in and do a special scrubbing down of every wall and surface in this classroom the day before classes start. We change the snack location out to the front lawn so that just in case some kid brings in a PBJ, the girl doesn’t have a severe reaction to being in an enclosed room with the nut fumes. We wipe down every surface that she is about to sit on that is out of our control in the classroom so that the little girl in shorts doesn’t get exposed if someone left crumbs of something peanuty on a bench. It was INSANE. To top it all off? Crazy-mom lady keeps asking for the moon (doesn’t want the Cafe to cook anything with peanuts – HA! Yeah right lady!), and we tell her that we can’t do that and she says “You can’t, but you can’t stop me from asking them”. o.o So, she happened to run into the nicest person she could run into up there and she says that she won’t be making peanut butter cookies for those three days. ¬_¬ She also passed out letters to all the parents on the first day to ask them to not give their kids any peanut snacks.

And she still sent a babysitter along.

WE COULD HAVE AVOIDED THE EPIPEN TRAINING THAT TOOK A SPECIAL TRIP TO THE CLINIC BEFORE OUR WORKING SHIFTS LAST WEEK. WE COULD HAVE AVOIDED A LOT OF STRESS HAD WE KNOWN SHE WAS SENDING SOMEONE ELSE ALONG. But no. By this point, my coworker was so paranoid about this little girl that it didn’t matter that there was someone else watching her because we were watching her plenty. After every single activity where we had kids interacting with each other, we had them wash their hands. If they were touching artifacts, wash hands. These kids washed their hands SO MANY TIMES (prolly about 5 times in the three hours, as a class, not counting bathroom breaks). Oh, and did we get a ‘thank you’?

No.

This is not a peanut-free world, as my coworker said. She cannot go around and change the world around her daughter her entire life. She needs to learn how to adapt to the world and not expect the world to adapt to her. That mom has a lot of learning to do.

And with that I end my rant.

14 Responses to "Expressions"

scarah2 says:

August 25, 2006 at 12:23 am

My aunt said that she did some research into why there are so many severe peanut allergies now. Because no one was ever like this when I was a kid or she was a kid, and now you hear about it all the time.

She said that doctors are pushing pg women more to eat a shit ton of protein every day, plus there are more vegetarians now. So all these women are eating like a jar of peanut butter a day, and rather than build up a tolerance the fetus becomes hypersensitized to it.

So it is her fault lol!
1. mauvaise_etoile says:
  
  August 25, 2006 at 12:32 am
  
  Ah, thank you! I posted my comment while you were posting yours and I was just asking if there was any scientific evidence for this.
  1. canutius says:
    
    August 25, 2006 at 6:04 am
    
    You realize that you are now banned from eating peanut butter and peanuts aren’t you??? 😀
    
    Well, come on, I gotta practice being an overreactionist if I’m going to move back to the States don’t I? 😛
2. anitza says:
  
  August 25, 2006 at 12:41 am
  
  Oh god, just more reason for me to live my life without the interference of medicine. I’ll come to you if I need ya, ok Doc? Don’t give me unsolicited advice, kthnx!
mauvaise_etoile says:

August 25, 2006 at 12:31 am

Dude.

This is not a peanut-free world, as my coworker said. She cannot go around and change the world around her daughter her entire life. She needs to learn how to adapt to the world and not expect the world to adapt to her. That mom has a lot of learning to do.

THANK YOU.

And WTF is UP with all of the kids with peanut allergies nowadays? I can’t remember one kid when I was younger that was allergic to peanuts. Seriously, does anyone know if there are scientific reasons for this? Or is it just because everyone is psycho?
1. anitza says:
  
  August 25, 2006 at 12:39 am
  
  I have ABSOLUTELY no idea, but scarah2 has a theory right up there^^^!
nosinabook says:

August 25, 2006 at 12:59 am

I feel for the woman having a kid with an allergy that severe. Being a mother, I would be FREAKING OUT if my kid could die from sniffing a nut. (that is not meant to sound perverted….) HOWEVER, I would try to bend over backwards and be nice when asking for people’s help when wanted my child to be accomodated.

My kid’s friend has this allergy, and one to dogs even more severe. This kid went into shock being in the same PARK with a dog. They had no idea. His father was running with him through the park and the kid was laying there in his arms like a dead person; it was really, really scary.

But the peanut thing? get this: Right, as Tara above will find out, now they say not to give your kid peanuts till FIVE (was two when MK was a baby) and this kid’s grandmother shoves it down his trap at one and the kid gets hives. So what does she do? DOES IT AGAIN.

HERE’S A TIP: Don’t give kids who get hives the hivey thing over and over. Morons.

I once read an article that nowadays peanuts are more apt to have this fungus that makes people sick. So maybe that’s why everyone is allergic these days.

Glad my kid is healthy and normal….
1. canutius says:
  
  August 25, 2006 at 6:14 am
  
  Gad! And what do you do about something like that (dog allergy)? I mean seriously, if the allergy is that bad, I could kill someone just walking through a store. I’ve always got dog stuff on my, even when I’ve just washed my clothes and there’s not a thing in the world I can do about it.
  
  Same deal with the peanuts. What if she steps in peanut crumbs in a parking lot and gets them on her fingers when taking her shoes off? She’s in danger just walking out her door. Still, we can’t make this a peanut free world. We’d then also have to make it dog free, bee free, cat free, tree and plant free…
  
  Oh, and I’m really allergic to penicillan, I even have to be very careful when I have to give it to the dogs, but you don’t hear me asking the rest of the world to stop taking it do you?
ms_gnomer says:

August 25, 2006 at 1:32 am

As a mother to two children who aren’t considered “normal”, I know the ache one feels in trying to provide as much “normalcy” and in trying to allow your child to be as “typical” as possible. I also know the hoops and hurdles you have to go through to do this from everything from the dentist office to a babysitter. It isn’t easy, by far. And moreover, it’s heartwrenching. However, that being said, I do think Mrs. Peanut-Allergy could have handled this (and probably many other) situation much better. It’s only going to worsen as the child gets older, and at some point she will have to realize that the world is going to keep spinning regardless of her personal woes, and that unfortunately, they will have to learn to adapt to society instead of waiting for society to adapt to them.

We all our a product of our environment, though, and at some point we all will be effected by our environment, so it would do society a world of good to be a little more understanding.

I do wonder, though, if one of the other parents either didn’t care about her letter, or didn’t realize that the bag of pretzels they sent with their child was made in the same factory as a snack with/of peanuts–and this caused a terrible reaction on little peanut-allergy, who Mrs. Peanut-Allergy would sue? And good lord, what does she do if they go to DisneyWorld??

Life isn’t fair, regardless of your point of view.

Spello
1. nosinabook says:
  
  August 25, 2006 at 1:49 am
  
  *hugs Spello*
  
  MK has a sensory problem and sometimes freaks about ‘normal’ things…
  
  So what IS a normal kid??? Maybe there aren’t any…
ms_gnomer says:

August 25, 2006 at 1:33 am

Oops…I forgot to say that I like your new layout…and
Sea Squirt Camp! How damn cute is that!!
annasmum says:

August 25, 2006 at 1:35 pm

WOW! Maybe I should go around asking people to clean themselves of cat hair because Bri is deathly allergic to cats ~ NOT!! OMG! What is wrong with people???

*hugs* for being you and caring enough to go to the training.
platonicform says:

August 25, 2006 at 3:57 pm

Much ado about peanuts…

Well you guys could have sung this as an activity:

Peanut, Peanut butter and Jelly!
Peanut, Peanut butter and JellY!
First you take the…

Geez what a pain.
dead_sexydexy says:

August 26, 2006 at 3:54 am

You had to go to Epi-Pen training?? O.o My middlest has one because he went into shock over red ant bites once. They threw the thing at me (not literally) and told me basically what you said. Stick it on his thigh and push the button. **Thankfully I’ve never needed to use it.**

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