{"id":3683,"date":"2017-03-15T19:53:34","date_gmt":"2017-03-15T23:53:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.anislandmom.com\/?p=3683"},"modified":"2017-06-22T13:30:58","modified_gmt":"2017-06-22T17:30:58","slug":"cold-beach-weather-flying-chickens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.anislandmom.com\/?p=3683","title":{"rendered":"Cold Beach Weather and Flying Chickens"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>My heart goes out to my snow-drenched and winter-weary friends in the North. All my winters in Chicago taught me that by this point in the year, most people living north of the Mason-Dixon were ready for winter to be over weeks (or even months) ago. <\/span><\/p>\n

In the coastal South, where we are experiencing \u00e2\u20ac\u0153colder than normal\u00e2\u20ac\u009d temperatures, our plight is laughable in comparison. While the spring break tourists have been understandably disappointed, the greatest challenges for the locals have been deciding whether to take any porch plants inside and remembering to dress appropriately. <\/span><\/p>\n

Today, I realized too late that Baby-Girl went to school without weather-appropriate clothing. The situation really has its origins in last night, when she attempted a new bedtime stall tactic. The girl dabbles heavily in loquacity at bedtime; last night, she announced that she needed to choose a new topic for a speech immediately, because tomorrow in class she would have to write the outline for it and she now disliked her chosen topic.<\/span><\/p>\n

Her original topic was \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Ten Ways to Make a Chicken Fly.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll just leave that there a moment.<\/span><\/p>\n

Secretly, I was pleased with her decision, because I had no idea where she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d go with this topic. Furthermore, I had to give her some credit for coming up with a better-than-average excuse for delaying bedtime. A more typical attempt is something like: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Mom, I really, really need to ask you about rubber bands.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d She\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d correctly assessed my weakness by throwing out school-related questions with teacher-generated time limits. But I was resolved; clever though she might be, she was not going to extend her bedtime. Instead, I told her we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d discuss new topic ideas in the morning while she got ready for school. She tried two \u00e2\u20ac\u0153But, Moooooooms!\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and followed these with high-pitched whining sounds as I turned off her light and left her room, so I used my standard ammo of saying \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Good night, sweet girl!\u00e2\u20ac\u009d several times at a volume loud enough to squelch the sound of hers. I finished, heard several long sighs as I walked into the kitchen, and then silence.<\/span><\/p>\n

Thus, we were distracted this morning as she readied for school while I churned out topic ideas with the breadth and fluidity of an English teacher. All seventy-two ideas I produced were deemed either sophomoric or stupid, and off to school she went, topic-less and left to face recess clad in insufficient amounts of cotton.<\/span><\/p>\n

On the drive home from school, I asked Baby-Girl about recess. Apparently, she had been cold, but bore no permanent scars. And the speech situation, it seemed, had resolved itself with a little tweaking on her part.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153So what\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d you decide on for a new topic?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d I asked.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m going to speak about having a chicken as a pet.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/span><\/p>\n

For the record, we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve never had a chicken as a pet. We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve never even watched another family\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s pet chicken while they were out of town, or taken a class chicken home for a night. I eyed her in my rearview mirror and asked, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153So, um, what kinds of things are you going to talk about?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153You know, like what to expect if you get a pet chicken. What it will be like and stuff.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/span><\/p>\n

So it seems the speech is to be informative; here\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s to hoping she knows how to do enough research to mask her experiential deficit. <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My heart goes out to my snow-drenched and winter-weary friends in the North. All my winters in Chicago taught me that by this point in the year, most people living north of the Mason-Dixon were ready for winter to be over weeks (or even months) ago. In the coastal South, where we are experiencing \u00e2\u20ac\u0153colder […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[2168,2169,2171,2170,2172],"class_list":["post-3683","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-island-parenting","tag-cold-beach-weather","tag-cooler-beach-temperatures","tag-dressing-kids-for-school","tag-even-the-coast-is-cold-right-now","tag-pet-chickens"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.anislandmom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3683","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.anislandmom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.anislandmom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.anislandmom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.anislandmom.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3683"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.anislandmom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3683\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.anislandmom.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3683"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.anislandmom.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3683"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.anislandmom.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3683"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}