lawmummy

From Parents United for Public Education:

Call-in campaign Thursday, May 29, 9 a.m. - 5 p.m.

Want to avoid steep school budget cuts this fall?

Let your state legislators know you need them to support the Governor’s education budget.

Parents United for Public Education endorses the Pennsylvania School Funding Campaign, which advocates for a better funding formula for schools. This month we have a historic opportunity to improve school funding for Philadelphia (as well as statewide). Our schools are counting on more than $87 million in new state money if the Governor’s budget passes in its entirety.

Join us on Thursday, May 29 as we campaign for our schools - call your Philadelphia State Representative and Senator!

Follow these steps:
introduce yourself;
give your address;
request that your elected official support the Governor’s budget;
request that your elected official support the six-year plan.

Every office needs to receive at least 10 calls! All Philadelphia legislators’ numbers are listed below. Don’t know who in the General Assembly represents you? It’s easy to find out by typing your zip code and address into CAPWIZ!

Senators

Vincent J. Fumo 215.468.3866
Vincent J. Hughes (19146) 215.471.0490
Shirley M. Kitchen 215.227.6161
Michael J. Stack (19154) 215.281.2539
Christine M. Tartaglione 215.533.0440

LeAnna Washington 215.242.0472
Anthony H. Williams 215.492.2980

Representatives
Thomas W. Blackwell 215.748.7808

Mark B. Cohen 215.924.0895
Angel Cruz 215.291.5643
Lawrence Curry 215.572.5210
Robert C. Donatucci 215.468.1515
Dwight Evans 215.549.0220
Harold James 215.462.3308
Babette Josephs 215.893.1515
William F. Keller 215.271.9190
George T. Kenney, Jr. 215.934.5144
Kathy M. Manderino 215.482.8726
Michael P. McGeehan 215.333.9760

John Myers 215.849.6896
Dennis O’Brien (Speaker) 215.632.5150

Michael H. O’Brien 215.503.3245

Frank L. Oliver 215.684.3738
Cherelle L. Parker 215.242.7300
Tony Payton, Jr. 215.744.7901
John M. Perzel 215.331.2600
James R. Roebuck, Jr. 215.724.2227

John P. Sabatina, Jr. 215.342.6204
John J. Taylor 215.425.0901
W. Curtis Thomas 215.232.1210
Ronald G. Waters 215.748.6712
Jewell Williams 215.763.2559
Louise Williams Bishop 215.879.6625
Rosita C. Youngblood 215.849.6426

“There is no more important priority this spring than for the General Assembly to enact a permanent school funding formula and fully fund it in no more than six years.” -The Pennsylvania School Funding Campaign

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(Hat Tip: Jay Cohen)

Soooo, I’ve been training for my 8k as part of the Philadelphia Marathon.

And yes, it is true that I had a cheesesteak with cheese fries earlier in the week (they don’t call that restaurant Chubby’s for nothing). So yes, the diet could use a little work.

But the running is going really, really well. Yesterday, I ran a little over 4k at a pretty steady rate just under 5 mph. This, my friends, is a big deal for me. Serious runners, you can take your snickers elsewhere.

Today, I did a nice, brisk 4+ mile walk in the park.

My heart doesn’t know what to think.

I haven’t lost any weight - maybe it’s the cheesesteaks - but I have significantly increased my stamina and speed. I’ve also apparently readjusted my body fat. While the numbers aren’t dropping, my pants are, literally. I can no longer run on the treadmill or in the park with my fancy exercise pants. The lack of a drawstring is causing some, er, problems. So, onto the Danskin site I went - the girls needed some new dance tights and I needed pants that would actually stay up.

I have to say, I thought that increasing my exercise regime would be incredibly hard for me but it’s been really fun. Getting up earlier has given me a better start to the day and more energy (lord knows I need it). Yeah, sounds corny but it’s true.

See you at the finish line!

Bike to Work Week is next week and it ends with Bike to Work Day on Friday.

Mayor Nutter will commute to City Hall by bicycle. Citizens are invited to ride with Mayor Nutter from the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art at 8:30 a.m.

The ride ends at a reception at Temple University’s Broad Street Plaza (across from City Hall) for complimentary coffee, tea and bagels provided by Express Breakfast & Lunch and South Street Bagel Company.

Free coffee? I’m so there.

There’s a really cool place to write and be creative in Philly… Check it out: http://www.dailycandy.com/philadelphia/article/36199/Work%20It

Katie has taken to calling everyone “Hon” - I feel as though I am constantly in the middle of a South Philly diner.

We are such city people. It is easy to forget - we don’t live in the midst of skyscrapers and subways in our city home. We are neither Sex and the City nor Friends - our days are not spent meeting in coffee houses down the block and we don’t spend our nights clubbing. But we still have a very urban existence, one that is most apparent when contrasted by the very surburban/previously rural existence of my parents.

For starters, people drive everywhere here in the suburbs/country. Everywhere. If we need milk, we drive. If we need shampoo, we drive. Everywhere. As a result, there is a phenomenal amount of traffic - it far exceeds the Philadelphia traffic per capita, which is really difficult to get my head around.

Next, mailboxes and paperboxes. My children are now obsessed with them. On a recent walk down the street from my parents’ house, the girls opened every single mailbox and looked in every paperbox. When Amy got to take the newspaper out of the paperbox at my parents’ house, she was in heaven. The newspaper! It’s in a box. Katie was perplexed. She wanted to know why the mail would be put into a box. I never thought to think that this was different. I explained that it would take the mailman a very long time to deliver the mail to the doors with the long driveways. This seemed to satisfy her.

Similarly, in the city, it is not unusual to walk through someone’s yard to get where you need to go. My girls regularly climb up neighbor Molly’s steps to get to our house. We spent much of yesterday telling the girls to get out of the neighbors’ yards - my parents don’t really even know many of the neighbors since they are so spread out. Katie could not understand why the neighbors would not want you in the yard - and further, she didn’t understand why my mom didn’t know who the neighbors were. After all, she has quite a comfort level with our neighbors, the crazy neighbor next door excepted.

And just before bedtime last night, I let Lyle out into the backyard. It was pitch black. Blacker than pitch black. And Lyle is black. Not the best of combinations. He took off towards the compost pile where apparently a family of raccoons or possums were feasting. I could hear the commotion but I could only see the flashing light on Lyle’s collar. I called for him several times but just had to wait for him to return. Fortunately, he meandered back up to the porch eventually.

But the biggest sign of being out of the city was made obvious at dinner time. We met my dad for dinner at quarter to 5pm. That isn’t the unusual part - my parents are early eaters. The strange part was that we were not alone - the pizza parlor was nearly full and it was quite a large place. 5pm. Chris and I always find this odd when we visit. We have definitely become earlier eaters now that we have kids, so this I get, but the mix of patrons represented a wide demographic - not just seniors or those with children. It seems that the whole area eats early. This is much different than Philadelphia - when you can always be assured a seat if you come before 6:30pm and where “rush hour” for dinner lasts until 8pm, easily.

I keep looking for the slower pace of life that I thought I remembered - and what is so often touted about the southern coast. I’ve decided that it’s a misnomer. Perhaps some things are slower - but it doesn’t make the pace of life any more relaxing. Traffic still zooms along. People still rush about to get home (though I’m not quite sure why). Buffets and fast food restaurants are wildly popular - folks want their food quickly. Drive thrus abound - you need not even get out of your car to get a cup of coffee (admittedly, I was thankful for this last night).

It’s all a fallacy. The idea that cities are moving 24/7 may make them seem faster paced and busy. But just because something is always going on doesn’t mean that it’s not relaxing. In fact, I’d argue the opposite. I can walk up to the cafe from my office and sit as long as I want, munching on a fresh cannoli, listening to old men shoot the breeze in Italian. I can sit on my front porch, watching the world go by, without fear that my children might get run over by a car in a hurry to get… somewhere. I can hop a subway train to Center City for dinner and not have to wait - in fact, in a Cracker Barrel-less existence, I can almost always be guaranteed a table somewhere without excessive waits or being summoned by a vibrating disk.

My life in the city? It can be exciting. It can be busy. But it can also be relaxing. Trust me.

Amy’s visit to Children’s Hospital went well today. We left with some great advice and some allayed fears - but more on that later.

After the visit, I texted Chris that perhaps we could meet in the City for pizza. While there are many things that I love about my neighborhood, pizza is not one of them. The pizza is embarrassingly mediocre.

But in South Philly? It is heaven.

Chris, of course, did not disagree. He loaded up Katie and Charlie and met Ames and I at the pizza restaurant.

Minutes before we met, Amy had what can only be described as a spectacular meltdown on the train platform at University City. One moment she was delightful, so much so that a woman on the platform looked and me and said, “She is adorable!”

But then I took away the orange juice.

We were getting on the train and I took away the orange juice to throw it into the trash. I promised to get her more when we got to the restaurant. That was not a good move on my part - she was far too volatile and tired after a long doctor’s appointment. Screaming, crying and hitting ensued. She was shrieking her head off.

We got onto the train (still screaming) and I tried my best to calm her down. She was in full fledged tantrum mode. The woman next to me, who had muttered at me when we sat down (it was, unfortunately, a full train during rush hour), began quietly quoting scripture.

And then Amy screamed, “I want my orange juice. I am going to kill you!”

The train was so quiet, you could hear a pin drop. Oh yeah. My three year old threatened to kill me on public transit.

When it was time to get off of the train, Amy went into double tantrum mode. She did not want to get off.

I told her that we were, in fact, getting off of the train. And I picked her up to take her. She said she didn’t want to get off the train. I said that nobody on the train wanted her to stay. I also told her that I was going and she could stay behind if she wanted. She said she wanted to stay with me, and she got off of the train.

Her tantrum continued more or less until we got to the restaurant, where she managed to make her father angry enough to yell at her in the first five minutes of being there. The restaurant was completely full, the Phillies were playing that night not far away.

It was not an impressive end to the day.

And yet, it got worse.

When all was said and done - the pizza was eaten and Katie had chatted up the next table and scammed some free chicken parmesan - it was time to go. Chris was waiting for the bill and I told him that I would take Charlie and Katie out to the car. Amy was sitting on Chris’ lap.

I scooped Charlie up and started out, holding Katie’s hand. I was wearing my favorite skirt - a paisley brown and blue flare skirt with elastic waistband from Banana Republic - and my favorite sweater - a comfortable brown v-neck from Zara. This is significant because, on the way out, Katie fell. And in her effort to stop herself from falling, she grabbed my favorite skirt - the one with the elastic waistband. She managed to pull the elastic down about mid-thigh. So, yes, she caused me to moon the restaurant. I tried, with one hand (remember, Charlie was in the other hand), to pull the skirt back up… But Katie decided that the skirt would make a fine handle for purposes of righting herself and she pulled it back down in her effort to stand up. So, I mooned a completely full restaurant not once, but twice. Nice. And I’m sure the wait staff loved it. Cause nothing says, “Have another slice of pizza” like seeing a chubby girl’s ass.

In case you’ve been waiting for more signs of spring, a big one has arrived: Greensgrow Farms Nursery in Philadelphia opens today!

For more details, check out their web site.

We officially confirmed today with Katie’s school that she will not be returning in the fall. She’s headed to… public school in Philadelphia.

That’s right.

It’s kind of a leap of faith that we are taking. We are choosing to believe in Mayor Nutter’s vision for the City. We are choosing to believe that the new CEO will do what is right for our children. We are choosing to believe that parental involvement in the process makes all the difference in the world when it comes to education.

And it is a scary, scary feeling.

We have, for years, been wary of our local public schools. This year, though, my heart and my mind changed.

There is something inherently wrong about driving past my local elementary school in order to take Katie to school (and you know that I hate driving her to school). The local school is walkable. It’s better than walkable - it’s on the way to the office. It’s just a few blocks away from Amy’s preschool. It’s across the street from the ice cream stand.

So, I met with the principal - a couple of times. I’ve toured the school with Chris and with Katie. And in January, I helped organize a social to talk with other parents about drumming up support for the school.

The stars, it seemed, had aligned. We enrolled Katie and then sat down to mull - and figure out the when and how to tell her current school.

I will miss Katie’s current school. It is a wonderful place. And Katie loves it so much.

She has, however, shown little resistance to the idea of going to a new school next year, which I find curious. She is generally resistant to even the idea of change. But when we discuss the new school, she is filled with a bit of excitement, it seems.

Her father is not.

I think he’s worried that we are not doing the right thing. And with private school, there are admissions processes. You cannot simply pop in and out.

This is, more or less, a full blown commitment to the City and its schools. I so hope it’s the right thing to do!

There is a new Toddler Story Time starting at the Roxborough Library this coming Tuesday (2/26) at 10:30 a.m.

Local moms approached the staff at the library to get a regular story time started at the branch and they hope you will come. It will be short (roughly 20 minutes) and it will combine stories with songs and activities chosen with younger children in mind (i.e., kids between one and three years old). Siblings are welcome, too.

They are hoping to get enough turnout to justify an every-other-week schedule for toddler story time, so come on out!