Grudgingly Learning How Stuff Works

The responsible parent in me knows we need to give our children as rounded an education as possible, so they get useful skills, gain understanding of how the world works and can find their own career interests.

But as an individual, I couldn't help but why my 11-year old daughter needs to know how hydroelectric power stations and geothermal power work.

Today I was testing her on sources of power; specifically looking at how hydroelectric and geothermal power is made. She has a cycle test tomorrow and wanted to brush up on stuff. Boy, was it hard on my old brain.

Her books explained some of it, but not wanting to rely on only one source of info, I suggested we do Google searches and see what other reports had to say.

Lots of it was incoherent tripe. OK, maybe that's a bit harsh, but why couldn't some of these writers explain things in simple English?

Amid lots of giggling over silly old Mum not getting it, we managed to work our way through the stuff. Hopefully, she'll pretend she's explaining things to idiot me during test, and be as simple but thorough as possible.

Desperately seeking used tween novels


Also spent a frustrating evening at CNA trying to find a book for Baby to read. The shelves were full of High School Musical and Hannah Montana books, with a bit of Nancy Drew thrown it.

I know High School Musical and Hannah Montana are extremely popular - and therefore cash-cows for the bookstores - but for goodness' sake, do they really think that's all young girls want to read/ should read?

And where can international and local writers who write for tweens ( but not based-on-TV series crap) sell their books in South Africa if CNA does not carry them?

Sometimes I think writers are really optimistic creatures, spending hours creating characters that hopefully, people want to know more about. Sometimes it works and people fall in love with the characters and want it as a movie too. (Harry Potter series and the Twilight series being good examples in my own household).

But too many times, young readers are fed the book franchise version of what's on TV.

Bah!

Ended up buying The Tracy Beaker Trilogy by Jacqueline Wilson. The deal-maker was that fact that I was getting three books in one, and the store had slashed the original price by 50%.

OK, I'm sure you can tell I'm not in a very good mood, so I'll toodle off to bed early. As Scarlett says, "tomorrow is another day."


P.S.

Work was great thanks, so it's not the reason for my mood .The grey, wet and cold weather and little life irritants are the sources of my discontent.

Finally figured out how to sort a web design glitch that was bugging me all week, had a good meeting with one client, posted content up as usual, and am working on a small article that stretches me out of my comfort zone.

Things are also rocking on the OneLove web site. In addition to the usual comment/chatter, I had three poetry submissions for the OneLove Poetry Competition today, and an online writer asked out of the blue if she could contribute an article in exchange for a link. So all the blog promotion I've been doing for the site ( and other sites) is starting to pay off.

P.P.S - Just found out that my post on blog promotion was published on the 12th Editiion of "Bringing More Traffic To Your Blog Carnival."

Nice! I should do more carnival submissions over the weekend.