Too Funny To Miss

If you have any sense of personal freedom combined with even a slight enjoyment of irony, you'll love this satirical article on Homefeeding.

Here's a picture of one of my homefed kids enjoying a raspberry smoothie. Yes, I know - this is dangerously subversive behavior.


HOMEFEEDING children: Threat or menace?
CNSNews.com | June 12, 2002 | Lydia McGrew

(The following editorial originally appeared in the June 6 edition of the Midwestburg Courier-Gazette.)

The recent tragic death from malnutrition of seven-year-old Johnny Marfan of Bensonville draws our attention to the growing trend toward so-called "homefeeding."

While the majority of the local children still receive their nutrition from state cafeterias or approved, registered private cafeterias, a growing minority of parents - hundreds by some estimates - are engaged in homefeeding, a practice in which children receive at least breakfast and dinner in their own homes as provided by their parents.

In accordance with law, the Marfans informed the state health department that they were homefeeding Johnny. But in this state, homefeeding is relatively unregulated, giving carte blanch to parents to feed their children virtually any food under the sun; meat, milk, cookies, butter, pie - anything goes.

Some states require parents to have a certified degree in nutrition or at least be monitored by an accredited nutritionist. But here, parents do not even have to fill out periodic reports detailing what they are feeding their children.

Opponents of homefeeding argue that parents like the Marfans used homefeeding as a cover for abuse and neglect, with terrible results. While this remains in question, we've seen nothing to disprove this.

Calista Nicole-Carson of the state Department of Cafeterias and Caloric Monitoring says, "I realize that there are conscientious parents who genuinely try to feed their children what they need. But they should have no objection to filling out the forms we are introducing, describing each of the meals they give."

That seems a reasonable step in safeguarding our most precious resource - our children. "Pro-active steps are necessary to insure we are protecting all children," says Nicole-Carson. "It is ridiculous not to monitor what all children are fed because of a misguided concern for 'privacy' or 'freedom,' and such lack of regulation allows children to slip fatally through the cracks."

Other critics are concerned about parents' lack of necessary qualifications. "Every year we make new nutritional discoveries," says Dr. Sue d'Panzoff of the University of Omasota. "Parents cannot possibly keep up with each breakthrough in nutritional science and give their children these benefits."

It's preposterous for us to leave such vital functions to amateurs who claim authority based on something as flimsy as parenthood, particularly in the realm of keeping pace with nutritional advances.

"Who knows what changes we may need to make next year to improve children's nutrition," asks d'Panzoff. "At a minimum, homefeeding programs must be carefully monitored in the domicile to make sure all the latest advances are represented."

Still others point out the social skills homefed children are missing. Ms. Nicole-Carson tells us, "During meals at the public cafeterias, these children watch educational videos about crucial subjects like the environment, sex, and the evils of capitalism. The food itself is culturally diversified, and each day the children are taught a different set of table manners from another culture around the world."

Homefeeders rely in large part on outmoded history in defending their decision to place their own children out of the mainstream.

"As recently as 1992, the majority of children in the United States were homefed," says Philip Flicka, of the right-wing Home Food Legal Defense Association. "Even when kids went to school, they were allowed to bring lunches packed by their moms."

Whether Mr. Flicka is right or not, it seems that homefeeding is here to stay, consequences be damned. But we cannot be too vigilant. Homefeeders of good will should, as Ms. Nicole-Carson says, be entirely open to having their homes and programs monitored by qualified nutritionists for the good of our children.

Any small amount of time and privacy this costs parents will be more than repaid in lives saved. If the Marfans had been properly monitored, Johnny would still be alive.

There is nothing more valuable than the life and safety of a child, and for that reason, strictures on homefeeding must be tightened in this state.

Copyright 2002, the Midwestburg Courier-Gazette. Used with permission.

Life Gives Us A Thrashing

Note: this entry was written several months back and the story is incomplete. More to come soon.

Next note: no, this isn't an actual photo of our crashed vehicle. Rather, it is a symbol of what life felt like around here for a good, long while after Dave's accident.


I guess flexibility is key in life. It's either that or frustration, which I've experienced plenty of in my more inflexible moments. Especially this past year 'n a quarter or so. "Let go and let God" is taking on meaning for me, probably because I've had little to no control over the events of the past 15 months. For me, trying to make everything right has resulted in a lot of stress.

I used to be semi-immune to stress. It's not that hard to ignore stress - you just think about something else. Read a good book or go do something fun. In college there were times I failed or did very poorly on tests because I didn't want the stress of preparing for them or thinking about my grade. You could say I chose to disassociate from the consequences of things rather than face them. I preferred to live a carefree and free flowing existence, and most of the time that worked out for me. I'm a little amazed that I've lived for 41 years without learning some crucial life skills like self-discipline and time management.

About a year and two weeks ago, my husband was in an accident that has had far-reaching results. He was driving our mini-van on the freeway at about 55 mph when a guy in large pickup hit him from behind going at least 90 mph. How the guy didn't see the van in front of him, I'll never know. The van was totaled and DH had the kinds of back and neck injuries you'd expect from that type of collision. Nothing broken, but lots of chiropractic care needed. We figured it would take time, but that he would recover and be able to get back to work soon. His employer was very understanding, and he was allowed to do his work as a software developer from home.

However, about 6 weeks after the accident, he became very sick. He began throwing up violently every time he tried to eat. His esophagus swelled up, he got sores in his mouth, his stomach was like a ball of fire, his colon was in agony. For a month he ate nothing but watermelon, because that was the one thing that he could get past his throat and keep down. He lost around 60 pounds. The chiropractor assured us that this can be a normal result of an accident due to stress, pain and nerves being pinched and pulled due to spinal misalignment. DH began to see a gastroenterologist, who performed a number of invasive tests on him and diagnosed him with esophagitus, gastritis, hiatal hernia, reflux and colitis. He gave Dave some pills that, when we looked them up, predicted potential cancer and other risks greater than what Dave was already going through. So he declined, and we went on a search for natural remedies - diet, supplements, natural therapies, etc.

All this while DH was trying to work from home, and even tried to go back in to work. He no longer had the physical strength to do so, and would become even more stressed and ill and broken while trying to force himself. His physical pain was too great and he had lost the ability to concentrate and keep focus on anything. After nearly a year of patiently working around DH's issues, his company finally let him go. I think they deserve to be sainted for their kindness in giving him so much time and flexibility. Thank you, former employer!

Meanwhile I was researching all kinds of potential therapies and diets and such, many of which we have worked with this past year. Also, God sent us a perfect angel to help us - a lovely woman in another state who went through something very similar - a bad accident followed by complete bodily malfunction - and had spent years learning to overcome her accident injuries and the resulting illnesses. She has not only given us very wise and practical advice to follow for healing, but has even sent us some of the essentials that we couldn't afford to buy on DH's disability pay.

Corn Flakes Kill Rats (and humans, it must be inferred)

Today's blog is written by the me that gets Very Peeved over What The Public Is Led To Believe vs. The Truth. I'm actually not going to write a blog, but rather refer you to this GREAT ARTICLE by Sally Fallon all about how unreleased research proved in the 1960's that cardboard will sustain life longer than Corn Flakes. Happy reading!

Also worth checking out is an article at Mercola.com on 8 Drugs Doctors Would Never Take (but would be perfectly happy to prescribe to you). Mercola's comments below the article are the real punchline, of course.

Seven Shades of Beige

If I had a good story line, I'd write a novel set in suburban Southern California, and call it Seven Shades of Beige. That's actually the phrase I use to describe all new housing developments that go up around here. Excuse me, new Communities. Because we no longer buy into a development or a neighborhood or buy a house on a certain street, or a house in a certain area; we buy a new house in a Community. (You and your neighbors will never get to know each other because your new Community has 7 foot fences separating the yards, but that's beside the point.) Your new Community offers you choice of one of 5 different models painted one of seven shades of beige. Your 2,000 plus square foot house is on a 4,000 square foot lot, because you and your kids don't go outside anymore, and the space is more useful indoors where you need room for an office, a living room and a den, plus a media room.

I'm probably just hyper-critical, or maybe obsessed with color, or nostalgic for the good old days when a new neighborhood had houses in green, yellow, white and blue, and the neighbors came over to meet you and the kids were outside on bikes and skateboards. I dunno. All I know for sure is that I hate driving down the street and seeing a mass of new houses built and painted to look as if they're supposed to blend in with the dried up summer grass on the hills. Why do people want to buy houses that look so nondescript? Do they not notice, or not care, or do they like it that way? Do they move to beige neighborhoods intentionally?

I can't exactly say I'm living in my dream house (you can find pictures of my dream house HERE ). A little over a year ago we bought our first house: a pale yellow 1950's California Ticky Tacky in need of fresh paint and personalizing. It doesn't stand out as anything extraordinary... yet... but at least every house on our street looks unique. We have an orange house next door and a pink house across the street. There might even be a couple of shades of beige on our street. It doesn't hurt my eyes to look at them, though, because they don't look like part of a desert camouflage unit; they're unique to the other houses around here.

I've always had a problem with uniformity. I hate graduation pictures for the same reason. Everybody in the same cap and gown, like a sea of red with touches of gold (in the case of my high school colors). Nothing stands out as special. My eyes blur over when I try to look through them, and I flip through those pages of the photo album quickly to get some relief.

Maybe one day I'll move into one of those new communities - buy a big beige house with a tiny yard and a 3 car garage and nazi-like yard care rules. If I do, though, I'll be sure to paint it fluorescent green with pink trim. Maybe I'll even get to know the neighbors and lead them in a color revolt.

Barbie Nudist Colony

There's a nudist colony in my living room. I estimate there are 13 or 14 nekkid women, and 3 or 4 nekkid men. I really haven't kept track, and honestly I don't want to get close enough to investigate. Some of the nudists are driving around nekkid in a mini-van and others are in a pink VW Beetle. Some are sitting stiff-legged and straight-backed in a semi-circle. Some have been decapitated, and others are missing a limb or two. A few unfortunates are missing all appendages. All are stark nekkid.

Why is it that Barbie and Ken dolls come into our lives fully clothed and accessorized, sometimes in fabulous princess costumes with high heel shoes and tiara, or cool surfer-dude board shorts, but they never remain that way? In the box of Barbie accessories there must be two dozen sets of clothes. Why do Barbies and Kens refuse to keep their duds on? Why are they all nudists? Summer or winter, they are nudists. WHY? This is a great mystery of life, and one of the questions I plan to ask God when we've gotten the joyful reunion and other more important items out of the way.

I should add that Barbies aren't the only dolls around here that are forced to live nekkid, but they are most noticeable, probably because they congregate in large groups in the living room. All the baby dolls are also nekkid. Pretty much any doll in this house that comes with removable clothes is nekkid. I have come to really appreciate dolls with cloth torsos that can't be removed. And Raggedy Ann and Andy, who have their clothing sewn on.

So you're probably now wondering what kind of twisted household my children live in, and whether or not we all just run around here nekkid day in and day out. You can rest easy on that one. While nudism may have its nice points for some, we practice clothesism here. Maybe it's just that an eight year old and a four year old are still young enough to remember how free they feel without the constraint of clothing and they want their Barbies to enjoy that same freedom.

Stuff on the Living Room Floor

Here's a sampling of the junk all over the living room floor that shouldn't be there.

- Several hundred tiny Legos pieces (but at least the other three thousand are in the plastic tub)
- a Hello Kitty purse
- a Little People bus
- Several Barbies, some of them headless and/or limbless, and some Barbie accessories, including little magnetic dog poops to go with the Hillary Duff Barbie's dog, which eats these little brown capsule-shape magnets and then poops them out. Isn't it a bit much even for a child's imagination to accept that what goes in the mouth comes out the back side and then goes back into the mouth again?
- the basket holding the Wii controls (at least the controls are in the basket this time)
- laundry baskets
- plastic file boxes that should be in the computer room, and for the life of me I don't know why I haven't done that yet
- an unstacked stack of books that Sojie tried to stand on, and which subsequently unstacked themselves themselves under her feet
- a pink Webkinz poodle
- one Shalom-size flip flop and one Sojie-size princess shoe with the red lights that light up when she walks. These two items are under the futon couch. We seem to be on a roll with shoe separation. I'm to the point where I'm ready to let them wear mismatched shoes to go places, because it takes us forever to find the mates
- seven overdue library books
- a tea set
- There's more, but I don't want to bore you.

Stay tuned for the next installment of Burn Down This House. Maybe we'll explore what can be detected on the bathroom floors using a microscope. Aw heck, who am I kidding? You're not going to need the microscope.

The Hairy Lunatic

The Hairy Lunatic is really Maggie, our dog. The name Maggie evokes images of a sweet, devoted family dog, which our Maggie really is. But she also really is a Hairy Lunatic. We got her from Ramona Animal Shelter after Zonga, our Kitty Boy, abandoned us for a life of freedom on the streets. But more on that later. Zonga is a whole blog post all by himself.

Maggie was an adorable medium sized dog with German Shepherd markings plus a kind of foxy-coyote-ish look and a curly tail like a Jindo, all cute and eager in the kennel at the shelter. The tag said she was about 10 months old and had been a stray. We asked to see her in the fenced yard outside - see how she acted around the kids and all. The shelter guy led her out on a leash and closed us all in together. We let her off the leash so she could play with us. She promptly ran to the fence, found a hole under it and ran back to her kennel. She liked her poopy kennel more than she liked us. We took her home anyway.

Once home I walked her into the house and she immediately took an enormous dump on the carpet. I put her in the back yard where she quickly put as much distance between us and herself as she could - parked herself near the farthest fence from the house and lay down in some bushy-grassy stuff. I went inside to clean up the dookie, and wondered if it was her way of saying she didn't like us. But before long Maggie had mostly accepted us, and nowadays she knows she owns us, and seems to view us as something of a cross between her charges and her servants.

Early on she demonstrated her gift of communication. When outside at the sliding glass door she would jump up, reach her paws as high as they would go and stand there on her hind feet looking in at us purposefully. If we ignored her she would let her claws drag slowly down the glass for that nails-on-chalkboard effect. When wanting to go outside she would do the same - stand on her hind legs with her paws up high - only now looking back over her shoulder at us to make sure we got her meaning. We thought about installing a revolving door or something, as she wanted in or out about every other minute (and we obliged her), but she has actually resolved this for herself by creating her own doggy door. She started building her door by scratching at and making minute tears in the sliding screen. The tears soon turned into small holes. She could then hook her toenails into the holes and slide it right open. The small holes grew, creating convenient large holes for easier and faster use. Now the main hole is big enough for her to gallop through at full speed, eliminating entirely the need for us to open and close the door for her. She's a very clever dog, and very considerate. We didn't really feel like putting the money out for a doggy door anyway.

Maggie has some very endearing behaviors. Here's why we love our lunatic:

~She adores socks. Doesn't chew them up, but likes to have them near her when she sleeps. If I leave socks on the laundry room floor, I will find them near her bed the next morning, usually right next to her nose. Do they smell good to her? I have no idea, but it's kinda cute.

~She eats flies, bees and wasps, or whatever flying creature is in the vicinity. She even jumps into the air to try to catch birds. At first I worried about her getting sick from eating stinging insects, but so far so good. This is mostly sport for her, I think. We do feed her other food.

~She's part cat. She loves to toy with small critters she's hunted. She has no interest in eating them. She goes out into the bushy-weedy areas and tramples and leaps around to stir up whatever critters might be hiding, just for the fun of the chase. One day I watched her play a lizard to death and then lose interest when it stopped moving. And one morning I went into the back yard and found a dead rat, which I suspect had met the same fate as the lizard. She pushed at it with her nose and walked away disinterestedly when it didn't respond.

~She prances and leaps like a pony when excited.

~She flies through the air with the greatest of ease. Seriously, this dog can leap, and it's sheer pleasure to watch her take wing while running around the back yard, or just doing a high jump over the girls when they're playing on the living room floor.

~She loves to play-wrestle, but is a sore loser. We pretend to let her win so as not to hurt her feelings. She's a sensitive lunatic.

~She's so impossibly cute when she wants something that I give her way too many rawhide bones and raw eggs and bits of meat. And many times I've nearly caved in and allowed her pleading little self onto our bed, which is against the rules.

~When she hears Dave get the harness down she is so excited she can barely contain herself. In spite of this she exerts great effort to hold herself still so he can put it on her. She's nearly trembling with excitement, but somehow manages to not turn herself inside out with joy until the harness is on.

~She likes to lick our feet, which is both gross and sweet. I think it means she's taking care of us.

~For that matter, she likes to lick everything, so maybe the foot licking means nothing in particular. She smells the chair, then licks it, smells a toy on the floor then licks it. She smells the watermelon and cantaloupe I left in grocery bags on the floor and licks them. She's also a glass licker.

~She obligingly rolls onto her back if we come near her and there's a possibility we might rub her belly.

~She gives deep groans of pleasure or tiredness or, well, I'm not really sure why. She just groans humorously from time to time, and we think it's very funny.

~In spite of her youth and high spiritedness, she has only destroyed one shoe and three or four Barbies since she came to live with us. She tries hard to be a good girl. (Seriously, my sister's dog has eaten up walls and metal pipes at their place, so I am well aware of the potential for destruction with a young, spirited dog.)

Our Hairy Lunatic is a sweet, quirky little gem. There is just nothing like the joy that a happy dog exhibits and communicates. She gives us pleasure every day.

A, Like, 2 1/2 Inch Winged Cockroach

Bugs didn't used to creep me out that much. And even now most bugs are alright with me in moderation. Naturally, like anybody else, I hate flies around my food, or wasps and bees dive bombing the jacuzzi while the kids are playing in there, or snails eating up pretty, flowering plants, or any kind of bug that has pretensions of forming ranks with its brethren and taking over my personal living space. What I mean about them being alright with me is that I don' t mind sighting the occasional roly poly or the meandering stink bug. Earwigs and silverfish annoy but don't terrorize. Spiders don't make me shriek. In fact one time I was singing in a classic rock and blues band on an outdoor stage over which hung a lovely shade tree, which apparently played host to a spider egg sack that was fit to burst, when suddenly, probably in the middle of one of my superior Janis Joplin renditions, hundreds of tiny little spiders came floating down onto and around me and the rest of the Mike James group. I'm proud to say that I just kept on singing. Now potato bugs are a different story altogether, and you can't judge me for being squeamish about them, because they're rubbery and squishy and kind of translucent, and are probably part alien, and one of them ran across my flip flop clad foot one evening when I was watering the lawn of the house I rented on Pixie Lane 13 or 14 years ago. I nearly hurled.

But you're probably wondering about the cockroach in the blog title. Several nights ago one of the girls ran in and screeched, "There's a big bug on the wall! There's a big bug on the wall!" I was skeptical about the "big" part, since my girls tend to react strongly to bugs in the house, so I took my time getting into the computer room to tend to the bug. Once I did, however, tears sprang to my eyes and my hand sprang to my mouth, either to hold in a shriek or a wail or maybe some vomit. It was a monster. Even now, with the initial shock over and time for my rational mind to process the incident, I'm fairly certain this beast was at least 2 1/2 inches long. It was winged. It must have weighted like a pound, because it didn't scuttle or skitter, it lumbered. Slowly enough for me to practically empty a spray bottle of some natural bug killer stuff onto it as it made its slow escape. And it did escape, I'm afraid, somewhere under my desk, although I'm certain it couldn't have escaped death with all that spray on it. I have that to console me.

I didn't always have such a strong reaction to cockroaches. Not that I ever felt fond of them or anything, but I tried to keep my wits about me around them, even when I lived in a Caribbean city in Colombia where there are plenty of these big, flying cockroaches. What really turned me against cockroaches was an apartment we lived in in West Covina. The day we moved in there was the beginning of a war for me. There were roaches (the smaller, reddish ones) visible 'most any time of day or night - you didn't even have to know their hiding places. The cheeky things were peeking out from under the counter by my foot, rushing out from somewhere around the sink while I was preparing a meal, clinging to the inside of the door of the cupboard as I opened it, dashing across the floor to snatch a fallen piece of lettuce. These were some bold and brassy little tormentors.

Some things I may never forget about living in that apartment: I never prepared food without disinfecting the counter and sink first; I began keeping clean silverware in ziplocks and using paper plates; I never left food unattended; while sitting at the kitchen table I didn't keep my feet on the floor, but instead propped them up on the base of the table as I ate; I should have taken out stock in those roach bait trap thingy companies. While the kitchens were the worst places in those apartments as far as critter activity, I always felt I might step on one anywhere I walked. The ultimate horror was the night I was woken up by the sensation of a cockroach at the corner of my mouth. Only it was more than a sensation; it really was a roach. I wanted to scream and throw up and cry and who knows what else. I actually met a woman at a Bible study once who, when I told her where we were living, shuddered, and told me that she'd lived in those apartments as a little girl, and that she still had nightmares about it. Those apartments obviously should have been razed decades before we ever lived there.

I never did win that war against the roaches in that apartment, although I won thousands of personal battles over our three years there. I got so angry about the incessant roaches that I went into killer mode. When I saw one, I would go after it with a napkin and smash it, throw it away, and get ready to do it again when the next one showed its face. I felt triumphant with each slaying, feeling I'd reduced the roach population significantly (I'm sure now that the friends and relatives of the dead were laughing at me from behind cupboard doors as they procreated untold millions). I used to buy a package of 500 napkins once a week, and between our normal family use and the roach slaying, the 500 napkins were all used up by shopping day.

It was a great day when we moved out of that place. We had to get rid of any upholstered furniture we'd had there to make sure we didn't take any critters with us. We even unpacked our boxes in the garage of our new place to make sure we weren't bringing them in with the boxes. Three years of terror over.

I didn't realize that I'd lost the Roach Warrior aspect of my personality until the other day when this big fat monster was on my office wall and I was reduced to a whimpering bundle of horrific apartment memories, unable to grab a napkin and smash that big bug. I guess the reign of terror lives on in my mind. I probably need some deprogramming. And to keep our house doors closed at night; our security screens are not secure enough to keep out cockroaches.

If you're ever planning to move to an apartment in West Covina, please contact me first. I'll let you know which apartment complex to steer clear of.

Ulterior Motives

First off, in the interest of full disclosure, and all that... I mentioned in my first blog that I had ulterior motives for blogging, besides just wanting to write. Here it comes...... (Am I a sell-out???): I am starting a home business, and hope to use blogging as a way of networking and advertising. So now you know, and you can choose to read or to refrain, to become a pawn in my evil schemes or to run for the hills. Or just to read some other blog by a truly altruistic soul who has less mercenary reasons for blogging.

On the bright side, I'm going to write about whatever I feel like writing about - not just about business.

Oh, and here's the other thing. This might truly turn you against me, even if the networking/advertising thing wasn't a deal breaker: my picture. I cheated a little. Not that it isn't me, or that it's me after thousands of dollars worth of surgery, or me after a little Botox enhancement; it's none of the above. But my husband did take the picture of me from slightly above, so as to minimize the double chin and bags under my eyes. I hope it doesn't smack of MySpace desperation or anything. The picture does look the way I really look.... about 25 pounds lighter and on 8 hours of sleep a night. The way I looked for a brief moment in time just before my second kid was born, when I got into shape and onto a good sleep schedule - about 3 years after my first kid came around.

So there you have it.

Oh also, if you want to know my favorite joke, which I learned in fourth grade, and which is the only joke I can actually remember, it's this:

What do Star Trek and toilet paper have in common?








............................................They both go to Uranus to wipe out the Klingons!



I told my pastor this joke a while back and he liked it. Hope you did, too.

First.Blog.Ever.

As the title says, this is my first blog ever. Not just on blogger.com, but ever on the internet. And I'm too lazy and/or busy to keep a journal on paper, so why on earth would I be creating a blog for the world to see (you may wonder)? Yes, I have ulterior motives. More on that later. Anyhow, I really do enjoy writing, and since typing is not laborious for me as is pen-and-paper writing, I think it will be a pleasure for me to write my thoughts out.

So here's a story for today's entry - My four-year-old daughter, Sojie, and the neighbor girl (age 5, unless she's mistaken or lying, about which I have my suspicions) have struck up an over-the-fence friendship. It started when the neighbor girl got a plastic two-story playground thingy to play on in her yard and she became able to peer over our 6 foot fence and into our back yard. She began hollering at Sojie one day, and that was all it took. I love how easy it is for kids to make friends. Sojie is gregarious, so it didn't take much for her to establish a solid over-the-fence relationship. Whenever one of them hopes to connect with the other, she hollers "LITTLE GIIIIIIRL!" from her respective side of the fence, and the other little girl runs out to talk with her. Even after learning each other's names, that's still how they arrange their over-the-fence play dates. I wasn't watching things too closely - busy with laundry or whatever - so I'm not sure how the whole gift exchange thing between them developed, but one day Sojie started running in with all kinds of new (to her) toys from Little Girl: a castle for tiny dolls, a big plastic purple horse with legs that move, a hair band, and I forget what else, but like 6 things a day. I didn't want it all to be one-sided, so I picked out some of Sojie's things to send over to Little Girl: a bracelet, a little tree house for tiny dolls, special colorful pencils taken out of our prize box, and I forget what else. About the third day of this gift-fest, Sojie ran in with some items that I considered less desirable - two mismatched socks and a pair of women's underwear. Little girl had crossed an unspoken line. We don't really know the neighbors, beyond a wave and a hello. Certainly not well enough for exchange of intimate apparel, even if it hadn't been gently used. I bagged up the latest gift and had Sojie return it. Little Girl insisted that it was for me - for Sojie's mom - and tried to give it again. I decided this was going to require adult intervention, so I came out and asked her if her parents knew she was giving away so many things. She assured me that they did. Then I let her know that I have lots of underwear, and she should not be throwing over her mom's things for me. Happily, both little girls seem to be done with the gift exchange phase, and now keep their interaction limited to hollered conversation. Although I did recently find some green onions that Little Girl pulled up out of her folks' garden and threw over the fence for Maggie, our dog.