I wasn’t planning on sending my son to daycare but he has some trouble speaking so his doctor recommended a special daycare that offers speech therapy.  It made sense; the therapist can work with the children as needed to improve the quality of their speech. When the children were not in therapy the daycare workers keeps them busy with activities like singing, dancing, and artwork.  All I had to do was drop him off in the morning and pick him back up in the late afternoon.  This was going to be a piece of cake, or so I thought.

I always packed a small dessert with my son’s lunch.  I was soon scolded by the daycare worker that I’m such an awful parent.  Sugar is bad for children and their teeth.  My argument was that my son was not overweight and his dentist just told us that his teeth are excellent.  Her comeback was that the other children were always jealous of his desserts and fussed because they wanted a dessert too.  How fair is it that my child can’t have a dessert because some other kid will be jealous?  That is a big life lesson. You can’t always have what other people have.

Soon after the cookie incident as I like to call it, my son had an accident on the playground and hurt his nose really badly.  It was bleeding and very swollen.  The same daycare worker tried to talk me out of taking him to the doctor but I was deathly afraid that his nose was broken.  Luckily his nose was not broken it just looked awful.  I talked to her and told her that she must be more careful with my son’s nose.  I don’t want him having a broken nose.  This crazy woman looked at me and seriously asked me “Well, why it the nose so important?”  I was in shock when she said that to me.  I told her that once you break your nose it’s just broke because it never heals properly.   I should have asked, “How would you like it if I broke your nose?”

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While it’s clear how the attached conversations are useful I find it hindering that there isn’t a way to detach them.

Here’s my example:  I recently answered an email that I later wanted to mark as spam. When I did so the whole conversation was marked as spam including my own email.  I had to unmark it because I didn’t want the system to think of my own address as spam.

I also think that things get messy and confusing when the conversations are forwarded to a third party.

Another thing that I find really irritating about Googlemail is that it automatically adds contacts to your address book without your approval.  Lets say that I had a stalker and emailed that person back , just once, politely asking to be left alone.  The stalker’s address is now in my address book.  That’s a quirky example but you get the idea.   Is there a way to turn the automatic addition of contacts off?   I’m tired of cleaning up my address book.

If anyone has any useful tips on how to solve these problems please leave a comment.

I’m not a poet but sometimes I like to practice writing poetry.  I used to think that poetry was useless to me because I write fiction.  Why would I want my story to rhyme?  As I gained more experience with writing and read the works of other writers I began to see that really good writing has a natural rhythm even if it’s not poetry.

I know that all poetry doesn’t have to rhyme but if you read it aloud or slowly in your head, you can still hear a rhythm.  Getting this natural rhythm or flow in your writing is very difficult to achieve.  It takes practice, practice, and more practice.

Poetry is not only for cool cats that hang out in cafés drinking coffee.  Poets understand rhythm and flow.  They know how to make their words dance.  Writers of fiction and non-fiction also need to recognize how to make their words flow naturally.   So take a few minutes to read some poetry and if you’re really brave try to write your own poem.  It will improve the quality of your writing.

For all you talented poets out there be careful of poetry.com, it’s a really big scam.  Howard Ely is the supposed editor. Don’t send them any money!  Once you’ve submitted your poem they will email you saying that you have won this Editor’s Choice Award and that you need to pay them for membership and plaque.  They will also tell you that your poem has moved on to the next level of judging for the $10,000 award.  This Google Search will show you the many angry people that were duped by this despicable way of thievery.

A clever investigator submitted a ridiculous poem called Pie is so Good to poetry.com just to see what would happen.   The result of his investigation is hilarious.  You have to read this…