Because sometimes things have a tendency of making me feel happy and sad at once.

I don't know what I was thinking: Setting an alarm to wake up at 3:30 a.m. with the intention of making scones? Dragging the kids out of bed to watch two people get married an ocean away? We'd sit in front of the telly with tea and biscuits?

What a royal pain in my ...

"Silliness," I said to the dog, who was roused and curious at the sight of a human lumbering around the house, breaking the silence of the dark by turning on the TV. It would be at least another hour until the prime event would take place anyway.

"The kids would rather eat sawdust than scones," I said as I stroked the dog's head and retired the idea before I'd even collected ingredients.

It was all so last minute. It wasn't about the pomp or the circumstance, it was just about the moment.

Thirty years ago when a similar scene was playing out on network news I sat in the living room of my mother's house, watching a horse-drawn carriage carry another soon-to-be-princess through the London streets.

We didn't analyze the spectacle. We didn't ooh and ahh. We just witnessed it together - my mother, my sister and I. And the memory of that vision has stayed with me as if all happened yesterday.

Today isn't anything like that day.

Fairytale things have little place in Ittybit's real life. She rarely dresses up like a princess anymore. All that stuff has been packed away in the trunk of a younger girl's imagination and fancy.

This was just a wedding of two people she didn't know -- a pretty woman in a pretty dress and a groom she'd mistaken to be the bride's father -- and nothing more.

"Can I play Math Bingo now?"

This week the Chicago Tribune reported a story about a ban on homemade lunches at Little Village Academy, a public school.

Seems the principal at the school decided to enact the moratorium six years ago after seeing some of the junk food kids brought with them on field trips. She contends school lunches are healthier and should be required of students who don't have health concerns or allergies that would prevent partaking in the meals.

When I first read the story I immediately thought "of all the incredibly bone-headed things ..."

I started listing the outrages in my mind:

So parents wouldn't be able to pack ... say ... This:

School-made lunches aren't any healthier ... We all know the stories about how healthy school lunches really are: Chicken nuggets, hot dogs, hamburgers, mozzarella sticks, pizza (that's a typical weekly menu at our school, anyway). Here's a sampling of school lunches from flickr.

The lunches certainly aren't any cheaper ... if you don't qualify for a subsidy it's, on average, $2.25 a day on top of your now inflated grocery bills.

And most kids toss them out if they don't like the offerings. So as officials are demanding food revolutions, some kids aren't eating anything during the day, and families are paying for the privilege of their kids going hungry.

There are just so many Head-Meet-Wall Stories my wee brain can take.

I'd like to think we come up with cockamamie ideas and turn them into rules because we truly mean well. But mostly what I think happens is that people see a problem they have no idea how to fix and so they start making new and often useless rules.

Which makes me wonder what exactly do educators know if not education? It seems to me they are in a perfect position to inform parents on healthier choices and they can do it through our children.

I know my fifth-grade teacher showed me the joys of yoga and eating whole wheat bread ... and my mother happily indulged those changes.

Of course, some parents will still pack their kids' lunches with sodas and candy and high-fat snacks. ... So how do schools control what students eat? The answer seems simple enough to me: They can't. Not entirely. The best they can hope to do is influence it ... and offer more exercise.

Which leads me to wonder what happens when schools try control food? After six years there should be some positive change in obesity rates at Little Village Academy, don't you think? The story never mentioned if there was.

Oh, School Photographer ...

How despised you've become.

You backgrounds are hokey, your lighting formulaic. Your three-quarter poses are always just a teeny bit off.

The smiles you elicit, time after time, make our children nearly unrecognizable.

You give us a menu of choices and then offer no substitutions. Of course then you make your own substitution and offer us the choice to fix it ... with reprints.

Oh, and your prices ... They make us cringe, and rail against you. Yet, they are cleverly concocted to ensure most of us return a check rather than the photographs.

It's just a business you're in. I know.

The ever-cheapening surprise in a Cracker Jack box.

It's not your fault.

Would these mothers and fathers of children complain if you were supplying any other product?

A second beer that tasted nothing like its predecessor would surely be rejected with more venom, no?

Amateurs. So what they take better pictures?

You have something they don't.

You are selling the school experience in all its Look-this-way-and-Smile awkwardness.

You are selling photographs that will come back to haunt people.

You are selling the stuff of blackmail.

Don't ever change.

This is essentially the reason why photos swimming around in the flickrverse are heavy on her brother lately:



I am the official photographer of Overshot Your Welcome.

There's other stuff I haven't been talking about much.

For instance ...

THE PARENT TRAP Who's big idea was it to design a gift holiday around St. Patrick's Day? Isn't it enough to believe a boy kidnapped from England and sold into slavery grew up to drive the snakes out of Ireland? Now you hook the kids into making intricate traps to capture little green imaginary creatures, who once cornered will leave a gift?

Guess how I found out?



She made a trap. And checked it hourly.

Also ...

EGYPT * LIBYA * NEW ZEALAND * JAPAN I am sending my best agnostic prayers your way.

WISCONSIN? THAT'S THE CAPITAL OF MINNEAPOLIS, RIGHT? Oh, education in this country is the target of much scorn. I know we need to work harder to energize students and prepare them a world we can't even comprehend. But I can't help but wonder why millionaires are picking on school teachers. To me one group eviscerating the collective power of another isn't the answer for society. In fact, it seems a little like throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

SMALLER IS BIGGER, THOUGH. Consolidating districts, sharing superintendents, administrative staff? That's OK in my book.

LAST IN, FIRST OUT I have to say this is tougher for me. Experience should count, and it should be weighed heavily. That's not to say that I think "bad" teachers should be protected. But I just don't think during a layoff is the time to be punitive. Performance-based reductions should be continuously handled through evaluation. If that was happening, last in first out would be fair. Eventually all these young teachers grow older, too.

NEW YORK TIMES' ONLINE SUBSCRIPTION ANNOUNCEMENT: Wow. Not exactly the "paywall" people had predicted. But to my limited mind it seems pretty brilliant. Although there are several ways to trick the system, the system is really set up to make sure those who have been benefiting the most from having free news to aggregate (socially speaking, anyway) will be asked to pony up. If you are really "benefiting" from the downward trend of the news business I'm guessing $15 a month isn't too much of an uphill climb.


BUT WHAT DO I KNOW? I don't have a crystal ball, either. I'm just interested to see how all this turns out in the end. And really? I'm hoping for a time in the near future when we can laugh about some of this stuff.

Including this:

For some reason, one I've never thought to question before now, I seem to take an abundant amount of photographs at 7 o'clock.

I never considered the timing, despite having noted it, I think because it seemed a matter of convenience. I usually start to wake up a little before 7, and despite all the things I could and should be doing ... rousing the kids, getting a shower, making breakfast, packing lunches ... I tend to grab my camera.

I sneak in on the kids if they're still asleep ...

Maybe it's the light that draws me to the hour. Maybe it's the quiet.

There's also the getting-home-from-work, time-to-myself factor. When able, I go for walks at 7 p.m. Seven seems like the perfect hour for contemplative selfly things.

Down time.

Of course, it's just a coincidence that both of my children were born in the first quarter of the nighttime Seven hour ... in December of 2003 and again in June of 2007.

Then again, the coincidence could be the reason I love that time of day the best.

I'm really NOT this silly, originally uploaded by toyfoto.

Is your favorite news outlet Tweeting you?

I'm not really as silly as the photo suggests. *Hush up you who know different.*

But I think the explosion of local media outlets trying to get hip - and potential hype - by signing themselves up on Twitter is pretty silly.

In fact - gulp - I kind of think the whole "Let's-adopt-social-networking-as-a-potential-new-business-model because-it-seems-to-be-all-the-rage ... not-to-mention-getting-a-whole-boatload-of-bucks-right-now" IS downright laughable.

It may sound a lot like the pot calling the kettle black, here, seeing as how my personal blog is getting some linky love from the Home Office ... but really, I don't see how moves like this will save the industry.

I've been blogging for about five years now and I've made a total of $80 (although the people at Google haven't sent me that check yet ... so really I shouldn't count those eggs until they're hatched). My guess is there's no gold at the end of this rainbow.

truck , originally uploaded by toyfoto.

Push a petal,
Pull a lever,
Ease back slowly
Keeping an eye on where you're going
But your mind always drifts to where you've been.

I can't remember the last time I just enjoyed the ride.