Sticks and stones

I have very little patience for political advertisements. Most of them provide no useful information. Candidates say little about themselves, opting instead for the chance to take a cheap shot at an opponent.
But the "Linda Stender is a spender" slogan is a new low, where a whole bunch of people take turn saying that phrase, in the ad approved by Rep. Mike Ferguson, R-N.J. He is trying to keep his seat from being stolen by the Union County assemblywoman.
How annoying! It almost seems like it deserves a sing-song tone. While most of the cheap shots taken in political ads show a lack of maturity, the person who came up with this ad campaign was probably hired on a playground during a kindergarten recess period. I suspect the next slogan will be along the lines of "Nanni-nanni-pooh-pooh."
Stender could equal the quality, taste and maturity level by taping a spot that says: "I know you are, but what am I?"

Did "pull" come to shove?

So Sen. Wayne Bryant of Camden County -- whose questionable dealings have been coming to light in various ethics investigations -- wrote to Sen. Richard Codey saying he wants to temporarily step down as Budget Committee chairman. Codey said it was done after "careful consideration and discussion" and Bryant's brief resignation letter referred to his and Codey's "thoughtful discussion during the week" that led him to request his own resignation.

Wouldn't you love to know what that "thoughtful discussion" (sounds more like a Book of the Month Club) entailed? Bryant's antics -- and his obvious gluttony at the public trough -- should have people screaming. Not to mention the many public jobs (and scads of public money) he pulls in for himself and many of his family members. Do the other legislators revile that or do they just wish they had his pull?

Torture Me Elmo -- shopping season's coming.

Our family writer is receiving samples of the season's new toys (no, she doesn't get to keep 'em!) that will have kids begging their parents for and putting stars next to on their Christmas wish list for Santa. There's a new Elmo doll that falls down, rolls over, throws its arm in the air, kicks its feet and rights itself while cracking up. Toy technology has really come far since the original Tickle Me Elmo just laughed and shook. I found it made a good neck massager.
Remember the run on the toy stores the year that came out? People were selling them in the classifieds for hundreds of dollars. Now you can get one for a quarter at a garage sale. Ever pay more than the face value for something your kid really, really, really wanted? (Although in the Tickle Me Elmo case, I think it was actually the parents or grandparents that really, really, really wanted the kids to have it.)
Ever knock anybody out of the way to grab the last toy on the shelf? That actually happened to someone I know, who was about to pick up the last toy off a pallet, but was shoved away by another woman who knocked her down, grabbed the last of the "hot" toy and fled.
I've done the Friday morning, 6 a.m. shopping on the day after Thanksgiving. I hate crowds, but that's no big deal, I'm up then anyway and if there's something I want for sale, I'll go get it. But I get in, get what I want and get out, pronto. I've got four young'uns to shop for, and every dollar saved counts.
If one of my kids wanted a toy that was impossible to get without paying 10 times the store cost, they'd have to forget it. I'll pick it up in January -- when it's back on the shelves, there are no crowds and I don't have to worry someone might knock me out of the way, too.

Where does this sense of entitlement come from?

I'm in awe of those in "public service" who see absolutely no problem in ripping off the public. How do they justify it to themselves? Do they even recognize what they do is wrong? I'm reminded of Gov. Corzine's inaugural speech, when he came down hard on the corruption in New Jersey government, and those with the most ethical lapses got all offended and basically said, ''How dare he?!''
Wayne Bryant spent a few hours a week reading newspapers at UMDNJ, then took a $35,000 salary and benefits for it. That's not really any different from the Operation Bid Rig guys who had no sleepless nights about accepting envelopes stuffed with wads of cash in exchange for promising their help in getting bids. What went through their minds at that moment? What did Bryant tell himself that let him think it was OK to do this?
Whenever I read one of these public-officials-gone-bad stories, which come out waaaaay too often and from every level of government, I'm always floored by the absolute gall of these people. Maybe I'm too honest. If I get too much change handed to me by a cashier, even a few cents, I hand it back. One time a busy cashier wouldn't take the money back, so I threw it into a Humane Society canister. It's not mine. Why can't these politicians think like that? Maybe each day the Legislature meets, it could start off with just one minute of a group mantra: "The money is not mine. The money is not mine. The money is not mine."

My chance to dance (and for my kids to get a laugh)

I just bought a pair of tap shoes on eBay -- much to the horror of my friend Dianne, who would never wear anything used. They're on their way from Washington State. Good thing. Tapping in sneakers is just downright impossible, I found out last week.
I'm taking a tap-dancing class. I've never had a tap shoe on in my life. I did a year of ballet when I was in second grade, but it was One and Done. I discovered I was much better suited to basketball. For most of my elementary years I was the tallest girl in my class, and taller than most of the boys. But at 12, I hit the ceiling and stopped growing, so my plans to be a star forward came to an abrupt halt.
But back to the dancing. My daughters have been dancing at Miss Robin McGill's school in Avon for four years now. One's been tapping and ballerina-ing, and the other has done acrobatics and is now in Jazz. Over the summer, another mom told me about the adult tap class, with plans for the moms and daughters to do a skit in the end-of-the-year recital. Silly me, I signed up.
My first class last week was a lot of fun and laughs, to counteract the humiliation, I suppose, when I realized how much better at this my 7-year-old daughter is. As we repeated, with just one foot, the shuffle taps (or squeaks, in the case of my sneakers), we talked of being in the recital and one mom asked our instructor, Miss Maria, "Can't we just do this and have our kids dance around us?"
A few years back, I took karate with our oldest. I started with the kickboxing but switched over after watching him get his half-yellow belt. I ended up going further than he did, in World Karate Academy for 4 1/2 years, getting my red belt, (next one was brown, then black) but had to give it up because of job changes and family changes. My youngest, who shares purple belt honors with me as I was 7 months pregnant when I earned it (my flying side kick left a little to be desired), is a big Power Rangers fan now. Go figure.
I do regret not finishing through to black belt. But I would never have done it at all without having a child in it.
Don't think I'll follow through with this latest effort to the Savion Glover stage of tap dancing, but again, I wouldn't be doing it if not for my daughters. They truly give us a chance to be a kid again, don't they? We're just not as cute in the leotards, though.

Lynch, et al

I'm glad to hear that another politician is facing the music for dancing to an unethical tune. This time it's the powerful Democratic party leader John Lynch Jr., the former state Senate president from New Brunswick, who pleaded guilty to corruption and tax evasion charges today.

I find no joy in hearing of one of our top state leaders facing jail time for being corrupt. But I know there's rampant corruption out there, and when one takes a fall from the top shelf, maybe those working their way up will think again when tempted to follow suit. Maybe.

Sometimes it's so discouraging. The audacity of people who -- thumping their chests and spouting that they have a calling to public service -- go on to stick it to the people they promised to help by using their offices to enrich themselves, their families and their pals. That's why hearing of another one in the crosshairs of the justice system makes me happy. Root them out. Put them in jail, if warranted. Snatch away their pensions. They don't deserve any more state money.

What remains discouraging is how slow justice can be. I think only one of the guys snagged in early 2005 under Operation Bid Rig in Monmouth County has been sentenced -- some haven't had their day in court yet. It seems some can delay and greatly reduce their sentences by ratting out others. Which goes to show what their true intentions as "public servants" really were.

Rebate debate

On the radio on my way in to work, I heard something about a New Jersey legislator, didn't catch which one, who wants to end the practice of companies offering rebates on items where you have to fill out forms, send in receipts, clip bar codes off boxes, jump through hoops and mail it out, then wait eight weeks for your five bucks. This legislator says the rebates should be given at the time of purchase. The radio report said companies save billions on personal computer rebates each year, by people not sending them in or not filling out forms properly.

That's all well and good, but how can a New Jersey rule affect a rebate outlet in Young America, Minn., which is where all my rebate applications end up? I just had an interesting experience: I bought a cell phone for $50, with the promise of a $50 rebate. Both the saleswoman and the technician who programmed it emphatically said I should keep the box intact for a couple of weeks, because if there's anything wrong with the phone, I would get an immediate exchange for 30 days, I think, but I had to have the box fully intact. So I left the rebate application and the box in the bag on my desk for about a month. My phone worked fine, so I got out the rebate application. Lo and behold, it expired two weeks after I purchased the phone. A call to customer service rectified that. The agent said they do recommend you keep the box intact so they would send me my rebate. But how many others wouldn't bother calling? And how many people never sent it in?

The thing that makes me laugh is, this is a bill out of New Jersey? The state that takes too much of your property taxes, then makes you fill out forms, file applications and jump through hoops to get a rebate? Ha!

9/11 made normalcy disapppear for a time

I'm too young to remember the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy or Martin Luther King Jr., and I have only vague memories of the first man on the moon. But I can remember so much about 9/11, so many details about that surreal day.

The first recollection is of my then 2-year-old daughter running into the kitchen saying, "Mommy, T.B., T.B." ... seems our TV, hooked up to an antenna for local channels that did not come free with the satellite dish ... stopped working right in the middle of Sesame Street. I figured something was wrong with the antenna and just switched on the dish and didn't think anything more until a few minutes later when my husband called and said two planes had hit the World Trade Center, where the broadcast signals came from.

My first thought was it must have been small single-engine Cessna-type planes or gliders. I even had split-second images of them bouncing off those massive buildings and worried about who they might have landed on below. Then I turned on CNN.

I was due at work about 10, and I didn't want to go in. Two of my kids were in school, and now I had to drop off my third at the sitter's. I lingered there awhile, and we could see the smoke from our positions by the Shark River. It was eerie, and the enormity of it all still had yet to hit me.

A strange thing happened about an hour after I got to work. I was Community editor, and someone called in asking how to get a November bus trip into our calendar. "She must not have heard," I thought, and after telling her where to send the blurb, I said, "I really can't talk, there's a lot going on, I don't know if you've watched the news yet today." She said, "Oh yes, that's really horrible, I imagine you must be busy there." I was stunned. Why would she pick that morning to call about a bus trip taking place two months later? Maybe it was her way of pretending it wasn't really happening.

Did anyone else, after the third and fourth planes crashed, wonder if it was going to go on all day? I thought we'd hear of planes crashing every hour. I just wanted my family ... my folks were stuck in Germany, their Sept. 12 flight canceled. They made it home the night of Sept. 15, and they were lucky to get in that soon. A French student stranded at the airport tried to get me to sing "La Marseillaise" with him at the coffee station there when I told him I took French in high school. That, and the Hail Mary, are pretty much all I remember. The Hail Mary would have been more appropriate, but less entertaining for those around us.

It was such a strange time. I was horrifyingly fascinated with the news. I couldn't take my eyes off the TV for days. I remember for the next few days, making a point to go out to the window at work and stare at the planeless sky, knowing that the week earlier I could find one easily by looking up at any time of the day.

Our plans to have another baby just got put by the wayside. Who wanted to bring another baby into such a strange world? We healed, though. That's why our youngest is entering his first year of preschool, and not his second.

It's back to school time: So what's on TV?

The McDowell household returned to school and work this week, mostly smooth, except for the surprisingly early bus that left a few dozen high school kids stranded this morning (I took three of them for the half-hour trek to school - seems only the freshmen were notified the new schedule has the bus coming 15 MINUTES EARLIER. AAAAUUUUGGGGHHHHH!

Oh well, it just means I get started 15 minutes earlier, too. And with my youngest starting preschool, that's one more who has to be dressed and ready to go. Last year he often rode in his pajamas to drop his sisters off at school.

After too many crazed mornings, two years ago I started getting everything ready the night before. I'm not an overly organized person, but in this aspect, I now am. I spend a few hours each night reviewing homework, repacking backpacks, making the next day's lunches (hint: freeze the sandwiches the night before, especially PB&J, throw 'em in the backpack in the morning, by lunchtime they seem like they're freshly made. I'm a regular Heloise sometimes), lining up snacks, juice and water bottles and having everything lined up by the door, readying the automatic drip so my beloved coffee will be oh-so-easy to reach in the morning, overseeing piano practice, pajama-putting-on, tooth-brushing, plus cleaning the kitchen (hubby gets dinner ready and feeds everybody, so hey, it's only fair).

Which gets me to my question: What's on TV during that time? After too many times seeing me run back and forth from my nightly routine to the TV room, frantically grabbing the remote from whichever child had it to check the score of a Seton Hall basketball or Giants game, my husband installed a TV in the kitchen. It's mine, all mine, I tell you!

But there are only so many games. And I've lost touch with the evening TV routine. I watched ''American Idol'' last year, in solidarity with Carol G who was enamored with Taylor Hicks since the auditions. And I'm hooked on "House" -- same story formula each week, but you've gotta love Hugh Laurie's dialogue.

I'm a Sunday HBO junkie -- give me ''The Sopranos,'' ''Six Feet Under'' and ''Big Love'' and I'm happy. But I'm at a loss at what else is good in primetime during the week. Any recommendations? Not news -- that's what I watch in the morning and live with all day long. No "survivor" or whatever those shows are that people eat bugs and the like. I'm dealing with a 3-year-old who's reluctantly potty trained. I have enough to gross me out. Any suggestions?

Out of sorts

Well, in case you missed me, I'm back after a two-week vacation. Problem is, I'm scratching my head to remember all my various passwords and the Web sites I usually use on a daily basis. By Wednesday or Thursday I expect I'll be back in the swing of things. But even after this short time off, things seem so foreign, things that will be habit in only a few days are requiring extra thought right now. And where's my stapler? Did I even have a stapler? Did I hide it before I left? How do I sort through the nearly 1,000 e-mails in my inbox? I need more coffee.

The first question is always, "What did you do on your vacation?" I'm not really sure, now that I try and recall what I did. Nothing amazingly interesting to anyone else besides me. Cleaned, back-to-school shopped and spent a lot of time with the kids and visiting family members. I did a lot of jogging in the early mornings -- it was scary, I was hooked on that early-morning run, including a "date with Ernesto" this Saturday, when several people actually pulled over and asked if I wanted a ride, then chided me for jogging in a storm when I declined.
So no spectacular trip to the islands, no frenetic trip to Disney World, not even a camping trip. Celebrated my daughter's 7th birthday, our wedding anniversary, the birth of a good friend's first son, and I remembered what the stove was for and cooked a few times. It's tough to come back to work after all that time of "leisure," whatever that is. But I'm back, and after the cobwebs clear from my head, I'll try and come up with more interesting blogs other than "What I did (or didn't do) on my summer vacation."