Vocab Woman

Who’s this? Who in the hell is this? As a special treat for back-to-school week at NTB, let me introduce you to Vocab Woman. As most high schools seem to, the high school where I taught had a spirit week during which students and teachers who had spirit (and I’ve always had spirit, how ‘bout you?) dressed up as each day’s theme demanded. This is me as Vocab Woman on superhero day.

The picture is blurry, I know, but you can probably make out the VW crest on my shirt. My wand is made from a yellow kitchen sponge. My socks have red hearts on them, since I “heart” vocabulary. My acrylic nails are painted a nice maroon red (this is not related to my Vocab Woman identity, but worth noting as having my nails filled every two weeks was something I did religiously while I was a high school teacher, one of the many reasons I did not save even a quarter during those years). My tights are emblazoned with various ninth grade vocabulary words: debris, unbridled, apex, alien, pliant, plethora, erratic, pauper, relinquish, hoodwink (my all-time favorite), and many more. My headband reads “Present Power.”

Present Power? As I always liked to say, inspired by Cousin Eddie in Christmas Vacation, “A good vocabulary is the gift that keeps on giving.” At the beginning of each school year at McHS*, I would take the vocabulary workbooks for each class period of students and wrap them up as presents (one large present per class period, I am not so big of a loser that I individually wrapped 87 or so vocabulary workbooks). During the first week of school, I would choose one student to unwrap the present while saying a few words about how improving one’s vocabulary also positively influences one’s writing, reading comprehension, preparedness for college admissions tests, and overall sense of and/or appearance of intelligence. My students were ninth graders who, while not particularly excited by the contents of the unwrapped box, tended to be amused and charitable enough to make it worth doing. Whenever it was time for vocabulary throughout the year, I would say with enthusiasm, “Open your presents.” They thought I was being a dork, and I knew for sure that I was so there was a nice synergy there. They would open their presents and, NTB, end up enjoying vocabulary time. It was only a small piece of our curriculum, but I think I did the best I could with it. Students would proudly share stories with the class of hearing or reading a ninth grade vocab. word in the real world. Sometimes they brought in proof, and we had a bulletin board devoted to textual evidence that these were words they might encounter outside of their workbooks or room 126.

My last year of teaching at McHS, I recall being really peeved when I heard that an eighth grade Language Arts teacher at McMS had decided to use my idea and wrap his vocabulary books too. I never got a chance to confront him on that, but I still get mad whenever I think of it. What, was he going to dress as Vocab Man for Halloween too?

Anyway, I came across the picture and it reminded me of the years when I did a job that, though it could be awfully frustrating and time intensive, had its own unique rewards and satisfactions. I liked finding ways to engage my students, to be creative, and to share my enthusiasm for literature . . . and vocabulary. I hope that when my former students, most of whom should be out of college by now, hear a ninth grade vocabulary word, they think of me, Vocab Woman, and/or their presents. I hear ninth grade vocabulary words all the time. When I do, I smile and look around excitedly, then realize there is no one around to share my joy. From time to time though, my husband will say something like, “Spurious. That’s a ninth grade vocab. word, right?” It is, indeed.

Including pictures in posts is a skill learned in honor of back-to-school week (and as these pictures are not in the proper order, clearly I am still learning). I have included another one, taken during spirit week the same year as the Vocab Woman photo. As the photograph makes evident, it was 80’s day. Here are some of the English teachers mocking the very decade in which they spent their formative years. If you look on the floor to the left, you can see that one of my friends even had a boom box blasting. NTB.

*McMansion High School

Hot for hot lunch.

Since this is back-to-school week at NTB and I’ve just had a power lunch of soft pretzel and Lean Cuisine pizza (yes, they are finally back on sale), I thought I’d share some thoughts on school lunch. This piece is not a commentary on how school lunches are the reason that so many young people are overweight. Nor is it about how ketchup supposedly counts as a vegetable for the purposes of federal or state health requirements for school lunches. If these issues interest you, watch Super Size Me, the documentary about the guy who ate nothing but McDonalds for thirty days (or maybe longer, I can’t remember). The documentary has an interesting segment on school lunch.

This post is about what I liked to eat for lunch when I was a schoolgirl. As a grade schooler, my lunch options were limited. My school only sold milk and orange drink, no hot lunch. I wish I could say that I packed my own lunch as soon as I was able, but my mom packed it for me. The standard in my house included a sandwich, a salty, a sweet, and a piece of fruit. I don’t remember much about sandwiches, except that I was into butter and jelly sandwiches for awhile. The salty would be either potato chips, pretzels, or Doritoes (often in the individual mini bags that are so cute. NTB). The sweet could be a Little Debbie (the swiss cake roll and the starcrunch were my favorites, or maybe those little white cakes with white filling, white icing and chocolate stripes). My mom is also a good baker, so the sweet was sometimes a homemade item. I don’t remember much about the fruit as it was often placed directly into the donation box for the One Way Farm. (The One Way Farm was a home for runaways and other troubled children and one of the nuns at our school had students donate food they did not eat to the box. Nothing half-eaten, of course, but unopened packages of snacks, pieces of fruit, or even untouched but still wrapped sandwiches were to be donated. You can imagine that those runaways were more inundated with fruit and sandwiches than with Fritos or fruit roll-ups). By the time my youngest brother needed a packed lunch, the health standards in our home had relaxed quite a bit. My mom was understandably tired after having packed thousands of lunches already. Do you remember the bright orange crackers filled with peanut butter in individually wrapped six-packs? This item fulfilled the sandwich requirement.

Endless days of brown-bagged lunches could get old, no matter how much love was packed with them or how cute of a note my mom left inside. There were bright, or perhaps I should say hot, spots though. It was standard practice at my school that if it was your birthday (or that of one of your siblings), your mom or dad would drop off a hot lunch for you. You’d line up with your class to enter the cafeteria, you would bypass the milk lady, and then there, on a ledge adjacent to the milk cooler, you would find a McDonald’s bag with your name on it and a fountain pop standing right next to it . . . or maybe a Pizza Hut personal pan pizza or a bag from Arby’s or Burger King. Other students would smell your fries and look at them longingly or look forlornly at your pop as they sipped their lukewarm milk. Surprisingly, I do not remember many requests to share my fries or my drink on those special days. There must have been a tacit understanding between students that if you don’t ask me to share my McDonalds, I won’t ask you. The good news is that hot lunch was not something that was only allowed to happen on one’s birthday. So, if the morning was chaotic at our house or if I “forgot” my lunch, there was a good chance it might be replaced with a cheeseburger and fries. NTB.

My high school did offer hot lunch, and after I figured out the system (race into line directly from your pre-lunch class, do not stop at locker, and do not get in the “senior cut” line), I was a loyal customer. My younger siblings all went to the same high school as I did, but they probably could count on two hands the total number of days they bought lunch in four years. I guess they were not as charmed as I was by the pork fritter sandwich. It was like a chicken patty but made of pork and kind of flat and thin and irregularly shaped along the edges, delicious with ketchup. They did not take advantage of the fact that mashed potatoes with gravy were available every day for a mere 30 or 40 cents per scoop. They did not share my passion for the institutional school pizza--the kind cut into large rectangular pieces and topped with the thinnest shreds of sausage (cheese only on Fridays in Lent). There was also a salad bar. At the salad bar you could make a salad (though there was an odd rule noting that only “two proteins” were allowed), buy a hot pretzel brushed with butter (heavenly), or a hostess pie (the perfect ending to a healthy lunch of salad). I would eat there tomorrow if I had the opportunity.

My love for the college dining hall deserves a post in its entirety. My school lunches during my years as high school teacher are memorable only because of the awesome colleagues and friends with whom I ate. So, I think that’s all I have to say about school lunches and surely it is more than you wanted to read about. Were you a buyer or a packer? Any school lunch memories to share? I’d love your comments.

Bouquets of freshly-sharpened pencils . . .*

It’s back-to-school season, and I know it’s pretty much a cliché now to talk about one’s love for school supplies, but indulge me for just a bit.

As a little girl who loved school, I perhaps loved choosing my school supplies even more. I loved entering a discount store like biggs, Meier, or K-Mart and seeing the stacks and stacks of clean, crisp notebooks and packages of filler paper. I painstakingly chose my folders for each subject. The best folders would go for the best subjects—Reading and Language Arts—and the worst folder would go for the worst subject, which was and is, of course, science. I silently cursed teachers who asked for plain folders and assigned a color for each subject (though I would not have dreamed of buying a pink folder for Math if, say, red were requested). I would carefully select my pencils—ones adorned with rainbows and balloons, swirly-painted designs, or metallic accents—and then worry that these fancier pencils were not actually no. 2 as the teacher’s list had specified. My mom was patient and generous in the back-to-school shopping trips, never forcing me to re-use a pencil bag from the previous year or to start the year with half-used pencils or crayons from the previous school year (not that re-use is not a good idea, but she understood how much pleasure I experienced in selecting new stuff for a new school year).

As I got older, I always struggled with my school’s barring of Trapper Keepers. They were not allowed, and it made me want one all the more. They came with cool designs on the outside, and you could choose special Trapper folders for the inside. The Trapper was not just an object but also a symbol of order and organization of the sort that appealed to a rule-follower like myself (though, again, I wouldn’t have wanted anyone to tell me which folders to choose for inside my Trapper, had I actually possessed a Trapper). My husband and I were discussing school supplies this morning, and he actually used the phrase “the whole Trapper controversy.” Apparently, at his school, Trappers were banned but then the ban was later lifted. We speculated as to why Trappers were ever banned. He suspects it was the noise of the opening and shutting or perhaps the size of the Trapper Keeper in proportion to the size of a student desk. My guess is that at my school, Trappers may have been banned as potential status symbols. After all, this is the same school where your uniform shirts could not have any logos on them. Thus, when my mom found a good deal on Gloria Vanderbilt white oxfords at K-Mart and then washed and ironed them before the new school year (rendering them un-returnable), she was dismayed when I was sent home with a note saying that the shirts were banned because of the swan insignia sewn into them. I can understand though how the other kids would have been jealous. “That’s right, I’m wearing a Gloria Vanderbilt shirt. From K-Mart. NTB.” They became the shirts I only wore under a uniform-approved sweater. God help me if I got too warm and was tempted to take the sweater off.

One item that was always included on my grade school back-to-school list was a box of tissues. This box of tissues was your contribution to your class’s defense against snot, sniffles, and sneezes. Most teachers stacked all the boxes on top of a cabinet or on a shelf and then pulled one down as needed to be the community box. I selected my box of tissues with care, preferring the traditional, long rectangular box to the jauntier upright one. I tried to choose a pattern that made me happy, and over the course of the school day, I would often scan the stack of tissue boxes, looking for mine, wondering when its turn would come to be the community box. Would others notice how cute it was? Would we go through this box more quickly because I had done such a good job selecting it? Did my teacher notice that I had chosen the name-brand Kleenex? NTB. Some kids’ parents wrote their names on the boxes. Was Beth M. sorry that her mother had chosen an ugly brown box and that Beth M. had to claim it since her name was scrawled on it in black, permanent marker?

Since I am still a student, I can conjure up excuses now and again to experience a little bit of the old school supply bliss by making a quick trip to Staples. But, without a list and without the excitement of a new school year, classroom, and teacher, it’s not the same. I look forward to taking the bubby to get his school supplies some day, and hope I can refrain from trying to choose his folders, pencils, and tissue box for him. And, if the rules allow them and if they still make them, I’ll even buy him a Trapper. NTB.


*the title comes from You've Got Mail and is meant to conjure the happy feelings conjured by school supplies, Fall, and fresh starts.

Brown is the new yellow.

Last night was a big night. Parent Orientation at Preschool. Ohhhh. Actually, it all went well and my daughter’s teacher for next year seems absolutely delightful. Everything you’d imagine a preschool teacher to be, except I don’t peg her for a holiday sweater wearer (not a bad thing.) So, here’s my one concern (other than being kicked out for excessive potty accidents) as we approach the first day of school…

There is a color-coded system used for the 12 kids in her class. Each child is given a laminated picture of a puppy to pin to his/her bag. You hang your coat on the rack next to the puppy of your color, place your bag on the floor next to that color, etc. Classic sort of concept…I have no issues with the system.

Here’s my problem. I have a daughter who is OBSESSED with colors, particularly her favorite one: yellow. You might argue it’s an odd choice for a 3 year-old girl. I probably wouldn’t disagree with you there, but it is what it is. If I had to wager how many times a day she reiterates that yellow is her favorite color, I would say three. But, three times a day for the past six months means that yellow is a very important part of her life. She has yellow crocs, yellow clothes, yellow popsicles. Yesterday at the store she picked out a yellow bag for preschool and a yellow balloon from the same store.

When asked what color different items around the house are, my one year-old daughter says “yellow.” She of course is only accurate when she points to the bananas and then essentially everything else belonging to my older daughter. While I don’t believe it’s uncommon for a one year-old to incorrectly identify everything as being the same color, I have to think “yellow” isn’t the most common color guess. Is her consistent answer of “yellow” a coincidence, or is she a victim of her surroundings? We’ll never really know.

The thing is, even though yellow is my older daughter’s favorite color, we could work with just about any colored puppy we were issued. After all, she can tell you the favorite color of nearly everyone she has encountered for the past 6 months. About three or four times a week, she’ll say “let’s talk about my birthday party.” This involves, among other things, recalling together what color everyone wore to her birthday party back in May when guests were asked to arrive wearing their favorite colors. If we got a pink puppy, we’d celebrate the fact that it is the favorite color of Grammy, Aunt Jen, and Aunt Mol-Mol. We’d rejoice in blue knowing that it is mommy and daddy’s favorite color. The Intern even has us covered should we receive an orange puppy. We have most all our bases covered. Most, I said….

But brown. Her puppy is brown. What do you do with brown? How do I talk up brown? How do I get her excited about a color that not one person has listed as a favorite during her extensive polling? Don’t get me wrong, I’m not asking to be issued a new puppy. I am very aware that she will suffer greater disappointments in her life than this so she might as well start with the hard knocks now. Am I being dramatic? Well, yes. However, this situation is going to call for some creative parenting. “You got brown, just like daddy’s hair! You got brown, just like mommy’s Diet Coke! You got brown, just like that dirt that helps the flowers grow! You got brown, just like our grass! You got brown, just like chocolate chips!” Oh yeah, brown is going to be the new yellow before I’m done with it.

I wish I had evidence.

My mom was in town this week, and I thought her visit offered an ideal opportunity to take the bub to have his picture taken. We went out and found him two really cute outfits to wear. We took him to get his hair cut (NTB, but he was an angel during the haircut. He sat in the yellow car kid's haircut chair very calmly. Never mind that he insisted on holding in his lap the toy vacuum he had been playing with in the waiting area. Never mind that he did not give up the vacuum during the entire haircut, and that when the stylist tried to trade him for a tow truck, that tow truck went flying. Never mind that he refused to wear a cape and thus looked like a gerbil by the end of the cut. Still, he was an angel).

During the two days of Grammy's visit that led up to photo day, we kept asking the bub to "smile." He would respond by offering a really toothy, big smile and scrunching up his eyes. Not the expression I was hoping for for the photos, but still really adorable and, I thought, a good sign that he would respond to direction during the photo shoot.

The morning of the photo session things were still looking good. He fell asleep on the way there, and I thought, "Oh good, a little twenty-minute snoozer and he'll be fresh for the photos." In the waiting area, he played, in the words of Grammy, "just like a big boy at nursery school." Even as we witnessed some poor behavior by some bigger girls at the lego table (alas, young Chloe even received a public spanking for throwing legos), the bub was a prince.

But when it came time for the photo shoot, the bub was not having it. The problem was not just that he would not smile but that he would not stay still. Not at all. The photographer tried prop after prop in a valiant but ultimately futile attempt to get the bub to stop and smile. Does the bub want to play ball? Nope. Sand buckets, a faux piece of boardwalk, and a beach backdrop? Not what I was imagining for the photo, but I was going to roll with it if the bub was game. No luck. What a about a little rocking chair to sit on? No thanks. A miniature blue, leather recliner? Don't think so. How about a Radio Flyer ride-on car? Seemed promising at first but was really only good for about 90 total seconds of photography. Two large teddy bears that the bub was asked to kiss? He did offer some kisses, but I was not able to move out of the frame quickly enough for them to be captured. Not that a photo of the bub kissing two carnival prize-sized bears was what I had been hoping for either.

Now, there were places in the studio that may have worked for a photo, places the bub was especially and consistently enthusiastic about visiting. These places were, in order of preference: the lego table in the waiting room (my mom asked if we could move it into the photo area but the photographer thought she was joking), the water fountain, and the toilet (would have been his favorite play area if I had not closed the door after his first visit).

After twenty minutes and two finished packets of fruit snacks, the photographer, her assistant, my mom, and I were out of ideas and physically spent. I didn't check the condition of the photographers, but I will vouch that my mom and I had both pitted out our shirts, a side effect of the energy expended picking bubby up and wrestling him back to the next prop.

After we waved our white flags, Grammy followed the bub back to the Lego table, where he played happily. Felicitously, a chastened Chloe, back from lunch to pick up her family's photos, rejoined him at the lego table with no further violent incidents. The photographer and I sat down at the big screen to evaluate the 15 shots she was able to snap (just to give you an idea, we looked at maybe 50 or 60 images that the last time the Bub had his photo taken). What to choose? The photo of the bub straddling the Radio Flyer backwards with a look of defiance on his face? The one where he is lifting the Radio Flyer (not that light, by the way) and is poised to throw it while wearing a red face and a look that I would characterize as intense/constipated? The one that captures the bub actually smiling at the two carnival prize-sized bears but that also captures the fruit snacks littering the floor and doubling as pellets of bear poop? The one where he is standing against a plain white background crying and really pissed off?

I had shown up prepared to purchase quite a few photos. I tried to make the most of my options . . . maybe the bear pellet photo because he was smiling . . . maybe the throwing-the-car or riding-it-backwards photo to capture the day. I tried to talk myself into leaving with some evidence of the time and energy that had gone into this visit. But the photographer talked me out of it, encouraging me to cut my losses and reschedule. I am thankful for her good sense and the incredible patience she showed throughout the session. If my mom had not been with me, there would have been an emotional breakdown on my part for certain. The rub is that the bub is, NTB, pretty stinking cute and generally happy and full of smiles. So, in a couple of weeks we'll try again to capture at least a couple of those smiles on professional photo paper. I'll keep you posted.

I'd walk to the end of the earth with George Guidall.

1997 was a big year for me. I graduated from college, moved into my first big girl apartment, and started my first teaching job. Thanks to the Busken Bakery less than a 100 yards from said apartment, it was a "big" year for me in other ways as well. But anyway, 1997 was also the year I discovered audiobooks, and my life has been much richer ever since. To celebrate ten years of this passion, I dedicate this post to audiobooks. Why and how much do I love audiobooks, let me count the ways . . .

Audiobooks are a wonderful chance to "read" more books.
I know some people who want to get technical about listening to books and to discuss whether or not listening to audiobooks is "really reading." Frankly, this discussion gets on my nerves and strikes me as beside the point. For me, the point is to enjoy stories of all kinds. The listener still has to make sense of what he or she is hearing, follow the threads of the narrative, and make connections just as one does when reading a book in print. Now, these tasks are sometimes made easier by the fact that the audiobook's narrator is offering a certain interpretation in his/her performance, but I usually find these interpretations in accord with the spirit of the text. Audiobooks allow me to experience more good literature. I am always consuming several books at once: a book in print, an audiobook, and the various books that are part of my academic project. (Just to clarify, I do not mean simultaneously consuming, as in I listen to an audiobook while I sit on the couch and read another book. I'm a good reader, NTB, but not that good). Audiobooks are a wonderful chance to "read" in situations when you can't normally read, such as while driving a car.

A good narrator makes listening to an audiobook an absolute pleasure.
I have been listening to audiobooks long enough now to have favorite narrators. Flo Gibson reading Pride and Prejudice is divine. The low-key, but compelling narration of Shelly Frasier is another favorite. Though at times she verges on overdoing it, many of my most awesome audiobook experiences have been listening to books narrated by Barbara Rosenblat. I enjoy Richard Easton, Simon Preble, and the fantastic Ron McLarty. And, as the title of this post suggests, I would walk to the end of the earth if I had a supply of audiobooks narrated by George Guidall to keep me company. His reading of Jonathan Frantzen's The Corrections is sublime. Now, a poor narrator can ruin a listening experience, but I typically find that I can adjust to most narrators if I give them a chance. For those new to audiobooks, beware of audiobooks read by celebrities and/or authors. Sometimes they are wonderful, but oftentimes not so much. Professional audiobook narrators (and such people do exist) are the best. With very few exceptions, I am very happy with the narrators who read for Recorded Books, Inc.

If not for audiobooks, I might never clean.
My house is cleaner when I am listening to a compelling audiobook. Unloading the dishwasher, wiping down the bub's booster chair, folding laundry, tidying the piles of stuff everywhere . . . all these tasks are made more pleasurable when an audiobook keeps me company as I do them. The only task that I cannot do while listening to audiobooks is vacuuming.

If not for audiobooks, I might never exercise.
For me, my monthly subscription to audible.com is a far better value than any gym membership I could purchase. My main form of exercise is walking, and I am always willing to walk longer if I'm listening to a good book.

Audiobooks reintroduced me to the library.
Audiobooks are expensive to buy, and though I happily purchase books, I have never been interested in purchasing audiobooks as physical artifacts. In my post-college years in Cincinnati and Chicago, I learned to re-love the library as a source of audiobooks. Walking to the library is a pleasure, and in my first two years in Chicago, I probably explored at least ten different branches of the public library in search of a greater variety of audiobooks.

Audiobooks are less cumbersome than they used to be.
When I first started listening to audiobooks, they were called books on tape. I would walk around with a walkman on and then have extra batteries and the next tape in a ziploc baggie in my pocket. When I got into the car, I would bring the tapes with me. When the libraries started shelving books on cd, I temporarily tried listening to audiobooks on my discman. I found it frustrating because the discs often skipped as I walked and the discman was too big for a pocket. For a while, I would wear a hoodie with a pouch in front and store my discman there, but I got tired of feeling like a kangaroo. I went back to the walkman, which I proudly sported until the fall of 2003. At that time, I got my first ipod and discovered audible.com.* A monthly subscription to audible.com runs me about $21 a month and includes two audiobooks a month. I download these audiobooks onto my ipod, and I am ready to go. Once you download an audiobook, it remains in your online "audible" library and your itunes so that you can re-read it anytime. I think you can also share it with other listeners in your household (my husband is not interested, however). I look forward to choosing my audiobooks each month and make a game of trying to get the maximum amount of listening time for my book credits. I also have a complicated thought process about which books to listen to and which I would prefer to read in print. Generally, I try only to listen to unabridged audiobooks, but many books come in abridged versions as well, in case any of you would prefer a shorter listen. I also want to point out that some large public library systems allow cardholders to download audiobooks for free. The Chicago Public Library offers this service, but it is not available for ipod users yet. I think you need a PC as well, and we are a Mac household so I have not been able to take advantage.

Audiobooks are a great way to widen your reading tastes and take risks.
I have listened to many books that I might never have read on my own. For example, March by Geraldine Brooks was a beautiful novel, which tells the story of Mr. March, father of the famous Little Women, as he serves as a chaplain in the Civil War. I can't explain why, but March is not a novel I would have jumped to read in print and yet I am so thankful to have experienced it. The same can be said for Margaret Atwood's The Blind Assassin, now one of my favorite novels. I also listen to mysteries and thrillers, but I never read them in print.

Audiobooks are a totally new (or perhaps an ancient) way of experiencing a great story.
I associate times and places in my life with audiobooks. When my husband and I were first married, I explored our new neighborhood during walks while listening to Tom Wolfe's I Am Charlotte Simmons and David Sedaris's Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim. I walked down Lincoln Avenue with tears streaming down my face as I listened to the ending of Audrey Niffenager's The Time Traveler's Wife, set in Chicago. I unpacked and cleaned our first home while listening to Marian Keyes's The Other Side of the Story (actually not a great story, but okay). I got the bub's nursery ready while listening to Jennifer Haigh's Mrs. Kimble. After a long winter of new motherhood, I took my first steps outside for sanity and exercise while listening to The Wonder Spot by Melissa Bank. I painted our bathroom with the company of Gregory Maguire's Wicked (and no, I still have not seen the musical). I could go on and on. I'll just say reiterate that I love audiobooks and feel fairly confident in my ability to give customized recommendations if anyone is interested. NTB.

It's been a good ten years and I look forward to many more hours of listening pleasure. I've got to go now. The kitchen is a mess, and Freddy and Frederika by Mark Helprin is waiting for me.

If you have a memorable audiobook experience, please share it in the comments!

*NTB, but our car also allows me to hook up my ipod for easy listening while driving.

Lean Cuisine Pizza Update

Thanks to all of you who have been in touch to show support as I wait for Lean Cuisine pizzas to go back on sale. The bad news is that none of my three local stores has them on sale according to Sunday's ads and the Jewel ad that starts Thursday is a no-go a well. The good news is that I did go to Target this morning where I purchased eight pizzas to tide me over.* I am disappointed to report that the pizzas were $2.89 each when usually they are $2.59. I smell a conspiracy.

*I am proud to report that while I did not leave Target with only the LC pizzas, I purchased mostly needed items like baby wipes and paper towels and did a fine job of avoiding the cartload of random crap that I usually purchase. NTB.