Five things make a post

[marydell]

1. This year, for Chinese New Year, we're having our long-overdue Christmas gift exchange with my brother P and his family (the youngest of whom is Chinese, and a year older than Charlie).  So we'll give gifts on CNY but they won't be proper CNY gifts, which is about typical for how it goes with us. At least we'll be getting the kids together, so that should be fun.

2. I dragged Charlie away from his books to make him come out and play in the snow yesterday.  He loves snow, but BOOOOOKS!  I remember being on the kid side of this conflict.  Reading on a snowy day is the best, but of course going out and playing in the snow is also the best.

3. However, today I am wondering if that was a good idea because the little sprout has a fever.  And since he's already been on antibiotics (for an ear infection, which he got in spite of having tympanostomy tubes) for a week, the fever is perplexing.

4. I bought that horrible trashy book Game Change and I am going to savor every horrible trashy page of it.

5. I got the audiobook of Spin from Audible, but the reader did that thing of pitching the female voices really soft, which makes them sound lost, tentative, and lacking in agency than they already are.   Since the beginning of the story is very much about people feeling lost, tentative, and lacking in agency, it was making me a little crazy, so I had to bail. I really need to preview audiobooks before I d/l them.  Fortunately I have the Tor free e-giveaway e-copy on my e-Kindle, so I am reading it that way instead of listening to it.

6. What is the origin of this "5 things" thing? Enquiring minds want to know...[Edit: answered, below, by mrissa]

Comments

[bifemmefatale.livejournal.com]

3. Cold viruses are not affected by antibiotics. They only kill bacteria.

6. Oh gosh, it was a now-deceased author who ran in the same circles as Bear and Mole and their ilk, but I can't remember her name.

[ma-ee-uh.livejournal.com]

Yes to the above about antibiotics.

Also, playing outside in the cold or going out in the rain doesn't lead to getting sick! :)

[carbonel]

Is an e-Kindle different from a Kindle?

[kcobweb.livejournal.com]

We just got our copy of Game Change at the library where I work, and I read the first 5 pages before handing it off to the reference librarian for processing. I will totally enjoy reading that when it's my turn off the hold list. :)

[marydell.livejournal.com]

No, I'm just being silly. "E-books" has been a ubiquitous term on my flist lately due to the Amazon/Macmillan dustup.

[marydell.livejournal.com]

I asked a fellow mom today if her baby liked playing in the snow and she gave me a shocked look and said "we don't play outside! Germs!" She was laughing at herself when she said it but she was not kidding. Whereas I'm a big fan of fresh air & exercise and so forth as being the best medicine for kids (For me, the best medicine is the couch+the tv). But I might overdo it sometimes :)

[marydell.livejournal.com]

This doesn't seem like a cold, either...it's a fever (low, now, with motrin), with fussing and lack of appetite. No other symptoms...very strange. I mean, for him. He usually either gets very mildly sick, without any fussing or real fever, or he goes all-out with a multi-system bacterial infection (skin, inner ears, and airway). I guess this middle ground is where ordinary kids' immune systems hang out?

[marydell.livejournal.com]

There is a delicious excerpt over here: http://nymag.com/news/politics/63045/

[etumukutenyak.livejournal.com]

I can't remember her name either, but you're right -- she started the whole "five things make a post", and her friends spread it around LJ.

[ckd]

wilfulcait, who I never knew except as a commenter around my flist but who I wish I had known.

[ebony14.livejournal.com]

I think that the lists of five things came from High Fidelity by Nick Hornby and the movie based off of it starring John Cusack. At least that's where I saw them get popular.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Yes, wilfulcait, Rise. Breast cancer took her from a husband and a teenage daughter, and from us, far too young. The story I wrote for her got to her before she died but not before she was too weak to read it on her own. This is just one of the manymany things I didn't get to do with/for my friend, which is in turn just a tiny subset of the things she'd have liked to do.

My tag for five-things entries is "I miss Rise." Because I do.

[marydell.livejournal.com]

Oh, I'm so sorry. Looking through her LJ I get a glimpse of her...a lovely, charming person.

[real-gone-girl.livejournal.com]

funny, i'm learning towards a certificate in early childhood education, & my textbooks say you *should* try to have outside time every day, even when it's cold, because otherwise you're always in confined spaces with lots of people germs.

like, outside is *big.* so germs dissipate more than they do inside.

[ma-ee-uh.livejournal.com]

There is research that shows that a lot of kids w/ asthma and environmental allergies were not allowed or able to play outside in the dirt and therefore didn't develop the proper immunities.

No such thing as too much fresh air. :)

[marydell.livejournal.com]

Yeah, makes sense. This friend is a little hyper-protective with her kiddo...I am also hyperprotective, but about different stuff.
One of the things I like about our day care is that they take the kids outside a lot. And their policy says "if your child is too sick to go outside they are too sick to come to school." The only thing I really worry about with Charlie is getting him too chilled in the snow, since it's up to his waist, but we have good outdoor play gear so he's stayed dry so far.