Guess who's two??

Two years ago today Ella joined our family.



One year ago she was full of mirth and mischief (but, alas, still short on hair).

















Today she is full of fun, energy, sweetness, and joy. Happy birthday to our Ella Bella!

Stepping foot and other turns of phrase I despise

Suddenly it's everywhere. Careless people were writing it before, in blogs and emails, but now it's made its way into actual articles and other places where sloppiness can no longer plead an excuse and the only remaining explanation is plain ignorance. Do people really think that 'stepping foot' is an acceptable way of describing perambulation?

Let's get this clear. If you stepped foot somewhere, that can only possibly mean that you stepped on a foot. It is to be hoped that you weren't dancing at the time. Perhaps you were trying to be clever and abstruse in referring to your own respective feet ('I stepped my right foot, then my left foot, then my right foot again...it was the last time I ever stepped foot in Walmart, I can tell you that!'), but it's still a cumbersome and awkward way of going about it.

If you want to talk about your feet, then think about what it is your feet are doing. If your feet are doing the stepping, then for heaven's sake let them be the subject of the sentence: 'My feet will never step in Walmart again!' Stepping is not something you do to your feet; it is something your feet do. If you want to talk about what you do with your feet, then use a verb that works: 'I will never set foot in Walmart again.' Passive vs. active, people. (Oh, my stars. Do I sound crochety?)

Then there's the growing trend toward substituting then for than, which I think comes not just from sloppy misspelling but from an actual misapprehension of which word means what. (That sort of thing can happen more and more as people read less and learn their lingo from hearsay rather than from the original written form. After all, if one has never seen the word 'could've' spelled out, and one doesn't understand the significance of the contraction, it is perfectly reasonable that one would assume the phrase is 'could of.' I've seen this.)

But back to this particular mondegreen. It crops up everywhere now: 'It is better to be happy then miserable,' for instance. Well, Solomon did say that even in laughter the heart is sorrowful, and the end of that mirth is heaviness, but personally, I'd rather be miserable first, and then happy. Heh heh.

RE: Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 2008

Dear Senator,

The aforementioned piece of legislation has just come to my attention, and I am appalled at the potential ramifications that enforcing this bill may have, both for the flailing economy in general and for my family in particular. As I understand it, requiring all products (clothing and toys) designed for children 12 and under to be tested for lead and phthalates could have the unintended consequence of wiping out the second-hand industry as we know it.

I understand the desire to protect our children from shoddy goods imported from China, but this legislation was absolutely the wrong way to go about it. With times as tight as they are, it is unimaginable that the US Congress would allow this legislation to be actually enforced. I depend solely on second-hand sources to clothe my children, and with a third child expected this summer, I know I cannot afford to pay full-price for new children's items.

Seriously, children are far more threatened by second-hand cigarette smoke than by the potential side effects from hypothetical lead in the occasional beadwork on their clothing. Let me, as the consumer, make the choice to purchase items for my family, using my own discretion to weigh the risk of whether I feel threatened by the potential lead content of any particular toy or item of clothing.

If you want to require this testing for all children's products going forward, that would be a more fair way of handling the situation. At the very least, this legislation needs to be revised to apply only to new products being manufactured, and should never apply retroactively to all the goods out there already in circulation. We need much more clarification and revision to this law before it takes effect next month.

My main concern, of course, is with the availability of second-hand items for my family and the effect this law will have on the second-hand industry in general; I haven't even touched on the devastating consequences this would have for small business owners, artisans, craftsmen, and the like, who run their small cottage industries in the best of the entrepreneurial spirit, and who cannot afford to have expensive product testing for their handmade hairbows, aprons, and other goods they sell on Etsy, for example.

I am astounded that this legislation somehow passed without general consumer knowledge. I wish we had had time to lobby about it before it was voted upon, but as far as I can see, the information is just now hitting the blogosphere. Trust me, this thing will spread like wildfire. Small cottage industries, frugal families, second-hand stores, and environmentalists concerned about the impact of trashing all the perfectly good items whose only crime was to be manufactured before February 10th, 2009, will all rise in protest. There will be a huge backlash if this thing goes through. I respectfully request that you be our advocate on this issue and make every effort to repeal or substantially amend this devastating piece of legislation before it is enforced.

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

Sincerely,

Rose Focht