Just for a minute. Can we talk about sunscreen? One thing about living in San Diego—we are spending a lot more time in the sun than ever before. I’ve never been a sun worshipper. At our neighborhood pool in Virginia, I was the mom trying to squeeze myself into the bar of shade cast by the fencepost. In fact, I have friends who laughed hysterically when they heard I was moving to one of the world’s sunniest vacation spots. The climate, they feared, would be wasted on me.

What I didn’t realize about Southern California until living here was that, except for a few hard-baked weeks in the summer, sunny doesn’t necessarily mean hot. It’s balmy and breezy and just so darn pleasant. And so off we whisk to Balboa Park or Mission Trails, and the kindly sun beams down upon us.

Which means, of course, sunscreen is our new best friend. But I have to say I don’t entirely trust this friend. I once heard an oncologist say that if you use any sunscreen stronger than SPF 15, the chemicals are worse for your health than UV rays. I don’t know what kind of stats support that statement, but it’s always there in the back of my mind.

So what do you do? Chinaberry sells a "natural sunscreen" that’s supposed to be safer than most brands (it does not contain oxybenzone, whatever that is), but yeesh, the price tag! (Although when I went to get the URL just now I discovered they’re having an end-of-summer sunscreen sale, so there you go.)

In the summer the kids go through the stuff so quickly that I usually wind up opting for whatever’s on sale at Target. But ugh, that chemical smell, I can’t stand it. And what’s in that stuff? I seriously don’t trust it. For occasional use, fine, but for something they need to wear every day?

For myself, I seldom bother to do more than put an SPF 15 moisturizer on my face. I always forget about my arms…

I don’t wear makeup, but I’ve been looking at the SPF-containing mineral powders (like Bare Minerals) and wondering if they’re a better idea than the creams. But then I read that Bare Minerals contains bismuth, which sounds as sinister as oxybenzone. So I’m back to square one.

What brands do you use? For you, and for the kids? Do you use something
different for faces and bodies? Every day, or only in summer?

…please visit Here in the Bonny Glen!

Not my favorite words to hear on the other end of the phone: "Cardiology. I have six calls ahead of you, can you please hold?"

One of the most unexpected aspects of blogging has been the barrage of emails from marketing departments asking me to try a free something-or-other, and if I want "to post a review of it on my blog, that would be great." I turn most of these requests down, because I have a dread of sounding like a commercial. I fear I already sound like that too much of the time, when I’m waxing enthusiastic about a book or resource I love. It is in my nature to gush when I like something, and we all know it’s a fine line between gushing and ad copy. What differentiates them is sincerity. When I gush, I mean it.

Which is why I turn down most of the product review requests. (Books for review are an entirely different matter. Books, I jump at.) I did agree to try the package of Luvs diapers—they were launching some kind of new stretchy elastic system at the leg openings—because I have two kids in diapers at the moment, and hey, those things add up. And actually they were quite good and I keep meaning to do a price comparison to the Target brand, because if the Luvs are cheaper I’ll switch. (As to why I don’t use cloth diapers—when I did the "how crunchy are you?" meme a long while back I came up just shy of super-granola crunchy because of the disposable diapers thing—it’s a long story related to living in Queens with no washing machine.)

A well-known maker of disposable cleaning tools sent me a sample kit of a dusting "system," and it came in a house-shaped box which my young daughters deemed perfect for converting into a fairy house, but I looked at the dusting "system" and burst out laughing. If I need an instruction brochure to show me how to assemble a duster, it ain’t the duster for me. Heh. Besides, I’m already filling landfills with diapers. I can’t possibly add paper dusting cloths to my trash column: I’d lose yet more crunch!

Then there was the email asking if I’d like to receive a free sample of new reduced-sugar NesQuik. One of the kids read it over my shoulder, and there was a great clamor of YES! YOU WOULD LIKE TO! YES! So we tried it, and my children thought I was the coolest mom ever, because people sent us chocolate milk mix in the mail just because I have children and write about them on the interwebz. Our NesQuik interlude was a most comical chapter of our lives. I couldn’t write about it because the children sounded like commercials. If I’d had a camera rolling on Beanie, I could have made a fortune: golden ringlets bouncing, bright smile, chocolate milk mustache, "Mommy, this NesQuik is DELICIOUS! I can’t even tell it has reduced sugar!" I kid you not. It was a ridiculous moment. I kept waiting for the director to yell "Cut! It’s a wrap!"

They are still tormenting me, my children, with requests for more NesQuik. That’s what they call it, NesQuik, and it drives me crazy. Quik! I cry. Just plain Quik! I grew up with it and I know what I’m talking about! I don’t care what it says on the package. Rassafrassin’ marketing departments, messing with my childhood brand names. Humph.

After that episode (and the subsequent and still-occurring barrage of please for more NesQuik), I decided I’d had enough of free product samples. But then came an opportunity to try out a new kind of cell phone service called Kajeet, and since it was related to something I had posted here a while back, I was curious to find out more. This is less a product review than an FYI kind of post. I don’t yet have a need for one of my kids to have a cell phone, but with the teens just around the corner (pardon me while I go tend to my husband’s heart palpitations), I can anticipate a time when I’m going to want them to have that means of keeping in touch.

Do you remember when I posted a mini-rant in response to an article about kids racking up huge credit card and cell phone bills, and I wondered aloud how such a thing could even happen? A commenter (I wish I could find the post—Google is letting me down) clued me in to just how easy it is for kids to download games and burn up phone minutes without needing any access to the billing info; you can download anything you want and your cellular service is more than happy to add it to your tab.

Kajeet seems like a reasonable alternative. When you set up a Kajeet account, you have a parent’s wallet and a kid’s wallet. (Or kids’ wallets, if you are activating more than one phone.)

You put money into the parent’s wallet via your credit card, and then you decide how much to transfer into your kid’s wallet.

Instead of a monthly service fee, you pay an access fee of 35 cents a day. This is deducted daily from the sum in your child’s wallet. There is no time commitment—you can cancel service whenever you want, with no fee or penalty. So you’re looking at ten or eleven dollars a month for the service, plus the cost of however many minutes you use.

Phone calls are ten cents a minute. Text messages are five cents each to send or receive. Picture messages are .25 a minute.

I worked out a price comparison to my current cell phone plan, and it looks like the cost of, say, 150 minutes of Kajeet service (including the daily access fee) would be only slightly higher than the cost of adding another phone and 150 more minutes to my current plan. The main difference would be that Sprint would bind me to a year-long contract, and with Kajeet there is no time commitment or contract. So that’s a plus.

The wallet system is pretty clever. In addition to controlling how much money goes into the wallet, the parent can also allocate a number of minutes to be used per day. So if you’re wanting a cell phone just so a child can keep in touch with you, it would be easy to keep the cost minimal by allotting only a small number of minutes a day. There’s no way for the child to rack up a nightmarish bill, because the parent controls the purse strings.

You can also control what phone numbers can make calls to and receive calls from your kid’s phone, and whether those calls will be paid for from the kid’s wallet or the parent’s wallet. Similarly, you can manage settings for what the child is allowed to download: games, ringtones, wallpaper, and so forth.

At this point, my kids and I almost always travel in a pack, and (sorry, Jane) we really don’t have a need for any of them to have a phone. And I’m starry-eyed enough to think ‘my kid would NEVER surprise me with a bunch of games she downloaded without telling me’—but I can easily, EASILY, see my beloved daughter chattering away to a pal and racking up hours’ worth of minutes without realizing it. I can see this because I’ve done it myself now and then, ahem, and we all know that what we DO has far more influence than what we SAY.

Since we got to play with a nifty blue phone all week (I think we get to keep it?), my kids would like me to add that the phone is AWESOME and you can download games (also funded by the wallet system) and the games look AWESOME and can we buy some, please, please, Mom, that would be so AWESOME? And *I* would like to add that there are other descriptive words in their vocabulary, but apparently something about hip cell phone technology brings out the latent 80s teen in them. Gnarly!

(And now back to our regularly scheduled programming.)

The Martha Years books are a series of four novels written by Melissa Wiley about Laura Ingalls Wilder‘s great-grandmother, Martha Morse Tucker.

Martha was born in Scotland; her father was a small landowner, a laird. She emigrated to America and was married to a Scotsman named Lewis Tucker in Boston on January 1, 1799. Among their children was a girl named Charlotte, who would grow up to marry Henry Quiner and give birth to Laura Ingalls WIlder’s mother, Caroline.

Charlotte’s story is told in the Charlotte Years books.

Books about Martha Morse:

Little House in the Highlands
The Far Side of the Loch
Down to the Bonny Glen
Beyond the Heather Hills

Resources and activities for exploring Scotland with Martha

Books about Charlotte Tucker:

Little House by Boston Bay

On Tide Mill Lane

The Road from Roxbury

Across the Puddingstone Dam

Charlotte Years resource and activity page

         

 
     

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

Is it true the Martha and Charlotte books have been abridged by the publisher? Why?

Yes. Here is a Bonny Glen post explaining the publisher’s decision, as well as my decision not to continue writing books in the series. There are more details in the follow-up post, here.

How can I tell the difference between the original editions and the abridged ones?

The originals have painted covers, as shown above. The abridged versions have photographic covers.

Oh no! Is The Road from Roxbury (unabridged) already out of print? I can’t find it at Amazon.

Try smaller booksellers such as those affiliated with the various Little House museum sites around the country. Whenever I hear about a source, I post a link in the Little House category at Bonny Glen.

Is it true they are getting rid of the Garth Williams illustrations in Laura’s books?

Only in the new paperback editions with the photographic covers. The Garth Williams art will still appear in the hardcover editions of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s books, as well as the colorized paperback editions.

Are Laura Ingalls Wilder’s books being abridged?

No, only the Martha, Charlotte, Caroline, and Rose books are being abridged.

How did you get started writing the Martha and Charlotte books?

I tell that story here.

Will there be any more books about Martha and Charlotte?

I don’t know. The publisher may decide to find another writer to continue the stories. I have decided not to continue working on the series in light of the publisher’s decision to abridge. I explain in more depth in this post, excerpted here:

One important point is that HarperCollins doesn’t think of the
abridgements as dumbed-down. I do, and that I am strongly opposed to
the dumbing-down of children’s literature must be obvious from my
decision to walk away from a series of books that has been my heart’s
work for the past decade. Although I came to the decision many months
ago, the shock of it still takes my breath away sometimes. I love
Martha and Charlotte, really love them. Like daughters. I
have written certain scenes between Martha and Lew in my mind a hundred
times. I’m sorry that I will not be sharing them with you, more sorry
than I can express.

My decision to quit also had serious ramifications for my family.
Had I continued with the series, we would still be living in Virginia;
Scott would still be a work-at-home freelancer. So quitting was not a
decision I made lightly; it had teeth.

And yet, if you read this blog then you know my stance on giving
children the highest caliber of literature—not a slimmed-down version
of what had been a carefully crafted novel. And so, when it became
clear that my publishers were committed to their decision to abridge, I
made what I believe to be the right decision—the only decision I could
have made. Doing the right thing, I tell my children, is almost never
the easy thing.

Certainly, this was a very hard thing to do.

But as I said, while I see the abridgement as dumbing-down, I must
say in all fairness that I don’t believe my publishers see it that way
at all. They see this as an opportunity to bring the books to a younger
audience, a way to keep the series in print. The decision was presented
to me with excitement and enthusiasm; I really think they were
surprised that I was dismayed by it.

I bear them no ill will; indeed, I shall be sorry not to be working
with my wonderful HarperCollins editor anymore. She is a gem. I simply
disagree, quite gravely, with this publishing decision.

Will you be writing more books (not about Martha or Charlotte)?

Oh yes! In fact, there is a new novel in the works…Watch this site for more details!

For more information about my source material and inspiration for the Martha and Charlotte books, explore the Little House archive here at Here in the Bonny Glen.

Martha illustration by Renee Graef. Charlotte illustration by Dan Andreasen.

Welcome to Aetna Member Services!

To endure an assault upon your sanity, press 1.

To waste approximately 23 minutes of your precious time, press 2.

To speak to an actual live human being who has any interest in hearing about the problem you are desperately trying to solve…

Call your mother.

The R.L. Stine ad in the sidebar is driving me crazy, too. Let’s just say I am NOT a fan.

But these…oh, I am smitten. Both with the adorable sneaks and the clever makeover.

Followed the link to Rockin’ Granola from Like Merchant Ships. Meredith has a good many other nifty links in that post…I especially liked the little jars of ocean at Green Bean Boutique.

And from Rockin’ Granola, I followed Kara’s link to another new-to-me blog, Angry Chicken, where discovered its companion blog, Tie One On, and swooned over the chicken-scratch apron.

Angry Chicken’s piece about toys is, as Kara noted, well worth a read.

Right here.

Lego is holding a movie-making contest. Contestants created short films using the Lego Star Wars figures, and the finalists’ films can now be seen in the Lego Gallery. Word has it that the second entry in the 13-17 years category was created by the nephews of our friend Love2Learn Mom! Best of luck, boys!

The entries are hilarious. You can vote once per day. Enjoy!