Category — Safety

By now we have visited various websites and entered our zip codes to find out how close a registered sex offender lives to us, but usually that is just a snapshot in time. What if one moves tomorrow in your neighborhood and you don’t think to go back to that website for another six months? OffenderWatch.com is a service that notifies you by email any time a registered sex offender moves within one mile of your address. All you do is enter your address and within minutes you receive an email with your results. Of course you can manually look up your address but as busy as I am, I want to know as soon as someone moves close.

Offenders move an average of 4 times a year! Citizens want, and need, easy access to sex offender data so they can run neighborhood searches around their home and school. They want to stay updated with emails and postal mailings whenever there is a change around them.

The service is offered by a number of law enforcement agencies across the nation. To find one new you click hereand then search by state or just enter your email.

We had wind damage to our house where our fence is a wreck, a broken window and roof damage. Thank God no one was hurt.

I love watching my oldest run into his school after a drop him off.  So full of excitement and wonder.

I love you infant crawling on top of me when I lay on the floor to watch TV.  He must think I am a mountain that needs to be conquered.

We had another bad storm last night and the weather sirens went off.  We huddled in the master bedroom walk-in closet until it passed. The second storm caused me to review my home-made emergency kit I leave in the closet.

• crackers
• bottled water
• weather radio
• first aid kit
• candy
• baby snacks
• dry cereal in a zip lock bag
• wash cloth and small towel

I picked these ideas up from other disaster resources and put all of it in a old paint bucket that has a lid.  If you are in a true disaster and can’t get out of your safety place, someone in the family will need to use the bathroom and a bucket with a lid is a lifesaver.

The wife has finally given me the ok to jump into the digital age. We have been spending time at a friend’s house who has a nice HD TV and Mommy Bacchus has finally seen what all the fuss has been about. I have had plans to start getting some for the house, but not until next holiday season. Fortunately for me, she has loved watching TV in HD and wants to contribute funds to the cause. So off I went to the internet and did my research. Talked to some friends and a good buddy developed the below list that I found very helpful.

• Darkest blacks possible
• 120 Hz is better
• DLP is the best for the price
• LCD is the best picture
• Plasma has a better picture but they’re about to be discontinued because of problems
• Mitsubishi probably the best big screen maker
• Measure how far your seat is from where the TV will be and get that distance away at the store
• Go HDMI – go digital its worth it but don’t buy expensive cables because digital is always digital – a 1 is a 1 and a 0 is a 0
• Fry’s is a good place to shop – online is a better place to buy
• Go with the picture you like the most and pay few hundred extra if you have to. You don’t want to be stuck with a TV you’re not happy with a year down the road and you could’ve spent just a few extra bucks.
• The TV will look bigger in your house than it does on the show room – trust me on that one

We were limited in the size that we could get, but got the best we could afford and fit in the space we planned for it. MB had been talking with her friends and decided that because of the two active kids we have, she made one hard requirement.

The Ultimate Mommy Toy: HD Flat Screen TV Wall Mounting

Because a couple of MB’s friends had children involved with some type of accident with the flat screen TV, she insisted that the TV be mounted on the wall. Initially it didn’t bother me because the mounts I saw in the stores cost a $100-200, but the real problem was the cost to get someone to actually do the mounting for you. Wow!!!! It was almost the cost I paid to buy the TV. I bit the bullet and got someone reputable. MB knows that I am good for finding a friend of a friend, but mounting a TV is not something you want to trust to just anyone. I decided to go with Circuit City Firedog service, and hopefully everything will go well.

Now What???

Since we needed the TV mounted and the existing TV stand would have to be taken down, MB thought that I would just leave the TV in the box and wait until the installers came. Nope, not gonna happen. I had the TV out of the box within 30 minutes after we got it in the house. Put it in the bedroom for the time being and watched my first show on fuzzing regualr TV. Oh, did I forget to mention that I now need to get a new satellite box that will bring the HD signal to the new TV. Oh, and you need to purchase HD wiring, Oh, and you need HD package for your satellite service……..IEverytime I looked up there was another “Oh.” I just hope everything will turn out ok. If anyone can think of anything that I missed, please share what you know.

I wish we would have heard about this prior to the summer months, but it is still very scarry……See the story below 

Rare but deadly amoeba infection hard to prevent - CNN.com

GREAT IDEA: Put your car keys beside your bed at night. If you hear a noise outside your home or someone trying to get in your house, just press the panic button for your car. The alarm will be set off, and the horn will continue to sound until either you turn it off or the car battery dies. This tip came from a neighborhood watch coordinator. Next time you come home for the night and you start to put your keys away, think of this:
It's a security alarm system that you probably already have and requires no installation. Test it. It will go off from most everywhere inside your house and will keep honking until your battery runs down or until you reset it with the button on the key fob chain. It works if you park in your driveway or garage.  If your car alarm goes off when someone is trying to break in your house, odds are the burglar or rapist won't stick around….
after a few seconds all the neighbors will be looking out their windows to see who is out there and sure enough the criminal won't want that.
And remember to carry your keys while walking to your car in a parking lot. The alarm can work the same way there….. This is something that should really be shared with everyone. Maybe it could save a life or a sexual abuse crime.

One of my co-workers had her house broken into while she was at work. This can be a scary experience for anyone, but to make matters worse was that her sister and her infant were in the house asleep when they initially kicked the front door in. In my city there is an increasing occurrence of front door kick-in robberies  I had my apartment broken into in college and since then, I have used door jammers for all of my doors.

You wouldn’t believe how easy it is to kick in a door, and those pretty $30 locks on your front doors are no match for a 130 lb crack addict looking for their next fix. Women who live alone or any family should have them placed on each door at night. So please consider investing the cost of $20 for each of your doors and use them on a regular basis. They can be found in most hardware stores, target or wal-mart.

We primarily only use them at night or if we are going to be away from the house for an extended period of time. Of course it is impossible to place them on all the doors when you leave the home but if you have three entry doors in a home, I would always leave a second door un-jammed.

Good Luck and be safe.

Toilet Paper Lock: Parenting Ideas

Ever since BJ's toilet paper fiasco, I have been looking for ideas to help with this problem.  Parenting Ideas has a good post on a product worth consideration. Stop by and take a look.

Love him or hate him, Mark Cuban has posted a great notification to help parents with a tool to assist monitoring our children's use of the internet.  It seems every week I am reading about Myspace and teenagers, so take a look and pick up some helpful hints. 

Searching Myspace.com - A parents tool. - Blog Maverick - www.blogmaverick.com _

 

My wife received this from one of her friends and after reading Izzy’s post, hearing another amber alert and re-posting info on the family watchdog website, I thought it important to emphasize Child safety issues again. So please read and take caution.  I don’t know how many times I enter public bathrooms and see children playing with no supervision.

I’m sending this out to keep everyone aware. Sometimes we tend to become complacent and assume children are safe going to the bathroom alone. At Gabrielle’s soccer game today, she had to go to the bathroom, and she is not allowed to go alone. You can call me overprotective, but I just call it being extremely aware. I walked in the bathroom entrance with her and checked the stall before she went in. She was talking to me when suddenly, the middle bathroom door swung open and a man ran out. I couldn’t leave my daughter alone, but I ran to the entrance to see him running towards the parking lot. I was able to get a description and called the police. I am majoring in social work and have learned enough to know that there are many pedophiles looking around for any opportunity to have access to a child. Any place where you see children there will also be people that prey on them. Unfortunately, this is reality, so please be aware and protect your children.

If you don’t have children but know of someone that does please pass this on. I have heard these stories about children going into bathrooms and being hurt, but had never actually ever encountered this particular situation, so it caught me completely off guard.I don’t even want to think about what could have happened if my child or someone else’s child had encountered this man in the bathroom alone.

I needed to share this with you and you can choose to do whatever you want with this information. Just so you know, it was Carpenter Park in Plano and the bathroom was next to baseball field #2 on the opposite side of the soccer fields. I notified her Coach and now I’m notifying you. You may think I’m overreacting but if overreacting means protecting at least one child, then so be it. The men’s bathroom was open and there was no reason he should have been in the women’s, and what made it even more suspicious was the way he ran out of there.   

Thank you for taking the time to read this!         

I heard an Amber Alert this morning in our area, and this caused me to repost this again. Try it, it will freak you out…..

A friend of mine forwarded a link to this website and I found it astounding. You can click on the “find offender” button and put in your address or any address you are interested in and find what sexual offenders live or work in the area. Once you are looking at the map, you can click on one of the boxes and see their pictures. This is a must for any parent……

www.familywatchdog.com

To look up offenders is free, but they do offer other paid services that can notify you any time a sexual offender moves in your area.