Christmas Plans

It's time for my annual Grinchy post about Christmas.  I love Halloween.  I can tolerate Thanksgiving.  But I loathe Christmas.

OK, that's not quite correct.  I love Christmas with my husband and kiddos.  I love making it magical for the kids, even though they don't technically believe in Santa any more, and I enjoy getting them gifts and seeing their faces on Christmas Day.

What I loathe is the level of expectation.  It starts in September.  SEPTEMBER, for Pete's sake, before I've even begun to think about my son's birthday or Halloween or Thanksgiving or any of the stuff that has to happen before the blessed holiday is upon us.  It varies from year to year as to who the person is, but someone inevitably mentions Christmas in September… and usually throws in an expectation along with it.  "You'll be at my house this year, right?" "Are you doing X again this year?" "What are your plans for Christmas?"

I hate it.

And it only ramps up from there.

By the time December, let alone Christmas itself, rolls around, I'm exhausted.  It's all I can do to keep up with the kids and their holiday stuff - which is the stuff I *want* to do - let alone manage all the stuff that I'm supposed to do.

And every year, I wind up loathing Christmas.  It has taken on a year-round aspect at this point.

I know some people love the holiday.  I wish I could be one of them.  But I am not.

So.

Because this year has been a year of many revelations and changes for me and I am finally making me a priority, I am going to do things differently.  The following changes are now in effect:

1.  I will NOT be going anywhere on Christmas Day.  My children have already requested to stay home; my son wants to plan a menu and cook Christmas dinner for us.  I want to let him do this.  So I will be staying home on Christmas Day.

2.  I do not intend to purchase gifts for anyone over the age of 12.  If you are old enough to have your own income, expect either A) nothing or B) a gift card.  My sister and I have already cleared this with each other, and I am hoping to follow suit with both my parents at some point soon.  It's quite freeing to not have to worry about so many bills and wonder whether or not you've purchased the perfect gift for somewhere between 12 and 20 people, not including anyone who lives in this house.

3.  I do not want any gifts myself (again, unless you live in this house, and that's only because I can't really stop them).  I have what I need.  I do not want extra stuff.  Just send me a card to know that I'm thought of.  I enjoy those!

If I'm perfectly honest, I'd love to give up celebrating Christmas altogether and just celebrate Yule/the solstice.  I'll conform to the societal norms for form's sake, mostly because my mom, dad, and some of my in-laws are strong Christians (and I live in a town that threw such a huge fit over having a 'holiday' parade that for several years they had two parades just so the people who wanted a 'Christmas' parade would be happy), but I'd be perfectly content to follow my own pagan path and celebrate my way.

Maybe next year.

Because I really don't want to hate Christmas.

Nope, Spoke Too Soon

Friday.

Today had a whole lotta NOPE in it.

It started out badly.  Doodlebug (yet again) didn't want to get out of bed this morning, and even Boo was dragging.  I made it to work on time and was excited to get to sit at the front desk for my first full day up there EVER… only to discover that I had forgotten to check one of the other schedules and hadn't done one of the weekly jobs I'm supposed to do and someone else was covering my hind end, which isn't their job and makes me feel bad.

Then Oz texted me and told me that Doodlebug had waited until about the time he was supposed to be heading out the door to the bus and said, "I forgot about an assignment!  I need six pictures of momentous occasions in my life!!"  Thank goodness Oz had a few minutes to spare to help print off the photos and help the boy finish the assignment, which, by the way, will be the first, last, and ONLY time we ever save his ass in this fashion.  I've told him since the beginning of school that he needs to complete all assignments the day he gets them, if possible, but now I think he finally understands why we crazy adults say things like this.

And just when I thought the day was settling down and things might get a little bit better… the shit REALLY hit the fan.

First, Doodlebug shoved a friend in jest, and the friend didn't like it, so the friend hit him, and Doodlebug hit him back… and both boys wound up getting suspended for two days.  *sigh*

And then I got thrown into a situation at work that wasn't good to begin with but which I probably shouldn't have been handling on my first full day up front, and things just absolutely snowballed.  By the end of it, I wound up apologizing to everyone on the entire front desk team as well as a couple of nurses in the back, and at this point, while everything *seems* to be smoothed over, we'll find out on Monday whether the company president is going to lower the boom or not.  And I hate inconveniencing others and getting them to try to cover for me.  Not their job.

I am very, very glad today is over and I have a weekend in between now and Monday.  I'll be back at the front desk on Monday, which I suppose is somewhat of a testament to the fact that folks at work must have at least some faith in me (the nurse I had to apologize to is also the one who writes the schedule for me each week), and Oz is going to meet with the vice principal regarding Doodlebug to see if we can't get his punishment either lessened or rescinded altogether.

Hope you all have had a better Friday than me!

Ugh, Monday

[WARNING: PROFANITY AHEAD.]

Doodlebug is in his room right now.  Theoretically he's working on his writing, but I'm pretty sure he's taking a nap because I'm pretty sure he's been up in the middle of the night on electronics or eating or doing something he knows he's not supposed to do.  One day I swear I'm going to install a motion-sensing camera outside his room with an app that links to my phone so it'll ding and wake me up whenever he starts his nocturnal wanderings.

Or not.  I like sleep a lot more now than I used to.

Anyway, he's in his room theoretically working because he decided this morning was a good time to conduct an experiment with mom.

-----

Title:  FINE

Materials:
-- One PMSing mother
-- Monday
-- Tweenage attitude
-- Grammar

Objective:  To see how far one can push one's mother before she threatens actual bodily harm.

Hypothesis:  I suspect it will take less than 30 seconds, if experiment is conducted properly, before Mom totally loses her shit.

Procedure:
1.  Half-ass your way through a grammar assignment.  Make sure to ask Mom to help you complete the work before you've actually read the lesson to see if she's as big a sucker as you think she is.
2.  Turn in said half-assed grammar assignment.  Start throwing a giant tantrum when you get approximately 20% of the questions wrong (mostly because you didn't read the lesson).
3.  Ignore Mom when she tries to get your attention to calm you down.
4.  Start yelling, "FINE," repeatedly at the top of your lungs every time your mother opens her mouth.

Results:  I was allowed to select between Option A: GET IN YOUR ROOM and Option B: BECAUSE IF YOU DON'T GET OUT OF MY SIGHT NOW, I'M GOING TO PUT YOU THERE MYSELF. AND DO NOT COME OUT UNTIL YOUR WORK IS DONE AND YOU CAN STOP INTERRUPTING PEOPLE WHO ARE TRYING TO HELP YOU!!!

Observations:  My hypothesis was correct.  While I did not have a stopwatch during the experiment, I would estimate that from the time I initiated Step #4 to the time that I received results was approximately 25 seconds.

Conclusion:  Mom is nuts.  

-----

Clearly all this is my fault.  And yeah, I lost my temper at the dude.  But for heaven's sake, it's ridiculous, isn't it?  You try to be nice, you try to help them, and all they want to do is pick a fight.  And I'm really, really not good at backing down when someone wants to throw their hat in the ring.  I'm better than I used to be, but if you act like a turd, things will not go well for you.  I'm just sayin'.

So he's in his room until he can get his crap done.

Boo is fine.  She's finished school and practiced her violin and is currently researching meteorology just for the fun of it.

-----

Got a call this morning from the ophthalmology office as well.  Doodlebug has an appointment with the retinal specialist on Friday morning at an hour so ungodly that I'm pretty sure the doctor is coming in early just to fit us in.  I'm grateful, but I am not going to be human; I'm usually not even out of bed at the time of that appointment.  I'm just hopeful that I can figure out how to program the coffee pot so that I can at least stumble out of the house with a life-giving beverage in my hand.  I need the ability to ask coherent, intelligent-sounding questions.

-----

Hello, Monday.

'Responsibility' is a 4-Letter Word

I went to bed last night optimistic about today. I really did. The plan was to get up, start a couple loads of laundry, do school (what little school we have on Fridays), run a couple of errands, attend our homeschool group meeting, come home, fix dinner, and relax.  Oz was going to run one of my errands for me so I wouldn't have to drive clear across town (he'll be 2 miles from that particular errand, which is far closer than I would be with my planned schedule today), and I couldn't really foresee anything happening that would screw up my plans.

I forgot, however, the most important detail: I have children. Chaos machines. Engineers of things not going the way they should.

My first clue that the day was going to be shot to shit came when I looked out the front window at the curb and the trash can wasn't sitting there. Trash is supposedly Oz's job. Not that we have gender-specific job roles or anything, but he is the one who leaves the house each morning, and so taking the trash to the curb has been his job, more or less, for years. I used to be more understanding when he would forget, because at our old house, everyone was responsible for their own trash service. Some of our neighbors burned their trash; others used companies that didn't have pick-up on the same day we did; and all our neighbors were fairly spread out. It was easy to forget. Now there's no excuse. EVERYONE puts out their trash on Friday, and we live in a cul-de-sac. EVERYONE's trash cans are visible. Our neighbor's trash can actually goes right next to ours beside our basketball goal.

So I had to take out the trash. While I was having the kids empty the upstairs cans, I asked Doodlebug if he'd taken his medicine. "No," he said, "but I will. Oh, and Tom's out of worms."

I have asked the boy repeatedly to tell me when we're 2-3 days out from needing worms - or anything else, for that matter. And to be fair, he did tell me yesterday that he was almost out of worms, and that was one of the errands I had on my mental list to run today. I did, however, expect that I wouldn't HAVE to run that errand today if push came to shove and he lollygagged his way through school like he's done most of this week. Now I have no choice.

Then he went to take his medicine. He pulled out the container of Vyvanse, which we're giving him a low dose of right now because the Intuniv alone wasn't cutting the mustard, and no, I do not want to hear that diet changes will fix my kid because they won't, I've tried, and I don't need judgment from random trolls, anyway, and I noticed there wasn't much of a rattle.

"Doodlebug, how many of those do you have left?"

"Hm?  Oh.  Um.  Two."

%&#*.

Don't get me wrong. I'm glad he's been taking it. He's retaining his math, and he's far less aggressive and far more focused when he's on it. And I'm glad I caught the problem before we went into the weekend and came out med-less on Monday. But... BUT! Vyvanse is a Schedule II drug, which means I have to go into the doctor's office and physically pick up the prescription each month. And his pediatrician's office is on the other side of town, miles away from any other errand I potentially had to run today.

On any other day, I would just toss going to homeschool group to the wind, run all the errands, and possibly take the kids to the park to run for a while, maybe let Doodlebug take his roller skates or something. However, I agreed to give a friend a ride home from group today, so I don't feel like I can bail.

I hate days like this. I hate when I think I have things planned out neatly and life interferes and gets things all messy. I realize this is a personal problem. But it's still irritating.

-----

In other news, I called the pediatric ophthalmologist with an update on Doodlebug's eye today. It is both better and not better, and I'm not sure what will happen when the doctor gets into the office (he's in surgery this morning) and gets the report. The black line (Doodlebug's final description of the line was black with white edges) has faded to a medium-gray that is somewhat translucent, but he's getting occasional flashes around it now. He says the flashes aren't there all the time, and they're usually white but sometimes orange- or yellow-tinted. I don't even know what to make of all that. So I dumped on the poor ophthalmologist tech, and he said the doctor will probably give me a call later today.  Lovely.

It is February

Approximately one month from now, the kids, Oz, and I will be headed to Australia.  It seems surreal.  Know what else seems surreal?  That this year is more than a month old already.  I haven't even bothered to get out the Valentine's decorations because no sooner will I do that than it will be time to put them away and fling something else at the mantel, and ain't nobody got time for that.  There are snowflake candles up there right now, and that's it.  I'm happy for that to suffice until the equinox, and then I'll decorate for spring.  Maybe.

We wound up being able to get Boo back yesterday evening.  Some of the snow melted off the roads (thanks to a couple of warm days, the asphalt wasn't entirely at freezing temp), and Oz was able to get out and get her.  I also sent him a short grocery list so we would have food to make it through the week.  It's probably a good thing he was able to do that, because while I had the best of intentions of getting to the store today, it's now 2 p.m. and school is nowhere near completed.  The girl is bouncing and humming and whistling and talking and won't. shut. up. and the boy is squawking incessantly.  I'm about to go out of my mind.  Plus the house is disGUSting, and while I know I should be cleaning it, I refuse to do it until everyone else around here is willing to do their fair shares.  Seriously, the kitchen counters got scrubbed two days ago, and I set my hand on the counter near the coffee maker last night and about went insane. Dearest Oz, WHEN are you going to learn that ground coffee is not invisible to the eye/touch?  And then this morning I got up to find crumbs all over every surface.  Dearest Children, WHEN are you going to learn to wipe up after yourselves when you fix anything?  I'm on kitchen strike until further notice... and master bathroom shower strike as well, after a snarky remark or two from Oz the other night.  Not that he'll have noticed.  I'm sure once he reads this, the shower will get cleaned, but until then, no.  (In other news, I may be PMS-ing, and I am currently of the firm belief that all jeans makers should be required to make PMS-sized jeans... so when you buy a size 12, you get a free size 12+ for those days when the jeans just don't fit right and you know you haven't done anything differently but you weigh 3-4 pounds more and anything you drink goes straight to your bulging muffin top because you haven't peed in days and Holy Hippo, Batman.)

And it's going to snow and people are going to be trapped with me.  This could get ugly.  Just feed me chocolate and stay the hell out of my way.

On second thought, nix the chocolate.  Clearly I don't need any more carbs.

I suppose it's time to go pull the rising bread out of the oven and see if punching that down will do anything to calm my frayed nerves.  I'm so very done with winter, and I'm stir-crazy even though I'm not trapped.  It's either feast or famine lately.  Either we have too many things on a single day or we have nothing.  I'd prefer it all to spread out, just a little bit. 


How's your week looking?

First Day Back Blues

It's the first day back in school after two weeks off.  Two weeks in which the children, like all children before them, have forgotten everything I've taught them in the previous six months.  We can no longer write complete sentences, select the right homonym, spell anything, or turn in any work without correcting it half a dozen times.  Right now I'm having an argument with the boy over how to write a conclusion to his science experiment.  We have a poster on the wall that clearly states what needs to be in a conclusion (What does your experiment show?  Did the experiment confirm or disprove your hypothesis and how?  How does the information you found relate to everyday life?), and yet I got an answer to the last question - in fragment form - and nothing else.  The girl is arguing with me that it's good to put her box of colored pencils on a tiny ledge (whoops... she just spilled them everywhere) and whether or not she can spell whether 'wether.' 

I planned a nice, easy week, easing back into the lessons and with a minimum of tough assignments - or so I thought.

Clearly I didn't go easy enough.

I hate first days back.

That *Something* That Had to Give... Finally Did

I hit my wall this week.  It's been coming for months, and I've been trying to crack down on the kids, but yesterday was *The Cherry on the top of the pile of pecans on top of the whipped cream on top of the icing on top of the triple-layer cake, and today when the kids tried to add **ONE MORE THING...

I snapped.

And promptly called Oz and informed him that the inmates are only running the asylum until December (and in between now and then I'm calling a counselor because I'm clearly not getting through and need help), at which point in time, if there's no massive, noticeable improvement, the boy will be enrolled in public school and the girl will be given the option to do the same.  I'm calling the local school administrators sometime in the next week to find out what the enrollment process would entail and see if we can get the ball rolling.

*The Cherry:
The kids have had a tremendous lack of respect for anything and anyone lately.  Both of them are equally guilty (and given my stress level, I must take responsibility for my own short temper and lack of patience, which has lead to some snarky, fairly disrespectful comments of my own, but at least I do respect their property and apologize when I do screw up).  Things really started on Monday, when yet again, Doodlebug felt that he didn't have to complete his school work in a timely manner.  On Tuesday he finished up Monday's work and brought Tuesday's work in the car to (theoretically) complete while Boo was at her violin lesson.  Boo brought my copy of Anne of Green Gables that she's been reading so that she would have something to do during swim team practice.

We got to swim (with all the gear, I might add), and Boo sauntered into the observation room and promptly tossed my book onto the floor.  Let me say it again:  She TOSSED my BOOK onto the FLOOR.  I freaked.  Not aloud, of course, but I instigated a discussion about respecting other people's property, and she apologized for mistreating my book.  I've had that book since 1991.  It was a birthday gift.  I have no intentions of letting her destroy it.  Anywho, she apologized; we moved on.

Now, in between swim team practice and the violin lesson, we have an hour to kill.  It takes Doodlebug about 15 minutes to get dressed and it takes us another 15-20 to get across town, but that still gives us time to spare.  There's a park just down the street from the teacher's house, so I park there and the kids either run or not, depending on their whims and caprices.  This week nobody wanted to get out of the car.  So we sat.  Doodlebug worked.  Boo stared out the window for a while.  Or, at least, I thought she was staring out the window.  Until suddenly Doodlebug yelled, "Boo, don't draw on the seat!!"

W.T.H.

I whipped around from where I was reading a book on raising adolescents (excellent book, by the way) and watched Boo try to hide a pencil in her fist.

"What were you doing?!?"

"Um... "

"Yeah, don't even try.  What were you doing?"

"*sigh* I was drawing on the seat."

"Of our new car?" [Captain Obvious at work here.]

"Um... yes."

"WHY?"

"I was bored."

*earsteam*

She surrendered the pencil without comment, and I told her that she would be wiping down her seat and vacuuming out the car when we made it home.  She agreed that the consequence of her actions seemed fair.  We discussed, yet again, respecting other people's property.  She agreed that her actions were not respectful.

We get home.  She vacuums out the car and wipes down her seat, and Doodlebug comes inside and tosses his swim gear onto the couch.  I call him back to put it away, and he starts his prepubescent downward spiral.  He continues in that vein through dinner.  After dinner, Oz and I remind him that he needs to take his shower while his sister feeds the animals so that we can get through the bedtime routine in a timely manner.  He doesn't.  She feeds the animals and goes upstairs to take her shower, and the nightly fighting starts.  Usually I take care of it, but last night Oz stepped in.  Good man.  The boy, however, wasn't having it and promptly slammed two doors in his rage.  He had slammed several doors earlier this week, and I had warned him that any repetition of the crime would result in the removal of his bedroom door.

So Oz removed the boy's bedroom door and stuck it in the attic.  Boo finished her shower, and Oz told Doodlebug he needed to go take his turn.

"Yes," Doodlebug shot back. "I do." Whereupon he perched on his bed and stared defiantly at Oz.

Oz, to his credit, walked away.  We left the boy to his own devices for a while, because at that point I was ready for him to stay in his room till Doomsday if he so chose.  All was quiet.  I started reading our nightly chapter to Boo, because if the boy couldn't manage to take care of business, the natural consequence was that he missed what normally happened after the shower routine.  He eventually came down and asked if there was any way to get his door back that night (um... NO) and then went and showered.  I went up to tuck him into bed and say good night, and the door was back in his room.

"Look," the boy said proudly, pointing to the door. "I got my door back."

He put his door back in the attic, too.  And Mama came downstairs and drank half a bottle of strawberry wine and ate an entire bar of chocolate.  Therapy, man, therapy.

---

**ONE MORE THING:
Doodlebug got up in the middle of the night last night and got onto the XBox.  For hours.  Playing one of his sister's games that he pilfered without permission.  I can't do this again.  I simply can't.  I realized that with extreme clarity today, because as soon as I discovered that sneaking electronics had started again, I felt something break inside me.  Mommy is Broken.  See the first three paragraphs of this saga masquerading as a blog post.

---

To combat the lack of respect, we've started two new systems, the Respect Jar and the Put-Up Plan.  I'll outline those tomorrow.  So far so good.

---

Oz and I have been debating the usefulness of homeschooling for a while now.  When we first brought Doodlebug home, homeschooling was clearly the right choice.  No ifs, ands, or buts.  Now, however, it's more of a 50/50 situation.  Yes, he's learning, and yes, he likes it here, but he's slacking off and taking things for granted and we just aren't sure whether it's good for him to stay here or whether he would be better off being held accountable to other people.

We shall see.  Right now, I'm going to drink my beer and try to unwind.  Lor' Have Mercy, what a week.

Jekyll and Hyde

Doodlebug. It's a dang good thing I love that boy, because he is either spectacularly calm and lucid or bewilderingly unstable and illogical this week. There is no middle ground. Boo hasn't been easy, but she's at least been herself. My Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde son... I don't even think he knows who or what he is these days. He swaps back and forth too quickly to settle into a single persona.

Warning: This post is long and fairly rant-filled. I suppose that isn't entirely new, but I felt a warning was in order.

On Monday, Doodlebug decided (decided? Maybe that isn't the right word. Maybe he was simply uninspired. I've no idea) not to do his schoolwork. Because he'd been generally horrid on Sunday evening and again on Monday morning, screaming at me, his father, his sister, and anything that happened to tick him off, which included pretty much everything, I ordered invited him to spend the morning doing his school work in his room where he couldn't be interrupted, distracted, or otherwise disrespectful to anyone or anything. I always print out the week's lesson plans in advance, so he knew what he had to get done; at lunchtime, he had one subject ready to be checked. One. Along with this he felt, with all the know-it-all-ness of an almost-11-year-old boy, that this was not a problem, because surely Mom would be perfectly willing to cater to his every whim and do school on his schedule, not hers/when it needed to happen.

*snort*

At 2:30, when he finally managed to get that first subject corrected but hadn't accomplished anything else except the eating of the food and the going to the bathroom and the multiple getting of the drinks, I calmly informed him that the rules of the Sunnyview School Education Plan are thus:

1. All work listed for a single school week must be completed no later than Friday evening at 5 p.m. This gives the teacher (me) time to grade and him time to correct any mistakes before dinner that evening. Because, ya know, the teacher is also the cook and he likes to eat, right?

2. Swim team is a privilege. If he wishes to attend swim team practice, all of Monday's work must be completed prior to Tuesday's practice time, and all work from Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday must be completed prior to Thursday's practice time.

3. Teaching and explanation of assignments happens between the hours of 8:30 a.m. and 5 p.m. weekdays. I will not explain/help with anything outside of those hours... because I can't do it. I can't be 'on' all the time. And nobody likes Mama when she hasn't gotten her 'off' time.

He listened sullenly, as preteen/teen boys are apparently wont to do, and then uttered his current catchphrase. "OK." Actually, I lie. It wasn't even that much. It was, "'K."

By 5 p.m., he'd completed four of his assignments. Ordinarily he's done with that much by about 11 a.m. and through with all this Monday work by about 1:30... 2 at the latest if he's struggled or lollygagged. He did know, however, that going to swim wasn't going to happen if he didn't get his rear in gear, and so he went back upstairs and worked after dinner to get more done before bed. Dr. Jekyll had returned.

On Tuesday he actually applied himself to his work, but his brain was scattered. Dr. Jekyll was still in residence, but Mr. Hyde's residual effects hadn't entirely worn off and threatened to return at any moment. This was made plainly evident when we got to swim. We were running late due to the fact that Boo had lost her glasses and had spent a frantic 20 minutes trying to find them (no luck), so I told Doodlebug he would have to change quickly and not spend his normal 15 minutes playing snap-towel or whatever it is that he does in the locker room that takes him so long. Boo and I sat down in the observation room, and I watched for him to emerge. No boy. Practice started... still no boy. About the time I was about to march around the corner and use my back to open the door a smidge and start yelling, he walked into the observation room... still fully clothed.

"What's up?" I asked, having a fairly good idea what the answer would be.

"I... um... can I have the keys? I need to go out to the car and look for something."

I handed over the keys, and out he wandered, showing no urgency or distress whatsoever because apparently it's in the pre-teen code that to be seen hurrying and/or distressed would result in utter disgrace and humiliation. He meandered back a minute later, empty-handed. I reached for the keys, eyeing him, "Well?"

"Apparently... I forgot my jammers."

I'm about 99% sure my eyes bugged out of my head at that point, because I had point-blank asked the child before we left the house, "DO YOU HAVE ALL YOUR SWIM STUFF." And yes, I do use that tone of voice when I ask that question. It used to be effective at making him actually think about things. Apparently that is no longer true. Score one for selective hearing abilities.

We left swim. We went back home, Boo dismantled her room in the search for glasses (I came up when she reemerged downstairs in tears, claiming they were gone forever, and promptly picked them up from between her nightstand and her bed, which was, of course, the first place I told her to look), and the boy finished his Tuesday school work, squawking incessantly.

On Wednesday morning, I couldn't move. I couldn't get out of bed. I was pretty sure my body was holding me there, unable to function, until my stress level was somewhere below critical. I was actually scared of what I would face. I finally forced myself out of bed sometime around 9 when my bladder gave me an ultimatum.

It wasn't pretty, but we did make it through the day, the worst and best part being when the whiteboard jumped off the wall and tried to attack my son, because if even inanimate objects feel like mauling him now and then, I think I'm off the hook for having similar emotions.

Today has been quiet other than the anger that surfaced when I told him to go outside and enjoy this gorgeous fall day before it starts raining this weekend. How dare I suggest he get fresh air? He went out and sulked for a while before he decided he'd had enough of this whole sunshine thing and came back to cocoon himself in his bedroom with the last book in the Eragon series (never mind that I suggested he read it outside... outside doesn't have beanbags and does have things like clouds which are horribly distracting). I'm about to go fix food to feed the beast. If only I knew which beast would arrive at the dinner table...

Chronicles of Raising a Preadolescent, Vol. I

The last three weeks have been hell.  At first I thought it was me, since I really had been in a funk, but the last three weeks have been particularly 'special' and I'm pretty sure I've figured out why.

And it has a name.  What is it, you ask?

M1.

Mug shot of personified Mayhem

I love this child.  I do.  I have loved him ever since he had to be dragged out of my womb kicking and screaming.  However, I swear to any deity willing to listen, I totally understand why young male lions are kicked out of the pride and told to go find their own territory because MOM AND DAD AREN'T PUTTING UP WITH IT ANY MORE.  Hear me, boy?  Do ya?  Hm?

Something tells me I'm not getting through.

It might be the smirk.

It's 1:01 p.m. on a Monday.  This is a school day.  The boy has completed his work in precisely three subjects - grammar, spelling, and art - and even those weren't completed without waspishness and peevishness and snarkiness and all those other -nesses that encompass raising a child who is quite sure that A) the universe revolves around him, B) he knows more than anyone ever alive ever knew, and C) he must have the last word in any and all conversations.

For example, this morning, he tried to argue that newspapers weren't descriptive.  We weren't talking about newspapers, and he was supposed to have been working on his own work, but he felt the need to interject one of his Ultimate Hypotheses into M2's grammar lesson.  "I think article adjectives are called that because they're the only adjectives used in newspaper articles, because newspapers aren't very descriptive."

I can't invent this stuff.  Thankfully a quick reading of some articles from well-known moments in history - the Civil War, 9/11, the Kennedy assassination - showed the boy the error of his statement.  Did he actually acknowledge that I still might know more than him?  Of course not.  He put his head down on his desk and thoroughly ignored me.  Because if it can't see you, you can't see it.  Mantra of all Ostrich Children.

Then there was this:  I was giving him his weekly spelling pretest.  We do this so that if he knows most of or all of the words on the list, we don't waste time on a useless lesson.  One of the words was 'animosity.'  He spelled it incorrectly - a-n-a-m-o-c-i-t-y.  Not a big deal; I put a dot by it and moved on.  When it came time for him to learn the correct spelling, I pointed out that he'd gotten close and gave him props for that.  Was that enough?  Hardly.  "It sounded like you were saying anAmosity, Mom, not anImosity.  So that wasn't my fault."

Argh.  Animosity.  Yes.  How do parents survive this?  Any tips?  I'm going to need the village for this one.

Dear Tuesday

Dear Tuesday,

I am writing in regards to your delivery today, August 13, 2013.  I would like a replacement; I feel this particular model is defective.  In case you may feel that the problems have been caused by user error, let me itemize the problems I've had so you can see that they are, in fact, manufacturer issues:

1.  M2 spilled milk all over the floor first thing this morning.  Neither she nor I cried over spilled milk, but now I have stinky milk-soaked towels drying on top of my washer.

2.  M1 decided to go to the school room instead of eating breakfast this morning.  While in there, he felt the need to attempt to log into the computer multiple times, thereby locking me out.

3.  Rain.  Really?!?  It's August in Oklahoma.  It isn't supposed to rain, let alone flood, and there was certainly no need to induce a heavy downpour on the day that M2 decided to leave the van door hanging wide open after she ran outside during M1's swim team practice to get her school books and umbrella.  You're just lucky I keep towels in my van during summer as seat protectors or I'd be asking for a gift certificate for a van cleaning/detailing service.  On second thought, send one of those along with the replacement Tuesday.

4.  The dog yarked orange vomit all over the tile and pooped on the rug behind the couch.  I was not gone that long.

5.  The cat also had apparently yarked on the formal dining room carpet sometime recently, under the table.  I found it today.  Of course.  Between the dog and the cat, I need more SpotBot cleaner fluid.  Please enclose a bottle with your reply, because that stuff ain't cheap. I find that convenience often isn't.

6.  This week, the children seem to have forgotten how to load the dishwasher, wipe their placemats, pick up after themselves, flush/clean toilets, change/bring in toilet paper rolls, change/bring in paper towel rolls, and do any work in a timely fashion.  They have not forgotten how to whine, fuss, bicker, and randomly fall asleep (that last trait being one of M1's signatures).

7.  The UPS guy showed up while I was trying to clean up the urp, get the boy to finish his school work, and put away all the stuff I hauled out of the van.  Kindly inform him that while I appreciate him ringing the doorbell to inform me of a delivery, the sound does ramp up the stress level when I'm already feeling overwhelmed.

The consolation prizes that I have found in the bottom of today's apparent Pandora's Box - being able to find everything for some upcoming craft projects in a single trip to Michael's and having an appointment for myself at a very inconvenient time this evening - do not make up for the aforementioned defects that I find in this day, largely because there is not alcohol served along with any of it.  Should you be unable to send a new Tuesday, you may instead enclose a check for the price of a weekend trip to an all-inclusive resort, including airfare.

Thank you for your consideration.

Signed,

Exhausted Mom

How Weeks Off *REALLY* Work

I've had this week off!  It's been glorious!  I've sat on my backside and done nothing!

I can hear you laughing already.  Stop it.

OK, don't stop.  Someone needs a chuckle.

How is it that the word 'vacation' and the term 'week off' have turned into something so nasty for moms?  I realize that a parent's work is never done, but for heaven's sake, CUT ME SOME SLACK ALREADY!

I have no idea who I'm yelling at.  Murphy, perhaps.  He struck today.

On Monday, I painted the school room.  It is lovely, and as soon as Oz hangs the curtain rod (hint, hint, dear), it will be complete and I will be happy.

On Tuesday, I cleaned the house.  The floor is already gritty again, and once the boy comes home tomorrow and tromps his stank-nasty shoes all over it, the cleaning will be hopelessly undone, but it's been nice to have the house all clean.  It's just so temporary.  (Children, if you ever read this, I love you and will eventually love any grandchildren dearly, and I will gripe about how long you go between visits, but I will not miss having to constantly clean up after someone else.)

On Wednesday, I ran errands.  I picked up the curtains for the school room... and a curtain rod (*cough*), and I met Oz for lunch.  That was a fairly low-key day, but I still had things to do, places to go, people to see.

Yesterday I visited a friend's house in the morning because her husband is also out of town this week and she's desperately lonely, and then M2 insisted that I arrive at camp early to watch her ride a horse, but Murphy started rearing his ugly head and the horse riding that had been at the end of each day was rescheduled for the middle of the day Thursday and I still missed it.  Otherwise I'd have an adorable video to share of my girl riding a horse, and I wouldn't be in such an awful mood, and you'd all say, "Awwww, isn't she doing well?" and life would be dandy.  But no.  Such things aren't meant to be.

Today was meant to be my one day of luxurious nothingness.  I wanted to work out, since I hadn't done that all week, and I was tossing up between working on German or reading a book or even watching a movie.  After all, this week was meant to be a week of days off, of enjoying the silence and not running hither, thither and yon trying to get stuff done... and that had not happened yet.

Murphy, however, is a conniving bastard.  Murphy killed my dryer.  I washed the knits and denims, tossed them into the dryer, turned it on, and nearly had my eardrums explode with the screaming noise that instantly emerged from my NOT-turning dryer drum.  I yanked the door open to stop the cycle and emitted a noise not dissimilar to the dryer's own but with certain syllabic qualities that can't be reproduced onto a proper blog post.  Then I called Oz, who was sympathetic but also working.  I gripe that he hasn't hung my curtain rod, but he's good at listening to rants, which is one reason among many that I keep him.

I took the wet laundry and strewed it over my dining room, kitchen, living room, laundry room, staircase, and bedroom so that, in theory, it would all dry eventually, and decided to go on with my Day of Nothing.  Then... THEN... Oz called in the middle of my workout to ask if I could go to the store and pick out a washer/dryer set that I liked, because our machines are 12 years old and have had intermittent problems for a while now, and he figures they're about at the end of their lives.

*sigh*

I tried looking online, but there's just no substitute for opening an actual machine that's in stock/on the floor and picking out what you like/don't like, so I cleaned myself up and changed clothes, shoved some leftovers down my gullet... and left my house.  Oh, I hated that.  I hated it even more when I learned that Home Depot couldn't deliver anything till Tuesday or Wednesday, and I really got my dander up when Oz called while I was at Lowe's and said he was going shopping at a couple of the downtown locations and had I found anything I liked yet?

It's a good thing he's good at listening to rants.

The girl had a great time and camp, and we came home and made chocolate chip cookies, and Oz mooched my dad's truck and has schlepped home a new washer and dryer to install this evening, so obviously the day isn't a total write-off.  It's just nothing like I planned.  And absolutely nothing like the quiet day I desperately wanted.

Ahhh, Life... shove off.  I'm done with you now.

Drill Sergeant Mama

I hate being tough.  I am naturally a very Type A person and enjoy things being done 'just so,' but I've learned to let some things go.

Still, sometimes I hit my wall.  They're kids.  They push.  It's what they're supposed to do, and I get that.  But still, you can only shove me so far before I hit my limit, and I've absolutely been forced to the wall this week.

And when my back's to the wall and my fight or flight instinct kicks in, I fight.  (Ask Oz and M1 both.  Scare me, and I will deck you first and check to see who it is later.)

Yesterday, obviously, was a struggle.  M1 finally got his schoolwork done sometime around 5... or I thought he had.  We had dinner, and then I asked to see the last piece of work.  No dice.  So back upstairs he went.  He's had all week to work on this particular project, so it should have been nearly completed, but it wasn't.  It still took him half an hour to finish the part that needed to be done so he could complete the work in a timely manner today.

When tucking him in last night, I noticed that there were a couple of things sticking out from under his closet doors.  Drawers in his chest of drawers and dresser were hanging open.  I saw a couple of items peeking out from under his bed.  As I walked to the closet, I told him that he needed to take care of those things that I could immediately see.

Then I opened the closet door.

I should not have done that.

Ignorance was bliss.

I'm okay with a slightly untidy closet.  But this was Fat Man unleashed.  Everything was piled on the floor about a foot deep.  It reminded me of a closet a friend of mine once actually went diving into; we had to hang onto her legs so we could pull her out when she'd unearthed what she was looking for.

I was good.  I closed the door and simply informed him that he had to clean his closet tomorrow (today).  He had known he needed to do it, so he didn't argue.  I put him to bed and hoped the next day would be better.

I should have guessed.  This morning, the poo really hit the fan.

It started with laundry.  Fridays are one of my two weekly laundry days.  I ask the kids to bring down their hampers, I sort the clothes, and I start the first load before we go upstairs for school.  For their part, other than bringing down the hampers, the kids have to make sure all the clothes are right side out, so I can check for stains, and have empty pockets.  M2 has no problem with this.  Once in a while I'll find something, but for the most part she takes care of things when she puts them in the hamper.  M1, however, panics every. single. time.  He has to dump everything out, turn them all right side out and check the pockets (because nothing ever goes into the hamper in the condition it should be when it comes out), and then he takes the entire load, knots it together inside a few hoodies or pairs of jeans, and shoves it back into the hamper.  When I try to pull one item out of his hamper, it takes brute strength and both hands and feet to accomplish that.  Or I have to dump it all on the floor and then separate it, which takes me three times as long as just pulling things out.  Either way, I hate it.  I have asked him repeatedly to stop.  Today I told him I wasn't fighting his laundry.  He could do it himself.  He's capable of it; he's done it before.  Still, he wasn't happy.  Much squawking commenced.

Then... both kids know that I try to start school at 8:30.  If we start around that time, we can usually get done by lunch or shortly thereafter and have the afternoon to go to swim, run errands, or just play.  I've told them that they need to figure out what time they should get up so they can be ready by 8:30.  Give or take 10 minutes, we're usually on time.  Lately, though - and I know this is partly due to M1's growth spurt, but still - he's been coming down later and later each morning, and school time has been getting pushed back little by little.  I've warned him this has to stop, because an 8:45-8:50 start time translates to an hour later on the other end somehow, but today, I hit my limit.  At 8:21, he had just sat down at the table with a giant bowl of cereal.  The cats had been fed and he was dressed (whether his pajamas were put away or not was debatable...), but he still had a couple of chores to accomplish before he was ready for school.  On a good day, these two chores take him 10 minutes because he can't walk in a straight line, let alone do a chore in an orderly manner.  So at 8:24, I told him he was done.  "QUAWWWWW??!??"  (No, really, that's his response to things when he doesn't like them.)  He threw a giant toddler tantrum when I asked him to put his breakfast things away and get his chores done so we could get school started in a timely manner, complete with stomping upstairs (which I made him walk back down and climb again calmly) and hooting incessantly (that one I can't stop and am fine with as long as he's not calling people names).  At 8:39, we made it to to the school room.  Not great, but better than our average lately. 

Then... I find him drawing all over his math page.  Not a big deal except that he draws all over his math page and finding the chicken-scratched answers in the midst of sketches is nearly impossible, so I've asked him to stop.  I always make sure he has scratch paper available and have asked him, if he must draw, to draw on that.  Still, he ignores me.  And he knows he's ignoring me.  And *I* know he knows he's ignoring me because he was hiding the drawing behind his hand so I wouldn't see it.  So he's having to redo his entire math paper so I can read it.  Cue another tantrum.

In the midst of all this, I discover that M2's been eating straight out of the sugar bowl again.  Literally taking a spoon and eating straight sugar.  She only does this when her moods are completely out of whack and she's craving carbs like there's no tomorrow.  I strongly suspect that sometime in the next few days, I will wind up with a raging girl-child again.  Thankfully I've been working on my arm strength.  I have a feeling I'm going to need it.

I hate all the nitpicking.  I don't think I'm being unreasonable with anything I've - repeatedly - asked the kids to do.  Mostly, I'm really, really sick of repeating myself ad nauseum.  Drill Sergeant Mama is here for a while.  And when she ain't happy... well... you know the drill.

Proverbs Ring True

Pride goeth before a fall, says the adage, and nowhere is that more true than here this week.  I posted earlier this week that I was proud of M1.  Now, I am full of disappointment, and because I blog all my life - the good, the bad, and the ugly - I need somewhere to vent my frustration.

Ahh, the anonymity of a blog and the kindness of readers.  I know (OK, I hope) you'll sympathize, even if you can't really understand.

I discovered yesterday that M1 has been sneaking into my room at night - AGAIN - and stealing the remote - AGAIN - and using it to try to watch TV in the middle of the night.

AGAIN.

Now, Oz and I have parental controls set so that the kids can only watch TV during normal, human-functioning hours, so he wasn't able to get anywhere with that, but apparently he spent a good chunk of time learning how to delete game history and playing Wii games.  *sigh*

Then today he asked for his math worksheet.  We use MUS, and I use the 'test' pages as a final review of the material in each lesson.  He asked for the test.  I handed it to him.  Five minutes later, he handed it back, complete and utterly correct, which is UNHEARD of for him, especially since it was neatly written and there was a plethora of difficult multiplication involved (squaring 63, for instance, as part of finding the area of a circle), which I know takes him several minutes to complete by itself.

So I asked him to hand over his scratch paper notebook.  As I flip through it, knowing what I'm going to find, I thought I'd give him a chance to 'fess up.

"You're cheating, aren't you?" I asked.

"Nope."

"M1, there's no way you could finish that work that quickly.  Show me your work."

"It's... all throughout the book.  It's not just on one page."  (This is probably true, as I know he does flip around when working, but I wasn't buying it today.)

"M1, did you come in here in the middle of the night and get the answer book and cheat?"

"Nope."

About that time I found the page.  Numbered neatly 1-18 with all the answers listed next to it, the evidence was staring me in the face.

"M1, what's this?"

"Oh, that's just the answers copied down before I put them on the paper."

*sigh*

"M1, WHY????"

"I dunno..."

I do not punish for bad 'grades.'  It only shows me that we need more practice on a concept.  M1 KNOWS THIS.  So I just don't understand.

I simply don't understand the lying, the cheating, the sneaking, the stealing, the hiding, and - like I said - the lying.  I don't understand how he can want to be treated like an adult and be left alone... and then turn around and act like a toddler who has to be monitored 24/7.  There's pushing boundaries, and then there's this.  This is beyond pushing boundaries.  And I'm lost.

Pass the Bailey's.  I need a stiff'ner.

Someone Poked Mama Bear

I very, very rarely gripe about teachers.  For the most part, I think they're saints.  Many of them are underpaid, underfunded, and overworked.  They are asked to do more with less but still improve test scores on an annual basis.  They're asked to keep track of half a dozen IEPs, evaluate students individually but teach an entire class at a time, communicate with parents who may or may not care (or even speak English as their primary language), make lesson plans months before they've even met the students, attend mandatory training classes that sometimes take place on weekends, volunteer for extra activities such as supervising concession stand sales at basketball games or other after-school events... the list could go on and on.  And that's not even factoring in the fact that many are parents themselves.

For the most part, I admire teachers.  They've got guts.

However.  I received an e-mail today from M2's reading teacher.  M2 is bright.  M2 is determined.  M2 was moved up to second-grade reading and spelling early in the school year, along with another first-grade girl, and she has kept up with them beautifully.

At the beginning of the year, this teacher sent home a folder filled with some 'book report' pages and asked that the kids read each evening and keep a log of some of the books that they read in this folder.  I checked it, and there were about 25 pages in it.  Cool beans.  The teacher encouraged the kids to read each night but specifically said that they didn't have to write down every book they read... which was a good thing, because this wasn't a simple book list.  Each page has space for the title, the author, a line about the child's favorite part of the book, a box to draw a corresponding picture, and smiley faces that can be colored in to rate how much the child liked the book.  It's a 20-30 minute process for M2 to do one of these pages, and I'll be honest... we slacked off.  M2 does most of her reading after I tuck her in at night, and I'm not about to encourage her to get up and do the book reports at 8:30 p.m. because she would use that as an excuse to get up every night.  So as of today, she'd done about 15 pages.  I thought we were doing okay, because I hadn't heard otherwise from the teacher and I just assumed that the goal was to finish the pages in the folder by the end of the school year.

Apparently, I was wrong.  VERY wrong.

I received an e-mail today from the teacher indicating that many of the kids hadn't been doing as much as they were supposed to be doing, and please remember that all children who read ONE HUNDRED TWENTY-FIVE BOOKS (that's 1-2-5) by the end of March or early April got to go on a special field trip.

W.T.H.

That would have been nice to know in, say, August.  Apparently the teacher reminded the class about it today.  The second graders had known about this for a while, but this was the first time either M2 or I have heard anything about this field trip/reward trip, and M2 was frantic to do 110 book reports between now and the end of March.  Her anxiety was going through the roof, so I told her that we would not be doing that much, and that on the day of the field trip, I'd take her out for ice cream for doing her best since we hadn't been given the appropriate information to begin with.  She's still a little panicky, but her anxiety level isn't quite as bad as it had been.

I like to think I am a conscientious, involved parent.  When the teacher e-mails about homework, we do it.  It is turned in on time, and if M2 forgets it (as she did on Tuesday), we go in and tell the teacher what happened rather than assuming that it's all gonna be okay.  I am up at the school nearly every day, and I try to talk to the teachers on a fairly regular basis to make sure all is well.  The fact that it is January 6 and I'm just hearing about this irritates the crap out of me.  I understand that this teacher is a busy lady and a mom of two, but c'mon... five months of nothing?  I could go talk to her and have a good rant, but I won't.  I don't feel like it would accomplish much, and besides, M2 will still have her first-grade classmates to hang with that day, so she won't feel quite as left out as she would if she was a full-time second-grader.

Still... Mama Bear has her claws out today.  Let's see if anyone else wants to poke me.

I'm Not Cured, But...

I'm in a much better mood than I was yesterday.  For one thing, my head isn't threatening to explode.  For another, I've released myself from the expectation that M1 is going to function.  It's nearly 10 a.m., and he's just begun writing.  He's crouched behind the coffee table, manically twisting his hair, rocking, and going, "SHH. SHH. SHH. SHH. SHH. SHH. SHH. SHH. SHH. SHH," over... and over... and over.  Oh, wait, we just got an answering squawk to a cat howling at the back door to be let out.  Perhaps I should release the obnoxious cat and see if that red-tailed hawk which has been eyeing the chickens...

Never mind.

At this rate, M1 will get done with school sometime around 3 p.m., which doesn't work when he has a swimming lesson at noon and swim team practice at 2 and I really, really need to try to fit in a couple of errands in between.

I hereby absolve myself of any educational responsibility for the rest of the day.

There.  That feels better.

I got 10.5 hours of sleep last night, more or less, which probably has a lot to do with my New and Improved Mood.  Both kids were conked clean out by 7:30, despite their protestations of "I'm NOT tired!" and "Mom, I can't go to sleep."  I sipped a mug of warm apple cider, read a few chapters of a book, and put myself to bed at 8.  It was glorious.  Poor DH got home around 12:30 a.m. and was out the door by 6:30 a.m., so I missed him both ways, which I hate, but I think the sleep was worth it.  I still have the potential for a major grump-fest lurking in my system, but I don't quite feel like I'm perched on the edge of a cliff waiting for someone to show up so I can shove them off.

This is probably a good thing.

Let's Play!

Today's post is brought to you by my really crappy mood.  Hang on, folks... it's rant time.

Have you ever... had one of those days where you know you got up on the right side of the bed, because your spouse was taking up his 2/3 of the bed and you couldn't possibly have gotten out on the wrong side anyway... and yet the day decides to frisk and molest you like a rogue TSA agent with a power trip and a boner?

Have you ever... watched three people walk straight by the pile of cat urp on the carpet because clearly it's invisible to every being in the house except you and the old cat, and the old cat thinks you left it there as a delectable breakfast?

Have you ever... wished you could sink through the floor when your son starts making some of his infamous noises... right behind a person who clearly has some psychological/developmental issues of their own and is also making noises... and who gives you a look that says, plain as day, 'STOP YOUR KID FROM MAKING FUN OF ME...' but you're stuck there because it's the vet's office and kind of have to pay before you can bail and you somehow know that an explanation is NOT going to make things better?

Have you ever... watched your son hop through the house like a deranged lemur, realized that no good school is gonna happen, proposed the cessation of said school, and then watched Deranged Lemur Boy go off half-cocked because OMG YOU PROPOSED SOMETHING THAT WASN'T ON THE SCHEDULE?

Have you ever... realized you should have listened to your instincts rather than picking up the other child early from school because you're sick and tired of the phone calls from the front office informing you that your child has come in (yet again) complaining of a sore throat and cough and sniffles... but when you arrive, there's no fever and she's grinning like a Cheshire cat?

Have you ever... tried to run errands with an impending migraine and two kids on a December afternoon when one of them claims to feel ill and wants to climb you like a tree and the other has the maturity and mental stability of a honey badger on PCP?

Have you ever... ordered pizza at 4 p.m. because maybe the instigation of the dinner/bedtime routine will make it all stop?

I think I quit now.  Someone tell me when it's January.

My Brand of Magic

This post could be subtitled, "Or, The Quickest Way to a Headache."

Swim days are crazy days for our family.  Besides the drive (clear across town) to and from the swim school and the hour in the water, the team practices end precisely 10 minutes before M2 gets out of school. It takes me 17 minutes (on a good day) to get across town.  It takes at least 5 minutes for M1 to get out of the water, dry off, claim a dressing room, change, and get out of the locker room... and that's assuming that he doesn't get involved in a game of snap-towel with some of the other boys.

(By the way, what IS it with boys and locker rooms?!?  I simply do not understand why it takes them at least twice as long as the girls to get dressed... and the girls come out looking neat and clean and the boys come out looking like... well, like they just got out of some sort of cage brawl.  It drives me crazy.)

Anyway, so team practice ends, I wait the 5-7 minutes for M1 to get changed, and we get in the car.  By the time we hit highway #1, M2 is already out of school, which means I'm racing the clock to pick her up before the teachers who have car line duty take her back into the school for aftercare.

*IF* M1 gets dressed in a timely manner, I can make it in plenty of time.  This has been hit-and-miss, but I think I finally instilled a sense of urgency into the boy by threatening to make him pay for aftercare every time she has to go ($2.50 a pop).  So after practice earlier this week, he busted his butt and was out in two minutes flat.  I was thrilled!  We got in the car, made the left onto the onramp to get onto the highway... and stopped.  Dead stop.  Then I noticed the pretty red and blue lights on the highway where traffic was narrowing down to one lane from three because someone had changed lanes into the back of another car and spun it out.  Fantastic PIT maneuver, I'll grant, but it's not really one you do on the highway unless you ARE the cop and you ARE administering justice.  I don't think that was what happened here.

Anyway, I was late getting M2.

*headwall*

Then we had another swim practice.  I thought to myself, "There's no way it'll be backed up two sessions in a row," so I decided to go the same way.  The same way I always go.  Again, M1 busted his backside and escaped the locker room quickly.

And again, I got onto the onramp just in time to see that - AGAIN - the traffic was at a full stop.  And this time, the wreck wasn't visible because it was two miles away.

Un-freaking-believable.  I do believe this is the definition of winning, isn't it??

Next week, I'll test traffic and see what I can jack up by going a different direction.  After all, it isn't fair for me to condemn the same people to traffic jams all the time.  Gotta spread the love.

DAGNABIT (Bucket List rant)

One of the things I want to do at some point in my life is see the aurora borealis.  Had I gotten off my lazy duff and gone OUTSIDE last night, I could have done that.  But did I?  Did I?  Of course not!

*grump*

There should be alerts for those kinds of things.

That is all.

Good News Friday

I think that because today is the first day of fall AND it's Friday, it's time for a post about dogs.

I'm typing this while my Schipperke, Gizmo, is lying upside down on the floor beside my feet.  I learned this week that if you don't let him in the house for 48 hours because it's raining and he looks like a bedraggled, pathetic stray, he gets a massive entitlement complex and howls at the back door for hours.  It's even more fun if he also gets fed outside because he's convinced that eating outside isn't really eating and that there must be another bowl hiding in the house somewhere with his real food. 

Speaking of dogs, I brushed Speed Bump the not-quite-so-oversized Corgi this week.  I found a Shih Tzu hiding in his undercoat.

ALSO speaking of dogs, we've had quite the predicament with the dog across the street.  He's a Rottweiler.  Now, I'm not opposed to Rotties - my MIL has two, and one of them, Toby, is a lover.  Darcy's totally wacked out, but Toby's sweet.  M2 calls him her baby.  But this dog across the street is a problem.  He's getting older, and the older he gets, the more territorial he gets.  And apparently he thinks our yard is part of his territory.  A few months ago, the problem really got started when he came into the yard and had a go at Oz, but the neighbors were good and built a pen.  For a while, they even kept him in it (how gracious of them!).  I could let my kids play in the front yard, and M1 could even go out to the mailbox (which is on our side of the road) to get or send mail.  That's how it should be! 

However, they got lazy or decided that the dog wasn't really a threat; I don't know which.  Either way, Cosmo started wandering again... but only at random times, because sometimes he would be in the house and sometimes they'd still pen him.  So my kids were allowed to play in the front yard as long as they couldn't see him or he was in his pen.  This was most of the time.  It wasn't ideal, but it was suitable.  After all, we do have a good-sized back yard, too.

Two weeks ago, they dismantled the pen.  I have no idea why.  I've never really talked to them (hazard of living in the country... we've been here 9 years and I still can't tell you most of our neighbors' names... our house is still known by the previous owners' name), and with that dog, it's not like I can just wander over and have a chat.  But I suspected that the dismantling of the pen would be their downfall, and I was right.

It's getting cooler here now - highs in the 80s - and there are several preteen and teenage kids who live on the street.  Some of them are friends.  One of them is in some sort of sports and likes to go running.  Some of the kids even try to ride their bikes, though this street really isn't good for that - no sidewalks and crazy drivers.  Sure enough, Cosmo tried to take at least one of them out.  The kid got away safely, but I'm sure he was scared to death.  I try to keep an eye out of my kitchen window for things like that because if someone's getting mauled, they're generally not in a good place to call 911, ya know??  Still, I'm not home all day and can't sit and stare out my window when I am, either.

The last straw came when the natural gas guy came to install one of their remote meters that can be read from his truck.  Cosmo went absolutely nuts.  The guy was throwing everything at him - including the meter he came to install - just to try to save himself.  I guess it was sheer luck that the homeowner was able to get hold of Cosmo, because he doesn't listen at all.

Now, I only know all this because our Horse Lady is going riding this weekend.  We don't have a circle drive, but our neighbor to the west does, so she parks in his driveway and walks her horse over to the trailer so she doesn't have to try to reverse in or out.  Earlier this week, she was getting Cherokee reshod, and Cosmo came across the street into our yard - again!  She had to hop in her truck to get away.  I had no idea about this.  So she hates Cosmo as much as we do.

Thankfully, The Horse Lady has known our neighbor for decades because they knew one another growing up.  She called her up and read her the riot act about the dog and told her in no uncertain terms that if it tried to do anything to her or if she saw it loose again, she'd be calling the sheriff's office. 

You have no idea how happy this made me.

But the best news was that the neighbor has promised that the dog should be gone by Sunday.  Since the meter reader incident, they've figured out the dog is a liability (DUH) and needs to go, so they're having a rescue operation come get him.

I'm ecstatic.  I can't wait until my kids can play in the front yard without me out there to keep an eye on things.  M1 has been quite annoyed that he hasn't been able to go get the mail, and he'll be able to do that again.  Things will go back to the way they should be!

That makes for a great first day of fall, doesn't it?  :)

When Things Don't Add Up

I am frustrated today.  Angry.  Hurt.  Upset.  Really dang pissed off at my son.

I'm dealing with something this school year that I honestly never thought I would deal with in a home education setting.  Well, to be perfectly honest, I had hoped I would never deal with it at all.

Cheating.

I know some people are going to sit there and read this and think, "Ah, he's 8, almost 9?  That's developmentally appropriate... probably a tad delayed, really, because cheating can start any time after the age of 6."  And maybe it is 'developmentally appropriate.'  Maybe I should have expected this in some form or other.

But he's homeschooled.

Honest to Pete, I don't understand why on earth he even tries!  I'm with him on a daily basis.  I know his limitations.  I know what he can and can't read, understand, spell, etc.  So when he brings me his very first history test and has the word conquistadores spelled correctly without a single erasure, an alarm goes off.  When he brings me a math worksheet and has half of the work written out and half not, I might ask questions.  I'm reasonably sure any teacher would be able to pick out these falsehoods, one-on-one setting or not!

He knows that cheating is wrong.  We talked about it after the history test incident.  But M1 is one of those kids who thinks that if he can come up with a simpler way to do something and get away with it, then it must be okay.  He stashes clothes until someone finds them or he runs out of clean clothes, played his Nintendo DS till the wee hours of the morning until it got permanently confiscated, gets up and steals food - cheese puffs, candy, peanut butter, etc. - on Saturday mornings rather than putting a Pop-Tart in the toaster, etches tic-tac-toe grids into his wallpaper with a screwdriver... the list could go on and on and on.  The problems all occur when I inevitably find out about his stashing, stealing, destroying, cheating, etc., and bust him for it.

Now, I've been trying to cultivate a sense of responsibility in the kid, and he understands the concept but obviously not the practice.  After we talked about the cheating, I thought I wouldn't see it again.  WRONG-O.  He discovered his electronic dictionary had calculator abilities and felt the need to try it out on his math worksheet.  If he had asked me about this, I probably would have given him some extra problems and let him go.  But of course he hid it... and then tried to pass it off as his own mental math.  Then he had the nerve to get mad at ME because I caught him!

I'm on my last straw.  I've told him point-blank that if he cheats again, he'll be enrolled in public school before that day is out, and I mean it.  Third time's a charm.  If he doesn't want to learn... if he wants to take the easy way out and do only the bare minimum... if he wants to face consequences like he's never seen before... then home is not the place for him.  And I'm happy to put him wherever he wants to be.

After all, it's my job to accommodate his interests, isn't it?

(P.S.  Sorry for the bitter undertone of this post.  I'm just really hurt and upset right now.)