I read this somewhere: "Don't should all over yourself." I think it's pretty funny and true as I sit here thinking about what I need to be doing.
What I would like to accomplish today:
furiously clean the house
grocery shopping
bake 14 different kinds of Christmas cookies and a few breads
wrap the few presents I managed to find for Ant
take the dogs somewhere and/or go for a long walk
upload graduation/Ant's concert/project pictures here and save them to the external hard drive
7-8 loads of laundry
What I will actually accomplish today:
furiously clean the kitchen and halfheartedly pick up the living room
precision strike on grocery store, pause to admire receipt
bake oatmeal chocolate chip cookies for Mike, pb kiss cookies and hopefully some gingerbread
wrap the gifts
delegate the dog exercise to Chris but potentially participate in a walk
upload pictures and spend two hours writing blogs
5 loads of laundry with one forgotten about in the washer
take a fun family photo, upload it to Facebook, waste an hour checking to see if anyone liked it yet.
Last night we drove around to look at Christmas lights. I made Chris swear that he would not complain about the Christmas music, but he did anyway. We found two Christmas channels on the XM radio, but since I don't really know how to operate the thing, I found them on the pop channels. Chris was yelling at Mariah Carey when we pulled up to a stoplight and he looked over at me.
"Don't make me hate you on Christmas."
I think that would make a lovely Christmas song, don't you?
We drove through Hidden Valley, which is a great big neighborhood situated on a hill (?) overlooking Reno. Most of these people have way too much money, but live in reasonably sized houses, so they spend lots of money on Christmas decorations. Usually when you Google to find Christmas lights there will be several singular addresses and even some whole streets that participate, but these Hidden Valley people are dedicated. If it's not a requirement for the homeowner's association, it should be. The whole area was crawling with people like us, admiring the show. Chris was thrilled by one set of LED lights so much that he wanted to decorate our house in them and leave it up year-round, setting the colors for each holiday. He also liked the icicle lights that drip- those are neat. I liked all of it, but I was extra entertained by all the cartoon characters I saw. Snoopy, Mickey Mouse, Elmo, Sponge Bob, Homer... and the house with Homer had a port-a-potty all lit up with Santa taking a leak inside. I thought that would be Ant's favorite, but since he's 13 now and not amused by anything anymore, he laid down with Jasmine in the backseat and slept through the entire drive. We were out for a couple hours and he didn't look at jack shit. Chris finally yelled at him to wake up to see this one house we went all the way down to South Reno to find. I read about it online and I will be storing the address in our Christmas box because it was awesome. It's one of these houses that does the synchronized lights to their own radio station. It was an amazing show and their lights were really well done. We saw another with synchronized music on Tanea Drive, which is one of those streets where everybody participates. This one was a little messier and only had one song, but the street was mobbed. Do you know how many limousines we saw last night? Is this something new I don't know about? Hire a limo to drive you around to look at Christmas lights? They made getting through Tanea Drive pretty interesting. The other amusing trend this year was all the inflatable mangers.
So my pictures are finished downloading (Multi-tasking, that's right) so I'm going to go grab some of the awesome pictures and write another blog. Aren't you lucky?
Saturday, December 24, 2011
Thursday, December 15, 2011
That's not funny, Lane Bryant.
When I was looking for clothes to wear to Shannon's wedding, I went to Lane Bryant in search of tall sizes. Chris was instrumental, coaching and encouraging both me and the saleslady, since we were ready to throttle each other. Chris sat by the fitting room at first, but after several what-the-hell-was-she-thinking moments, he went out into the store to find more flattering options for me. He found a great pair of pants that fit perfectly and looked great- but they didn't carry the tall size. "Oh, you can order those online!" said the saleslady. Yes, I'm sure I could but I'm a procrastinator and I leave for the East Coast TOMORROW.
Allow me to pause here and explain that the first time I went there, all I had to say was that I was trying to find jeans that fit and the super awesome saleslady looked at my belt and knew what my problem was. She knew my size better than I did. She was awesome, so I don't consider all of their salespeople to be ding-dongs.
So back then I signed up for their email coupons and such. Tracy got me a gift card for graduation so I can try to buy pants-that-aren't-jeans for my new job, whatever that will be. (Thank you, Tracy!) I have been monitoring the emails looking for a good opportunity to strike and today's email looked positive. $25 off $75. Hmm okay, sounds reasonable. I know I'll need the online promo code since they don't carry many tall sizes in the store (which seems to defeat the purpose, but what do I know). The online promo code is:
SPEND25LB
Did you read that the way I did? Spend 25 pounds? Are you making fun of me, Lane Bryant? Wait a minute, LB stands for Lane Bryant. Did they do that on purpose? How come I never noticed that before? Maybe it's not intentional, but either way- that's kind of messed up. Is there a big and tall store for men called Xavier Lee?
Tuesday, December 13, 2011
Asshole.
Now's about the time for me to lose my shit. It's time for me to either go into my room and close the door and ignore all activity in the rest of the house or sit here and write a blog and try to vent just enough to keep my shit together. Pretty soon Ant will finish washing the utensils and come in to say goodnight. He'll lean in to hug me and turn his head to see what I'm writing.
So what's wrong, Jenny?
I am fed the fuck up with coming home to find that nothing's been taken care of. Oh, but he did all the laundry. Well, half the laundry not counting the linens. And nothing's folded or put away. And the towels are still damp. But I'm supposed to be grateful and encouraging because he did the laundry. Yes, I'm talking about Chris. God, what a bitch, huh?
Chris had to go out to Washoe again tonight to work on this church project. He's building speakers and they're almost done. He dropped me off at home after school and drove back out. I said I would make Ant and I some mac n cheese for dinner.
"There's the chicken," he said.
"I have a big headache," I said. "I don't want to cook the chicken."
"You have to. It needs to be cooked."
Oh, fine, I'll make the stupid chicken. I walk in the house and here's Ant "working on homework."
"How long have you been working on homework?" I ask.
"About five minutes."
"What were you doing the whole time Daddy was gone?"
"Daydreaming."
"Were you watching TV?"
"No."
I go turn the TV on. It's on South Park. Hmmm. Could be either one of them.
Ant does homework for 2 1/2 hours. It's mostly math, but he can't answer 2 of his 3 science questions. I cook, set the table, clean up, and drop a glass on the tile floor. It breaks with at least half a cup of milk inside and I stare at the floor, forcibly absorbing the metaphor.
Ant asks me to help him with a math problem. He's using graph paper, which he did not have yesterday.
"Where did you get that?" I ask.
"I got it out of the back of your notebook."
In my mind, this translated to: "If I don't get what I want immediately, I'll just take it."
But let's go back to the car. This morning I said to Chris that the one thing that really needed to happen today was exercise for the dogs. Laundry would be great too, but the dogs were the priority.
"I know that."
Okay. But on the way home he volunteered the information about the laundry, so I asked about the dogs.
"The dogs were taken care of, yes," he said.
Well, that means that Ant took them for a walk when he got home. As you can imagine, that isn't quite enough.
I'm already unhappy after a long, mentally exhausting day at school, but I was not pissed off when I got in the car. I wasn't even pissed off when I got out of the car. I held it together until a little after 8. Now I think I will not be able to do dammit until I get it all out.
Today's Shakespeare class was supposed to be a review. It's hard to find the motivation to attend this class since he a) does not take attendance, b) knows very few of us by name, and c) never talks about anything we'll be tested on. I bet I could have blown off the class all semester, shown up only for the exams and done as well as everyone else. Just read the plays- that's it. The two papers have nothing to do with what he says, either.
He's a Shakespeare expert, that's for damn sure. He is the most conceited person I have ever met and he has every reason to applaud himself. He is absolutely every bit of the Shakespeare scholar that every English teacher said he was. What I have learned in his class is fascinating. I mean really mind blowing. It is amazing... and completely irrelevant. He is not a good teacher. He had a substitute last week (Because he had to fly to London to meet with the Royal Shakespeare Company about his book) and though I never heard her name, this substitute taught me some very basic, important information about Macbeth. ("Key points!" said Alex, my friend in the class. "She talked about key points!") She not only taught us some really relevant information about Macbeth, she taught us about how to find relevant information during the first read! Do you realize how valuable that is? She understood that we don't have time to read anything for school more than once! I wish this woman had been teaching the whole time. Alex and I learned more from her than we had from Mr. Fabulous through the whole semester!
So. Today was the review. I dragged my butt to class because it was the last one, dammit. Only the final is left after this. Alex and I pulled out our notebooks, ready to scribble any last important notes Giant Ego Head had to offer. Here was the review in its entirety:
"It's all Hamlet."
He spent the next hour talking about his book. No, I am not kidding. And what's worse is that it was a fascinating talk. He showed us examples of Shakespeare's handwriting and how all these mistakes had been made by the typesetters and copied over and over for four hundred years. Lines that don't make sense or repeat themselves- suddenly they make perfect sense and perfect pentameter! Example after example he showed of places in the accepted texts where s was misread as f and it totally changes the word and the meaning of an entire speech! Places where the thin lead spacers worked their way up, got dusted with ink and changed anguish to languish! Altered stage directions and missing characters, unnecessary speeches that Shakespeare edited out or rewrote, and the "purists" that published the cuts along with the final play!
I have never been so frustrated and fascinated at the same time. It felt like we were in The DaVinci Code. I would pay to go see this Robert Langdon madness and a lecture like that would be worth every cent. But right now I need to study for this goddamned exam, asshole.
I spent lunch finishing my presentation for my other English class. I knocked out my notes for that slide lecture so fast that by the time I was done with my photography class, I had no idea what the hell my presentation was about. There were a lot of presenters, so I sped through mine under the guise of "time constraints." The teacher appreciated that, ha. I made it sound like there was a wealth of information sitting under that presentation and you know what? There probably was. I could certainly tell you a lot about American Indians at this point.
Photography was pretty focused today, too. The final project was due today and we did the critique for half the class. I'm set for next Tuesday and the work is done, so of course I saw everyone else's photos and wondered if I had time to redo my entire project. Of course not, but I did think about it. Thankfully, Mom liked my pictures and offered lots of artistic reasoning behind all my random, haphazard choices. That made my artist statement a lot easier to write. We have to post those suckers up with the photos so the whole class can read them, isn't that adorable? The teacher gave us guidelines to write the artist statement, but it might as well have said, "Try to sound like an asshole."
Yeah, so it was a long, stupid, pretentious day and I came home to the same housework that I left behind this morning. But there's no reason to cry over broken glass in your spilled milk, so I guess I'll go find my big girl pants and fold those too along with the rest of the laundry.
So what's wrong, Jenny?
I am fed the fuck up with coming home to find that nothing's been taken care of. Oh, but he did all the laundry. Well, half the laundry not counting the linens. And nothing's folded or put away. And the towels are still damp. But I'm supposed to be grateful and encouraging because he did the laundry. Yes, I'm talking about Chris. God, what a bitch, huh?
Chris had to go out to Washoe again tonight to work on this church project. He's building speakers and they're almost done. He dropped me off at home after school and drove back out. I said I would make Ant and I some mac n cheese for dinner.
"There's the chicken," he said.
"I have a big headache," I said. "I don't want to cook the chicken."
"You have to. It needs to be cooked."
Oh, fine, I'll make the stupid chicken. I walk in the house and here's Ant "working on homework."
"How long have you been working on homework?" I ask.
"About five minutes."
"What were you doing the whole time Daddy was gone?"
"Daydreaming."
"Were you watching TV?"
"No."
I go turn the TV on. It's on South Park. Hmmm. Could be either one of them.
Ant does homework for 2 1/2 hours. It's mostly math, but he can't answer 2 of his 3 science questions. I cook, set the table, clean up, and drop a glass on the tile floor. It breaks with at least half a cup of milk inside and I stare at the floor, forcibly absorbing the metaphor.
Ant asks me to help him with a math problem. He's using graph paper, which he did not have yesterday.
"Where did you get that?" I ask.
"I got it out of the back of your notebook."
In my mind, this translated to: "If I don't get what I want immediately, I'll just take it."
But let's go back to the car. This morning I said to Chris that the one thing that really needed to happen today was exercise for the dogs. Laundry would be great too, but the dogs were the priority.
"I know that."
Okay. But on the way home he volunteered the information about the laundry, so I asked about the dogs.
"The dogs were taken care of, yes," he said.
Well, that means that Ant took them for a walk when he got home. As you can imagine, that isn't quite enough.
I'm already unhappy after a long, mentally exhausting day at school, but I was not pissed off when I got in the car. I wasn't even pissed off when I got out of the car. I held it together until a little after 8. Now I think I will not be able to do dammit until I get it all out.
Today's Shakespeare class was supposed to be a review. It's hard to find the motivation to attend this class since he a) does not take attendance, b) knows very few of us by name, and c) never talks about anything we'll be tested on. I bet I could have blown off the class all semester, shown up only for the exams and done as well as everyone else. Just read the plays- that's it. The two papers have nothing to do with what he says, either.
He's a Shakespeare expert, that's for damn sure. He is the most conceited person I have ever met and he has every reason to applaud himself. He is absolutely every bit of the Shakespeare scholar that every English teacher said he was. What I have learned in his class is fascinating. I mean really mind blowing. It is amazing... and completely irrelevant. He is not a good teacher. He had a substitute last week (Because he had to fly to London to meet with the Royal Shakespeare Company about his book) and though I never heard her name, this substitute taught me some very basic, important information about Macbeth. ("Key points!" said Alex, my friend in the class. "She talked about key points!") She not only taught us some really relevant information about Macbeth, she taught us about how to find relevant information during the first read! Do you realize how valuable that is? She understood that we don't have time to read anything for school more than once! I wish this woman had been teaching the whole time. Alex and I learned more from her than we had from Mr. Fabulous through the whole semester!
So. Today was the review. I dragged my butt to class because it was the last one, dammit. Only the final is left after this. Alex and I pulled out our notebooks, ready to scribble any last important notes Giant Ego Head had to offer. Here was the review in its entirety:
"It's all Hamlet."
He spent the next hour talking about his book. No, I am not kidding. And what's worse is that it was a fascinating talk. He showed us examples of Shakespeare's handwriting and how all these mistakes had been made by the typesetters and copied over and over for four hundred years. Lines that don't make sense or repeat themselves- suddenly they make perfect sense and perfect pentameter! Example after example he showed of places in the accepted texts where s was misread as f and it totally changes the word and the meaning of an entire speech! Places where the thin lead spacers worked their way up, got dusted with ink and changed anguish to languish! Altered stage directions and missing characters, unnecessary speeches that Shakespeare edited out or rewrote, and the "purists" that published the cuts along with the final play!
I have never been so frustrated and fascinated at the same time. It felt like we were in The DaVinci Code. I would pay to go see this Robert Langdon madness and a lecture like that would be worth every cent. But right now I need to study for this goddamned exam, asshole.
I spent lunch finishing my presentation for my other English class. I knocked out my notes for that slide lecture so fast that by the time I was done with my photography class, I had no idea what the hell my presentation was about. There were a lot of presenters, so I sped through mine under the guise of "time constraints." The teacher appreciated that, ha. I made it sound like there was a wealth of information sitting under that presentation and you know what? There probably was. I could certainly tell you a lot about American Indians at this point.
Photography was pretty focused today, too. The final project was due today and we did the critique for half the class. I'm set for next Tuesday and the work is done, so of course I saw everyone else's photos and wondered if I had time to redo my entire project. Of course not, but I did think about it. Thankfully, Mom liked my pictures and offered lots of artistic reasoning behind all my random, haphazard choices. That made my artist statement a lot easier to write. We have to post those suckers up with the photos so the whole class can read them, isn't that adorable? The teacher gave us guidelines to write the artist statement, but it might as well have said, "Try to sound like an asshole."
Yeah, so it was a long, stupid, pretentious day and I came home to the same housework that I left behind this morning. But there's no reason to cry over broken glass in your spilled milk, so I guess I'll go find my big girl pants and fold those too along with the rest of the laundry.
Tuesday, December 6, 2011
Only two more weeks of scavenger meals.
I took a final exam yesterday. Today I edited and printed all my pictures for the final photography project and took another final exam. I'm taking the night off.
Okay, so I'm doing research for my presentation and some light cleaning. It feels like I should be doing a lot more, but I just don't have the brain power. I'm going to compile my lunch and the school work on my to do list for work tomorrow, attempt to organize all the Book Arts crap on the kitchen table, repack my backpack and go watch something asinine on TV. Why do I tell you all this stuff? Today I realized why I have to use blank books instead of assignment books: I create simultaneous schedules and to do lists. I create due/do lists. (Doo-doo lists, ha ha.) I think I tell you all this because I'm trying to figure it out for myself. I do this in conversation way too often. Somebody asks me how I am and I start telling them how I've planned out my week to accommodate everything I need to do. "Thank you, Jenny, that was exactly the information I was looking for."
I sent Chris a text before English reminding him when and where to pick me up. He responded that Ant wasn't home yet, which meant he was 45 minutes late. Right before the exam started, he texted back and said Ant's bus had broken down.
Chris said when Ant didn't show up, he went out looking for him. At first he thought Ant had disappeared to the skate park or to a friend's, but we both immediately realized that would be totally unlike him. He comes straight home every day. Chris looked around and saw high school kids but no middle school kids. Ant got home an hour and a half late and was all kinds of agitated. He said the bus wouldn't start and they had to wait for a mechanic. They had to get off the bus while the mechanic worked, so all they all started using this one kid's cell phone to call their parents. When Ant asked, the kid said no. When Ant asked why, the kid said Ant was the reason his girlfriend broke up with him. By the way, until she moved, Ant was dating an 8th grader. But this was not her, and Ant had no idea what this kid was talking about. "Well, you're dating her now, aren't you?" he asked. Ant said no, but the phone was still off limits, so he went back into the school to use the phone in the office. They wouldn't let him in. The school doors were open. he got into the school- they wouldn't let him into the office. He said they offered no explanation, which could be the 12-year-old-ese translation for whatever they told him. He asked me to let him go to bed at 7 so he could get this day over with.
I said no, but I did tell him how awesome I thought it was that he tried to call Chris. I also made sure to point out that because he'd made a habit of coming straight home, we were able to figure out that something was wrong. Then we went to figure out dinner. He had waffles and egg rolls, I had cheese and crackers. Over dinner, he ruined the nice feelings I had towards him by trying to sing the Beverly Hills Cop theme song and getting it slightly wrong. This created an instant earworm as my brain tried to fix what it was hearing. He wanted me to print out the notes so he could learn it on his keyboard, but it's an instrumental and I have yet to learn how to identify instrumentals. He said it was the "crazy frog song." My look must have conveyed disagreement. Turns out it has been turned into a ringtone.
After we solved that mystery, he said that today at school he tried to tell everyone that from now on, he wants to be called Chupacabra, only he messed it up and said Chewbacca. He realized his mistake and cried, "AARRRRRGGHHH!" but this only made it sound like he was imitating the Wookie.
Okay, so I'm doing research for my presentation and some light cleaning. It feels like I should be doing a lot more, but I just don't have the brain power. I'm going to compile my lunch and the school work on my to do list for work tomorrow, attempt to organize all the Book Arts crap on the kitchen table, repack my backpack and go watch something asinine on TV. Why do I tell you all this stuff? Today I realized why I have to use blank books instead of assignment books: I create simultaneous schedules and to do lists. I create due/do lists. (Doo-doo lists, ha ha.) I think I tell you all this because I'm trying to figure it out for myself. I do this in conversation way too often. Somebody asks me how I am and I start telling them how I've planned out my week to accommodate everything I need to do. "Thank you, Jenny, that was exactly the information I was looking for."
I sent Chris a text before English reminding him when and where to pick me up. He responded that Ant wasn't home yet, which meant he was 45 minutes late. Right before the exam started, he texted back and said Ant's bus had broken down.
Chris said when Ant didn't show up, he went out looking for him. At first he thought Ant had disappeared to the skate park or to a friend's, but we both immediately realized that would be totally unlike him. He comes straight home every day. Chris looked around and saw high school kids but no middle school kids. Ant got home an hour and a half late and was all kinds of agitated. He said the bus wouldn't start and they had to wait for a mechanic. They had to get off the bus while the mechanic worked, so all they all started using this one kid's cell phone to call their parents. When Ant asked, the kid said no. When Ant asked why, the kid said Ant was the reason his girlfriend broke up with him. By the way, until she moved, Ant was dating an 8th grader. But this was not her, and Ant had no idea what this kid was talking about. "Well, you're dating her now, aren't you?" he asked. Ant said no, but the phone was still off limits, so he went back into the school to use the phone in the office. They wouldn't let him in. The school doors were open. he got into the school- they wouldn't let him into the office. He said they offered no explanation, which could be the 12-year-old-ese translation for whatever they told him. He asked me to let him go to bed at 7 so he could get this day over with.
I said no, but I did tell him how awesome I thought it was that he tried to call Chris. I also made sure to point out that because he'd made a habit of coming straight home, we were able to figure out that something was wrong. Then we went to figure out dinner. He had waffles and egg rolls, I had cheese and crackers. Over dinner, he ruined the nice feelings I had towards him by trying to sing the Beverly Hills Cop theme song and getting it slightly wrong. This created an instant earworm as my brain tried to fix what it was hearing. He wanted me to print out the notes so he could learn it on his keyboard, but it's an instrumental and I have yet to learn how to identify instrumentals. He said it was the "crazy frog song." My look must have conveyed disagreement. Turns out it has been turned into a ringtone.
After we solved that mystery, he said that today at school he tried to tell everyone that from now on, he wants to be called Chupacabra, only he messed it up and said Chewbacca. He realized his mistake and cried, "AARRRRRGGHHH!" but this only made it sound like he was imitating the Wookie.
Saturday, December 3, 2011
No time.
It's almost 11 and I've got 10 more pages of this Malcolm X chapter to go before I can answer question #12. 14 questions in this lesson, email it in and move on to the last lesson.
The last one is the notebook full of articles relating to race that I've been collecting all semester. Brief response to each article and I'm already half finished with that.
Monday is the exam and all lessons must be handed in.
Tuesday is printing the pictures I haven't taken yet for the Digital Photography final project, then the American Novel final. Well, that's not true- I might have 2 or 3 pictures that work out of the 7-8 required. So almost halfway there.
Wednesday is work and whatever I can accomplish there, plus whatever I can do at home.
Thursday is more printing.
Friday is work and arrival of family.
Saturday is graduation.
Then I go back to class and finish this semester a week and a half later. Somewhere in there I'll finish 6 projects for Photography, American Novel, Shakespeare, and Book Arts.
What am I doing writing this? I need to get back to work.
The last one is the notebook full of articles relating to race that I've been collecting all semester. Brief response to each article and I'm already half finished with that.
Monday is the exam and all lessons must be handed in.
Tuesday is printing the pictures I haven't taken yet for the Digital Photography final project, then the American Novel final. Well, that's not true- I might have 2 or 3 pictures that work out of the 7-8 required. So almost halfway there.
Wednesday is work and whatever I can accomplish there, plus whatever I can do at home.
Thursday is more printing.
Friday is work and arrival of family.
Saturday is graduation.
Then I go back to class and finish this semester a week and a half later. Somewhere in there I'll finish 6 projects for Photography, American Novel, Shakespeare, and Book Arts.
What am I doing writing this? I need to get back to work.
Wednesday, November 30, 2011
LOL
I'm supposed to be writing my paper, but I had to write this down because I'm amused.
Chris set up his office and started working on some piece of music he started a while ago. Ant finished his homework and went to hang out with Daddy. He listened for maybe five seconds before offering to play his trumpet for the track. I giggled quietly in the kitchen. Ant brought his trumpet into the studio and started to play. It sounds like Donald Duck giving directions in slo mo. This must be really exciting for him though, to be able to contribute. I hope Chris just records this as is, because we need it. God bless the band teacher.
Chris set up his office and started working on some piece of music he started a while ago. Ant finished his homework and went to hang out with Daddy. He listened for maybe five seconds before offering to play his trumpet for the track. I giggled quietly in the kitchen. Ant brought his trumpet into the studio and started to play. It sounds like Donald Duck giving directions in slo mo. This must be really exciting for him though, to be able to contribute. I hope Chris just records this as is, because we need it. God bless the band teacher.
Sunday, November 27, 2011
Today was really just an F0
This morning when Ant and Bubba woke up, they went to pee and eat breakfast, and then they started lobbing erasers at Chris, who was still asleep.
"STOOOOOOPPP," he groaned.
"It wasn't me!" cried Ant.
"Whatever, Anthony," said Bubba.
Ant giggled.
A few minutes later, Chris roared again. I left my book and found the boys giggling back in Ant's room. I told them to clean up first, then get the hell out of the house and check in in an hour.
"I'll clean up later," Ant said.
"I'm sorry?"
"I mean, can I clean it up later?"
"Nope. You have six minutes until 10:00; get it done and go play." In addition to the no-no of telling me what he's going to do, I also know this will take 14 times as long later tonight when there's no help and no incentive.
Six minutes later, the room is picked up, the boys are at the park, and I'm reading my book. Chaos just returned to check in, though. They are so loud. They come in the door like pinballs. They got some water, yelled at each other, then went out back to swordfight with sticks. I had to tell them to stop running into the house- literally bouncing off the side- and five minutes ago I had to go teach them how to close a sliding glass door. I didn't realize you could slam a slider until we moved here. Their approach is to throw it so hard it bounces back open. I can only assume that their goal is to test the limits of the door's construction. I don't know which will break first, the frame or the glass. Jesus. The other night, Dad and I were watching Louis C.K. and he's got this bit about the difference between having boys or girls. He said boys just destroy things- you can track their damage in dollar amounts, like tornado ratings- while a girl does emotional damage. I periodically have to remind myself that I always hoped for boys.
They lost interest in the sticks and nobody lost an eye, so we're good. The boys are back in Ant's room playing video games and I hear Chris moving.
Yesterday we went to lunch before taking Dad to the airport. He wanted to go early so he could find some gift shop items and get through security, but it might take four minutes to walk the entire airport here, so I knew something else was up. Chris asked me to drive because he felt horrible, so he sat in the backseat with Ant. They could not leave each other alone, so Dad's last ten minutes with us consisted of the boys car wrestling. At the last light, I looked over at Dad (the car rocking and threats flying back and forth behind us) and said, "Ah. Now I understand why you want to get there early." At the last curve where we slowed to 15mph, Ant let out the loudest, longest, instant headache inducing screech because he had started to pinch and Chris pinched him back- on the nipple. It was a great way to end the visit.
Other than that, the visit went fine. Thanksgiving was awesome. I posted some pictures on Facebook (and promptly got in trouble with Chris), but I will collect all of them and give you a nice picture blog. For now I'm off to do dishes and make up silly songs to sing to the girls.
"STOOOOOOPPP," he groaned.
"It wasn't me!" cried Ant.
"Whatever, Anthony," said Bubba.
Ant giggled.
A few minutes later, Chris roared again. I left my book and found the boys giggling back in Ant's room. I told them to clean up first, then get the hell out of the house and check in in an hour.
"I'll clean up later," Ant said.
"I'm sorry?"
"I mean, can I clean it up later?"
"Nope. You have six minutes until 10:00; get it done and go play." In addition to the no-no of telling me what he's going to do, I also know this will take 14 times as long later tonight when there's no help and no incentive.
Six minutes later, the room is picked up, the boys are at the park, and I'm reading my book. Chaos just returned to check in, though. They are so loud. They come in the door like pinballs. They got some water, yelled at each other, then went out back to swordfight with sticks. I had to tell them to stop running into the house- literally bouncing off the side- and five minutes ago I had to go teach them how to close a sliding glass door. I didn't realize you could slam a slider until we moved here. Their approach is to throw it so hard it bounces back open. I can only assume that their goal is to test the limits of the door's construction. I don't know which will break first, the frame or the glass. Jesus. The other night, Dad and I were watching Louis C.K. and he's got this bit about the difference between having boys or girls. He said boys just destroy things- you can track their damage in dollar amounts, like tornado ratings- while a girl does emotional damage. I periodically have to remind myself that I always hoped for boys.
They lost interest in the sticks and nobody lost an eye, so we're good. The boys are back in Ant's room playing video games and I hear Chris moving.
Yesterday we went to lunch before taking Dad to the airport. He wanted to go early so he could find some gift shop items and get through security, but it might take four minutes to walk the entire airport here, so I knew something else was up. Chris asked me to drive because he felt horrible, so he sat in the backseat with Ant. They could not leave each other alone, so Dad's last ten minutes with us consisted of the boys car wrestling. At the last light, I looked over at Dad (the car rocking and threats flying back and forth behind us) and said, "Ah. Now I understand why you want to get there early." At the last curve where we slowed to 15mph, Ant let out the loudest, longest, instant headache inducing screech because he had started to pinch and Chris pinched him back- on the nipple. It was a great way to end the visit.
Other than that, the visit went fine. Thanksgiving was awesome. I posted some pictures on Facebook (and promptly got in trouble with Chris), but I will collect all of them and give you a nice picture blog. For now I'm off to do dishes and make up silly songs to sing to the girls.
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