Rules for children cleaning their bedroom together

Rule the 1st:
There shall be no agreement, under any circumstances, as to the disposition of any object.

Rule the 2nd:
There shall be much exclamation over every object unearthed from the bed.  Comments such as: "Mom's been looking everywhere for this!" and "I wondered what that smell was!" are to be deployed to keep parents alert.

Rule the 3rd:
When working under an adult-imposed deadline care must be taken not to start too early, lest the adult in question relax.

Rule the 4th:
If the threat of progress raises its head play "This Isn't Mine:"

• The first child should select an item.  Something hard and aerodynamic is preferred.
• State, loudly and clearly, "THIS ISN'T MINE," and throw the item on the second child's bed.
• The second child then states, "THIS ISN'T MINE," and returns the volley.
• Scoring is as follows:
• 1 point for each successful landing in enemy territory.
• 3 points for an interception
• 5 points for landing the item somewhere that requires a hunt (under the bed, etc.)
• 10 points for chipping a wall
• 10 points to each player if a parent confiscates the object
• 30 points to the first child who takes a direct strike to the head (signal this point by screaming "OW" and bursting into tears).  10 bonus points for making your sibling cry before a parent gets to the room.

 

Shy.

Came home from work in time for a little bit of the block party. It's the 3rd (4th?) annual. I went for a little while, long enough to eat, then came home because I'm tired. Kissed the hubby, said my farewells & left. The actual truth is that while I AM tired (work was a bit stressful for a couple of whiny reasons that will be skipped here) I really left because I just don't really know anyone there and I'm not feeling up to sitting by myself in a corner feeling sorry for myself.

Ok, there aren't any corners, I mean it's a BLOCK party, in the middle of the street. But I'm still more of a natural wallflower than social butterfly. That's my fella. I married a butterfly, and he frequently flits off, not even realizing that I'm feeling abandoned. All alone! Woe! And it's not really fair to him - I used to blame him, see. I used to say "You go off & leave me alone and I don't know anyone!" After a few years (ok, more than that, fine, but he's very patient) I realized that it's not his job to escort me all evening. I got better at being social. I'm much more confident than I used to be. But I'm tired, ok? And shy! And I wanna go home! So I did.

School is here!!

The same thing happens every year. We have a great summer - fun, travel, pool, general laidbackedness (look it up) then it happens. The kids hit the wall. This year the wall showed up on Tuesday, August 23. From that morning until they walked in the school doors this morning my boys have been fighting. About everything, which is normal, but there's a nastiness that's not usually there. Every day my Beloved would come home and say "What is WRONG with you??" because I morphed into this horrible, snarly, snappy bitch. Again, normal, but there was that nastiness. By Friday I hit my wall and started drinking when he got home. I must say, that helped. When the boys started fighting (about toothpaste, of all things) I was pretty amused. Today they went to school. Thank the Lord. But here's the other thing that happens every year - I'm happy to see them when they come home. That's my favorite part about the first day of school!

You guys! I made a PIE!!

I made a peach pie! The recipe itself is from the July Southern Living, but I, um, decided to add a few twists.

1.) Read recipe & purchase ingredients. Recipe calls for making a pie crust. Screw that; Pillsbury Refrigerated it is.

2.) Realize peaches are hard as rocks. Let sit three days.

3.) Reassemble ingredients. Call husband to add brown sugar to shopping list to be delivered at lunch time. (He was going anyway.)

4.) Preheat oven while waiting. Separate children. Set crust out to come to room temperature. Separate children. Call husband to add vanilla ice cream to the list. And Mike's Hard Strawberry Lemonade.

5.) Tell kids to clear toys from driveway before husband arrives. Now that the driveway is clear they decide to roll a small boulder onto the drive instead. Husband manages not to squash children or ruin undercarriage. Accept delivery.

6.) Now you're in business!! Mix dry ingredients. Commence peeling peaches. Slippery suckers.

7.) Notice Beagle #2 in the backyard, limping and licking front paw. Poor Baby! Catch Poor Baby, spend 10 minutes inspecting paw of writhing miserable Poor Baby. Find nothing. Dunk paw in cup of hydrogen peroxide. No reaction, no bubbly site on paw. Wonder what the hell is up. Probably a bee sting. Poor Baby is thirsty, so she drinks some peroxide. But it's not much, so don't worry about it. Get back to work!

8.) Wash hands, start peeling second peach. Hear "hrunk, hrunk, hrunk, blearch" from somewhere. CRAP! Effing peroxide!! Where's Poor Baby?! Launch dash through house in search of dog. Ichiban yells, "She's barfing in the den!" Throw Poor Baby out the back door, clean den carpet, hall floor, boys' carpet, bathroom floor...

9.) Wash hands. Begin third peach. Sons and friend want to do water guns. No, I'm not helping you find them! No, get them out of the kitchen! Take off your shoes! Geez... Moving on...

10.) Interrupt peeling of peach four to separate children and boot Niban & friend to friend's house. Ichiban slinks to the basement in a snit because he's not allowed to hit his brother for squirting him with a water gun while they were ALL PLAYING WITH WATER GUNS. Retrieve Poor Baby so she can sulk in the corner.

11.) Peeling of peaches five through eight is blissfully uninterrupted. Now you are free to concentrate on how slippery these things are. Wonder how in the name of sweet potatoes your grandmother managed to put up umpteen cans of pickled peaches every year. Did she have a special peeler? Child labor? Black magic?

12.) Done at last. Assemble pie. Calls for a glass pie pan. Hey, just be glad it's not a casserole dish, ok, Southern Living? Let's not get crazy, here. Beat egg to brush on crust with fork. Break glass you're beating the egg in. Get another egg, try again. Wonder why you haven't had a Mike's yet...

13.) Finally in the oven. Wait, 15 minutes at 425, 40 minutes at 375, cover with foil, then 20 more minutes at 375? Freaking high maintenance dessert. A brownie doesn't demand this kind of treatment.

14.) An hour into baking realize you skipped the "Freeze pie for 15 minutes"-before-putting-it-in-the-oven step. Maybe this explains the juice bubbling all over the oven. Why why WHY didn't you put a cookie sheet under the damn thing earlier?!

15.) Ten minutes later the kitchen fills with smoke. The pie is done. "After all this," you think, "This better be the best #%$@* pie in history." You'll have to wait to find out because it has to cool for TWO HOURS before you can have any. Time for a Mike's.

16.) When you finally eat the pie, yeah, it's pretty good. Next time, maybe there'll be some streamlining. If the current layer of pie-goop comes off the bottom of the oven, that is.

My yard is empty
My beagle is gone again
Sniffs led her away

Soooo... My son almost died today. Again. Still trying not to throw up. We walk to school and after much thought had decided to take a route which bypasses the crossing guard because it walks along much quieter streets with fewer business driveways. Unfortunately that involves crossing at a light where drivers consider red a suggestion. We were waiting at the cross walk and I saw him step forward - thank God, thank you God - and yelled his name. I didn't yell because I saw the car, because I hadn't, I yelled because he'd stepped forward. He stopped on his tiptoes, and his fingertips hit the red SUV speeding by as he windmilled his arms to stop. When we got to school I was still trying not to freak out, and he was explaining to his friends why he had a grocery bag instead of his backpack today. I don't think he knows just how close we came to losing him. He's only six, for crying out loud, and since he was in the womb (with a knot in the cord and another loop around his neck) he's had more near-death experiences than a lot of adults I know. We won't be taking that route again.

My kids are really great, and I love them to distraction, but it's mornings like today's that make me feel dishonest when people coo "Oh, your children are so well behaved!" Yeah... I slept in (sign of a bad mom), had breakfast, chatted with my offspring, all was well. My mistake was thinking I could take a shower. It was like some kind of transporter that sent me to reality. I stepped out to hear

"Give it BACK!" "NO it's MINE!" "I had it FIRST!" "Give it BACK!"

Wonderful. All drippy with a towel around me I went downstairs to be greeted by the sight of my darling children wrestling (in tears, both of them) over... what IS that? Oh, of course. A Lego Pirate head. Not the whole Lego dude, just the head. Sigh...