I feel guilty because I haven't checked out anyone else's blog in weeks. I have no idea how Py is doing, no clue if Carlisa is as jovial as ever, or whether or not Annie's animals are happy and here I am posting a meme. I am a terrible neighbor, but Metz tagged me, and so I must obey. It's that middle-management whip you wield darlink, it scares me.So here it is:
The rules of the game get posted at the beginning. Each player answers the questions about themselves. At the end of the post, the player then tags 5 people and posts their names, then goes to their blogs and leaves them a comment, letting them know they’ve been tagged and asking them to read your blog. Let the person who tagged you know when you’ve posted your answer.
What was I doing 10 years ago?
Ten years ago, I was living in a tiny townhouse, raising a kindergartener, a three year old, and had a newborn baby. The newest addition to the family had colic and screamed 24/7 for over a year. He never slept for longer than 20 minutes at a time. My husband and I would take turns trying to get some rest. He would come home from work, see the state I was in, and order me to bed. We watched a lot of TV that year, while we walked the floors. Mr.Krista in particular got fond of Nick at Night, and watched a lot of Pokemon in the middle of the night, because that was all that was on. I remember this because we didn't let our kids watch it, and he got caught once by the oldest child and she was really mad. The rest of that whole year is kind of a blur for me, I didn't do much except walk that boy around and stress out. He had to have a scope stuck down his tubeage trying to grok what was wrong with him. We never did find out, but he is sensitive to a lot of foods, and I suspect he probably has had celiac's from day one.
What are 5 things on my to do list for today?
1. Pack to go camping on Monday.
2. Drill holes in all of the sweet altered art charms I made out of printable shrinky dinks for the girls at camp. I will try and post a picture, they turned out so cool.
3. Clean up my altered charm making mess so my friend Shelley can come over and I can help her screen print her t-shirt for camp.
4. Go to the store and buy my girly a new swimsuit (since she inexplicably is shaped like an adult instead of a child now) rabbit food, and water softener salt among other random things.
5. Read some of the New Testament, and go over some of my teaching materials for seminary.
Snacks I enjoy:
I will pretty much eat anything, but I love Neopolitan Dynamite Ben and Jerry's, Dark chocolate (the kind that doesn't even taste good, the darker the better), and Root beer floats. I am also a big fan of anything in the Itos family: Doritos, Cheetos, Fritos, etc. Since most of the people in my family can't eat any of this stuff though, I barely ever have it in the house, and we tend to eat stuff like homemade salsa and hummus on tiny pita chips. I am a sucker for the fancy junk food at the health food store too- All of the mixes in the bulk bins that are anything but good for you, sesame sticks and my favorite: pecans covered in maple sugar covered in dark chocolate. Those things set your brains to vibrate for the rest of the day after eating like 5 of them.
Things I would do if I was a billionaire
This is an interesting question, because if you are a billionaire, it stands to reason that you could do lots of good for others and still do whatever you wanted. So after the donations to cure autism, and paying off everyone's everything, college for the kids, giving tons of it away, all that jazz, I think I would first acquire a very eclectic wardrobe. I love clothes, but what I really love are quirky, one of a kind clothes, so that would happen first, I bet. And I am afraid I would probably buy a lot of shoes. I would also build an art studio tree house in the woods, somewhere with a view of the water, where it never snows, and I would indulge in making art all day long. I would pay someone else to do all of the tedious shopping and cleaning and cooking I normally have to do, and I would spend all of the not making art time with my children, reading them books, and playing with them. And of course, Mr.Krista could have his barn full of animals that he has always wanted, and could cease being a pasty faced office worker bee. We would probably travel, but since we are homebodies, we would probably live somewhere that was like being on vacation all the time, like Hawaii. And as for charity, I don't think I would give to big charities. I would ask the Bishop in my local church who needed help, and I would anonymously buy them a house or something. That would be fun to do. Really change the world, one family at a time. And If it was possible, I would pay for Mr. Krista to go into space, because he always wanted to be an astronaut, but couldn't because he has glasses. Off to the moon with you, CBD!
Places I have lived:
Born In Salt Lake City, Utah
Moved to North Ridgeville, Ohio When I was in 1st grade
Moved to Carmel, New York, 6 months later, to live down the street from Metsakins, although we were unaware. I lived in a house with huge windows and beautiful wood floors, In the middle of a grove of trees. In front there was a rock wall that dated back to the civil war, that we would climb on. The backyard had a huge glacial boulder, right next to an apple tree that was covered in huge grape vines. We would rake the leaves into a huge pile at the base of the tree, climb the tree and swing on the vines like Tarzan into the pile of leaves. We played kick the can and jailbreak with the neighborhood kids late into the night in the summer. Where were our parents? Who knows. I loved that house.
Then we moved when I was in 5th grade to Avon Lake, Ohio. The kids picked on my New York accent, and were generally not very nice. The house is one of those "modern" homes from the seventies with stained wood siding and exciting chunky bits that just look dated now. My parents still live there. The people who lived there before us had hideous taste, and every room was covered in the most horrific wallpaper you have ever seen. It took my mom about 10 years to get rid of most of it, and a lot of it is still up. But the backyard made up for the house- outside we had woods, with bike trails in them, and a creek where we could wade and go fishing. I spent a lot of happy hours getting poison Ivy back there. I went to high school in that town, met my husband there, and visit it often to see our parents. I guess it would be "home" in the traditional sense.
After Graduation I left to go to BYU, in Provo, Utah. I loved going to BYU, but I didn't last long because I got married and started having babies. We lived in Oxford, Ohio, where Mr.Krista was going to school at Miami, and then we moved to Stow, Ohio, when he got his first job, the same one he has now. We moved to Aurora a few years ago to be closer to his job and because the schools are really good here. Who knows where we will go next?
Jobs I have had:
I have had many jobs watching/teaching children over the years. I have worked in daycares and babysat, and while they haven't been paid positions, I have had many volunteer positions at my church. I was Primary President for several years, where I was in charge of running the programs for about 40 kids between the ages of 18 months to 12 years. They had Sunday classes that needed to be taught, and cub scouts and achievement programs to run. I also was in charge of the nursery for the littlest ones, and we had big activities quarterly. The children would perform a big program with singing performances and speaking parts once a year. It was a big job. Since then I have had lots of littler positions in Primary, nursery leader and I have taught classes. Right now I teach my 5 year old son's Primary class on the New Testament every Sunday. I was also Young Women's President for a while, over the teenaged girls, and my favorite volunteer job was running a craft thing once a month for all the ladies in our ward.
I also teach Seminary, which is a class held every morning before school for teenagers aged 14-18. (Yes, it is at 6 am and they do come. I have about a dozen students every day.) This next year I will be teaching the New Testament as well. I really love teaching Seminary, it is the best part of my day. I am on break now, but I just received my teaching materials for next year and am excited to get started.
Other jobs I have had:
I worked as a receptionist at my Dad's office, when I was younger, and then again at a large company in downtown Cleveland. I ran a switchboard at that one, and had fun saying sweetly to people, could you hold please? And then putting them on perma-hold. Apparently I have a sexy phone voice, or so I have been told. My voice is quite deep for a woman's, and I always thought I sounded like a guy, but whatever.
In college I had a job working in the cafeteria where the BYU football team would eat before every game. I have never seen human beings that could eat so much in my whole life. We would make up those little bowls of pudding that you only see in institutional type food services, the kind where you have a splodge of pudding with a tiny flowerette of whipped cream on the top? Well, these guys would take a tray, and fill those up with pudding bowls and eat them all. We could never make bowls-a-puddin fast enough. My main job when I worked there was to cut up fruits and vegetables for the cooks. They would bring over a huge wagon of watermelons, there would be around forty of them, and we would have to have them deseeded and cubed in an hour. I learned tricks for cutting up just about everything- Like mangoes and pineapple- things that other people have trouble figuring out how to chop- well I am a ninja. It really is the most valuable thing I learned at college, to this day. Also, when I first got married, I worked briefly at a Burger King. That was a horrible job. It was hot and the people were morons. Not because they worked there, it was just that particular crew were awful to work with, because there was no one interesting to talk to. We were the only place open after the bars would close (this was at Miami U.) They ran this special there , 2 burgers 2 fries 2 bucks, and it would go for a couple of weeks, and then they would end it. But every night the drunk kids would come in and wave around their last two dollars, and demand 2 burgers and two fries. There was no explaining to them that they couldn't have them. I hated that place.
The only other job I have had was I worked for a while as a videoette. At least that was what we jokingly called ourselves- I worked as the girl that checks out your videos at the local video rental place. That was a very weird job, because they also rented porn, but there were all of these rules about it. We kept the vids in plain brown boxes, and all of the titles were in this black folder. The perps would come in, and ask to see The Folder, and would go into a corner to slaver and read descriptions. When they had picked their vid, they had to ask for it by number. If they didn't, and were creepy in any way, we were supposed to tell them we didn't rent that kind of thing any more. I have to say it was never the college guys who rented this stuff- it was always creepy fat old guys. There was this one regular who would always call and ask if we had any new titles. He gave me the jibblies. I hated touching those brown boxes and always wanted to go scrub up afterwards. One of the funniest things that happened there was someone came in and seruptitiously put stickers on tons of the videos that said "do not rent this movie, it is degrading to women" on all of the soft porny hot tub type crap that they rented there. The boss lady was furious that we hadn't noticed, and made us reshrink wrap all of the boxes. I thought it was hilarious, but thought it was too bad they didn't put them on all of the "Disney Princess" movies.
Well that's all folks. I tag any and all who want to play. Have fun peeps!
You know how you never think of the perfect thing to say until later? When you have an autistic child, people say the most obnoxious things. Sometimes people mean well, or they don't know what to say, so they say things that make you want to hit them. One of the worst ones, which is meant as a compliment, is "God must have chosen you for this" Or a variant is "You must be a special person to be chosen for this". So God chose for us to be miserable and live in non stop drama, trauma, and screaming? Thanks for that. But I read a mom's perfect comeback today. When someone points out that God chose her, she says, "God chose you to babysit, can you come over this weekend?"
I haven't been voxing much lately, and a large part of that is that we have been working non-stop on finishing our new bedroom. It is really quite surreal that it is finally done, and is a huge accomplishment for us. We have been working on it for three years. I have always wanted to have a really nice, pretty bedroom. When I was a little girl, I dreamed of having a canopy bed, pink walls, and big windows with flowing cutains. My room was generally in the basement next to cardboard boxes with Christmas ornaments in them, with what ever left over furniture nobody wanted upstairs. Then I moved on to dorm rooms, horrible apartments, and rented houses, and I never really could have a room that was mine. When we finally were able to buy our house, we knew it was too small, and would need another bedroom at least. We really couldn't afford to though, so we crammed our furniture into the tiny "master" bedroom, and tried to make it work. It has horrible blue and salmon wallpaper right out of 1982. Then TJ's Grandpa died, and left us a small inheritance. We used the money to add an addition onto the house, 16' x 16', for our new bedroom. The problem was, we only had enough money to frame it out- we couldn't afford to even do the drywall. TJ is very handy, and did all of the electrical stuff, HVAC, and insulation himself, ten dollars at a time. The only thing left was drywall, and we knew it would be a cool thousand bucks to get it put in. That might not be a lot for some people, but it is for us. So it sat, all but finished, with no drywall, for two years. It was so frustrating. Finally, this year we were able to use our tax refund to put in the drywall, and after that we just went crazy painting, putting up trim, etc. We really can't afford any of it, but it is finally done. Nearly everything in our room was recycled, and I am actually kind of proud of that- for me this room is more than just a room, it really symbolizes that I can do anything I want, if I am willing to work hard, and think a little outside the box. For those of you who think it is sickeningly pink, I gotta say, I love it, so there.
The desk used to belong to my BIL. It was orange. The chair was from our church- they remodeled and got rid of chairs, and I reupholstered this one. The frame still needs a piece of mirror, but I kind of like it empty, too.
Our nightstand beloged to Tj's Grandma. They were really dated oak. We painted all of the furniture, and put new knobs on everything.
The dresser was from my mother's basement, when she saw what I did to it, she wanted it back. The mirror was a cast off from another Grandparent.
One whole wall is covered with curtains- there are massive wardrobes behind them...
Behind these curtains are french doors- I have them drawn because we are not quite done with them- they need trim and some paint. They lead out into our backyard, and it has the most awesome view of the forest. The Ivy looks corny in the pic, but nice in real life.
We got these sweet wardrobes from Ikea- they have all kinds of baskets and shoe racks and organizing stuff. Compared to our old closet, it is like heaven.
The last two pics are for my Cute Talk friends- I have two pics up in my room that only you guys will understand. Sorry they are kind of blurry:
My children tell me their bus driver is the most evil old hag in history. The indignation on their faces as they discuss her is something to behold. It is the kind of scorn usually reserved for tattletales and the first day of school. "There's something wrong with her," my nine year old informs me. "She never smiles, and won't play the radio." Yeah", says Mr. Twelve, "she smokes these huge nasty cigars and smells disgusting!" I chuckle at their wrath, "she can't be all THAT bad", I say. ( I remember a bus driver from my youth, who was legendary for keeping a jack knife in his boot. My older brother claimed to have seen it- as I recall, that guy never even had to yell. Clever old boy.) The kids look at me like I have finally lost all reason. She is downright evil mom, they say shaking their heads sadly and walking away. Now it is true, they have been royally spoiled. For the last few years, their bus driver was a jolly lady they called Miss Cindy. She played rock and roll on the radio, nice and loud. She bought them lollipops and little Christmas gifts with her own money. When she found out my kids have allergies, she went out of her way to get them a non-food treat. She figured she could catch more flies with honey rather than vinegar. She was right. They took her for granted, but she didn't have to yell.
"The little kids staged a rebellion yesterday on the bus," Mr. Twelve says conversationally. ( And yes, he actually talks like this. It is entertaining.)
"Really? Why?"
"Because she goes around and takes everyone's Gameboys away. She says they distract her. As if! It keeps everyone busy! Besides, she is NOT allowed to do it, we have property rights, and sometimes she doesn't give them back!"
"So what happened?" I say, fascinated.
"Well, David and some of the other kids decided to just shout No! You can't have it! And then they put their gameboys in their bag real quick, and zip it closed. If she wanted to take them away, she would have to go through their bags, and they figured that would be illegal."
I am stunned by this. These are third graders we are talking about. Mr. Twelve heard all this from Mr. Nine, and was relaying it- You have to keep in mind that they have the same bus driver, but are on different routes- Mr. Twelve goes on the Middle school/ High School route, and after they are all dropped off, she turns around and gets the little kids. So they weren't put up to this by bigger kids- on their route, the third graders are the big kids.
With visions of bus suspensions dancing in my head, I say, "your brother wasn't involved in this was he?"
"Naw, he didn't give up his Gameboy, but he made sure he put it away really fast, and turned his puppy eyes on her. He never gets in trouble." Says Mr. Twelve with some disgust. It is true- most nine year olds lose the advantage of being cute sometime in their third grade year, just when it would come in handy. Mr. Nine, on the other hand, is still the size of a six year old, with freckles on his nose and the biggest brown eyes you have ever seen. Long curly eyelashes, round cheeks. He looks like a pixie. And he works it- but his charms no longer work on me, I can tell when he turns on the high beams to get out of something. Others would be more easily taken in.
"What did she do?"
"Well, she was really mad, and freaked and gave everyone assigned seats. She said it would also help her figure out who was chucking sunflower seeds, but that is messed up, because the kids throw them, so then they are under the seats of the victims! How is that fair?"
"Why are they chucking seeds?" I ask.
"Well, why not? Nobody is going eat them." He says this as if to a very moronic person- like DUH, Mom.
"Well, except Miss Fourteen." He adds, and snickers.
Something is definitely up. We are finally getting to the reason for the rare candid look into school bus politics.
"What is going on?" I say now, with the no nonsense, stern voice that excludes the possibility of bail if someone is caught or found lying.
Mr. Twelve burst out: "Miss Fourteen has to sit in seat one right behind the bus driver, and she takes her lunch away every morning because she hogs the whole thing down right in front of everyone!"
Miss Fourteen is edging away trying to make a run for it.
"Is this true? Are you eating your whole lunch on the bus?"
"Well", she shrieks "obviously not anymore! Thanks a lot, Mr. Twelve!'
He looks smug.
I sigh. It is obvious why we are having this conversation now. It can be horribly humiliating having a developmentally delayed teen-aged sister. This is the first I have heard of this, but it makes several things clear: Why Mr. Twelve hates the bus, why Miss Fourteen is so ravenous all the time- she doesn't eat all day! Since we will be homeschooling her next year, this will no longer be an issue for him. I decide in a split second that it is better to have a laugh. So I do, I laugh. The brewing tantrum dissipates, and the smug look is wiped off Mr.Twelve's face.
"That is totally hilarious. How long has this been going on", I say.
"Nearly all year. I told her that she wouldn't be so hungry if she would wait to eat her lunch." He sounds a little petulant. It must be hard having to look after her like that every day. It must be fairly thankless.
"Thank you for telling her that- really you ought to listen to your brother", I say, "he is full of common sense."
Sensing that the moment of doom is passed, Miss Fourteen skedaddles.
I hug Mr. Twelve. "Thank you for telling me," I murmur into his hair. All may not be right with the world, but it is for this five minutes, and it is enough for now.
Well sort of, I read LaidOutInLavenders blob today, and she tagged me as well as tagging everyone! I haven't posted in forever, so here it is:
Here are the rules:
1. Each player starts with 8 random facts/habits about themselves.
2. People who are tagged, write a blog post about their own 8 random things, and post these rules.
3. At the end of your post you need to tag 8 people and include their names.
4.
Don’t forget to leave them a comment on their blog and tell them
they’ve been tagged, and to come back and read your blog for the whole
story.
I am going to try to think of things that I haven't said before...since I never shut up, this could be a challenge:
1. I was in a coma for a few days once. I had short term memory loss for a while afterwards, just like Dory in finding Nemo. It was extremely frightening.
2.I bite my nails like crazy, sometimes right down to the quick. I can stop if I want to, and I have, I have even grown my nails out to be long and gorgeous, but it takes so much concentration not to, that I figure my brain space is better occupied with other stuff.
3. I love to buy shoes, but I love to go barefoot. Go figure.
4. In Junior High I had an awesome Flock of Seagulls haircut. It was so cool, nobody knew it was cool. I wore super sparkly bright blue eye shadow every day too. I rocked!
5. I have a terrible time driving in heavy traffic or on the highway. It is a left over from the car accident that put me in a coma. I used to not be able to drive at all without major panic attacky fun, so progress has definitely been made. I've tried the Bene Gesserit chant but it doesn't seem to help.
6. I am currently fairly obsessed with the series Firefly, and it's accompanying movie, Serenity. Having never inhabited "Fangirl" land, I find it very odd, and somewhat comforting that there are so many other folks who can be as obsessed with a TV show as I am. Any other Browncoats out there? Probably not. If wishes were horses we'd all be eatin steak.
7. The running gag at my house is that since I am so serious all the time, that I have been 40 since the day I was born. Since 40 is 4 short years away, It is a toss up whether I will explode, or start aging backwards from the paradox. Ironically, people seem to have a very difficult time determining my age. When I was a teenager, Someone was looking at a picture of me with my siblings, and they thought I was the Mother. I also had kids in Junior high mistake me for a teacher, stupid haircut and all. When I would hang out with my older teenaged sister at the beach, guys would assume I was much older than her, which would make her no end of angry. When I had my first baby, it switched, people often assumed I was 15 or 16, and would tell me off. I found out that my husband's Grandma thought I was only a teenager too, and that explains why she never seemed to like me much. (I was 22). I also got the "look" a lot when my daughter turned 14 or so, and people would look at me and try to do the math to see if I had been a pregnant teen. One of her teachers said to me, YOU are HER mother? With complete shock on her face. I still haven't figured that out. Recently with the advent of wrinkles, I seem to not be getting this as much. It will be interesting to see what 40 brings.
8. I sang in Carnegie Hall once. The choir I was in was directed by John Rutter, who is the founder of the Cambridge Singers, who are often on Fresh Aire albums by Manheim Steamroller. That was a pretty cool day, but I wore shoes that were a little too tight, so I didn't enjoy it as much as I could have.
Ok, so much for random weirdness about me! I tag Cyanide, Mr. Fred, CCat, Helene, Annie, Metsakins, BrinnAnn, Bugmom, Roger, Oakie and Metz. Oh And Py and YGRS, and Carlisa, and MC2.....ok I can't count.
I gotta make stuff. I know the stuff I like to make doesn't really fall in the "crafts" category, but it is not exactly Art with a capital A either. That is ok with me. The stuff I like to make is not stuff you can buy, so I have to make it myself. I needed a cell phone pouch thingy, and all of the ones at the store were horrible, so I made myself one. I used a scrap of fabric, some paper bits, and odds and ends. What I did was I arranged the collage on the fabric, and then I gave everything a medium coat of Mod Podge. I folded my teflon ironing sheet in half, and put the gluey fabric on the inside, like a teflon sandwich. I ironed on the top of the teflon, on high heat, pretty much cooking the glue. Steam came out from everywhere as it cooked off the liquid. I'm sure it was very carcinogenic. What this does is give the fabric the texture of plastic, kind of like those plastic tablecloths some people use. When it cooled, I hand stitched around the edges, put some eyelets in for the handle, sewed on some beads. After using it for about a week, I am going to have to replace the handle with something sturdier, but the craft fiber is working for now.
Making stuff cheers me up when I feel like Bastian looks:
When I saw Roger's tour of her house, I thought it was great, and so I decided to make one like it: raw footage of life as it really is around here, not sanitized and stylized for public consumption. However, I ran out of memory before I did the teenager's rooms and bathroom, but that is probably only for the best. I had to do it in two bits, and I don't know much about CBD's fancy video editor, so it is what it is. In my own defense, I do have to say that the house is not usually quite this trashed- we have a bad case of the contractors...
I am mostly posting this for everyone's amusement, and partially to vent a bit. My darling boy, Mr. Nearly Twelve, the one who always comes up to me and says, what is it, Mom? when I am upset about something, has turned into the most incredible monster. Of course this was coming, it is a phase. Mothers often report having really good relationships with their 9 and 10 year old sons, which then evaporates with the onslaught of hormones. It is natural, I suppose. But that is beside the point. What am I going to do with him until he turns 17 or so, and starts communicating mostly in grunts?
This is what happened: I bought an extra huge bag of Easter chocolate for prizes for my seminary class. I have about a dozen students, and after class, I handed out about 2 dozen pieces. The bag was still super full, maybe a quarter of it gone. In my rush to get the little kids off to school I left the bag downstairs, in the room in the basement where I teach Seminary every morning.
*Time Passes*
Next morning, I go downstairs to prepare for the students, and find the bag, nearly empty. The seminary room is right next door to my son's room, and probably it is my fault for leaving such a huge temptation out in plain sight. ( by the way, this is the son who is not on any special diets.) I teach my class, and go upstairs with the students and get ready to send my own children on their way to school. There is my son, doubled over, sick as a dog, saying I feel so sick, Mom. Can I stay home? My stomach hurts... I tell him, unless you puke, you have to go- you are out of sick days ( it is true, he had the flu a couple of times and used them all up.) He goes to school. That day, I go to get his laundry, and find about 9 million pastel candy wrappers stuffed in all of his clothes. What we have here is the equivalent of him holding the smoking gun, right next to the corpse. The candy is missing, he has a stomach ache, and the wrappers are stuffed in his clothes. Also- after the rest of the day progresses, it is fairly obvious it wasn't any of the other children- they all have special allergy diets, and none of them were sick, as they would be if they had even eaten one piece of candy.
So I confront the boy when he gets home from school, prepared to give him standard lecture #537: The Ten Commandments, or Thou shalt not steal. Now bear in mind, this incident is not what has me calling my darling son a monster- on the contrary, this is the bread and butter of daily parenting, a nearly everyday occurrence. Children need guidance, they make mistakes, and you need to correct and teach them . Sometimes you have to discipline them. It is all part of the job description. I was thinking a punishment along the lines of, no computer games for awhile, and maybe a couple of chores to work off the cost of the candy. A punishment to fit the crime. Well, the boy looks me right in the eye, and says I didn't do it. I didn't eat your candy. I said of course you did! The wrappers were all through your room! He says you can't prove that I did it. I said, why yes I can, you are the only kid who had a stomachache, and anyone who ate that much candy overnight was going to be feeling it this morning. He proceeded to deny any wrongdoing at the top of his lungs, pronouncing it completely unfair that he should have to be punished for something he didn't do. I had been prepared to let him off with pretty much a slap on the wrist, and letting it go, but I don't tolerate lying. So I told him he was effectively grounded until he decides to come clean.
*More time passes.*
Later the next day, my stuff starts going missing. This is an odd thing, because I am big about everything having a place. I always put my keys on the hook by the door, that kind of thing. My keys are missing, and my scriptures are missing. I am frantic, because I have to take my daughter to an activity at school, and pick up the boy as well. But I can't because my keys are gone, no where to be found. My daughter says wait a minute- I can't believe he actually did it! and she runs straight to the boy's room, and starts rummaging around. What is going on, I say. She says, he told me last night that he was so mad that he was going to hide some of your stuff to get revenge, and he specifically mentioned your keys! She was really mad now, because she was missing her favorite club, while we looked. I called my husband at work, explained the situation, and he had to leave work to go get the boy from school. That is one car ride I am glad I was not present for.
When he got home I said, I want my keys back now, and I need my scriptures to prepare my lesson for Seminary. You go and get them right now. He said to me, I don't know what you are talking about, but I will look for them. He had them both in his hand in 5 minutes. We had been searching for them for over an hour. He smugly hands the stuff over, and still keeps insisting he didn't do anything, and that his sister was lying. I am pretty much furious at this point, and I tell him he has to be supervised for the rest of the day, because apparently he has acquired sticky fingers. I sit him in a chair to do his homework, and then he just gets to sit. I get on the computer to work, do my lesson, check my email, etc. He squirms and whines and finally asks if he can go to the bathroom. I let him go. While he is gone, I lose my internet connection. I try to see what is going on, and the computer can't even find the network at all. The boy comes back, looking very smug once again. I go down to the basement where the routers and stuff are, to see if something got jostled, perhaps by a cat, and there is one of the pieces of equipment ( I confess I have no idea what it is), all unplugged from the phone clips, etc., and chucked on the floor. The internet equipment is all in a room across from the bathroom where the boy supposedly was. He had gone down, and chucked the stuff on the floor so that I could not get my work done. When I came back upstairs, I held it up, and said, now you have really done it. Your Dad is going to have kittens when he gets home. once again, he said you can't prove I did anything. Well, actually I could prove it. No one else was down there. Even the cats had alibis, they were in another room with one of my other sons. Besides, not having opposable thumbs, it would be pretty hard for them to unhook everything so they could chuck it from the shelf to the floor.
So what do you think peeps? The psychologists office, or the slammer? I mean, for me? Cause I haven't killed him yet. You decide....
Last week we had the most incredible ice storm- it was a doozy. The power was out all over and the wind howled all night long. The next day the sun was shining, and all of the ice was cracking. It sounded like gunshots. The birds who had come home, expecting some Spring action, were in full song. Everything was coated in ice. Trees lifted their crystalline arms heavenward in supplication for a new season. I went and took some pictures, it was gloriously bright. I figured we were on our way to Spring- it couldn't get much worse than this, weatherwise:
You know who you are- and this is the fabulous prize I made for you! We are snowed in up to our eyeballs at the moment, so when I dig my way out, I will get this in the mail for you....
The question is, will she be too busy to Vox? Will she even see this if I just throw it up, and don't tell anyone?
*waiting with bated bref*
