Potpourri

My oldest child is mad at me right now. I won't let her play Grand Theft Auto III on the PS2. I am such a mean parent. Just because her daddy can stay up all night long stealing cars, running over pedestrians, shooting people and taking their money and picking up prostitutes, doesn't mean that I'm going to teach my 9 year old daughter how to do the same! She just can't understand my logic.

Speaking of my oldest child, her Social Studies grade was brought up to a 72 in a week's time. She went from a 63 to a 72 in 5 school days. Of course, she could also run for mayor of San Francisco she knows so much about it now.

Parent Teacher Conferences are this next week. This particular one, the teachers use their discretion as to whether they feel a conference is necessary. I usually get out of this particular conference because my kids have always been super students. Ah, but guess who's got a conference at 6pm on Tuesday? Sam's teacher only grades in four areas and he has nothing less than a 96 in any of them. And he was the kid I thought wouldn't do so well in school. I should be ashamed of myself for stereotyping that kid. Of course, third grade may kick his butt as well, but for some reason I don't think it will. He's just a different learner than Abby.

In going over Ab's Friday folder, I found some AR tests. She got 100% on them. Hooray right? Well, not really. I mean, yeah, it's great she's getting perfect scores on them, but I'd be more excited if she were actually reading above her level. It's Accelerated Reader, not Read Below Your Grade Level Reader. She's in her 7th month of 3rd grade and at the beginning of the school year was testing at 4.4 - 4th grade, 4th month. Now she's taking tests at 3.1 and 3.3 because the 4th grade books are harder and she doesn't get 100% on them. Omg, I'm going to bang my head on something hard again. WHY?????????????????????

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Mr. Diva's 43rd birthday is Monday and the kids and I had planned on going to Joplin last night to get his birthday present. In the afternoon, I called Mom to see if she'd like to ride along. She said it sounded fun and agreed. I told her I'd pick her up after I ran to the bank.

When my last babysittin' kid was picked up, we loaded up and drove into town. Our bank is in the middle of a reconstruction and they are operating out of a trailer house (Only in Oklahoma, right?). The trailer house bank has two windows and two lanes, but they were running ONE WINDOW in ONE LANE at 5pm on a Friday. Yeah. Imagine the line of traffic down the street. Finally I got my banking done and headed over to Mom's.

Between the bank and Mom's I told the kids that I really wanted to have a fun evening and that there would be NO crankiness, no attitudes, no griping, no bickering, no arguing and that was that. Those kids were precious angels all night! It was one of those nights that you feel like you're actually doing something right in the parenting department. I took them to Olive Garden for dinner because they think that is something downright fancy, lemme tell ya. I just like their salad dressing. Sam got a little bouncy, but he's a boy and well, he tends to get bouncy. He's always been that way. But they were all three polite to the server, "please" and "thank you" were said at the proper times, no one spit food, showed their food or even griped about the food. It was most enjoyable.

From there we went to Academy Sports where I dropped $85 on a fishing pole for my husband. Yes, I just said "I dropped $85 on a fishing pole for my husband." Yes, I am insane. But see, and I kind of can't believe I haven't mentioned this before now, I WON ONE OF THE $100 DRAWINGS AT BUFFALO RUN LAST LADIES' NIGHT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! You can tell by the gratuitous overuse of exclamation points that it was quite exciting. I was sitting at a quarter slot machine, playing on the $20 I had borrowed from my mother because payday was still 4 days away, and I was thinking "If I could just win one of those hundred dollar drawings tonight I could get Paul that fishing pole." I had no sooner finished that thought when they called my name. Remember how I made fun of those girls screaming at the blackjack machines on Mom's birthday? I kind of outdid them. Actually Mom and Tater screamed so loudly that people thought it was one of them. I was trying to be all calm and cool, but as soon as I walked toward them they screamed louder and hell, so did I. You'd have thought I'd won a house or something. So anyway, because of winning that drawing I actually had the money to throw away spend on a really long crappie pole that is actually a bass pole, but the kid at Academy said that the fish don't actually know the difference. *shrug*

After Academy, where I felt out of my element like Martha Stewart at a Hillbilly wedding, we went to Toys R Us. Santa brought Sam a Lazer Tag set for Christmas and after he and his father had shot so many lazer beams into each other that it was incredibly unhealthy, it quit working. Fortunately, Santa had left the receipt with me, so finally, just a few months after Christmas I managed to get up to Toys R Us. Sam had said all along he wanted another Lazer Tag set, but then decided upon entering the store that only rivals Chuck E Cheese in the cause of ADHD in both parents and children, that he might want some other toy. Kady still had some birthday money left that I've been slowly doling out very sparingly because the child needs toys like Michael Jackson needs a little boy, so I told her she could look for something. Abby had earned some money working at an auction with Mom a few weeks ago. So the fun began.

Abby had her heart set on the book Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing, but Toys R Us didn't have it. They had Pixel Chix and she wanted one, but I told her we could get one at Wal*Mart where Mommy gets the magical 10% Associate discount. I also explained that they were $30 and she only had $15 and if she wanted one I was going to work that extra $15 off of her. She agreed and I got an indentured servant. MUAH HAhahaha! Kady found a "Stwawbaby Shootcake" backpack that she couldn't live her life without and also a Blue's Clues DVD for her InteracTV. Two down, the boy to go. Sam had long forgotten the Lazer Tag game and headed for the Ninja Turtles. Yet they had nothing that he didn't already have. (That is just sad, btw.) He was kind of moping around that he couldn't find anything, then suddenly beams of God light from heaven shone down upon the Godzilla toys and it was good. There sitting on a shelf were Godzilla, Burning Godzilla, Mothra and Gigan. Life was complete. Nirvana had been attained. We had reached Shangri La.

He settled upon the Burning Godzilla, Mothra and Gigan and pretty much floated out of the store. From there we went to Hastings in search of that durn Fourth Grade Nothing book. I'm sure I have my copy somewhere in storage, but she wants her own copy, the spoiled thing. Hastings didn't have one either. They had every other Judy Blume book ever written, but not Fourth Grade Nothing. Sam had a few bucks left and got a Narnia book. The cashier was a snotty, pimply-faced dork that told my son to "be sure you thank her" for the two pennies I gave him. Ya know, I can tell my kid to say please and thank you, but I don't appreciate strange cashiers telling my son to use his manners. I nearly climbed over the counter and slapped him around a bit and I SO would've won, but Kady really needed her inhalers and instead I just shot him a dirty look and left.

By that time it was after 9:30 and Kady really was in near-desperate need of her inhalers. We walked a little slower to the van, hoping that the cold night air could work its usual magic, but no such luck. She woke up night before last wheezing and just generally not sounding good and hasn't sounded good since. She had had a breathing treatment before we left, but it was obviously wearing off. Mom was bound and determined to get Abby that durn book so we drove across the street to Books A Million. She took Abby in the store while I stayed in the van to give Kady her inhalers, put a much-needed layer of Carmex on my scaly tattoo and open up Godzilla and his crew for Sam.

Glory be to God they found the book!

So then, because we have serious mental problems, we went to Wal*Mart. It was after 10pm at that point. My children are always in bed by 8, but I was on a mission to find Baby Magic, to heck with the exhausted children. JOPLIN WAL*MART DOESN'T HAVE IT EITHER!!!!! What's up with that?? It's a conspiracy, I'm sure of it. And you know how it goes, you go into Wal*Mart for one or two things and walk out $50 poorer. I bought some sponge curlers because Abby had the thickest hair I've ever seen and the 30 sponge curlers I have are not enough to get all of her massive hair curled. I bought four packages of baby wipes that were on sale for $1.50. That is an AWESOME price and I had just opened my last pack this week. I bought Sam's Easter shirt and found the dresses I'm going to get the girls. Sam's going to wear a pink polo shirt. He was SO not happy about that either. I told him that his cousin, Anson, has a shirt that says "Real Men Wear Pink", but he wasn't convinced. He finally said, "Fine. I'll wear it, but I don't have to like it." I rubbed his head and said, "You'll wear it and I don't care if you like it or not. I'm the mom and if I want to put bows in your hair, then by cracky, you'll wear bows in your hair this Easter, boy." Sometimes you just have to remind them who's boss. :)

I stocked up on 7-Up (Ad-Match, whoo hoo!) and Gatorade because Tater's youngest tot was home puking yesterday and I don't want to be caught unprepared if someone comes down with it in my house. I bought a package of chocolate chips, some orange juice (Ad-Match again! I should shop with Mom more often.) and a gallon of milk and ended up spending nearly $50. *sigh* We walked out of the store at 11:00pm with three very tired children, one of whom was wheezing and crackling to beat the band. By the time I dropped Mom off at her house, stashed the fishing pole in her dining room and drove home, we pulled into the driveway at the stroke of midnight. Paul was still up playing MuthaTruckers so he helped Kady get into her pj's while I fixed the nebulizer up for her, shot her full of albuterol, put her in my bed and then I went there myself. I think I'd rather put up with Paul's snoring then my youngest child's kicking. And if she coughed in my face once she coughed in it a thousand times last night. It's a good thing asthma isn't contagious. Of course, the way I figure it, she's probably got some virus, too, and I'll come down with it in a day or two.

I slept in this morning and woke up when Kady came back into my bed and said, "Well, if you're not going to get up, I guess I'll snuggle with you some more." I took the hint and got up to find Sam watching cartoons in the toyroom and Abby with her nose in her new book on the couch, a fire crackling in the fireplace because my husband thought enough to build one before he left for work, and a dirty house. I just hate to spend one of my days off cleaning, though. But I'm afraid it's gone beyond "just a little cluttery" to "we might lose a small child in it soon" status.

Hmm....you know.... I bought some chocolate chips last night.... I bet I can effectively dodge housework by making chocolate chip cookies..... Just a thought.