Busy, busy, dreadfully busy

This is the next-to-the-last week of school for me. I cannot tell you how thankful I am that it is almost over. I am so ready to have this monkey off my back. I am still about 58,000 topics behind in Algebra, though and have a final to take, so I think it's pretty evident that I'm not going to get an A in the class. I'm not holding my breath on passing it either because I have absolutely NO retention in this subject! I can do problems, get a handle on them enough that the program will let me move on to the next topic and the next day when it reviews the previous day I have to look back over the work to remind myself what the hell I did just 24 hours ago. I truly am a mathtard. However, I was able to help Abby with her algebra homework the other day. My FIFTH GRADER. The fifth grader who is doing pre-algebra. Yeah. But thanks to one of my dearest friends in Texas I was able to impart upon her the wisdom I was given regarding order of operations. So I guess my kollij experience hasn't been entirely for naught.

I have one last assignment in my Lit class and one final paper. The paper is a literary analysis and since I did my last paper over "The Fall of the House of Usher" by Poe I decided to do this one over "The Minister's Black Veil" by Hawthorne. She picked my last paper to itty bitty smithereens, so I'm not hopeful that this one will fare any better, but I'm gonna give 'er a whirl. I want to be a writer, I'm told I'm good at writing......so WHY IN THE HECK do my English/Lit teachers rip me a new butthole every time I write a paper???? Not words of encouragement like "You have hidden potential. Hey, do you blog?" or "This paper is evidence that you are a diamond in the rough. Let me put you in touch with my cousin who is an agent" or anything like that. Instead I get "Double-space your sources, dipwad" and "You nitwit, you left out 16 commas. Duh." Okay, so technically she didn't call me a dipwad OR a nitwit, but I think she was secretly thinking it. And in my defense, I was going on about 2 1/2 hours of sleep when I wrote that paper - although I'm sure all the other Freshman were going on less. Of course, they were sleepless because they'd been partying with a beer bong, a trampoline and a goat named Bubba and I had just been crying hysterically for 14 hours straight over the fact that I have no mad math skillz and obviously no mad grammer skillz either. But I'm not bitter.

Tomorrow night is the last Macro test before the final. I got a whopping 65 on the last one and while these last three chapters are over money and monetary policy and I kind of almost halfway understood it, I'm still not going to get excited and think I might fare better than failure. Failure looks good on me these days. See? I think my butt looks smaller in failure, don't you? Okay, maybe not, but I still have awesome boobs.

Monday I took KD to the doctor because we spent all day the Friday after Thanksgiving doing breathing treatments because she sounded like a baby harp seal. I was close to taking her to the ER, but back-to-back treatments did the trick. Of course, she bounced off the walls after that and nearly drove me nuts with the incessant talking, shaking and chattering because of it. Her PA said her asthma has progressed from Stage 1 to Stage 2, meaning that instead of the occasional to rare flare-up, she's now having more frequent flare-ups. He put her on the Advair inhaler which he seems to think will do the trick. I'm sure her teacher will appreciate it when the new meds kick in and I'm not writing her a note every day giving her endless information about KD's breathing and wheezing.

Today I took the kids to the dentist in Tulsa for the six-month checkups/x-rays/cleanings. No cavities again, thankfully. Even though I have neglected them this entire year, I have still demanded they brush their teeth. I refuse to go totally redneck and allow dental decay in my children's mouth. In fact, because Abby is an overachiever like her mother, she's growing two whole extra teeth. When they handed me her x-ray I noticed these little nubbins down below and between a molar and bicuspid. Shortly after I noticed them, the hygienist said, "Doctor, I think Abby has some extra teeth." I asked if it was rare and he said rare, yes, unheard of, no, but he hasn't had a case in his practice in years. Leave it to my kid. He said they would eventually need to be extracted and I asked, "They'll have to be cut out, right?" He whirled around at me and said, "We prefer not to use the word 'cut' around the children." Whoops. My bad. It didn't seem to bother Abby regardless. Anyway, he wants to give them some time to develop a little more before he removes them, which hopefully will be before they undo all the progress we've made in the attempt to keep her out of braces.

Sam and I got a stern lecture because he's still not doing his lip exercises and I'm still not enforcing it. He hates doing them and I hate making him. Normally I am a bit of a drill sergeant when it comes to making my kids do things that I feel important - so I guess maybe I've decided the lip exercises aren't important? I dunno - I just hate making him walk around with a popsicle stick pinched between his lips in an effort to make his lips strong enough to pull a Volkswagon. After the dentist lectured us both thoroughly, he then told me that he will not start Sam in any orthodontics until he breaks the habit of biting his lip which can only be broken by doing those stupid lip exercises. So now, it has become "important" and I will soon go into full-force drill sergant mode. He's already getting some kids making fun of his teeth and I'm tired of him wallering his food around because he can't chew properly and if it means he has to walk around with a stupid popsicle stick in his mouth to train him to not bite his lower lip, so be it.

Today at work I learned that the Easy Bake Oven has been recalled because of "partial finger amputation." OW. I thought the foremost safety hazard with an Easy Bake was spontaneous combustion of your house and/or daughter wearing non-flame-retardant pajamas and running with scissors while her shoes are untied, but nope, turns out we all have to look out for them lobbing off part of their fingers, too.