You Have GOT To Be Kidding Me

the puppy dog eyes

School has started. We've picked up the information packets, we've filled out forms until the pens died, we've bought the supplies. Supplies. Dear Lord, supplies. Pocket Protector, Blue, Plastic, 1 inch wide, on sale at midnight at a store 20 miles away. Madeleine needed a notebook (WHITE ONLY) 1 inch thick. Walmart only had a WHITE ONLY 1 1/2 inch notebook. I threw it in the cart. I hope I don't get called to the principal's office and my disobedience put on my PERMANENT RECORD.

As the years go by we've (DH & I) have developed a rather cavalier attitude. Meredith needed 25 1 quart ziplock bags. Walmart only had them in boxes of 40. Roger opened the box and carefully extracted 15 of the bags. She needed two 7.5 bottles of antibiotic hand sanitizer and Walmart only had 12 oz bottles, and seriously, guys, Roger was preparing to PUMP OUT THREE OUNCES FROM EACH BOTTLE. I think being a SAHD is warping him a little. I slapped his hand with a rolled up newspaper and he whimpered softly and left the hand sanitizer alone.

And the forms! Egads! Madeleine's teacher had one innocent question on her form. "Has anything happened in her family that might have an effect on her classroom performance?" The brief answer here is no. Madeleine and I both have Teflon-like abilities to brush away events that would devastate the more sensitive members of our house, Roger and Meredith. For example, my grandmother died when I was a junior in high school. I had a perfect attendance record at our high school football games since I loved them plus I was in the band. Grandmother, bless her heart, had been senile as long as I could remember, and I never really formed any sort of relationship with her. The words "You're really making me miss the game just for a stupid funeral?" may have escaped my lips sometime during this family crisis.

But of course, how could I resist writing about myself? I mean come on now! To channel Chandler on Friends, Could I BE more interesting? I think not! I filled a page starting in October of 06 when I thought I had cancer and then I had to have a total hysterectomy December 06 and then developed fibromyalgia in Jan 07 and Madeleine's father had to quit his job in June 07 because I could only do 2 things, work and collapse and then her grandmother developed Alzheimer's and has been so far this year in TWO nursing homes and THREE hospital stays and so on and so on and then I referred her to this blog if she wanted more detail. And I am just as sure as I can be that she leaped on this blog like a leopard leaps on a wounded gazelle. Mmmmmhmmmmm.

They start early these days with the fund raisers. Raise your hands if you feel that fund raisers were a direct result of Satan worming his way into the hearts and souls of each school. Ok, I get fund raisers for cash-strapped private schools, but this is a public school. I delivered a lovely civic lecture and showed the kids our property tax bill, ending with a rousing call to ignore all the gazillions of fund raising brochures they were presented with. I held them spellbound as I explained the intricacies of property law taxation. Well, not really. They just continued to watch Hannah Montana.

But later on two little girls came to me with the puppy dog eyes and begged me to buy something. I refused on principle. To heck with the principal!! hardehar.

I said you may not sell to:

1. My friends.

2. Roger's friends.

3. Relatives.

"But mom," they said, WE WANT TO WIN A PRIZE!"

"So sell to the neighborhood, then," I said, figuring that my shy little ladies would never dream of marching up to strange doors to sell merchandise.

This weekend I've been kinda laid up with a stomach problem, and it seems to be circling the neighborhood, because today one child came over to swim and lost control of his bowels while standing on the steps leading to the porch. My God. That poor, poor child. Poor, poor Roger, who had to clean it up.

So while I lay comatose moaning and clutching my stomach.....

The kids went all over our neighborhood and sold stuff to just about everybody!! (I must admit it was really cool stuff and I might even buy something myself) Roger crabbed about it because it forced him to abandon his yard projects to play chaperone, but by gum, those kids just marched up to strange doors and rang the bell.

Amazing.

p.s. Callie is doing great.