'splain this one

I was emptying out the dishwasher this morning and pulled out half a plate. Yep, broken right down the middle. I'm thinking, okay, the plate crashed against another one in the washer or broke when someone was putting it in, I can deal. But, when I went to take the other half out of the dishwasher so it could join its twin in the garbage, I discovered there was none. The half plate was the only half there, and I couldn't find it any place else either. Of course, the inhabitants of this household all plead ignorance and claim they have no idea how/where/why there was half a broken plate in the dishwasher. Later this afternoon I stepped on a tiny shard of, what looked like, remnants of a broken plate and did that little jumpy dance you do when pain is shooting through the ball of your foot until I could pull the glass out. This brings me to the hypothesis that the plate was broken in the general area of the kitchen peninsula counter, but no closer to the culprit. Life's full of little mysteries.

how he spent his summer vacation

Hubby got back from his trip to Wisconsin last night and this afternoon we watched the videos he filmed of his time there. It started with his trip to the EAA, a hu-mungo air show he tries to attend whenever he can. He and his buddy made a sign advertising kisses for $1 and secretly stuck it on the side of the EAA booth where a woman was selling programs, then filmed people's reaction to the sign. The poor woman in the booth had no idea her programs for sale sign had been replaced with one selling kisses. Yeah, my husband's 11 years old.

The next part of the video was my family reunion - this is the 2nd year in a row that hubby's gone to my family reunion without me. The guy just loves my family and gets a total kick out of the reunion. It was great seeing family members I haven't seen since we moved down here, even if it was just on tape. My dad's twin brother and his family all came from Iowa - his 3 boys were the closest things to brothers I had growing up and it was great seeing them and their families. But, the tape really got me homesick and I'm going to see what I can do about making it myself next year and let hubby deal with getting the kids off to their first day of school. He also got a picture of my step-mother's tatoo. Yeah, my step-mother got a little moon tatoo on her arm - my dad's nickname is Moonie (his twin brother's is Sunshine, in case you were wondering - yes, really!) So, with all the kids in my family, our spouses and kids, Grandma was the first of us to get a tatoo. Who woulda thunk? Not me. When hubby told me someone in my immediate family got a tat and said it was the last person I would imagine, he was right, because it never even occured to me that it would be her. Sometimes people surprise you.

The last and longest part of the video was his time at Keller's Lake. You long-term readers may remember that back when we lived in Wisconsin, our whole family would volunteer at a day camp for mentally handicapped adults. We've really missed doing that and hubby extended his trip so he could be there last week. After watching the video, we were all pretty jealous of him. It was so great seeing all those happy familiar faces at the park. Maybe I'll have to squeeze Keller's Lake into my trip next year also.

Ambition

Did you ever have one of those days when you're really ambitious and clean or do really odd/extreme things? Today was that day for me. I woke up at 4:30am and couldn't get back to sleep, so was up and at 'em at 5:30 when I gave up and got out of bed. After that, things just got more and more out of hand. I baked bread, not so unusual, except I got over enthusiastic when I was adding flour and put in way too much and ended up tossing the whole mess in the garbage and started over again. I emptied out the flour bucket and decided to open a 100# bag I had in storage instead of using the stuff I'd already had in containers of more managable size. I had to transfer 100 pounds of flour into smaller containers, spilling plenty in the process. This led to transfering some rice into a different container, spilling some of that too. As long as I was in the transferring mood, I moved some Cream of Wheat from its box into a jar and organized my shelves. But that's not all, oh no. I washed my spice rack and sprayed the jars with Goo-Gone to get the mysterious sticky stuff off the covers and then, are you ready for this? I vacuumed the coffee maker. Trust me, you don't wanna know. I also organized all my stored bed linens and made chocolate chip cookies, among other things. I think I've gone over the ol' hill o'sanity and I'm not sure if I'm ever gonna get back. If you drive past the asylum some day and see a woman there polishing the buckles on her strait jacket, give her a little wave, because that would be me.

The Day the 80's Died

John Hughes, the man responsible for Sixteen Candles and Ferris Bueller's Day Off, among many other wonderful movies, died today. Sixteen Candles is one of my favorite movies of all time and I use lines like "the Donger need food" in regular conversation and it was one of John Cusacks first movies roles, so what's not to love? Anyway, the 80's wouldn't have been the 80's without John Hughes wonderful movies to go to on Saturday nights with your friends and I'm glad he shared his talents with the world.

Angel #2 has been in a cooking/baking frenzy since being on her diet. She had a friend over yesterday and they made puppy chow, sugar cookies, popcorn and supper for the family, all without eating any of it. It's some weird form of masochism that we're all benefitting from.

School's in

The older kids all started school today. WE had a bit of a scare this morning. We never received his final report card for 7th grade and today while waiting for the bus, he started getting a little nervous thinking that maybe he hadn't passed. He finally convinced himself that there really wasn't anything to worry about, he had good grades the first 3 quarters of the year, so figured 4th quarter wouldn't be any different. Then he got to school and looked for his advisory class where you get your classroom assignments and discovered that he was in 7th grade advisory. The poor kid was a wreck until he talked to one of his teachers and found out they'd put him in the wrong class and he was, in fact, really an 8th grader.

The older kids had the usual challenges. #2 never was assigned a 6th period class, so she's got to go in and get one - hopefully it'll be one of the classes she signed up for but didn't get. #1 is doing the summer homework he didn't do over summer vacation.

Angel #2 is doing the master cleanse diet, the one where you don't eat/drink anything besides water and a lemonade/maple syrup concoction. Part of the diet is that you're supposed to drink a quart of warm salt water every day to get your colon cleared out. She was doing that this afternoon and making a fuss over the grossness of the salt water. Angel #1 was sitting there and decided to brag that he could drink salt water without making a huge scene and #2 challenged him to prove it....#1 didn't know what happens to your body when you drink large amounts of salt water. He drank the whole glass full and did a little gloating, until #2 started dancing around the kitchen singing "I gave my brother diarrhea!" over and over again. WE missed the whole thing, so when he came in, the kids told him that #1 drank a whole glass of salt water and there's no way WE was man enough to do it, too. Of course, he picked up the gauntlet. My kids are so darn evil. It's a good thing we've got 3 bathrooms in our house, I got the feeling they're all going to be busy tonight.

And it all begins

Today is Angel #4's first day of 5th grade. The rest of the kids start tomorrow (on the first day, they have the incoming 6th graders and Freshman go in alone to get used to the campus before the invasion of the older kids the following day). Things were a bit crazy at the elementary school. Because it's her first day in a new school, I needed to come in with her. My original intention was to walk there, but the weight of her school supplies coupled with her persuasive arguments convinced me to drive instead. Now, imagine the parents of 400 other kids doing the same thing - in a school that has about 24 visitor parking spaces. She'll definitely be walking to school in the future. She was happy to see that she got the teacher she wanted. She had nothing to base her teacher desires on than one kid she met at the beach who said he was the best 5th grade teacher, but, whatever makes her happy. After looking at the list of 5th grade teachers in the school, Angel #2 said she would have wanted Mrs. Lyons, just because her name is Kitty Lyons, and who wouldn't want a teacher with a name like that?

We did the school supply wrap up yesterda and had to go to Walmart, K-Mart AND Target before we found an Angel #4 approved backpack. Since last school year, we have two new stores, Target and Office Max, added to the mix, which is good. For the last couple years, the stores had run out of required school supplies about a week before school started, which made shopping a bit of a challenge. I never thought I'd see the day when I'd be desperately diving for the last package of wide-lined, loose leaf paper when in the school supply aisle. A funny thing I noticed when in Walmart. They have school supplies and booze in the exact same aisle - I'm guessing so mothers can get #2 pencils while at the same time get some margarita mix for their own back-to-school celebration.

This morning, WE brought up the subject of sex education in schools. I have no clue why the topic popped into his head, but I decided to listen to hear his take on the whole matter. He informed me that (in his exact words) I think sex education is best taught in a classroom environment (yeah, he really used the word environment). I asked him why and he explained that it's much better to learn about that stuff in a classroom where you can laugh about it with your friends rather than be all serious and awkward talking about it with your parents. You can't argue with logic like that, now can you?

ice cream cake and bocce ball

Yesterday was Angel #1's 17th birthday. Being particularly lazy, I didn't make the usual carrot cake and decided to splurge on a Baskin-Robbins ice cream cake instead. Those buggers are expensive! I bought just a small one, and since there were only 4 of us home, #1 cut the cake in quarters and we all just pigged out. He didn't want to do anything special for the day with either us or his friends and seemed happy with just the cake. I'm happy I've got easy to please kids.

Today I spent the morning at the park helping with the finals for the Special Olympics. There was bocce ball and soccer going on - what a blast! I'm not a big sports fan, but the special olympics are so different. There were 3 soccer teams and I think the 3rd place team cheered louder than the other two when they got their ribbons. When one of the players screwed up and made a goal for the other team, no one got on his case or made him feel bad. My favorite was when one of the players standing along the middle line was having problems tying his shoe - one of the defenders over by the goalie ran over and helped him get it tied before running back to her position. The sportsmanship and support is unbelievable. If you ever get a chance to help at a Special Olympics event, I highly recommend you do so. You'll have a wonderful time.