crickets marinated in camel spit on a stick or something...........

One afternoon while I was having problems with the perpetual hemorrhoid(that I am now over thank you) I had decided to take a bath. I had found my jar of TOA(Tired Old Donkey) hiding in my cabinet. TOA is mostly epsom salt. This excited me more than it should have.

I poured almost the whole jar into the tub and put the water on entirely too hot. I know the water was too hot because the parts of my skin that were submerged in the tub water were a sun burned red color. The parts of my skin that were outside of the water were a tannish brown.

Relaxing……….relaxing………………….relaxing…………………

!!!!!!!BUST THE DOOR OPEN!!!!!!

S- (with her Diary of a Wimpy Kid book) HEY MOM! Will you help me fill this book out please?

A- No

S- Mom, please…

A- No I am soaking my butt. Lock the door please.

!!!!!!!!!!BUST THE DOOR OPEN!!!!!!!!!!

CB- Mom can I get in?

A- No CB! I am burning my skin off…on purpose. Look at my legs. You see how red they are? You don’t want to burn your legs off do you???

CB- Mom…you can just put some cold water in, then I can get in with you. Besides I already heard you tell Sky you were soaking your butt off not your legs. (I wish it were really that easy to rid myself of excess buttocks.)

Cole is rolling his Hot Wheels up and down the side of the tub making this horrible, unpleasant, not relaxing noise.

S- So. What is the worst thing I ever ate?

At Easter, instead of an Easter Egg Hunt I do a scavenger hunt. Sort of a like The Amazing Race on TV with “Detours” (where the 4 siblings have to complete a challenge together before they can get the next clue) and “Road Blocks” (where they select one of the 4 siblings to complete a challenging task before they can receive the next clue).

I will try to blog on this stuff later…. if I can remember.

What is The Amazing Race without an eat something yucky food challenge?

Before Sky was really old enough to do the hunt fully, Zac had to eat 2 pieces of Kibbles and Bits dog food. I can feel you thinking, why would a parent ask their child to do this awful deed…..but hey, they don’t go to school where kids can subject them to this kind of atmosphere. Somebody has to complete the daunting task of making them "normal.".....after all, this goes under the category of "it tastes like chicken," right?


I mean for real, once this kid told me tree bark tasted like chicken. So I took a rock and scraped some tree bark off of an idiot tree and ate the flippin stuff. I really believed the dang tree tasted like freaking chicken. I liked it so much sometimes I still eat it.......fried......just kiddin.


...side tracked, sorry.

Sky is an eating machine. She loves all food… meat, veggies, tuna, sushi…if I eat it, she will too. She adores eating all creatures great and small from the sea, unlike me in this way(cause you know I like to eat tree bark....just kiddin, sidetracked, sorry).

Two years ago the food challenge was eating a ¼ of a peanut butter and mayonnaise sandwich.
(I actually like to eat this sandwich about once a year.)

May and Zac totally bugged out of the challenge and refused to eat the sandwich. I mean it was ¼ for petes sake. It wasn’t even like I asked them to eat crickets marinated in camel spit on a stick or something(or tree bark).


.....so they zoned in on “Mikey.”

Sky said she would not eat it either. I told them that the game was finished then. They would not get the next clue until the challenge was completed. Now…most parents would have given in and gave them the next clue, but I swear I’m just hard that way. This way when I need them to know I will stick to my word, good or bad…they know it’s true.

The beauty of this too is... they all want their perspective prizes. The clues have been set. They can’t get to one without the other. So it was over……no prizes. Life is like that you know. You don’t always get what you want without some sacrifice. People don’t cave in and give you what you want without getting something in return all the dang time.

Somebody had to eat ¼ of the peanut butter and mayonnaise sandwich.

Sky did it.

Maysie and Zac worshipped her for a full day. Whatever she wanted that day, they gave her…..because they were grateful that they didn’t have to eat the sandwich.

..........Back to the bathroom taking my bath……

S- So. What is the worst thing I ever ate?

A- Well, let’s see...........Think back to Easter a couple years ago….what did I make you eat that was really gross?

Then she says….

S- I don’t know, Mom. You’ve cooked lots of gross food before.

A- Sky, get out of this bathroom with that retarded book right now.

CB- Mom? When yer done soaking your butt off will you play UNO with me?

Is there really no rest for the weary....ever?

If Tim & Joe are at the mall, how old is Betty?.............

Oh gosh yesterday I had a day where my mind would not work. Like I was helping May with her Algebra and suddenly I just couldn't do it.

So I looked at the answer and tried to work the thing backwards. I could not do it. The problem was by far not the hardest problem we have ever done. It was an age problem that should have been fairly easy once we plugged the numbers in the right spots.

COULD NOT DO IT

I am like why can't I get this freakin answer right?? May was completely frustrated with me, then Zac interrupted with another easy question from his math. By this time my brain was completely and utterly fried and I couldn't even do Zac's math. It was like he was speaking French to me or something and I just couldn't hear him right or understand what he was asking me. Zac got frustrated with me.

I'm all, "LOOK!! I can only do one math problem at a time and right now I can't even do one. EVERYBODY go to your rooms and do a different subject while I figure this idiot problem out before I just die twice and grow a dang beard or something!"

That's what they did. I sat at the kitchen table well past lunch trying to figure out what the heck I was missing. It just was not that complicated of a problem. I called D at work to just get him to do it, didn't answer his phone. So I called my girlfriend Ms. SWAT so she could just give me the answer, she didn't answer. However, her 16 or 17 year old kid that has already graduated from high school and is now in college answered the phone.

A- Look, I need you to give me the answer to this math problem. Can you do this for me without judging me.

.... cricket, cricket.....no answer on the other end

A- Does this mean yer going to judge me?

Ms. SWAT's son - I don't know yet.

So I give him the problem he comes up with the same answer May and I have gotten. I felt validated. Then he takes a pause while I read it to him again and he spouts off the answer with no problem.

I get him to explain it to me like I am a kindergärtner.

Everything in my universe suddenly lines up properly....furry bunnies start hopping across the bedroom floor and rainbows color themselves across my ceiling...pink hearts & glittering stars rain down around me while all the angels in heaven sing.

I end our conversation with gratitude and adoring love that he absolutely would not take from me in person.

I put aside my parental shame and general lameness at not being able to do the idiot math problem. Since my mind has clicked back on "Go" mode, I quickly call Zac down to explain his math problem to him. His universe lines up properly & he celebrates by declaring he is done for the day and popping a bag of Doritos open.

We are all pretty delirious. My house looks like a bomb went off in it.

Mays says to Zac - Who thinks these math problems up anyway?? I mean they are like:

• If Tim & Joe are at the mall, how old is Betty?.........45

• The lake is 400 square miles. Four Tuesday's ago they drained it, next year it will be 6 times the size it is today? How many trees are in the forest?..........3

• Two years ago Betty planted a tree but before she finished planting the tree, she buried her train set underneath it. When she digs the train up in 40 years how fast will the wheels move?.........35mph

• If the cookie jar holds 37 cookies and Jack is 37 years old, how much lemonade did his mother make?

Z- NETFLIX! It's free!

.......we all start laughing, we are truly done with school for the day.

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I was fixing May a microwavable noodle dish of some sort for lunch last week.

Obviously the meal is hot when it comes out of the microwave.

I put it on the counter top "to sit for 2 minutes."

I peeled back the clear packaging to let it vent a bit and stir it a little.

One cheesy noodle came out and landed half on the counter top and half on the meal container.

I thought I would flip the hot noodle back into the dish. The blasted noodle stuck to my finger and was burning my fingertips off. So I slung in a panic downward motion to get it off.

The flippin scalding cheese defied my panic and went in the upward position onto MY FACE....... AND BURNED MY FACE! Can you believe that?

Dig on this now, one little dot of cheese hit the one mole or beauty mark, which I prefer, under my nose....... AND BURNED A HOLE IN MY "BEAUTY MARK!"

If you have ever scratched a mole or done something that causes a mole harm, you know they bleed horrible and take forever to heal. It looks like a big zit under my nose.

I didn't get the mole on this pic but who cares.

I mean for real....I do have the flippin "cheese touch."

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I am sure other parents do stuff I don't like.....

...because little kids examine themselves in the mirror trying to figure out their bodies and stuff, CB discovered his birthmark on his butt. His birth mark is a bout 1 1/2 inches long and maybe a 1/2 inch wide.....

He comes to me in the laundry room....naked, as usual ....

CB- MOM! Look what you did! You spilled your coffee on me and stained my butt! Look what you did.......

It's the exact color of a coffee stain. I had never noticed that before.

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I saw a dog hanging out of a car window waggin its tongue....the dog had on blue goggles.

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To keep Skylar interested in reading we have been reading The Diary of a Wimpy Kid books. They are hilarious. The movie just came out on DVD, I love it, it's hilarious. I think it's surely one of my favorite kids movies. Cole does a great impersonation of the Indian kid, who tells Greg Heffley, the main character, that he almost got the infamous "cheese touch."

Anyway.. I am convinced the best way to keep a kid interested in reading is to get them interested in books they love to read. One can only read about George Washington and the pilgrims so many times before they began to hate reading, thus dreading it. Many of the books for required reading at this age are not very engaging.

I dread reading time with Sky...blah, blah, blah, blah....blah, blah....blah, blah, blah...blah, blah, blah, blah....Oh my gosh, then some poetry, I want to scratch my face off...humbly, bumbly, tumbly , in my rumbly fumbly, gumbly, zumbly.......can't do it right now. Understanding for that stuff comes much later than 3rd grade.

I have never figured out why they put these awful books on required reading list when kids hate them and dread reading them. Let me say I am fully aware that The Diary of a Wimpy Kid books ARE NOT classic literature or even could stand in the same line with the classics. However, if I can't get my kid to read the classics cause she hates reading...I haven't gotten anywhere anyway.

You don't get to The Screwtape Letters, Jane Eyre, and Shakespeare because you just can't get enough freaking "Susie loves to go to church, her mommy and daddy love George Wash ing ton and the first Thanksgiving. Everything in the world is furry bunnies and rainbows. The End."

One has to climb a mountain before they can stand on top and claim conquered with their flag waving and arms raised in victory!

Okay I am so done with that rant.

SOOOooo, in the name of learning to enjoy writing and some outside of the box creative thinking, I let her buy The Diary of a Wimpy Kid, do it yourself book. I thought it'd be a waste of cash really but she wanted it and she was willing to pay for it out of her account. She loves the dag gone book. Sky wants to write in it constantly, to the point of I am fixing to hide the thing and tell her it's lost.

To those who have never read the books or seen the movie, "Zoo-Wee Mama" is the punch line to dumb jokes and barely understandable cartoons. In my house "Zoo-Wee Mama" should be a new word in Webster's Dictionary, right along with the distraction word, "Squirrel!" from the movie, Up.


The book has cartoons you are to fill in with your words like this one Maysie did here....

To me this is classic "Zoo-Wee Mama."

So I start to draw one of my own thinking I am sort of creative this should be easy. I drew a complete blank after I drew the first picture, grew frustrated, and wrote some random caption about Elmo on crack. I told Sky to erase it and re-do it with her own, cause I was blank on the Zoo-Wee Mama and forgot about it.

The next day Sky brings me this that she has completed and drawn herself....

Which I thought was hilarious. I know, I know, most parents don't like this kind of talk.....that's fine. I am sure other parents do stuff I don't like.....try to move on, it's funny.


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http://www.wimpykid.com/

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