Whew!

I am NOT on the PTA board this year! For real, and for certain! Can you hear the Hallelujah Chorus? I can!

I turned in my filing cabinet key last night at Open House. It felt great...and strange. I'm not part of the "group" and it feels weird. (I'm not complaining, I'm just sayin')

In reality, I've agreed to do other stuff, and I'm still doing the newsletter--which I'm blowing off as I type--so I'm still plenty involved, just not as up-to-my-neck obligated as I once was.

Open House went well. The Howler is doing fine, and is growing up. Homework isn't the fight it was last year, and she likes her teacher well enough. Spelling, however, is going to be her downfall, I'm afraid. She doesn't enjoy it, and the longer, harder, bigger words trip her up, especially those vowel sounds.

We did have an incident early this week with her forgetting her homework, but she was duly chastised by all and sundry (ironically enough, even the Toad) and she missed recess because of it. Hopefully, she will have realized that she doesn't want to do that again!

She's learning many things, especially at recess. Miss Mary Mack and Down in the Meadow are very important these days.

She's doing well learning those Bible verses for AWANAS and is working hard in gymnastics.

Could it be that My Sweetie & I are doing OK as parents, or is it that as High Maintenance as she has been, she's mellowing in her old age?

Eenie Meenie Freak-a-Reenie

This happened a few weeks ago, but it still seems rather full of strangeness, so I'm sharing here in an effort to get it out of my head.

As we all know, my neighborhood is polluted: polluted with OPK; polluted with more than my fair share of whackjob neighbors.

Case in point: It was Saturday, late afternoon. OPK were, of course, filling my front yard with their usual annshinnegans, and my Trailblazer was sitting in the front yard, having recently been emptied of my new furniture (purchased in an abandoned parking lot.)

A woman with a large bowl of tomatoes appears between the Slum House and the tumbling down garage. She asks if any of us would like some tomatoes. In all honesty, accepting any kind of food from a person I've never slapped eyes on before in my life, who appears from that particular direction ranks as high on my Bucket List as licking the purple acid.

Anyway, being up to our own eyeballs in our own tomatoes, we decline.

She suddenly points a finger at me, begins coming at me, wading through the OPK, yelling, "YOU! ARE YOU THE WOMAN WHO JUST WALKED INTO MY HOUSE THE OTHER DAY?!"

Er, uh, NO. (But thanks for asking)

"Are you sure? Some woman just walked into my house and woke me AND my kids up, saying that my daughter was playing in the road. Are you SURE it wasn't you?"

Uh, Yup. I'm sure it wasn't me. I don't know where you live. I don't know who you are, and I don't know what your kids look like. I also don't just walk into other people's houses.

She continued telling her story--not that I was listening, as I was busy unrolling my eyeballs from the back of my head. She eventually wandered back the way she came.

When telling this story recently, I was told that I was "Goon Bait." Personally, I'll stick with the Weirdness Goddessness.

Posey

My niece is 5 years old. She started Kindergarten this week. She's adorable as all get out, and this morning when I called to talk to her Dad, my brother, she just wouldn't get off the phone. Too funny!

Part of my conversation with her involved her telling me that her dad couldn't come to the phone because she was on the corded phone, and the cord wouldn't reach to him. (And you're going to get the same visual as I got.)

"See?" she said. "It's only this long and it needs to be that long."

First Day of School Pics

Before:
Unauthorized Self-Portrait, After

I love that we've moved beyond her nostril period! This is hilarious!