I'm putting off cooking bacon

I don't have a relevant, witty title for this blog post. We're having waffles and bacon for dinner tonight, and I'm fighting starting the bacon because while I love to eat it and can smell it for miles and miles, I do not enjoy cooking it. I'm also not particularly good at cooking bacon.

For Mother's Day, the boys each made me something at school. Landen made me fish out of his hands with little heart mouths and bugeyes. He's very proud of it. He keeps asking me if I like it and gets all bright-eyed when I tell him how much I ADORE it.

Jake make me a small cross. I'm not sure of the pattern - it looks almost camouflaged - but it has red in it. He made it clear that his teacher made them do those. I do not get offended by such statements anymore, because he's still working through his shit. When I told him that I loved it and held it to my heart, he smiled, hugged me and patted my head before saying "you're welcome," wrinkling his nose like he knows I love (it's my favorite Jake face) and running upstairs.

Corey bought me My Passion for Design by Barbra Streisand (I worship) and from the boys, he gave me the Chef Basket. I've been hinting that I needed that more than life itself for several months now. You can boil pasta in it (though clearly not spaghetti or angel hair) and fry shit (which I do not do) and you can turn it upside down and steam vegetables in it (50% of the people in this house eat the type of vegetables you can steam.)

So, for Mother's Day I want to reflect and share on the tools that help me not screw this up. I haven't been told I wasn "the Worst" in a while, since I sent Landen to school dressed for Santa pictures with no money for Santa pictures.

This idea I got from a friend of mine. I don't have a name for this wall. I'm open to suggestions. This is located in the laundry room, right off the kitchen.

The top left clipboard is the Parent clipboard. It has the color coded calendar for when which child has a test or project due, early dismissal days, class parties, extracurricular stuff and the weekends they go with their grandparents. That clipboard also has important mail, the monthly and yearly school calendars and weekly bulletins. To the right is a whiteboard where I keep track of what I'm cooking with day. The two bottom clipboards are for each boy. That's where party invitations, weekly schedules, spelling words, certificates, homework assignments and projects. The poster at the bottom is our Allbritton House Rules.

The second tool I rely on is our feelings chart. My therapist will make me use one like this in sessions. When Jake brought home F's in reading, we knew that something was going on in his little brain. So I pulled up a feelings chart with kids' faces on it on the computer and we used that for him to get his feelings out. I found this magnet on Amazon.com and it had a little frame that identifies the feeling for that day. Landen puts a funny one as a joke in the mornings, but we have made Jake stand in front of it and pick his feeling when he's having trouble.

Today we are hopeful that Corey, whose unit has called up volunteers to help with flood prep, will come home to us tonight. Where there will, hopefully, be bacon waiting.
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