Camping practice and costume shopping

I do not know who is more excited about Cub Scouts. (I know I am the least excited.) Corey went to the Scout Store on Friday and spent more than $200 but less than $300 on ONE Scout uniform for each boy. One. Despite the blow to his banking abilities, Corey talked about the Scouts all night on Friday night. 

Next weekend is their first camp out at the Boy Scout camp about an hour from here. Corey cannot go because he has drill next weekend, and I am not going because I am not an Outdoor Girl. This is a rite of passage I feel no need to participate in. I took Jake to a Scout meeting last month that was held outside, and I sat in my air-conditioned car for the duration of it. Their pawpaw is taking them on the camp out next weekend. People are excited. 

Because he was not going to be available to take them on their first Scout camp out, Corey decided that he would camp in the backyard this weekend. Then they had a vote and decided it was way too warm for the three of them to be rolling around a tent together, so he decided to fire up the fire pit we got last Christmas and roast hot dogs for supper Saturday night. 

Jake is clearly not a fan of fire. I am not sure how he is going to fair at a camp site. He ended up putting something over his face that would not burn his eyes. His hot dog was barely warm. He is like Murphy. He circles the fire, but would prefer not to go near it. Too smoky. Hopefully he does not outgrow this and thus will not spend much time in bars in college.

Landen is a little pink from the noon sun we all endured at the flag football game yesterday. Our team is the best team in our age group in YMCA flag football, by the way. They do not keep score, but we do, and you do not want to play against the purple team. We are in the end zone at least five times per game. We have two kids on our team who zip around the field like The Flash. And every one of our kids can zero in on the guy with the ball and pull his flag. If we cannot get your flag, one of our teammates will throw himself down on the ground in your bath and you will fall over him.

Landen is a little more fearless than Jake.

After hot dogs, there was marshmallow roasting. Landen is terrible at this because he is afraid of turning his marshmallow black. He's had this issue in the past, apparently. The best way to eat a roasted marshmallow is with half of a Hershey bar, between two graham cracker halves, like this:

And people, this was my FIRST S'more in life. In 31 years of life, I have never eaten this. I wish the graham crackers would get soft, but me loves a warm marshmallow and a warm chocolate bar. Ooshy, gooshy loveliness. 

Pay attention to Murphy in the background scrounging for food. This was after he ate his dinner of a hot dog mixed with some dog food. The Allbritton boys ended up dropping a marshmallow on purpose onto the mesh cover of the fire pit to let it melt all down into the fire. Then they dumped a bunch of water on it and peed in the grass. I long for a baby girl.

Last weekend I made a deal with the boys that if I got no notes from any teachers this week (for missing homework or forgetting a book) I would take them to the Halloween store so they could have first pick of costumes. It proved to be quite the incentive, and this morning I got everyone out of the house at noon to go costume shopping. 

When they're teenagers, they will be horrified that they have been on the internet in pictures like this, forced to wear goofy glasses in the costume store. 

Jake really did like this hat. Last year I bought him an aviator cap that he wears around the house. I guess Landen thinks pharoahs are supposed to look mean.

Have you ever noticed that once you get your children started with playful behavior, they cannot figure out how to turn it off? This is a dangerous phenomenon when the Disciplinarian begins sword combat with them in the middle of the Halloween store.

We have had a home improvement project going on here this weekend, but we also have two Den meetings this evening. Corey got the uniforms squared away and the boys have been hanging out in them for the last hour. They will both get their Bobcat badge this afternoon. The pants are those kind that zip off into shorts. We heard one of the boys saying "I don't usually like to wear shorts but I do now because I look good in this." 

See for yourself.  

When I saw them, I cried. They're growing so much and they are such happy kids, which is just a miracle considering what they went through last year to get to this smiling, achieving place. I told them that their mom would be so proud to see them in the Scout uniforms, and Jake said "she sees," and hugged and kissed me. 

What else does YOUR dining table do?

I have an aunt who has a house that is always in pristine, magazine-ready condition. It actually was in a magazine once. She raised a child and kept a house that way. You can ask the child how she felt about that. So in this blog, when I am often apologizing for the condition of my house in photos, she responds to me that the pictures of my house make her realize that she has no idea how real people live.

This inspires me to break it down using a scene from today. The boys come in a little before 4:00 pm. They walk themselves from where the bus drops them off at the stop sign, which is one house away from mine. I can hear the bus stop, so I know when they should be walking in the door. I'm usually upstairs in my office, so they come in, get a snack and a drink and wait for me to come down. I do and we get out all the folders and books and assignment pads and start organizing for their homework session, which has to be completed plus a parent-required reading period before any electronic devices can be turned on. This is a scene from about 4:30 pm today.

As you can see, my dining room is not just our dining room. It is also the Instructional Zone.

1.  Usually I park in the carport and come in the back door, so my purse is typically NOT on the dining room table. It prefers to be on the table in the sunroom. Today my car was parked in front of the house, so here rests my purse. You cannot see that my purse is sitting on top of three days of mail and catalogs. This is riveting information that now has you on the edge of your seat waiting for #2. You're welcome.

2.  Here sits my oldest boy, doing a little English workbooking. You may notice that his hair is significantly shorter than all the conversations you and I have had about his long, luxurious crown of hair and pictures we've exchanged since this summer. We had to get a little corrective haircut for him. He twists the front of his hair so much that he is giving himself a bald spot. I do not know how to get him to quit. He has to do that himself. Either he will force himself to stop for fear of being embarrassed to death when I send him to school with no hair in the front of his head. Or he's going to pull all the hair from the front of his head and will not have anything to twist anymore.

3. This is the oldest boy's assignment pad. You cannot tell from the photo, but Jake has the worst handwriting I've ever seen. I decide to pick my battles and leave that problem to his teachers.

4. This is Landen's assignment pad. He has beautiful handwriting, but he is slow as frigging molasses when he has to write in cursive.

5. Landen is going on his second field trip of the year and this is the permission slip we have to sign when we send $7 to the school for him to go. Jake has had no field trips. Poor middle schoolers. I also take calls and answer emails on my Blackberry while the boys do their homework. We do the things they may need my help with first (math) and then I go back up to my office and leave them to copy definitions or write their spelling words three times by themselves. I'm reinforcing the school's attempts to teach third graders and fifth graders some independence.

6.  This is my youngest child, who never misses an opportunity to be a ham and a half. He's supposed to be doing his math homework - subtracting money with three or more digits and decimals - not trying to commandeer a static picture I am trying to take. Landen always comes home with food on his white shirt. In this picture he has chocolate on the corners of his mouth from the ice cream sandwich he ate when he got home. Last night we got in a fight because he could not grasp the concept of not getting seconds of macaroni and cheese.

7.  There are real apples in a bowl on the table, not the faux fruit that is usually there. We are also rocking a tablecloth and my fancy seagrass chargers. Why not the plastic polka-dotted placemats we usually have? Because we had grown up friends over for dinner Saturday night, and we set the table for grown people. It just takes us a long time to unset it. We do this incrementally over a number of days.

8.  This is Jake's old people medicine holder because it's the only way his parents can remember when they check whether they gave him his medicine in the morning, a mere five minutes after he swallows it.

9.  Those two shoeboxes contain the new church shoes their mawmaw bought them this weekend, because they have grown out of their old church shoes. She dropped them off on Sunday. On Tuesday, they are still sitting on my table.

10.  In the distance is a bottle of pet stain remover sitting on my antique side table. Murphy sharted on my white chair the other night and I JUST washed the slipcover, so I was trying to remove the sight and smell with some industrial strength cleaner, which is a no-go. The only way to get shart off a white slipcover is to wash it.

11. YOU may keep ice in the ice bucket on your rolling bar cart. Or at least leave it empty and clean so you can put ice in it on a moment's notice. Not I. My kids have AMAZING bedhead in the morning. We spray their hair with water and detangler and spray gel to make them presentable for school while they eat their breakfast and drink their coffee milk at the table. Then we store it in the handy place in the dining room, because that's where children's hair products are supposed to go.

Miraculously the mess gets cleared enough for the four of us to take our meals here. I inspire my dining table to multitask as efficiently as I do (I cook and work at the same time) and I'm pretty proud of that. And don't worry about there not being room for that distant-future third Allbritton boy child to do their homework and take their meals. The table extends.

I can kick! The blue door.

Remember when I declared that I was going to paint my front door turquoise and we all said "You bet. Sure." because it takes me an average of four months to say I am going to do something and then stand back and look at my finished product? 

So, I decided that my cute chalet cottage needed a pop! of color in the front, and that I wanted that pop of color to be raspberry. And then I remembered that I live in a house full of testosterone and no one would want to come home to a raspberry front door, so I declared that I would paint my front door my second favorite color - turquoise. 

First I had to pick the color. I found some inspiration pictures on Pinterest, like these two

but could not commit to the right color turquoise to go with my brown house. Then I grabbed a Benjamin Moore app for my iPhone that lets you take a picture and match the color to anything in the picture. So I took pictures of all the turquoise things in my house that I like - tables, curtains, plates - and all brought up Meridian Blue. 

Before I can paint the front door, I have to paint the trim around the front door, which is currently black. It needs to be the brown color of the rest of the trim. That's a 10+ hour commitment with the front door open, and the weather and the weekend schedule have not bee quite right for that. It occurred to me today that we could practice on the back door, which already has the brown trim. 

Corey did most of the painting because my shoulder hurts like dammit from when I got rear-ended on my way to work last week. But the concept was mine, and he doubted. Until he put the first coat on and stepped back to look at the blue against the brown of the house and understood and accepted my vision. 'Twas magnificent. 

Don't believe me? Check us out.

This is primer and one coat, after the boys got home from their grandparents weekend. The enthusiasm is not for the door. Jake does not care for it. The boy doesn't understand me at all.

The weather is lovely enough for me to leave the door open to let it dry. I also spray-painted the lock and the door knob with a metallic cobalt spray. 

It's night time now, so you cannot see how spectacular the color really is. You'll have to wait for The Big Front Door Reveal.

So the next Saturday or Sunday that Corey does not have drill and we do not have plans to not be home and the weather is nice enough for us to leave our door open all day, we'll tackle the trim and the front door and our house will have bright blue eyeshadow and I will lurve it even more. 

One more share from the weekend. At Landen's game on Saturday, he was the first to kick the ball to the other team. He did like the coach said and kicked it low so no one would catch it. He's really coming around on the fundamentals of flag football. Excuse the craptastic video. All we had was an iPhone. 

What we did not get on video was the poor kid from the other team that got hit IN THE FACE with a football our team kicked. It was not my kid who kicked the ball or took the football to the face, so it was really awesome. Sorry. 

Proof of a life well-lived, Instagram-style

If you have an iPhone and you have not downloaded the Instagram app, you are light years behind your peers and missing a way to waste a significant amount of time that also makes you feel like an artist. So these are some of my favorites, most of which have shown up before in some social medium, but here they are again, sometimes cleverly captioned. 



My Aunt Marilyn took this picture of Corey and me dancing at my cousin Ainsley's wedding in Bunkie. My family knows how to throw a frigging party. Be jealous if you're reading this and not related to my mother.



Sometimes Dixie Girl comes and stays with us on the weekends. Or when her mama has to work late. This is Murphy's best cousin.

So by now it's no secret that when you get a conduct mark at school, you write lines. For me. Not for St. Jude. I keep them in a drawer in my office upstairs.

Jake keeps pulling his teeth. He's also tugging on a section of the front of his hair so much that he's giving himself a bald spot there. We keep telling him that we're going to have to shave all his long luxurious hair off. In reality, shorter hair would only show the bald spot more, and that's not something I'm willing to torture my fifth grader with.

This is Murphy stealing the Throne of the Man of the House. I do not know what I did with myself before I had this dog. He's the only person in this house who sits still while I give him 500 kisses in the same spot on his face.

When Dixie Girl stays on Saturdays, she does not sleep on the pull out with the boys. She's smart and sleeps in the hole in the bed that Corey leaves. On nights that she sleeps over when there is no slumber party, she sleeps in the bed with me and Uncle Corey. She makes me sleep in the middle.

This is one of my favorite pictures in life.

I'm pretty sure that Landen and I had gotten in a fight this night and he came down after his bath to make up with me. Murphy does not let a child near me without him being present to supervise, so here I am with a child, a dog and a computer in my chair with me.

Jake goes to football practice every week to climb trees at LSU. I want to have a whole bunch of these to show him if he decides to break my heart and not go there one day.

I took this picture of them waiting, waiting to be picked up by their grandparents for a Beaumont weekend. We're all friends here, people, so I can tell you that we were sick and tired of being around each other and they were as ready to leave us as we were not to have to get up and feed anyone the next morning.

This is Daisy. She lives with my parents but Corey and I got her when I was seventeen years old. Usually when we go to Jena we bring Murphy, so we do not see her much. We ran away from everyone this particular weekend and she spent the entire time laying on our heads.

There are very few things that make me want to abandon city life for country living. The sky is one of them. We do not have an empty skyline for great sunsets in Baton Rouge. We also rarely see stars.

Corey never met my friend Maggie's husband Trane, but I've talked about them enough to keep Corey inspired. He wears a KIA bracelet for Trane. You can read about Trane here. He was a big deal as a human being.

My sister is obsessed with Trombone Shorty. A few weeks ago she had to take the boys to school for me, and she tried to make them believers. Landen does not have my taste in music.

I hope that whenever he's a devastatingly handsome teenager, he does not realize how good looking he is. There'll be no living with him after that.

The reason I know (not always feel) that Corey and I are doing a good job with these boys is because every night they sleep like this - soundly and securely - with the peace that only comes from knowing what the next day will be.  We're not 100% sure we have that for ourselves as adults, so it's a smashing success that we are able to give it to the boys.

Cookie Monsters

These days we are very busy with things like this

He's getting good y'all! He's been past the goal line carrying the ball two of the three games.

And this

I'm hoping he'll stick with this long enough for the uniform to fit.

And two nights a week the sky looks like this before I'm leaving Orleans parish

But this post is not about any of that. This post is to tell you all about how I got my kids to forget how much I fuss at them for leaving the toilet seat up, making wild noises in my car, not liking to read, singing to the dog at dinner, leaving their books at school, "forgetting" to follow the rules, bringing home notes from the teacher about how they do not follow directions and still having to be reminded to brush their teeth before we come upstairs to tuck them in and cheer for me being a loving genius.

Both of my boys love mint chocolate chip ice cream. I found a recipe for Mint Chocolate Chip cookies on Pinterest and pinned it because I know that I could make them on a day when I am feeling shitty about my parenting styles and be the hero for the hour.

But I did not bake those cookies, because as talented as I am in the kitchen (cooking not cleaning) and as wonderful a cake and pie baker as I am, I cannot bake cookies. They always are hard on the outside and raw in the middle.

My cousin Katie, who was born exactly five years to the day before me and whom I love like my big sister and whose baby I was obsessed with for the first three years of his life, used to make me cookies made of boxed cake mixes. They are the only cookies I can make. So I adjusted them to include the flavors and coloring necessary to make them Mint Chocolate Chip and fed them to my children, who jumped with glee around my kitchen and told me I was wonderful.

Mint Chocolate Chip Ice Cream Cookies

1 box vanilla cake mix

2 eggs

1/2 cup cooking oil

1/2 to 1 whole teaspoon peppermint extract

Green food coloring

1/2 cup milk chocolate chips

1/2 cup Andes peppermint chocolate chips

A note about the cake mix you select: Do not get a butter recipe. Your cookies will not rise. You can also use Funfetti without the sprinkles.

Preheat your oven to 325 degrees. Spray two baking sheets with non-stick cooking spray.

In a large bowl, mix together the 2 eggs, 1/2 cup cooking oil, 1 teaspoon peppermint extract and green food coloring. Because of the kind I bought (pastel) I had to use about 30 drops. You should start with eight if you are using regular coloring and then add until you get the green that looks like the mint chocolate chip ice cream that you buy. Mixing those wet ingredients will help you not get Tennis Elbow when you try to mix the extract and food coloring evenly in the very thick cookie batter. If you have a husband/boyfriend with nice biceps who likes cookies and you, you can mix it in whatever order you like and then ask him to stir it for you, but my husband was reading and he only comes in the kitchen to feed himself and clean it. So I did it the Wussy-Wet-Ingredients-First way. When the wet ingredients are mixed, add the cake mix and make your very thick batter. Then add your chocolate chips.

I used to roll my cake mix cookies in little one-inch balls, but today I just used this small melon baller/ice cream scoop that it looks like my sister paid a lot of money for, left over here and is never getting back. Worked like a charm. Drop them on the cookie sheet about two inches apart and bake for eight minutes. They will be puffy when you take them out of the oven, but will flatten slightly when you put them on a cooling rack to cool.

It makes about forty cookies.

WARNING: If you do not want your children to make faces at you like this

It's supposed to be his "sexy, food is good" face, but he missed the mark.

Or like this

you should not make these for them.

Put on the damn helmet!

There's a comedian who does a routine about how the five threat levels do not make any sense to him, and he always gets confused calls from his mother, who does not understand what she is supposed to do when the terror threat level goes from yellow to orange. He tells her that no one does. He then proposes his own terror threat alert levels, and there are two: get a helmet, and put on the damn helmet. 

People, I am deep in the throes of hell joy of raising boys. I guess our threat level went officially from yellow to orange with the Duel of the Fates - a day that will live in St. Jude infamy. I may or may not have mentioned that Landen is going through his pestering phase. He knows more than you and he cannot wait until you finish a sentence, so excited is he to point out your idiocy. You're doing it all wrong, and he would love to oblige you and point out how. It is safe to assume that no one feels the red hot coals of this more than Jake, who has held on to his patience like a champ all summer. We've been telling Landen for six months that if he keeps being a pushy know-it-all or a jokester to his friends, some kid is going to lay him out. He did not heed the warning though.

Picture it: Thursday before last in the bus line at St. Jude. Tens of children waiting in line to catch bus 1717, mine included. Landen reaches over and yanks on the handle of Jake's backpack while he's wearing it. Jake declares "I have had enough of this shit!" by turning around and smacking Landen in the face. Landen returns with a punch in the face. Smacks were laid. Punches were thrown. Karate chops were hi-yahhed. It took three teachers to break up the fight, and my oldest came home with a busted lip. The principal said she's never seen a fight like that in her years at St. Jude.

Go big or go home, we teach here. I'm not going into the visit to the principal, the punishments, the crying, the sobbing on the phone with the psychologist they had seen the day before. We move on. Except the television that used to live in their room. It moved out and is being earned back with good behavior. 

I promise that I always go into weekends without Corey with a good attitude. I even let the boys sleep in the bed with me Friday night. They wanted to because we took the TV out of their room, but they said it was because they like sleeping in my bed with me. I like us all in the same room because if some events requires that I save their lives, it's easier if they are next to me, or just in the same room. 

It does not take long before my pleasing personality folds to the challenges of BOYS.

One of them made a Number Two in his bathroom in the dark. This made him completely oblivious to the giant mess he left on the toilet. I really cannot get any more specific than that. Mutiny of the Toilet. I made him clean it with Clorox spray and then rubbing alcohol. Fast forward two days, to my finding a bloodied undershirt AND a bloodied uniform shirt in the bottom of the dirty clothes hamper. Fast forward at warp speed past my flipping out about that.

I mean, I have a hard time believing that you violated a toilet to that degree and did not take note of it, even in the dark. By all measures of intellect, I would assume you have the ability to recognize that such a mess on THE FRONT OF YOUR CLOTHES would surely leave a scene in the restroom. But then to not mention the two? Because you FORGOT?! I responded by #1 asking him 372 questions about all his bathroom expeditions in recent memory, which is obviously faulty information #2 declaring that his father or I (mostly me) would be inspecting all of them in the coming days to make sure his colon is not trying to escape his body and #3 demanded $25 of him to pay for the replacement of the uniform shirt, which I would have been able to  save AT THE TIME but is bound for the garbage with two days of dried mutiny on it.

I have a family member who tells a hilarious story of driving lessons with her mother, who asked after a particularly intense lesson if she was a f**king R-word? Because she is a now well-rounded, sensible and grown individual, I come dangerously near tinkling in my pants when she tells the story, although I'm sure it was not hilarious at the time it occurred. While I am in no way encouraging calling your child a f**king anything (because I certainly do not, out loud), much less the R-word, I completely sympathize with how a parent can be so tried by the apparent brain damage of their children that they lose the head-mouth filter. When angry, I try to stay further away from them than I can reach with my arm, and count to three (sometimes ten depending on the level of rage) before speaking to them.

Corey has given Jake and Landen detailed instructions on how to clean their ears by using their fingertips and the suds from their hair on numerous occasions. It makes no sense then, why it took me EIGHT cotton swabs (both sides) to clean one set of ears on Friday night. And they do not give a rat's ass about having clean teeth.

I really feel like they are both too old for me to sit on the other side of the shower curtain doing call-and-response to ensure they are completing all the requirements of cleaning themselves. Or to watch them brush their teeth or dry their bodies. I'm definitely certain that they both know that blood and vomit are irregular activities that should be reported immediately, not concealed to be found out later.

I caught one of them in the parking lot of the YMCA yesterday with an open car door that did not belong to him. When I asked "What the f**k are you doing Why are you holding someone's car door open?!" he responded that he was just seeing if people were locking their doors.

Yesterday there was gum-chewing, which there will never be in my presence again. Why, you ask? Because the offending child asked me to roll down the car window so the gum could be discarded, which I obliged. Thirty minutes later, as we are returning to the car in the heat of midday, I noticed the wad of about six chewed pieces of gum sitting on the side of my car. When the boy tried to remove it, it turned into a giant, melted, sliding mess on his finger, clothes and door of my car, which Corey the Hero later removed with gasoline.

When I called Corey in a blind rage and crying to express my awe, disgust and anger, all he said was "They're boys, Nell. We're stupid. Put on the damn helmet, baby. That's all I can tell you." 

Tuesday Evening: A Photo Essay

This is a completely gratuitous post about my children climbing trees and "playing" football. I was hormonal and feeling sentimental about The New Normal Life of Jake and Landen.

So, Tuesdays are not fun. The boys come through the door a little before four. This is usually the time of my work day that is the most productive, for various reasons. They grab a snack. We spread out across the dining table to do their homework, continue my workwork. Landen has football practice on Tuesday evenings at the LSU parade grounds. This was the last day I will sit in my car for 90 minutes while Landen practices and Jake climbs trees. I intend for Corey to come straight to practice from work on Tuesdays, so that I can come home and get ready to feed everyone before 8 PM.

It was so beautiful outside Tuesday evening though. I was able to sit in my car with the windows rolled down, watching the tree-climbing and football-practicing of my boys.

Yes, that is a real honest-to-God Army PT shirt, complete with reflective letters, that Jake is wearing. They both have shorts to match, but they are a little short for public outings. This is what happens when he dresses himself. He wears a heather gray t-shirt and a pair of grey on grey houndstooth cargo shorts that do not really fit him.

I can already tell that football is going to be a riot. Their coach keeps asking them to cut down on the "silliness" at practice. There is one kid who dances all the time. I've already been informed by Landen that he is not wearing the correct practice clothes, so I dispatched Corey to buy him some mesh shorts, and now he wants to wear them 24/7. These picturs are pre-cool shorts.

This is my favorite picture. He made it through all those kids too. I have no idea what they are going to have him playing on Saturday. He's not the slowest runner, but he's not the fastest runner. The fastest runner is this teensy-tinsy kid who I'm starting to call The Flash. He's spritely.

Jake perches in various trees to get the bird's eye view of the practice. At one point Landen had the whole team distracted from football to stare at Jake and then all turn to me and tell me my child is stuck in the tree. He's not stuck. He got himself up there. He makes sure he can get himself down. LSU students walk by him and ask if he needs help, and he politely declines. Please note how many feet are between the bottoms of his feet and the tops of the SUVs parked below him.

Sports trivia: You are not allowed to touch the other players with your hands in flag football, unless it is to reach out and grab their flag. Is this YMCA rules? Anyway, the kids practice blocking with their hands behind their backs.

And mine in particular would rather use his hands to pick up pieces of grass and put them in his mouth like he's seen cowboys and ranch hands do on TV.

This is going to make a mighty fine framed photo for a female admirer one day. For my first Valentine's day with a boy ever, in third grade, he gave me a framed photo of himself leaning against a tree in a red turtleneck. I know exactly where in my parents' house that framed photo lives.

Right now I will not make you bored or uncomfortable by talking about how cute Landen's little tush is, and how I know when he gets in high school all the girls are going to go crazy for how fiiiiiiiine his butt looks when he dresses up and wears khaki pants to dances and band concerts....because that's what I did when I first saw his dad when I was fourteen years old.

Seriously, son? Do you really need to DROP out of a tree like that?

The first game is Saturday at noon. Baby Jesus loves me because he's not making me set an alarm or wake up early for flag football this year, knowing that my Saturday sleep-lates are precious to me. We also have to get haircuts this weekend, because this school does not let you get away with shit and they are going to send me a uniform violation notice for these kids any day now. We're off to see Grace at the mall after Saturday vigil mass tomorrow night. Corey has drill all weekend, so it's just me handling everything by myself as a punishment for not being home two nights a week us.

Oh, and then he's out of town Tuesday through Friday. I sent Cydney the Dates She Would Be Living At My House a month ago, so she could clear her schedule. This is a two-adult household. We're accepting applications for a permanent stand-in adult.