Adventures in Wreath-Making

This post could also be called “Crafting with Wine.” Or, most accurately, “Sh*t I Will Never Do Again.”

No, it was not that bad. It was tedious. And it took forever. And the outcome was neither symmetrical or perfect, which are two unrealistic outcomes I strive for during every DIY project, the unsatisfaction of which is the reason why this is not strictly a DIY blog and why I do not craft for a living. I’m not going to tell you not to do it, because it was simple and relatively inexpensive. I will share with you why I hope this wreath lasts me forty years so I do not have to do this again.

Me loves ornaments. Specifically red and silver ones, which are the only ones allowed to join the festivities in my house at Christmas. Last year I wanted an ornament ball wreath for the front door, but splurged on a wreath that is so bodacious my children had to open the front door all the way to come inside. It is the Fat Elvis of Christmas wreaths. I worship it.

This year with the addition of our uber-fabulous turquoise front door, which my short, walking, talking units of testosterone and boogers still think is odd and does not match our house, I resolved that I would make a red-and-silver ornament ball wreath for the front door. Because buying one from here or from here would have been too simple and impersonal, and I’m all about personal touches.

The opportunity for a seizing of creativity came two weekends ago, when the boys were in Beaumont and Corey was in New Orleans for a class. This girl hauled off to Hobby Lobby to score some supplies at 6:30 on a Friday evening. I know women are supposed to be “gatherers,” the historical term for “shoppers,” but I defy that characteristic because I hate to shop. Order your supplies from Target. I bought 130 PLASTIC red and silver and white ornaments of various finishes and sizes, all half off, and a straw wreath, which you will leave the plastic on. The hot glue melts and fuses to the plastic on the wreath, so there is some extra hold there. You can also use a foam one, which I’m told works just as well. It’s also probably more visually pleasant from the back.

I recommend you start here, but this step is completely optional.

You have to pull all the little tips off the ornaments and throw them away. I glued ornaments in a circle all the way around the outside of the wreath, standing them out where the tip used to be. I wanted a wreath as wide as I could get it.

I did the same thing around the inside. It is not going to matter if the ornaments do not meet up perfectly. That gap will be covered when you fill it in.

Stability in your wreath, which at this point is floppy when you pick it up, is achieved by putting a dot of glue between each perimeter ornament and sticking them together.

After you wreath is stable, start filling it in. I could have done it a little tighter, but I was trying to make 100 large ornaments work. My bad. I could have used 110 or 115, but by the time I realized that, Hobby Lobby was closed.

Now, I will blame it on my frustration and partial boredom at this point that that pictures stopped, because this is around the point that I realized that I did not have enough ornaments and since Hobby Lobby was closed, I would be schlepping back over there on a Saturday.

I wanted it to be more than just round sparkly ornaments, but could find no inspiration for what that extra glitz should be. I hung it on a door and looked at it for a while before going to bed.  The next morning, I braved Hobby Lobby for twenty more small ornaments and some accents. I ended up with a silver "Noel," a red reindeer and a white snowflake. I also bought a wooden "A" and modge-podged some candy cane wrapping paper to it. All of these items are stuck to the wreath with high temperature hot glue.

There are about 150-160 different sized ornament balls on this wreath and there are STILL holes. I just got to the point where a) I could not add any more and take myself seriously and b) realized no one would see my small holes from the street.

For the size, which measures about 28 inches across, the $50 I spent on it it way less than I would spend for a similar wreath of a smaller size from my favorite Christmas stores. It may have to be an indoor wreath next Christmas. We will just have to see how it holds up. So far, in the six days it has been on the door, I've only had to replace two ornaments that fell off, and closer inspection revealed they were not glued that well to begin with.

I am getting much braver on the crafting. Look out, Martha.

The Official Chili Recipe for People Who Don't Eat Ground Meat

Could also be titled "Cooking Chili that Picky Eaters Eat."

I do not eat ground meat. Any of it. Ever. This means I do not dine on breakfast sausage, hot dogs or hamburgers. It makes me a social pariah at cookouts and tailgates. It means I have to be quick and creative in the kitchen because the easiest weeknight dinners are spaghetti, lasagna, tacos, chili dogs and hamburgers. I love beef, chicken and pork in their boneless, slab forms. Just don't put it in a grinder and then make me cook it. I often substitute chopped chicken or shredded beef in recipes.

Enter the chili dilemma. Who doesn't love a good pot of chili? Over Fritos with a bunch of cheese and spiced-up sour cream on it? I certainly do. So for the last four years I've been looking for a chili recipe that did not have ground meat it in. Every one I tried was unsuccessful - either because it just tasted like beef chunks in well-flavored tomato sauce or set our orifices ablaze at both entry and exit. This was the exact day I learned that the smaller you chop something, the more intense the flavor. So when you put a couple of honking big chipotle peppers in the food processor and make them a paste, you'd better ready yourself for the Fiery Colorectal Rejection that will occur before bedtime. I thought I was going to have to run Corey by the Emergency Room.

The losing streak ended Sunday.

I found this recipe for Steak Chili at Tasty Kitchen, and decided to try it (judging by the quantity of chili powder), but I could tell there were some tweaks I needed to make to the ingredients. On Sunday, at the same time that we were painting the "B" side of our front door navy blue, I was testing a chili recipe. That knowledge of surrounding activities should explain why I took a picture in the middle of prepping the ingredients and then did not take another one. At all. Until I put leftovers in a bowl two days later.

Steak Chili, Allbritton-style

2 pounds chuck steak, cubed (I used a tender chuck, less fat)

2 tbsp vegetable oil

Season salt

Black pepper

Kosher salt

1 whole large onion (I used red)

2 jalepenos, without the seeds

4 cloves of garlic

2 tsp Adobo sauce (from a can of chipotle peppers)*

3 tsp cumin

3 tsp coriander

1/4 cup smoked paprika

1/2 cup dark chili powder (not ancho)

3 cups beef stock

1 cup tomato sauce

1 cup beer

2 tsp sugar

3 tbsp cornstarch

1/2 cup water

*An important note about texture: If you like your chili chunky, you should chop the onion, jalepeno and garlic and use one cup of diced tomatoes with juice. If you do not like your chili chunky, use the tomato sauce and finely, finely (almost puree) your onion, jalepeno and garlic in a food processor.* 

*A more important note about spice: This is of a medium spice. We do not eat chipotles in this house, because of that screaming hot entry and exit I mentioned earlier, so I used only the sauce from the can of chipotles. My mother put cayenne pepper in everything we ate growing up, so my spice tolerance is the highest in our house, and I. cannot. handle. the. chipotle. The adobo sauce is quite spicy. Extra beverages were poured at our table but we could not stop eating it. If you do not like extra spice, omit the jalepeno and adobo sauce entirely.*

After I cube my steak, I dump it in a bowl and coat it with Lawry's Season Salt and black pepper, and use my hands to coat it evenly. In a large Dutch oven, heat the 2 tbsp vegetable oil over medium heat until it shimmers. Add half the beef, turning until brown on all sides. Remove to a plate and cook the rest. Remove all meat from the pot, leaving the oil and cooked fat. Put the onion, jalepeno and garlic, either finely chopped or chunky, to the pot and cook until soft. (That's about 90 seconds for finely chopped and five minutes for chunky.) Add the adobo sauce and cook for one more minute. Add the cumin, coriander, paprika and chili powder and toss around for one more minute. Add all of the beef with juices and turn to coat.

Pour in the beef stock, beer, tomato sauce (or diced tomatoes) and sugar and bring to a boil. (Your instincts will tell you to add salt, but you should wait.) Once the pot starts to boil, turn the heat to your simmer settings (mine is 3.5 on my electric stove) and put a lid on the pot, but leave a vent for the steam. Cook for two hours, stirring every half hour or so.

After two hours, you need to taste it. Then you should start salting it. I prefer kosher salt, which is less salty than table salt, and ended up using three big pinches, which is probably a little over a teaspoon. Start small, taste, and keep adding until the flavor explodes in your mouth. When you like the taste, cover, vent and cook for another hour.

By this time everybody on your street can smell that you have cooked chili, and they will be trying to get in your door to eat it. You may need to leave a bat by the door. After the tortuous three hours are over, the meat will be shreddable, so I used my potato masher to just push on it in the chili and get it to shred. Worked like a charm. If you find that, after you shred your meat with the tool-that-has-many-purposes-beyond-its-name potato masher, you would like a thicker chili, which I did, mix a few tablespoons of cornstarch with 1/3 or 1/2 cup of water and add it to the chili. If you use a thickener, you will need to bring it back up to a boil, stir it for a minute, then turn the heat back down.

The recipe says you should serve it with some shredded cheese, a dollop of sour cream and some green onions, which sounds just divine. I would typically put fritos UNDER that combination. Corey, Jake and Landen all crumble Saltine crackers into theirs. On this night, I made an accompaniment to my chili, and was ostracized by my entire family for doing so. I like food more than they do, so you'll want to listen to ME and put your chili over these here mashed potatoes. I did not use any milk and went instead with seven tablespoons of butter, but if you're not adventurous, or you did not eat pats of butter as a kid, you should stick to the low-butter-add-milk recipe.  THEN you put all that in a bowl. . . .

And reject the judgment from your husband, your children, and your seester and ENJOY your steak chili over your cheesy chili mashed potatoes. Stand up for what you believe in.

I believe that anything is better with some taters in it. 

Turquoise Front Door: The B Side

If you are not a child of the 80s who remembers buying cassette tapes with a hit single on one side and a random song from the album on the other (the "B" side), this title makes no sense to you.

If you have not already, you need to join Pinterest. It's basically an online bulletin board where you "pin" pictures of things that you like or inspire you or items from websites you want to buy, and it keeps it all organized by your "boards." I have board for projects I want to do, stuff for the boys, Christmas decorations, Christmas gift ideas to give others, rooms I love, upgrades I want to make to my house, food I want to cook and stuff I want my husband and my mama to buy me for Christmas. If you click on that little "P" icon over on the right under each of our names, you can see what we are "pinterested" in.

I love blogs almost as much as I love Pinterest. My favorites are the ones where common, untrained people like me work on their houses and then tell you what they did and how they did it. Two of my favorites are Young House Love and Bower Power. They happen to be best friends who came up with an idea over the summer to do a non-affiliated "Pinterest Challenge," where they would complete a DIY project they liked on Pinterest and then blog about it. They invite people with blogs to also do a "pinned" project and link to it on their site. I was planning to do this project anyway, so I just time it for this past weekend so I could put it up on the Pinterest Challenge.

The simplest explanation for why I keep slapping paint on everything I can think of and find the energy to complete is because we are not currently budgeted for the two main things I want to do to my house: built-ins in the liviing room and adding cabinetry in the kitchen. I do keep convincing Corey to not only entertain but assist with these little projects of mine, and he's always pleased with the results. Recently, we painted our front door turquoise, which has gotten quite a pleasant reaction, because it's bold and suprising, and I revealed it in this post, but, here's a photo to remind you:

Then I kept looking around Pinterest and home magazines and those decorators kept telling me not to ignore color on the doors INSIDE your house. This led me to the conclusion that the inside of my back door needed to be painted as well. And the obvious color was Navy. See? Look how dull it is in this picture of the house readied for Landen's First Communion party, painted the same color as the walls with white trim:

This is very sad for me because I have since been forced to get rid of this couch.

This weekend, the weather was lovely and the boys were in Beaumont, so we reserved our Sunday afternoon to do a bit of painting. Corey taped up the windows and the top and right trim, thinking we would have the door cracked open to paint the left side of the door. We ended up taping the left trim after I ran the paint brush up and down it, screamed like an injured walrus and washed it off quickly with Pine Sol.

Corey also sanded the door with a fine grit sandpaper. We did not use primer because we were painting dark over light, but we should have used a rougher sandpaper to make sure we could get all the sheen off the old paint so the new paint would stick. This would be a lesson learned during Coat Two. But "thin and even coats" is the tedious and correct way to go, so after one coat, we had this:

While Coat One was drying, I took the hardware outside to strip and paint it. Ultimately I am going to paint all the hardware in the house (instead of paying $12 per door to replace with eighteen doors). So it's a commitment to paint the hardware on this door, because the rest of the hardware will soon follow. They did not have the Cobalt Mist I used on the front of the door, so I went with the similar-but-more-brown and very trendy oil-rubbed bronze. Step 1 is to clean the hardware with something that does not leave a residue. I use watered-down Pine Sol. Step 2 is rubbing the entire thing with a deglosser, because you cannot sand it. Step 3 is sticking them into a paper plate, or that's MY step because I spray paint my entire arm if there is no shield. Step 4 is applying a primer. I use a spray auto primer, because it is meant to go on metal.

The paper plate allows you to pick it up and turn it so you can spray in all the angles you need. I find that spray paint needs to cure, cure, CURE for a very long time between coats - up to two hours. It may be the sub-tropical weather I paint in. I just do not add coats of paint until the previous coat is no longer sticky. I ended up doing three thin coats of oil-rubbed-bronze spray paint, which I did not photograph again until the hardware went back on the door.

After about an hour, Coat Two was ready to go on the door. Coat Two actually redistributed the paint from Coat One, which was followed by another injured walrus yell and then a hearty Lucy Ricardo wail/whine which ended with resolution to let TWO HOURS go between Coats Two and Three, to make sure the paint was bonded and would not removed under the brush strokes of wet paint.

Okay, I'll back up and let you see the full door after the second coat.

This puts us at 6:30 PM applying the third coat to the entire door. Then at 8:30 PM we put another coat just around the windows, which is the area that really needed the stern rubbing with coarse sandpaper. If I had used primer, we still would have put three thin and even coats on the whole door, so the fourth coat of paint around the one area did not end up being more work. Before we went to bed, we put the hardware back on and closed the door.

Monday morning we admired our blue door (Laura Ashley's Navy matched to Valspar Latex Interior Semi-Gloss) and removed all the tape. My husband and children always sound surprised to me when a project I devised is finished and looks tremendous, and I really feel that constantly having to declare that you are really good at something chips away at your credibility. But I insist that I have a vision for this house, and my vision will never be wrong. It's again a bold statement in the room, but there's enough navy in the rugs and porcelain and lamps that it does not look out of place here. Plus it's a great interruption to these too-neutral beige walls.

I did not get a picture of the door before Corey put the plastic back on it. If you are wondering what those little silver dots are or why the bottom of the door is shinier than the top, it's because there is a piece of thick plastic mounted to the bottom of the door so that the dog does not scratch and ruin the door. I had a friend who put this on the outside of her back door, (but her huge dog still destroyed it.) Little Murphy scratches at the door when he has to potty, or he sees us coming up the driveway, or someone or something walks/runs/bikes in front of our house.

Here's a close-up of the knob and lock with the very cured oil-rubbed bronze spray paint.

This concludes a very long post about my completion of the non-affiliated Pinterest Fall Challenge. Thanks Sherry and Katie for opening the field for all of us who tinker with our houses as a hobby (because we have not yet figured out how to get paid for it) to contribute to your blogging event! If you did not get here from their pages, please make sure you go check out what Sherry and Katie and Ana and Erin, the professionals, completed for their Pinterest Challenge, and check out what all the other bloggers contributed.

Does anyone know what a warlock is? Or does?

Friday was Free Dress day with a Halloween theme at St. Jude (if you paid $1 per child to benefit the Beta Club). Fifty-three pound Jake still fits in the jack-o-lantern shirt my mom got him two Halloweens ago, but I did not tell him it was that old. Corey found Landen a new shirt at the Wal-Marts, which he did not want to wear until he found out it glowed in the dark.

Do all little boys look adorable in blue jeans? I have one with no hiney and one with a round hiney, but both are equally dapper when they wear jeans. I told Jake he looked like a small version of a grown man in jeans, and he said "thanks, I'm mature."

Tonight I was at work for the trick-or-treating festivities (darn) and Corey confessed that he was secretly hoping the boys would get conduct marks or in trouble on the bus and he would not have to take them. We are taking the Carrot approach to parenting: no level of removing their right to attend extracurricular activities or power on electronics will get them to adjust their behaviors, so we have started holding desirables in front of them. For the last two weeks they have been warned that just because we bought the costumes does not mean they have automatically won the right to wear them anyway. That right has to be earned.

We reinforced this for two weeks. Predictably, today Jake came home with a conduct mark for saying a game at his Halloween party was "stupid," for which I ripped him a new asshole (via phone from work) about how we are absolutely never rude. I pulled out the full name and demanded suggestions for what he SHOULD have said. Landen got a mark for forgetting to bring all his materials to class. So both of them were allowed to go door-to-door but neither of them were permitted to enjoy not one single smidge of candy out of their full buckets when they returned home.

Apparently this does not prevent the enthusiasm of going galavanting around the neighborhood in a ninja or warlock costume and asking people for candy. They have been on a sugarless high, upstairs giggling and playing. Corey had some notes to share with y'all about taking the boys trick-or-treating for the first time in several years:

• Landen was fifty feet from the house before he started complaining about his feet hurting.
• He had to tell Jake to "slow down" and wait for him before they were at the end of the block.
• They did not grasp the concept of "walk toward the porch lights" and kept asking Corey for which direction to turn.
• Apparently a plastic staff is too heavy to hold upright for long walks.

Behold, Corey's photography (and my cutesy edits.)

I asked Corey why Landen was wearing his Heelys, which always blister his feet, and Corey's exact words were "Because you weren't here and you're the better parent." There it is, immortalized on the Internets for all eternity.

At some point they met Jake's friend and classmate and our neighbor Grant and hit some houses together. Grant was a Dementor and his little brother a penguin.

Don't those buckets look like they are getting heavy. They're about 60% full from just out little neighborhood. I had one piece and Corey had three after the boys went to bed.

And Cydney Wilson partied like a Halloween Rock Star this weekend - first as Darth Vader (in a leather corset?) and then as a wolf (with no hair on her stomach.)

 
I just do not understand where these kids get all this energy. I cannot remember if my last dress-up Halloween was 2002 or 2005 or 2006. I repurposed a prom dress and went as a fairy all three years.

An Exercise in Redemption and Dexterity

The last time I carved a pumpkin, my mother was holding the knife. I'm thinking I was about ten, before it was not longer adorable to entertain me and before I discovered boys. A couple days ago I was in Fresh Market and they had big gorgeous pumpkins, so I came home and asked Corey if he wanted to carve pumpkins this weekend. He said no. So this morning when I was at Albertson's and they had huge pumpkins two for $6, I did what he loves so very much for me to do. I bought two of them. 

I'm so very tired of being that beast that fusses and bitches and corrects short people all day. Landen is grounded for yet another conduct mark, so he's without electronics privileges for the weekend. I grabbed a little bit of daylight this evening and surprised Landen with my two big pumpkins. I sent Corey a bunch of stencils today to print, so while we waited for him to come home with those, the boys and I set about prepping the pumpkins for carving.

First you have to start with a giant pumpkin. I do not remember watching my mom struggle so much to get a knife through a pumpkin top. Also, how are you supposed to cut that shit in a circle? Mine could barely be described as an octagon.

Thankfully Landen was willing and eager to scoop out the guts of the pumpkins. It's so very nasty and icky and gooey and that's just the shit that boys are made of. 

Not surprising, Jake was much more interested in the knives than in the goo that is the center of the pumpkin. Also, please notice how he crosses his toes.

See?! Excited about the ick. He actually did a great job of using the ice cream scoop to scrape the seeds and the pumpkins bits from the pumpkins and then use his very own digits to pull the yuck out. If you have a dog who helps you do everything and eats a bunch of goo, do not freak out. It's not poisonous to dogs.

This is the look of a boy who has been commanded for the last time not to touch that knife and who is trying with every fiber of his little being to not touch the knife again. 

So when Corey got home we taped the stencils to the pumpkins and used safety pins to poke a bunch of holes in the lines of the stencil. Corey and I worked on a pumpkin and Jake and Landen worked on a pumpkin.

Here you might be shocked to find a photo of the very husband who, when asked whether he would like to carve pumpkins, denied any desire to participate in the activity. Yet here he sits, at dusk in our driveway, poking holes in a pumpkin with a safety pin. That's why I keep him. 

And Cousin It came to our pumpkin-carving party.

Have I ever mentioned on here that the only activities that Murphy does not participate in are ones that involve nudity? There is nothing a member of his family (maybe mostly me) can engage in that he does not want to be right in the middle of. Folding clothes? Invited. Waking the boys up in the morning? Him first. Carving a pumpkin? Sign him up. 

As night fell and I went off to grill steaks and make homemade potato skins, Corey was left with the cutting, led by the light of the MagLight Landen was holding. 

It is really hard to cut a pumpkin. It does not slice easily, and the two I got were really thick. It took the strength and dexterity of Corey's hands to get them cut, even though we did not make it through the process with the center part of the "A" intact.

At the end, we had a pumpkin with a regular nose and a bat for a mouth.

And the outline of the letter "A."

After they were done I took them outside and sprayed them with a bleach-water mixture to keep them from molding and getting nasty before Halloween. After they dry, I'll be rubbing the cut edges with Vaseline, which is supposed to prevent them from drying and shrinking.

Both little boys thought the pumpkin process was fun. We talked about how much they remember their mom liked Halloween. They were really excited to see the candles light up the inside of the pumpkins. Next year, Landen wants to help Corey combine two different stencils to make a "Two-Face" pumpkin. Jake wants to draw his own stencil. I'd just like to make an intact "A." We managed to get through it without anybody yelling or snarling or snapping at anyone. 

Happy Weekend, Internets!

Allbrittons by the numbers: October edition

There are so many random, often ridiculous, events that occur in the daily life of on of these Allbrittons, but they are not all riveting enough to warrant their own blog post. I like to do these little recaps for you, just so you do not get the sense that 1-2 posts per week means that nothing happens. For instance,

Three is the number of conduct marks my youngest boy got IN ONE DAY last week. The next time this happens, she will send him to the principal's office to be disciplined, and we've made clear what happens when he gets home should things again escalate to that level.

Four is the number of teachers and administrators who participated in my parent/teacher conference at school this morning. It was scheduled prior to the earning of three marks in one day, which is probably why the Principal and the Assistant Principal got added to the meeting this morning.

Seventeen is the number of years I predict I will walk around with the feeling that someone heavy is standing on my chest and occasionally jumping. Extend that if there is a third Allbritton added to our brood in the next couple years. I base this number off the fact that my parents are seeming to relax a little, finally, now that my sister is 24 and pursuing a direction in life. I'm thinking Landen will be 25 before I can say "f*ck it" and let the chips fall where they may.

Eight thousand, eight hundred is the number of dollars that someone else's insurance company paid to have my car restored to its purchased condition. It's better than it was before it was wrecked, since I had dinged it twice: once on my garbage cans and one on a car parked too close behind me. The amount that same insurance company pays moi for hurting my shoulder and pinching a nerve in my back better be considerably more than this.

One is the number of the lesson in the life rulebook that I propose should be "Never be at fault in a wreck with a lawyer's daughter."

Seven is the number of A's that Landen had on his report card. He had a "B" in P.E., which lends something to the "nurture" column of the nature vs. nurture debate on how children turn out, because I'm pretty sure I went out and got mono in high school to get out of P.E. for six weeks. The puzzling thing about this is that he's only had one week of P.E. I asked him why he has a B, just curiously, and he believes it to be that he slides around the floor in his socks too much. He somehow emerged from the nine weeks with a B+ in conduct, which I said I could not believe. To this he responded with "Me neither."

Last night after I yelled at him and sent him to his room for disobeying me by playing on the bus and getting in trouble for it, I told him that he makes me smile and I'm not happy when he's not here. This is a very confusing relationship between parent and eight-year-old son.

Six is the number of A's that Jake brought home on his report card. I'm really going to count and say it's seven, because he has not taken art yet, and Landen has. There is no doubt that when Jake Allbritton takes art, he will make an A in it. What Jake will never make an A in is penmanship. This frustrates Corey because he cannot read what Jake writes. I say "pick your battles," because Jake can read his own writing, and apparently the teacher can read it well enough to mark his answers right or wrong, so I do not harp on how many extra lines he puts in the number "6." And just to give you a sense of how different Landen's conduct is than Jake's - Jake got an A in conduct, and that's WITH detention for slapping Landen in the face.

If you know the parents of this boy, please slap them in the head for not being more attentive to the growth of the child's hair. This is immortalizaed in the St. Jude yearbook for all eternity. Also, please send $5 bills postmarked to The Tooth Fairy at our address because Jake keeps pulling his teeth.

More than eighty-five is how many pounds of intruder have been occupying my marital bed this week. Could you tell this face she had to sleep on the couch or the floor?

In the past, she's made me sleep in the middle. I've been putting my foot down lately, so she's been sleeping in the middle. She does not care for this mandate.

Fifty-two is the number of lines that you have to write for me when you come home with a conduct mark for not following the rules at St. Jude.

Twenty-four is the average number of points our flag football team scores in a ball game. If you live in Baton Rouge and want your kid to play flag football for the YMCA, email me and I'll tell you which coach to ask for. We have stomped every team they've given us. We only have one game left.

Twenty is the number of minutes you have to read in my house after you finish your homework and before any electronics are powered on, IF you have not gotten yourself grounded from electronics for the evening. The Cub Scouts say that as long as I am feeding you adequate (not delicious) meals, clothing you, getting you medical attention and sending you to school, I am not neglecting you. I am not required to let you participate in extracurricular activities, buy you toys, take you to the movies or restaurants, have a television for you to watch or a video game for you to play or buy you trendy clothing. I would add that if I am not teaching you the value of reading and comprehension, I am also neglecting you.

Thirty is the number of minutes that Jake hi-yahs in tae kwon do every Thursday. He has another month of his introductory course at the YMCA, and then if he wants to continue, I can get a second mortgage to pay for his continued lessons at the dojo. The best thing that has come out of this for me is that when you give him what he wants or command him to do something, he bows in gratitude or acquiescence.

Seven-hundred-sixty-nine is the number of miles between me and the nearest military school that will accept fourth graders. Fun fact.