Justice Suffers From My Idiocy

Glad to have a reason to tempt Justice out of bed this morning, as I shook his shoulder, I said cheerily, "Wake up Justice, it's wacky hair day! Do you want to go to school with green hair?!"

Well of course he did! So we had fun spiking his hair and spraying it with some green glittery hair-spray that I had left over from a Halloween costume last year. Justice was stoked about his cool, green, glittery, spiked hair!

I dismissed the little nagging worry as I dropped him off at school, and didn't see any other kids with crazy hair. "I looked at the date. It's today. Their parents just aren't as fun as I am. Besides, I only saw about 10 kids, surely that place is a buzz with crazy haired kids." I told myself, as I drove off. "It's just like when you were in grade school, and you called your fellow band member friend every time to make sure it really was the day that you were supposed to wear you band uniform to school, for a band competition. It's fine!"
Doesn't he look great! Well just to satisfy that little nagging doubt that was barely noticeable at the back of my brain, I re-checked the page. Red Ribbon week is NEXT WEEK!!!! Monday was just wear a red shirt, so we're okay there. I guess the up shot is that I noticed my mistake before I sent him to school in his pajamas tomorrow! Oh I'm a loser! I hope Justice has a good sense of "look at me, I'm cool"ness. I hope I haven't scarred him for life.


And since I'm here, who falls asleep like that?????


T

The Smelly Tail of the Mighty Huntress

Yes, Bruce is SOO PROUD of his little girl! He took Ross and Lydia away for youth deer season, and Lydia made her first kill. It was actually a doe, but Bruce posed Lydia with the antlers off a different deer, so he could taunt his hunting buddies with this photo. They all hunt in the same area, and the guys are feeling a little miffed because no one has gotten a buck in several years there. So Bruce figured that it would really steam their eyebrows if a 13 year old girl bagged a buck on her first try there.

They also went to Metropolis nearby, and visited some Superman stuff.

About a day after the trio came home, I started noticing a bad smell in my kitchen. I went through all my cabinets looking for rotten potatoes or onions gone bad, all to no avail. But that smell just kept getting worse. I looked all over for the source, but I just couldn't figure it out. That is until I saw part of a plastic bag just peeking out over the top of my cabinets. Curious, I climbed up on a chair to see what it was. As I picked it up, I saw something small and furry, and wet looking through the white, plastic bag. Grossed out already, I started to open the bag up, and that's when the smell hit me. It was HORRIBLE!!!! I gagged. Someone forgot to take the tail of Lydia's deer outside in the sun to dry so that they could make a plaque with it. EWWW!!!! I got in big trouble with Lydia because I threw it in the outside trash. She cried. It has since been dug out of the trash and set to dry on the roof of my garage. I still have my doubts about that nasty thing.

At any rate, GO LYDIA the MIGHTY!!!

The Journey of a Golf Ball (also in which Renae taunts environmentalists and goes to Hell)

What is up with our stuff breaking down lately? I had to get a repair man out to fix the ice maker on our 3 month old fridge. My second clothes dryer is currently out of commission. (Yes I have two washers and two dryers. It helps a lot when you have a family of seven. And before you go off on me for ruining the environment with my energy wasting by running two dryers at the same time, it's not like I do any more laundry than I would do with only one. I just get it done faster. Clothesline??? I don't know. Sure sometimes, but who has the time for all of that all the time? Drop it. Just leave me in peace with my energy sucking, Earth ruining, devil worshiping two dryers already!! I'm sure that my eternal soul will pay a heavy price for my crimes! Shall I tell you how many disposable diapers I have contributed to my ginormous environmental footprint? I can hear a mob of dirty hippies knocking down my door as we speak! Al Gore is planning is next movie based on me and how I have single-handedly managed to raise the earth's average temperature by 5 micro-degrees, obliterate a 20 foot section of the ozone layer, and melt an entire polar ice cap ALL BY MYSELF!! Me and my bad kind of light bulbs!!! Come on I've TRIED to be good. I've got several of those "good" light bulbs in my house. (Please don't ask me how many of those my kids have broken! We're probably all dieing of cancer as we speak.) ACK! Is that the ghost of Rachel Carson holding a green knife at my throat?!! Okay, enough. Bruce just spent the entire day yesterday getting our van fixed. (Yes, I own a large vehicle that runs on gasoline, AND I drive it!) The blue-ray player that we bought only 4 months ago at most, has decided not to work, and when I turned on the heater the other day, (Yes, I have the audacity to heat my home, but only when it's cold outside.) it made a HORRIBLE noise.

Here is where we get to the story that I wanted to tell. A week ago or so, I got cold and struck up the heater for its first voyage of the year. As was expected on this first session of the year, this was accompanied by that familiar smell of a summer's worth of dirt being burned up, and by the usual beep or two of the smoke alarm. What I did NOT expect was the horrible rocks-in-a-blender noise that followed. Alarmed and dismayed, I shut the thing right off, and reluctantly added another urgent item to my hubby's to-do list. Happily the cold snap went away for a week or two, giving Bruce some time to get around to it. When he finally did, he was a witness to the awful sound of potential malfunction, and high maintenance fees. But, being the wise and brave soul that he is, he did not fear to investigate the source of this dreaded noise. Upon doing so, he was able to trace the sound to the exhaust fan.

"Do you know what that sounds like?" he asked me "That sounds like a golf ball in there."

"How could a golf ball get in there?!" It's a small box thing closed except for the ... oh, the two exhaust pipes that run up the length of the machine to the basement ceiling, turn ninety degrees, and then run about 12 feet out to vent in the backyard. We have found the little kids sticking rocks in the end of it. In fact a couple of years ago, Justice put one in there large enough to block enough airflow so as to make the heater shut off entirely, and refuse to run properly. But the kids were never able to get the rocks more than an inch or two into the end of the pipe, where you could just reach in and grab them right back out.

"If it's a ball, it could just roll all the way in." answered my genius Bruce.

So Bruce, with his trusty screw driver, undid the fastenings that held the pipes to the exhaust fan, reached his hand in and found .... a golf ball.

And there was much rejoicing.

Sweetness (or Not)

My kids are always stapling pages together to make homemade books. As I was cleaning up yesterday, I found two. The first one was titled "I love Mom" and had pictures of a kid hugging his mom. The second was titled "I Kill You."

My van is currently in need of some work, so for a day or two I'm hoofing it. I needed to make a trip to the Post Office today, which just happens to be about a half of a mile from my house. It's a gorgeous, autumn day, so I rather enjoyed a leisurely walk with my three year old, Clayton. We stopped and looked at a dragon fly, picked up colorful leaves and a nasty bit of rope that had been run over by about 100 cars. Clayton said it looked like a dead snake and cheerfully gave it to me to carry home.

As we were leaving, Pam, my friend who works at the Post Office handed Clayton one of those small packets with about 10 little fruit snacks inside it. Clayton looked up and said "Nakes!" in his sweet way ("nakes" is Clayton's version of "thanks" As we started home, Clayton was babbling about how he was going to share with his brothers. Back in the beautiful day, Clayton snacked and we continued collecting pretty gold and red leaves. About halfway home Clayton stopped, felt the tiny fruit snack package, and realizing that it was empty, a sad little frown crossed his face as he moaned "Oh, now I can't share with Mark! I ate dem all."

There is a First Time For Everything

I have always been of the opinion that it is not good to have the "Wait till your father hears of this!" kind of dealings with my children. I don't want Bruce to have to come home from work to have to deal out punishments to his children. Plus I don't want him to have to always be the feared, mean parent who gives out the spankings. I try to deal with things myself, if I'm the parent who is there at the time.

However, after finding Justice hanging out of the second story window for the second time today, this time with his younger brother too, I decided that MY earlier spanking must not have been hard enough. For the first time ever, I told one of my children to wait while I went to fetch their father to administer the spanking. Luckily Bruce was already home from work, and more than willing to assist in the punishments.

I think I might be switching their bedrooms with Ross and Mark's (which is in the basement) tonight.

Spend My Nights With A Roll of Bubble Wrap

I Am Totally The Best Stake Choir Secretary That Never Was

I have just finished (well nearly) a very large project that very few people will actually get much use out of. Those few who do however will find it absolutely marvelous I believe, and I am rather proud of myself. Bruce (not I) is our stake's choir secretary. Hence we have all of the stake's music filed at our house. For some queer reason, I take an odd satisfaction in doing all of the filing myself. As Bruce ... well doesn't seem as keen as I do... it works out.

Aside - it might be useful to know that we have both been highly involved in the stake choir for about a decade now. It may make me a dork, but I absolutely LOVE it! We have an amazingly talented director, and we are actually pretty good. Choir practices are a major highlight for me every fall / Christmas season. I'm totally psyched about starting practicing again soon!

Anyway, what I was getting at was my new filing system that I came up with and did all by myself (even though I'm not actually the secretary.) The wonderful things about what I've done are:

1) It's online, so our director can look at it anytime she wants and it will always be updated.

2) It has a SEARCH ENGINE. I have taken extra pains to make the songs as searchable as possible. Each song has it's own page with the lyrics included (as many as I could find on the internet to cut and paste in. I'm totally not going to type up 200+ sets of lyrics) This makes it so that even if you can't remember the name of the song that you are looking for, you can just type in a snippet of the lyrics, and the search engine will pull it up. The songs' pages also include the composer / arranger, arrangement type (SATB, TTBB, etc.), and as many applicable topics as I could think of. This way if say you want an SSA arrangement of a song about faith, you can just type "SSA, faith" in the search engine, and bang, there is a list.

3) I also have an alphabetical list with links to each song's page.

4) And here is the REAL beauty of my plan: Most published songs are listed on the web by their publishers with a sample of the music to either look at or to listen to. I have put links on as many of the song's pages as I could find, so you have only to click, and you are taken to the publisher's listing of that song with a sample of what the song actually sounds like or a sample of the sheet music.

How awesome am I?

I still need to do a couple of things like:

1) Make a static opening page for us to list choir news, upload MIDI files where choir members can listen to their parts, and such.

2) Change the url so that it no longer has the word "stake" in it. This is because we aren't supposed to have any stake or ward websites.

These things can both be done, but I have to figure out how first.

Anyway, I think it's a totally awesome tool for our wonderful choir director. And though she and I may be the only people to ever use it, it's still a stroke of genius on my part.

Just a Thought

At the beginning of the school year, Mark brought home one of those tests that helps you figure out how you learn. Curious, I took the test myself, as did Bruce. Bruce seemed to be very well rounded, and did fairly well in all of the categories. I scored very high in the musical and linguistic areas, fairly well in a few other categories and downright awful in the spacial category.

As I have lived with persons who are very smart, but in drastically different ways, I know first hand that there is no real way to pin down HOW smart a person is as compared to another person. There are just too many facets. I know some people who are geniuses certifiably so, who in a school / on paper do exceedingly well, but when it comes to real life situations, they lack somewhat. On the other hand, I am very closely linked with some people who look like complete idiots on paper, but who are in actuality very intelligent. Bruce for example can't spell to save his life, but give him a puzzle to solve, and you'd be hard pressed to find someone who could do it faster.

What I'm getting at is this: There is just NO way to pin down how smart someone is, or exactly how they learn. The brain is just too multifaceted to be able to do it with any REAL accuracy. But here is a facet that I've been thinking about: focus.

How focused is your brain power. Some people seem to have a wide focus, and others narrower. This would effect the kind of information that you take in. Think of it like a flashlight beam. A wide focus would illuminate lots of things, and take in a wide range, while a narrower focus would take in a smaller range, but with greater detail.

I think Bruce has a wide focus. He is very observant, and good at remembering general things. I on the other hand seem to have a narrower focus. The things that I pay attention to, I remember VERY well. I can memorize like nobody's business. If I actually paid attention to it, it's there for good, and I challenge you to prove me wrong. But I'm always forgetting little things. Bruce will ask me to do something while my brain is elsewhere, and I'll say "sure," then forget about it 10 minutes later. Why? It wasn't in my field of focus. I was paying attention somewhere else. If you gave Bruce and I a picture to look at and said "Study this, and in a minute I will ask you questions about it." Bruce would probably do better than I would. He would take in the whole picture, while I would probably be focused on a part or two. If you asked me about something on that part that I paid attention to, I'd tell you every single detail, but if you asked me about something outside of that sphere...??? If you asked the two of us to remember a 10 digit number, I'd beat him every time.

I don't have any autistic children, but it seems like they have a very narrow focus. They will shock you to the core with some of the things that they can remember and know, while at the same time they seem to miss a lot of other things.

I don't know. It's just a thought.

My Son the Hero

That's what everyone (the principal included) is calling Ross. Yesterday at lunch, the kid across the table from Ross started choking. Ross hopped up and did the Heimlich maneuver, and was able to dislodge the food. The staff at his school are making quite the deal out of it. They are saying he saved the kid's life. Way To Go ROSS!!

Falling Down the Stairs, Cursing and Other Amusing Items

This morning as I was putting breakfast on the table, Clayton was singing a little made up song called "Joggity." It goes like this:

"Joggity, joggity, joggity, joggity, joggity,

joggity, joggity, joggity, joggity, joggity,

joggity, joggity, joggity, joggity, joggity..."

Apparently Justice didn't like Clayton's little song.

Justice: "Clayton, that's a bad word."

Clayton: "Joggity, joggity, joggity..."

Justice: "That is a bad word, Clayton!"

Clayton: "joggity, joggity, joggity..."

Justice: "Mom, Clayton is saying 'joggity!'

Me: "It's not a bad word, Justice."

Clayton: "Yes it is!"


(Aside: I really don't like it when I'm blogging here on my computer and I hear the sound of eggs cracking coming from in the kitchen, and I get up to find that *sigh* I have lost another dozen eggs and I have another mess to clean up. *sigh*)

Where was I?

Amusing item #2 or I guess maybe #3 now for Mr. C. Clayton was sitting on the toilet the other day saying "Wait for it... wait for it..."

In other news, my boys have discovered a new wonderful game to play, which frankly my mother hates. Oh how I wish I'd had my camera with me at the time! We were at my parents' house after church the other day when my boys invented the fun new game called:

"Falling Down the Stairs."

Oh GOSH I wish I had caught it on tape! What you do is pretend to look at the picture at the top of the stairs, or pretend that you are a baby, or perhaps an old lady, and oops, you fall down the stairs, rolling and bumping and screaming all the way down. It's really hilarious.

The draw backs:

1) You can only play it at Grandma's house because she is the only one with heavily padded, carpeted stairs.
2) Grandmas has an especial aversion to falling since she spent some time in a wheel chair about a year and a half ago after a particularly traumatic fall. Hence, Grandma doesn't find this game very amusing.

On yet another subject, I guess other families with multiple kids have do deal with the phenomenon of "Calling things." I get so annoyed with my kids calling everything. Justice's last words nearly every night are,

"I call the computer first in the morning!"

Me: "No you don't."

We can't go ANYWHERE without every person under the age of 15 in the family yelling

"I call sitting next to Clayton, no call backs, pad-lock!"

or

"I call window seat, no call backs, pad-lock!"

Apparently all contracts are null and void if you don't say "no call-backs, pad-lock!"

Oh and if somebody sits in the seat that was called by somebody else, WWIII is surely to follow. "I CALLED that seat!"

"I didn't hear you!"

"MOM, I called window seat!"

"I don't care. Get in."


I often amuse myself imaging a world where grown ups "called" everything and you HAD to say "no call-backs, pad-lock" or it didn't count. Although come to think about it, we really are kind of like that with all the red tape - political BS that surrounds every facet of our lives. Is it really so different from "no call-backs, pad lock," but I digress...

Anyway, apparently we've reached yet another dimension of calling things. I opened the fridge to find that we seem to now be calling food too.

Ross of course hid "Lydia's orange" behind a bunch of stuff in the back of the fridge and told her that he ate it. *sigh*