The Way We Were

Anna asked me to take her shoe-shopping this evening, and she was shocked, shocked, to hear me say, "No." The floor of her room is still littered with the refuse from her tantrum last night, including broken shards of plastic and approximately a zillion teeny tiny beads that fell victim to her indignation at being made to catch up on her geometry assignments. It would also be nice if she put the sheets on her bed. I am quite the exacting housekeeper.

I hope that these Anna stories make someone feel better, just knowing that at least his/her teen doesn't act this way. Somebody has to benefit from this craziness. So go ahead, pat yourself on the back at my expense. I don't mind.

We're still coming down from the candy high which was engendered by the holiday-that-must-not-be-named-again-in-this-blog-until-next-October. Rachel wept all through dinner because Brian still had 4 Skittles left and she had nothing. It is beyond my organization skills to make sure that my kids all eat their candy at the same rate. I may be a control freak, but I still have to draw the line somewhere.

I just finished uploading all my photos (a conservative estimate puts the number at 2000) from the entire year onto Snapfish. Now I have to edit them. I really don't know how I fell this far behind. I didn't even have a baby this year. Maybe if I give up sleep....

Wait, I've already done that. Oh, dear. Maybe I should give up the digital camera instead. With film, I didn't have this many pictures to deal with. Remember film? How every event pretty much amounted to 24 snapshots, and at least 8 of those weren't any good? And you didn't know that until you paid for them? Now film photography seems as quaint as driving around with a horse and buggy. Or listening to lp's. Remember those?

I'm feeling nostalgic for simpler times tonight. For lousy photographs and scratched records, ugly Tupperware and boring evenings when there was nothing good on all 3 channels. We had some tough times back in the 70's, even without Watergate hearings pre-empting all the Saturday morning cartoons. Maybe I'll wake up the kids and tell them that. But I know they won't believe me. They don't even believe I was ever a kid. Heck, I don't believe it myself. It used to be that having children made me feel young. But now it does the opposite. Can someone explain that, please?

It occurs to me that I could get more photos edited if I didn't persist in wasting time maundering on about my own mortality. Let me test that theory. Good night, all!

Hell Hath No Fury....

Anna hates me because I expect her to do her schoolwork so she can graduate from high school some day. She started throwing her books around the dining room yesterday just to show me how much she hated me, so I ignored her (as did the rest of the family, all of whom know the drill by now). Unfortunately, no one had briefed David's very sweet little friend Chuck, who I noticed - a few minutes into the episode - standing in the kitchen, clutching his comic books to his chest, eyes darting frantically as he tried to gauge his chances of escaping via the front door. No doubt the studied nonchalance of the rest of us in the face of obvious danger added to his confusion. The look on his face was indescribable (where is that camera when I need it?). I sure hope his mother lets him come back.

Theo, naturally, was glad he had just packed up his stuff for a Boy Scout canoe trip. There's only so much drama one teenage guy can take.

I visited 3 grocery stores today, plus the Farmers' Market. I don't know why that was necessary, but I can rest assured now that I won't have to buy any food for at least 48 hours. Then I decided to take a well-deserved nap. It was one of those delicious, mid-afternoon naps with the sun streaming through the open windows and the ceiling fan whirring away above me. Apparently, I looked too comfortable; so Larry woke me up to inform me that he was going to go to the office for a couple of hours. He could have just left. If someone needed me, they would have screamed loud enough to wake me, I'm sure. So, I hate him. He tried to make up for this gross error in judgment by agreeing to meet me and the kids for pizza at dinner time; but then he stood me up. The waitress kept looking at me funny, because I had requested a separate table for me and Larry, and of course I was the only one sitting there. With my imaginary date. Luckily, I had the presence of mind to order the food without waiting for him. By the time we were almost finished with the pizza, I had made up my mind that nothing less than a flat tire or a car accident could have kept him from joining his beloved (um, that's me) at Pizza Hut. At just that point, he sailed in. "Sorry I'm late," he said breezily, grabbing a slice of pepperoni and apparently dodging the death darts emanating from my eyes. Sorry? Sorry? With no accompanying tale of a close brush with death? No explanation involving rescuing poor innocents from a burning building, say? You know, he's shown himself capable over the years of fitting the clueless-male stereotype from time to time; but today, he outdid himself. If I told him right now that I'm still pissed off, he'd have no idea what the heck I was even talking about. That's sort of cute, in a guy sort of way. But he still owes me chocolate. Twice.