Happenings in "Whoville"

Whew! It's been a hectic week or two. Last week we went to the Nature Center for a "Little Acorns" presentation. All of the little preschoolers were sitting on the floor while this nice man talked about racoons. He asked the kids if they knew why his job was important and littlewho yelled out "so you can make money!". True, but not really what he was getting at. After about 15 minutes of listening quietly, ds then raised his hand to speak. Mr. Conservation called on him and littlewho said "I think I have a tick". Mr. C politely explained that mommy would check on that when they were done and I tried to become invisible in my chair but ds ran over to me and said "Mama, is this a tick on my neck?". Happily, it was just a mole.

While we were there, things were stolen from my car. I had forgotten to lock it, grrrr! Fortunately, I had locked my purse in my trunk so I didn't have to deal with the mess that would have created. The thief took my new "Bento Bag", a designer bag I ordered online that holds a recycled plastic lunch box and perfect portion-sized containers, a stainless steel drink container, and stainless steel soup thermos-very cool and convenient but quite pricey. I ordered it from www.laptoplunches.com. I decided I had to replace the bag so I explained to the owners what happened and they are shipping me out a new one for half price. Several days after the robbery, I realized that the thief had also taken another bag that I carry with me and it had my makeup in it, none of which was Cover Girl, if you know what I mean. All totaled about $300 worth of stuff was stolen =(.

I was off work last weekend, the first in 6 months and now I know why I rarely take off. It was nice to be at home but I do appreciate my job. I have always said--jokingly--that I go to work to rest and now I realize I wasn't really joking! When you only get to stay home 3 weekends a year, you tend to want to make the most of them so I had all sorts of plans made for us. At one point dh looked at me and said "you're not taking off again for awhile, are you?". Even the kids were exhausted and are happy to send me off to work again this weekend.

Dh says he moved me out to the boonies in order to keep me from doing too much. I love it in the country but occasionally we need to go into the "city". I had a staff meeting so a friend of mine watched the kids for me. When it was over, I picked up the kids and her 4 year old daughter and took them to the park. The kids were playing on the jungle gym when a woman started screaming at ds. I heard her yelling "where is your mother? WHERE IS YOUR MOTHER?!!!" I approached her and asked what the problem was and she said--screamed, rather--that my son had pushed her son. It was diffucult to stay calm but it was apparent that this woman had forgotten to take her medicine that day so I said "if you will calm down, I will address this problem, but please stop yelling, there are children here". That just made her even more angry and she got right in my face and put her hands on my chest to demonstrate the atrocity ds had committed on her son. I quietly explained to her that if she touched me again, I would notify the police at which point she started jumping around and screaming "go ahead and call the police, you need to control your child!". It had actually become quite ridiculous by this time and there were a couple of men there who pulled the lady away from me. Ds said he wanted to apologize to the little boy so he walked toward him but the mother ran to her son, grabbed him and said "NO!". Ds just walked back to me and very maturely stated that she must just be upset because she was worried about her little boy. Hmmm, she could learn something from this 5 year old "bully", I think. Afterwards, 3 parents came up to me and thanked me for staying calm, all the while shaking their heads in disbelief.

Dd turned 12 on April 7th. She wanted nothing but a cell phone for her birthday, much to my dismay but dh thought it would be a good idea so we bought her a prepaid phone. You know, the kind where you purchase minutes ahead of time and when they are gone, you're done. It seems like a good idea but each minute costs $.25 and dd's allowance is only $7 a week! Of course, she has to text her friends who live 1/2 mile down the road and my goodness, it's just not cool to call someone on those old-fashioned wired telephones! Dh (Mr. Safety, remember?) wanted her to have it so he could call her home in the evenings when she is over at the neighbor's riding horses, down at the creek catching crawdads, or in the woods searching for who-knows-what.

Last night she and her 2 little girlfriends wanted to go on a hike and it was getting kind of late so we told them to be back before dark. Well, apparently they were having so much fun walking the creek beds that they lost track of time. Before they knew it, they were a couple of miles from home and it was dark. We suspected what had happened and all 3 girls have a cell phone so we would just call them, find out their location, and go pick them up, right? Turns out that none of them took their phones with them! ...."but honey, we'll always be able to reach her.......".