By Myself

This morning was a little hectic.

Actually, mornings here are always a little wild. Between 7:00 AM, when the boys wake up, and 8:00 AM, when they leave for school, no two days are the same. On four days of the week, my wife drives morning carpool. On another four days of the week, she has somewhere else to be immediately after carpool. Those days are not a one-to-one match. On some days Sam (4) goes with my wife. On some days he goes to his friend Anna's (3) house.

The only common factor is that on all five days of the week the Big Three boys go to school. But even in this there are subtle and challenging variations. Timothy (9) goes to school all day, and so gets a full lunch. Stephen (8) and Jonah (6) go half-days and only get a snack. Because of this schedule, they also take different carpools home. But that only makes the afternoons crazy.

This morning was worse than normal, though. Timothy had strep throat and was staying home. Sam had woken up in the night and stayed up for a few hours. Because of this he spent the morning either a) asleep in bed, b) crying about wanting to be back in bed, or c) crying about not wanting to go back to bed.

In the midst of Sam's crying and explaining to Stephen and Jonah why Timothy was still in his pajamas, my wife dropped a bomb: "Did you check the boy's homework?"

"No. Didn't you?"

"I took Timothy to the doctor yesterday afternoon, and then took Stephen to karate. I thought you checked it."

"Let me look."

Both of them had worksheets. So while Jonah sipped hot chocolate, he circled words like "the," "and," "to," and "green." While Stephen pouted about not having a chocolate Pop Tart, he raced through a math worksheet. Timothy just sat there and smiled.

While I presided over the homework, my wife took a shower. As she neared the end of hers, she yelled at me to come take mine. We high-fived each other as we passed, and the water never even got turned off.

When I got done, I dressed and came downstairs. My wife was looking through the boys' backpacks. She collected Jonah's worksheet and homework folder from the table and dining room floor, respectively, and then assembled his snack. Putting them all into the backpack, she placed it into the staging area. But Stephen's backpack was already there, zipped up and ready to go.

Suspicious, my wife picked it up and investigated the contents. Inside was his homework folder, with the worksheets in the proper place. She pulled out his signature sheet, which listed the assignments for each day of that week, and which usually required a parent's initials to ensure that each day's work is done. On Monday and Tuesday was a small, neat, set of initials in black pen. Under Wednesday was a slightly larger, but perfectly copied, set of my wife's initials in green magic marker.

She held it up for me to see. "Nice work," I said. "I suppose that's technically illegal. Why don't you go ahead and initial it yourself, and I'll go talk with our little forger."

Before I could make it out of the kitchen, she called out, "He packed his own snack."

I turned around to see her holding two cookies. No bag, not gummies, not a granola bar. Two cookies, shoved into his backpack.

"He's a pretty independent guy," she said.

I agreed, and nodded. "You'd think he'd use those powers for good, and remember to do his own homework."

She laughed. "Maybe someday."

Introverted, With A Blog

I wouldn't believe it myself, but it tracks with the "real" personality tests I took in high school and pre-marital counseling.

I can't explain it, either.

Selling Popcorn

It was a big dog, and it was barking.

We were going up to our very first house, and this dog was standing at the chain-link fence barking fiercely at us.

Timothy (9) had already reached his goal for the year by walking solo in another neighborhood and via phone. For this street, Stephen (8) and Jonah (6) were going to tag-team the sales. It was Jonah's first time ever selling popcorn door-to-door. Stephen had done this last year. But last year, it had been Timothy as the lead seller as Stephen tagged along. Now Stephen was the lead with Jonah in tow.

Jonah walked past the dog and gave it a little wave. Spittle flew from the dog's mouth as it barked, just a few feet from Jonah's face. Jonah, clipboard in hand, kept walking to the door.

Fearless.

Not seeing Stephen on the walkway with us, I turned to look for him. He was standing far out on the driveway, looking at the big, barking dog.

I yelled across the yard, "It can't get out of the fence. Are you scared of the dog?"

Stephen looked at me with huge eyes and nodded.

"Okay," I said. "You can stay there." The original plan was for the boys to alternate, with one of them ringing doorbells and pitching until he got a sale, and then the other one would have a turn. Stephen was supposed to go first in order to show Jonah how it was done (we had practiced in the car on the drive over). This was supposed to be Stephen's house. Completely, utterly, and totally in a non-judgmentalor pressured way, I called out to Stephen, "Jonah will do this house, and you can have the next one."

By the time we got to the door, Stephen was right there beside us. "Jonah needs me to show him how it's done."

Brave.

Nobody was home. When we walked back past the fence, the dog was gone. I kept waiting for it to jump back out at us, but it never did.

I'm not the kind of person to generalize from a single incident (actually, I am), but I kept seeing this behavior the rest of the two hours we spent walking.

Jonah was oblivious, in a kind of manic state. Someone could have shown up at the door with a bloody chainsaw in hand and Jonah would have said, simply, "Hi, my name is Jonah and this is my brother Stephen. We're selling popcorn to support our Cub Scout Pack. Would you like to help?"

(Actually, whenever Jonah said the spiel, there was a massive pause between the opening of the door and the first sentence, and between each phrase thereafter. And his voice got sillier, higher, and faster as he went along, so that at the end of "help?" he was pretty unintelligible. People were nice, though.)

Stephen, on the other hand, was not enjoying himself (he didn't join us yesterday when we went back out). But when the time came and it was his turn, he smiled, looked the people in the eye and said, "Hello. My name is Stephen and this is my brother Jonah . . ."

People were nicer in this neighborhood. Maybe it was because of the demographics, maybe it was because we had younger and cuter kids with us. But nobody said no to Stephen and Jonah. Over half of the houses had nobody home. But everyone who was home bought something.

It was different with Timothy. On the street he did (on the same days of the week and at the same times of day), we had similar proportions of people not home. But of the ones who were home, over half said "No." Most at least said, "No thank you." But at least a few said, "I don't want to."

Now, I'm not one of those folks who sees anti-male bias everywhere I turn (actually, I am). But this really startled me. I'll try it again next year and switch neighborhoods.

Anyway, Jonah and Timothy have reached their $200 goal and will be able to throw a pie (actually, a paper plate piled with whipped cream) into the face of "a den leader." This will most likely be me, as I'm the Tiger Den Leader this year.

Stephen is still about $60 off this goal, but he and I will be going to our own neighborhood on Thursday. If you have a massive hankering for Cub Scout/Boy Scout popcorn, let me know. But do it quickly, because we turn in the sheets on Sunday.

(P.S. This is not a beg for money. Stephen will make his goal. But if you love CS/BS popcorn and haven't been able to get your fix this year, we will be happy to provide this service for you. Seriously.)

Wrist update:

Still broken.

Seriously, though. I was supposed to go back to the Dr. next Thursday, but he called and moved it back another week. It doesn't hurt, except when I type.

Popcorn (pre-blog)

I still can't type worth a darn in this cast-type thing.  And recent experiences (typing an application and essay, washing the cast after camping) have taught me not to take it off.  So, blogging will be light.  

Not that anyone will notice.

But, I did take Stephen (8) and Jonah (6) out to sell popcorn last night.  Short version: Stephen is brave and Jonah is fearless.  There is a difference.

I'll try to type it up, or I may try to get the 4boymom to type it.  I wonder if there's a way that someone could record my voice, and then play it back while typing?

It turns out there is.

Sam In The Morning

This morning Sam (4) was getting dressed to go to a friend's house. I had picked out his clothes, with one pair of underwear, two choices of shorts, and two choices of striped shirts. The shirts must have stripes, preferably horizontal, but vertical will do in an emergency.

He was singing a little song to himself as he walked in and saw his clothes on his bed. Still humming merrily, he picked his shirt by slapping his hand down and then chose his shorts using the same method. He climbed up on his bed, and I held his hand while he kicked off his pull-up and pajama shorts. Then he sat down to take off his shirt (I have no idea why), and I left the room to see to some other issue.

When I walked back in, he was singing again. The tune was the same, but the words had now become, "Underwear first, then shorts. Underwear first, then shorts . . ."

Then he burped.

I'm back . . . kinda

Well, no sooner do I get my law school application in, than I break my wrist.

Hm? Yes, I said I broke my wrist. Technically, it's a "fracture." But I've never broken a bone before and . . .

Oh that? Yeah. I applied to law school. To be specific, I've applied to Georgia State University College of Law. That's one of the reasons I haven't been writing much here. In March I decided to give it a shot, so from March to June I was studying for the LSAT. From June until yesterday I was writing my 2-page Personal Statement.

Ugh. Personal Statement writing is not blog writing. I can't make fun of myself. I can't write about poop or boogers. Nobody on the GSU Law admissions board smiles knowingly when they read the word "Jonah." It's hard, hard stuff to write.

So for the past 3 months or so I've either been writing my statement (5 format changes, scores of different versions), or else been so sick of the keyboard that I couldn't stand to type another word.

I also had a month-long writer's block.

And I was all set to start blogging again, and with such great stories, what with the boys all in high school now (just kidding). Then I broke my wrist. And my typing speed went from 70+ wpm down to 7. I type with one hand, while the other rests angrily on the desktop.

Hunt . . . peck . . . hunt . . . peck . . . aaaarrrrgggghhhh!

Four to six weeks.