Dear teachers, dentists, firefighters, doctors, librarians, nutritionists, police dogs, etc.,
Please just give my kids candy. My mother keeps them in pencils.
love, Shannon

The guest/toy room is always the worst. At first I was glad there were 2 closets in there, because I could close them and hide the mess. Unfortunately, 22 months of closing them and hiding the mess eventually has to end. After 3 days, I’ve come up with this:

And this:

I did not match up Barbie’s shoes. I am making progress!?

The food is up high to protect it from bears. Actually the food is up high to protect it from kiddies, so that I don’t end up with sad little toys like this:

I can’t find 2 plastic cookies or the other half of this velcro broccoli. I don’t know which is sadder, the fact that I know what plastic food is missing or the amount of energy I have expended trying to find it.

Of course if the kiddies can’t reach the food, they are more than willing to occupy their time pulling out other random things like this:

Yes, we must get a good look at Mommy’s college classmates before we can possibly get ready for school. I have come to the conclusion that as I lay my hands on everything we own, I leave behind a magical sparkly aura that induces my kiddies to come along behind me and then attempt to lay their hands on everything we own.

Case in point: the other day my neighbor called and asked me to let her dog out. I jotted down the location of their spare key on a post-it on the desk. The next day I sat down at the desk and noticed my note, which said “deer head in shed” and had 3 marker swirls at the bottom. I thought it would make a funny little post, about how I’m leaving cryptic little notes to myself and how every scrap of paper in the house has marker swirls on it because I’m testing every marker I find before clearing it for the move.

This morning I went to take a picture of the note, and it is gone. So is the pack of post-its. Why could they possibly need my “deer head in shed” post-it? I think maybe I’ll e-mail Alberto Gonzales to see if it is legal to keep your children handcuffed while at home.

The other major problem these days? Let’s see if you can guess. What do these items have in common?

They are all things that the ants who invaded our house over spring break did not infiltrate. All other cereal, crackers, candy, etc. - in the trash.

Of course, I always try to have as little food as possible in the house when moving day arrives, so I must admit that the ants are being more helpful than the children. We’ve had the exterminator out here twice, but still the ants reappear.

Now I must return to the sorting before the little varmints return. Any of them.

Our child.

She looked a little more put together before lunch, but all in all, I think it’s a pretty good match.

2 - Number of items needed for costume - one plain blue collared shirt, one plain straight navy blue or black skirt

0 - Number of plain blue collared shirts available in the girls’ section of the PX

0 - Number of plain blue collared shirts available in the boys’ section of the PX

1 - Number of blue collared shirts purchased that approximate what Julia Child might have worn had she been an 10-year-old skate rat boy

1 - Number of Marty’s fingerprints that appear to be on the camera lens

5 - Number of searches on the internet attempting to determine what “Destricto or enablis” is supposed to mean

0 - Number of answers found from internet searches

3 - Number of blue markers needed to finish the “L’ecole des Trois Gourmandes” patch

10 - Number of minutes spent deciding how to attach said patch. Since Marty may be a 10-year-old skate rat boy himself one day, I decided rather than glue it or trot out the sewing machine, I would just loosely stitch it so it could be easily removed.

2 - Number of times I sewed the shirt to itself

1 - Number of times I sewed the shirt to my pants

14 - Number of times I quietly cursed Aislinn’s teacher while repeatedly stitching, pulling out stitches, and restitching

1 - Number of pictures I took of the finished shirt, after I saw the fingerprint and cleaned off the lens

1 - Number of pictures taken with the clean lens that did not seem any less fingerprinted

1 - Number of pictures of bags of onions that I took to see if it was the camera or the shirt causing the crazy lines (note to Erin, we will be bringing back those books on CD)

1 - Number of pictures I took of the finished shirt from above to see if it was the camera or shirt causing the crazy lines

0 - Percent interest I have in continuing to sort out the source of the crazy lines

Moving on:

0 - Number of skirts of any kind available in the girls’ section

0 - Number of black or navy straight skirts available in the juniors’ section for less than $26

8 - Number of rounds of the girls/juniors section I made looking for anything that might work

1 - Number of nonsleazy skirts I finally found on the sale rack that might fit a 9-year-old twig

50 - Percent off both items I finally bought for the costume

19 - Total number of dollars spent on the Julia Child costume

24 - Ounces of wine it may take me to put the Julia Child costume saga behind me

Okay. I was just wondering though? Are there large groups of people who think deaf people can’t do things? In my world, deafness seems to be a handicap that many many people cope with and overcome on a regular basis. His situation sort of reminds me of Charla, the little person on the Amazing Race who wanted to show the world that little people could do anything. I agree that footage of both of them shows that while some tasks are harder for them, they do find a way to complete them. And so, I will agree that they both have shown the world that their disabilities do not hold them back.

However Luke and Charla, if you want to be an example, then I think you’d better stay on the heroic side of the fence. Or was it your intention to show the world that deaf people can screw over their fellow competitors better than hearing people (even your mom seemed a little leery of the whole thing)? Just like Charla showed the world that little people will lie and act handicapped if they think it will get them special treatment?

Enough of this. What I need people, is a good book. All of the books I have read in 2009 have been complete downers, including the biography of Charles Schultz, A Thousand Splendid Suns, a fascinating yet revolting biography of Jesse James, and a book called The Billionaire’s Vinegar, which is sort of interesting but has no ending. Now I’m back to reading The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, which everyone says is so awesome, but I just don’t get. I find it highly irritating that there is so much untranslated Spanish in it - at least The Yiddish Policeman’s Union had a glossary in the back. I think I went too long without reading it so now I’ll either have to start over, and I really don’t want to, or just hope it all comes together in the end. I had hoped to get to the bookstore on haircut day, but you heard how that turned out. Hopefully when I get to my parents’ house, everyone will be done with their Christmas present books and I can nab a couple for free.

For those of you who don’t know the game, basically the evil INKT Corporation has taken over Chroma City and removed all the color. You, as de Blob, jump all over the buildings and gardens, etc., repainting everything. When you paint a whole block of buildings, you liberate the Raydians, the citizens of the town who have been turned into Graydians. You basically throw your blobby self all over the place, do challenges, and the more different items you pick up, the more patterns, music, etc., you bring to the city. And here I will bow my head and pray that is both the longest and the last video game summary you will find posted here by me.

Anyhoo, little did I know that my world would one day become Chroma City (and that I would be the blob inhabiting). Unfortunately, in order to activate our joyful plans to shake the dust of MO from our feet, we must return our house to its original state. We painted almost every room of this house, because we thought we were going to be here for 3 years. Now, less than 2 years later, the thought of painting over all of our hard work makes me sort of sad, but particularly the kiddies’ rooms because I spent A LOT of time painting them. If you are not Erin, Doug, Kate, or one of the kiddies’ grandparents, you never got to see my handiwork. And you never will. In person that is. Here is Marty’s room:

Using a protractor (yes, a protractor - I’m not sure which is weirder, that we have a protractor or that I was able to lay my hands on it within a few weeks of moving) I cut a wave shape out of a manilla folder and then used it as a stencil all the way around his room I’m sure there is an easier way to do this, as well as an easier way to make sure it stays level (my way was repeatedly measuring the height from the floor to the folder in a most OCD manner). Anyway, in the end I was able to keep it level, and I was happy with the way it turned out. The kiddies call Marty’s bed “the boat” because the height of the waves makes his bed look like it’s floating. I chose that height very carefully - based on my strong conviction that the waves must be higher than the window sill so wouldn’t have to paint waves on that wall too.

The HP found these old decorative wooden fish I had when I was single and put them up on the wall. Of course, whenever things get very exciting back there, the fish get knocked off the wall, but when the room is straightened up and no one is in it, the fish look really cute.

************************************************************************

Remember that paint I had to pick up in the snow storm? Yes, well Marty’s room, sadly has been returned to its Army issue/institutional FLW white. So has our room, although I hadn’t really done any special painting back there. But I still have the front of the house and the kitchen, and for a few more weeks I’ve got the girls room.

Aislinn wanted blue, Lauren wanted pink, so I talked them into this stripey thing, and if I thought the wave was a lot of trouble, let me tell you, measuring stripes all the way around their room was even worse. I have mostly blocked out how I did it, except I know it involved a lot of tape and time with the electric level, but I promise you that the stripes are very straight - I’ve never been sent running from the room in horror because I noticed a deviant stripe. The tape was 1.5 inches, so the stripes are 3, 4.5, or 6 inches. It took me forever to come up with the pattern of stripes and then what colors to paint them (the height, once again, was based on the window sill). And then when I was done I was disappointed because I pictured the stripes on a white background, and as you can see, the background is not white.

You can probably tell that the girls’ bed conglomeration is rather heavy. Once it was in place, I couldn’t move it, and after measuring stripes around most of the room, I decided I could not face trying to make level stripes while squashed in behind the bed. That’s why the stripes just end in that weird stripe up to the window. I realize now that if I hadn’t shown you this picture, no one would have ever known.

The painted rooms look clean, but cold. Martin has already requested new waves for his new room in Kentucky, and I have to agree with him. It is a big pain in the behind, but the paint just makes everything seem more like home.

Could she be any cuter?

After the recital, we went to the PX for ice cream. Of course, Lauren doesn’t like ice cream, so she had a Godiva chocolate chickadee. I think they are glad that it’s over.

But they are pretty stinking cute.

I had attended coffees prior to life at Ft. Knox, but Ft. Knox was the first place where another wife flat out asked me my husband’s job and rank, and then, having found my answer unsatisfactory, turned on her heel mid-conversation, and walked away to find someone more acceptable to speak to. I was speechless. She turned around a second later, after she realized how bad it looked, and mumbled something about how she needed to speak to so and so about their daughters’ riding lessons. Okey dokey then. That is about the time that I lost interest in the whole officers’ wives’ coffee thing, but I continued to go, since you are supposed to, until they tightened up their invite list and cleared out the riffraff (me and Becky).

The house where that happened?

Yeah. Apparently 8 years of ranch houses and double wides later, that house is now going to be my house. I don’t know if we’ve got the furniture to fill it, I don’t know if we deserve it, but I can tell you this: If some captain’s wife with small children comes to my door for any reason, I will immediately hand her a margarita and a magazine, and take her little bundles of joy off to the toy room for some good old fashioned deconstruction.

* I’m not antisocial, the HP just hasn’t had a job where the coffees were applicable.

This evening, after guitar lessons, Aislinn had some math homework to finish that dealt with “translation, rotation, and reflection” of shapes. Fine, she’s pretty much got that figured out, so when she starts organic chemistry in college and they start talking about stereoisomers, she’ll be all set. At the bottom of the page were a bunch of “review” questions - regular math, like adding and subtracting 4 digit numbers and money. Awesome, she’s got that down too, so when she gets a job at Station 7, she’ll be able to make change. But there were two multiplication questions that required her to multiply a 3 digit number by a 2 digit number. Apparently, they’ve gone over this once at school, and then had to move on to “shape transformations.” She had no idea how to do it.

I’m sure there’s any easy way to explain why you put a zero down before you start multiplying by the second digit. That is, I’m sure there’s an easy way to explain it during a comprehensive class on multiplying large numbers. I was unable, however, to come up with an easy way to explain it on the fly at 7:40 pm when we’re both ready for bed and desperate for the homework to be over. You know why I couldn’t explain it? Because that is the type of thing you don’t explain - someone tells you that’s how it’s done, and then you practice it and practice it until it becomes second nature, and then you don’t think about “why” you do it again, until 7:40 pm some evening 30 years later when your poor untaught daughter is desperately trying to get her homework done.

Aislinn is, and has always been, a little math wizard. She picks it up easily, and even though I really didn’t give her a very thorough lesson on how to multiply large numbers, I’m sure if we spent another 5 minutes on it tomorrow, she’d probably understand at least how to do it, if not why. But then, I have to wonder, what the bleep is going on in math class if I have to teach multiplication at home?

I confess that I’m on a hair trigger about Aislinn’s teacher due to an incident last week which I can’t believe I haven’t whined to you about yet. And really, I’m too tired to do it justice tonight, so it will have to wait until tomorrow. I will say, in conclusion however, that I have done multiplication this week. I have not had occasion to worry about how to draw the next iteration of a tumbling shape.

And so I ask you, while I know abstract thinking is important blah blah blah, can’t we nail down the basics first?

For those of you who were unlucky enough to read Erin’s totally disgusting yet hilarious toe tale, here are year-old pictures from the museum that started it all, The City Museum in St. Louis. Although I am not a huge fan of heights, there is something about this place that makes you want to climb.

It seems so sturdy, you don’t even question whether you want to climb up to and through that suspended rusty airplane.

It makes the kiddies happy (although not any less nuts).

When you’re inside, if you see a hole in the ceiling,

or in the floor, you are welcome to climb through it. Sometimes the holes in the floor lead to a huge maze of tunnels.

Marty is not a fan of flash photography in the tunnels. It is DARK, hence the glow-stick bracelets.

Some places are dark and wet. Bonus.

If you get tired of the outdoors and the tunnels, you can go climb through this tree trunk.

I did. I went through this too:

There’s a big whale there.

And the bathroom walls are made of breadpans.

You should totally go there. I would caution you however, to do some major neck and shoulder stretches beforehand, because it involves a lot of ducking and squirming and wriggling through tight spaces.

And wear proper footwear of course.

In December I took the girls to get haircuts from the same woman who cut my hair. I had taken them to Walmart previously, because, well, see any post from the past 19 months regarding life in Missouri, but in December they told me that they wanted to get their haircut somewhere where there were “pretty people.” Yikes. They are really not that judgmental; it is true that the Walmart hair place is not a showroom for the well-toned or well-dressed. So I took them 45 miles away in an ice storm (is Crystal Gale trying to tell me something?) to have their hair done by my 19-year-old, skinny, tan, blond, dentally perfect stylist. She gave Aislinn a super choppy bob and blew Lauren’s hair out straight (after which I think Lauren was trying to find out if the stylist could adopt her, or at least come live with us and straighten her hair every day) and they couldn’t have been more pleased. This stylist, of course, has disappeared.

The girls have not had a haircut since December, and their social lives prevented them from accompanying me on the harrowing 97-mile haircut sojourn on Saturday. I was going to wait until we got back east at spring break and take them to my mom’s salon which also has pretty people in it. I even let them take their class pictures all shaggy. But unfortunately for them, tomorrow they have a field trip to the state capital for “Gifted Student Day” and it’s possible that they may be meeting with the governor. If they are meeting with the governor, it is possible that someone will take their picture (or not want to take their picture if their hair is totally out of control and in their eyes), so after school today, after explaining that they might even be on TV, I made them suck it up and head to Walmart.

Oh my goodness. It is a very cramped little hair cutting place, and I was so glad that we didn’t have to wait, that I didn’t even look around much until the cutting was underway. Once I did look around, I was sorry. Their was hair color splattered all over the floor and the walls. The walls? I can see how it might end up on the floor, but the walls? Really? As each haircut was finished, the haircutter would push the hair to a corner of the room with a broom, but I’m not sure when someone last gathered up said hair and disposed of it. There was a shopping cart in the back full of white plastic bags, which you might think were full of purchases, but were actually full of trash. It was nasty, and a little surprising because our entire Walmart (except for the hair cut place) has been renovated, rearranged and painted. We will not be returning.

From Walmart we made our way to McDonald’s because we are red-blooded Americans, dammit! Actually, it was McTeacher night where the teachers from the kids’ school work behind the counter and the school gets a cut of the cash for four hours. There were some teachers, some parents, and a lot of McD’s people working there, but apparently no one was assigned to sweep the floor or clean off tables or perform any of those magical chores that make McD’s tolerable (although they were on top of the trash). Miraculously and luckily, we did not have to brave the bathrooms.

Now I am home, in my own semi-clean house, where the main problem is that the ants are done with their long winter’s nap and keep showing up on the countertop. There is no food out, we keep killing the scout ants that come up looking for food, so I don’t understand why they keep coming. But I killed them all this morning, and so far I haven’t seen any more. Unfortunately, about an hour ago, I accidentally put a plastic bag of brown sugar down on a still hot burner (CURSE YOU ELECTRIC STOVE!!!). Now my kitchen smells like a maple syrup factory. Something tells me a new front may open in the ant wars tomorrow.