I wonder if he knows he married a renaissance woman

My activities for the day included:

• baking homemade cinnamon rolls (from scratch, the yeast kind)
• recycling (with the whole family...and the dog)
• hauling my car in to the tire shop to have the blown out tire replaced (the blown out tire that, yes, I’m convinced I could have changed all by myself had that gentleman not shown up to help me)
• repairing plaster
• making the most divine portobello burgers for dinner
• taking A to enjoy the last night of our county fair...and the last heats of the demolition derby

Sometimes I don’t even believe all the crazy that is my life these days.

It's been a long time since I laughed so hard that I cried.

Tonight, this did it. And I'm not exactly sure why.

Perhaps we just need to get out more.

Football season again!

You didn’t seriously expect that I wouldn’t post about this, did you?!

And then there’s this!!

I told my sister-in-law that surely this must be the end of the coaching road for cousin Lloyd, but she thinks that I'm predicting the wrong kind of outcome. "Seems to me," she said, "that he's working out just fine for you guys!"

Doug took it upon himself to pen this in celebration:

"and it came to pass that after Bo descended into Sheol and after a short time, his children and his children's children began to rot, and they did smell with a stench that did reach into the highest heaven"
--- from The Song of Washtenaw 39:7

With the most sincere and hearfelt apologies to my Wolverine friends.

NOT!

Excuse me, I say to the hardware guy at that store I hate.  I need some, umm, silicone, uhhh, lubricant.

He looks up, one eyebrow raised.  Mmmm-hm.

Yeah.  So, um, it's for our toilet.  Because we have a toilet with, um, well, it doesn't have one of those ball things, but it has this thing that goes up and down.  And that thing is stuck and it's not going up and down anymore, and so my husband (I just talked to him and he looked it up online) thinks that silicone lubricant will fix the problem.

Uhhhh...  eyebrow no longer  raised, but both eyebrows are now knit together in a look of, what is that, feigned concern?  Or is he just trying not to laugh at me?

Actually, I'm not sure that he's really sure that silicone lubricant, um, exists.  (As to myself I think, "But I'm sure he wouldn't even think of sending me on a mission to that store I hate to ask a strange man for silicone lubricant if he wasn't near certain that my chances of actually finding such a thing were pretty good.)

Um, yeah.  Well, I don't know that we have that, uh, here.  Why don't you go and ask the guys over at the automotive desk.  Just go right up to the desk and ask them for what you need.  I'm sure they'll be able to help you.  They know where all that stuff is.  (And you can bet your soccer-mom you-know-what that as soon as you are out of ear shot I'm going to call the guys in automotive and laugh my a** off when I tell them what you're looking for.)

Ch-ch-ch-changes

The boy started kindergarten last week.  Here in our town, everyone goes to kindergarten all day, every day.  The only option for half-day happens to be at his school, but we thought that all day every day school would be good for him.  He tends to find trouble when he's not occupied, and since he's reading like a freaking nine-year old, we were happy to be able to send him to a stimulating environment 5 days per week.

It's gone well.  We are so happy with our choice of schools, and he seems to really like it as well.  So far we really can't complain or wish for anything better for him (except the clique-y PTA, but that's quite another story).  He's handled the transition pretty well, and aside from being so tired that he walks around resembling a drunk in the evenings, he loves school.

The transition to having a school-aged child has been a little difficult and surprising for me.  I realized this week that I really have not much of an idea what's going on during the day with my boy.  We rely on his stories and any communication from his teacher to let us know what (and how) he's doing.  We're quickly learning that he's not the most accurate of historians, and of course we don't get a daily rundown of his every moment from his teacher.  That's fine - I don't really expect that.  But it's hard to make that leap.  Harder than I thought it would be.

The other thing we're trying to figure out and manage as best we can is the absolute exhaustion brought on by school.  A has always been one that requires a significant amount of sleep, and school requires an early wake-up time.  I figure he goes full-tilt all day long, and when he finally returns home at the end of the day he is noticeably wiped out, and usually quite irritable.  So we've bent our usually strict rules on TV watching, and we send him outside frequently because as long as he stays really busy he isn't consumed with how tired he is.  We let him watch stupid cartoons and do far more vegging than previously.  Perhaps it's not the best strategy, but right now we're just trying to adjust and get by.  We play sleep catch-up on the weekends and try to keep the schedule low-key.

And that's what's happening here.  We're head-long back into the school schedule, and while at some point this week I felt certain it would completely kick my a**, we're managing.  More changes are coming - a new office for D, perhaps a new house for the 4 of us.  It's 10 shades of crazy around here.