“LM, what happened to the two potatoes I bought yesterday? I don’t see them in the fridge.”

“They should be in the crisper drawaer, Mom.”

“I know, but they aren’t there, and I don’t see them in the fridge anywhere.”

“Maybe they are still in the car?”

“Why would they still be in the car, we only had one bag at the store? They should have been brought in.”

“I know, but maybe they fell out. I’ll go check.”

“Nope, they aren’t in the car.”

“Well, LM, I’ve looked in the fridge three times, where else could they be?”

“I don’t know, Mom.”

“I remember buying them. I can remember putting them on the scanner and typing in the produce code. I think it was 4072.”

“It was 4072. I remember you doing that.”

“Well, if I bought them, where could they be?”

“I don’t know, Mom.”

“I remember putting them in the bag, on top, and we only had the one bag, and all the grocery bags are back in the car, so it can’t still be in a bag somewhere. I just don’t know where they could possibly be.”

“Mom. I just don’t know.”

“I know, LM, but sometimes when you say ‘I don’t know,’ it turns out later you did know. I wouldn’t surprise me in the least to find two potatoes in your bathroom or someplace weird.”

“I know, Mom, but I really don’t know where the potatoes could be. I know we ate two baked potatoes last night, but…”

“Oh, we did eat two baked potatoes last night, didn’t we?”

“Mom?”

“Yes, LM?”

“I think your brain is officially fried.”

“I think so, too, LM.”

LM’s school had a Science and Literacy Night this evening. Living in such close approximation to my sister, she felt an obligation to attend (or perhaps Bear just wanted to see what kind of a grade he LM, got on his marble cannon). Or maybe my sister just doesn’t get out enough. Ahem. In either case, we went.

We were greeted at the door by students shoving handing us reuseable grocery bags. I thought for a moment that perhaps I had misjudged the event and it might be slightly more organized and interesting than I had imagined. Right.

We followed LM to his science room so he could drop of Bear’s LM’s marble cannon. The room had about 20 tri-fold first-grader sixth grader presentations on display, representing ten minutes’ a month’s worth of a science project for each student full of useful information grammatical horrors. On the projection screen were students mumbling giving book reports. (What the one had to do with the other, I never will know.)

LM’s PowerPoint presentation was on display nowhere. We had to make room for his cannon display despite having told his teacher he would be bringing it for the evening.

We went back to the front of the building to actually attempt to go through the right procession of events for the evening, only to find there was no procession of events. They had skipped the Welcome part, dinner was being served for the next hour and there were various activities throughout the rather large building. Bear surveyed leftover school lunch dinner and suggested perhaps we think twice about eating there. The kids LM thought reheated monkey brains school spaghetti sounded delish. After a hike back to LM’s locker to get the dinner tickets we didn’t know were in the reuseable bags that we had shoved in his locker for the night, we jumped in line for our gruel dinner and sat down to eat without anyone ever asking us for the mandatory useless meal tickets.

While we ate, a small group of girls did some sort of stomping screaming thing rhythmic cheer thing on the stage (can someone tell me the correlation between that and Science or Literature?) We also heard the drums playing (not with the girls’ performance) off in the hallway somewhere, but never did see them.

After dinner, we wandered around – not, in fact, to actually try the “interactive events for the whole family” namely Book Bingo and the Cake Walk, but to find LM’s Science Teacher so we could ask some very pertinent questions about the Science Olympia this weekend that we’ve received NO details on to date. (Note it should be made clear that the Science Fair marble cannon and the Science Olympia trebuchet/catapult are not only not related, they are equally a pain in my butt.)

The highs of the evening would include showing LM that wintergreen Lifesavers really do spark in your mouth, and of course, the indulgent obligatory trip to DQ after a school event. The lows, while too numerous to name them all, included: A)LM’s teacher telling us that the Science Olympia he’s been preparing for since December is really only competitive at the ninth grade level, and while the sixth graders will take their projects, (LM’s catapult) they are really nowhere good enough to actually compete in the event. B) Walking nearly ten miles back and forth between supposed “interactive activities” is always a fun way to spend a family evening together, lost in a middle school building. And certainly, 3) Talking again, with LM’s math teacher and reminding him again, as I did the first time I met him, during the third week of school, that LM is ready to commit hara-kiri STILL bored in math and some truly challenging curriculum would be greatly appreciated.

I think, after this evening of learning, entertainment, chaos, ineptitude, my sister might listen to me choose to stay home the next time.

*Stacy, you’re right! Strike-throughs are a sign of astute intellectual humor fun!

When you feel badly for forgetting your coat when you visited out of state, and you have to tuck your tail between your legs and kindly, sweetly ask your friend if she might just cram it into the smallest box possible and ship it the cheapest way possible, she’ll do it, but she’ll stuff the pockets full of rocks just to remind you why she’s such a dear friend to begin with.

While LM might have proclaimed the SAT “easier than I thought it would be” (see skeptical post), thankfully absent from the test was a pronunciation section.

Add to our list:

‘municipal’, pronounced, ‘munickipal’ as in, “Mom, how come all the muNICKipal cars have an ‘x’ on the license plates? Isn’t it obvious which ones are police cars already?”

It is often the highlight of my day to drive Bird and George home from school. No matter how difficult my day of subbing, no matter what matters lay heavy on my mind, the ride always leave me smiling.

Earlier this week, Bird and I were discussing the rain, and how grateful we both were that it didn’t fall from the sky as more snow. George quickly reminded us that we did, however still have several more weeks of winter, according to the groundhog.

“Are you telling me that you’re putting your faith in a groundhog to tell you the weather?” I inquired.

“Yeah, don’t you know that God controls the weather?” chimed in Bird.

“I know God controls the weather, Bird,” George retorted, “But the groundhog has to tell him when to make it Spring!”

Well, duh.

I could have gone to Eastern and saved myself eight years of student loan payments. But the minute I set foot on campus, I knew Augie was the right fit for me.

I lived all four years in the same residence hall (the building on the right). Set on perhaps the only hill in the state of Illinois, I learned quickly my freshman year that 564 stairs between me and breakfast would keep me in shape without even trying. Now, there are brand new ‘dorms’ (I’m allowed to say that 15 years after being an R.A.), a security system and an empty front desk (where I used to manage a staff of 20 students). But some things never change.

Men are still not allowed unescorted in the ‘Virgin Vault’.

Some sights are just as beautiful as they ever were making me wonder how 15 years could go by so quickly.
The library that was built early on in my collegiate career. I avoided it at all cost, only going in long enough to photocopy whatever materials I needed so I could return to my room to study.

The snack bar where I spent many mealtimes reading my mail over a deli sandwich and Sun Chips.

When I heard about the trajedies at Virginia Tech and NIU, my mind always pictured Old Main, the building where I spent many hours in classes on religion, history, literature. The true icon of the college.

No tour of campus would be complete without standing on the now snow-covered spot where his dad and I were married. The day so memorable for so many reasons:

it was the day before graduation when we stood outside the chapel and said our vows; the people in attendance few, but significant then; the weekend marking the last time I saw my mother out of bed and full of life; a day I would look back on many times during the divorce and wonder what did I know then that might have changed the outcome.

We stood on the banks of the Mighty Mississippi, the bridge in the background, and I thought about the years that have gone by. I thought about the husband I fell in love with during a Modern Fiction class my freshman year. While I watched the eagles floating over the river, I thought about the man I married and 8 years later divorced. I knew that I could look back regretfully if I chose. But there, in between me and all those memories, walking next to me along the campus paths, shopping with me for sweatshirst in the bookstore, throwing snowballs and laughing all the way, was the one who makes regret impossible.

A few short blocks away was the townhouse we lived in for three years after we were married. It was the home LM first came home to as a newborn; the home he left when he was too young to remember it. The home I left on my fifth wedding anniversary for a new start in Pennsylvania.

No trip back memory lane would be complete without sandwiches from Arthur’s. The owner is still the same, only the pictures on the walls have changed (for the better). I used to sit in a booth surrounded by the man that I loved and all our friends. Now I sat with the boy that I love and our dear friends. Some things never change.

Even the ice cream still tastes as sweet.

I have two siblings. The elder, a sister (Jules) is a textbook eldest child. While I would never wish ill-will against her or upon her, she’s had a life that followed the book and now has a good husband, two kids, a dog, a home they built with a swing on the porch and enough money in various places that Dave Ramsey himself would be proud. My younger sibling, G, is fun to be around, carefree, tied down to nothing more than his two dogs, he has made his way through life trying different paths, different jobs, different locales and has thus far come out unscathed. While Dave Ramsey might not be impressed with my brother, I suspect he might make quick friends with someone like Toby Keith.

I was sitting here this morning wondering over a lot of different things and it occured to me to think about what it might have been like to have Jesus as your older sibling. First of all, what shock Mary must have had when her second child was born. The first one had been, well, perfect, and now, she has one that gets sick, cries, throws tantrums, is selfish, lies, bites and screams for no reason at all. But as I keep my own envy in check over my sister’s seemingly perfect life, I have to think that being a younger brother to Jesus might have been the worst situation a child could be in. Your mother would never stop saying, “Why can’t you just be perfect like your brother?” And while Jesus could go off, wandering around the country without a job, writing home to say he’s off preaching and performing miracles, but has no real source of income, no place to lay his head, no intentions to marry, there would be enormous pressure on every other child in the home to have a good job, raise a family, be a good provider.

As kids, Mary might walk into the room and see her children fighting. Asking one what happened, she might hear, “Jesus stole my toy!” only to have to reprimand her son for lying.

When you held a summer job as a teenager, your employer probably mumbled under his breath, “Jesus was the best kid we ever employed. His brother, however, leave a lot to be desired!” Even if you worked hard, you could never work perfectly. When the donkey didn’t get fed, or the eggs hadn’t been gathered from the chickens, you couldn’t try to suggest that maybe it was Jesus’ fault. You’d learn quickly that Mary would instantly know better and you’d be to blame. Again.

Women probably fell in love with Jesus, but settled for a brother thinking there must be similarities. How disappointed they must have been to realize they got the short end of the stick! “Your brother, Jesus, is sympathetic! He would have understood! How can you be so calluous?”

Even children might favor their uncle Jesus over their own fathers.

I guess, when I give it some thought, I am fortunate to have a sister to look up to, but one that I can surely say isn’t perfect.

It wasn’t so bad. Wasn’t as difficult as the practice tests we took. The math wasn’t nearly so bad, he says. On a scale from one to ten, 10 being how hard the practice tests were, this one was a 6 or maybe a 7.

On the practice tests, his scores weren’t high enough to get in to the gifted program.

But maybe, just maybe…

Dare I hope that there is an end in sight to his boredom in math class?

Dare I even think it?

I want to post pictures from our trip. I want to post about LM’s latest mispronunciation, I want to post about George (I probably have three posts just about George) but tomorrow is the SAT (which LM is not going to score hgh enough on in math to qualify for the gifted program, but sine I already shelled out my dollars, he might as well take the darn thing) and next week LM’s Science Fair project is due, and I’ve been fighting a cold and the house is a pit, the dog is desperate for attention and I haven’t seen anything green outside in months and well, I guess posting is going to have to wait. Even if I still can’t see grass or leaves outside, I’ll post soon. I promise.

I will say this much, though, hibernating through the winter months is sounding better and better every day.

Nothing but sleep, baby, nothing but sleep.