I Spent All My Beer Money on School Supplies
Oh. My. Goodness. Just spent a couple of hours at the local K-Mart getting all the school supplies that the quadruplets will need to start 7th grade on Tuesday. I remember hearing stories years ago about rich oil Sheiks going to Harrod’s in London and having a private shopping spree in the middle of the night. They would instruct the employees there to pack up one of everything they touched as they drifted through the store. I felt that way, only much poorer, and having to deal with the unwashed masses. I can’t decide if every moron in the metro area plans to shop when I’m there, or if morons are ALWAYS shopping.
I imagined myself doing one of those supermarket sweeps, racing with my cart to the school supplies aisle and raking shelf-fulls of stuff into it. I mean, twelve composition books?! And twenty-four BIG glue sticks?! Are they snorting this stuff? And the regular size glue sticks aren’t acceptable. They must be jumbo-sized. Considering that the K-Mart was out of all sizes of glue sticks, I told my kids they were lucky to get the two small each I tossed into their backpacks. I told them if their teachers rolled their eyes or made a comment, to respectfully say, “My mother was buying supplies for quadruplets and said to talk to her if there’s a problem with anything.” While I desperately hope that all of their teachers are really nice, I have fantasies of being able to get in full irate-redneck mode with someone. I can wave my Bud Light bottle around, sloshing beer, while I take out my shopping-with-morons frustrations out on them. I could even be barefoot!
The kids have stashed all of their stuff away in their backpacks and are now worrying about locker combinations. When did they get so old? I can’t believe I have seventh graders now. I glimpsed DS2 talking on the phone today and realized how deep his voice had gotten and how long his legs were. In another year I’ll have teenagers! Anyway, we haven’t even gotten to the point of sending in checks for PE uniforms, art supplies, and after school activities. The older they get, the poorer I feel.
Fay, Fay, Go Away
Our family just got home after our week at the beach. We had a great time, even if we’re water-logged and drippy. The beach we went to was just below Charleston, SC and we got all the rainy edges of Hurricane/Tropical Storm Fay. We are a family of readers, so a little rainy weather wasn’t a totally bad thing. I finally started Pillars of the Earth (Ken Follett) and am hooked. A thousand-page book goes pretty slowly when you’re only reading a few pages a night before bed. So being able to have big chunks of reading time allowed me to plow into it a bit. Even if it meant pretending not to smell a dirty diaper until someone else would grudgingly get up to handle it. (Thanks, Sugar Daddy!)
I also got through most of Sex, Lies, and the Media by the Eversons. There wasn’t really anything new in it, but it’s always shocking to see the hard numbers of how many times a day our children are exposed to drug and sex images. One of the kids was watching the Travel Channel yesterday. Deep Fried Paradise . . . mmmmmmm. We were drooling over the fried Reese’s cups and fried Twinkies when it cut to a commercial. And the commercial was for an adult store that sells sex toys and supplies. This was at 5 pm on the Travel Channel, for heaven’s sake! I’m not a prude, I swear. I wouldn’t question it if I saw these commercials after 9 pm. But when kids are watching? (Stepping down off the soapbox.)
I would not think to describe myself this way, except for the once or twice a year we are at the beach, but I am an avid beachcomber. I could spend hours slowly strolling, bent in half at the waist, enjoying all of God’s miraculous tiny creations. Of course, then I bring a bucket of them home and it starts to smell like dead fish in the kitchen. How could something so pretty stink so much? I don’t mind the kids bringing a few shells home, but they had HUGE collections laid out on their towels at the cottage. Fay’s rough seas were causing large, intact conchs, sea urchins, and abalones to wash up and the kids loved seeing shells that we don’t normally find. DS2 made the outstanding suggestion to take pictures of them all and then leave them on the beach for others to find. What a great idea! But I think a few of them still got smuggled home in their bags. What’s that smell?
The only grocery store on the island is a Piggly Wiggly. They actually sell T-shirts there that say, “I DIG THE PIG.” I would love to see that become the new fashion trend with the celebrities. Even with their exorbitant captive-shopper prices, the costs were about the same as the Washington DC suburbs. I wanted to whisper to the manager, “You may think that you’re screwing me, but, really, I’m used to these prices.”
BabyGirl loves the beach. When she sees anyone putting their flip flops on, she’ll start chanting, “Beach, beach, beach!” She did a lot of carting buckets of sand and water to various spots around the beach for no particular reason. I found out that if I showed her a pretty shell I picked up, she’d take it and not want to give it back, eventually throwing it out to sea. So I started giving her my rejects. Didn’t seem to bother her. She spent a lot of the rainy time coloring. Eight crayons and one Dora the Explorer coloring book and she’s happy for days.
The big kids are still young enough to enjoy making sand castles and walking the beach. I am breaking my arm patting myself on the back because no one came home with sunburn! Yay, me! I always feel like a bad Mama when the kids get burned and blistered. They had a great time and rode the rented bikes all over the island trails.
Now we just have to get all the kids’ school stuff ready for the start of (drumroll) Middle School. Orientation is tomorrow–hope I don’t cry!
We’ve Got Spirit, Yes We Do!
It’s always interesting when school starts and we find out about Spirit Days that are planned for the school year. One Spirit Day we’ve seen in several schools is “Twin Day”. What amuses me the most is that my kids will sit around discussing who they should try to be twins with, usually settling on their sibling of the same gender. About this point, I start giving them a hard time, “Umm, you DO know that you’re quadruplets and that you’re already sort of ’super’twins, right?” My kids have never dressed alike (except for the sappy pictures that Mama forced them to smile for) so they think that wearing the same clothes suddenly makes them twins. I’ll try not to ruin the fun this year by reminding them that EVERY day is Twin Day for the four of them.
Sixth grade graduation with their principal . . .and yet another Twin Day for my kids. 
More on Books
More books I love–
Forgot this one. Written from the point of view of a teen with autism. Really gives a different perspective on how people see the world.
- The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon
Some Christian fiction that is really good:
- Black, Red, and White (The Circle Trilogy) by Ted Dekker
- Three by Ted Dekker (oh, I get all giddy just thinking of the exciting climax of this book!)
- This Present Darkness by Frank E. Peretti (I love Peretti’s writing, but after a few books you begin to wonder if anyone causes problems in our world other than Satan worshipers. I’d think casual Christians or other “feel-gooders” would be more threatening to most of us in real life.)
We are heading to the beach this week and I have several books to work on while I’m there.
I have been carrying around The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett for several months now. While it has been great for bicep curls (976 pages!), I have yet to read the first page. Just seems a little intimidating. Maybe I’ll crack it on vacation.
I’m desperate to read the only Jen Lancaster book I haven’t gotten to — Bright Lights, Big Ass. They don’t even have it at my local library. How bassackward is that?
Just started Sex, Lies, and the Media by the mother-daughter Everson team. I think it will wind up making me very uncomfortable with what I allow into my home via the TV and internet, which is probably a good thing. Sugar Daddy has been trying to get me to cancel the cable TV for a while. This book may convince me.
All the Colors of the Rainbow
BabyGirl is suddenly into coloring now. I dug through the art boxes around the house and found a bag full of colored pencils and washable markers. She loves to sit at the dining room table and scribble while also demanding us to write letters and items–”Color ‘E’!” “Color star!” She was happily coloring today and we momentarily took our eyes off of her. Here is the project she worked on when we were looking the other way:
How much would this pull if it was a Picasso?
"Just keep that baby away from me, got it?"
The cat was so happy.
Just had to include a picture of the artiste with the outfit she insisted on wearing the other night–her surfer-girl bathing suit with her new Dora sneakers. She is totally a Fashion DO.
The freshest look at the Paris shows this season.
