Catching Up. . . Or Not

Jerry was gone last week. He had a week-long convention in Las Vegas. I was anticipating the week with mixed feelings - after all, I married him so I could be around him for the rest of my life, and he was going to be gone for a week - but a part of me was looking forward to getting a few of my projects out and completed while he was gone, too.

Well, remember how I posted that Gracie was home sick with me last week? She stayed that way for six more days. She missed six days of school, total. I'm sure I'll be getting my nastygram from the truancy office any day now. Anyway, having a person asking me every five minutes if there wasn't something we could play together put a crimp in my project plans. Not that I minded, of course, I mean, as a mother, my primary job is to tend to my offspring, but still. . . my projects. . . Oh well.

Gracie and I played some games one day. Blockus is always one of my favorites. I was a bit tired of Candy Land and Sorry, so I made her play Scrabble, which is like saying I played myself in Scrabble. Gracie didn't care for it, until the end, when she beat me 150 to 85 with an 80 point play for the word "hazards". Yeah, she came up with that. . . right. Oh well. It was a short game.

The last two weekends have been filled with Girl Scout activities. The first weekend we were supposed to go to an overnight at the local museum. We were actually supposed to go last October, but we all had the flu or something, so we pushed our registration to the spring event. When it became apparent that Gracie was not going to be well enough to attend, we decided I would have a special night with Maggie, and Gracie will (hopefully) get her turn this fall. Maggie and I had a good time, although sleeping in a cavernous building with 400 giggling girl scouts is an exercise in futility.

This weekend we went to Frontier City, our local amusement park, for Girl Scout Day. Maggie's troop had decided to use some of their cookie money to buy the tickets, and lots of parents had decided to come along, but once we got there, it was more of each family doing their own thing that our troop doing stuff together. We had brought our lunches, but not drinks, so I stopped at a concession stand to get us some. The girls wanted the souvenir cup, and since Gracie was still newly recovered, I figured I better get each girl their own. Four drinks, and our total was $25.90! Highway robbery! Of course, we get refills for the souvenir cups for only $1.50 each, and now I feel like I have to come back to the park again just to get refills so I can drive down the cost per drink to a reasonable level! ACK!!! My penny pinching soul was in anguish!

The girls have been working on riding their bikes with no training wheels. There's a church at the entrance to our neighborhood with a nice, large, flat parking lot. Once Gracie was feeling a bit better, I loaded them up with their bikes to go practice. Interestingly enough, Maggie is the one who wants to go fast and fearless on the bike, while Gracie is being super cautions. Here they are, getting the hang of it.


It wasn't long before they had the hang of it and were mugging for the camera and singing cute little ditties about riding a two-wheeled bike as they made their passes by me:


Sorry, I know the sound doesn't work for everyone.

Saturday Maggie went out to ride her bike in the driveway, and she wiped out, skinning her knee. She came in sobbing, declaring , "I will never, ever, ever, ever, EVER ride that bike again!" We got her calmed down and washed her wounds, but couldn't convince her to get back on the bike. Sunday after church though, as we got out of the car at home she asked if she could ride her bike after lunch.

"You mean the bike that you will never, ever, ever, ever, EVER ride again?" I asked.

"Yeah, forget I said that." She said.

And she wonders why we call her a drama queen.

Let's see, on other fronts, my application for OU has made it through the admissions office, and now I am being considered by the College of Library and Information Studies. I still haven't heard about my writing scores on the GRE, so I guessing they haven't either, but I'm not as worried as I was.

I had noticed that whenever I talked about going back to school, Maggie would get very agitated and upset. One day, when I was discussing my education plans with another mom who is currently finishing her bachelor's, I found out why. Maggie thinks that I am going away to college, to live in a dorm, like some of her babysitters from the past have. We laughed and explained that no, I'll still be staying at home. Maggie still wasn't sold on the idea though, so I told her that the things that would change was that I'd be on the computer a bit more, and be busy with homework and studying, so I might not have enough time to cook every night, so there would probably be more take out in our future. This was enough to convince her that school could be a good thing. This just proves, it's all a matter of perspective.

And now it's time to get a new perspective on my laundry pile! Adios!