Oliphant Parts

Is it a bad sign that the dream I’ve woken to the past few mornings has been of divorce? Sure, I’ve woken up sad, but also a little relieved. For this Thanksgiving weekend, I want to give thanks that I won’t have any more four-day weekends for a while. Let’s just hope that Christmas involves less screaming at the children on the wife’s part. My favorite Mormon Mommy quote of the week: “I’m sorry, I guess I just don’t like kids.” I’d say it’s time for a spa day. Or making dreams come true.

There’s an odd smell in my office this morning. I don’t think Mango pooped in here, although she has been known to do so. As far as I can tell, there are no plates of old food on my desk, although I may have to excavate for an hour or so just to be sure. Perhaps it is time to actually clean this place.

We had parent-teacher conferences for the kids yesterday. The girl-child does quite well, but tends to be highly disorganized. Homework assignments frequently have to be done twice, either because she misplaces them or because they are too messy/crumpled to be turned in. Looking in her desk is like looking in a landfill. She hasn’t thrown away a single scrap of paper since the beginning of the school year, apparently. I have no idea where she gets this behavior from. Maybe I should challenge her, tell her I’ll clean my desk if she cleans hers.

The boy-child also is doing quite well, but has a spotless desk. Where the girl-child rushes through her work and forgets to turn it in, the boy-child finishes all work on time, keeps it neat, and if it is math, includes extra problems because he wants to move on to subtraction and multiplication. Apparently, he’s taken it upon himself to teach the other kids in his first grade class the concepts of infinity and of subtraction. Hopefully he’ll keep up on the math stuff, because Jennie’s ready for someone to take over the balancing of the checkbook and maintaining our Quicken data. Since she is on the math squad, I’d suggest the girl-child, but I’d hate to find the checkbook crumpled behind a dresser and the computer files somehow merged with a Scooby Doo game. C’mon, boy-child!- stick with math so your parents can stick you with the chore of maintaining household finances!

My kids are always good for a laugh. Sure, it may be at them rather than with them, but the important thing is that we are laughing. Yesterday’s laugh-fest was boy-child induced. He waited a bit too long to go to the bathroom, and when he finally let loose, he managed to spray everywhere but in the bowl. Being a boy, he then left, leaving the mess for someone else to clean. That someone else was his aunt, who promptly sat in the puddles he’d left on the seat. She didn’t laugh, but I certainly did.