Is it really THAT unreasonable an idea that I host Thanksgiving at our house this year?  Yep!!  I don’t know what kind of wine I was drinking or what kind of cold medicine I may have taken, but clearly my rationality was compromised at the time this decision was made.  I’m almost positive I was brainwashed. 

So since I decided to have everyone here for the holiday of binge eating, obviously I need to make sure my house is in perfect shape, right?  Ya.  So I decided this was a good time to paint the entire downstairs.  I have 8 days left to finish this and am working 3 of those days.  Two weeks ago I decided to paint two walls a day.  This would make a terrible task easy to accomplish.  I painted one wall one day, two the next, and went shopping or worked the next five.  So here I sit with five days and 13 white walls.  Oh, and the roller is dried up and stuck in the bathroom sink.  Of course.

I have decided that one does not need to be able to sing or have any talent at all to be able to have a children’s show on cable TV.

Dora – One question:  Where are her parents?  I know what you’re thinking, “Um… duh… the grandma!”  No!  She sees her grandma like once every 20 shows.  That is an elderly woman who lives in the woods and makes chocolate all day.  There is absolutely no supervision going on there.  If there was, I’m certain Dora wouldn’t be hanging out with an Ebola-incubating monkey being chased by a rabid fox who apparently has kleptomania!

There are only a few weeks left before the kids head back to school.  Now is the time to form a battle plan so you can conquer all the back to school madness!  Here are a few things I do to make the transition easier for the kids and especially YOU!

Organization – Make a spot in your home where kids can chunk all their junk so it’s somewhat organized but easy to access.  The last thing you need is to forget to check backpacks before you go to bed.  The morning is crazy enough without permission slips and folders being shoved in your face. 

A poet once said, “Good fences make good neighbors”.  What a clever saying, and completely applicable to us even 100 years after the poem was written.  Why?  Because no one wants to see what’s going on with the jungle of weeds in the backyard next door.  My best friend, Krista, and I were discussing this topic while I was driving down 75 with my kids in the back seat of the car, one of which had just opened an umbrella and was attempting to push it out the window and fly away.  (We had just watched Mary Poppins,  thank you so much for that.  But sincerely, thank you to the child safety window lock inventor.)  Krista and I live on completely opposite sides of the metroplex, but we both have a hand full of neighbors that have quirky little habits that make them…need better fences perhaps.  I am sure everyone has experienced a neighbor like this, so we took the liberty of developing a list of rules.  Rules that might help everyone enjoy daily living just a little bit more, and no… none of this has to do with the quantity of weeds in your lawn (unless they’re making their way into my lawn… then we have a problem).

Rules if you want to be my neighbor:

Please do not keep a full-size refrigerator on your front porch.  The fact that it’s plugged in implies it is currently in use or there is a plan to use it in the near future.  The potted plants that are neatly positioned on the top of it and around the base do not act as a good camouflage.  This decision was a mistake.

So, about a month ago my husband went out and bought himself a graduation present when I finished nursing school.  You read that correctly.  He is a car guy.  A gear head.  I married my nemesis.  Here’s the deal.  When we started dating he had a mustang, after that a few trucks, and then he got his beloved 2000 Camaro SS… which after a few months I accidentally backed over with my SUV.  I know!  I know! 

SCHOOL SUPPLIES!  Need I say more?  I don’t need to, but I’m ganna.  School glue?  Aren’t we all to a point where we can just say “glue”?  I have never EVER heard a child say the sentence, “Say, Bobby!  Could you please pass me the school glue and bold, washable, flat-tipped Crayola markers?  I’m going to use my blunt, 5-inch safety scissors to cut out this circle and then color it neatly.”  If you find yourself confused in the school supply aisle, might I offer you a School District to People English translation tool?

You know, this is probably true for every family who has the traditional Easter egg hunt on Easter morning…or afternoon… or whenever.  It really doesn’t matter as long as you’re hiding something from your kids with the intent of them finding it (and I said that last part because hiding candy or sweets from your kids indefinitely doesn’t fall under this story’s treasure hunt theme).  I didn’t realize until this year that every single year there is always ONE egg that isn’t found on Easter.  It might be July 4^th when you’re pulling card tables out for the lawn party that you shout “Oh my goodness!  You’ll never guess what I just found folded up in the card table!”  In our family the egg was always purple.  I don’t know why.  Or maybe the purple one is the only one I remember.  Regardless.  I was watering my mom’s plants & there it was.  Purple Easter egg with an old Hershey’s chocolate stashed inside.  I opened it feeling like I had struck gold… until I saw that the chocolate had those white specks that mutter, “If you are desperate enough to eat me then you need to walk your butt to the gym”.  Only when you’re a kid it mutters, “eewww!  Ga-ross!”

Ok, so anyway!  Like I said, I think that situation is fairly normal.  I’m sure if I called all my girlfriends they’d say, “Ya!  Last year we found one in Daniel’s boot!” or “Yup, dog ate it…”  I think that’s common.  Right?

Well yesterday we did the whole egg hunt thing at my parents’ house.  Nana & Poppie’s house.  Well, Nana and Poppie are getting old guys, cuz not only could the kids not find the eggs, but Nana and Poppie had no idea where they hid them!  (I am soooo ganna get a call from my mom!  In my defense, I told them I was going to write this!)  They made plans!  They had a strategic plan going on in their heads before we even got to the house.  They counted out how many eggs they were hiding for each child.  Each child had their own room to look in, and each child had about 25 eggs.  Or 26.  No one knows.  And we probably won’t know for sure until July.  So our Little Bit had her own room with easy to spot eggs, Middle Girl had medium hard room, and Oldest Child had super hard room.  Are you sure we’re in the right room guys?  If you do the math, there should have been 75 eggs flying around this house, and to this day (one day later) I only saw one!  My husband swears he saw three.  I swear he’s a liar.  30 minutes into it my son is saying, “this is the worst Easter ever!”,  I’m saying, “It’s not Easter if nobody cries!”, and Poppie is digging around in Nana’s house plant looking for eggs.  “Are you sure you hid 26 and not 25?” he asks my mom.  “I hid 26 in the girls’ rooms!  You’re the one who hid the eggs in here!” she replied.  At one point I hallucinated a plastic egg tucked away on a magazine rack!  It was a dead leaf...  or my son’s egg hunt enthusiasm… I can’t be sure.

As I joked around with my parents about how they’re too old to play the part of the Easter Bunny a terrifying thought occurred to me!  What if next time we go on vacation they play hide-and-seek with the kids and forget to look for them!  What if we don’t see our CHILD again until July 4^th!  “Oh!  Here it is!” I heard my questionably blind father declare.  Though he has been known for pulling quarters out of thin air, and he has the ability to disconnect his thumb entirely, wave it around in the air, and then reattach it without spilling a drop of blood…. Curious.  I don’t believe that egg was found!  I believe it was planted!

Whatever the case may be, take this as a warning.  Beware of the Alzheimer’s Bunny.

Also…. What in God’s name do a bunny and eggs have in common!?  Who came up with this brilliant idea!?

So I’m in the diagnostic phase of this whole ADD/learning disability thing.  If you’ve been here, then you know what I’m thinking, “holy cow!”  This is a mess you guys!  It’s a    hot   mess!  It’s not this easy process.  It’s not 1. Get a diagnosis  2. Start a medication  3.  Tell the school  4. Magical straight A report card.  Okay, you know when you’re a kid and you have like perfect yellow Play-Doh and then you fold in some red, and then some blue, and then some orange… and then you put it through your mom’s garlic press & it comes out all swirly?  Okay, so if yellow equals the success you want for your child and red, blue, and orange equal all the problems you’re going to encounter with a learning disability and then the garlic press is the school district…  Wait, wait, wait…. Is there orange Play-Doh?

In my quest to find help I’ve spoken with numerous parents who share the same stores and same struggles.  Their kids have ADD/ADHD and all they do is hit brick walls!  It stinks!  These are parents who are involved and want the best for their kids, but red tape is keeping their kids from being successful.  All I want is for someone to help my son be successful!  He can do the work!  He knows his stuff, but God bless him if he sees a bird in the corner of his eye he’ll be lost for the next half hour in some magical daydream aviary land.  I know he’s brilliant, but I need to figure out how to channel that into his school work… even for 30 straight minutes.  Who do I go to for help!  If I could get one straight answer that didn’t have the sentence, “we’re going to refer you to…” I’d be a happy woman.  In the meantime, I’m going to pursue this elusive questionnaire I’m supposed to get from a vague ADD diagnostician so my son might eventually shine the way he was meant to.