And while he’s playing, he likes to listen to THE JON SCHMIDT playing the same song. Only Jon’s piano and our piano are not exactly tuned to each other.

I went out yesterday with the girls to get them to band by 7 am (the JOY OF MY LIFE, let me tell you). The window to the suburban was down, so I threw my purse onto the passenger seat and tossed my keys over to the middle console thing. Then when Natalie tried to open the car door, she can’t, because it’s locked. I reached through the window to open the door, but it wouldn’t open. I tried pushing the button to unlock, but that wouldn’t work, either. You must unlock with the key fob, or it thinks you are trying to break in. But my key fob was way over there where I had tossed it and I COULDN’T reach it! Without completely climbing through the window, I couldn’t see a way to reach it.

(I just have to insert a MONK reference here, for those of you who watch Monk…”if it doesn’t reach? Call Warren Beach.”)

Enter the tongs. I use tongs for all kind of reaching in my kitchen. Seriously. Can’t reach that cookie sheet? Get the tongs. You dropped something behind the dryer? Get the tongs. So, I had Natalie go and get the tongs from the kitchen, and I was able to reach in, grab my keys, push the unlock button, and carry on.

I was feeling all proud of myself in handling this tricky, although annoying situation. I told my husband about it, and he said, “Why didn’t you just manually switch the unlock switch?”

Um…. I forgot?

Batman is currently saving my children from boredom.

We got John the Lego batman game for his birthday, and the kids have been playing it CONSTANTLY since. Well, except when I tell them that the Wii needs a rest. And for the most part they are getting along while playing. So, if they get 20 hours of playing from this one game, I consider it a good investment.

Of course, tomorrow the long weekend is over and Batman will have to go back inside his case and rest so that we can all do our homework.

Well, they tell me it’s true. Now he’s a running, jumping, soccer playing, star wars obsessed boy.

Not one to get shorted out of ONE moment of birthday fun, he came into my room at about 5:50 am and said, “Mom, you need to get up and make me breakfast in bed.”
Ugh.
So, we all got up, made him breakfast, and even brought him his presents in bed. Hey, dad was out of town and there was no party planned for the day, so why not? He was thrilled with his lego star wars stormtrooper set, Lego Batman Wii game, and Galactic Heros star wars figuring. He was not too thrilled with the new pajamas, although he did wear them that night. He was more concerned with how MANY presents there would be rather than is they were awesome presents.

He was the special birthday boy at school, played with his Star Wars guys all afternoon, and we even went out to Iceberg for dinner. He got himself a free birthday shake, but was so full from his kids’ meal and ice cream that we put the whole thing in the freezer. There will surely be a party later.

Happy Birthday, John. I’m glad you are my baby! He may be stubborn and he may be a little spoiled, but he makes our lives fuller and richer and we can’t imagine what we’d do without him!

Oh, how I love that boy!

- A car

- My washing machine

- Deodorant

- Lipstick

- The Internet

- Mascara

Six Movies I’ve Never Seen Before

- Any of the Godfather movies

- 2001: A Space Odyssey

- Any of the Twilight movies, (although I will admit that I just checked the first one out from the library)

- Casablanca

- Die Hard, or any of the sequels

- Mad Max

Six of My Pet Peeves
(believe it or not, I had a hard time coming up with six things. It must be a good day)

- Signs that are spelled wrong. And not just things like “Krazy Kars” (although I don’t like those, either. Why can’t they just spell things correctly?)

- Car repairs

- People (meaning my children) who take their socks off and just leave them on the floor

- People who leave a tablespoon of cereal (or milk, or juice) in the container and then put it back

- When I have just returned from taking someone somewhere, and someone else says, “Mom, will you take me to ….?”

- Flaky people

Six Things I Really Love Doing

- SLEEPING

- Laughing with my family

- Cooking

- Singing along to the radio

- Winning things

- Reading

Six TV Shows I Enjoy

- Covert Affairs

- the Amazing Race

- Glee

- Burn Notice

- Chuck

- the Closer

Six Jobs I Have Held

- Party Hostess at McDonald’s party room

- Purchasing Agent at a pool cover manufacturing plant

- Receptionist

- Sandwich maker/ice cream scooper

- Substitute teacher

- teacher/cook at a day care

Six Books I’ve Never Read

- Gone with the Wind

- War and Peace

- Anything by Steven King

- Watership Down (although I started it, but couldn’t get into it)

- Jane Eyre

- Any of The Lord of the Rings

Six Movies I will ALWAYS Watch if I happen to see them on tv
- Overboard

- Napoleon Dynamite

- The Breakfast Club

- Oceans 11

- The Princess Bride

- Sleepless in Seattle

I will admit that even though I’m sad to see them go, sad to have to say goodbye to the fun and spontaneity of summer, and sad to jump into the planning, the scheduling and the homework, I have been looking forward to having some time without them to get things done. Think about it. It’s been 16 years since I’ve had a little one at home with me for all or part of the day.

I have plans. Yes, I do. I’m going to work out, clean the house, get myself organized, take care of all my PTA responsibilities, manage the Primary stuff, paint, etc. But it’s amazing how quickly the time goes from the time the last one goes until the first one gets home.

Lest you think I’m a slacker, let me tell you what I got done on the first day of school.
*I took my kids to the back to school breakfast at the busstop
* I went to the Gym. Yes. The Gym. Ahem. I DO know what a gym is. You over there..Stop snickering. I kicked out 30 minutes on the bike, 10 minutes on the eliptical thingy, walked 10 minutes and did about 5 minutes of arm weights. Exhausting.
*I came home and took a shower and got dressed.
*I organized about 6 weeks of coupons that had been waiting for me to organize them.
*Then I took all those newly clipped and organized coupons to our local Smith’s store, where they are currently running their big coupon event, where any coupon that is valued and $1 or less is equal to $1. I saved $50 with my coupons. Yeah, I love that!
*I had time to bring my groceries home and put them away, and then BOOM, the kids were home.

The other days were even less productive, unless you could presidency meeting and visiting teaching as productive. But I am enjoying the time without the kiddos. I get some cleaning done, get myself organized, and then hopefully I can be on my game when they come home and the chaos begins.

We have about 20 junior high kids in our neighborhood, and no bus to take them the 1.6 miles to school. Somehow I got put in charge of organizing carpool groups. Why did I get that job? I don’t know, but I’m NOT doing it again. So I checked in with people to see if they wanted to join up with a big carpool, or maybe they don’t have enough seats and want to stick with a small carpool, or no carpool all at. We had 6 kids/5 drivers, which was perfect, and when I went to talk to one of the moms, she said, “I’m not doing carpools this year. My son/daughter can just ride his/her bike. I’m not going to be driving any carpools this year.”

Uh, what? Well, that screws up my carpool schedule, and…really? I know what’s going to happen. Your poor kid is going to be out there in the rain/snow/wind/cold, and we are going to feel sorry for him/her and pick him/her up and squish him/her into our carpool, so you’ll get rides for him/her without ever offering to drive. I just KNOW it.

Anyway, this carpool has been difficult. Certain people can only drive in the mornings, We have to rotate through Fridays but some people just CAN’T do that, so some people will be driving more than others, etc. And we’ve changed our assignments so much I can hardly keep it straight. I had to call a friend and say, “Am I picking up the kids today or was it you?”

Then–(and here’s the venting part)–Mrs I don’t want to carpool called me this morning and asked who was driving and if her son/daughter could join in and could she take a day, etc, etc? I know I should jump at the chance to have another driver, but I honestly don’t know if one of our drivers can fit 7 kids in her car, and can we really add one more kid, etc, etc.

I know there are bigger problems in the world than my carpool issues, but I’m just kind of tired of it. The mean snarky side of me wants to say, “Oh, sorry. You didn’t want to join our carpool, and we’re all full.” But did I say that? No, of course not. Because I’m a wimp. And I want people to all just get along. Even if it’s irritating.

So, I’ll spend an hour on the phone with everyone, trying to work this out. Yes, I will.

Arghh.

25 minutes later I was checking out. I looked in my purse for my wallet and found none. Where the heck is my wallet? No problem, I can still write a check, since my checkbook floats around in my purse independent of my little wallet. No, wait, I had my checkbook out writing checks for school lunch, and it’s not in here, either. CRAP. I have honestly never been in this situation before. But I’m sure other people at Wal-Mart have. They must have a procedure for this, right?

“I’m so sorry, I don’t have my wallet,” I said to the sweet little cashier. She continued ringing me up while I SEARCHED my purse in earnest. Nope. Can’t find it. She called the customer service representative over, and he says, “No problem, we’ll just ‘suspend’ the transaction.” He does something that saves it in the computer and gives me a little tiny receipt. Meanwhile, I’m digging out my phone.

“Ryan, I’m at Wal-Mart and I don’t have my wallet. Can you run down here and rescue me?” I asked.
Grumbling just a little bit, he says he will. He asks which entrance which door I’ll be at, and I told him I was inside by the checkers. I called him back a minute later after I had parked my cart to pay later and told him I was outside waiting for him. “I just barely got out on the highway. I’ll be there in 10 minutes,” he said.
“Ten minutes?” I said, “You won’t be NEARLY 10 minutes.” The Wal-Mart is just down the street, right by the high school. It’s seriously less than 2 miles from our house.

I sat down outside and watched the shoppers coming and going. There’s the dad saying to his daughter, “Now it’s just the 1 inch 3 ring binder, right?”, and the mom with three little kids in tow saying, “Keep up with me…don’t you hit your sister.” It’s a pleasant night, now that the sun has gone down and it’s not 98 degrees anymore.

But where the heck IS HE? It’s been almost 10 minutes since I called him. I called him back. “Where ARE you?” I asked. “I just got through the roundabout. Which door are you at?” he said. “Roudabout?” I was trying to figure out why he’d be at the roundabout. “You do realize that there’s a Wal-Mart just down the street from our house, don’t you?” How long has it been open? Over a year, now.
“Oh, Crap,” he said. He has gone to the Wal-Mart in American Fork, which really IS 10 to 15 minutes away from our house. No, I didn’t specify which store I had gone to, but why in heaven’s name would I travel to the world’s most crowded Wal-Mart when we have our own smaller, less crowded, more friendly store 5 minutes away? WhY? “I’m having a really hard time finding things lately,” he said.
“I’ll just go home and find my wallet or checkbook and come back. You can just go home.” I said.
But he was already out and driving around, he said he would just come and that I should wait for him.

So I waited. Fifteen minutes is a long time when you are sitting outside the store feeling like a stalker. Feeling stupid. I tried to do some more people watching and not feel quite as much like the idiot that I am, leaving my wallet….where IS my wallet? I got out my phone and made a few calls, just to chat and kill the time, but no one answered. At 9:00, he finally pulled up. I grabbed his wallet and went in the store, hoping that I could use HIS credit card and get away with it.

I went back in, went to the same checker. Since she didn’t have huge line and she knew the situation, I was there to make her life MORE difficult. She couldn’t figure out what to do, so she called the same guy who had helped her before. He couldn’t make it work. The little receipt they had given me wasn’t scanning, and they couldn’t make it bring back the earlier transaction. I thought about just grabbing my cart and making a dash for it, but that wouldn’t be right. And I had already waited half an hour, so what’s a few more minutes, right? Now I’ve got 2 Wal-Mart employees befuddled and confused. Why isn’t this working. People come to the line and the checker waves them away to other lines, since she’s got a “problem customer” here (my words, not hers. She was actually quite nice, despite the frustration of the situation).

Finally, the guy figured out what to do. I swiped Ryan’s card, signed his name, paid, and left. My quick trip to WalMart ended up over an hour and 15 minutes. The good thing, though, was that the kids were all in bed by the time I got home. *Sigh* I returned Ryan’s wallet to him after I located mine. It was in my big old coupon purse that I had taken grocery shopping the day before. Duh. I’d driven without a license for a day and a half (oops) and didn’t even notice I didn’t have it.

So that’s it. That’s how you befuddle and frustrate the Wal-Mart cashier, and it proves I’m an idiot and my husband is directionally challenged.

But Cole did actually get his license on Friday.

He has no car to drive, but I did just send him to take John to a friend’s house. Cole and the car came back unscathed. It’s the beginning of a new era.