September 2008

Myrna in her natural environment.


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September 2008

Tuesday, September 2:

Rupert has recently discovered football. He now feels as though he was “made for it.” He probably was. He gets it from his father. As for me, I am to sports like chocolate is to garlic bread--two things that were never intended to go together. I’m lucky I can walk without tripping. I am, however, an enthusiastic sideline supporter.

We’re still trying to get settled into a school routine around here. Pandora says she hates school, but she loves seeing her friends and she really likes her teachers with the exception of one very boring teacher. I don’t know exactly what it is she doesn’t like about school. I mean, liking your teachers is half the battle, right? Maybe it’s just that the schedule cramps her style. That I can understand.

Rupert is really enjoying school. He has once again begun his people collection. He has added a Star Wars best buddy, a Pokemon best buddy, a crystal-loving best buddy, and of course, a football-playing best buddy. I have to remind him that if he is going to have best friends, he probably ought to know what their names are, so he’s working on that now--that and his phone number collection. He’ll bring home phone numbers without knowing names, which sometimes complicates his social life. He just doesn’t think to ask about names. Names are merely trivial details that pale in comparison to common passions.

Tuesday, September 9:

We’ve been listening to the new audio book version of Raisin’ Brains. I have to say, the reader did an excellent job. She even makes me laugh, and I’m the one who wrote the stuff. The kids are especially enjoying hearing the stories about themselves. They could listen to it all day. If I’m not careful, they will listen to it too much, and I’ll get sick of it or I’ll start repeating the whole book word for word in my sleep.

There have been occasions where one of the kids will say, “Mo-o-o-m, why did you have to tell that story about me?” But over all, they’re really enjoying it, especially as they get older. Stanley’s only complaint is that I didn’t use his real name. The most embarrassing story is actually found in Life in the Fast Brain, and that story is about Otto. If you’ve read the book, it’s the story about Babe the Big Blue Ox. Otto agreed to let me use the story if I bought him a six-pack of tapioca pudding. His pride has a price. He has never, however, complained that I don’t use his real name.

Friday, September 12:

Rupert, who will be nine next month, is a pretty sensitive kid. He battles social injustice on the playground. He loves poetry. He tells me I’m beautiful (did I mention he is my favorite?) not because it’s necessarily true, but because my feelings are important to him. This morning, he was listening to Mozart while he waited to leave for school

On Wednesday, I asked him if he wanted a hot ham and cheese sandwich for dinner. Ham is one of the few foods the entire family will eat--at least until last Wednesday.

He said, “No thanks. I don’t like ham.”

“Why not? You used to.”

“It comes from animals,” he said.

Terrific, my third-grade son, who thinks he was made for football, has decided to become a vegetarian. I don’t know of any vegetarian football players, and I don’t know of any vegetarians that don’t care all that much for fruits and vegetables. Rupert only likes a select few. He’ll starve to death if he becomes a vegetarian. After all, “Boy cannot live by bread alone.”

So, I said, “What about chicken? You’ll eat chicken and that’s an animal.”

“Yeah, I don’t want chicken anymore either.”

“But you love chicken with barbecue sauce!”

He looked at me and smiled. “Okay, I’ll eat it with barbecue sauce.”

He’ll eat anything with barbecue sauce. I guess his principles have some limits and at least some of his sensitivities can be overcome with the right condiment. In this case, that’s a good thing.

I think I’d better stock up on barbecue sauce. I wonder how it tastes on broccoli.

Tuesday, September 16:

I’m putting my notes together in preparation for the conference in Kansas next month. I’ve never been to Kansas before. I’m looking forward to it.

As soon as I finish that, I’ve got to get to work on the next pressing project--a Halloween Party. Rupert was born on Halloween, so it’s a big deal around here. It’s also a big deal because this will be the first year since 1995 that we’ve lived in town and had trick-or-treaters. Rupert says he doesn’t want to trick-or-treat this year. He wants to stay home and answer the door. He says he wants to be the Grim Reaper this year. Little does he know that when Otto was about his age, he wanted to be the same thing, only he innocently called it the Green Raper, because Otto never did care much about getting his words straight. I’m thankful that Rupert has chosen to take a slight deviation from Otto’s path and is going with a more traditional character.

I love this time of year. All the old feelings of childhood excitement come rushing back. School starting, Halloween, and then Thanksgiving and Christmas just around the corner. It always makes me feel like a kid again, which is something I never tire of feeling. Best time of the year ever!

And then winter hits us smack in the face and reminds us that we’re adults after all and we have windows to scrape and driveways to shovel and a teenager who will catch pneumonia because she refuses to wear a coat that is warm rather than attractive.

Sigh.

Tuesday, September 23:

Rupert has invented a deadly weapon. After a great many questions on how bows work and how much tension the string should have, he went to work making his own. With nothing more than a pen, a shoelace, and some scotch tape to hold the shoelace firmly in place, he made a surprisingly powerful weapon which shot six-inch Lego sticks. Once Rupert had his bow perfected, he decided that Magnolia’s friend, eighteen-year-old Ivan, would make a good target--you know, a target is more of a challenge when it can move. But after Ivan realized how painful the weapon actually was, he came and got me and to ask Rupert to stop because “It hurts!”

I quickly found Rupert and gave him the “We don’t shoot things at other people or animals, even if they are just toy weapons or even if we are just pretending” lecture, even though I thought Ivan was being a little wimpy about the whole thing.

I was down in the family room with Rupert few minutes later, when Rupert fired another Lego arrow from the pathetic little bow. I about jumped when I heard that thing hit the wall. I had to look to see if there was a hole in the wall and an arrow sticking out. Holy Toledo!

That little demonstration was all I needed. That was the end of his new weapon--at least unsupervised. It’s a good thing he was using blunt “arrows,” or he might have done some actual damage.

If you look at the bow, it just looks like a handful of garbage that some little kid taped together. And if you look at Rupert, he just looks like a little kid who likes to make things. I am beginning to believe that he might just know what he is doing.

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