Bashful's Work Ethic is Lacking

At the end of my day yesterday, I arrive home with a lot on my mind.  Getting dinner started for the kids, organizing my time until I need to leave at 5:30... and as I enter the kitchen, and drop my keys and phone on the counter, I see spread before me on the 12 foot kitchen table a huge MESS... and a small dwarf whirling around creating.

I inhale deeply, approach the yellow headed dwarf and ask what I think is a very simple question..."What is this big mess?"  (for anyone that had little kids in the early 90's, said in the voice of Molly and the Big Comfy Couch, at the end of her 30 minute show, when she looks around and raises her hands and says: "who made this big mess?" )

Sheepishly Bashful looks at me, places a hand in the air and says, "I am making fish.  For a project.  At school.  I know what I am doing! "  Okay, maybe he does know what he is doing, and maybe he has a plan... but the next question is "when is this due?" 

Drum roll please....  Tomorrow!  "What, I say, you have got to be kidding me.  When did you get this assignment?"  "two weeks ago mom." " Do you have the instructions for this project?"  "No, I don't need them, I know what I am doing." 

I instruct Bashful to stop creating and go get me the paperwork that describes the project.  He digs for a long time in the folders and binders in his backpack, finally withdrawing a goldenrod sheet of paper that has more creases and folds than a ninety-five year old, and with a dramatic flare, produces the directions, simultaneously pronouncing : " See, I know what I am doing." 

It turns out that this project, which was due the 28th of February (even though he claims the date was changed to today the 5th of March)  is an elementary exercise in magnets and or electricity.   Insert head scratch here - what do I know about either of these things?  and on such short notice - NOTHING. 

But in Bashful's defense, he had this !   Once he enlisted the help of the whole family, to procure, bobby pins, magnets, fishing line, poles, scissors, a box from the trash, glue, and construction paper... well viola... a fish pond, with fish that were attracted to the magnet on the end of the rod, with questions about magnetics and electricity on each fish.

Did he complete the project to the extent that it was supposed to be done, I can not vouch for that.  The basics were in place.  As a procrastinator, he needs to learn a valuable lesson about planning, and working ahead and this may be the perfect way to learn that lesson.  Did he give it an A+ effort - nope.  But will he most likely get an A for effort yes, and overall after the deductions for the missing parts I say it was a solid C project. 

While this situation has probably happened at your house occasionally over the years, and the result of throwing something together at the last minute may vary from house to house...Your really can't make this stuff up... 

What is it like to not be able to communicate?

Often we may wonder things like, what is it like to have a broken foot?  What is it like to be invisible?  Or what is it like to not be able to communicate with the spoken word. 

Well Happy, has been experimenting with each of these the last several weeks much to the confusion of the staff at his school. 

Two weekends ago we had a pile of homework to do because Happy determined that he would be invisible.  Hence rendering all his work invisible too.  (I can't seem to understand why his curiosity about things always ends up causing me angst.)  However, we determined that this was not the best format for pretending and that while he enjoyed "not being seen" he really was causing his staff to have to do additional work, via emails to the house, the staff follow up and then falling behind in his work.  In the long run, he determined, on his own that invisibility was not his thing !

Prior to that, he drug his foot behind him for a day.  Insisting that the night before he had sustained an injury on the trampoline that we refused as his parents to address.  He talked the staff into propping up his foot on a chair and surprisingly skipping gym class.  He was a very convincing lame person.  However, when the truth of that pretend session came to light, the deal was that he forgot his locker combination for his gym locker and since his gym clothes were locked inside the locker, he knew he would otherwise get in trouble for a)not dressing for gym and b) having to ask multiple times for the combination that was alluding him, so the lame routine was his creative out.  Since then we have addressed the combination issue by placing it inside his main locker, on a paper in his backpack, on a paper in his gym bag, and in his communication log as well as taped to his desk... No more fake injuries to avoid gym class for Happy!

SO fast forward to yesterday.  He pretended all day that he had lost his voice.  His team leader even questioned if that was the case because he stuck to the silent routine consistently all day - writing notes to communicate with the staff at school.  Sadly, a challenge for all involved based on Happy's inability to spell correctly.  When the Prince addressed this with Happy at home last night, Happy thought long and hard about what had happened during that day.  He responded that his reason for the silent treatment was that he wanted to know what it would be like to not be able to communicate using his voice.  The Prince then asked him if he thought he would enjoy spending the day pretending that he was blind...opps on the Prince's part,  because of course Happy thought that would be a GREAT idea! 

In all this we have tried to express to Happy, that curiosity is wonderful, and we would like to encourage him to explore these types of things, but in that  it has to be done in a controlled enviornment.  NOT at school. 

Anxiously waiting for the day to end, so I can go home and see what antics the dwarf was up to today.  Or maybe not... Really, you can't make this stuff up! 

I've been set up!

Well Happy, who is one of God's special dwarf's had an altercation at school last Thursday that has left us all scratching our heads.  It seems that in light of an upcoming field day, the students had to follow directions, work extra hard and be attentive in the classroom in order to earn the privilege of being out of the building for this special day.  Happy lost his privileges prior to lunch last Thursday, which we believe put him on a downward spiral that lead to the incident...
Rumor on the street is that he stabbed four students with a pencil in the lunchroom, causing enough injury to two of the students to cause the need for bandages. 
Now according to the injured students and to the other witnesses, Happy was the one that not only stabbed the students, but he also stabbed them well enough to cause bleeding. 

Happy's take on this is that he was set up.  This is the story and he is sticking to it.  He claims that all the witnesses are friends of the student who did the stabbing and that they are all conspiring to keep this student out of trouble.  Hence the reason they all said that Happy was the stabber.  We are waiting now for the school to pull the video footage and confirm or deny the situation. 

Really, you can not make this stuff up!

Do I Smell Smoke???

Ah yes, another day at home for the public school children. Election day means that the kids are home with me for the day.  No big deal right, they both slept in, and had a leisurely breakfast... I am getting a lot of work done...day is going great.  As I head out to move vehicles around the driveway, my youngest comes running to me crying that he has a "rush burn" on his hand.  Hum.. well go wash it off I say.  So he goes in the house, and I follow a few minutes later to see that it is more than a "rush burn" it is a thumb pad with a hunk of skin missing from it... So as I am showing a great deal of empathy and sympathy for my young yellow headed dwarf, (which anyone who knows me well, knows that these are not areas of great strength for me) I catch a whiff of something akin to smoke... like wood fire smoke... like fresh air and smoke mixed together. 

I say to Bashful... were you lighting something outside, trying to burn it?  Eyes wide open, shocked that I would accuse him of such a thing... he says emphatically "NO!!"   Sniff, sniff, sniff... sure thing it is smoke that I smell.  "Bashful, can you please tell  me what you are doing outside?" "NOTHING!!"

"Well, maybe I was trying to light some leaves on fire, in my fort, with a lighter that Happy gave me."

There you have it, push too hard and the answers are always there... just not always the answers that make us happy - so it really seems that Happy has a lighter supplier, and he is getting the lighters from school and passing them on to his 9 year old brother... just for kicks and giggles!

Can you make this stuff up? Maybe if you have a lot of time on your hands!

Oh that boy! (Written by Happy's Teacher, today's guest blogger)

True story... again you just can't make this stuff up!

So after lunch during quiet time I hear a female student yell out, Happy you're bleeding!! I look at Happy and say, oh my word, you are bleeding!" Happy looks at me with no concern and lies his head on his desk in the pool of blood... I ask him to come up to my desk and he asks why. I look at him as the blood is dripping from his nose all over the floor and down his chin. He walks up to my desk and begins to bleed all over my desk. I point out the blood on his hands and he proceeds to lick the blood off his palms. I ask him what he thinks he should do and he says, "sit back down?" I say, "ummm noooo, do you think you should go see the nurse" and he looks at me puzzled and says, "why would I need to do that?" I say, "well you are bleeding all over the place". Still unconvinced that he is experiencing anything less than normalcy, I shake my head, laugh to myself, and write him a pass...

Gather up the children for a quick trip to the church...

So, as always there is background to the story -here is the background - my dwarfs do not listen - we have gotten to the place in their lives where they are smarter than I am and know far more than I...

Couple of days ago - Happy was cleaning the van - he had out the vacuum and the Windex, and he spent hours cleaning the inside of the van.  Now remember this is a 15 passenger van that on any given day could supply a small third world country with enough food and water,  to feed at least one meal of great nutritional value along with clothe most of their children and some of the adults (if they were prone to wearing clothing).

While this occupied his time for hours - and there was a small amount of progress made - Happy was thrilled to be entertained, jamming to the radio and working, working, working.  (Keep in mind a few things - he asked permission to do this task, even though it was not on any to do list for the week, and he had assistance setting himself up, ie the extension cord, the radio in  the vehicle on, trash bag for trash, hamper for items to come into the house.)

Yesterday it was a beautiful day.  Happy figured that he would jump in where he left off the day prior with the van cleaning.  Opened up the doors, got out the vacuum, Windex, paper towels, cranked up the music and that is how I found him about an hour after he came home from school - like father like son, in his cleaning glory!

I popped my head into the van and asked what he was up to, to which he caught me up to speed on the fact that the van did not get finished the day before , so he was going to finish it today.  Fine I say, but please turn off the vehicle.  I am not sure that you know how to turn it on without draining the battery. Why yes I do, stupid mother, his body language says to me.  His real language insisting that he knows what he is doing, it is not "science rocket mom"!   I say again that I would just feel better if her were to turn off the vehicle. In response he begins to move towards the front of the vehicle in what I thought was a compliant response to my request to him, and now I know wrongly so, as I thought he was going to turn off the ignition and radio. 

Fast forward to this morning. Pouring down rain.  6 dwarfs loaded in the van to go the church for the work day - hop in, I the great Queen of this land, already in an agitated state because none of them could manage to get moving today in a timely fashion, and place the keys in the ignition, while instructing the dwarfs to quiet down and buckle up. 

Go to throw the van in reverse and something seems off...  it's not on.  Hum turn the key in the ignition again - nothing - no juice - no power - no puttering - NOTHING - the battery is not only drained - it is dead!

So we fly into action, because we are already 10 minutes behind schedule,  jumper cables out of the garage - the female dwarfs  and I move the car closer to the van - the eldest male dwarf googles the correct procedure for jumping a car, because again as the mom I KNOW NOTHING! Did I mention that it was raining ? Did I mention that Happy, knowing he is in hot water wants to talk his way out of this situation and try to say that it was not his fault that the van won't start?  Did I mention that the youngest dwarf was in the midst of an hour long meltdown? Did I mention it was raining? All the while I am being second guessed, by Sneezy &Dopey.

I start to instruct the dwarfs in the fine art of jumping a vehicle as Dopey repeats after viewing,  the steps out loud from the UTube Video that he uploaded on his Ipod....just in case or because(not sure which) I KNOW NOTHING! 

Well sadly, I wish there were a happy ending to this story - That the dwarfs and I were able to restore life to the van, but doing it my way - which was correct-  and the Utube video way yielded nothing, so there is one big white 15 passenger van sitting in the driveway  with no go go juice ...

We will wait for the Prince to ride in on his white stallion (or Chevy pick up) to save the day! Lucky for us we have no where else to go as a large group today!

There is a lot to be said for laughter vs anger...

Really there is... however it was not until later that I actually was laughing.  As many of you know, I have a small business that helps families prepare meals in advance for their families to help take the stress out of dinner time.  While typically getting ready for the class is not stressful, this past week getting ready, getting through it and getting home were a tad bit overwhelming for even I a seasoned mother of many!

Each week one of my dwarfs will ask if they can accompany me to class.  I believe that it is not so much because they like working with me, but because they like to be able to select dinner from anything in the whole grocery store that we work out of.  This week, on Sunday Dopey asks me to accompany me, for this I am grateful because he has become a strong young man and his brawn will come in handy.  So Monday he confirms that he is still in, and Tuesday at 4 off we go...

Things area going well, and Dopey heads over to select his dinner...  $15 later, dinner is served, yes just for him, I am not having dinner because we are running a bit behind schedule.  We begin to prepare the area for class and suddenly there is a crash... I see Dopey standing and staring at the floor where a green bag is lying, with soy sauce and glass amidst the heap.  I say "let's get this cleaned up." to which he begins removing everything from the bag, glass shards include - at this point I see disaster, so I say, just take the whole thing to the trash.  And he does... leaving in his wake a trail of soy sauce the distance from the accident site to the trash can (which incidentally the can has wheels and could have been moved to the site of the accident), however I digress, now we have another mess to attend to - which puts us about 20 more minutes behind.  I am now in the hole for the evening by $15 for dinner, $1.69 for soy sauce, and $1.00 for a recycle bag that was tossed in the disaster and about 30 minutes.  I now explain to him that we must make up lost time that we are behind, he seems remorseful, and attempts to pick up the pace.  We get set for class right on time.(even though I like to be done in advance so that early arrivals can start early) and I thank him for his efforts.

So you are thinking - what is the big deal - so far so good - be flexible ...  and I am.  The best is yet to come - part way into the evening there is a customer that needs a can opened and because the can is bent Dopey takes it to the back of the store and used an industrial can opener on it, but even with that is still not able to get the entire top off - so I tell him to set the can on the counter and we will pry open the lid.  As I am saying this to the boy- I am also saying, as is the customer - "please be careful that you don't cut... ""Ah.. Mom, I cut myself". 

Now, any of you that know me also know I can't do blood.  I am not capable of it, but there is no one to assist me.  I tell Dopey go to the sink and I start foraging for a band aide.  (Note to self, business needs a first aid kit ). Find two in the back - (have I stated that customers are needing assistance?) I am sure that I look like a woman on the brink right now... and go to the sink where Dopey is washing and ask him on a scale of 1 -10 how bad is it - he says " a 7 -- it hurts really bad...   and it looks pretty deep." "Look",  I say, "I can't do anything - dry off your hand, lets slap these band aides on, and then your dad can look at it when we get home."  "Wear a glove," I tell him for the remainder of the night - and get back to work...  all the time thinking when this is over I am going to have to take him to the ER for stitches.

Okay so the rest of the evening progresses, slowly --- but finally we are done - the items are ready to be packed in the van and I am ready to check out and pay.  I pull the van to the curb, put  on the four ways, get out and start to go into the store to tell Dopey to load the cart, take it to the van, load the van and then wait for me in the van after returning the cart to the cart lot. 

I am at the register paying and said Dwarf is upon me with a soda in hand and a pleading look in his eyes, so add another $1.49 to the tab for the boy for the night and I send him out to the car with my purse and his soda and tell him I will be right there and we will go home and have his dad look at his finger, which is now on a scale of 1-10 a 5.



"Funny story," I say.  "I need to go, can't talk the keys are locked in the van and the van is running... " 
Now this is where the story is a bit tricky.  See for about three weeks the spare set of van keys are missing, and while I have searched high and low for them in the house - in jacket pockets in my purse, I can not find them.  I am anticipating the Prince blowing a gasket now because, if I had not lost the keys, then he could just run to the store and rescue us.  He did a fine job of controlling his anger with me and was even able to walk me through calling for roadside assistance.

"Hello, Roadside Assistance." "Yes, I am outside my van with the keys locked inside and the van is running can you send someone to assist me?"  To which the long and the short of it is this, they were able to come out inside 40 minutes to open the lock (it took longer for them to drive to me than to open the doors) and Dopey and I were on our way, however, we did sit in the cold air for 30 minutes waiting for them to arrive.  Dopey is now shivering - teeth are chattering - and he is saying things like, "Mom the van is mocking us."  "Boy am I glad we are not sleeping on the streets tonight."  All while guzzling his soda... and the amount of money that he is costing me is increasing as I see the fumes from the van burning through my $3.59 a gallon gas... and the potential of an ER run upon arriving home whenever that may be.

At last safely on our way, we arrive home and unload and we recount the story to those we love and we all get a good laugh.  However the funniest part of the story is this...

Wednesday the Prince left me a message saying that he found the spare van keys on the floor of the van.  We chuckle because that means both sets of keys were locked in the van and the locksmith needed to come regardless... but the funniest part is that at lunch yesterday I asked the Prince where in the van he found the keys, to which he responded under the drivers seat. 

DRAMATIC PAUSE, under the drivers seat ????  Wait a minute...  I turn to the Prince and say, " I think you owe me an apology... because it seems that I did not loose the van keys after all.  Three weeks ago when we had the van into the shop,  and had to pick it up after hours, you used my set of keys to drive it home and the spare set were under the drivers seat the whole time, because that is where the guys at the shop put them before they lock up the van....

Really, you  can't make this stuff up...