family

The definition of honor

Moriah

The XX Tax Deduction is 5 and in kindergarten.  All day.  She has an account she can use to pay for her breakfast and lunch, and we just put money in it from the web.  Nifteee. Yet … she comes home every day and says, “I’m STARVED!”  Oh, really?  Have a snack.

Anyway, a couple of weeks ago, we found out she’s been throwing her entree in the trash wholesale.  Every day.  And she’s starved when she comes home from school?  Well, lemme tell ya.  Two parental unit heads blew up. So.

We cut her off.  Now, she’d been begging to let her take lunch to school in her nifty Dora lunch box (not a real one, just a little play tin thing), but we wouldn’t let her.  So we knew that sending lunch to school with her would be no punishment.  But … she loves having breakfast at school and always eats all of it.

Bye bye school breakfast. That made her howl.

Bye bye school lunch, bye bye Dora tin-with-a-handle thing, bye bye hot variety.

Today is day 5 of bologna-and-cheese-on-white-with-Miracle-Whip, cheese cubes, and a bag of carrots. In a brown paper bag. Welcome to my childhood, kid, enjoy.  She was forbidden to try to access her account and she was told to bring home whatever she didn’t eat. Today is also day 5 she didn’t eat her lunch and brought it home, ate it after school because she was STARVED and wasn’t allowed anything else until she did.

Except today … Her current best friend had his birthday party, for which his mother brought the class pizza for lunch.  Since we had not anticipated such a thing happening, we didn’t tell her she could eat whatever was brought as a treat.

Even though she loves pizza above all other foods and it broke her heart to watch the other kids eat, she didn’t have any.

Because we told her she had to eat the lunch we gave her and nothing else.

Road. Hell. Intentions.

Moriah

So for the last 2 years I’ve been collecting recipes for plain cleaners and wanting to go “green” and cheap, and have done nothing. Nothing! I tell you. I am ashamed.

At least we have our 72-hour kits and a good supply of food laid in (but what WE have depends on electricity, yipes). I also have Amy Dacyczyn’s book, The Tightwad Gazette, and there are all sorts of resources online to help pare down.

It’s time for the Mojo-Dude Family to turn Yank: Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without.

First thing to go: Water cooler and associated water delivery service.

Second thing: Homemade cleaners, coming right up! No more Scrubbing Bubbles or Simple Green, no matter how much I love thee.

Third thing: Homemade bribes for the Tax Deductions. No more “if you eat your dinner, I’ll let you have a [insert store-bought treat here].” This means I will have to, uhm, bake. I’m not a bad cook, nor a bad baker. I don’t loathe and despise and spit upon the act of baking, either. I just don’t care for it much. Today’s bribery stock-up baking: goodie cookies also known as Russian tea cakes.

There’s a moral in this somewhere…

Moriah

Tax Deduction #2: Mama, after I eat my lunch, may I have candy?

Me: Yes.

TD#2 eats lunch. Carefully chooses a piece out of his bag of Halloween candy. Oh, goodie. Chewy Fireballs.

Me: Are you sure about this?

TD#2: Uh huh.

Chomp. Big eyes. Tears. Wail.

TD#2: Mama, tongue!

Me: Yeah, it’s hot, hunh? That’s cinnamon.

TD#2: Simmum for toas’.

Me: For candy, too. Want me to throw that away?

TD#2: No.

Chomp. Big eyes. Tears. Wail.

TD#2: Mama, hurts mouf!

Me: Yeah, I know. Are you sure you don’t want me to throw that away? Mama doesn’t like them, either.

TD#2: No.

Chomp. Big eyes. Tears. Wail.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

The springtime song

Moriah

Tax Deduction #1 is 5 and can’t read much yet. Bad Mommy! Bad Mommy! Call social services.

Okay, well, I keep a CD player in her room so she can have music (“lullabies”) and we’ve been doing this for about 7 months, I guess, givvertake.

CD #1 was Kenny Loggins’s Return to Pooh Corner. That lasted about 4 months.

CD #2 was Tina Malia’s Lullaby Favorites. That lasted about 3 months.

She wanted the Nutcracker next (took her to the ballet last Christmas), but I couldn’t find my CD. (Must be in another case somewhere—I hate it when that happens.)

So we’ve been on CD #3 now for about a week and a half. It’s just one of those compilation samplers of baroque (you know, the musical equivalent of the bathroom book of quotations to make you seem really smart at cocktail parties).

She says to me, she says, “Mama, there’s a springtime song!”

Oh, really? I mean, I know which one she’s probably talking about, but where/how does she know it’s the “springtime song”? Did she learn that at school? (Cause, wow, great school!) Or does it just magically say “Hey, I’m a springtime song” to a kindergartner?

So she’s on me about this, right? Tonight I turn on her “lullabies” (she had a meltdown when I told her it was really called “baroque,” so we’re back to “lullabies”) and she says to me, she says, “Number 9 is the springtime song.” So I look and why, yes, it is, right there, #9. I asked her a bunch of questions about how she knew this (well, I guess interrogated would be a better word), but she didn’t cough anything up.

I decided to go on the theory that a 5-year-old, when listening to Vivaldi’s Concerto No. 1, automatically knows that that’s the springtime song.

Because to think otherwise would take away the magic.

Got you on my mind

Moriah

A picture of the Mormon Nauvoo temple in Nauvoo, Illinois, taken from the hill below.Here’s to me and Dude, who got married 6 years ago in the LDS Nauvoo, Illinois temple (very soon after it re-opened). Yeah, we got married on a Friday. The 13th. On purpose.

A black tie with a stylized and embellished heart screen-printed on the endDude likes funny ties, but Serious Ties not so much. I’m not keen on the Stooges and I thought Spongebob Squarepants was hilarious—but he didn’t. We have been at a tie impasse ever since. Until today.

Happy anniversary, baby.