Miscellaneous

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.

I need to get out more

Moriah

Today, February 7, at 4:25 CST in Kansas City, it is 70 degrees outside. I got a sick kid (have had for about 3 days now). I got a list of things to do a gazillion miles long. Since it is my mission in life to give birth to a new race (Glow in the Dark) and the sun cackles wickedly every time I go outside in anticipation of what evil it can wreak upon my skin, I don’t go out unless I have to. I’m a hermit, I tell you, and I like it that way.

But you know what?

I’m missing something, I think. I had a visitor yesterday, like, came to the door and rang the doorbell adult human type of visitor. The real deal. To visit. With me.

I’ve forgotten how to converse with people. My face feels all out of whack. My voice doesn’t seem to work very well. I’ve begun to stutter. I space out faster. I don’t smile much. My small talk is microscopic. Once I actually manage to pry my mouth open, I talk in longer monologues than I used to. I mean, I’ve always felt more comfortable with the written word than the spoken—but lately I’ve just gotten downright terrible.

It’s been my goal in life to become that old woman on the block, you know, the one with the muumuu and the orthopedic shoes and the orthopedic stockings rolled down to her ankles and the funky straw hat, the one all the neighborhood kids whisper about (“I heard she’s a witch”). Mmmm, I dunno.

Mebbe not.

Pardon me, dearie, while I go stir my cauldron.