What?

It's late September, so talk in our house has turned to Halloween costumes.  I asked Dec what he wanted to be this year.

"Oh, I don't know.  I have it narrowed down to either Michael Jackson or Gene Shalit."

My son is nuts.

Normal

I was sitting and talking to Dec the other day.  The Husband said something weird.  I would share it, but I honestly don't remember.  After all these years my brain just filters all of it out...

"We have an odd little family, don't we Mom?"
"Yeah."
"I mean, Emily's a little pixie, Isa is so good at art she could be a descendent of Claude Monet, dad is a walking wad of hair, I'm a sprinkler of hate and rage sometimes, and..."
He looked at me as if he were seeing me for the very first time.
"Wait.  Mom, you're just a normal person."
In our family, "normal" is a huge disappointment. I'll have to work on that.

Good Ideas

I was sitting on the couch talking to Dec the other night.  The Husband had gone to the basement (where our shower and bedroom are) a while before.  He texted me - yeah, I know - to say that a baseball game was on and I should come down and watch it. 

Dec asked who texted me, and laughed when I told him. 

"What does he want?"
"Me to come down and watch baseball."
"Are you going to?"
"Eh.  Maybe, I don't know..."
"If he really wanted you to go downstairs, he should have left a trail of Hershey's Kisses."

It's too bad he's sworn to "never get a wife".  He seems to have many of the basics figured out.

Gifted

So, Emily is very excited that she has been selected to attend a Talented and Gifted class at her school once a week.  More so than the other two, she is very aware of social status and "keeping score".  She is a very kind and compassionate kid, but winning is a very important part of her day. Being designated as gifted is perceived by her as a big "W". 

So she was explaining to me in great detail, and with great enthusiasm and emphatic hand gestures, all about the teacher, the classroom, the curriculum, who else had been selected, etc, etc, etc.  The process by which students are identified as "gifted" is apparently not perfect.  About five minutes into her soliloquy, I noticed that her fly was down.

And So it Begins

Today is Isa's birthday.  She is 12, so I did the only reasonable thing; I took her clothes shopping.  Two pairs of jeans, a couple t-shirts and a sparkle belt later, we were on our way home.  A pop song that I actually like came up as she was flipping around among channels. After almost an entire second of consideration, she moved on.

"What? What was wrong with that one? I like it."
"Oh, sorry Mom.  That's only one of my 'C' list songs.  If other stations that I like to listen to only are playing songs that really suck, then I'll come back to it."

Oh, boy...