You Can't Stop the Music

So, no, the day didn't start out particularly different than any other day... I asked the Man to convey to our Middle Child that I did not wish for her to stay after school, and when I asked him about it later, he said she'd told him she HAD to, she had a student council meeting. This seemed odd to me, given that she'd stayed after for a student council meeting yesterday, so I called the school.

Two guesses. You're right! There was, indeed, no student council meeting. Hmm... so I called the OTHER part of the school, and asked them to send my daughter a note that read "No student council meeting, take school bus home". I mentioned to them that the word "school" was very important, because MC is big on semantics, and could easily interpret "bus" to mean "public transit" and then wander in God knows when, feigning innocence, and I just didn't want to have to hassle with it.

And then I was off...slightly delayed by all this dealing with the high school...to a meeting about a job. My dear friend Kim, (of "4 Chambers of My Heart" fame), had graciously agreed to watch my Small One, so I basically threw the child at her as I dashed back out the door, and she invited me to stay longer on the return trip, and have lunch. This is where the day took a few rather odd turns.

For one thing, I got a call from the high school. They'd tried to deliver the message, you see, but failed, because my child wasn't in class. What?!? The lady was pretty blase about it, considering it was basically their turn to watch the girl, and they weren't doing such a hot job. She assured me that she'd look into it further and call me back. I took a deep breath (or several), went to the meeting, returned to Kim's house to pick up Small One and have lunch.

Over lunch, Kim made reference to the fact that I seemed pretty unconcerned for a mom whose daughter was MIA, and I explained that I was going to wait for the school to call me, and then go to the school if she'd not been found. But as I was explaining this, my phone began to ring, and at the same time I noticed that TWO HOURS had passed since MC had not been in class, with no word from the school. I snatched up the phone and ran out the front door, to better hear the other party without 5 children in the same space.

It wasn't the school, it was my Oldest, and as I was wrapping up my conversation with him, I noticed a car pulling up to the curb. A bald African American man, probably in his late 50s, got out and approached me, just as I was dialing the school, and told me he was from Comcast, and I directed him inside, explaining that I didn't live there. Here's where it gets weird.

He said to me "Well, is the baby still crying?" and I conceded that it was possible a baby could still be crying, as there were two in the house. To which he replied "Well, I'm about to go in there and calm EVERYONE down", in a rather lilting tone, with an somewhat expansive hand gesture. Think "conversational jazz hands". (This should have clued me in that this was no ordinary Comcast cable guy.)

Kim came to the door, with a dvr and her Littlest in tow. "Hello, Little Man!" the Comcast guy called out, and her Littlest looked at him with suspicion. Small One, on the other hand, came right out onto the front porch and looked up at him, and he said...

"Hello! HellllO! Hello, Baby! Hello, it's me... I've thought about us for a long long time... Seeing you, or seeing anyone as much as I do you, I take for granted that you're always there..."

Yes, folks, YES, he sang his entire rendition of the old Todd Rundgren song "Hello It's Me." Did I say sang? Oh yes, sang! And in fact, right about the time he said "Hello Baby" he went into a little dance, complete with step-hip action and some side to side jazz hands. The other three children came to the door. Small One was fascinated.

All the children, in fact, were fascinated. I can really only describe it as "stupefied fascination", but Kim put it a little more aptly when she said "They were looking at him like he was Willy Wonka. Like they thought he MIGHT be nice, or he MIGHT be a little crazy, and they just needed to figure it out." Yep, that's exactly right.

Small One extended her arms, and he picked her up and finished the song, dancing with her. During this performance, I was on hold with the high school, waiting for them to locate MC, but when Small started looking a little nervous, I took her from him, smiling at him as if to say "No, no, I think you're nice crazy, not dangerous crazy, it's all good!"

When he finished his song, he turned his attention to Kim's Littlest. He said "What about you Little Man? Would you? Would yooooooou... WOULD you like to swing on a star?" And he was off again. All the children stared. Kim and I attempted not to look at each other, for fear we would burst into hysterical laughter. I walked a little way away to better hear the school administrator. (MC was found, she'd only missed part of one class, and was being duly written up for that infraction.)

By the time I was hanging up the phone, the man had moved on to a song about Jack coming back down the hill because he needed love he couldn't get from Jill. Not too sure I liked where that one was going, but it was broken up anyway, by the small children losing interest and fleeing the front stoop, and the not quite as small children retrieving them, against their will, to a chorus of howling nos.

Kim and I began to herd everyone back inside, saying our goodbyes to Theatrical Comcast Man, when he said to the children, "Wait, little girls! I've got something for you in my car!" We all froze in our tracks. Kim and I looked at each other. (She later told me my eyebrows went up almost to my hairline.) The man amended his statement. "I mean, if it's ok with your Mommies, I've got some candles I'd like to bring to you from my car, if you'll just wait here." Then he turned to us and said "I used to own a Dollar Store." (presumably as an explanation)

Then he was back, with a big bag full of candles. The bigger girls each picked a candle, as Kim and I wrangled the little ones away from the bag, and the man handed each of us a candle, despite our insistance that we didn't really need one.

I got a faux Heineken, Kim got a faux Budweiser.

As we walked in the door, and Comcast Man was headed down the front walk, I turned and looked at Kim. "DON'T!" she stage whispered, "THE WINDOWS ARE OPEN!"

I stage whispered back. "You KNOW I'm blogging about this!"

In about 20 years, we'll stage this picture again, with real beverages, and put both shots together in a double frame.

And you know, we have to keep those candles forever.

My Friday, the Old and the Small of it

So Thursday was hectic, to put it mildly, and I didn't fall into bed until 3:30am. When I had to get up at 6:30 to make sure the big kids were up, well...that was pretty darned early. And were they up? Not so much. Oldest was in the shower, but Middle Child was still firmly tucked into her bed, and when Oldest emerged as I was coming out of M.C.'s room, he snarled at me that he DID wake her up, she just didn't listen to him. (Which may have been true.)

I would've stayed up to help them get out the door, but they were basically surly, snarling, vicious creatures, and I was not too interested in losing a finger to one of them. I retreated back to my room, where the Small One was calling for molebats. (Or something.) I did stick around long enough to be chastised for not waking them up earlier, as now M.C. wouldn't get a shower and Oldest wouldn't finish his lab.

Tried in vain to get the Small One to sleep in, but alas and alack, off we went into our day. Midway through the morning, I got a phone call from the high school, that went something like this:

Man: Mrs. Momtype? This is Dean Importantguy at the high school, and I have your Oldest here in my office.

Me: Mmm hmm?

Man: Yes, well, we are WELL into second period, and he has not been in class, and a teacher found him in the bathroom working on something.

Me: (silence in which you can hear crickets chirping, because I'm not sure I WANT to know what he was working on in the bathroom)

Man: Er... I think it was some kind of homework. (speaks to my child, away from phone) What was it, son? Uh huh. And when was it due? Uh huh. (back to me) It was a lab, and he says he left his book at school and couldn't finish it, and it was due second period. And that's THIS period. But we're WELL into the period and he hasn't been to class.

(And yes, he did mention to me SEVERAL times about which period it was and the fact that he hadn't been to class.)

Me: Mmm hmm, well, I know he was concerned about. So what happens now?

Man: Well, I'm going to have to give him a detention. Because (say it with me, folks) it's well into second period and he hasn't been to class.

Me: So... what does that mean? I have to pick him up late from school?

Man: No, no, it'll be Tuesday, and you'll have to pick him up an hour and a 1/2 late.

Now, at this point I got tickled. Because while I do appreciate being kept in the loop, my son most assuredly would have come home and told me what was going on, because he would've needed a ride on Tuesday. So really, not that important to call me right now, and anyway... what a HORRIBLE offense, right? Doing homework in the bathroom at school- what's next? You know, that's how it starts, and pretty soon they're doing schoolwork at home, and science projects on the bus, and where does it all end, I ask you? Hooligans! So I giggled.

Me: Well, I guess there's really not much chance of getting through high school without ever receiving a detention, huh?

Man: (taken slightly aback) Erm, well, actually, I was surprised to learn he was a senior, because I've never seen him before, and so I thought he might be a transfer student, but he tells me he's been here all four years. (said a bit incredulously, as if the kid had probably just transferred in and was trying to pull one over on the dean)

Me: Yeah, I guess that's because he's usually a pretty good kid. But thanks for keeping me informed.

I hung up, and got a text message from my Oldest about five minutes later that read:

"Yeah, so that pretty much sucked."

Meanwhile, back in toddlerville, my sister-in-law had invited me to come paint handprint tiles with them at a local pottery place. Though I typically think that taking a toddler into a pottery place is about as much fun as taking a fork to my eyeballs, I agreed, because a)it was for the in-laws,b) Small One loves her cousins, and c)I had some things I needed to bring to my sister-in-law, and the pottery place is closer than her house. It was determined that we would meet in the afternoon, after Small's nap.

Only napping was not in the plan for my youngest child. I got her to sleep, and five minutes later she was running through the house, yelling at me in a loud voice. After about an hour of trying to get her back to sleep, I stuck her in her crib (aka "baby cage") so that I might shower, and after 45 minutes of her calling to me from her crib, I took her back out and stayed with her on my bed until she finally dozed off. Of course, this meant that once again I had to break the rules and wake a sleeping baby, but I waited until the last possible moment (and actually beyond the last possible, as I was 30 minutes late) and then fed her lunch in the car.

The pottery adventure? Bit of a nightmare. Have you ever heard the expression "bull in a china shop"? "Toddler in a pottery shop" is, in my opinion, at least that stressful. And not because she's not a good girl, because really, she is, but she did want to take all the breakable things off the shelf, and she didn't want to put her painted hand on the tile in a flat way, but insisted on making it into more of a squid shape, so that it was VERY tricky to get more than her fingertips on the tile. By the time we left that place, I was wiped out. So of course, afterward, we went to a toy store. With two 2 year olds and a 4 year old. Because we are gluttons for punishment.

On the upside, she did demonstrate her rather remarkable intellect in ways that tickled me, both on the drive over, and in the toy store. On the way over, she was playing with various toys, and doing what I call "toddler conjugation". She'd pick something up and say, for instance, "Zebra. Baby's zebra. MY zebra!" and then nod and smile, and move onto the next item. In the toy store, she picked up a cow puppet and said "Oh, wow- a COW! Moooooo, cow! Mommy, cow." and at that last "cow", she did the sign for cow. LOVE her. And when it was time to go, I anticipated a fight, but no, I just suggested that she tell the toys goodbye and she did... individually.

"Bye bye cow! Bye bye, kitty cat! Bye bye monkey! Bye bye, cars! Night night, balls!" (Why the balls got a "night night" instead of a goodbye is anyone's guess.)

And since I mentioned the signing, I'll leave this rather long narrative with the video of my Small One signing, in case anyone on the planet earth has not yet seen it.