My last blog entry...

This will be my last blog entry for this blog. Too much has happened in just a short time.

The long and short of it all is that my husband, who I had jokingly dubbed "Pig" here (because of the Chinese zodiac sign for his year of birth), and I will be getting a divorce. This was not something I ever wanted out of life, but the decision has been taken out of my hands when he informed me he would not be leaving his mistress. Now, I am regretting a number of things, especially my choice of zodiac names for everyone.

At the time, I thought it would be amusing to have Pig, Horse, Rooster, and Pig Jr. be the members of my family. Now, it hurts too much. Well-meaning individuals have been referring to my husband by his blog name. I know they are just trying to be supportive of me in this trying time, but I have no desire to call him any names, but especially not "Pig." That had been, at the time, an endearing nickname. No matter what my feelings are towards him at this moment, he is still the father of my children. They were conceived in love. There had to have been something redeeming about him at some point in time, or I would not have married him, let alone had three children with him.

To those who have sent me their love and support since hearing this news, I offer you my thanks. I have no idea how I am going to get through the days and weeks ahead, but I will do my best to pull myself together for my children. For those that formerly communicated with me through the online game of KoL that my husband and I played, I am leaving that game. If you wish to contact me in any other way, please find the Murphy Brawn Facebook page that I had set up to post links to this blog. You can leave me a message there, if you like. Please be advised though: That is a public page, so anyone can see it. That means I do not wish to see any name-calling there, even if you think it is to support me right now. Regardless of his indiscretions, he is still the father of my children.

Most likely, the children and I will be moving in with my parents in just a short while. My husband will be finding an apartment elsewhere. I will have to find a good divorce attorney, dust off my archaic resume, find a job, get my act together, and find a more permanent place for the kidlets and I to live. I appreciate more than anything that my parents are willing to take us in right now. Otherwise, I have no idea where we would go. I have no paying job as a stay-at-home mother. Even the car is in my husband's name.

We are currently under contract and waiting for our closing date in October on the sale of our house, so we would have to be moving out no matter what. I am glad I found out what I did before we purchased another house. I have no idea what is to be done with most of our things. Paying for storage is expensive, and it is unlikely that either my husband or myself will have room for much. Most of what we already have boxed and in storage has items for both of us, so it will all have to be gone through before we go our separate ways. I wish I had found out earlier, so the yard sale we just had early yesterday could have contained more items. Now, the thought of another sale this time of year simply fills me with dread.

A bizarre part of my brain keeps thinking it's a relief I will not have to cook with a set of pots and pans I cannot stand. They were a wedding gift from my in-laws back when my husband did all the cooking, so they were a style that he loves. What an odd thing to fixate on at a time like this.

Please keep us in your thoughts and prayers. This is going to be extremely difficult for everybody involved, but especially our children. My husband and I both want what is best for them, and I truly hope it stays that way.

Thank you all for your support.

Dancing Birds

In the middle of the chaos that is my life these days, I had one of those unexpectedly joyous, yet fleeting, moments that catch us unaware. While I was in my car and stopped at a red light, glaring at pretty much every driver around me for simply being there, I saw a flock of birds swoop down in the sky ahead of me.

While I watched, the flock split into two distinct groups of birds. Each group flew as one while being partnered by the other half of the birds. Each half moved as if they shared one communal hive mind as the two groups flew around and around each other in fantastic whirls. It was as if two swooping, swarming, flipping, flying, absolutely amazing dance partners took over the sky right in front of me. Their choreography could not have been more perfect.

I don't know how long I sat there, dumbfounded over the beautiful dance I was witnessing. I do know that nobody honked at me, so either we were all collectively entranced or the moment was shorter than I would have guessed. Time certainly seemed irrelevant at that moment.

Life needs more of those moments. Or perhaps we need to learn how to fully embrace them as they come. They might be few and far between some days, but it would be a crime to miss them once they arrive.

So much for daily entries once the kidlets went back to school...

What a month it's been! Between the kidlets going back to school and everything going on with the sale of our house, I've been insanely busy. I have to laugh every time someone asks me what I am going to do with all my free time now that I have all three at school full-time. "Oh, not much. Just packing up an entire house to try and move God only knows where because we can't find anything short-term in town. Oh, and trying to recover from some sort of bizarre bacterial infection that's not strep, but gave me funky white spots on my tonsils and is making me more tired than I should be. Aren't you jealous?"

Gotta love the ignorant.

The kidlets are trying to cope with all of the moving plans by either denying our house will actually sell or by embracing it fully. For their sakes, this had better all be over within the next two months, as is our current plan.

Pig Jr. has had multiple accidents at school and even more at home, which is unlike him, but makes sense with the turmoil of starting kindergarten and all this talk of moving.

Rooster has been sobbing for months now every single time moving is mentioned, except for this morning. "I can't wait to move!" When asked why, she responded with, "Because then I can get away from Lacie." Two and a half weeks into school, and she already has someone trying to boss her around in her classroom. Lacie had previously tormented Rooster in kindergarten, so this is not a total surprise, but I had been hoping that little devil spawn would mature a bit over first grade. (I'm sorry. That's not very nice of me. My apologies to devil spawn everywhere for giving them a bad name by comparing them to that child.)

And then there's Horse. She desperately wants her own room, yet does not want to leave the only town in which she remembers residing. Horse is also in these awful tween years where she's not a little kid anymore, but she is also not really old enough to be as independent as she would like. She has been asking me if she can walk home from school with her friends, which I am okay with provided she stays within visual range of my overprotective eyes. Not for nothing, but there are at least four registered sex offenders living in our one square mile town, along with known gang activity. No stinkin' way am I letting her walk home at her age without me knowing exactly where she is and if she is safe. On the other hand, I want her to spread her wings a bit, and enjoy whatever time she has left with these friends. Well, today, another friend asked her if she could walk home with her, and Horse told her no because she only wanted to walk with her other friends. This does not fly in my world. Adding another girl who is already a friend to a group is an option. Deliberately excluding a friend is not. To be fair to Horse, she claims she thought her friend was asking her to not walk with anyone else but her, and she had already told her other friends she would walk with them. I am not entirely sure I believe my daughter. She is not exactly the most truthful kid on this planet, and she inherited her mother's complete lack of tact in certain settings. I would not put it past her to deliberately rephrase things to make herself look better.

I am done with this school year already, and it's still only September.

Telephone in the School District

I walk my kidlets to and from school almost every day. A lot of people in town tell me I'm crazy, but I look at it as if this is a total of three miles' worth of walking and exercise that I would otherwise miss. It also gives me extra time with my kidlets, and helps them to wake up a bit before starting their school day. To me, these are all good things. At least I consider them to be good things when the weather is beautiful. I do question my own sanity when it's either freezing cold and sleeting or roasting and humid.

On the walk home from school today, a couple of middle school students stopped us. They both knew at least one of my kidlets by name, and we all knew each other by sight from simply seeing one another hundreds of times at the elementary school over the years. Both boys looked exceedingly concerned, so I asked them if they were okay. It might take a village to raise a child, but I was the only adult around who was in a position to help if needed, unless you counted the guys cutting down tree limbs two houses away, and those were hired men who were likely strangers to the two sixth graders.

One of the boys immediately asked me if I knew what happened at one of the parks in our town. I told him I had not heard anything, and asked why he was asking. Both boys piped up to say they heard there was a shooting at the park, and that the teachers had told them whatever happened was too violent to tell them. They claimed all after school activities had been cancelled due to this supposed shooting. One boy stated he did not want to go home because he would have to be there alone.

Hmm. I had not heard anything. I had seen an emergency vehicle fly through the center of town, but I had no idea if it wound up at the park in question. I certainly had not heard any rumors flying at the elementary school. Having been a teacher myself during September of 2001, I could say that it is not uncommon for teachers to be told they are not allowed to mention anything about tragic events that are still unfolding. (We were told to not tell our students anything on 9/11, which I found exceedingly difficult as I did not immediately know if my husband was even still alive. Thankfully, he was.) No one wants to start a panic amongst the students, I suppose.

I asked the two boys if either one needed help contacting their parents, since I had my cell phone on me, or if they needed us to watch to see if they would make it home safely. They declined, but one walked with us as we finished our walk home. (He lives a couple of houses up the street from us.)

After walking into my house, I immediately contacted a friend of mine whose husband is a volunteer firefighter in town. I figured if anyone I knew would have heard of an emergency call, she would have. Apparently, there was an emergency near the park in question, but there was no shooting. Those middle schoolers were worried over a rumor that had essentially been a game of telephone run amok.

You know that game? One person starts out by whispering something to someone else, who then whispers it to another person, who relays the message further, and so on and so forth, until the very last person announces the message they heard. "I love the color red" becomes "Rainbows are awful things unless you own a unicorn" or something else totally unrelated to the original statement. That's what must have happened here. One person said something about the park in question, and the next thing we knew, the middle schoolers are asking about a shooting that never took place.

The saddest thing about this whole telephone situation, in my opinion, is that we live in a society where kidlets know a shooting could actually take place at the park where they play. I am just grateful that turned out to be a rumor instead of the truth.

Adventures in House-Selling, Part VIII

This should really be titled, "Hurry up and Wait." That seems about what we are doing at this stage of the game.

We waited after the home inspection for our buyer's list of demands...erm...things she wanted addressed. We waited for her attorney to tell us whether our concessions were acceptable to our buyer. We waited for our appraisal. Now we are waiting to find out if our appraisal is high enough that we can continue with our sale. After that, we will wait to see if our buyer gets her mortgage.

In the middle of the waiting for selling our house, we are also waiting on the buying end. We waited to see if another seller would accept our offered price. We waited for a counteroffer when it was rejected. We waited to sign the contract once the details were agreed upon. We waited for the seller to also sign. Now we are waiting for the two attorneys to reject the contract and put in their own legal mumbo-jumbo during the attorney review period. While waiting, we are also worrying that someone else will swoop in and offer him a better deal and leave us out in the cold.

Some of us are getting a bit tired of all this waiting.

In the middle of all of this, the kidlets returned to school. They, too, are waiting. They are waiting to find out whether we will be moving at all, once, or twice this school year. (If our buyer cannot buy for whatever reason, we are giving up on this whole idea, refinancing, and looking into putting an addition on our too-small house. If everything goes smoothly on the selling end, we will move at least once into an apartment of some kind to wait out the time until we close on the next house, whatever that one will be. If the house we were admiring actually becomes ours, another move will take place.)

Our eldest does not want to move, but does want her own bedroom, so she will likely be the most willing to go along with one or two moves. Our middle kidlet does not want to move at all, and she tells us this at every opportunity. We might have to bribe her with a visit to Grandma and Grandpa's house as a means of preventing her from handcuffing herself to our current house. Our youngest has not said anything on the subject, but has had three accidents since school started last week, so he is clearly dealing with enough stress from just starting kindergarten. I shudder to think what his reaction will be if he is uprooted from the only home he has ever known.

The good news is that in another month or so, we will know for sure whether or not we are going to go through with the sale of our house. We will cross any other bridges when we come to them. What is meant to be will happen. Now pardon me while I go hurry up and wait to see what will be.

Adventures in House-Selling, Part VII

We are not entirely sure what our attorney Mr. Law is actually doing to help us sell our house. We know we will have to pay him for his services, regardless of whether the house actually sells. However, there are days we really, truly wonder what he is doing to earn his fee.

Last week, Mr. Law told me I had to get copies of certain paperwork to him immediately so he could forward copies to our buyer's attorney for our buyer to review. Verbally, Mr. Law told me we were going to be offering our buyer a $500 credit towards some water-damaged wood repairs that need to be done for our Florida room. (Think concrete back porch, but with metal walls that have the option of putting in either a bunch of windows or screens, depending on the season. The only wood is actually in the frame, which is covered by aluminum.) He also said he would forward the various receipts we had, including one where our hot water heater was inspected, one to prove we treated for termites even though the mud tunnel the home inspection found was actually from decades ago, and another to show we had treated for the supposed carpenter ant infestation in the Florida room. I got the copies to Mr. Law, as requested. We were therefore expecting to hear back from our buyer to see whether everything on the home inspection contingency is now met.

This morning, I opened up my email to find a forwarded letter from the buyer's attorney, demanding that we treat for termites, treat for carpenter ants, replace the hot water heater, pay for a home warranty for our buyer, repair the damage to the Florida room, and install a rail up to our unfinished attic because its absence will interfere with our ability to obtain a Certificate of Occupancy from our town. (I was told verbally that we passed our inspection, and am supposed to pick up that certificate from our town's office tomorrow afternoon.)

There were a few things wrong with that letter, the most glaringly obvious being that we already took care of half the things on the list and were waiting to hear our buyer's response about the rest. I called Mr. Law and asked him what on earth that letter meant since I thought we had already addressed most of those issues last week.

Apparently, Mr. Law never forwarded copies of anything to our buyer's attorney. Now, however, he wants to double the credit we will give towards the wood repair. (This actually annoys me, given that the damaged wood had been found when the home inspection company physically ripped a row of siding off each side of the frame of my Florida room. Until that point, we had no idea there was a problem.) Mr. Law said he will take care of forwarding all of those receipts to our buyer today, and indeed I did just receive a CC of the email that proves someone in his office did just that. Finally!

After this morning's conversation, Mr. Law called me back later to ask for the wood destroying insect report or clearance or something involving the carpenter ants. I told him I gave him copies of everything I had received. Mr. Law told me I needed to call the treating company and ask for the form he needed, so I did. The treating company told me they did not write the wood destroying insect report (WDIR, apparently) in the first place; they only treated the Florida room. Therefore, our attorney needs to send a copy of the treatment paperwork to the company that tore apart our siding, and have them issue a clearance letter about the carpenter ants. I relayed this information to Mr. Law, and he said he could do that.

Now I have two new things over which to fret. First, will Mr. Law actually send the paperwork to the correct company so we have the clearance we need for our closing? Secondly, will that hideous company accept the treatment paperwork as sufficient evidence of treatment, or will they insist on coming back out to re-inspect? We just nailed the dang siding back into place and caulked it all up yesterday. Darned if I want them to come back out and pull it all up again!

I think I might actually be relieved if this deal fails to happen. We're losing a ton of money, getting nickeled and dimed to death after this inspection, and don't have many options when it comes to buying our next house anyway. The one potential option we have is unlikely to come to fruition given our contingency to sell first anyway, it's already the cheapest available house in a very expensive area, and every single person we've talked to about it has put it down as a bad idea because of its oil heating, high taxes, and lack of a garage.

Regardless of our options for the future, we at least have our house right now. If our buyer balks over anything and backs out of the deal, it's not the end of the world. At least that's what I keep trying to tell myself between massive freak-outs and chocolate-eating binges.

Adventures in House-Selling, Part VI

I should have, perhaps, entitled today's blog entry either, "The Home Inspection from Hell," or, "Your House Knows You're Abandoning It." I wish I was joking.

Three days ago, our buyer had her home inspection. From that point on, pretty much everything went to hooey.

First of all, the buyer, her realtor, the inspector, and others who I am not entirely certain who they were or why they were there all showed up an hour early without any sort of notice. Her realtor, if no one else, carried with him a cell phone with our realtor's cell number available to him. When I called our realtor in a panic, since the girls had just finished their lunches and I still had a few chores left to accomplish before leaving with them, our realtor was just as surprised as I was. I left the house in the responsibility of the buyer's realtor while my realtor did what he could to get someone from our team over there.

I should point out that our realtor was the one who did not want us there. He said there were too many times where he has seen the seller get bamboozled by the buyer and home inspector if the seller was actually present. Why agree to things because you can't handle saying no in person? That's what lawyers are for. Leave the naysaying to them. The fact that the buyer's realtor wanted me to stay also made me feel the need to leave. He gave me the impression that he would make slick used-car salesmen look like they are all on the up-and-up.

I probably should have stayed. Upon my return, I discovered my microwave (which is not involved in the sale) had been used and the time set. We never set the time on that thing, and the clocks we have around the house are all set fast to help my husband get to the train on time. They set the microwave to the correct time instead. They broke our indoor-outdoor digital thermometer (also not part of the sale), which we were thankfully able to finally fix after exchanging all of the batteries and letting it completely reset. They shut off our basement dehumidifier (once more, not part of the sale). They messed around in the back of the toilet tank so it did not flush properly (Okay, fine. The toilet technically comes with the house. But why mess around with its innards?). It took me two days to figure out the problem and correct it. But the worst was yet to come.

Yesterday, we received a copy of the letter our buyer's attorney sent to our attorney. In it, we were told she had some demands to make before any of us even received the written inspection report. One of the things sounded as if she was going to demand a termite treatment based on the claim that they found an old mud tunnel in our detached garage. First of all, we get termite inspections yearly, and nothing has ever been spotted. We do use a pest control service to receive quarterly spraying to try and prevent creepy crawlies from entering our house, but we never had to treat for termites. Secondly, an old mud tunnel might have been there for decades, even since before we bought the house. It does not imply any termites are currently in residence. Thirdly, I called our pest control service immediately, and they sent someone out to investigate. No evidence of past or present termites was discovered, including any mud tunnels. Regardless, since this was something we are sure they put in the inspection report, we have to have the property treated because the mortgage company will demand it even if the buyer does not. That's over fifteen hundred bucks right there.

While I was outside talking with the termite guy, I decided to take a look at our back porch, or what we call our Florida room. The buyer's attorney had claimed there were active carpenter ants and water damage that needed to be addressed. Well, we already had the pest control plan, so it was easy to just place a call and schedule a treatment day. However, we were baffled by the claims of water damage, so I went to look around our Florida room to see if I could spot anything or if we would have to wait for the official report. Boy, could I see it!

It turns out that someone for the buyer, whether it was the home inspection person or their bug guy, had pried up these metal siding slats at the bottom of the Florida room. They physically pried the siding away from the exterior of our house and left it pulled out like that. They even bent one of the pieces, so it is not likely to ever look normal again. Sure, we can now see how there is rotted wood there, which we did not know about previously, but they took away just about every option we had towards getting it fixed.

If they had simply knocked on the siding and said it sounded hollow so they suspected water damage, or bug damage, or whatever, then we could have just told the buyer we'd give her a credit of some monetary amount and it would be her problem. She could decide to back out of the deal if that didn't work for her, but at least we would not have three of the four sides of our back porch now exposed to the elements.  We now have to get it fixed before it rains. Not only that, but because of the location and the damage the company did, it is likely to be a much larger problem and cost more to fix than it would have before they ripped everything open. For example, I honestly cannot see any water damage down one of the three sides they opened up, and it is only minimal damage on the second side, yet we now have to fix all three sides, which is likely to require a complete overhaul of our Florida room.

The rest of the house, upon hearing me on the phone all afternoon with our realtor, the inspection company, and their bug guy, suddenly realized what this all meant. We are trying to abandon it, at least in its inanimate mind. It got back at us. Our less than three-year-old bathroom fan just up and died. I suppose it's possible the home inspection people messed around with it, too, but we have no proof of that as nothing is noticeably out of place like we have with the glaring gaps around our Florida room's border.

Oh, and our buyer also wants a new hot water heater and the right to add whatever else she wants to add upon receipt of her written inspection report.

I'm about ready to tell her she can take a flying leap and hope I can make this all up to my house before it completely goes kablooey on me.

Adventures in House-Selling, Part V

We made it through attorney review on the selling end of this deal. Next up is getting our house inspected, then haggling through lawyers over whatever nitpicky items crop up during inspection. Rather than waiting around to see whether the inspection will give us poor results and have the buyer run screaming away from us, we have chosen to spend our time pouring over online searches to try and find our ideal house to purchase.

Just a few months ago, there were a zillion houses out there in the school district we are aiming to enter. We even had a choice of towns in which to reside for that regional district. There were simply oodles of houses. Now, the only ones left online are either poorly maintained with or without major structural damage, located right next to something awful, pulled off the market despite still showing up online, or are suddenly under contract the day after we ask to see them in real life. Seriously?

Okay, fine. We decided to broaden our search to other excellent school districts that are still within a reasonable commuting distance for Pig. It seems that every day that passes, I am texting our realtor with instructions to look out for houses in an additional town, generally in the completely opposite direction of the town I requested just one day prior.

Our first day of actually going to a few houses to check them out was quite informative. I figure a few more of these visits and I will be able to speak fluent Realtor. Here is what I have been able to figure out thus far:

"Lovingly maintained home" implies "Still has the original two-prong electrical outlets installed somewhere in the 1950s, although owners may have sprung for an upgrade to 150 amp service within the past decade." It could also mean, "The roof has been patched so many times it looks like thatch up there." Expect to see a heck of a lot of wallpaper that has been clearly re-pasted a number of times, twenty or more coats of paint on the walls, and a furnace that is older than you are.

"Newly renovated [insert room name here]" can be translated directly into one of two things. Either it means, "We knew there was no bloody way you would ever look twice at our house if we still had the original circa 1920s stove in the kitchen, so we did the bare minimum necessary to make you think you were getting something spiffy," or it implies, "Of course we had to renovate. That's what happens when you get flooded and your house is declared a federal disaster area." Clearly there are exceptions to the rule, such as our own house, which has a "recently renovated bathroom." (Our translation was, "You mean you'd rather we kept the awful 1950s pink tiles and the leaky tub? We didn't want to deal with that for us even if you don't buy our house!")

"Spacious eat-in kitchen" means you will have plenty of space just as long as your table is one of those TV trays.

"Quick closing" is one for which to watch out. It might mean that the seller has already relocated to somewhere else. It could also imply they do not want you to think too long and are hoping you'll just buy quickly and then spent the next twenty years repenting in leisure.

"Seller is offering [insert company name here] Home Warranty" should, in theory, serve to reassure the buyer that if anything major goes kablooey during the first year of home ownership, they shall be covered. In reality, those warranty companies pay very little money towards actually fixing problems that might arise, and, in fact, often exclude a number of things the buyer assumes should be covered. "Oh, I know the foundation appears cracked, but with that warranty, we'll be fine!" "Oh, wait. What do you mean they do not cover pre-existing conditions, and even if it wasn't pre-existing, they'd only pay us a thousand bucks on a job that will cost at least ten times that?"

"Huge [insert house-type here]" is a direct translation for, "Will cost you a zillion more dollars to fix up anything you want to fix as opposed to if you were doing similar work on a more reasonably-sized house." Any type of size description also implies the relative cost of your heating and cooling bills. A "cozy" house will be cheaper to keep comfortable than a "nicely-sized" or "surprisingly large" house would, and will be infinitely cheaper than anything that calls itself "huge."

"Owner is extremely motivated to sell" is another tricky one. It could imply the house is part of a divorce case and the owner is willing to drop the price quickly to screw over the soon-to-be ex. It could mean the owner is desperate to get out before the dang house floods again or the next tornado comes through town. It could also imply the owner overextended him- or herself and already purchased their dream home before selling the house you are admiring and losing their job and getting stuck trying to pay two mortgages while rapidly depleting what is left of their savings. It can be extremely good for the buyer, or absolutely horrible. I will need to look at a few more houses to be able to get a better grasp on that Realtor-speak.

My personal favorite Realtor phrases to interpret are ones pertaining to special features on or nearby the house's location. "Stream runs through the property" means both that you will likely flood at some point and that your neighbor's discarded trash will wind its way over to you. "Pond on the property" can be directly translated into, "Expect mosquitoes large enough to drive their own cars." "Right next-door to a horse farm," lets you know you certainly do not want to be downwind on a hot summer day! (It also informs you your ten-year-old daughter would be pleased as punch for you to purchase that house, since she desperately loves horses. Or maybe that's just my daughter.) "Property is located in a flood zone" lets you know that you should expect to have to do some renovations yourself at some point in the future, most likely immediately after you discover your priceless family photo albums have all been thoroughly saturated.

See how much fun it is to learn how to speak Realtor? At least it keeps my mind off of our impending home inspection! (Wish us luck. It is to be held tomorrow. While we do not expect to hear anything major is wrong with our house, we have no desire to be nickeled and dimed to death over stupid little things. Well, or big things either. But I'm not replacing the lovingly maintained boiler that is older than I am. It still works, dang it.)

A diagnosis of autism...

"Pig Jr. does not make eye contact the same way regular children do. He will attempt to answer your questions sometimes while completely facing the other direction. This is not normal." "What is it like to try and have a conversation with him? He does not really know how to do the usual back-and-forth it takes to carry on a conversation. That is not normal.""He's a toe-walker? That's also one of the signs." "The way his voice goes up and down in a sing-songy manner when he is talking is not normal." "He seems to do repetitive play. Does he line things up or do the same thing over and over the way he is doing now with the erasers I gave him to play with? That's not normal." "Does he ever react if someone is upset or cries? Not really? That's not normal."

I swear, if I heard my son or something he does was "not normal" one more time, I was going to scream.

Just a few minutes before this discussion, Pig and I had been talking privately about our concern that this doctor will tell us our son is fine and that we are just being worrywarts. His old neurodevelopmental pediatrician had told us he barely qualified for a diagnosis of PDD-NOS, and it seemed to us that he had improved in a number of areas over the two years since then. We honestly wondered what we were going to do to convince the school he still needed to be under the supervision of the special services department if that diagnosis disappeared.

When this new doctor casually mentioned our son was "on the spectrum," I asked for clarification, since we had been told for years now that Pig Jr. was not autistic although he has some characteristics of autism. "On the spectrum" means "autistic," doesn't it?

Apparently, the standards are changing and our son's old diagnosis of PDD-NOS (feel free to google it if you're bored or curious) will be going the way of the dodo bird. He is now officially diagnosed with autism. He will be put on a registry for children with autism. Big brother will be watching our little boy. The doctor even recommended getting some genetic testing done to see why he is the way he is.

The worst part was that this neurodevelopmentalist told us she did not have a copy of the new standards, but showed us a list of the old ones. She said a child only needed a couple of characteristics to qualify. He had far more than that. Our little boy probably should have been diagnosed with autism two years ago at his first evaluation.

Granted, Pig Jr. is very high functioning. He is also highly intelligent. Ultimately, we do not care if his diagnosis is called "cow manure" as long as it means he will get the services he needs for speech, OT, and socialization. (Please, doctors, don't change the name to "cow manure"! I was being snarky.) Unfortunately, many people hear the word "autism" and think of the extremely severe cases. That is not our son. There is still very much a stigma attached to this diagnosis, despite the fact that many people live pretty normal lives with it.

A diagnosis of autism will ultimately help Pig Jr. receive services. Our insurance will supposedly have to pay for them now. I will have to look into what, if anything, his school will now need to do to ensure he receives a proper education.

I just wish they would stop saying what he does is not normal. It's normal for him.

Adventures in House-Selling, part IV.

For the first time in my life, I am actually grateful that we have an attorney on our side. Selling a house is such a stressful situation, and I cannot fathom why people would ever voluntarily do this more than once. Oh, I know there are reasons people have to move or sell their houses. I used to think buying a house was stressful. Now I know better. The selling part is far worse, in my opinion.

Anyway, the first of a long series of stresses over selling a house, once you have the initial contract, is the attorney review period. To the best of my knowledge, this is when two or more attorneys try to one-up each other in changing how things are worded in the contract between buyer and seller. They take a fairly standard contract and tweak it until it matches how they think it should look. The attorneys send letters back and forth, and discuss each other's messages with their clients, who are likely both panicking at their respective locations.

Today, my attorney went over the revisions the other attorney wanted to see placed into the contract. Part of the discussion went as follows:

     Mr. Law: "Take a look at number five there. That shouldn't be a problem."
     Me: "Uh...if you say so. I'm not even sure what it means."
     Mr. Law: "It means [insert unintelligible explanation of sorts]. Then number six was already addressed by my number eleven sent out yesterday."
     Me: [frantically flipping through papers until I find the referenced number eleven]
     Mr. Law: "Then we need to change the wording on how number eight reads to [insert elite-sounding babble]."
     Me: "But what happened to number seven?"
     Mr. Law: "Oh, that shouldn't be a problem. It states that [insert even more elite-sounding babble]."

The end result was that I smiled, nodded, and agreed to whatever revisions my attorney said he wanted to write. I figure we are paying him for his knowledge of this sort of thing, so we have to trust him to some extent. This, however, is not why I am glad we are paying him for his services.

Towards the end of the conversation, he asked me if I had any questions. Given that my eyes had glazed over and I probably could not have stated my own name if asked, I could not formulate anything even remotely intelligent. Instead, I blurted out, "When is it time to panic?"

Mr. Law babbled about how straightforward this really is, and how we just take this one step at a time so there is no need to panic. I rephrased the question. "I have three children who have to start school in less than a month. I have no idea where we are moving and I do not want to sign a year lease on something if there is the potential this closing will not go through. Now, you're saying that everything might not be all ready until almost the end of September for an end-of-September closing. What the heck am I supposed to do to prepare for this sale when there are so many things that might cause this deal to not happen?"

There was a pause. Then, Mr. Law suggested adding a stipulation of some sort to the closing date. The basic gist is that our closing will now be no later than the previously suggested closing date, or thirty days after all contingencies are met, whichever is later. In other words, once the inspection, assessment, mortgage, and all that other stuff gets resolved, then our closing date will be at least thirty days from then. In theory, a month is enough time to find another place to live, make the arrangements, pack, move, and clean the house for closing. We shall have all of our ducks in a row to ensure we do not get stuck paying a year's rent somewhere while also handling our mortgage, if something stops this sale.

I am very grateful for Mr. Law's suggestion, and I am able to breathe a little more easily now that I do not have to immediately find another place to live without knowing if, for example, our buyer's mortgage company will agree that our house is worth our contractually agreed-upon price.

Now we just have to wait and see what else happens during the attorney review process to see whether or not we will have a finalized contract during this lifetime.

Adventures in House-Selling, part. III.

I'm fairly certain my gravestone will read, "Death by laid-back attorney," because I swear that guy is going to kill me.

On August 2, 2012, the day after we signed our half of the contract that states we are willing to sell our house to a particular buyer for a certain cost and closing date, I first contacted an attorney. After all, we needed someone to handle all of the legal aspects of the sale, and the first step in that regard is to enter an attorney review period. In theory, that is three business days where attorneys start representing both the buyer and the seller debate the finer points of the contract. In other words, they both reject it as written and make their own requirements as to how things should read. This could take weeks. In theory, that should be fairly straightforward. In fact, our attorney told me he would send out an email to me that very afternoon, regarding whatever he needed to put in writing at that time.

Can you hear the crickets chirping and the tumbleweeds blowing while absolutely nothing happened?

Over the weekend, I texted our realtor to ask if everything was going as intended, since we had heard nothing about what was taking place between attorneys. I received a response that this was common, and the attorneys are going back and forth and doing what they need to do. In other words, calm down. Things are progressing even if you don't see it happening. Okay, I'll just sit here and take deep, cleansing breaths while trying not to worry.

This morning, I decided to go ahead and give our attorney a call, just to make sure. I figured I could chalk it up to never having sold a house before, so I honestly did not know what to expect. Our attorney basically read back the notes from when I talked to him four days ago and informed me he still did not know who the other attorney was. Nothing had been discussed between attorneys.

We are no closer to ending our nerve-wracking attorney review period than we were last week. The only thing getting me through this weekend was the thought that our three business days would be up on Monday, so at least we would be through that particular hurdle. Now we find out that it still technically has not started, since only our half of the contract is legally represented.

I get that an attorney has a bunch of things on their plate at any given moment. I understand that selling our house is not a priority to any of them. However, it certainly is to us. I have about a month and a half to pack up, clean house, find a place to move, actually move, do one final cleaning, then have our closing on or before September 28, 2012, and we do not even have a finalized contract to motivate me to get up off my behind on this hot, muggy, summer day.

I guess it's a good thing I called him today then, eh? Oy. Keep your eyes peeled for that grave marker. I'll either be six feet under from stressing myself out over this laid-back approach, or he will have murdered me for calling him all the time to keep on top of what he is supposedly doing.

Adventures in House-Selling, part II.

For those of you who can't care less about how all I want to blather about these days is pertaining to the sale of our house, you can't say you haven't been warned. Today's house-sale-related blog entry is really just for me, so I can write down how my dream timeline looks at the moment. Note the words, "at the moment." My dream is likely to change from second to second, let alone from day to day.

First, our buyer sticks around and still wants to buy our house after our attorney review period ends. Then she is even more happy to still have a contract after the house is inspected. We find the perfect rental house (already searched and ogled online) in our current town and find the perfect house to buy (lusting after a particular house online) a few months after we close. We get pre-approved for a mortgage with a great rate that will be effective once our current mortgage is wiped out with the sale of our house. So far, that sounds good in theory. It's a great market to buy!

The house we adore will have an owner who is willing to accept our (low) bid and our contingency that we have to close on our current house first. We will move into our rental  place before the start of the school year so that all of the zillions of forms the school sends home on the first couple of days of school (times three for our kidlets) can have our new, temporary address listed instead of having to list our current house and then re-fill out everything a week or two later should we wind up moving after school starts. Okay, so that's not overly unrealistic so far. A lease could easily start September first, before school does.

Next, we close on our current house. The buyer does indeed buy our house, and we weep with glee for being out of debt for the first time in a decade. Then we notify the people who own our dream house, and promptly finalize that mortgage so we'll be back in debt once more. We arrange a closing date sometime before the end of November, and all goes smoothly with our own inspections and whatnot.

During as much of November and December as I can manage, I start moving things from our rental house to the new house, paint what I can (possibly delay that until spring if it's too cold to open up windows for ventilation), and set up the Christmas tree in our new home. The kidlets continue to attend school in the district where we are renting until the last week school is in session in December. We possibly pull them out a day or two early so we can pay someone else to move all the heavy stuff from the rental property into our dream home, and we officially move in just before Christmas. The kidlets can settle in to their new lives for a week or more, and start their new schools the first week back in January.

Finally, our rental property can be officially vacated, as we had set up a four-month lease (or a month-to-month situation to get us through the end of December) and we will no longer have to pay both rent and a mortgage.

That is my dream. There are no unexpected worries, no getting stuck without being able to sell our current house, no major problems with any house inspections, and no mortgage companies being less than thrilled that we want to use their services. I have no idea how realistic this dream is, but at least it gives me something for which to hope. Let's see how close to reality it truly is...

Adventures in House-Selling, part I.

Well, we have officially accepted an offer on our house and have entered our attorney review period. To the best of my knowledge, that means we get to sit around and panic while not hearing from our attorney. Is he working with the other attorney? Have they made contract revisions? Did they flat-out reject the contract like our realtor said they would both do? We have no idea!

I suppose ignorance is bliss, but I never knew bliss would be so stressful.

In the meantime, we are in a wait-and-see mode. Our buyer has a lot of power right now, although we are hoping she is unaware of that fact. We have no plans to back out of this sale. She might get cold feet or worry about something that crops up between now and our closing date. However, we are unable to drop our price any further should the house inspection show something she did not know. If she is unaware that the sixty-ish year old boiler is so dang old, for example, then too bad. It still works and we have no intention of replacing it while it still works. So we are waiting to see what happens.

Our plans, right now, involve trying to get past attorney review and then our inspection before finding a place to rent here in town. This way, we are likely to know if the deal is going to go the way of the dodo bird, and even if we are blindsided after signing a lease, it's not as if we will be trying to swing two mortgage payments every month for an undetermined time.

Unfortunately, I did something I swore I would not do. I looked online at a house my husband has been keeping an eye on these past few months. Despite not even knowing whether our own deal with go through, I immediately started lusting after that house. I want it. It might be absolutely atrocious in real life. It might be sold before we have the chance to look at it. I have no idea.

The worst part is that even if our house sells as expected, we love the new house, and have an offer accepted by that seller, we will be stuck with around seven months of an overlap between a lease and a mortgage simply because I do not want the kidlets to switch school districts mid-year. My eldest is in her final year of elementary school. I do not want her to have to switch schools twice in a six-month period if we were to move mid-year. My middle kidlet has severe food allergies, and I do not want to have to bring her into an established classroom setting that might not work for her. I would prefer to figure out some sort of arrangement with the school over summer vacation. And then there's my youngest, who has an IEP that another district will still have to follow, but is more likely to have difficulties with any sort of transition. My kidlets have to come first. If we cannot afford to swing both lease and mortgage, then we shall just have to wait to buy.

In other words, I will be extremely grateful if and when our house closes. I am spending a lot of time praying that we have found the perfect buyer for our house and that the perfect house for us is out there somewhere. The kidlets, who do not want to move, are probably spending their time praying we stay put. This is going to be interesting.

The (immediate) future of this blog...

Well, I know I have not written here for a while now. Truth be told, I never expected to be so overwhelmed this summer. Between one kidlet still attending school four days a week, the house being on the market, preparing for our latest Open House, and various tasks and errands that have been demanding my attention, I feel as if I lost my head somewhere. (If you find it, will you please let me know? That's the sort of thing one misses.)

I'm hoping that once school starts up again in September, I will once more be able to sit down and blog. If the house goes under contract between now and then, that might be next to impossible. We shall see. I hope you forgive me for hoping that happens. We really, really want to be able to move into a new school district before Horse hits middle school in a year.

As of today, I'm officially giving myself the rest of the summer off from writing in here. For the few people who check this site religiously, I wanted to thank you for your interest in my random blathering and invite you to check back here in September. If something major occurs between now and then, I shall do my best to sit down and write, but I am making no promises.

I hope all of you have a very enjoyable summer.

--Murphy

Here a thwack, there a thwack...

I have a problem. Specifically, I have a problem with a three-year-old in my son's class at school thinking it is absolutely fine to haul off and thwack my kidlets every time he sees them. From what my son tells me occurs during the school day, this other little boy also throws toys, knocks down whatever people are building with blocks, and generally frustrates the heck out of my son.

I understand that children who are going to school in the extended school year program that my son attends have special needs. My son was once the three-year-old in a similar situation, except he would not randomly thwack people. Yes, he would push people away if they got too close to him, but he was generally quite shy when it came to being in a classroom setting for the first time. Two years later, Pig Jr. is one of the big boys in the class having to put up with three-year-olds and their socially immature behaviors.

At pickup time today, Lion, the three-year-old in question, followed Pig Jr. out of the door, walked over to where Rooster and I were waiting, and thwacked Rooster.

     Me (to Rooster): "You can tell Lion to not hit you."
     Lion's Mom (to Lion): "You need to apologize."
     Lion: [dead silence]
     Rooster: [mumbling and a bit unnerved] "Don't hit me."
     Lion's Mom (to Lion): "Hey, say you're sorry."
     Lion: [dead silence combined with a smirk]
     Me (to Rooster): "You did a good job using your words instead of hitting him back."
     Lion's Mom (to me): "He hits everybody. He hits his siblings. He hits us. He hits his cousins. He just hits."
     Rooster: [still mumbling, but looking up at Lion's Mom] "I accept your apology."

We walked away from Lion and his mother at that point. Lion did not apologize at all, and I honestly cannot blame my kidlets for looking a bit miffed at the self-satisfied grin on that little boy's face after he thwacked Rooster.

As we walked to our car, Pig Jr. pointed out that Lion had knocked over a bunch of his toys at school today, too. Pig Jr. told me he let the teacher know right away, and I praised my son for his response. (Pig Jr. will sometimes shut down emotionally when someone does something upsetting to him. No one can get a verbal response out of him at those times, so him speaking up to let the teacher know what happened was a huge deal for my little man.) We talked about how younger kidlets sometimes do things that older kidlets know is unacceptable, and that Lion will eventually learn how to behave in a classroom.

Sadly, I am not sure I believe Lion will ever stop hitting other people, at least not when his mother is involved. Today was the first day she even spoke up to try and get him to apologize. Normally, she just lets Lion thwack whoever he wants without any type of consequences or even a verbal warning.

I remembered a situation that happened with Horse, back when she was around two years old. She bit me. Immediately, she had to deal with the consequences. I got her attention, told her she hurt me, and put her into a time-out. Before she was allowed out, she had to tell me she was sorry and that she would not bite me again. (She was quite vocally advanced and fully capable of doing what was required. Also, we had previously talked about how biting is a no-no when a friend of hers bit her, so I knew she was aware she had misbehaved. Things would have played out differently if she did not know biting was not allowed.) That was the last time she ever bit me. A day or two later, she bit her father. He told her not to do that, and said she would get in trouble if she did it again. She bit him again. He warned her again. She bit him once more and received another warning. Eventually, I got frustrated overhearing him warning her, and pulled him aside to tell him to stop the warnings and deal strictly with consequences. She already knew biting was bad. He did as I suggested (okay, fine...demanded), and she stopped biting him. With Horse, it really was that simple.

I wonder how long it is going to take Lion's mother to realize she is being manipulated by a three-year-old who likes to thwack people and get away with it. When a child has the mental capability (it is very different if someone doesn't) to know something is wrong and should not be done, they need to have age-appropriate consequences for their misbehavior. When the adult in charge does not follow through with consequences, he or she fails that child. When Lion's mother just shrugs and says hitting people is just something Lion does, she is setting her son up to continually do as he wants instead of what he should do. Ultimately, he's not my kidlet, and there is not too much I can do to correct the situation other than to teach my kidlets how to react to him.

I am proud to say that in the weeks my offspring have already had to deal with that little boy, none of my kidlets has ever hit him back. They know there would be consequences for them if they did.

Kidlets Driving

My offspring can drive better than I can. It's true. The fact that they are five, seven, and ten just adds insult to injury. Now before anyone goes to report me for endangering my kidlets' lives, let me just state for the record that we are talking about playing Mario Kart on the Wii.

The fact that I have been driving for longer than they have been alive is irrelevant. My abilities behind the wheel of an actual car count for nothing. The truth of the matter is that my kidlets can kick my behind from here to kingdom come when it comes to steering cartoon vehicles on our television. Every time they attempt to race me onscreen, the conversation goes somewhat like this:

     Horse: "Okay, Mom. You're the race on the bottom." [points to a part of the television screen]
     Me: "Okay. I think I can follow that."
     Pig Jr.: "I'm in charge!" [picks the hardest race possible]
     Me: "Hey, I just fell off a cliff!"
     Horse: "Yeah, Pig Jr. picked a hard race."
     Pig Jr.: "This is fun!"
     Horse: "Mom, you can hit the plus sign to use that item you just picked up."
     Pig Jr.: "Hey, why is the game paused?"
     Me: "I hit the plus. That's what Horse told me to do."
     Horse: "No, that's the plus over there. [points] You hit something else."
     Me: "No, I hit the plus sign. You just pointed at the directional arrows. That's not the same."
     Pig Jr.: "I'm in first place!"
     Horse: "Yeah, Pig Jr.'s way ahead of you."
     Me: "Hey, what the heck just happened right there?!?"
     Horse: "Oh, yeah, Mom. You're supposed to avoid those shy guys."
     Me: "What's a shy guy?"
     Horse: "The guy who just bumped into you and knocked you off course."
     Me: "Doesn't seem very shy to me. Oops. Found another cliff."
     Pig Jr.: "I won!"
     Me: "I think I'm in last place."

I really don't understand why it is so difficult for me to mentally transfer from driving on a road to steering on a game. Granted, I am not likely to have other vehicles trying to play bumper cars with me while I'm driving down the street. A ghost is not likely to pop up and spray ink at me, thus blocking my visibility in real life. And most cliffs that I have ever seen have guard rails to prevent my plummeting over the edge when I accidentally hit a power up and go faster than expected. Then again, I don't think I've ever hit a power up in real life either.

Come to think of it, it makes perfect sense why I stink at Mario Kart. I expect other drivers to follow laws, stay in their lanes, and play nice. I do my best to stay in my own lane, drive the speed limit, and stop for yellow or red lights. This is the sort of game where erratic and illegal driving skills are actually a plus.

I guess I should be grateful I cannot compete amongst insane drivers. The fact that those animated drivers are being controlled by my offspring scares the ever-lovin' daylights out of me. I nominate their father to be the one to teach them how to drive behind the wheel of an actual, real-life vehicle. If they drive anything like they do onscreen, that's going to be the most petrifying thing we will ever experience.

Eating Machine

I have inadvertently created a monster. Specifically, I have turned a ten-year-old into an eating machine.

Let me back up a bit here. Last week, Horse's stomach was "burning" about an hour after eating breakfast. She said she felt hungry, too, and a bit like her legs were shaky. A snack or two later, and she felt perfectly fine once more. I just figured she hadn't eaten enough breakfast.Yesterday, Horse had a similar experience, but it was much more severe. She was doubled over in pain from her burning stomach, pale as a ghost, too hot (to herself, not to the touch), queasy, and could not even walk from the bathroom floor (where she was lying down) back into her bedroom. Heck, even sitting up hurt her too much. She tried sipping a bit of water, but was afraid it wouldn't stay down. Half an hour-ish later, the burning suddenly stopped, she was able to finally sit up and then walk into her room, and eventually eat. By "eat," I mean she chowed down on three separate, full snacks. She was still a bit shaky until all three of the snacks went the way of the dodo bird.

Needless to say, I was on the phone with the doctor's office while snack number one was still being devoured. This did not seem like a stomach bug, acid reflux, or anything I could think of. Horse had been sitting quietly reading right before it happened, so it wasn't as if she was exhausted from running amok. She had lunch, which consisted of a bologna and cheese sandwich (on bread with six grams of fiber between the two slices), fruit, and a full glass of milk somewhere from half an hour to an hour before it hit, so it wasn't as if she should have been hungry or dehydrated. So what the heck was it?

Well, the nurse on the other end of the phone line was not sure either. She suggested it might be a low blood sugar thing, since that could give all of the symptoms Horse had. A conversation with a relative later brought to my attention that hypoglycemia (which is basically low blood sugar attacks) ran in the family. Huh. I never knew that. Suddenly, Horse's frequent commentary about how hungry she is takes on a whole other meaning. (Please note that her weight has always been fine, so the doctor had told me she was eating the right amount. Had she lost weight or not gained weight appropriately, I would have instantly fed her either larger portions or more frequent snacks. Given that she already eats more than I do and the doctor thought her weight and height gains are fine, I had not done so before now.)

The end result of those two conversations is that if Horse has another one of those bouts, which she claims she has every three or four weeks and just never told me about before now, we need to take her immediately to the doctor's office so they can check her out, look into her blood sugars, and see if there is anything else that is going on without our knowledge. (Strep, for example, can cause stomach upset without having a sore throat.) Heck, it might even just be a growth spurt where she needs a larger caloric intake and is not consuming enough. That could make her stomach cranky, too.

In the meantime, I told Horse she has free rein (interesting play-on-words there, with the astrological sign I use for my daughter) to have a snack if she feels hungry and it's been an hour since she last ate.

My ten-year-old has pretty much eaten us out of house and home today. In addition to breakfast and lunch, she had two snacks this morning, not including the extra breakfast she consumed, and is already on her third post-lunch snack. Dinner will, in theory, be in another hour, so I'm curious whether she will clean her plate there, too. There have been no complaints of a burning stomach, queasiness, shakiness, or any other similarity to yesterday. Here's hoping the near-constant snacking will take care of whatever ails her.

I have definitely created an eating machine.

Pets in cars...

Okay, so it's been a little while since I've been up on my soapbox. I guess I missed it, because I've decided to jump back up on it for a rant today.

Right now, according to the last news reports I have seen, our country (USA, for those who don't know me in real life) is in the middle of a heat wave. It's brutal outside. When plastic items left outside in the sun start looking like they belong in a Salvador Dali painting (specifically, The Persistence of Memory, for those with an intense desire to google something), you know it's nasty.

A friend of mine had posted on our social media outlet of choice about how she heard barking while in the parking lot of a store. There was a dog left in a truck with the windows cracked about two inches to keep the poor thing cool. I am beyond proud of my friend for calling 9-1-1, waiting around for police to show up, and then retrieving water for the severely overheated dog once the responding officer got the dog out of the vehicle. By her count, it was around fifteen minutes between when she noticed the dog and when the police arrived. In that time, the dog was no longer barking or running around the vehicle. I suspect that poor dog would have been dead by the time the owners returned from their shopping trip if not for my friend's intervention.

Please, pet owners, use some common sense. On a nice, cool spring or fall day, a car can still get up to over a hundred degrees inside, depending on where it is parked, how far down the windows are, and whether the sun is beating down on it. Remember that greenhouse effect that people have been discussing since at least the '80s? A car is the perfect example of what can happen when sunlight enters through the windows and bounces back and forth inside the car without being able to escape. Even in the winter when it's cold out, a car can still be much warmer inside than it is outside. So what on earth would possess someone who supposedly cares about their pet to leave that pet unattended in a car on a hot summer day?

When I walk to school to pick up my kidlets, I see plenty of other parents at the school waiting in their cars. On beautiful spring or autumn days, they might have the windows all the way down and their cars silent while they wait. On warmer days, almost every single one of them has the windows all the way up, the car running, and the air conditioning cranking. If it would be too hot for a person to sit inside a car with the window down two inches, what absolute moron would think it is okay to leave a beloved animal in the same situation? Has no one else heard how it is possible to bake cookies on the dashboard of a car (well, technically on a cookie sheet on the dash) on a hot, sunny day? If cookies can bake, so can Fluffy's brain!

Please, pet owners. Leave your pets at home when you run to the store. Even if you don't have air conditioning at home, you can still pull all the shades down and keep the house much cooler than the inside of a car. Besides, your pet can access his or her drinking water at home. (Remember, too, to change your pet's drinking water often, especially when it is hot outside. You don't want Spot to get sick from drinking water that has who-knows-what growing in it after being left out for a day or more.)

And to anyone who sees an animal or, God forbid, a child, left unattended in a turned-off, parked car this summer, call 9-1-1. (If it is a child, I strongly suggest doing whatever it takes to get that child out of the car as soon as possible, especially if said child is unresponsive. I'd ask whoever is on the other end of the 9-1-1 call what to do while waiting if it is an animal. Even kidlets that bite are less likely to cause as much damage as a pet that does.) No one should have to die because someone locked them in a car on a ninety-degree day with only two inches of window to provide them with slightly cooler air.

God bless you for doing the right thing, my friend...

Who's Brave?

In celebration of all five of us being home from school and work today, Pig and I decided to take the kidlets to go see the movie Brave. Quite conveniently, said movie is playing at the movie theater just down the street from us. Huzzah for ease in movie-going!

Brave was the first movie we have attempted to see as a family in quite some time. Actually, I think the last one we tried to see all together in a theater was Toy Story 3. Rooster started sobbing about two minutes into the movie, and I took her home while the rest of the family stayed and finished the movie. I still haven't seen Toy Story 3 all the way through, despite us having it on DVD by this point in time. Oh, well. Maybe one of these years...

Anyway, the kidlets were thrilled to be going out to see a movie. Horse was ecstatic that she and Pig would be eating a pizza lunch there. (The rest of us, due to our dairy allergies and/or lactose intolerance, depending on the family member, ate lunch at home first.) I asked Pig if he could buy some water for the younger two kidlets, too. Properly supplied with food and/or drink, we awaited the start of the movie with great glee.

Shortly into the previews, Rooster proved that she still has not mastered the fine art of keeping her mouth shut during a movie. She talked. A lot. Even with me threatening to take her home immediately if she could not respect the rest of us enough to let us listen to what was going on onscreen. (I think she knew it was an empty threat. Harrumph.) I don't know what Pig said to her to get her quiet, but she finally settled down by the time the movie actually started.

Around the same time Rooster became absorbed in the screen was around the same time Pig Jr. discovered the fine art of how to drive Mommy crazy in a darkened room. It's quite simple, really. First, you get on and off of your seat a zillion times, making sure to properly put the seat up when standing up and pushing it down noisily when sitting. Then, you need to stomp in place several times in order to make your cool, new, light-up sneakers demonstrate their amazing capabilities. Eventually, you need to tell Mommy you need to sit on her lap, so as to better try and push the seats on both sides of her up and down with your feet. Finally, you need to stick your fingers into your plastic cup, play with the ice cubes, and then complain about being cold.

Truth be told, I was shocked that my son would play with ice cubes at all. He hates anything cold or wet, and ice cubes in a cup of water certainly fall into both categories! I'm assuming my surprise overrode my natural maternal instinct to scold him into sitting still and just watching the dang movie already.

Then came some scary parts. Brave has a number of not-human characters, specifically bears. Angry bears are scary things to kidlets. Heck, I wouldn't have wanted to run into one in real life either. So around the same time I had Pig Jr. on my lap getting scared by bears, I had to lean over, thwack Pig to get his attention (there were two seats in-between us and he did not hear my angry whisper), and tell him to hold Rooster, who was freaked out in the seat next to him. The irony of our kidlets being petrified during a movie called "Brave" was not lost on me.

All in all, I think our whole family mostly enjoyed the movie. My daughters were perplexed that I would like a movie simply because it's not a "girl meets boy, falls in love, and they are married by sunset" type of movie. Kudos to the filmmakers for finally realizing that a girl doesn't need a boy to be complete. That was truly a "Brave" move on their part.

When ages three and up doesn't actually mean that...

I should preface today's blog entry with the information that I am coming down off of a horrific migraine. It hit yesterday afternoon, with no aura beforehand, so I was totally unprepared. Normally, my vision starts doing funny things (that's the aura part) before I become sensitive to light, get nauseous, and then finally get hit with the mother of all headaches. The good news is that if I take Advil when I get the aura, I never develop the full-blown migraine headache. The bad news is that when I skip over the aura part, I'm too queasy to even consider taking Advil to try and lessen the pain.

Migraines do make me cranky, so I should, in theory, know better than to try and interact with the outside world while one is beating on a thousand invisible drums around my head. Note the words, "in theory," since I clearly do not know how to stay put and not inflict myself on others.

To make a long story even longer, I had to take the kidlets to the library to return a movie we had borrowed. It was due back today, and I did not want to forget to return it while struggling to function mid-migraine. While we were there, I picked up a schedule of the activities that are set up for kidlets during the next two months. I should have just left the schedule there and crawled back home to my darkened house and a hot pad for my head.

At home, I sat down to try and figure out what activities would work for any, if not all three, of my kidlets. I was surprised to see "The Goonies Movie" written on one of the dates. I was even more surprised to see "Ages 3+" written underneath that. Now, I love The Goonies. God only knows how many times I have watched that delightful '80s flick. However, it is a PG movie, there is a fair amount of swearing, and the level of violence (or implied violence) is definitely not advisable for young kidlets.

To err on the side of caution before calling the library, since I honestly thought they had perhaps meant to write "Ages 13+," I double-checked with commonsensemedia.org. (I love that website, by the way. It tells parents, or whoever uses it, about movies and other media, and gives a recommended age range so you have a general idea whether or not something will work for your family.) Sure enough, http://www.commonsensemedia.org/movie-reviews/the-goonies had it rated as good for ages ten and up. That matched up with what I already knew about The Goonies, so I went ahead and gave the library a call.

Imagine my chagrin when I spoke with someone who informed me, rather tersely in my opinion, that their age rating was simply because a child needed to be able to sit through a movie all by themselves in order to watch it, and that it was up to the parents to do their own dang research (okay, I'm paraphrasing that part) to see if it is okay for their offspring. I think you could have scraped my chin up off the floor.

Correct me if I am wrong, but if I see "Ages 3+," I am expecting the selection to be appropriate for children ages three and up. I do not expect to see a PG movie, which means parental guidance is required, and one that I know personally freaked me out the first time I saw it as a tween. To say I am disappointed that someone on the library staff would say a movie like that is fine for any child old enough to sit by themselves is absurd.

I promptly threw this summer's library schedule into our recycling bin. Darned if I am going to take my offspring to anything that they have set up for a particular age group. I don't trust their age ranges any farther than I could throw the library building. To say I am disappointed is an understatement. At least the Advil started working. To bad they don't have a pill for common sense.

"Where did you buy that?"

Today started out as a fairly typical Saturday in the Brawn household. We all got up, dressed, and got ready to greet the day pretty much the same way we do every weekend. (Grudgingly on the adults' behalf, and eagerly on the kidlets'.) Horse had her piano lesson right before lunch, and we arrived there the same time as we usually do. All went well, up until the completion of the lesson.

Mrs. DePiano opened up the partition that separates the person having a lesson from those in the waiting area. She looked me up and down and told me she thought I looked fantastic. Well, shucks. Thanks, Mrs. DePiano! Normally, I wear jeans and a tee shirt, but I had on a long summer dress in the hopes of staying cooler in the mid-nineties weather that has descended upon our neck of the woods. I am not a dress person by any stretch of the imagination, but I decided to make an exception this year so as to not torture people by having to look at my legs in shorts. Maxi dresses are back in, so I can stay cooler without any exposed skin on the lower half of my anatomy.

     Mrs. DePiano: "Wow, you look great! Those dresses are wonderful!"
     Me: "Thanks! Yeah, they are keeping me cooler than jeans would."
     Mrs. DePiano: "Where did you buy that?"
     Me: "Oh, at [insert store name here]."
     Mrs. DePiano: "Oh, I am going to have to go there then. I love dresses like that. I'll have to buy some!"

That conversation should have been flattering, no? Well, it would have if the person admiring my outfit was one of my peers. Mrs. DePiano, while an absolutely lovely lady who I think is a fantastic person and a remarkable piano teacher, is probably old enough to be my grandmother. It honestly freaked me out a bit. I do not usually assume that different generations would ever want to dress like each other. So either Mrs. DePiano wants to dress like someone far below her age range or I'm dressing far above mine.

I'm now seriously debating wearing my jeans and tee shirts for the rest of the summer.

Summer vacation must cause a drop in IQ points...

Earlier today, I found myself less than amused with a bunch of rather insulting articles that, both for and against a particular topic, chose to belittle anyone who believed in the opposite of whatever they were arguing. Annoyed, I switched to reading about another topic only to discover the exact same scenario playing out on both sides of that fence, too. I wondered when on earth we stopped assuming other people were somewhat intelligent and instead just resorted to telling others they were stupid. That's not debating a point intelligently. That's name-calling.

Shortly thereafter, upon growing tired of hearing the insults, I herded the kidlets to the car so we could run a few errands. I was still wondering why everyone seems to assume others are idiots when we arrived at our first destination. I had a couple of dresses I had picked out for Horse that just did not fit her properly, so we were going to return them. As I unloaded both kidlets and dresses from our minivan, I paused, noticing that my bag was unzipped. Much to my chagrin, I discovered my wallet was missing from its usual place.

Thankfully, I always keep my driver's license in a separate location, so it was legal for me to drive home. Also, I had the receipt for the dresses still in the bag. I was going to have to skip the bulk of my errands, including the shopping I intended to do once the dresses were returned, simply because I did not have my wallet with its various means with which to pay.

The kidlets and I returned the articles of clothing and headed back out to the car. I was a bit worried about how I would have time to drive all the way back home, find my wallet, and return to my original location so I could handle purchasing a few necessities. The kidlets might reject any and all uses of soap when cleaning themselves, but they still blow through it at an alarming rate. We were almost out of soap, I had other plans for us for the afternoon, and I had no desire to skip my own shower should I have to delay my intended soap purchase. Thankfully, I remembered that I keep an emergency twenty onhand for, well, emergencies. Buying soap so we're not all stinky counts as an emergency, right?

The kidlets were surprisingly happy that I located some cash, likely because they almost never see me use anything other than my credit cards. We dashed from the dress store to the soap store so we could pick up some unscented, hypoallergenic bars before heading back home. Huzzah for impending cleanliness!

It was in that next store that I made a startling discovery: My wallet was actually in my bag, just not in its usual location. I have this complete and utter inability to see something that is not put back exactly where it should be. This drives my husband crazy when I call him to ask where on earth he put [insert objecct name here] that should have been perhaps an inch away from where he put it. I physically do not see the items. My wallet suffered the same fate today. It had been put away in the wrong pocket in my bag, and I could not see it even if it was thumbing its nose at me. I felt exceedingly stupid.

I am starting to realize why it's safer to assume everyone is an idiot. Clearly, I am demonstrating my own ability to easily fall into that category. I had to physically move my wallet out of the way to access my emergency cash, yet I did not process that I was handling said wallet. I am going to just assume summer vacation causes a drop in IQ points and hope that my brain cells start functioning again once school resumes in September. Perhaps the news articles I read then will show signs of intelligent debate once more.

"You're driving me crazy!"

After dropping my son off at school this morning, I dragged the girls with me to the grocery store. They weren't overly thrilled with going with me, but they did not complain. They did, however, drive me crazy by not paying attention to where they were walking and either crowded me or tried to run over strangers. Hey, if that's the worst of their behavior when we're out at the store, that's still pretty darn good.

As we walked down the very last aisle before heading to the registers to pay, I saw another mother ahead of us. She was visibly struggling with her two girls. One of her daughters was trying to climb into their cart while the mother tried to pull her back out, and the other daughter did not want to go into the cart, which was where this exceedingly stressed mother clearly wanted her to go. Anyone with at least one functioning eye could see this poor mother shaking with barely supressed rage as she tried to get her offspring situated. As she slammed the younger of the two girls onto her hip to try and push the cart without either girl sitting in it, I worried that she had reached her breaking point.

It's not easy being the mother of two kids under the age of four, and I say that from experience. I pulled alongside this frazzled mother at the same time she shrieked at her daughters, "You're driving me crazy!"

I suppose I could have told her she needed to calm down. I could have told her she was going to hurt the toddler she was angrily trying to cram into the shopping cart. I could have said or done a lot of things to point out what she should have been doing instead of what she was actually doing. I'm sure just about every mother out there has had some well-meaning but absolutely ignorant person tell them things like that. Personally, it drives me even crazier than the kidlets do when people try to tell me what I'm doing wrong when I'm stressed like that. And, let's be honest here. What parent hasn't been that stressed out at one point or another?

Instead, I calmly said to her with a smile, "Gee, that sounds like me about five minutes ago!" I silently willed my offspring to keep their mouths closed, since I had obviously not said anything even remotely resembling that to my daughters. (If memory serves, I had technically just been saying, "Will you please pay attention? You're running me over and I'm getting smushed like a bug!" or words to that effect.) Thankfully, they kept their mouths shut. I strongly suspect I was not the only one who wanted to see how the other mother would react.

It was as if a magic switch flipped and calmed down that flustered mother. She smiled, gently got her one daughter situated in their cart, and commiserated about how kidlets must do this on purpose, because we could all be in and out of the store in just twenty minutes if kidlets simply did what they were told. Any observer could see her relax, and I suspect her children recognized it, too, since they stopped fussing.

Think about it. None of us want others to point out all of our flaws. I did not tell that mother she was overreacting or that she would some day miss these moments. (Yes, I have had older women tell me when I was carrying a kicking, screaming, temper-tantrum mess of a kidlet that I would one day look back on these memories fondly. I resisted the urge to ask them if their adult children had taken them for dementia evaluations. Clearly, they were not right in the head if they assumed I would one day miss such a thing!) Instead, I just admitted I feel like she did sometimes.

I'd like to think that helped.

Account sitting...

Okay, so I'm the first to admit I am addicted to an online game. Pig introduced me to Kingdom of Loathing (KoL) years ago, and I've been playing somewhat religiously ever since. Technically, I've only missed playing days when I was either giving birth to my offspring or was extremely sick. That silly game helps me to relax and is cheaper than therapy, so I figure why not play when I am able?

Over the years, I've met more than a few other people, mostly online but occasionally in real life, who share the same obsession with this game. Some of them have irked the heck out of me, but the vast majority of them have made me smile. Quite a few of them have attempted to take me under their proverbial wings, which always baffled me. I never quite understood what they could see in me or my sub-optimal method of playing KoL that made it worth their while to try and help improve my virtual world.

Once every few years, I've had one of those helpful players ask me to account sit for them. In other words, they've wanted me to log them in and play a bunch of turns, make sure they weren't missing out on a world event, and otherwise keep things going smoothly until they were able to find their way back to a computer once more. I have never volunteered to do such a thing, but a couple of times, I have agreed to help out those who have asked me to do so.

Truth be told, account sitting freaks me out. I am petrified I will botch something up on someone else's account. What if I use something in-game that they actually wanted to save? What if I misclick and adventure somewhere I wasn't supposed to adventure? What if I go into automatic pilot and do something I would normally do for my own two accounts when it's the last thing they would have wanted to do? I really don't want to mess up somebody else's account. Playing sub-optimally on my own account is something I do with great pride and glee, but that probably isn't how I should handle someone else's stuff.

Then again, anyone foolish enough to request that I account sit ought to know me well enough to know that there's a reason my in-game clan name is "Blissfully Sub-Optimal."

Seriously though, I feel honored that someone would trust me to watch over their account, especially since those who have requested I do that are typically ones who have played for even longer than I have and who own far more expensive items than I could ever hope to obtain for myself. Clearly, they trust me to not run their accounts into the ground or do something absurdly foolish to their items. (True story: A friend of mine in real-life who also plays KoL, once supposedly and accidentally destroyed an ultra-rare item in-game. Oops. That's the sort of thing I would never, ever forgive myself for doing if I were to do such a thing on my own account, let alone someone else's account. In-game friends have often asked me if I want to borrow items from them, and I'm petrified to do so in the off-chance I somehow botch it up and cannot return it. Being "sub-optimal" does not mean I don't feel horrible if I do something stupid.)

Right now, I am account sitting for a friend whose family vacation happened to coincide with a world event in KoL. The translation here is that there is a temporary event that is going to up and disappear soon that my friend did not want to miss. He asked if I could help him out, and I'm doing my best to comply. I hope he and his family are enjoying their vacation, but at the same time I am eagerly awaiting the day when he returns and I no longer have to worry about botching up things on his account.

Prayer probably should not take place due to an online game, but I am definitely praying that if I have to screw something up, it will be on my own accounts, not on his. Yikes. Hurry back, Mac.

The way to my heart is through fake cheese and allergy-safe chocolate...

My hubby knows I have been feeling hungry lately. The problem with having oodles of food allergies and feeling hungry is that there is not always something appealing or safe to eat in the house. Yes, I suppose I could eat another bowl of off-brand Rice Krispies with rice milk, but blech. It's too hot for me to voluntarily turn on the oven to bake something yummy, too.

Pig to the rescue! He took the car and drove to a store some distance away from us just so he could purchase some of the dairy-free, soy-free fake cheese (Daiya's cheddar style, in case anyone is curious) and chocolate (various forms of Enjoy Life brand bars and chocolate chips) that I am unable to find anywhere local. He also picked up a few different types of fake cheese that I haven't tried before in the hopes that I will be able to expand my "safe foods" list a bit. Is it any wonder I love this man?

I promptly ate myself into a food coma.

Afterwards, I was pondering what motivated my husband to give up a couple of hours of his precious free time on the weekend just to let me eat myself silly. A friend of mine actually sounded disgusted by the whole concept of "fake cheese," and said he could not fathom anyone wanting such a gift. Well, that's easy to say if you can eat just about everything under the sun. When your food choices are limited due to allergies or sensitivities, you appreciate what you can eat much more than someone else might. My husband brought me those gifts out of love, and because he knew how much I struggle to find foods that I like that are safe for me to eat. It's not just a man's heart that can be found through a stomach, you know! My stomach is clearly pointing the way to my heart, too.

I would imagine that other couples also demonstrate their love for one another by means of gastric bribes. Why else would fancy restaurants be packed on Valentine's Day? Why else might a date entail both dinner and a movie? And if a person is smart, they would tailor their meals towards a person's interest. Someone who is head over heels for Taco Bell might not appreciate a lobster dinner in a five-star restaurant, but would clearly enjoy some take-out. My husband gratefully gobbled down the lamb chops I purchased the other day despite the fact that even the thought of eating them turned me green and queasy. I didn't buy them for me. I purchased them so he could enjoy them. That's what we do for those we love.

Perhaps my husband's trip to the store today was his way of thanking me for locating meat that did not somehow involve dead poultry. Whatever the case may be, I am grateful.

So much for my first Ren Faire...

I saw an advertisement for a Renaissance Faire ("Ren Faire" from here on out, since I'm too lazy to write "Renaissance" a zillion times...) not too far from where we live. Granted, it was going to be a small local one instead of a massive one, but I figured it would do nicely to get our toes wet in the medieval/fantasy world.

The kidlets were excited about our little day trip. We figured we'd only spend about two hours there, since that's about as long as I wanted to be outside in the sun during a summer month. We ate lunch, packed some water, and headed out with visions of knights and fair maidens dancing in our heads.

Upon arrival, Pig had to hunt down someone to actually take our money to let us gain admittance. The guy who finally sold us our tickets was dressed up in a polo shirt (circa late 1990s, if I had to guess), but still called us "lord" and "milady." That was just weird. If you're going to act the part, I kind of expect you to dress the part, too. At least the woman who took our tickets from us was in what I would consider to be appropriate garb for a Ren Faire. I muttered something to Pig to the effect that I guess being called "milady" was a step up from the "wench" I was afraid of hearing.

We wandered over to catch the ending of a pirate show that had apparently started before we arrived. The three jugglers who were performing seemed to be enjoying themselves, and the kidlets, especially Rooster, shrieked happily every time one of them pretended to kick one of the other two. Horse was more perplexed about the juggling tricks, and asked me how on earth I knew that the flames on the torches one guy was juggling were actually real. You mean besides the fact that the torches were on fire? She finally decided that because she could see smoke, it had to be real. Good call, kiddo.

After the pirates took their bows, we wandered over to where a play based on Cinderella was supposed to start. Both Pig and I looked at one of the actors quite intently while trying to place why on earth we knew him. Given that we used to hang out at a game store where a huge percentage of the visiting population enjoyed hanging out at Ren Faires, it is likely that we actually did know him from back in our pre-kidlet days. Twelve years or so can make people change a fair amount.

Anyway, getting back to Cinderella, about half of the actors clearly were having fun hamming up their roles while the other half probably should have been re-cast. The kidlets did not always follow what the characters were saying, either due to volume or manner of speech. They were also confused as to why Cinderella's fairy godmother was stated to be her mother who died in childbirth when she looked as if she was too old to even qualify as her grandmother. I'm pretty certain that one character telling another to "shut up" wasn't technically proper speech for people pretending to be from the Renaissance, but at least it helped the kidlets to know who was ticked off at whom. The men in drag as the evil stepsisters were probably the one redeeming, and amusing, aspect of the whole performance.

After Cinderella and her prince went off to marry, we went over to see if we could get the girls' faces painted. We stood in line behind two girls and a boy, and after at least twenty minutes in the hot sun, only one of the girls was done. In addition, another family came up, and their kidlets forced themselves into the line next. The sole woman working on the face painting refused to say anything to tell the other family to back off and wait their turn, so we left instead. I must admit I really, really wanted to yell at the other mother for not teaching her kidlets the proper way to behave when getting in a line.

We found a guy making simple balloon animals (mostly swords for boys and butterflies for girls) and thought we would at least get the kidlets something from him, but once again another family pushed in front of us after we had been waiting there for a while. Visions of cattle prods and tasers were flitting through my head, so I decided we should once again leave before I told off a complete stranger.

Seriously, parents. If your offspring cannot learn how to wait in line for their turn at something, you are failing them. Step up to the plate, take responsibility, and teach your children how to behave themselves in public. Wait your dang turn in line, say "please" and "thank you," and correct your children when they misbehave. It is not cute when your kid pushes three other children to the side because the little hemorrhoid decided he did not want to wait his turn. (What? If a hemorrhoid's not a pain in the butt, I don't know what is!)

Anyway, the rest of what was promised to be set up for people to enjoy at this Faire wasn't all there. The children's games did not have people manning them. There were only two people handling the other two things that would attract kidlets, face painting and balloons. The pirates alone certainly weren't worth the thirty bucks for admission that it cost our family of five. I think if we go to another Ren Faire any time in the near future, it shall be one of the huge events with a zillion vendors and plenty of shows in which to partake. None of this small stuff where the absence of enough actors, vendors, or volunteers puts a huge dent in the scheduled plans for the day.

I think I shall practice a medieval way of telling other parents to "get thine brood in line where thou dost belong," too. I might even throw in a "wench," just for good measure.

A contract for my kidlets...

Now that summer vacation is upon us, I have the strangest urge to request my kidlets sign a contract declaring exactly how they will behave on our break from school...

I, [insert kidlet's name here], being the obedient offspring of [insert parents' names here], do solemnly pledge to adhere to the following declarations to the best of my ability:

1) The only person I have control over is me. I will not yell at my siblings, boss them around, or tell them they have to do exactly as I say. I don't like it when they do that to me, so I shall do my best to lead by example and not treat them as if they are my minions.

2) The word "compromise" does not mean you have to do what I say or vice versa. Everybody has to give a little, especially when playing together as a group. I will neither be part of a group trying to exclude someone, nor will I be the lone holdout refusing to do anything but the one thing I want to do that everyone else hates.

3) Taking turns is not an option. It is mandatory. We cannot all do everything at exactly the same time. Also, if someone agrees to play a game I want to play, I will agree to take a turn playing a game they want to play.

4) The words, "I'm telling," shall not be reiterated over and over until Mommy starts twitching and making comments about a "broken record-player," whatever that is. If I have a legitimate reason to not want to play with someone (i.e. because they pinch me when their mom isn't looking), or if someone is going to hurt themselves or others, I will let an adult know immediately. Otherwise, I shall refrain from being a tattle-tale.

5) Mom, Dad, and/or any babysitter left in charge are the only ones who have the right to boss me around. Even then, I have the right to ignore what they say for me to do. I acknowledge and accept that there will be consequences for disobeying or ignoring the adult in charge. If I do not like the consequences, I have no one to blame but myself.

6) I shall look out for those who are unable to defend themselves. I shall speak out against bullying even if it occurs away from the schoolyard. Telling someone to stop picking on someone else is not bossing someone around. It is doing the right thing. And telling an adult if the bullying does not stop is not tattling.

7) I will work on my summer math and reading packets a little bit almost every day. I will not cause gray hairs to sprout on Mommy's head because I left it all to the last week in August and now I don't have time to finish. My education is my responsibility. That is my job, and I shall do it to the best of my ability.

8) I will read for at least twenty minutes every day, and I will do this without an adult having to tell me to do so. Nagging is not an Olympic sport, and my folks should not have to practice their nagging skills as if trying out to receive a gold medal in that category.

9) I will not ask to watch television, play on an electronic gadget, or otherwise attempt to rot my brain until after my chores and school-related tasks are completed. I understand that my chores are based on my age and ability level, and shall not gripe that I have more to do than my younger sibling(s). I also understand that failure to complete my tasks or doing a shoddy job on them will result in me losing privileges and/or being forced to do them over again. I recognize that Mom does check underneath my bed and in my closet to make sure a clean room is indeed clean. If there's a chance she pulled a similar stunt as a kidlet, I shall not be shocked or offended when she catches me if I attempt the same thing.

10) I will not declare having to make my bed, fold and put away clothing, and keep my room clean to be tantamount to torture. If I am old enough to read this form, I am old enough to do those tasks and more. Also, if additional chores are required of me when I am home from school, I shall acknowledge that these are assigned not to torture me, but because I am a member of this family and we all have to chip in and do our part.

11) If I have a friend over to play, his or her actions are my responsibility. If he or she steals my little brother's toys, breaks something intentionally or through carelessness, or hits my sister, I am just as guilty. It is possible that a particular kidlet will be sent home early or not allowed back in our house if they misbehave badly while here. Guilt by association will mean additional consequences shall follow for me, too.

12) If any amendments are needed, this contract can and will be changed by the aforementioned adult(s), without any moaning or complaining on my part.

Signed,
[insert kidlet's signature]

Witnessed by: [insert signature of witnessing adults]