the good, the bad, & the ugly

ready for a little weekend report? This could be a long one, so get a beverage. Here goes…

The good:

1) breakfast at Libby’s Blue Line Diner on Sunday- belgian waffle w/maple syrup, sausage, and orange juice. Yum.

2) home improvement Saturday @ Jim & Angie’s- learned how to strip paint off wood. A task that requires patience, a strong arm, and breathing fumes.

3) a clear ferry ride to home improvement Saturday – which meant 12 minutes for a some lovely pics with my film camera, and one goofy pic with my digital….that’s us in red. (yes, we like our Aztec…don’t call it ugly)

4) the new Harry Potter book. Had to buy a copy for each kid. Neither could wait to start reading. That’s cool.

The bad:

1) Went to Old Navy after breakfast-as we were leaving, we saw a guy taking off through the side entrance with a HUGE armful of clothes. After a quick second of "is he stealing those?," our retail experience kicked in – I watched where he was going, Rob yelled for a manager. My retail experience also told me not to follow him closely – it was clear from the look in his eyes that he wasn’t quite right, y’know? So, by the time the manager got outside with Rob, the guy had disappeared. I felt so badly for the floor manager – it was clear from the lines at the register that she was short on payroll yesterday, and simply didn’t have the staff to really cover the floor. I don’t miss those days.

2) The heat. I know, I shouldn’t complain about the fact that it gets hot for a few weeks in the summer. But remember that we aren’t really prepared for it – we don’t have central air. The AC is broken in the Aztec.

3) My checkbook is still not balanced. There’s serious dust on nearly every surface of my house. My scrapbooking room is a mess. There are piles of clean, folded laundry on my bedroom floor. Ugh.

The ugly:

1) a website called Xanga (I won’t link it b/c I don’t want to encourage it). Apparently this is the hip site for middle schoolers (and others) to set up blogs on. Mean blogs that bash other kids. Explicit blogs about their sexual encounters (fact and/or fiction). Blogs that clearly illustrate that kids don’t pay attention in English. I’m sure there are some perfectly innocent blogs on there, but there’s plenty of trash to get in the way. Anyway, Hope was introduced to this site this weekend. After clear instruction of "no internet while ____ is here" – they logged on while I was at the grocery store & Rob was out mowing the lawn. Hope says she forgot that I said no internet. To be fair, I really don’t think she knew anything about the site prior to this. And the blogs that she went to (yes, I went into my IE history folder and looked at every page that they visited) weren’t filthy. Punk kids, yes – Xrated, no. So, I yelled at her in front of both ______ and another friend. Probably not the "cool Mom" thing to do, but really, it had to be done. After everyone left, Hope & I had a long conversation about following the rules, and about this hard lesson: people that you like & are friends with don’t always make good decisions. I hate making her cry. Really. I hate having to play the bad cop all the time. I hate that stupid site. I hate that this spilled over into a fight with Rob about why he wasn’t paying attention to what they were doing – and, more importantly, why HE forgot the no internet rule.

So there it is, folks. I’ve got to get ready for work. We’re ride sharing for basketball camp this week, so no late mornings excuse this week. See ya!