what’s this? a blog?

Oh, right, I have this thing where I write sometimes, huh? Okay, well.

Thursday is the day there was a note in the Sniglet’s math notebook that “The Sniglet should do his homework himself,” under a set of math problems in handwriting that was clearly not a child’s. I suspect my mother-in-law. DrBob said he’d talk to her, but he didn’t, so I have to. I have no idea what to say – “What planet are you receiving instructions from, because there is no place on Earth where that kind of behavior is any kind of acceptable oh my GOD what were you THINKING!?” is not very diplomatic, and God knows in-laws require a lot of diplomacy.

Friday was the day I picked up DrBob from the train station (crowded night train = no sleep for DrBob = not the best of tempers, okay?) and hustled home to get the house clean for the Sniglet’s birthday party, with no help from DrBob, see above re no sleep. The postman came with my new! Knitpicks! Needles! just as I was hustling out the door to fetch the Sniglet from school, so I parked them on a shelf and forgot about them and hustled. Had to have a chat with the after-school-care lady about how he lost his temper and threw a pillow at her head. He behaved very badly during the chat. I stormed home a block ahead of him because I was so mad, and when I arrived his guests were already there, so I had to go back and get him to hurry.

Birthday party = discussion of Very Bad After School Behavior deferred. DrBob was going to talk to him, but he didn’t, so I have to. I don’t know what to say there, either. It’s the Fall Holiday, so they’re out of school until the 10th – any lecturing or warning I could do now would be forgotten by then.

Anyway, that was also Halloween, so Ignatz had a couple friends over. I suppose, if any of the big kids was going to shoot one of the Sniglet’s party guests in the face with a little plastic pellet gun-thing, it’s best that it was Ignatz and not one of his friends. Since it was my son I got to yell and threaten all I wanted – sometimes you have to be careful with other people’s kids. In any case, he missed the eye (by about an inch), and little Torsten seems to be okay. All the guns are going in the garbage, as soon as I get a minute. I never approved of the damn things, but the kids have their own money, and you know, boys, toy guns, inevitable blah blah blah. Not in my house. Not anymore.

Where was I? Oh! Trick-or-treating, yes, I did go out with the Sniglet and his friends and their moms, and then hang out and drink glühwein with Klaudia and Catrin and hear all about Catrin’s son, who is basically Ignatz five years ago. I got to tell her what she has to look forward to! After some cheerful chat and a couple of glühweins I took the Sniglet home and told him to wash the greasepaint off his face. He declined my offer of help and said he could do it himself, and then instead of soap, he used Ignatz’s special (super-expensive) hand cream. Oops, guess I should have supervised.

Then I made a buncha spaghetti and threw the little guy into bed so the big guys could watch a horror movie while I made up two guest beds.

Jeez, did that all happen in one day? Blargh. Next day was All Saints’, when Bavarians go to the graveyard, visit their departed relatives’ graves and feel pensive. Usually the weather is wretched, but thanks to the Föhn it was warm and sunny. You don’t get to enjoy the Föhn, though, because it’s evil: it creates a sort of mass PMS (migraines and psychosis, says the Wikipedia article. Sounds about right.) that makes it impossible to enjoy the nice weather. After the graveyard visit you all gather at someone’s house for kaffee and kuchen and lots of chitchat which drags on for hours because DrBob only checks in with the Aunts and Uncles about twice a year, which means he has a lot to tell them, and it’s all stuff his wife and kids have already heard. This is unbearably boring for poorly-behaved children such as the ones I’ve got, so I spent a couple of hours shushing.

Today Lilu woke me up at 7, galumphing around with a mouse – oh yay, she’d unleashed her inner Huntress again. I didn’t find the carcass, so I figured she’d dispatched it outside, but no: she’d lost it. It turned up in my office, alive and well, about two hours later. DrBob wanted to know why he had to deal with it. I bet you can guess.

Otherwise I’ve been working, since I didn’t get anything worky done Thursday, Friday, or Saturday. I’m at the stage in my job where everything seems like an unbearable chore. Usually at this point I quit because I’m tired of it and it’s boring. Then three months later I think “damn! I had a perfectly good job, why’d I go and throw it away?” So I’m not quitting this time (see? I can learn!), but I could use an attitude adjustment.

So hey, I’m glad there’s no school this week. After that weekend, I sure could use a break.

Song du jour of the day: More Than I Could Stand, by Bobby Womack.