A Journal of Sorts

25 February 1999

The art of nastiness

I had a meeting with Jason's teachers today, the first since he has been in the new school. Jason, being the wild child he is, gets good attendance from the faculty at these meetings. I can always tell which classes he is doing well in - those teachers don't normally attend. Today, his drama teacher was absent.

Mrs. Hale, his special ed teacher, gave me a list of things he needs to work on. They pretty much all boil down to the fact that she thinks he should do his schoolwork. Mr. Minn wants to concentrate on his hygiene. I didn't get ANY comments about his moustache, surprisingly enough.

Jason, the little creep, has this thing he does in the mornings - every morning. He puts on a dirty shirt. He stashes dirty shirts in his room somewhere so that even when I make sure that there isn't a dirty shirt anywhere in the vicinity, he can still put on a dirty shirt.

Sometime after my final Jason inspection, he slips out of his clean clothes and back into dirty ones. I don't know how he does it; perhaps he has some dirty clothes fairy godmother that twangs him with her wand as we pull out of the driveway every day. Although I often marvel at his nasty skills, his teachers are not impressed and they have logged things they've seen him wipe on his shirt one day only to be spotted the next.

I found clean clothes stash in my van, but silly me, I took all the spring fresh clothes back into the house and re-washed them. My plan now is to make my own stash of clean clothes in the van so that when I discover yesterday's stains on him moments before the tardy bell rings, I can whip out a clean shirt and wrestle him into it.

Since Daniel and Jason have no school tomorrow, Katie and Daniel have cooked up a plan for Daniel to attend school in McKinney with Katie. My call to mother stuff came just as I was getting ready to start dinner. McKinney is only a 45-minute or so drives from here, but still . . .not one I'd want to make frequently. Come to find out, Dede was still at work, just a short drive down the road, so I gathered my oldest son and delivered him to the other parent.

One thing I've noticed about keeping an on-line journal is that I can't seem to tell anyone anything they don't already know. I guess I didn't expect anyone to read it regularly, but I guess they do.

I was trying to tell Daniel about the veggie garden; he said, "I know." I was trying to tell Katie about the birdfeeders; she said, "I know." I don't think my husband is reading it regularly, although, he might be because he often makes comments or queries about it.

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