Soap scum?

I live with pigs.

I say this because of the soap scum...of course there are plenty of other examples but today it is soap scum.  I have a husband age 42, 3 sons ages 16,13, 9, and a daughter who is 7.    My husband and my sons are in an ongoing battle of scum.  NONE, not one! of them seems to be capable of cleaning out the drain after they take a shower(this is excluding the 9 yr old who doesn't even want to get IN the shower in the first place).  Well my husband..from here on known as DH(use those letters however you want...I do) and my teens all use the shower the most frequently, my 13 yr old and my DH use it EVERY morning.  Which is good, nothing wrong w/ being clean.  My 16 yr old and myself every other day, and my two littles, as often as I can drag them in there. 

Let's back track a little, our tub drains like molasses in January, if you're reading this from a warmer climate than Michigan, first of all..you suck, and second of all January in MI is COLD so that would be excruciatingly slowly.  I don't know why, I hate it, but that's the way it is. 

Now back to the story at hand...My oldest son usually takes his showers in the evening, and leaves hardly enough hair or scum to clean out, in fact if he forgets, you sometimes can't even tell. My 13 yr old is the first one up and in the shower every morning.  He doesn't leave a ton of hair and scum in the shower, but enough that it should be cleaned out.  IF he forgets (which is often), then my DH goes next he will NOT clean it out before taking his own shower.   DH is a hairy guy, there's no other way to say it, when the rest of us in the house are cold, he's usually just fine, cause he lives in a permanent sweater.  If DH takes a shower and my 13 yr old hasn't cleaned out the drain, DH will NOT clean out the drain after he is done(can we say childish?).   He leaves a MAJOR amount of hair/scum in the tub, it looks like someone washed the dog and didn't clean it out...or maybe several dogs.  It's GROSS!  

So, after all these people have taken a shower, and there's a battle because "so and so was first and he didn't clean it out so I'm not cleaning it out." I get the shaft.  I'm the one who has to ultimately clean it out, because I take a shower in the middle of the day while everyone is at school/work.  I refuse to take a shower w/ all that crud in the drain which then ends up floating around my feet.   No one seems to give a damn, that the one person who does every damn thing in this house can't take a freakin' shower w/o cleaning it out FIRST!  WTH!? 

That is how it went today and then I super cleaned the shower when I was done, "blue turns to white ready to wipe!".  That bitch is SPARKLING!  And tonight when they get home they are all gonna get the book thrown at them.  All it takes is a little rinse, and cleaning out the drain and we'll all be happy.

WTH?

Not that you can tell from this pic, but this is what was piled behind my van this morning after my husband shovel out HIS car so he could go to work.  Granted I don't have to go to work, but I DO have to go feed horses every morning.   Had I (or God forbid.. the boys) left this 3 ft pile behind HIS vehicle I would not hear the end of it.  He COULD have just thrown it a little farther so it was NOT piled on top of the already 11-12 inches of snow I was gonna have to shovel anyway.  What. the. hell. ? is all I have to say.  My friend's husband shoveled, cleaned off her car and warmed it up for her, and I literally get dumped on.  NICE.

Btw...this pic was taken AFTER I shoveled enough to get out and come back, it was much worse before I left.

Kids CAN be thoughtful

We got our taxes back this last Friday so Saturday morning I took my two oldest kids clothes shopping.  We went to Kohl's cause they were having a big sale.  I took them to the young men's department, and told them to go find something.  Well they did ask how much they could each spend, so I told them about $100 a piece.  Of they went.  After some time they each had quite a few things, so we looked at the little kids clothes to find a few things for the younger two.  Found some clothes for the littles, found two pairs of shoes for myself.  On the way to the checkout my 13 yr old, Cole, said, " I bet that's about $200 worth of stuff"  I told him I was sure it was more, he was thinking I was wrong and kinda laughed it off.  So we get to the checkout and she starts ringing it up, and the total keeps going higher and higher...the end result $297.89 saved $585, and got $50 Kohl's cash! WOOHOO!  Cole was a bit shocked and said he was surprised I was right and told me he didn't think he'd ever see me spend that kind of money, then he said, " I didn't think my Mom ever even THOUGHT of spending that kind of money on clothes."  Which made me smile a bit, then he asked me if I had enough to cover it, and I assured him I did, told him, "it's called TAX refund baby!"  then he was all reassured and audibly let out a sigh of relief, it was cute that he was worried.  We are not well to do , or even well off by any means, we pinch every penny we can, so it was fun to just let them pick out whatever they wanted for once.  We had a great day, shopped, went out to lunch, checked out the new Galaxy Tab(so want one, someday) and just had fun for once.  They're good kids :D

"Did you check it for murder?"

So today I took my daughter and oldest son w/ me to the store.   We happen to LOVE this type of peanut butter and it was on sale, so as she's riding in the cart I stop and grab a jar saying," Oooh it's on sale, we better get another one!"  My daughter looks at me and says, "did you check it for murder?"  I had to stop and think for a minute...WTH is she talking about? is going through my head.   Then I had to chuckle a little out loud, and I promptly unscrewed the cap and checked the seal.   Why did she think of this you might ask?

Here's the rest of the story.........
Around Halloween one of the local vets offices was offering to X-ray your child's candy to check for razor blades, and needles that type of yummy stuff.   SO my husband and I had to explain why on earth they would put such things in candy.  There are lots of crazy people in this world, they do some extremely crazy stuff...yada yada yada...there ya go.  Well the last time I bought this particular brand/flavor of peanut butter I opened it and the seal fell right off.  I mentioned to my daughter that I needed to take it back to the store and exchange it because it wasn't sealed right.  She asked me why it needed to be sealed, and I told her, "so we know that no one tampered w/ it, and it's safe to use."  She said, " Oh, so just to make sure there's no murdery bits in it?"  Right here, you'd be proud because I didn't lose it and roll on the floor laughing....murdery bits?   Sounds like some kind of Adams family breakfast cereal... HOW do they come up w/ this stuff?  I admit I did crack a HUGE smile and said, "Yes baby, so we know there are no murdery bits in it".  
You can't make this stuff up...have you checked YOUR peanut butter today?

A little pain to brighten my day.

OK I tried to take a pic but you just can't appreciate it from that veiw.

I don't know why or how it happens, mostly because I don't pay attention, ya know you got your routine down and it's the same everyday.  I slammed my hand in the barn door today, why you ask?  Well why not!  Must be because I latched the gate AND then slid the door closed...I don't usually latch the gate, but rather latch the door shut.  It's a nice day, gonna be warm...I figured I'd shake it up a bit.  Ha ha..jokes on me...go to slide the obviously very heavy steel and wood barn door shit..shit? shut, at the usual break-neck, warp speed, and my hand got in the way.  Luckily I had gloves on or I would have lost a considerable amount of skin to go w/ it...tho it would definitely be more impressive looking.  My hand got slammed between the door and the center support bar of the gate BECAUSE...I latched the gate,  had it been unlatched it would have never been in the way.  Had my mind full of the other things I have to do today, and WHAM!  My mind cleared right up for a few split seconds...and then...it filled right back up w/ all sorts of obscenities, words that are best not repeated in company other than the 5 horse witnesses.  Who..incidentally only bothered to quickly look up and see why the heck I was yelling at them when they were obviously not doing anything but eating, and then went back to eating.  Dumb prey animals anyway!  At least their not going to repeat any of it to their teachers or at church.  It doesn't really hurt at this point, and doesn't really look that bad, only like I have an extra knuckle, but I have to admit I was a bit nervous about taking off my glove after all the yelling was over.

Am I pushing?

Well this past Saturday was the season's first competition for my daughter and her teams.  Overall she did GREAT!  Both her teams(Poms/Baton) got 1st in their divisions,  my daughter got first in Novice Baton Solo, and she got a medal for her Military box.   We had a great time, we enjoy our team friends and parents...and all that.  

 Here's where the question comes in.   Her first solo type event of the day was Basic Box...which is the EASIEST thing she does.  All she has to do is hold her baton and march in a square to the beat of the music, stop and bow her head to the judge.  She LOVES box, because it's fun and it's easy.    WELL, when they do these events they place the kids in alphabetical order and since my daughter's name starts w/ a B and her last name starts w/ a B she is almost always first in line.   So I'm standing there in line w/ her and she starts freaking out...instantly crying, telling me she can't do it, she doesn't want to do it, can't keep time w/ the music and all that.  Let me point out, this is NOT her first time, she's done Basic Box in competition before.  So the judge comes over, asks me if she's ok, and offers to wait a second.  I ask the judge if she can just go last in line, and yes, that's fine.  So the other two girls go first, and then it's my daughter's turn.  I give her a little nudge...she leans back against my hand.  I nudge her a little harder...she crosses her arms and looks at me and says "I'm NOT doing it!"  Meanwhile, the judge is waiting.  Finally I quietly tell my daughter, "if you're not out there marching that pattern in two seconds I WILL spank you where you stand!"  So she proceeds to trudge out there, barely picking up her feet, dragging herself in a circle (not a square like she supposed to), stops..looks at the judge and then walks off.   I walk up to the judge and apologize, and the judge(very nice lady went above and beyond IMO) asks me if I want her to receive a medal or not,  I said no.  The judge agreed and said, " if she'd at least tried, I wouldn't have asked you, but she just didn't"  She also said, "if it were my daughter I'd make her pay me back for the class."  Good idea, I take that into consideration.

  SO, she's also signed up for military, which she doesn't particularly care for, but knows how to do, AND she wants to go for a title at Nationals this year, so pretty much needs to do Military box to qualify.  At least, that's my understand according to her coach.   She goes out, does it how she's supposed to, and gets a medal...WHAT?!  How does that happen?  One meltdown and she's over it?!  OK, great cause she still has her solo to go and she has to do it twice, once for rating(basically practice), and once for judging.  She has a bunch of time in between and starts practicing like madwoman, now this is a girl who is LAAAAZY when it comes to practicing...it's hard to get her to do it at all.  I ask her why she's practicing so hard, she says, "cause I wanna WIN!"  Hmmm...so I guess the drive was back. 

Now let me be clear, I LOVE watching her do baton, and poms and I enjoy hanging out w/ the other team members and their parents for the most part.  It's kind of like our own special girl time.  I let her make the decisions about whether or not to do baton solos or other events.  I don't feel like I push her to do this stuff, well except for the one meltdown there.  It's something she wants to do.  I don't know...there was a minute there on the floor in the midst of the situation that I personally wanted to have a meltdown.  I was at a loss, what do I do, do I make her do it? do I let her get away w/ not doing it?  I felt bad for her that she was upset, but I also felt frustrated because this is something she loves and is good at AND it's paid for, she's wasting the judge's time, she's wasting my money...?  These are the times when being a parent sucks.  In the end I'm glad I made her do it.  We talked about it too in the down time between events.   I asked her if she thought it was fair to waste my money, to waste the judges time, to make her coach look bad, to act the way she did.  She agreed it was not. I decided not to make her pay me back for the class as I felt the lesson had been learned at that point, but I did have her apologize to the judge, who incidentally also judged her solo and gave her a 1st.  The judge gave her a hug and told her she was glad that she redeemed herself w/ her solo.
Anyway...that's my 'edge' moment for today.