I don’t know why but my kids tend to act up when their dad is gone. I don’t feel like it’s because they disrespect me but his absence just makes them all weird. So anyway, the bus debacle last week had them getting home super late each day, which was ok for Friday since I didn’t get home until 5:30, then I picked them up and went straight to the store, where they proceeded to be just.. obnoxious. I remember why I try not to take children to do grocery shopping. But they all got food they wanted and yeah, maybe the whole weekend I was a little TOO nice in terms of giving them things, but it made it easier for me.

Elliot has a friend, whose parents I do like OK, and he seems like a decent kid, but this kid’s family runs on a different time than us. I.e., they tend to stay up a lot later. So Friday was appreciation night for his school at the skating rink and they asked if Ell could go… from 9-11. To me, that’s late for a 12 year old. But I let him go, since it was mainly just middle school kids. I stayed up for him (10:45) and I was super tired the next morning. Saturday, we started in on some cleaning and errands early, then went to the mall for lunch. I was pretty much done after that and I tried to get in a good nap but Ash called because the DirecTV people finally got back to him (a week later) and the guy ended up coming out. Long story short, when we first moved in and tried to transfer over our service, there were just too many dang trees. So we waited. Waited for trees to be taken down or fall down (the hoarder lady lost a couple during Michael) and then we waited for Costco to run their deal. So the dude came out, found a line of sight, and had to dig a 100 foot trench from the end of the yard to the house but we have it again and we can get Sunday Ticket! Honestly, I don’t care about TV that much but I do appreciate football season.

Elliot and I ran Sunday morning and we got a little bit of stuff done before making breakfast lunch. We then ran a couple errands – inflating car tires, looking for some second-hand kid clothes – then we went back to the mall so the kids could do the bungee jumpy thing. We had to wait a bit but they had a really good time. I made burgers for dinner, I got them to help me do some other house cleaning and laundry stuff, then I let them watch a bit of TV. Oh, and we ate chocolate cake that we’d made earlier. Ash was supposed to get back around 10 pm but he ended up not home until 2:30 am because of severe Midwest storms so I am tired today, just from worrying about him and waking when he finally got home.

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Hmm, I do love me some root beer. Let’s see if I can dredge up some songs for an acrostic.

R is for Regret, by Avatar. It’s a nice slow one.

O is for On Your Own, by Green River Ordinance.

O is for On My Own by Patti Labelle and Michael McDonald.

T is for That’s The Way by Culture Club.

B is for Beautiful Pain by Crashidet – in case you thought I’d gone soft. 😉

E is for Every Other Day by one of my fave wrestlers, Jeff Hardy

E is for Escape – the Pina Colada song, by Rupert Holmes. Because it’s still summer on the Yacht Rock radio station.

R is for Renegade by Styx.

Whew! That was a long one!