Weekend Catchup: Aftermath and Art Hogging

So now I have a 14 year old.

I may have mentioned this.

Her party was awesome (-ly loud) and fun (-ner than a root canal) and with the exception of one of the girl's dad's showing up to pick her up dressed to go campaign for Congress as a Republican (no I'm not kidding) went off with almost no uncomfortable moments at all!

Me, upon seeing the "US Congress Candidate" badge: "So, you're running for Congress! Good for you!"
Him, upon seeing me still in my PJs: "Yes."
Me, upon realizing he looks like Anderson Cooper without all the joy: "So, um, what party are you running with?"
Him, upon realizing he saw an Obama sticker on my car: "Republican... but the incumbent is a Democrat!"

So, yeah, props to him for not rolling his eyes.

The party was truly great though; they had a blast, played Wii and watched horror movies (The Relic), ate pizza by the truckload and chips by the bucketfull, drank Capri-Suns (never go out of style, and the low-sugar ones use real sugar instead of high-fructose corn syrup) and yelled a lot.


Appetizing, no?

They also swore a lot.

Very fond of the f-word, are these 8th grade girls.

I mostly ignored it, although at one point they must have forgotten I was in the room because they began singing an alternate version of the Bob The Builder theme song, which ends with a heartily-yelled expletive.

They all gasped and looked my way, and I gave them the over-the-glasses mom look and went back to my book.

One of the girls stage-whispered "Man, I can't believe she isn't yelling at us for that!" I replied that basically, inside a party is okay if it's not said in anger, but outside it's not ladylike.

It seemed to suck the fun right out of it, and voila - not another f-word was uttered.

MOM-POWERS GO!

Anyhoodle.

So The Kid got some extremely nice gifts, including a couple of gift cards and a metric ton of beading supplies (she loved everything!). She also got a pair of earrings made by her friends dad, who shines up pennies and dimes and nickels, drills holes and makes ear-wires. The Kid got nickels and they will look awesome when her ears are all healed!

Also, all her friends are dorks.



I should note that the fancy house is not mine, but rather The Kid's grampa's. We were dog sitting for Lance (a yellow Lab who is the absolute real-life incarnation of Dug from Up) and Daphne (a Cairn Terrier who's a dead ringer for Toto).

The special super-deluxe awesome part of house-sitting/dog-sitting for them?

HOT TUB. Oh yes.

The Kid's actual birthday was Sunday, and we did absolutely nothing but sit in our PJs and eat, watch movies, play games, and ignore the snow falling outside.

We also finished up The Kid's non-grade project for school (otherwise I wouldn't have helped).

I've mentioned before that I'm an art hog...well, I struck again! (I let her help this time though.)


Check the monkey pajamas - a birthday gift from her buddy Devin, along with a quarter-wheel of Gouda

This time, I must say, the art-hogging was because I felt I should take the brunt of the ABSOLUTE PAIN IN THE ASS this project was. It was my bright idea, after all.

I mean, don't you remember when you were a little kid, and your teacher had you tape or glue a bunch of tissue paper to the back of a piece of black construction paper with holes in it, the STUNNING end to which was a "stained glass" art creation your parents adored and displayed for weeks?

I do.

But now I'm an adult... and I now know the teacher was up for a week before-hand, cutting those little windows out. And the gluing-on of tissue is only fun if you don't have to make it fit a one-color-per-hole kind of theme.

It looks great though... it's the visual part of the presentation that The Kid put together on the National Cathedral as part of the lead-up to The Big Trip (the recreation we did was of the Celtic Cross Panel). The kid with the best project gets to put a wreath on The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

Only 2 months to go! What an amazing trip it'll be...

Happy Monday!