Family Band

When you're a grown-up and you get sick enough to have to miss work, it can be hard to catch up on everything you missed.  When you're a parent and you have sick kids or, God forbid, you get sick yourself, it seems like you'll never get back to where you were before _______ got sick.

But when you're a middle school-aged kid and you miss an entire week, it's not just overwhelming.  It's straight up daunting.  And what happens when a kid feels overwhelmed?  They have an even shorter fuse.

N picked the best/worst week to be sick.  It was the last week of the 6 weeks, so there were several tests, but not a lot of homework since it was primarily review.  The hardest part about middle school, looking back, was the new found sense of responsibility and how in the WORLD do you get organized?  What is organization?/

I remember missing a week or so of school in middle school and hiding my (failing) Social Studies progress report from my parents for weeks.  I'm sure they knew, just like I know when N has fallen behind, but they never said a word and let me fail miserably before they stepped in and told me how things were going to go.

I feel like I can't do that with my kid.  Boys are so much different that girls in the organization/responsible department...especially at that age.  Like, tonight, as N was sitting at the kitchen table filling in less than half of his 12 Native American tribes for Texas History, he looked at me like "light bulb!"  I expected something profound or a new sense of urgency to get it done, but what did I get?

"Hey, Mom?  Will you buy me a harmonica?  I want to sit on the back porch and play Oh Susanna!"

Laughter spewed out of my mouth before I even knew what was happening.  Is that not the most random thought on the planet?  And if you actually KNOW my kid, isn't it totally bizarre?  But seriously...I might consider it if it meant he would stop whistling.  All. The. Time.

I have a low patience level.  This is not breaking news.  And when I'm mid-semester,  I have even less because I'm trying to keep all the proverbial balls in the air.  For N, it's whistling, rarely tunelessly, but typically a song like Oh Susanna.  It drives me crazy.  If it were just a "one and done" situation, I doubt it would bother me as much, but it's like a skipping record player and it never seems to end.

For B, it's clapping.  Non. Stop. Clapping.  He claps when he's happy, when he's sad, when he wins a round of COD, when he loses a round of COD, when he needs to get someone's attention, when he wants to annoy someone, and...you get the general idea.  If it were the soft, air pocket to the palm clap (you know you just tried to do it), that would be one thing, but his claps are the piercing, echoing, "I hear it in my sleep" kinds of claps.

And I just can't.  Those noises are the equivalents of nails on a chalkboard in my life.  It's so fun.

Now, if only I had someone in my house who liked to stomp or blow across the top of a moonshine jug, I feel like we'd be all set.

Aubs