Pinewood Derby Massacre

Well, we survived the Boy Scouts Pinewood Derby on Saturday. Unfortunately, the boys' cars did not fare very well. I have found that the art of car making may be an art that I have not perfected yet, but give me time. I am sure that with a few more years of practice, I will. The car pictured to your left is Forrest's creation, with my help (Oh and my husband did put in an hour or so on it too! I can't take all of the credit, but I would like too.) The car came in dead last in all 5 heats.(At least we were consistent.) But it did win the award for The Best Accessorized. Sadly, they spelled his name incorrectly on his certificate. But Forrest is quite a resilient boy, he told me that he was a winner, and I told him, "Yes, you are."
And then there was Nathan. My sweet baby had his heart set on winning a trophy. He was so excited about the first race. He became absolutely crestfallen when his car came in last in the first heat. He picked up his car and cried all the way back to where I was sitting. Then he put his head in my lap and cried very hard. It broke my heart. I just didn't quite know what to say. I held him close and told him that it didn't matter if he wins or loses, that the whole point of the race was to have fun. But he was terribly upset when his car came in last almost time. We both hooted and hollered when he came in third in the last heat. But he did win an award. Although, I'm not sure it was one he was too proud of. I personally think that his car is cool. He was much happier when several of the boys in the neighborhood told him that his car was awesome.

We really had a busy day. The race started at 9am and did not end until 1:30pm. It was quite exhausting to keep an eye on both of them amidst the sea of people packed inside the small area we were in. There were a total of 85 racers, plus their family members, so you can imagine how packed the place was. They had two modified stock cars on display outside, so the boys really thought that was cool. Forrest had climbed inside one of them and managed to hit the start button. To my surprise the car started up and lurched forward, nearly pinning a kid between the two cars. It scared me so badly that I berated the owner of the car for allowing the kids inside when the battery was still hooked up. I told him that if he was going to allow the children to climb all over the car then it should be fixed to where they couldn't start it. He just apologized, and turned very red. I took the boys inside and they did not go near the cars after that.
After the race, we rode our bikes for two miles around the neighborhood, we went out to dinner and had fried calamari and Italian food and finally we were beat. Forrest was so tired that he fell asleep on a pile of covers beside his bed. I was washing his bed clothes and did not have a chance to get his bed made. He looks so sweet and innocent lying there asleep. I didn't have the heart to move him. He looked very comfortable and peaceful. You see, God makes them look like angels when they are sleeping so that we do not kill them while they are awake.(just kidding, I think.) Right now, they are behind me screaming and slamming doors and trying to kiss each other, and basically pestering the dickens out of each other. But no one had cried out in pain yet, so I know they are not hurting one another. I just hope the house can survive. We will be heading to our weekly Boy Scouts Den meeting soon. I had to plan our activity for the night, because our den leader forgot. (Sometimes I wonder who the real den leader is.) We are going to make puppets out of brown paper lunch sacks. Amazingly, I had all the stuff we need just lying around the house. (I'm not sure if that is a good thing or not. It was a lot of stuff, I think I need to clean house.)

But as you can see, our lives are so busy and tiring that even our dog is worn out. But at least it is filled with love! And lots and lots of noise!

The Art of Frustration

Sometimes it is best to just let sleeping tigers lie.

Boy, what a day. It appears that I woke up in the middle of an obstacle course this morning. I endured hurdles and roadblocks all day long. First, I had to get up (that was a hurdle in itself, because I was still sleepy when my alarm went off.) But, on Friday's I have to get the kids up and dressed for school and walk them across the street to my neighbors house. Well, my kids are as grumpy and I am when you wake them up in the morning. Nathan had something in his eye this morning, so I spent an extra 10minutes wrestling with him to let me look at it. But finally we made it across the street.

Then my commute to work began. Over half of my drive to work is through construction. Not to mention, our parking gate to the parking lot where I work doesn't function properly half the time. Well, I arrive to work 8 minutes late.

Do you ever get the feeling that you work with a bunch of monkeys?

Yes, in this case they are gorrillas.

Then the fun stuff begins. I start working and two hours into the morning our computers go down. Two hours later and they are still not back up. Three hours into the morning and we have two computers that are functioning at about 75%. So 12 people take turns doing work on 2 partially functioning computers. The computers never ever came back up. How I managed to only work over 30 minutes is beyond me.

My commute back home went relatively well.

Then I started my second full time job. Parenthood. (I am rolling my eyes right now and sighing deeply.) My boys are in Boy Scouts. And tonight is the night that we weigh in our pinewood derby cars. We have basically been working for a month making a car out of a block of wood. I have put most of the work into them. Well, I was gluing a weight on them, and I managed to superglue the rear wheels to the axle so that they would not turn anymore. HAPPY HAPPY JOY JOY. I consult with my superglue specialist, Jeanetta, and she suggests that I douse them with fingernail polish remover. Well, I don't have any(I don't have any fingernails either. I keep them trimmed because germs grow under your nails. YUCK!) But, I borrowed some from my neighbor. I pry off the wheels and soak those babies off and on for two hours. Between soakings, I am using a hammer, screwdriver and any other tool I can get my hands on to help pry the wheel off of the nail it is glued too. Finally, I am successful. I get the wheels functioning and off to the weigh in we go. We are 1oz over the limit. My weight was too heavy. ARRRRGH. Luckily, they have a tool box full of weights. So I tell the boys to fish through the box and pick out some things they like. Then I have to explain to them that they cannot completely cover the car with weights because it would be too heavy and it would be disqualified. After explaining this three or four times to each child we get the cars finished, and checked and decide to go eat Chinese. Word to the wise, don't ever volunteer to take two six year old boys out to eat Chinese when you are already frustrated and ready to kill someone. Especially by yourself. My husband calls us in the middle of dinner and doesn't like all of the noise he can hear and asks me if I could get away from the noise. I tell him no. I told him that I was in the middle of a restaurant with the boys and I could not very well just get up and walk out. He hangs up on me. (Don't worry, I called him back! And no, no one is dead and yes we are still married. ha ha). Anyway, I have bored all of you for way too long. I am now sitting here typing this long winded recollection of my day. I am happy to report that my headache is subsiding, and I think my blood pressure is slowly returning to normal. I commend all of you for reading this all the way through, and please forgive me for my ramblings. But telling you all of this has certainly made me feel better. But, I really do wish I was aboard a ship and sailing away to Paradise.