Random thoughts

• This is just my luck -- I dragged my weary butt to the dealership yesterday to get a replacement blade for the back wiper on the minivan.  This has needed to be done for a year.  I bought the blade, installed it myself and hoped back in, all excited to clean the grimy window.  The wiper fluid was frozen!  Window dirty as ever, 20 miles and $14 later.

• One of those creepy guys at with a center kiosk at the mall caught me today and buffed my middle fingernail until it hurt.  Hand rape by buffer.  I've managed to escape them for decades but between my slower gait and lack of will to survive, I was no match for his eager hard sell.  I didn't buy anything but I'm pretty sure I caught a communicable disease from the no doubt highly unsanitary buffer.  Awesome.

• The school district needs to step into the 21st century and update their requirements for admission.  I plan to register Jack for kindergarten on Monday but I don't have 3 utility bills to present to them as required.  We receive and pay our bills electronically for most stuff.  Why is my driver's license with our address not enough?  Do they really think I'm going to get a fake ID just so he can go to their school?  That reminds me, I need to see if his birth certificate has a raised seal.  Don't ask me what I'm going to do if it doesn't.

• On a separate but somewhat related note, he's not even going to the school that a.) I wanted him to and b.) I've been telling him for 3 years that he would attend.  To spread the cost of the free lunch program out over the schools equitably (or so "they" say), the district realigned the each school's borders for next year.  Instead of going to the nice, new school right up the street, Jack will have to go to the older, farther away school.  I'm so not happy about this b/c it makes me look like a liar and I don't want him further away.  I liked the idea of him riding the bus right up the street rather than flying around on a big road like he will be now.  Supposedly there is a way to "choice" a child into a different school but then he wouldn't be able to take the bus and as much as I'm dreading the idea of it, he needs to do what all the kids do and take the bus.  God help me.

• Natalie is obsessed with the fear that Jack will poke his eye out.  I find it hysterical when I'm not worrying that she is psychic.

• The more excited Natalie gets for the baby's arrival, the more I worry about the fallout.  I think she thinks her "stister" will arrive with the size and abilities of her 18 mo. old "baby" cousin.  We don't know any newborns so I don't think she can visualize the crying, sleeping, peeing lump I describe.  The OG (Original Girl) waxes on and on about how she will teach Sheemee to eat yogurt and use the potty.  I used to worry about leaving OG alone in a room with the baby and a pillow; now my main concern is leaving her alone with The Girl 2.0 and some Yoplait.