The Mac and Cheese Chronicles

Date:  August 22

Time: 11:31 am

Location: Washington, DC

Temperature: 65 degrees.  Fahrenheit.

I’m on my way to turn off the air conditioner and put on some socks.

Something is seriously wrong.

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Don’t you hate it when people stop by and you’re unprepared?  Oh, I don’t mind if my friends drop by.  They all homeschool, too and have at least as many children as I do, so they know that if you drop by unannounced, you get what you get.  Even if you’ve been invited, you never know when Destructo Toddler and his Evil Minions of Mayhem will have been up to No Good, tearing apart the house behind me as I’m trying to clean up.

So a couple of weeks ago, the Feds showed up again.  I was infinitely less prepared than last time.  It had not been a good morning so far.

Bip has been refusing to sit quietly and eat his snack while I tackle history, science and religion with the older two. I’m sure that the fact that he is 2 years old has something to do with it.  In fact, not only does he refuse to sit quietly, he has taken to whining incessantly. Usually with proper threats of Baby Jail, also known as the pack’n’play, he quiets down enough. This day however, he decided to throw his bowl of cheerios on me.Not his most shining moment, nor mine, as I bundled him off to Jail.

Let me tell you that we don’t often confine him to the pack’n’play. So imagine my surprise when we heard little feet running across the floor upstairs. Young Houdini had escaped Jail and was sitting on my bed. Back in Jail for him, back downstairs for me. Not 10 minutes later, we heard him on the top of the stairs. This time he was quite penitent and ready to come downstairs.

So we continue with school as best we can.  We finish our main subjects, have a snack break, then move to the dining room for seatwork.   I don’t pay much attention to the mess in the living room that we’ve left.  We’ll get to it before lunch, when school is all done for the day.

Then the doorbell rings.  Probably a neighbor kid looking to play.

Nope.  It’s a nicely dressed young woman, flashing a federal investigator’s badge, wanting to know if she could take a minute of my time to talk to me about our previous next door neighbors.  Sure, no problem, come right in, says I.  I tell the children to keep working and scoop up Bip, who is hovering nervously at my feet.  I show the nice lady into my living room.

And then it hits me – the living room the way she must see it. There are school books piled on the couch, snack bowls, toys and the remnants of snacks scattered everywhere.  I’m barefoot with no make up.  Bip starts whining.

I sheepishly clear off a space on the couch, where she perches on the edge, obviously wary of staining her chic trousers.

She asks me the same run of the mill questions about our neighbor, while I bounce Bip on my knee and try to get him to stop whining.  I’m suddenly aware of how oily my face feels.  And I can’t remember anything about our neighbor.  We only lived here for 6 months when they moved, and it being winter for most of that time, we only saw each other in passing.  I can’t remember the wife’s name, what the husband does or where he is stationed now.  I did remember their son’s name is Diego and their dogs were Paco and Lola. That didn’t come up, though.  And to make matters worse, I had to give her my full name and all my dumb non-answers are going to become a part of the public record thanks to the Freedom of Information Act.  At least I didn’t mention the time the wife was out of the country visiting family and the husband went out who knows where and the dogs got out in the back yard and couldn’t get back into the house and barked until 1:30 in the morning.  In December.  Though hopefully that little tidbit wouldn’t be enough to end his security clearance.

By now, Bip is whining so loud that this young woman, who clearly had no children of her own, frowns and asks if Bip has a stomach ache.

Interview over and I show her to the door.  On the way there, I notice the hamper of laundry in the hallway, waiting it’s turn for the washing machine. Sigh. I come back to the living room to see if it really was as bad as I thought.  Yep, it’s that bad.  My only saving grace was that my hair wasn’t in curlers and Bip was not clad in only a saggy diaper and a runny nose.

Honestly, if it wasn’t my life, I’d never believe this stuff.

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Ok, so Matilda and Andrea both want to know if we usually have Half Birthday Parties. While in general, I like to hear myself talk or in this case, read what I’ve blogged, I thought I’d spare you my usual verbose self and write a more concise answer.

Nope, this is our first year doing half birthdays.

Hmm, that answer, while concise, is somehow infinitely less satisfying than usual.

So for the complete picture, we have to go w-a-y back to October 2006. Boo’s birthday is at the end of the month, the 31st to be exact. While that’s a very cool birthday to have – and is the reason we call him “Boo,” by the way – it is very difficult to have an actual birthday party that day. We manage a small immediate family only party and do something a little bigger the following weekend. However last year, that weekend included his end-of-the-year Soccer Victory party on Saturday and us getting on a plane and flying to Disneyland to meet my Grandma Honey, Aunt Peggy, and Cousins April and Jesse for dinner at Goofy’s Kitchen on Sunday. And since we’d made such a long trip, we stayed at Disneyland for the week. So no time for a birthday party.

So we thought we’d have his party a little later, not exactly right after we returned home, but within a couple of weeks.

Right.

Then while we were getting sunburned in Disneyland during an unseasonable heat wave in Anaheim (remember how I’m responsible for localized global warming?), our house was busy flooding and destroying itself. It wasn’t pretty.

We returned, not home, but to the Temporary Lodging Facility here on base, where we lived for a couple of weeks while we sorted through water logged and moldy stuff, salvaged what we could and moved into a different set of quarters.

Our first day in our new house was Thanksgiving.

And we’d now taken 3 weeks off from school.

So we spent December unpacking, getting ready for Christmas and doing school. Pumpkin Girl’s birthday is right after Christmas and we now had a house full of moving boxes, Christmas decorations and Christmas presents. December turned to January and well, you can see where this is going.

Eventually we decided on having Half Birthday Parties this year so they could at least invite their friends and have cake and ice cream. Boo is a simple guy and was more than happy to invite his best friend’s family out for bowling, pizza and cake. Pumpkin, of course, required the Ultimate Princess Party, with lots of pink, dress up clothes, magic wands, tiaras and glitter.

And yes, I know that August is actually 8 months after December. Don’t remind me!

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