10 Things I Probably Shouldn't Share

1.  It occurs to me that I get honked at on a more-than-regular basis as I drive my people around town.  It is possible, but highly unlikely, that the honking has anything to do with my ravishing good looks.  The fact is, I am a distracted driver.  Distracted by all of my offspring I'm driving around.  I get a good, nasty, mean-spirited honk at least once a month. Often there is an obscene hand gesture or aggressive reciprocal cut-off in addition to the honk.  I think that is suppose to teach me some sort of lesson.  I thought this was normal, but some friends recently told me they aren't getting honked at that regularly.  Now I feel bad.

2.  The other day I needed to leave the house relatively early with all the kids.  I couldn't find the little boys' underwear.  Was it dirty? Was it buried at the bottom of the laundry pile?  Who knew?  We just put their pants on and called it good.  For the record I went that very day to buy more underwear.  I do try.

3.  The kids finished their CRT tests this week.  We homeschool but we still do the end of year testing like the public schools.  The kids reported to me that they felt they did very well on them.  I hope so.  Because I am ashamed to admit that I demonstrated some not so attractive Chinese Tiger Mother parenting techniques in the preparations for these tests.

4.  Cannon got bit by a snake today.  He and Faith found a garter snake on the way home from a neighbor's house.  Cannon bravely went for it and successfully captured the snake.  And then it bit him.  But he was so happy. He said, "I knew Clark would be so proud of me!"  The kids caught 2 other garter snakes as well this week.

5.  And because 3 garter snakes aren't enough, Clark acquired a rather large ball python this week as well.  This was not caught in the neighborhood but from some guy on KSL classifieds.  You may remember the unfortunate demise of Ledge the gopher snake last summer.  It was entirely my fault, so I pretty much had to agree to the new snake.  So now we're wierdo reptile collectors.  Whatever-- we've always been wierdo reptile collectors.

6.  A couple of weeks back a neighbor friends posted on Facebook that she had several bags of clothes she had shrunk out of.  By the numbers they seemed to be my new size that I had shrunk into.  I quickly jumped at the offer to take them off her hands.  What was I thinking?  Good fitting clothing is more than just the size number.  She is markedly shorter and more well-endowed (you know what I mean) than me.  So pretty much nothing of hers fit like it should .  Now I have all of her clothing and need someone to take it off of my hands.  Any takers?-- size 8-10.

7.  If I have to listen to Clark play "Viva la Vida", "Axel F", "Mission Impossible", or" Fireflies" one more time I think my brain will explode and ooze out of my ears.  Sorry to be so graphic, but there it is.  The deal is he has to practice the piano for 45 minutes a day.  Whether or not he improves and progresses is up to him.  He seems content where he is.  Does he play these songs because he truly loves them, or is it to torment me?  I'm not sure he even knows the answer to that question.

8.  I offended Elinor today by suggesting that should she choose to wear her hair in pigtails, it would be better to not part her hair directly down the middle of her head.  This brought almost immediate tears and a hoodie to cover up her hair.   Perhaps I shouldn't have gone there, but seriously!  Is this worth tears?  This parenting of preteen and teenage girls could be much more treacherous than I anticipated.  I'm not sure I have the emotional chops for it.

9.  I recently purchased some items from IKEA to help in the organizational flow of our home.  Best case scenario is they work out just as I have envisioned and everyone miraculously begins to take responsibility for his or her belongings and the house is neat and orderly.  Worst case scenario:  I just bought more junk to temporarily place more junk on.

10.  I drove Clark and a van full of friends to another friend's birhday game night last weekend.  I knew I hadn't been doing a good job of keeping my car presentable, but you never know just how disgustingly filthy your car is until you have to drive your teenager's friends around in it.  I was mortified, and I don't mortify that easily.
Don't tell me they didn't notice anything. 
They did. 
I immediately returned home to clean out the car.  It was too little too late, but like I said before, I do try.