Getting to know you, getting to know all about you...

This past weekend the hubby went out of town and my mom took my younger two giving me the rare opportunity to spend some quality time and talk with my teenager. It's not often that I can really talk to her. Whether it's my hubby chiming in finishing my sentences with what he thinks I'm trying to say, or her little sisters being nosey, it's hard to finish a thought, let alone a whole conversation.

We spent all day Sunday together. We had lunch, saw a movie, and went out to dinner. At lunch, we talked and I learned some amazing things. I started off by telling her that I was completely clueless about how to relate to her new teenager self. That I couldn't decide between punishing her for failing two classes or rewarding her for being so responsible around the house. I told her that I felt I was out of touch with what she liked and disliked, but that I realized that the punishments we were using such as taking her phone away, really didn't seem to bother her and therefore weren't motivation to do better. I asked her what kinds of privileges or possessions she wanted and would be upset if they were taken away as punishment. She shrugged and said I don't know.

We continued to talk and little by little the picture became clearer. What I figured out is she really doesn't like her sisters. I mean she loves them, they are her sisters after all, but they annoy the crap out of her. Even though my middle one is only 2 1/2 years younger than her, there is a huge gap between what she wants to do and what they want to do. Everything she said seemed to center on the same theme, "All they want to watch on TV is baby shows" "They're so annoying" "They always come in my room and get into my stuff". When I asked her if she would be motivated to do better in school if I offered her $100 for a straight A report card, she shrugged and said "Not really", but after a pause she followed it up with "If you gave me $100 for each report card with straight A's, I'd save it so I could go to Hawaii and visit grandma (hubby's mom) for a week without my sisters."

So now I'm able to formulate a plan.

First, I need to give her more opportunities to do stuff without her sisters, like offering to drop her and her friends off at the movie or at the mall for a few hours. This is going to be a struggle for me. Up until this point, if they haven't been in my sight, they were always in the care of some other adult I trusted or at school. Yeah I'm a little a lot overprotective. I just think I would DIE if something ever happened to my kids that I could have prevented if I was watching them. So just the thought of letting her go off on her own and not knowing her exact location for a couple of hours makes me literally nauseous. Do they make lojack for teenagers?

Second, we need to give her more control over her room and her ability to keep her sisters out of it. Now this one is going to be harder for my husband. I have no problem with her shutting her door or even locking it. He on the other hand hates it when the kids shut their doors, and comes unglued if one of them locks it. He sees no need for it, but then again, he grew up in a house with no doorknobs (I won't even begin to get into that). I told him he's going to have to let up on the door locking thing, because I think THAT would be a privilege she would work hard to keep.

Third, we are considering getting her a TV and DVR for her room so she can watch the shows that she wants to watch without her sisters interrupting her or bugging her to put on a "baby" show. Screw up at school and it's back to preschool TV with your sisters.

Finally... that trip to Hawaii... I think if she brings home straight A report cards, we can put $100 in a savings account each time towards her ticket. Maybe by next summer I'll be over my fear of letting her out of my sight enough to deal with the thought of letting her navigate the airport and get on a plane by herself.

Snap 2 Twitter FAIL

Snap 2 Twitter is a pretty cool app I downloaded on my blackberry. It allows you to take a pic with your phone and then tweet about it and upload all in one step.

Except.

I just was on twitter seeing what the pic tweet I just sent looked like(Kimberly's little stuffed dog on the pony wall with a creepy note). Followed the little mini url to my pic. It totally worked, pretty cool, but then WHOA!!! There is a pic on there that looks like cleavage or ass cheek or something. No wonder I've had so many new twitter followers this week! They think I'm some porn twitterer or something.

And the picture. Yeah, totally my knee. Took it by accident. So totally not porn. Totally didn't mean to post it.

The problem is the minute you snap a pic it goes to this Snap 2 Twitter app. Gives you the option to "save and tweet" or "save only". You have to hit save only in order to go back and delete the accidental knee pics. Apparently I hit save and tweet by accident.

Don't bother going to look for it now, I deleted it.

How to parent a teenager

If you are looking for an answer you are not going to find it here. Look me up in 10 years and maybe I'll have a clue. Right now what I have is a girl who just turned 13 and not a freaking clue of what to do with her. I'm swimming in self doubt and totally scared that I'm screwing up royally.

She is still screwing up in school. Despite my best efforts, grounding, taking away all her cool stuff, lectures on why she doesn't want to end up a drop out, etc., she still managed to fail two of her classes last quarter.

I really don't get it. She's really smart so it's not a matter of the subject matter being too hard. Plus she's really super responsible about other stuff. She cleans her room, does her chores, helps with her sisters. Why can't she do her homework too? I have a really hard time punishing her because 98% of the time she is an angel. She's just doesn't give a crap about her grades. I don't get it.

I don't know what more to do to motivate her. Last summer I started paying her for babysitting her sisters. She gets paid per hour whatever her GPA is. I explained that if she got straight A's that would be worth a bonus dollar for a total of $5. Right now she's earning a whopping $2.33. I tried explaining to her that this is just like life, the better you do in school, the more money you can make. One quarter this year she had a 3.o, but now we are back down to 2 and change.

I asked her to write an essay on the importance of education citing at least 6 statistics. What I got back was an essay on why she "thinks" the high school she wants to go to is superior to the one she is going to attend. She totally didn't read the explanation of the rankings she was citing and got it completely ass backwards.

I get that this last quarter has been an emotional roller coaster for her. First we have to move, and end up in a different high school boundary than where we started, then we try to keep her in that high school by applying for two different programs that would allow her to stay (she doesn't get accepted to either), followed by not making the cheerleading squad at the one she is going to attend. I totally understand how craptastic that is for a 13 year old.

HOWEVER. We now live in a nicer neighborhood. The high school she is being "forced" to attend turns out more college bound kids than the other one. It's students consistently score higher on the state standardized tests. I'm totally not brokenhearted about her having to go there. She doesn't care at all about any of that though, she just cares that all her friends are going to the other school. And in true 13 year old drama queen form, she is POSITIVE she will NOT be able to make ANY new friends at the new school.

I am left confused with how to proceed. On one hand I want to spoil her with fun stuff this summer to cheer her up since I know in her 13 year old mind she thinks her world is ending, on the other hand I want to ground her for the whole summer for getting two F's, and bottom line, I have no idea if EITHER strategy will improve anything.

I had my chance..

and didn't take it.

What you ask?

My kids are going to a new school next year. This whole moving thing has thrust us into the boundaries of a different school and despite my best efforts the kids will not be able to stay at their old school. Budget crisis' suck, but that's a whole other post.

Leaving our previous school prematurely ended my term as PTA Vice President. I could have gone to the new school and pretended I didn't know what a PTA was. I could have laid low, bought my catalog crap and cookie dough, and left the work to some other sucker. But NOOO.

The day after school ended I went to the new school with the kids withdrawal paperwork from the other school and got them all signed up. She took me and the kids on a tour of the school and I got a little giddy about all the cool things they have at this school as opposed to the old one. It's a technology math/science concept school and beyond awesome. As I was preparing to leave, I heard myself say "so how do I get in touch with your PTA?".

I wasn't planning on asking about the PTA. Where those words came from, I have absolutely no clue. The very nice office lady took this opportunity to tell me that the newly elected PTA was short a few officers, a VP, treasurer, and secretary to be exact. Yeah, they're just short 3/5ths of their board. They NEED my help. And so it starts again.

I don't know why I can't just run away from the PTA. I've spent eleventy billion hours this last year alone doing PTA stuff. I should be a little burnt out on it by now. It's not like I have an excess of time on my hands as is evidenced by my lack of blogging for the last month. I have other things I like to do with my time and PTA cuts into that, but I still can't seem to walk away.

It's like Stockholm Syndrome, even when I have the chance to leave, I don't because I identify with my captors. I feel bad for them. They NEED me. So I have a meeting next week to meet with their two members and compare notes. To tell them all about what I know that works and to find out what they are planning. I'll probably end up involved.

The fact is, I like being on the PTA. I like the Principal knowing me by name. I like not having to show my ID when I pull my kids out for a doctor's appointment because the staff knows exactly who I am. I like it when the teachers take the extra bit of time to listen to my concerns because I'm the one that hooks them up with money for field trips. I like that my kids know that I value them and their education enough to give my time to get involved. I like the fact that they, and all the other kids, get to have cool things like Holiday Shops and Carnivals that I put together.

I'm pretty sure if I don't do it, nobody will. The fact that this board only has two out of five members just goes to show that not many people want to devote their time to a job that only pays in kid's smiles. This has been my experience with every school my kids have ever been to. The same eight people show up to every meeting and the other thousand parents take the attitude that someone else will do it. I want my kids to have the things that the PTA provides, and I'm willing to work to make sure they have it.

Tattoo

A long long time ago, on my first wedding anniversary, my husband and I celebrated by going to get tattoos. He chose a baby blue hammer head shark on his shoulder and I got a gecko on my leg. I teased him mercilessly about his cute little baby blue shark. It really wasn't very manly, and it was small. Like cover it up with a quarter kinda small. I liked my gecko but the artist had messed up one of it's feet so it had this whole "one of these things is not like the others" think going on with it's feet. Lesson #1 of getting a tattoo, check around and find a good artist, just don't walk into the first shop you see in Hollywood that doesn't have a wait. Lesson #2 a good shop will have a wait if you don't have an appointment.

Several years later we were at a party for our friend Mike's 30th birthday. Mike was a little drunk and said "Hey I think I want to get a tattoo". Of course we were all kinda shocked especially since Mike always hassled his wife over her tattoos that she had gotten before they had met. She was sure he'd sober up a little and back out, but figured if he got one he'd have to stop complaining about hers. So off we went in the middle of the night to get Mike a tattoo. He ended up going through with it and my hubby came home with his little baby blue hammer head shark covered up with a big very manly black shark.

Fast forward to my 30th birthday. We were in Vegas, such a perfect place to celebrate, and I wanted a tattoo for my birthday. I wanted to get something on my lower back but didn't know what. We ended up at Ironhorse Tattoo which came highly recommended and of course there was a huge wait since we hadn't made an appointment. We waited and waited and the whole time I was looking at all the pictures I still couldn't figure out what I wanted. Hours later when it was finally my turn I decided that before getting another tattoo I wanted to get my gecko fixed. So I did. Here is the end result.

Notice the matching feet. Ya. Good stuff. A good tattoo artist makes all the difference.

In the years that followed my hubby has added two more tattoos. One on his forearm and one on his calf. I still have not gotten my lower back done. At this point I really don't want the "tramp stamp" as it's a little overdone. A couple of years ago I decided what I wanted was stars. I saw a couple of different star tattoos and really liked them. I also saw a couple of tattoos that went down the side of the ribs and really liked that too. What I really want to do now and have been decided on for about a year is a trail of stars that goes down my right side, around my back, and ends on my left hip. It's a pretty big piece and talking my hubby into it has been a challenge. He's not that into lots of tattoos on girls. Especially his girl.

Now I don't want a bunch of dark black stars all over me. Don't want to end up looking like a leopard when I'm 80. I'm going for subtle. I'm thinking white and just the outlines of the stars. It's going to be cool. I like the idea of having a huge tattoo that nobody will know is there unless I decide to show them. I think it's kinda funny that most people who meet me think I'm very conservative when I am in fact pretty crazy. Even with the tattoo on my leg, most people don't notice it because they aren't looking for or expecting to find a tattoo on me. I've almost got the hubby talked into it. We got some star stencils and I'm going to get a white eyeliner pencil so we can draw it on and he can see my vision. I think he will see that it won't be that shocking even though it will be pretty big. Then I can finally go do it. I'm pretty excited.

This and That

A lot has happened since I last posted.

Here is the rundown.

We moved. Yes again. For those of you that don't know, we were forced to move out of the house we had been renting back in January because it was getting foreclosed on. We looked and looked and couldn't find anything that we liked. Well we found a couple but we were turned down. Each one we liked had several applications. All the others were dumps. Finally we found one that was only month to month (because it too was getting foreclosed on too). That gave us time to find the one we just moved into a week ago. On the hottest day of the year so far. Yeah, that was fun. So for the last week I've been playing, "Which box did that get packed in?" and trying to get unpacked and organized. Little by little it's coming together.

I've had to shop and buy some things for the house. It never fails, the little things you need to make a house livable, how the things that worked in the last house don't work here. Like the basket that I keep all the medications in. I keep all the meds in the cabinet above the microwave. Out of reach of little hands. Well the basket that I kept them in for the last 5 years, the one that worked in the last 4 houses we lived in, didn't fit in this cabinet. So I had to get several smaller baskets to hold the meds.

Then there is the guest bath. I've always wanted a guest bath with a pedestal sink, and I finally have one. Of course I haven't had a guest bath in the last couple of houses, so I had to figure out how to decorate that room. On a budget. Not having a cabinet in the bathroom makes storage more interesting too. I had some silver candle holders in there that my aunt gave me for Christmas several years ago that really didn't match anything in any of my other rooms. I decided to use them, get some white towels, and go with a clean spa like theme for the room. I found a spare toilet paper roll storage container in chrome, as well as an artificial calla lily arrangement in a silver colored pot. I picked up a chrome wire basket to hold the extra towels. Somewhere around here I swear I have a white bathroom rug, but I have no idea what box it's in. If I don't find it by next weekend, I'll probably go buy another one. (then I will find it, LOL) All that's left is to find something to hang on the walls. As soon as it's done I'll post some pics.

I finally got a new phone. After the insurance sent me two more Frankenstein phones, my husband finally got them to agree to send me a BRAND NEW PHONE. The catch, they don't make the pink ones anymore. They still have them in the store, but the insurance does not have any. They tell the hubby they will send the silver phone and maybe the store will trade it for a pink one. Ya, the store said no deal since it wasn't from their inventory they couldn't swap it. So he made yet another call to the insurance, and after they tried to extort another $50 deductible from him, he finally got them to pay for a brand new pink phone for me. Wow, it's only been like 3 weeks now. I tell you one thing. I'm not keeping my phone in my back pocket any more.

Close but no cigar

Here is the latest offering by the Verizon insurance people.

As you can see, they at least got the right screen on this one, but it still has the wrong navigation buttons. Of course it's too late to call now, but I'm making the hubby call first thing tomorrow. I bet you he gets me a brand new phone, not any more of this refurbished crap. He's good at things like that.

F#&king Frakenstein Fone Friday

Monday morning my phone took a dive into the toilet. Brilliant, I know. It's KARMA biting me in the ass for laughing at my husband for fumbling his brand new Blackberry Storm into a sink full of water. I called him "Fumbles" for days. That will teach me.

So of course the hubby was in no particular hurry to call the insurance to get me a new phone. He did turn on his old Curve for me to use and he finally called the insurance on Tuesday. Wednesday my new phone shows up. I haven't even touched it yet and he's already on the phone bitching about the trackball not working right. Fabulous.

He gives me the phone and tells me he will go to the Verizon store the following morning to get it swapped out for me. I finally get to try and use it and I immediately see what the deal is. The trackball works only about one out of every three times you push it.

So yesterday I had to work, so I left without my phone so he could take it to the store. I get home from work and he tells me that, of course, the trackball didn't act up at all in the store. Figures. He did however get the insurance to agree to send me out a different phone. It should come today.

SO last night I'm looking at my phone, and something just doesn't look right. I look up on Verizon's site and find this picture. This is what my phone is supposed to look like. This is what the one that went swimming in the potty looked like.

The phone the insurance sent me looks like this.

Notice something wrong??

It looks like they took pieces from this Blackberry

and mixed it up with a pink one.

No wonder it doesn't work right. F#&king Frankenstein Fone.

Random

I don't have the time or energy to write a long post tonight.

Here are some completely random things that are on my mind.

Tomorrow we get the keys to our new (rental) house.

I haven't packed anything.

Unless you count the fact that I only unpacked half the stuff we moved out of the last house.

In that case you could say I'm half packed.

Or half baked.

I have been feeling yucky all day.

Like I'm getting sick.

I don't have time to be sick, since I am:
Moving this weekend.
Working a crapload next week.

So I keep telling myself I'm not getting sick.

And I should go to bed early tonight.

But I need to take a bath before I go to bed.

I wore flip flops all day.

My feet feel dirty.

I can't sleep when my feet feel dirty.

Is it summer yet?

This happens every year. The day when the kids (or namely just the kid, you know, the ADD kid) just give up for the year. Classwork gets blown off and homework is a nightmare. It's like they know that it's ALMOST summer, so it should be goofing off time, right?

Yesterday I get an email from the teacher. "Kimberly refused to do ANYTHING today, I'm sending all the work home [for you to deal with]." Fabulous. Because I had soooo much extra time in MY evening to deal with homework PLUS three assignments she didn't get done in class.

Yesterday after school we had a meeting to review Kimberly's 504 plan. It went well. We made a couple of changes, took out some stuff that was outdated, and looked at what would need to be done differently for 6th grade. They start switching classes in 6th grade, so things are going to get interesting. Some things were rephrased, much to my delight, since I was a little miffed that the previous teacher's label of "disruptive" had remained in one section. All in all a good meeting, but because of it we had an hour and a half less time for homework and stuff that should have been finished in class.

Needless to say we weren't able to get it all done, so it carried over to today. When I picked the kids up from school Kimberly was rambling on and on about some video assignment she had to do. Now I have to admit I wasn't completly listening. For one thing, I have ADD too, and for another, Kimberly loves to talk. I swear she talks just to hear herself talk. Really. Like she will read the makes and models of all the cars we pass on the road. So I kinda tune her out sometimes. So I'm all whatever, she has some kind of report, it will probably be due in a couple of weeks and we will have some time to work on it. I tell her that we don't have a working video camera and I'm thinking to myself maybe some kinda powerpoint presentation will suffice.

We get home and I tell her to start on her homework, that she has a lot to do, because she has to get the rest of the assignments done tonight too. She asks "so you want me to do tonight's homework first, then work on the assignments from yesterday?" I tell her yes. She goes off to her room. An hour later I go to check on her thinking that she should be done by now and I need to prod her to get to work on the other stuff.

I find her sitting on her bed watching tv. I ask her where her homework is and she pulls her assignment sheet out of her backpack. Wanna take a wild guess what it said?? "Read for 20 minutes. Timeline - didn't do in class. 10 events in her life. She wants to do a video instead of writing." So not only has she wasted an hour doing nothing, we have last night's assignments PLUS now a timeline video thing that I don't have a video camera to do.

So I tell her "guess what? since you spent an hour goofing off AND this timeline thing could have been done in class to begin with, I'm not going out of my way to help you do a powerpoint on it, you are just going to write it." I'm such a mean mommy. For Kimberly writing is the most difficult thing on the planet. Not that she isn't incredibly creative, it just requires the kind of sustained attention that she is so terribly lacking in. So it's in her 504 that she can do alternative assignments that don't require as much writing.

Now it's time to play "let's make a deal". Kimberly loves to try and bargain. Someday she's going to make a great lawyer or snake oil salesman. After 15 minutes of her trying to bargain, now I'm getting frustrated. "YOU AREN'T GOING TO CHANGE MY MIND CHILD, NOW GET TO WORK, YOU ARE RUNNING OUT OF TIME TO GET THIS DONE".

Finally she sits down to work. On one of the assignments from yesterday. Answering 3 questions about a chapter in a book they are reading in class. Five minutes later she's whining about how she can't answer the questions because she didn't read the chapter, because she was still working on one of the other assignments that she didn't get done yesterday. ARE.YOU.FREAKING.KIDDING.ME??

I tell her to go work on the timeline and I start thinking of how to solve this little dilema.
I search online for the answers.
No luck.
Maybe the library that is 3 minutes from my house has the book.
Nope.
Call Barnes & Noble.
They have it.
Hold it for me, I'm on my way.

Forty five minutes later I'm back with the book. She's finished the timeline and showered. She reads the chapter. She answers the questions. It's 10:15 and she finally goes to bed. Bedtime is supposed to be 8:30. Tomorrow she will be tired. When she's tired she has bad days at school. So her inability to get her work done yesterday is going to snowball and ruin our whole week.

I just want it to be summer. No more school. No more homework. I'm done too.