Birthday Max, the zombie boy

Next week, Max is turning seven.

YES! I KNOW! MY BABY WILL BE SEVEN YEARS OLD!!

Yesterday we were discussing what he would like to do for his birthday party. I suggested a pirate themed party. Max was slightly interested at first, but then he got what he thought was a much better idea.........

Max wants to have a Zombie Apocalypse Birthday party!

He has a few great ideas for the party, starting with cupcakes frosted to look like brains.

I, however, have a few concerns, like how are the parents of his friends going to react when they get the invitation?

Will the seven year old children be frightened at the idea of a Zombie Birthday party?

Is there a way to portray the zombies as being "friendly" Zombies so the children won't be frightened?

Are there such things as friendly zombies?

Will all of that Zombie blood stain my carpets?

It would be so much easier if he would go with my idea of a Pirate birthday party. I can get a bunch of eye patches pretty cheap.

In other news, the pick up zone at the kids school is outrageously crowded, so much so, that many parents have been parking on the road near the school to pick up their children rather than waiting in line.

The problem with this is that the neighbors have been complaining. (rightfully so, some of these parents don't pick up their kids until 30-40 minutes after school lets out, allowing their little darlings plenty of unsupervised time to run freely through the yards, climbing trees and fences, throwing rocks, trampling flowers, having pine cone fights.....) (some of the parents even park in the neighbor's driveways to wait for their kids, needless to say, the neighbors have reason to be upset)

Last week I noticed that the lines on the road by the school had been repainted to be closer to the sidewalk, and no parking signs had been put up, making it quite clear that there should be no parking on that part of the street.

Imagine my surprise when I received an email from the school informing everyone that new stripping had been put put on the road, and the parents are no longer allowed to park there due to the new stripping, and the police department will be enforcing the rule of no parking in the area, and anyone parking in the area of the new stripping will receive a ticket.

My kids walk home, and being the rebel that I am, I have informed them that they are required to keep all of their clothes on while walking on that street.

Creeper or genius?

In school, Aaron sits next to a boy who constantly harasses him. He writes on his arms with ball point pens, he steals his pencil and throws it out into the hall, he steals his ruler and hits him with it......

You get the picture.

Aaron is a pretty big kid, one of the tallest in the sixth grade. This boy (we'll call him "Bubba") Is actually taller than Aaron, however, Aaron is quite strong and manages to knock the kid over and wrestle his pencil/ruler/textbook away from him.

I used to worry that the teacher wouldn't see Bubba stealing Aaron's stuff and only notice when Aaron is sitting on top of Bubba, recovering his belongings, and think that Aaron is the instigator, but Aaron said the teacher doesn't care.

Either the teacher doesn't care or he realizes that both boys are taller than him and there is a serious chance he could get hurt if he got involved.

A few days ago Bubba started a new activity. Suddenly he wasn't content just to steal pencils and rulers, he now felt the need to take Aaron's homework and other assignments.

Aaron decided that physical confrontation wasn't going to work any more, so he decided to take another approach.

Aaron found out Bubba's dad's name, which ironically was Bubba Sr. and looked up their address on White pages .com.

Next he went to Google maps, found where Bubba lives and using the street view, he printed out a photo of their house.

The next day at school, Aaron sat the folded piece of paper on the edge of his desk. It took a while, but eventually Bubba took the bait, and grabbed the paper.

Aaron said when he unfolded the paper and saw his own house he freaked out a bit.

"Hey! That's my house! What are you doing with a picture of my house?........You stalked me! You're such a creeper!"

He had assumed that Aaron had actually come to his house and taken a picture. (Aaron let him believe this)

Aaron grinned at him then gave him his slightly deranged, zombie eyed look and said "I'm watching you!"

Bubba has left him alone for the last few days.

Excuse me while I go purchase some additional home owner's insurance

Aaron's favorite television show is Mythbusters.

He loves to watch how they scientifically try to prove or confirm whether or not a myth is truth, however, I think his favorite part is watching how they blow up stuff if it doesn't blow up in the first place.

He once told me that this was a good show for him to watch because he can let someone else experiment, and he can still see whether or not something works (and he won't have to try to blow it up himself)

I do like how they begin every show saying "Don't try this at home" (However, Aaron has changed that phrase to "Don't try this at home, go to a friends house.")

It never really occurred to me to be worried about his fascination with this show until one day when he came up to me and said "Hey mom, can you get me some liquid nitrogen?"

Say what?

Liquid nitrogen?

My response, naturally was "NO!"

Then a few days later, he asked me if I could get him some lithium. And an incinerator.

(again NO!)

Last week we were trying to clean a spill off of the stove. I'm not sure what it was, but it was burnt on pretty good. Aaron said "Hey! I know what would clean that stuff off of the stove!"

"OK, what?' I asked.

"Sulfuric acid! Of course I would have to wear a bio hazard suit and there probably wouldn't be much of the stove left when I'm finished, but it would definitely get rid of that burnt stuff!"

No Aaron, I will not get you any sulfuric acid.

Then yesterday he came up to me really excited and asked if I knew of any way he could earn forty dollars.

"Forty dollars is a lot of money" I told him "Why do you need forty dollars?"

"Well, I found something really cool on Amazon and I want to buy it!"

He's really into electronics, and it's not unusual for him to find some sort of cable or memory stick or other computer accessory that he wants, so I just assumed that it would be something like that, so I was very surprised when he told me what he wants to buy on Amazon for forty dollars.

Are you ready for this?

Uranium ore.

That's right, believe it or not, you can purchase a chunk of uranium ore on Amazon for $40.00

Naturally, I told him "NO!" to which he replied..............

"But it's radioactive AND explosive!!"

Technology kills productivity........

Earlier today I was helping Brielle make a double batch of sugar cookies using my grandma's super delicious sugar cookie recipe.

Once the dough got too stiff for the mixer, I dumped the dough into a larger bowl, got out the large wooden spoon and stirred in the last of the flour.

"I just remembered why I don't like making sugar cookies" I said "I really don't like having to stir all this dough by hand."

Brielle said "I bet your grandma didn't have an electric mixer to mix the dough in the first place. Was she a very patient person?"

"Yes she was, in fact, she nursed twins until they were 18 months old, and during that time still managed to take care of her two other small children, make bread, do laundry, keep the house clean, make breakfast, lunch and dinner, take care of a garden, can vegetables from the garden and she even crocheted a queen size bedspread!"

Brielle chuckled and said "Obviously, she didn't have Facebook."

Facebook fury!

OK, so Facebook has disabled my account for "security" reasons.

They are now holding my account hostage until I give them my phone number.

I don't want to give them my phone number. We have an unpublished number and they have not earned the right to have my cell phone number. (this number reserved for good friends)

They want to call or text me with a code to use to log back on. (so giving them a fake number is out)

They tell me they need my number to confirm that it's really me logging in, however, I've never given them my number, so how do they know that the number I give them is really mine? How could they possibly know whether or not it's me or just some other strange person pretending to be me, giving them a phone number to access my account.

Facebook is stupid.*

Anyone know of a way I can get around this?

*And when I say that Facebook is stupid, that does not in any way mean that I don't want to regain access to my account.

Never a dull moment

Max came into my office while I was working and started making a very annoying noise.

When I asked him to please stop, he said "I'll stop if you say a big word"

So naturally I said......

"A big word"

"No!" he replied, "I meant a big word like discombobulated or something like that!"

Discombobulated?

???????????????

Last night, Aaron showed me a picture he had created on the computer.

(chocolate + mom = happy mom)

What can I say, my kid understands me.

I told him that he should add some Diet Dr Pepper, because combined with chocolate, that would make me even happier!

A few minutes later, he comes back with this.

I'm not sure if the addition of the delicious diet drink made me insanely happy, or just insane. It certainly appeared to have caused me to lose a bit of hair.

I told him that it would be awesome if he could give me a little more hair and while he was at it, he could give me a nice pair of shoes.

Yep, that's much better :)

What a difference a day makes, just 24 little hours........

Earlier this week Max decided to make himself a 3 year calendar. He stapled about 36 pieces of paper together, and has spent the last few days drawing grids on the papers and filling in the days of the month.

Max was very upset about the fact that June only has 30 days, he feels that it should have 31 days.

In his calendar, he went ahead and gave June 31 days, because apparently, he does control the universe.

This wasn't much of a problem for him until he got to the end of December and discovered that he only had room for 30 days.

He informed me that now December will only have 30 days. (again, supreme controller of the universe)

This is actually a very big problem for me because December 31st is our wedding anniversary, and I'm not about to give that up. Next December we will have been married 20 years, so to get rid of the 31st this year would be unacceptable.

Max, being the clever little manipulator that he is, had an argument ready for me.

"If we take away the day in December and use it in June, we'll have an extra day of summer vacation!"

I have to admit, he almost got me with that argument. I love summer! An extra day in June would be lovely.

We were about to give Max a very long explanation of the reasons why we couldn't create June 31st, but we decided against it because we realized that it would be much easier just to add the extra day in June than it would be to listen to Max whine about having to erase and re write all of the numbers on his calendar.

Is everyone on board with this? June 31! Mark it on your calendar.

Perhaps we should make it into some sort of holiday so we don't need to go to work that day.

He also said that February 29th should be called Farch because it is half of February and half of March.

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Bonus!!

A completely random comment I heard by one of my children today.....

"Ask her to log in one more time and I'll show you my toenail!"

I'm going to assume it would have made more sense if I had heard the whole conversation.