random ramblings

Sometimes, I really hate not home schooling the kids. 

Both were sick on Wednesday (which meant that the pixie missed her class's Easter party), but the imp was good to go for Thursday...just in time for his class's party.  Where they served Easter colored treats.  Like sugar cookies with orange frosting, and (probably) kool-aid. 

Both of which had red food coloring, judging by his behavior. 

We've asked his teacher, and asked his teacher, and asked his teacher to make sure he doesn't  get anything with red food coloring in it, and pointed out that his behavior becomes uncontrollable, and it's not his fault.  And it still happened, and he still got in big trouble, and we didn't realize what was going on until I found the remains of his goodie bag in his backpack. 

I am seriously so angry about it I could spit.  And I am inclined to ask for him to be sent to the office for all parties next year (with treats being given when he gets home). 

It's a damn good thing that he doesn't have a life-threatening allergic reaction to red food coloring.  Otherwise, I'd have had to sue the school, and I hate the thought of that.

I'm really thankful the pixie doesn't have any similar problems with food coloring. 

I'm going to have to work with her on the alphabet, though.  She's missed enough school to be a bit behind her classmates.  I hate that she gets so sick so easily, and I'm beginning to think I'm going to have to get her a boys' coat next fall, and save her cute little wool-blend coat for special dress-up occasions.  Because the imp's coat has an elastic band that keeps the hood close around his ears, and hers doesn't.  And she is the one with ear trouble.

We had a tornado warning that sent us to shelter, Wednesday night.  Unfortunately, I'd given the imp a dose of Benedryl when he went to bed, and couldn't get him to wake up.  I wound up walking him down the hall by kicking his heels because he's too big for me to carry, now.  He's over four feet tall, and I'm four feet eleven inches.  He wound up curling up on the bathroom floor and going back to sleep.  Odysseus had to carry him back to bed. 

Cricket flipped out and wouldn't settle while we were in the bathroom, but Shadow found a comfy spot and refused to move.  She was still there when we went looking for the cats to put them in the utility room for the night. 

I'm still really angry about having my chalkboard taken out of my room.  Worse was that they'd already taken it down before class started, and I'd needed the damn thing.  I wound up only able to do about half of what I'd planned to do, because I didn't have a chalkboard.  And Monday, I'll have a piece of shit dry erase board to work with.  If I'm lucky enough to have anything at all.

I'm about two thirds of the way through with another short story.  I've got just over 20K words in the short story collection I've tentatively titled Normalcy Bias.  I've got maybe a quarter done on Detritus, and it's just under 20K words.  And...I forgot the draft book at my mother's, last week, so didn't get any work done on it last week. 

I think that's it, for the time being...I'm waiting on the mail to run, because there's another 12 fountain pens coming today.  One of them is the first cartridge pen that Parker made, and I'm a little excited to see it, and test it out.