At this moment, I'm finding it hard to believe that anyone allows their grown children to move back in the house. I'm seriously thinking about moving myself, and not leaving a forwarding address. Maybe we could just meet up for Christmas and Thanksgiving--at a hotel. (Comment that inspired this? "You didn't tell me you wanted me to clean up the spaghetti on the stove--I thought you just meant clean up the stuff on the floor.")

So, I'm wondering: how much of a jerk should I be about the fact that the people in charge of sending home notices from my daughter's school seem to be functionally illiterate? After all, this WAS the school that two years ago had a sign out front reading "Student's First," prompting many passers-by to no doubt wonder, "student's first WHAT?" And recently there was a notice on the door informing parents that an upcoming meeting had been "cancelled" (yes, in quote marks), leaving me to worry that the meeting wasn't really cancelled at all--except in an ironic sense. The thing is, this is the same school that goes absolutely nuts about the dress code--surely THEY understand that appearances matter. Why then, are they okay with looking like morons in print?

I just spent the last 24 hours with an 18-year-old. I'd like to take this moment to officially apologize to every single person who had to deal with me when I was 18. Sorry about all that.

Okay, so I have to take issue with mayor Sara's statement regarding the mandatory helmet law for kids under 18. She said that she would "rather see kids in the juvenile system than the health care system." WTF? Hey, I'm all for helmets--I wear them and so do my kids, but this seems more like an unenforceable piece of "feel good" legislation designed to fit into a bullet point in a re-election campaign than an actual instance of governing.

So I have begun with the cutting.  And the problem is, it feels TOO good to cut--like I could just keep cutting until the whole thing is in the trash.  NOT the right space to be in for editing.  Maybe I'll just stick with deleting the EIGHT MILLION EXTRA COMMAS my friend Laura pointed out to me in her edits.  I'm very comma-y, aren't I?

Clementine left one of her Us magazine type things open on the table this morning.  Are guys really this hairless now, or is everyone in Hollywood waxing?  It's funny (in a tragic sort of way) to think that THIS is how we finally achieve equality with the men--soon, they will be just as screwed up about looks as we are.  I was kind of hoping for something different.  Like, I don't know, sanity all around.

This is Clementine's second week of middle school.  She was late because her mother (that would be me) was out drinking last night and overslept.  Yep--on a Monday.  I wrote her a note that said simply: Please excuse Clementine's tardiness.  It was all my fault.  Me culpa, mea maxima culpa.  The last part might have been  a little bit of overkill, but hey, I figured--go BIG.  I'll find out how it all went over tonight at the potluck, I'm sure.