It's On My List

Amanda began creating something yesterday and when she was finished, she announced, "I'm making a quilt, Momma, and I need you to sew my patches on."

HUH?

I don't quilt. I don't sew. My "sewing box" is some needles and thread that I took from my mom's house when she died. I've sewed a couple holes in stuffed animals since the kids were born.

How did she know the concept of that? So now I'm in a quandary, because obviously she wants to sew, but I have no way to teach her. Do one of those fabric stores have sewing classes for kids where I can drop her off and run? (I'm KIDDING, sort of.)

I feel bad that I can't help her pursue this part of her creative personality. But I did manage to get out the sewing box and help her sew on her patches. Is almost 40 too old to learn to sew?

We had a quiet day yesterday and I'm feeling 100 percent better. I'm so glad the 24 hours on antibiotics and I'm not contagious anymore, because the kids are fine. I swear that 2009 is going to be the year about ME. I'm going to get my rotten tonsils out next year. I am. Just as soon as I learn to sew. It's on my list.

We opened a box of presents from Mrs. S from Chicago yesterday. She sent them a set of books about manners, and they loved them so much I had to read every single one of them immediately. There is a book about sharing, one about taking turns, one about being polite, etc.

While we were reading, Sarah said, "Johnequa wanted a book I was reading during class, and when I told her I was still reading it, she hit me, and said, 'I HATE YOU!'"

This is the first I'd heard of the incident, but then Gregory piped in that he ran and told the teacher.

I haven't mentioned it, but Johnequa's mother is psychotic, and on the first day of their kindergarten prep class, she got in a tussle with another mother in the tot lot and was dropping the F bomb. I was down the hall when it happened, but I heard the yelling and got in the middle of the pow wow later to find out what happened.

I guess one of the little boys in the tot lot was too rough with Johnequa. His mother called him out on it, and was just getting ready to have him apologize, when Johnequa's mom, who had been standing outside of the glass enclosure and couldn't actually hear anything being said, came running inside the tot lot and started screaming, "We don't ROLL LIKE THAT! If someone knocks you down, you get up, and kick their ass! You HIT HIM! You hear me! You don't just stand there. You f*##@$% beat them down."

Johnequa's mother is black and the other mother was Hispanic, and the other mother followed her out of the tot lot. There was more profanity in both English and Spanish, but my kids didn't even know it was going on and never asked me about it, so I was happy to drop them off and go find out what happened later.

Since that day, I've watched her mother get very angry on more than one occasion. She snatched her younger daughter out of the tot lot just last week when she thought someone "wronged her". I've spoken at length with her boyfriend in the tot lot when she wasn't around, and I know they live in a pretty rough neighborhood. I've tried to actually befriend her myself, but she's not very friendly and just shrugs me off when I try to make small talk.

So would it be out of line to approach her on our first day back next year and say, "I hear your kid hit mine. WE DON'T ROLL LIKE THAT! I'll kick your ass if your kid touches mine again."?

Okay, I'm kidding. She'd kick my scrawny weak ass and leave me for dead.

So I told Sarah, "If that happens again, you say, 'I'm sorry. I'm not done reading. I'll let you have it as soon as I'm finished.' Then if she hits you and tells you she hates you, you say, 'That's RUDE. Hitting is mean and I'm going to get Miss ____."

We even practiced it a few times. I was Johnequa, and I'd pretend to hit Sarah and say I hated her, and then Sarah gradually got better at telling me I was rude and that hitting was mean and that she was getting the teacher.

So that's all I've got. Any other ideas? I'm going to learn self-defense, so I can back up my big mouth. As soon as I learn to sew and get my tonsils out.