Around 11:07am, I loudly proclaimed:
"How about we just drive into town and just enroll all of you in school?!?!?"
Yeah. Not so brilliant, on my end.
The kids broke out with much cheering and jubilation as they celebrated their impending freedom. It was really hard to convince them to get back to work. At home. For school. For homeschool, which is such a delight. A blessing, really.
We have flies. It's a problem, I cannot tell a lie. I can barely type this post, I kid you not. They keep landing on me! Oh, the humanity! I don't know from whence they came, but HOW LONG IS THE LIFESPAN OF A HOUSEFLY? I have been waiting out the deaths of these creatures for weeks now! WEEKS, I tell ya! And they are getting sluggish and old and they land on me all the time and I am going to SNAP.
Actually, I fear I may have already snapped today. During Sweet Pea's dictation lesson today, I was standing on chairs trying to kill flies with Windex.
Oh! Are you a homeschooling marm? Do you do dictation with your children? Let me assure you, it is deplorable. Today's sentence for my 8 year old?
"Toves are something like badgers, they're something like lizards, and they're something like corkscrews. They make their nests under sundials and live on cheese."
What the what? So, I am supposed to read it to her twice and she is supposed to write it down perfectly, listening for commas, periods, and what-have-ya. So, Sweet Pea, being the perfectionist that she is, is crying because she can't remember it and I am standing on a chair shouting ridiculous "Toves" characteristics and spraying flies with Windex.
Sweet Pea: You're spraying me!
Me: Well, move!
Sweet Pea: I am trying to do my lesson!
Me: Forget the lesson! The flies! I can't take it anymore!
What's a Tove anyways? I wash my hands of it. So then, THEN, all the smoke detectors go off! Because the world hates me. And children come running from all over the house to try and figure out where the sound is coming from.
Fun Fact: I learned how to disarm a smoke alarm today. I am so growed-up.
THEN, I decided it would be wise to have a fire-safety talk with the youngsters about what to do if they heard that sound again. I look at Handsome Dude, and he is shaking with fear and sobbing.
HD (short for Handsome Dude . . . keep up!): Our HOUSE is burning down?!?!
*wail, sob, wail*
Me: No! It's not! And it probably won't! But if you hear that sound you need to get out of the house, ok?
HD: Is da fire gonna get me?
*sob, wail, sob*
Me: No! It's ok! There won't be a fire!
HD: I don't want my bike to burn!
And that's the point that he lost it. His bike.
I can't say that I blame him. It's a fine bike that has served him well.
So, yes. It's been a day. A DAY. And there are flies everywhere and I am out of Windex. But good news! It is Wednesday, and that is going to town day and I have coerced my husband into taking me out to our favorite Greek restaurant that sometimes has belly dancers whilst the kids are at Awana.
Yes. It is hunting season and I plan on taking full advantage of "hunting guilt." Mmm-hmmm.
Dinner tonight and a trip to Tennessee in a couple of weeks.
Mmmm-hmmm.
100(meaningless) points to anyone who knows why on earth I would go to Tennessee.
A fly just buzzed in my ear. I kid you not. I am living in filth.
Oh. I have nothing to blog about. Can you tell? I do want to tell you something cute about Little Dude and Awana. This is his first year and this is how every convo goes with him after we pick him up.
Lest any of you are confused, "convo" is short for "conversation." Yes. I am that cool.
Me: Hey, dude! What did you do at Awana?
LD: God!
Me: Did you learn anything?
LD: Um . . . God?
Me: What did you learn about God?
LD: Um . . . um . . . Jesus and God?
Me: Great! What's your verse?
LD: God!
He's going to be a great test taker. I can feel it.
Flies! I cannot live like this anymore! I'm signing off!
PS-
Say you are perusing The Facebooks and someone writes:
"I'm really sad."
And then you look at the comments and 4.2 million of this person's kin write:
"Why? What's wrong?"
And the original writer then writes:
"Oh. I'd rather not say."
Do you think that's annoying? Because I think that's annoying.
What say you?
Ok. Now I am going.
Ugh! I hate flies! Do you know what works really well? A fly swatter... you should invest in one! They even come in pretty-ish designs, like flowers and stuff. I would suggest you buy an electric fly swatter that resembles a medium tennis racket (the best fly swatter on earth) but they are illegal here... They do sell them in Europe however... you know, in case you ever just find yourself over there... They are awesome! You don't even have to wait until it lands on something to kill it... you just turn it on and swing for the fences. As soon as that fly hits the mesh you see a little spark and the fly is toast! Good luck with your fly hunting!
ReplyDeleteMy heart goes out to you, I hate flies with a passion...After all I come from the land of Aust and the great Aussie blow-fly ( the national bird you know)
ReplyDeleteI suggest next time you head into town you grab a packet of fly swatters...Give one each to the children and duck....During the "fly season" here Fl...(confused yet? I was born in and raised in Aust but now live in rural Florida)...I have been known to resort to those ugly sticky fly strips to get ride of the flies...I can't spray because of my cockatiels and my 3yr olds allergies...
In the meantime try a rolled up newspaper, not as effective as a swatter but gotta be better than the empty windex bottle.
Enjoy the dinner..
Blessings Kelsie
I am sitting here in Tennessee whilst I read this post. Are you coming to see me?
ReplyDeleteYES! That FB comment is totally annoying! You almost want to tell the person to just write "Hi, I need attention." In fact, I was so "immature" about someone who kept posting things like that that I "unfriended" them. Oh yes I did. And now I live with the guilt.
ReplyDeleteSorry about your flys. We have them too. I have vinegar traps all over the place here. Our house smells like pickles. It's nice.
I tried to do dictation-ish stuff here in my homeschool mess and I think I did it consistently for about um . . . . about one day. Gotta work on that. But at least that's all I have to work on. Everything else is totally cool and under control.
OHHHHHHHHHHHH The electric fly swatter is AMAZING!!!!!!!!!! I actually waited for flies to come in the house when I bought mine. They didn't come in fast enough, so I ran outside to play with it ;)
ReplyDeleteOkay, I'm cracking up because after you described your use of Windex, I was going to ask if you were trying to copy the dad My Big Fat Greek Wedding. (In case you haven't seen it, he uses Windex for every trouble and ailment.)
ReplyDeleteThen you said you were going to the Greek restaurant for dinner.
Ha! It's all Greek to me.
P.S. You're going to see Bimlissa.
P.P.S. Yum!
That would be *steals*...
ReplyDeleteUm, only if she steal your new skirt from Kohl's that I'm coveting...
ReplyDeleteI just showed my husband HD's bike. His reaction- Dear Lord, buy the kid some spraypaint for that thing! ... I thought you'd appreciate that.
ReplyDeleteI hate flies too. And you're totes going to see Bimlissa and then blog about it and regale us with fun stories! Yay!
THAT bike is identical to my 5 year old son's bike!!! Down to the bi-coloured tires. And the purple. He's cool with it.
ReplyDeleteFortunately for me, my homeschooled kiddos run screaming from the idea of attending an actual school. Still works as a threat. And we don't do dictation, because Sassy would be in tears. She cries over copywork, but less than over creative writing.
Sorry you had a day.
ReplyDeleteAfter what I thought was some proactive fire safety teaching on Josh's part, our kids are now petrified of a housefire as well.
Bimlissa.
God!
Wow! What a day you had!! Hope it gets better! I dislike flies also...I don't have any fancy electronic fly swatter but I do have a purple manual one and I take my frustrations out on the flies. Right now I have no flies in the house...and I'm fine with that!
ReplyDeleteYep, I love reading your stories. The end.
ReplyDeleteWe live in the country and have major fly issues due to neighboring farms, but I have finally come up with a solution that WORKS. It is super scientific and complex, but here goes. Pay your kids to kill them. I pay my son .25 per fly carcas he delivers to the garbage. Thus far I have paid him $17.00 this summer, but it was WORTH EVERY PENNY!! To save ya'll the time digging out your calculators, that comes out to 68 flies. GROSS!!
ReplyDeletep.s That facebook thing you hate so much is called "vaguebooking"
ReplyDeletecongratulations on "town day"!
ReplyDeletewe are suffering from various illnesses and had to skip Awana, and thusly the coveted 'town without kids' time. boo.
proud of you for using hunter-widow guilt advantageously.
dictation? boo.
flies = definitely pay your kids to wield the swatter. You could call it 'using flexible tools for improvement of hand eye coordination' and count it for school. Apparently, if you call stuff by the right name, it all counts for school.
For a gal with nothing to say, you sure put it well. :)
I teach in ruralville (same one you live near) and we are OVER-RUN with flies as well. All day in my classroom children are smacking their desks trying to kill the flies. Then, when I get to sit down for a moment at my desk, the flies are lighting on my computer screen and buzzing around my head. This sound is much like bees of which I am very much afraid. So, then I panic just a bit thinking a stray bee has wandered into my classroom. Then, that cause the kids to come running to my rescue to shoo the bee away and out the door. The fly just buzzes of happily while my world dissolves into craziness. Flies are the modern day version of the plagues they speak of in the Bible. Gotta reread and see how the "ancients" dealt with such. Will reply again if I figure it out.
ReplyDeleteThere is a fly swatter that actually counts how many flies you kill! Being a little competitive at our house, we have contests to see who can get the most! They are supposed to only live a day, I thought, but I swear there have been times where one lived in my car for a lot longer than that!
ReplyDeleteSOUNDS not sound and buzzes OFF happily not of....gotta proofread better before posting! Geesh. I teach English in said classroom and everything!
ReplyDeleteTry vacuuming them. Seriously. If you have a vac with a hose attachment, go after the flies with it. It is fun. I need a life.
ReplyDeleteIf that doesn't work, I will loan you my golden retriever. She chases flies and catches them. It is HA-Larry-OUS! You will laugh until you pee your pants AND your flies will be gone.
If all that fails, move to Alaska. I haven't seen one fly since we moved here. We don't have snakes either. Or creepy bugs of any sort really.
Oh, don't you just hate it when your home-ed kids want to go to school?! It always makes me feel so guilty. Just repeat to yourself, Mum knows best, Mum knows best ...
ReplyDeleteRe: Flies - have you tried treating your house with flea spray? Kills everything! They'll be dropping like, um, flies!
You will see Bimlissa in TENNESSEE
ReplyDeleteI hate flies. And obscure comments on Facebook. :)
ReplyDeleteFlies! Evil little things. They were worse this year than I can ever remember; from one end of the valley to the other. No one knows why. Friends were hanging fly strips in their houses! And resorted to outdoor electric fly zappers and battery operated swatters. Maybe they won't have them in Tennessee when you visit your dear friend, Bimlissa. At least I think that's her name. Anyway, one of your friends who had the nerve to move far far away.
ReplyDeleteBecause I am a know-it-all I can tell you that the dictation sentence is from "Jabberwocky" by Lewis Carroll. Though it is super weird to see it out of context. (It makes it sound like a fact book instead of a piece of fantasy.)
ReplyDeleteAlso, yay for getting to visit Bimlissa! You could potentially be close-ish to me. But I guess that depends on where she lives.
Oh, and the flies...bless your heart! I have fruit flies in the summer and they just about drove me crazy!
You could pick up some Windex when you visit Tennessee. Or visit people. Visiting people would probably be more fun. You should wave at all your blog readers on your travels, it wouldn't look funny waving down at everybody from the airplane, I'm pretty sure. Of course, I haven't been on a plane since I was two, so I may not be the expert, but you should wave anyway ;)
ReplyDeleteMy four-year-old panicked when he saw a firetruck at his school when I dropped him off the other day (I am not an awesome homeschooler). He thought the school was on fire and we had to talk to a fireman to get him to understand that they were just there to show the firetruck to the kids. After that I could peel him off of me and go in the building. It's a fun age.
One time, I tried to kill flies with hairspray. Oddly, this worked, because the hairspray stuck their little wings together and they fell to the ground, dying a sad, buzzy little death.
ReplyDeleteAnd I cared not.
(Also, yes to the FB question. It's annoying. Why else would you announce you were sad if you didn't want to talk about it? Keep it to yourself, then!)
I know why you would go to TN. That fb scenario has happened to me so many times! For that, and so many reasons, I don't do, and haven't done fb in over a year. Frustrating. You get info you don't want and none that you do want. You could look up your cousin while you're there - he's about an hour from there.
ReplyDeleteYes I think that is very annoying on FB.
ReplyDeleteThe smoke alarm story is funny. When I was pregnant, all of our smoke alarms went off in the middle of the night. Of course my husband was on a trip. I called him to see what I should do to get them to stop and his first question was, Is there a fire? I said I don't know. I didn't even think to check because smoke alarms always just randomly go off. So from now on I do try to check there isn't a fire before proceeding with yelling at my alarms for going off in the middle of the night because that is the only time they do!
You are having a time right now with everything, and I hope the flies go away for you sometime real soon. I can't stand flies, and I hate it when they land on me. Take a few deep breaths and things will get better. I hope you enjoyed your dinner at the Greek restaurant.
ReplyDeletefacebook statuses like that are soooooooooooooooooo annoying i cannot begin to tell you how annoying they are!! like i could hurt someone annoying!! kinda like flies!!! ;)
ReplyDeleteFor the flies: My Mom has these little contraptions that you plug into an electrical outlet that sends off this little sound (humans hear a really faint buzzing sound only if you are really close), they are supposed to keep the flies away. I asked if they worked and she answered "well, do you see any flies in here?". Nope, didn't see any... There are flies once in a while, buy way less than before. I think she bought these little thingies at The Dollar Tree.
ReplyDeleteI agree with everyone on the Facebook statuses. One girl in my "friends list"always writes stuff like "I would just love to fall asleep and never wake up", then, someone goes and talks to her family about it, because they are worried, and then she writes (in capital letters) "To the person who talked to my family, why don't you mind your own business, and stay out of my life???" Uh, well maybe because you publish everything there? If you want to keep it private, maybe you shouldn't post it. She is also the type who writes that she is sad or angry, but never says why... It irks me!
Say hello to Bimlissa for me! ;)
P.S. your bear gives me the pee pee shivers...
P.P.S. The bear comment shouldn't be posted in this comment thread, but on your next post, but I am too lazy to start another comment, so it's stayin' here. ;)
I feel your pain with the flies. We, too, have been combating them for some time. But thankfully, as it gets to freezing or below at night now, they are quickly dying off. And the cat is doing a good job of killing them too. Now we are dealing with small moles or shrews in our house! Thrilling times, I tell you! Even though I read your blog often, I hardly comment since you seem to get "so many." Haha! But I had to comment today about the flies, as well as the Facebook thing. I HATE it when people say things like "I'm so sad" or "I have an unspoken..." Why not just say nothing than be so vague? Its all an attempt to have people comment and pay attention to you, in my opinion..... :-)
ReplyDeleteI understand the unfriending guilt!
ReplyDeleteOh, the joys of social networking on the computer!
AAAUGH!
Have you beat your dear friend in that Facebook Words game lately?
ReplyDeleteHow about an exterminator? We also live in 'the country' and bugs just come with the territory. We have an exterminator who comes quarterly and life is much better now. It's not inexpensive but maybe you could have someone come out once just to get rid of the fly problem. That would make me nuts too.
ReplyDeleteFacebook-yes...that irks me too. A lot.
I'm glad you're getting a trip to Tennessee to see your best pal Bimlissa : )