Good intentions

Of course I've been meaning to write. Almost wrote a post last night, but was too tired.

I got a lot of good work done yesterday. I fixed a rather elaborate dinner. It wasn't all that fancy, but I ended up spending a lot of time in the kitchen. It was a good meal, too. Roasted chicken, low fat sweet potato casserole, and a simple salad that Superman made. Oh, and homemade yeast rolls. It's the dessert that took so much time and used so many eggs. I made an angel food cake, using a dozen egg whites. That left me with a dozen egg yolks. So I made a big double recipe of chocolate pudding. Have you ever made pudding from scratch? It's time consuming. Not terribly difficult, though not  simple either. Anyway, I had fun with it. Dinner was a success, the food part anyway. The table conversation, not as much.

Because the kids were at the table with us. Diva and Sproing got deeply involved in a spat. Again. For the second night in a row. Twitch didn't help, adding his opinions to the fray. And right now, honestly, I can't even remember which particular mess happened last night or the night before. And I don't remember details of the arguments either.

One of the things I was going to say last night is that I'm doing better with the kids. I've been more involved in the household, spending a bit less time hiding in my room. That seems to help some. Sometimes. And yesterday morning I woke up before 5. I lay in bed thinking about making waffles, and finally got up and did that. That's one of the things that kept me in the kitchen for so long yesterday. I made a huge quadruple batch of waffles, with plenty of leftovers to freeze. Think Eggos, only better. That used 8 eggs right there. Yeah, I went through about two dozen eggs yesterday, all things considered. The sweet potato casserole used one, the dinner rolls used another couple. I had a brief nap after lunch, but had to get up to pick up Sproing from bad kid school. He gets out at 1:45. School starts around 8, more or less. I can't remember exactly. Superman takes him in the morning, I usually pick him up in the afternoon. It's a relatively short school day. Shorter by an hour than the elementary schools. Think of it, though, a whole school program full of troublesome students like Sproing. They don't hang on well throughout the day (Sproing's medicine wears off early sometimes) and who wants to deal with that much grief for a long time? So yeah, they only have about five hours of school. I guess that qualifies legally as one day's instruction. They have to get their required 180 days in. Except for when the kids get suspended. Which Sproing did last week. Did I mention that? Yeah, he got suspended from bad kid school for three days. What a mess. Kinda like this paragraph, which is a huge mess. Let's leave this particular travesty and begin another paragraph, shall we?

So, better at dealing with these kids, right? Well, maybe. Or not. Let's discuss today. (Must we?) (Yes, Java, go ahead and get it out. It'll be alright. Take a deep breath, be calm, etc.) This morning I got a call from the high school, from one of the assistant principals. Diva was in trouble and needed to be taken home. Her regular assistant principal was out of the office today, so another one had to fill in. Diva was not suspended or anything, just sent home for today. Because she was not cooperating in class or something. What she did was get up and walk out of a class after the teacher refused to allow her to leave. That's the mood she's in. She got into some argument with another student or students before school and let this attitude affect her behavior. So she was sent home. Except she wouldn't come out to the truck when I got there. So I went in to get her, but she wouldn't go with me, she wanted to see her guidance counselor. Fine. We go in to see the counselor. She doesn't want me to go with her. Tough, I'm your mom and you don't get to choose these things. She told the counselor about the drama with the other girls. He said something like "OK, I see that problem, but look at your choices now. You are the one who's letting this attitude affect you. You can't change their behavior, you can only control yours." You know, that sort of thing. She huffed out his office and went back to class. WTF? She's been sent home, she can't go back to class! I didn't know where she was and asked the nice lady in the attendance office to help find her. Yeah, the kid went to her next class. The nice attendance lady (she really is a nice woman. I like her.) sent someone to escort Diva to the front office where I was waiting to take her home. You can imagine Diva's attitude by now.

We got in the truck, I told her to put on her seatbelt, and she refused. Good gods, is this how it's gonna be? So I turned the truck off. We aren't moving until you put on your seatbelt. Fine. We sat there for 45 minutes. In the heat. (Thankfully it isn't as hot and humid as it has been.) I ended up calling for the school resource officer to help. He got her to fasten her seatbelt. We came home. I told her she is grounded for the long holiday weekend (they are out of school Monday, oh my aching ass). She wouldn't give me her phone, but called her boyfriend (he's 13. Where is he that he can talk to her in the middle of a school day?). Anyway, a bunch of yada yada yada like this shit for a while. Superman came home. He tried to reason with her. Nope, no good. So he spanked her with his belt. No good. She ran off. We called the police to report her as a runaway. She actually came back home, was in the back yard but we didn't know it. Sproing saw her back there. So the nice police officer came over, talked to her, talked to Superman and me a bit.

Before Superman went back to work he talked to Diva again, this time she listened. She did her laundry (one of the things I told her to do) and said she would clean her room and the bathroom. I haven't checked up on that yet. I keep thinking I'll get up and go check, but alas, I can't seem to motivate my butt off this bed and away from the computer. Yeah, I'm afraid of her. My defenses don't want to subject me to her presence.

I took away the curtain from her window. I took away her rat (hamster, but whatever). There isn't a whole lot that she has that we can take away. Oh, about the phone. She refused to give the phone to her dad, so he went to the mobile phone store and had it disconnected. So she might have the physical phone, but she has no way to call, text, etc. anyone she wants to talk to. I think she can still call the emergency number, so that's good there, I guess.

Superman called a few minutes ago, asked about supper plans. I have some stuff I can throw together for dinner, but he wants to go out to our default location. So he's picking up some cheap nasty take out pizzas for the ne'er-do-wells and we'll go out tonight. I wonder if that's the best decision. Perhaps we should stay here to supervise the mayhem. But I can't think clearly right now. He says he's considered it, and the best option is to get away from them for a couple of hours. Hopefully pizza will placate them for that long.

I really don't know what else to say. There are some other things happening in my life, I think. I sewed some this week. Made a dress that I plan to paint. It's a plain muslin thing I put together to test the pattern. I want to use the pattern on other fabric, but want to make sure the pattern works for me. So I have this white dress that, for the most part, works pretty well except the color. So I'm going to paint it so it looks fantastic. That's the plan. I have to be more calm and sane than I have been today for that to work at all. I tried to do a couple of other things this afternoon, but was too frantic and scattered to accomplish anything except sitting here playing Mahjong Titans and surfing the 'net. I hate this crazy feeling. I really thought I was starting to get my shit together better than this, but I didn't count on the Diva Explosion. I suppose I should have. She always does this eventually.

Hell, I don't want to talk about her anymore right now. I'll post this, change my shirt, put on some shoes in preparation for going out with my wonderful husband. Yeah, that's the plan.