Wednesday, September 07, 2005

Do You Want Fries With That?

ARGH!!!! I hate homework! Especially when it's not mine. My son came home today, with math and English homework. Today was the official first day of school. I can handle the English. I tutored Senior English when I was a sophomore in high school, so basically, no problem on that side. But math. BLAH!

The rule in this house is that the homework gets done, before we even think about football practice. I told his coach "too bad." He said, he totally understood, homework comes first, blah, blah, blah. But I knew the whole time, that he was using what was left of his mental abilities to not roll his eyes. Whatever. My kid was late to practice today.

Have you ever tried really hard to remember crap you learned in eighth grade? I did that tonight. I now have a headache. I called my best friend, who always did my math homework, while I did her English stuff, (don't tell my kid) to see if she could help us out. I figured it was too hard to explain over the phone. HA! *The bitch was doing it in her head!

I will never understand how some people can do this stuff. But then again I know that she has no idea what a 'collocation' is, (putting words in conjuction with each other i.e; 'train depot'). But I have to ask her to remind me what a denominator is. Anyway...I guess we all suck in different ways.

My head hurts, my kid's head probably hurts, and he is finally at football practice. My life is nuts, just plain nuts. But above all else, I have to agree with my son; homework bites.

*Bitch was meant in a good way,

Monday, September 05, 2005

Survival of the Fittest

School shopping sucks. Just plain sucks. Yesterday, I took my son on the dreaded tour of stores. Ugh. Since he starts school tomorrow, then you can tell that I put it off until the last minute.

Armed with "The List", off we went. First shoes. Now, we are not rich so the $47.00 was a big ouch. Although, that is not too bad since he wears men's size 13 1/2. The crappy part was that inexpensive shoes that a 14 year old would want to wear, do not come in a lot of variety. I think he had about four different ones to choose from. But we managed to make it out of the shoe store in under an hour. Whew!

Then I thought we would stop at ShopKo, and get everything else. At this point I am only concerned with the crap on "The List" the school sent me. As soon as we walked into the store, I realized my mistake. My misguided idea of hitting Labor Day sales. Yeah, right. Most of the school stuff was gone. Gone, to be replaced with Halloween junk. Where all the bright yellow pencils should be, I see wands. Masks, and costumes where the back packs should be. Crap. What to do, what do to!?! Well, we managed to get the pencils, pens and tablets, but for probably more than what I could of paid for it, if I had gone shopping weeks ago. But they didn't have all we needed. Soooo....

On to the dreaded Walmart. Gawd, I hate that store. I pull into the lot, and of course the only spots left were somewhere near Guam. My son had to get out and move a cart for me since someone left it in the middle of the only spot left in this abyss of a lot. I would have taken that cart to use in the store, except it had some mysterious goo on the push bar. Eww.

As we trek our way to the front doors, we were followed by two separate cars. I'm thinking that they thought we were going to our car, and wanted our spot, but why I don't know, since we were walking towards the store, not away from it.

Did I mention that this particular Walmart is under construction? Yup, they are changing it into a SuperCenter Walmart. Just what that is exactly is unclear to me. Is it going to have a giant red cape flying from the roof? I don't know, but the remodel has everything totally messed up. I try not to go to Walmart anyway, but now I really don't know where anything is! They moved all the stuff on the floor around, but without moving the signs dangling from the ceiling!

We ended up only buying socks, t-shirts, and boxers. It still put me back $27 bucks. Jeez. I think that all the little kids working in the sweat shops to make this stuff for Walmart are getting ripped off. They pay them 9 cents to make a pair of socks, and the stores get a 1'000'000 % mark up. That's crap. But of course I didn't get to pay my $27 until after standing in line behind the world's stinkiest person, who's only purpose in life seemed to be making kids, and screaming at them. (Why do some people not shower? I don't care if you are poorer than poor, it does not cost money to at least rinse off the grime from let's say...the last week or two.)

Oh here's a funny side bar: At one point my son went walking off with the cart as I was standing in line. I hollered for him when I starting getting close to the register, (I didn't want to lose my place in line behind the Stinky Empress of Multi-Baby Makers), he came up to me, and quietly said, "Mom, just because we are in Walmart, doesn't mean you need to scream for me from across the store." That's my boy. I guess he does pays attention some times. And it's kinda scary.

So, we made it out alive, after being followed by two more cars. I guess they really wanted to park in Guam. Although one of them gave up after the first mile or so, the second one just waited patiently while I loaded up the rig, and backed out. I really think that Walmart needs valet parking, although it might take too long for some people to show the valets how to start the car with the makeshift key made out of a coat hanger. And if some had to show proof of insurance, they would be screwed.

I still have some shopping to do, so...wish me luck.
.Image by FlamingText.com

Image by FlamingText.com