Usually, I make sure the kitchen is mostly cleaned up before going to bed at night. Clean dishes are put away, dirty dishes are in the washer, and the washer is set to start during the night. So in the mornings, we can start our breakfast time with a clean slate — the sink looks like this:

One day last week, Wifegrit was out of town overnight. So that meant it was my job to get the boys ready for school in the morning. After the boys had eaten their breakfasts and made their lunches, (they make their own breakfasts and lunches, with adult supervision), the sink looked like this:

Now, I hadn’t had the time to empty the dishwasher of the clean dishes from the night before, so I couldn’t just load these into the washer. If I wanted a clean sink again, I had to do them by hand. When Wifegrit came home that afternoon, I wanted her to walk in to a neat kitchen. (It’s a minor thing, but it’s nice to not walk into a messy house.) So I did those dishes by hand. The sink was clear, and the drying rack looked like this:

Do you see that? For the boys to make and eat breakfast and make their lunch, it messed up 5 plates, 2 bowls 2 cups, a few utensils, a cutting board, and some other odds and ends. Two. Boys.

I had to run upstairs to get my backpack and make sure all the bedroom lights and fans and radios were turned off for the day. When I came back downstairs to the kitchen for one last look through, the sink looked like this:

What the hell!? Everyone was packed and ready for school. But somehow more dirty dishes magically appeared. How? I threw up my hands and quickly washed those surprise dishes.

Happily, when we walked out the door, the sink was empty and the kitchen was neat. I didn’t think to ask Wifegrit about it, but I wonder if more dishes had appeared in the sink by the time she got home that afternoon.

Bullgrit

When you’re buying a new bedroom suit, you consider style, color, size, and a whole lot of variables. But something we never thought about was how comfortable the headboard of the bed would be. The headboard. We bought our current bed three years ago when we moved into this new house, and we’ve slept in it just fine all this time. But there’s an aspect of this bed that’s uncomfortable — when sitting up, to read a book or watch TV, the headboard is aggravating.

Here’s our headboard:

Pretty and decorative, right? Wifegrit picked it out, and I approved of it. (Read: I didn’t care one way or another, so long as she was happy with it.) But notice the cross . . . things? What is that design called? I have no idea. Anyway, whatever that is, it’s aggravating.

When sitting up in bed, to read or watch TV, those cross things hurt the back of our heads. You might think, “Well, just place your head in the center of one of the diamonds.” That’s easier said that done. No two people are the same height, so you have to position pillows and back and shoulders perfectly to fit your head in the exact spot on the headboard. Then you can’t move or shift at all. (Forget turning your head to talk to the other person.) And that’s assuming the perfect position for your head between the cross things is even comfortable to the rest of you, like your back.

Sometimes I’ve found the sweet spot for my head while reading, and then after a while, I’ll slide down a bit to get more horizontal or to get more under the covers, and ow! Dammit, those cross things ruin the comfort.

So now we’re trying to think of a way to fix this problem. Can we cover the headboard with some kind of upholstery, can we replace just the headboard, or do we have to buy a whole new bed? We’ve lived with the aggravation/discomfort for a few years now, and it’s reached a point that we just can’t put up with it anymore.

As I was writing this post, I just started searching the web for a solution. Interestingly, either Bing has already read this text, and therefore knows what I’m thinking about, or we’re not the only ones with this issue.

Bullgrit

Imaginary things have such real meaning to kids.

Playing Minecraft, Calfgrit8 gave Calfgrit12 a diamond sword. A diamond sword is made by crafting three diamonds with one stick of wood. Now, diamonds are not easy to find in Minecraft, but I can get a couple or so just about every time I mine deep — which is pretty much every time I play for an hour. We each have several diamonds saved up. I could make probably six diamond swords right now, but I don’t really need anything better than iron.

Anyway, so CG8 gave his big brother an imaginary item in an online game. Big brother hung the item on a wall in his imaginary house in the online game. A little while later, CG8 had giver’s remorse, and wanted the item back. Well, actually, he wanted stuff in exchange for the diamond sword. CG12 argued that it was a gift, not an exchange. But what CG8 wanted for the sword was stuff so easy to collect, bones and seeds — stuff you can accumulate accidentally in 30 minutes of playing. Even so, CG12 argued that he shouldn’t have to give anything in exchange for a “gift.”

So CG8 went to his brother’s imaginary house in the game, and took the sword off the wall and back to his own house. And all hell broke loose in our real home.

“You stole my diamond sword!” CG12 shouted.

“No, you stole it from me!” CG8 shouted.

“You gave it to me!”

“I wanted to trade!”

Now it should be noted that Calfgrit8 plays on the computer upstairs, and Calfgrit12 plays on the computer downstairs. So the shouted argument was loud enough for them to harangue each other 30 feet apart, around walls, and up/down a stairway. I let it go on for a couple of minutes, thinking, (read: hoping, praying), they would solve it without my needing to get involved. But it kept going. Then CG12 came upstairs, and CG8 met him at the top of the stairs, where they continued shouting and threatened physical violence on each other. I had to step in at that point.

I had to shut down the Minecraft play time to take each boy separately into another room to ask exactly what had happened and was going on. They both told me the situation, but of course with their own personal twisted perspective. At the time I stepped in, CG8 had his diamond sword. I ruled that he keep it and CG12 should just let the incident go. CG12 didn’t need the sword — he had just hung it on the wall of his imaginary house for decoration. If he actually wanted the sword, he could trade what CG8 wanted for it. But no, he decided it was the principal of the matter, and he refused to trade even the easy trash his brother was asking for.

You know, parenting is hard enough when arguments and fights break out over real world toys. But it gets absurdly difficult when the struggles are over completely imaginary things that can so easily be duplicated and replaced by just continuing to play the game they’re playing for fun.

Bullgrit

Last Friday, (Jan 4), was my oldest son’s 12th birthday. For his birthday party he wanted me to take his friends out to see The Hobbit in the theater. So Wifegrit and I planned it out:

The best show time for this was 4:00. The boys would come over to our house right after school, I would leave work at 3:00, and we’d get out the door a little after 3:30.

When I got home a little before 3:30, all eight 6th graders were in my house eating snacks — cheesy bread, nachos, pretzels, carrots. We wanted them full before the movie so I didn’t have to spend $100 on popcorn. The boys were loud and excited, but only two were really sort of over the top. When time came, Wifegrit and I herded the boys out to our vehicles. She’d take 5, (including Calfgrit12), in her van, I’d take 3 in my truck. She’d drop them off and I’d take them in for the movie, then she’d come back to help bring them home.

With the boys all loaded in the vehicles, we headed off to the theater. The three boys in my truck were getting a bit rowdy, so to distract them with a “game,” I plugged in my iPhone to the stereo system. At the first red light, I opened my music player and pulled up a song.

“Let’s see if you can identify this music,” I said.

Within the first few notes, one of the boys shouted, “The James Bond theme!” And he was right. That was probably a bit easy, especially considering there’s a James Bond movie in theaters right now.

At each red light, I chose a different song. After a few moments, another boy shouted, “‘Moby Dick’ by Led Zeppelin!” Holy crap, right again!

I pulled up another song. After a few moments, the boys were banging their feet and clapping their hands to “We Will Rock You” by Queen. They knew that song too. “Do you have ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’?” they asked.

“Of course I do,” I said. But looking through my library of songs, I discovered, much to my surprise, that I don’t have that. Wow, what a glaring hole.

I switched to another song, but they didn’t know “Sledgehammer” by Peter Gabriel. One of the boys requested, “Can you play more Led Zeppelin? That’s mine and my dad’s favorite group.”

I put on another Zeppelin song. We talked about how surprised I was that they knew so many classic songs. They mentioned several classic artists they knew, and as we were about to pull into the theater parking lot, I put on “Don’t Stop Believin'” by Journey. Not only did the boys recognize the song immediately, they joined me in singing along.

Just a small town girl

living in a lonely world

She took the midnight train goin’ anywhere.

These are 6th graders, 11 and 12 years old. And they know these songs from their parent’s youth.

Finally we pulled into a parking spot and all got out to join the boys unloading from Wifegrit’s van. I already had tickets, purchased the day before, and we headed in for the movie.

Bullgrit