A Conversation

Jerry and I had a conversation about the dog last night. It included the words "smother with a pillow" and also maybe the word "murder." Is that bad?

Here's the thing. Barney LOVES to play catch with a ball. He loves it with all his heart. So we provide him with tennis balls to occupy himself while we are not at home. Apparently, when a dachshund loves something with all his heart, he wants to bury it. So our backyard is a little dangerous to play football in, what with all the holes. It drives Jerry crazy. We made a rule that Barney can only have his ball when we are playing with him, so he won't bury it. Sounds like a good solution, right? Except that Jerry's garden is also in our backyard. And we have lots of tomatoes. Tomatoes vaguely resemble balls. Barney goes and gets tomatoes off the vine and buries them in the yard!! Well, you can imagine how well that went over. The kids and I tried to hide it for awhile, but Jerry caught on. Still, this did not lead to the above conversation. The straw that broke the camel's back occurred when we were standing in the kitchen watching the boys using each other as tackling dummies and realized what Barney was chewing on. THE FOOTBALL!!! That did it. You decide. Evil genius or just a really dumb dog?

So anyway, Luke is deep into football. He had camp every night last week, and then practice three times a week starting this week. He is there right now, as a matter of fact. We were initially a little hesitant about the coach and the team. Football is serious business here, and a lot of yelling goes on at practice - words like "wimp" are thrown around frequently. My boy is not linebacker material - he weighs in at a whopping 68 pounds. We moved here too late last year to get him on a football team, so he is a year behind the rest of his team. He and Jerry have spent a lot of time working in the backyard though, and he is coming along, learning to be aggressive. He got to play tight end on the starting offense at practice Thursday, and made some good blocks. We're cautiously optimistic that he will see at least some playing time in the games.

School went well for everyone.

• Jackson's first words when he got off the bus Thursday were "Mom, my teacher is soooo nice!" His classroom faces a courtyard, and they have a glass bird feeder built into the wall of their room so they can watch the birds come and go. They have a resident squirrel who lives there as well and is a frequent visitor to the bird feeder. What fun for first graders!
• Luke's classroom is one of two in a modular building in the parking lot of his very cramped school. They don't call it a modular - it is referred to as the "South Learning Annex." Whatever. It is actually very nice and I think the kids will enjoy being out there, especially as they are right next to the playground! Luke's teacher also seems very nice, and he has at least two of his buddies in his class.
  
• Aubrey's first words off the bus were "It was a very long day!" She did enjoy it, for the most part. She likes the freedom of sitting with friends at lunch and chatting in between classes. Her big event the first day was dropping her tray in the lunch room - yes, she dropped her tray on her first day of seventh grade. She was sitting at a table with all her friends though, so it could have been worse! She seems to have recovered.

And no, we wouldn't really murder our dog. I promise.