While I'm on the subject of Anthony

I don't know if I should post this, because it makes me look like a mean, sarcastic person who potentially causes her kids undue stress, but I'm sort of frustrated and annoyed and so hey, why not show my bad side. I've certainly done it before.

My husband drinks a beer every evening. Just one and really not an entire one. He pours a good amount of tomato juice in a beer glass and then fills the rest of the glass up with beer. Usually there is beer left in the bottle and I dump it down the drain, or add it to my food, depending on what I am cooking. You would be surprised at the wonderful flavor a good beer will leave in certain stews.

Greg used to drink a glass of wine every night but read that this new concoction was better for you and since he cares about his health he decided to go for it with the beer and tomato juice combo.

So the night before last he left his beer cap on the counter and usually this drives me nuts and I immediately pick it up and throw it away, but this time I didn't pick it up. Anthony did though. He saw it at some point and stuck it in his pocket and took it to school where he decided to take it out and show someone. Or as he put it, "well, I forgot it was there and then I was like Hey, what's this in my pocket,and I pulled it out and the teacher saw me and took it away. I'll go get my agenda."

His agenda is where he keeps his assignments and where the teacher writes notes when she has something nice to tell me about Anthony. Or something not nice, depending on what he's done. So right there in his agenda was the bottle cap, taped heavily onto the page, with a note written by his teacher and it said - Anthony said he took this off of your kitchen counter and took it to school. I explained to him that he can't show other children these sorts of things."

She didn't have to tape it to his agenda, did she? She could have thrown it away and simply sent a note home telling me what he had done. She could have written an amusing note in which she gently teased me about it, making me feel as though she understood she doesn't think I'm a drunk. She could have brought humor to the situation, because nothing makes me feel more at ease than when someone makes me laugh and lets me know they are not judging me. But something about the bottle cap being taped (and taped with several layers of tape, too) to his agenda made it seem so mean spirited and obnoxious.

So I figured if she wasn't going to bring levity to the situation, I would. I left the bottle cap taped to the agenda, because honestly, it would have taken a lot of work to remove it, and I wrote my own little note back... Mrs. X (not her real name) this must be the bottle cap from the beer me and Anthony split for breakfast in the morning. Kindly, A.M. Hacic.

And then I called Greg and we laughed, because Greg and I like to laugh together and we almost always find the same immature things amusing, which isn't always good. His laughing made me think it was a good idea to go ahead and send the note in, so I did. But as soon as I dropped Anthony off at school this morning, I wanted to go chase him down and tackle him and rip the page out of his agenda, because if there is one thing I have learned about his teacher over the past few months, it is that she has absolutely no sense of humor and she will perhaps take her annoyance out on Anthony.

Between this and the non-stop, loud farting my boy is a marked man. I am now sitting and waiting for him to get home so I can open the agenda and see if she wrote anything back. I only hope that at some point today she grew a sense of humor and found it slightly amusing.

Sunday Adventures with Anthony

Went to the 7:30 a.m. Mass, just me and him, because he was an alter server . It was his first time and he clearly had no idea what he was doing, as evidenced by his deer in the headlights look through the entire Mass.

He begged me to take him to McDonald's afterward, because he thought he had done such a bang up job (of standing at the alter and looking petrified)and said he deserved a treat. We sat staring at the drive thru menu screen for a couple of minutes while Anthony repeated the words, "um, I'm still deciding," over and over again, until he finally told me he didn't actually want anything now, but by lunchtime he would want something and so I could take him back then.

When we got home, Greg left with Kate and Jane for the 9:30 Mass and I was glad to be home in relative quiet, until I heard Anthony screaming and carrying on in a manner that led me to believe he was nearing death, and then I wasn't so glad to be home. His Nintendo ds broke and he just got it for Christmas and the world was ending and oh my goodness, how would he survive, I mean how was he going to go to the bathroom without his ds, which was where he happened to be when he found that it wasn't working.

I went in my room and laid on my bed and wondered. I'm not going to say what I wondered about. I just did a lot of wondering. I laid there while Anthony sobbed and screamed and I just figured the best thing to do was not say a word and let him deal with it by himself, which he did finally do.

I heard him pick up the phone and call a number and press a couple of other numbers, until he got the right person, and then I heard him say, "Hi, um, my ds isn't working but when I plug it in it goes on, but the screen is blank and I want to know why it's doing that. I just got it for Christmas. Why is it doing that?" And then he said a couple of other things and finally, "well, I don't have an email number, but my mom has an email number, do you want hers because she is home and I can ask her for her email number. Do you want it now? Hello? You want her email number now? Now?" I couldn't take it anymore and yelled out "address, email address, not email number," and then I got up and grabbed the phone and gave the Nintendo guy my email number and it turns out they are going to fix the thing for free.

Anthony had gotten the number for Nintendo off of the back of his ds. He was pretty proud of himself. It's amazing how resourceful he can be under certain circumstances. This a kid who consistently forgets to wash his hair when he is in the shower, but whatever, it's all about priorities.

After all of that excitement it was finally time to head back to McDonald's where he happily ate like a pig and consumed enough calories to start pestering me to bring him to the pool, which I agreed to do, because I guess when all is said and done, I can just never get enough time with Anthony.

No one else in the family wanted to go with us, so we headed off and after swimming for exactly two minutes he told me he was thirsty and if he didn't get something to drink he wouldn't be able to swim and we would have to go home. But I was relaxing and didn't want to go home, so I ignored him. I figured maybe he would be resourceful again and find a way to get himself a drink, which he did. It involved finding a glass behind the outdoor bar at the pool, (an outdoor bar that most likely hasn't been used in the past decade) going to the bathroom and rinsing it out with hand soap and filling it up with bathroom water. Hey, it's been several hours and he still isn't sick.

The water pleased him enough that we managed to stay a while longer and then we came home and had dinner and at seven p.m. he told me he had a book report due. Oops. He's been on vacation for the past week and half and he thought that was the perfect time to tell me about it. I told him he must be mistaken because I had checked his book bag last week and there was nothing in it indicating he had any homework. And he said "oh, well, I guess I left the assignment at school."

I had done a fair job all day of letting him solve his own problems so I decided to run with it and I said, "well, you're going to have to figure out what to tell the teacher, because I think you may have purposely left your assignment at school and I am not getting you out of this one." To which he said, "oh, I'll just go ask Hunter what we were supposed to do, he did his last week."

He headed down to the Hunter's house and asked him exactly what he was supposed to do for the report and came home and did his work and said, "see, no problem, my teacher will never know I almost didn't do it," but I'm guessing she might because it's almost as much of a bang up job as his first attempt at alter serving.

Anthony, I really love you, but you wear me out in so many little ways. My hope for you is that you grow up and get married and have a son just like you, because only then will you realize how exhausting you are. But really, I do love you...even when I got that phone call today from the nurse telling me you had gotten in trouble for farting really loud, over and over and over again, I still love you, maybe even a little more than I did yesterday.