Sticky Bomb

1-15-15

The sick fog is starting to lift.

The boys came home yesterday, chattering on like monkeys. They were worked up due to a conversation with a friend and subsequent sprint home. Their friend, Chris, with whom they walk to and from school with was apparently feeling the need to brag yesterday. While the three discussed the WWII book Bobby had checked out from the library, Chris explained that his father had been in WWII. In addition to this incredibly unrealistic tale, he proceeded to tell the boys about the full arsenal of weapons he has at his house. He then, in a hushed whisper, told the boys that he had a sticky bomb in his backpack.

Bobby, being sensible, didn’t want to take any chances with this data. He was familiar with the term sticky bomb and knew that if Chris was telling the truth it wouldn’t be a good idea to be near him while carrying something that could injure them all severely. So he instructed Dax that they needed to be far away, and they proceeded to run the rest of the way home.

Of course, I don’t want to be one of those parents whipping up the community into a needless frenzy over some kid who was most likely just bullshitting his buddies in order to feel accepted. That being said, I also don’t want to be one of those parents who is interviewed after the school is in rubble due to a kid having brought some explosive because no one believed him.

I had the boys tell me the story and I wrote down key components lest I forget anything. I then proceeded to have them tell Ken when he got home so as to make sure we were all on the same page. Ken is going to speak to the principal this morning just to make sure that the boy understands that if he was lying, this is something to not joke about. If he wasn’t lying, he shouldn’t be bringing a bomb (active or not) to school!

As much as I could be freaked out, the emotion that stands out this morning is pride. Not only did my boys do the right thing by not sticking around, their first instinct was to tell me everything that took place. In addition to this, Bobby’s first sentence to me was, “Mom, I don’t think we should hang out with Chris anymore since I don’t think we can trust him.” I am beaming!

As if my mommy ego wasn’t fluffed up enough, Bobby also brought home the slip of paper informing me of his award he would be receiving on Friday. He was selected for the creativity award. Yay!

As much as I had planned on being lazy yesterday, I ended up taking some time to clean the old cat tree and move it up to the living room. I had not expected it to be quite so heavy. I felt like I was lugging a body up the 3 steps, which seems like it shouldn’t be a big deal, but it is. My perseverance paid off in the form of quite the acrobatic show staring Bits and Sissy swinging and chasing one another all over both cat trees at top speeds. Totally worth it!

I also found myself inspired randomly to clean out the pantry. It has come to my attention that small amounts of pot tend to not relax me so much as energize me to do things. It is a strange phenomenon. I certainly cannot complain since it means not only am I productive, I am all kinds of chipper doing it.

Tonight is the second half of management training. I made sure that the boys were ahead of the game yesterday with homework. I am grateful that this afternoon Ken is home which means he can help Dax with the math work. I am horrible in helping them with that. I find myself getting lost in the question which then is complicated when Dax argues the way I do the problem. He is dead set on working the problem the way Mr. Chin showed him, but if he is wrong in his answer, he can’t see that since he used the “correct” path. He had division problems last night that were relatively straight forward like 49 divided by 7. He would then use the procedure he was taught and kept coming up with answers with remainders, which was not ever going to be the case. It was frustrating all around.

I sometimes wish I could take a class on how to explain things to people. I don’t have the correct words to express how a problem is done. Or in the case this morning, I have a customer that doesn’t understand that 3 invoices can be part of one sales order and one purchase order. He thinks the 3^rd bill must be a mistake, yet he hasn’t reviewed his entire PO to determine what was ordered. It is hard to explain these things to so many people. I don’t know that this is always their fault.

Sigh, time to dive in to the land of work.