I Am Cheating – Trying to Give the Appearance That I am Blogging

Hey…it was fun.  The “goof off” and “cynicism” statements were right on.

Your Five Factor Personality Profile

Extroversion:You have high extroversion.You are outgoing and engaging, with both strangers and friends. You truly enjoy being with people and bring energy into any situation. Enthusiastic and fun, you’re the first to say “let’s go!” Conscientiousness: You have medium conscientiousness. You’re generally good at balancing work and play. When you need to buckle down, you can usually get tasks done. But you’ve been known to goof off when you know you can get away with it. Agreeableness: You have medium agreeableness. You’re generally a friendly and trusting person. But you also have a healthy dose of cynicism. You get along well with others, as long as they play fair. Neuroticism: You have low neuroticism. You are very emotionally stable and mentally together. Only the greatest setbacks upset you, and you bounce back quickly. Overall, you are typically calm and relaxed – making others feel secure. Openness to experience: Your openness to new experiences is high. In life, you tend to be an early adopter of all new things and ideas. You’ll try almost anything interesting, and you’re constantly pushing your own limits. A great connoisseir of art and beauty, you can find the positive side of almost anything.

The Five Factor Personality Test

Time Out at the Science Fair

Craziness has taken over my life.  I submit to you just an example from this weekend’s festivities:

Saturday

·         8:00 am – Leave with Sophie for Science Fair judging.

·         10:30 am – still at Science Fair judging, waiting for John to come relieve me so I can take Maya to her end-of-session skating test.

·         10:35 am – John is late (on purpose, I swear)

·         11:15 am – Just barely make it to skating.  Maya passes on to the next level, Alpha 2.

·         12:15 pm – Meet John and Sophie at the fair, it begins to snow.

·         12:30 pm – The girls are so cold that they don’t even want to stay, but we spend some time in the buildings.

·         1:00 pm – We view Sophie’s hand woven bracelet that she made at school.  She got a blue ribbon.

·         1:30 pm – drive to Maya’s friend’s house.  I promised to help her Mom pack.  Remind me to tell you a bit more about this woman someday. 

·         Rest of afternoon and evening – help clean out garage.  It is so full of crap and garbage it is completely unbelievable.  There is actually rat crap everywhere.  I have to go outside every now and then to hide my gagging.  And I don’t gag easily.

·         8:30 pm – Take my girls and hers home for a sleep over.

 

Sunday

·         8:30 am – Take all the girls back to this woman’s house to help her pack up stuff inside this time.

·         8:45 am – Realize that the inside of her house is almost as filthy as her garage.  But on a good note, I found no rat poop.

·         8:45 – 10:30 am – Continually marvel at the amount of nastiness that can be in a kitchen.  Use lots of soap, cleaning supplies and magic erasers.  Discover that the walls are not actually gray, that they should be white.

·         10:30 am – Go to a co-worker’s house to help her fix her garbage disposal.  I am successful and victorious.  I also feel quite smug.

·         1:00 pm – 4:30 – Dive back into the filth.

·         4:30 – 5:30 pm – Somehow get the girls and I all showered and non-gross and head to the Fairgrounds for the Science Fair Awards Ceremony.

·         5:30 pm – Maya becomes a pouty horrible brat and is mean to Sophie through the whole thing.

·         7:00 pm – Sophie does not win a ribbon (except for participation) and tries to hold back tears.

·         7:05 pm – Maya teases Sophie about not winning.  On the way out of the building I pull her to the side and have a very INTENSE “talk” with her.  All the good Science Fair parents stare at us and fear for Maya’s life.  I tell Maya that “I will sit your ass down in the middle of all these people and give you a time out if you want to act like a three year old”.  Yes.  I said “ass” at the Science Fair.

·         7:06 pm – One of Maya’s friends from school walk by with her parents, they look at me like I might be too mean.  I look at them like I might rip their heads off if the say anything to me.

·         7:07 – 8:30 pm – Sophie cries a bit about no ribbon, but is okay.  Maya cries a lot and does a myriad of chores before going to bed.  I feel no remorse.

 

18/2 = Holy crap

Sophie turned 9 on Friday.  I hate 9.  Especially this one.  She is half-way to being officially grown-up.  And she is my last one.

Now, don’t get me wrong.  I completely realize that her becoming “grown-up” has nothing to do with her actually participating in life as a grown-up.  It is just an age, picked somewhat at random sometime in the past, that only symbolizes growing up.  God forbid, if she follows in her mother’s footsteps the real growing up will not happen for quite some time.  (I’m still waiting).

The day started, as all birthday’s do, with present opening.  Sadly she did not wake me at 5 AM this time and chose to sleep in.  What is that all about?

I bought her some ridiculous rose-colored sun glasses.  Everytime she puts them on she makes this face:

We then visited my work because the girls think it is the coolest place ever.  Sophie was not disappointed to see that while I have been on vacation, my wonderful coworkers covered much of my desk, including pencils, calculators, chair and scissors with aluminum foil.  They made me a crown, which Sophie claimed as her own and wore everywhere for the rest of the day.

 

After protecting her brain from alien invasion, we went to lunch a Chipotle with my wonderful friends from work.

Full of four (count ‘em – four!) tacos Sophie decided it was time to spend her $100 birthday present on fun new outfits for spring.  Sophie is a very colorful character, and this was reflected in her all of her chosen clothes, but was most apparent in this little number below.

A movie was next.  Nim’s Island.  It was beautiful cinemetography but I was a bit disappointed in the story.  It seemed long and dragged at points, but Sophie loooooved it – and that is all that matters.  On the drive home afterwards she fell so completely asleep that she slumped over sideways in the backseat and drooled all over her new sweatshirt.  If that isn’t the sign of a very good day, I don’t know what is.