This., That and The Other

A random trail mix of thoughts because it’s too hot and too summery to string a single, coherent post together:

1. Behold… I am no marketing whiz, but I do love embarrassing my family and so….

Ta da!

Matching shirts. I don’t think we’d look too tourist-y if we all wore them on our trip to NYC this summer. Also, I couldn’t go with “I read This.” because, ahem, one of my kids still has not.

2. Speaking of This…. I had the weirdest dream that I was at a bookstore and the manager was telling me that a home school needed eight copies of  This. because it was required reading for some reason. I’m not sure why I was the one picking through the shelves, but I was stressing out because every copy had something wrong with it and I couldn’t find enough copies. I pulled seven, but then as I went through the stack, I discovered three books weren’t even mine, but some other read with a bright yellow cover. The ones left that were really mine all had problems. One was missing a cover, one was warped like water had fallen on it and I looked up at the ceiling and there was water damage so there had been a leak directly over my books. I never got to the bottom of things because the dog woke me up, but could this anxiety nightmare be the author equivalent of the teeth-falling-out dream?

3. Because summer has been underway for three weeks now, I think it’s time my kids cleaned out their backpacks. Finally. This is no longer something I supervise. Nooo way. Not after my oldest and most responsible once called me over to look at something weird she found in the front pocket of her pack and I peered inside and saw… maggots.

This spring, No. 3 couldn’t understand why his cinch sack — the one he drags along to the mall and sleepovers and occasionally school — smelled really bad. Like, his own sweaty feet after a basketball game bad mixed with the smell of dog breath and the kind of farts that can only come from lactose intolerance. Turned out it was moldy (!!!) swim trunks.

4. My car came with a free trial of Sirius, and No. 3 promptly found a hip hop/rap station. Guess what I learned? There is actually a rapper who goes by the name A Boogie wit da Hoodie. Which is funny and yet really, do you want people to make that word association with “booger” because now in every song I think I hear the word “booger.” And so I will actually say out loud, “Did he just say booger?” To which No. 3 replies with a sigh, “No, Mom.”