Liars, Late Nights and Cheapskates

So I go home Tuesday for lunch. Kayla is home all day – she didn’t work on Tuesday. For some reason, she decides to spend lunch ‘with me’… talking to me- walking with me – sitting with me… odd.

She had been fighting with this friend of hers, Emilie. Emilie and Kayla had been the best of friends all summer. Spending the night at her house often times, talking to each other all the time, etc. But they had a fight the other day because Jackie thought Kayla was wearing one of her shirts. It was a $5 shirt and Kayla said it was hers. Kayla wears a small, Emilie a medium. Not to mention, Kayla says, if she wanted a $5 shirt, she would go out and BUY it – just like she did all the other gazillion shirts in her closet. (Her closet is FULL let me tell ya, she has spent all her money this summer on clothes!) Anyways, they had been fighting, and now they made up – apparently – so --- good. I don’t want to hear the details – high school drama – just tell me if you are friends now or not, and I’m good with just that knowledge.

Well, Kayla was following me around like a little lost puppy at lunch Tuesday, which I found odd. But, of course, I’ll take the time with my Niece when I can get it so I enjoyed it. Sure enough, at the very end of lunch as I’m getting ready to go to work – she asks the question I knew had to be coming. (There is ALWAYS a question!!) “Can I go to Emilie’s house this afternoon?” Yeah… I knew she wanted something. Ha ha ha ha ha. I make sure she has a ride there and a ride home and I tell her that of course she can.

Well, later that night I’m getting ready to go out. I have a ‘Girls Night Out’ party I’m going to. I don’t get out with ‘the girls’ much, and I’m pretty excited about the night – quite honestly. I have to leave work at 5, run home and get changed, get Jonathan to piano practice at 5:30, run out and get a bottle of wine, be back and pick Jono up at 6, bring him home, then be at the party by 6:30. No time to play around in my schedule – ya know? So… Kayla calls in the midst of all of this.

She tells me “so, is it still okay if I spend the night with Emilie like you told me earlier I could?” I said…. “What? I told you earlier you could do what?” She said that earlier I said she could spend the night with her. I said I must have been loopy – because I don’t recall that conversation at all. Then I sat for a second and completely recalled the conversation. I remembered Kayla sitting with me all through lunch, waiting to ask me if she could go over her house. Never mentioned spending the night. NEVER.

I have to point out how often these kids do that. They will BRING clothes to spend the night WITH them on purpose. THEN ask later. “Oh, well I brought my clothes so when I asked you later and you said yes, I’d have my clothes….” Well – why didn’t you just ASK me earlier?

It just flew all over me that she told me that she had asked me and expected me to think that I had just forgotten a conversation that never happened. And then I fully and completely recalled that entire lunch conversation – watching Ellen DeGeneres with her and eating Mac and Cheese and she only asked if she could go over there for the afternoon. She was going to get a ride over and back with Roberto. Gosh, I was SO ANGRY.

Course, like any good Aunt, I told her to ask Uncle Chris. I didn’t want to get involved. I was too angry.

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It’s been a few days since I posted that part up there about Kayla. A week actually. Sometimes I’ll just write out a frustration and then give it a bit and hope to get back to the blog. In this case, I didn’t get back to it. Oh well…. Sorry about that.

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Hey, what is it with God’s sense of humor – now that I’m getting older, with those strange chin hairs that grow one at a time really long? And then… some of my eyebrows are getting gray? What’s up with that? At first I thought they were blonde. Then I realized………… nope………… gray. Is that some kind of old-lady joke? I’m not ready to be an old lady yet!!!!!!

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So today is Saturday morning. Chris and I got in last night from a show and tried to get the kids who were here to bed in bed at a reasonable hour. It was 11 pm and Kayla, Justin and Jonathan were home. Jonathan went right to bed. Justin wanted to play video games – Kayla was on the back porch with Sean (a kid who practically lives here) and some girl whom I do not know at all.

Why these two were at my house at 11pm with no adult home I have NO idea and I didn’t like it ONE bit. I told Kayla to have those two leave the house immediately and Kayla went to bed. I told Justin to go to bed, and the resistance began. As it always does.

You see, Justin LOVES X-Box. He’s always in the middle of something that – apparently – you can’t just turn off. I don’t care what I do or how I try to prepare him, he’s never ready to go to bed on time. I can tell them to “prepare for bed at 11:30 so they are IN BED AT MIDNIGHT” (we only changed their bedtime to 10 this week because school was starting Monday) and still, at Midnight, I will find Justin – in the game room, remote in hand, in the middle of some ‘war’, asking me “Auntie Tina, can’t I just finish this one game???”

ALWAYS

I can tell him to just do WHATEVER HE PERSONALLY HAS TO DO to be ready for bed at whatever time, and he is just NEVER ready on time. Nor is Kayte, but that’s another story.

So last night when he asked me if he can finish this one game… I……. I………… lost it. I screamed my bloody head off. At the top of my lungs. I literally screamed “NO, YOU CAN NOT FINISH THIS GAME!!!” I was just soooooo tired of hearing him ask the damn question every day. Chris got up and said, “I’ve never heard you yell at him like that.” Well, ya know, it needed to be done.

We stood there and tried to tell Justin why he needed to go to bed. He tried to tell us that it was a Friday night and he should be able to stay up as late as he wanted to. Well – Justin has football practice at 7:30 tomorrow morning. He’s supposed to be up at 6:30 getting ready for it. If he went to bed at midnight, would he be in top physical shape in the morning? Would he be rested? Justin seemed to think he’d be fine. Of course he did… he’s 16.

At 7:30 this morning my alarm goes off. If we don’t leave the house at 7:40, he’s late for practice. I don’t hear any movement downstairs. This doesn’t sound good. I get up… go to his room… and guess who is still sound asleep in bed?

Justin. Mr. I-can-stay-up-late-and-it-not-affect-me.

I considered going back to bed and letting him suffer to consequences of his actions, but I decided against it. I woke him up and told him we were leaving in 5 minutes. I got dressed and hear Justin putting clothes in the dryer.

The dryer?

I asked…. “what are you doing?”

Justin tells me he has his clothes he’s supposed to wear today that he washed yesterday that need to be dried. IN FIVE MINUTES? More like four now.

I took him to practice with soaking wet clothes and sleep in his eyes. He said he was fine and his clothes were just ‘damp’. Yeah… okay.

Frustrating.

I can’t wait for school to start and more of these bedtime drama posts to happen. Get ready folks….

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Kayte told me the other day that she still needed shoes for school. I thought I was done school shopping, but I guess we are not. She had gone to the mall with her friends and done all her own school clothes shopping – and I guess I figured she had bought all her own stuff. She said she didn’t or couldn’t get shoes. So, today we’ll go get some shoes.

I decided to try to take her down to the base to get them. My boss told me I needed to try to get an AAFES Star Card, which I can talk to them about getting while I’m out there. If I get this “Star Card”, I can shop for things the kids need online and have them shipped to the house – TAX FREE (as an AAFES member because they are military). Things from appliances to jewelry to clothes. Worth looking into for sure.

I also need some groceries, so while I’m out at the base, I’ll go to the commissary as well. I think I’ll be allowed to go out there too. Although I think only one of us is allowed there so maybe Chris and I both can’t go… I don’t know. Guess I need to think about that, because I really wanted him to go with me. The commissary only allows one ‘guest’ and since I’m a ‘guest’ because I’m non-military… we’ll just have to see how it goes. I’ll bet they’ll let us in. The funny thing is, Kayte will have to buy everything.

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Speaking of things we need to buy at the store.... that reminds me of something that happened last night that I told Chris was totally a funny blog-story. Oh gosh - I can't even believe I'm going to tell you all this story.

So.... Chris and I are getting ready to go out last night.

We are penny-pinchers to the max. The kind of people who use every inch of toilet paper on the roll before throwing it away. Well -- I'm in the shower last night and Chris had just gotten out of the shower and was looking for his deodorant. I am in the shower shaving my legs with this cheap-ass razor where every time I use it it looks like something from a horror movie they cut my legs so bad. Actually they are not cuts, it's razor burns because they are such cheap blades. We got them at Sams I think really cheap in a big gazillion pack because of the kids. (The girls shave so much and heck, even Justin shaves his arms). And hey - razors are expensive. So.....

I'm shaving my legs.... with soap. Because shaving cream is too expensive, of course. The bar of soap is just a sliver. And I mean SLIVER of soap. Probably the size of a quarter. Literally. But, hey - you can't throw it out -- it's still SOAP! Here I am, shaving my legs with my sliver of soap and cheap-ass cut-up-my-legs razor --- and Chris pulls out his deodorant.

As he pulls off the cap, there is such a small amount left that the whole top thing comes out and falls to the floor. Yeah, a TINY bit left. Chris carefully pinches up what fell on the floor and holds it in his fingers and uses that -- putting it under his arms. Carefully as to not drop it again.

Then moves over to the other hand and does the other arm.

At one point we catch each other in the eye. I see his deodorant. He sees my soap. We realize what we are both doing. AND JUST LAUGH.

Oh my gosh -- are we cheap or what????????????

Yeah -- totally blog worthy. I've GOT to go shopping. On the top of my list -- soap, razors, deodorant. But we won't start using them until we finish what we've got here at home.

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1 Corinthians 13:4-7

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.