Well, Saturday night, I took the kids outside and we worked in the yard, cleaning up, putting in a few last minute pepper plants and watering everything.

Mike sat down and talked with Mark and told him we can't swing him living here unless he's paying something towards it. We told him what we thought it ought to be and he seemed a little ticked off, but he also said it seemed fair.

Russell's room is a freaking pit. Mark's gonna leave for a couple days to apply to work for a police position in the SF Bay Area. He's going to finally visit his grandparents, who have been impatiently waiting for him to arrive. While Mark is gone, I'm going to basically go sit in the boy's room and help him clean everything from stem to stern. Russell claimed he had no space to put things in his dresser. I found 2 drawers completely empty and 2 with 1 to 3 things in them. I told him I thought he was full of crap. But then I promptly removed an entire trash bag's worth of clothes that he had definitely outgrown.

Then I'm going to make him do the same for me in my room. (yeah, so not gonna happen)

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Today, Russell was kind of dramatic and whiny and tired from getting to go to Tahoe with his friend. I finally said that if he was going to be a whiny pain in the butt every time he went to a friend's house that I would limit his life a lot. He was not amused.

I was tired and cranky and I felt entirely insecure about how pleasant or unpleasant I was with Russell. I just felt like every time I asked him to do anything he tossed a giant fit and then didn't do half of what I asked anyhow. I felt really frustrated with his behavior. And Genny's been a complete spazz.

Tonight, we put her to bed. And all of the sudden she comes down the hall screeching her head off. Apparently, she'd taken a flying leap into her bed and she split her lip on the bed frame. The line that cut me to the quick was,"my teeth are bleeding!" uttered through heartfelt heaving sobs. I got crushed ice into a ziploc bag and a towel, handed it to Mark who took it to Mike who was comforting her because he get down the hall to her faster than I could. As Mark headed down the hall to her, I told him to have her rinse with flouride. I don't know if it would help if her teeth were knocked a little loose or not, but I figured at least it would give her a sense of having received medical treatment of some kind for it.

I got there as the two brothers tended the princess. Her lip was pretty puffy and split, but looks like it'll heal up in a few days ... definitely not worthy of stitches. I will see what I think when she gets up.

I had Mike sit on the couch with her icing her lip for 10 minutes and then, he tucked her back into bed. We reminded her that we'd told her that she shouldn't be goofing around like that with her bed. She tried to deny that she'd done anything wrong, and I just said, "Geez, Genny, we're not dumb! We were kids, too, once. We know about jumping into beds! Take it easy and knock it off, already. You're giving me a heart attack here!" She kind of giggled and went and sat with Daddy.

I'd been mid-muffin making in the kitchen, so I got the stuff doled into the tins and put into the oven.

Mom's muffins are a source of enormous delight to my family. I mean they're good and all, but I swear, you'd think it was Christmas. The big deal is eating them while they're still hot from the oven with butter. Russell wanted another one immediately and was bouncing around like a puppy on crack to have another.

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Beyond that, we did this. I was actually in charge of recording all the data. My first comment is that I think that the horse could be decomposing and infected for a truly disgusting splatter effect. I also think that testing water balloon should be next weekend's data collection effort. For one thing, you could do crazy Kool-aid and really go for that biological warfare thing and for another, if you were short of the castle, you'd still nail the front of the building.