so razi and lilah both have a half day of school today. oh JOY. not. and this means i have to bring lilah to razi's parent/teacher conference. even better. they've closed all the elementary schools in the whole town for two afternoons in a row to schedule parent/teacher conferences. do other school districts do it this way, i wonder? this can't be a happy thing for parents with ordinary jobs.

at least lilah's preschool can keep her tomorrow afternoon even though they can't keep her extra today.

so anyway, i got home from bringing all my beasts to their schools, and as i was parking on the street well past the mailbox (so the postal carrier will deliver my mail. they won't get out of the truck unless they have a box they can't fit in there) two middle-aged men in suits and carrying briefcases walked up to my front door and rang my bell.

i wasn't excited about dealing with insurance salesmen or whatever, but i didn't want to stand there and wait for them to leave or go for a little walk or anything, so i stood next to my mailbox and called out "can i help you?"

turns out they were from some church. i cut them off very quickly with "thank you, but we have a congregation."

i have no idea what sparked it, but the one who responded sounded perfectly gobsmacked as he said, "you do?"

uhh, yeah. and we're deeply involved with it, you unpleasant man. what freaked you out? the fact that i'm wearing pants?

i don't think he got a look at my bumper stickers, because that would have actually made some sense. i've got a pro-gay marriage one, a "non-judgment day is near" and one that says "question gender" to name some of the less door-to-door-christian looking ones. but since i'm almost 100% certain he didn't see those, i'm stumped. i'm a 39 year old white chick in modest and ordinary cold-weather clothes with long dark hair who drives a minivan and lives in a suburban nightmare of a neighborhood. What’s unchristian looking here?

we have some pumpkins in the driveway. maybe that's it. some christians around here get very upset by halloween, and actually a lot of jews don't celebrate it either (because it is secular/pagan, not because it is "of the devil"). feh. i don't know. but it really got my goat.

Free time begins today.

so lilah is in public school. as in, i brought her and left here there and that's where she is right now! omg! and we had rather an adventure with registration.

on friday afternoon i found out i would need a birth certificate and shot record to enroll her. i wrote the info on a post-it, stuck it to today on the family calendar, and promptly forgot all about that.

then this morning i thought to look at the post-it. i found her shot record easily, but not the birth certificate.

thought it might be at the bank. remembered that i need to get some paperwork to the hoosier healthwise people to keep the kids enrolled in their health insurance. got the papers i needed for that. started to drive to the bank. realized i might have the birth certificate in my filing cabinet at home but was dumb enough not to look. turned around, drove home, left lilah in the minivan (door open, looking down on her from window while i went through the files) for about 8 minutes while i determined that no, i didn't have the birth certificate in there.

partway to the bank i wondered if maybe the hoosier healthwise people had a copy of the birth certificate. headed there. dropped off paperwork and asked for a copy of the birth certificate.

woman at front desk was thoroughly annoying. the case worker can't drop everything and go searching for something like that, she needs 24 hours notice and a letter requesting an appointment. spent next ten or twenty minutes pondering the rude shock said case worker would get if she were suddenly forced to work in the private sector.

wanted to stop at bank but realized lilah would be really late to her first day of school if i went there at that point.

drove to the school, dealt with spectacular tantrum when i took back her brother's hockey gloves (they are for his sword fighting club and i did NOT want them lost or damaged), brought lilah to her classroom where she promptly forgot all about the gloves and her terrible mood because omg COOL STUFF!!!, learned the woman who runs the program was in the hall and booked it to grab my own copy of her IEP, filled out a ton of enrollment paperwork (got a cramp in my wrist there was so much), pondered how many fewer phone numbers there would be on said paperwork if my cell phone didn't have them all memorized, and had embarrassing conversation about why i didn't have the birth certificate right then.

drove to bank to check the safety deposit box and, lo and behold, there was her birth certificate along with those of everyone else in the entire family. thought about banging my head against a wall in frustration at my own stupid self for not going to the bank first or even second, like i'd planned.

anyway, i have the copy now. and i leave to fetch little people in 25 minutes.

preparing for school

this morning the kids saw a pile of backpacks that their father had set aside to check out. i have decided that two are going to charity but one will now be zora's new school pack. they got all excited about how they will start back to school soon, so this has become backpack morning.

lilah was wearing the old "Dora the Explorer" backpack i bought for her brother when he turned three (over four years ago. it's holding up well.) razi had me fill his brand new pack full of the school supplies i bought for him and zora has been stuffing her new pack with so many books and toys that she probably won't be able to carry it.

razi is still wearing his new pack on his back. he doesn't start school for two days. i wonder when he will decide to take it off. ;)

ahh, i was wrong. she CAN carry it. on the other hand, she's unbalanced!