hello, late april; can you arrange for early june to make a quick appearance?

It is late April. I can tell. I don't even have to look at a calendar because I'm awesome like that.

How can I tell, you ask? Easy. Look at the evidence. That's what we lawyers do, ya know.

Here's the evidence:

*Crazy Kansas weather (thunderstorms...YEAH!....hail...BOO! 89 degrees one day, 42 the next)
*The constant dull sore throat from allergies
*Younger is in her stomach-acid-churning-school-has-me-so-stressed-tears-running-down-her-face mode
*Eldest (probably because she is not in school, so will not be presenting her annual I-don't-care-that-I'm-failing mode) has ramped up into some ADHD-talking-my-ear-off-about-inane-things mode
*Younger reminded me last night that she needs to be dressed like Agave from Euripides' "Bacchae" Friday morning Oh. My. Hell. Who?

The scary part is that this late-April stuff is going to be followed by *shudder* ....MAY! And that means finals...and Younger's stomach will begin to digest itself and all will be miserable.

Super. I'm looking forward to that already.

Thus, before 7 a.m. I was home alone because Younger went to school to try and find the Chemistry teacher to figure out her lab. Apparently, she had a gym teacher sub and didn't quite understand what she was supposed to do...those darns subs...never can count on them :).... And there is nothing like not understanding that causes my baby anxiety (she's not her mama at all in this respect...uh...ok, she's exactly like her mama on this one). She spent from 6 to 6:40 curled up in the fetal position on my bed sobbing because (read the following imagining tears and sobs and giant huffing breathes and hitches in her breathing and all sorts of other dramatic pauses and clutching of stomach and sad pathetic teary eyes):

Chemistry and the injustice of the universe in giving her this TEACHER who never "teaches" anything but just expects them to figure it out and WHO WILL NOT CARE that she doesn't understand the lab and no help could be gotten BEFORE the lab was due because the teacher was out and there was a useless-sub (who I don't think she tried to talk to but I was not dumb enough to point that out) and her lab partner was a stupid-boy and she tried to copy his but she's sure he's got it wrong because his math wasn't right (I just bit my tongue) and she can't copy RaeRae's because RaeRae has different numbers (at this point my tongue was starting to bleed) and no other teacher will let her finish Chemistry in their class because (wait for this one, it's good) ALL THE TEACHERS THINK THAT THEIR CLASS IS THE MOST IMPORTANT ONE IN THE WHOLE WORLD!

Yea...so I am glad she left early for school because I had to go fix the bleeding tongue.

And Eldest left at 6 something to go to her girlfriends' house because they had a fight. (We shall call girlfriend, "Fedora Girl".) We had previously agreed they could spend the day together since Eldest has a RenFest meeting out near Fedora Girl's house at 7 tonight. But...um...hello? Six a.m. seems a bit early to show up, dontcha think? But somehow Eldest escaped before I could say no. It was probably busy listening to the fantastic tale of chemistry woe and Eldest fled.

But now...right now...it's kind of pleasantly quiet here with my coffee. Eldest isn't prattling at me about the NEW. Verizon. Phone. With. TWO (did you hear her? TWO!!!!) processors! Why do I care about this? I'm not sure. But I have listened to it almost non-stop for a day. When she gets in ADHD/Aspie focus mode like this, she is unstoppable on a topic. I was getting texts and FB chats about it yesterday. And I try to listen, REALLY, I do. But at about hour two I figure out I don't care and there is no way I'm ever going to care. At hour three, my neck aches from the Mom-pose known as "sureI'mlistentingtoyou"...the one with the sympathetic tilt of my head? You know the one. And by hour four my ears are ringing. And that's when I gently say, "Babe? Um, you are going on and on and...um...is there a point?" And then she started in on me about her RenFest costume--the one due July 3rd, so I haven't started yet--and can we add coins to her flute pouch?...and I slowly begin to pound my head against a wall.

(Yes, that is a Roman house.)

But then I remember...oh CRAP...I need to go figure out who the heck Agave is...some Roman chick...because THAT costume is due Friday...MORNING! And really? Hey school peoples, you want me to dress my kid like Agave? Let's examine who this chick is...she apparently got high out of her mind at some Bacchanal, participated in licentious behavior (a/k/a orgy) and in her whacked out condition dismembered her son who she mistook for a wild boar. Seriously?

But yes...quite seriously...because her school CANNOT LOSE their seven year strangle-hold in winning the Kansas High School Classics Festival. Which means Younger MUST participate in two events in said festival and she CANNOT conjugate verbs in public OR...horrors...read Latin out loud, so her only remaining choices are the art and costume competitions.

So tonight have have to shop for toga fabric, fake blood and body parts. Awesome.

Hello sweet-smelling late-April, but I really wish June would get here faster.