Rocks, Homework, and Spitting Toilets

What do those three things have in common?  Nothing, other than I'm too lazy to write three separate posts for the three separate stories that go with them.

Yesterday Josh decided to start a business selling rocks to the neighborhood children.  You wouldn't think there'd be much of a customer base for this sort of thing, but you'd be wrong.  Apparently the rocks used in our landscaping are highly prized among the kiddos of our street.  I mean, they are pretty cool... rocks.  Some are black with shiny flecks, and some are smooth and brown... and... hard... and...

Yeah, I don't know the draw, either.  But it's obviously there, because he "sold" enough of them to create a few bare patches in a few of our flowerbeds. 

As I was making dinner yesterday Spencer came in and said "Is Josh allowed to sell rocks?  Because he's selling rocks."

What?

After getting the truth out of Josh, I forced him (and Spencer) to go down the street and get our rocks back.  NOW.  Fortunately, no money had exchanged hands yet (apparently Josh sells on credit) so we didn't have to deal with refunds.  I suspect the neighbor kids knew this was probably a bad idea, because they were very sheepish about putting the rocks back.

And lest you think it was just a few handfuls, the rocks were drug back from down the street in a rather large football gear bag.  It took nearly 10 minutes to put them all back.  It was A LOT of rocks.

Josh has now been informed that he is no longer allowed to "sell" anything. Ever. Especially parts of the house.

I found this all very amusing.  I'm interested to see what money making scheme the child comes up with next.  Do we have a future MBA on our hands?

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Spencer has been especially punkish lately when it comes to school work.  Specifically, he hasn't been turning it in.  I have been working very closely with his teacher, and despite the fact that she reminds him daily of what specific work he needs complete and turn in, he is just not getting it done. 

Our school system now offers weekly emails that show the grades for all the assignments and tests your child has at school.  Spencer is not a fan of this email because I can now keep tabs on him at home.  However, he is still "forgetting" assignments.  (Read: being too lazy to complete them and turn them in.)  Not only that, but I've caught him lying about whether or not he's completed these assignments a couple of times as well.

Last week I got a detailed, personal email from the teacher about this from his teacher.  I was pretty ticked off at Spencer.  I made him work on all the missing work that night and the next morning.  I gave him a checklist of what he needed to turn in at school that day.  I warned him of what would happen if he didn't turn in his work.  I sent him to school.  All seemed well.  We enjoyed Fall Break.  We had a doughnut party.

And then this morning I discovered HE HADN'T TURNED IN ANY OF THAT WORK!!!!!!  Not only that, but he also hadn't finished some of the pages of a spelling words packet that he swore up and down that he had finished.  AND THERE WAS YET EVEN MORE WORK HE HAD NOT FINISHED.

YYEEEEAAAAAARRRRRGHGGHHHGGGHHHGGGHHH!!!   

MOM RAGE!!!!!

Things were not peaceful in the Madsen household this evening.  I decided that the sticker chart we had been using just wasn't working.  (It included rewards and consequences.)  No more nice mom.  No more rewarding him for something he should be doing anyway and that he had been doing before and that he is perfectly capable of accomplishing without basically being bribed.

I laid down the law.  From now on if he doesn't finish work and turn it in when he should, he will spend his afternoons finishing that work.  All of it.  And when he's done with that he will write a letter of apology to his teacher for it.  (This is especially cruel on my part because the child HATES writing anything.  Plus, writing a letter to your teacher?  Totally embarrassing.)  And to top it off, whatever time he has left between homework and bedtime will be filled with the household chores of my choosing.  (Honest Mom Moment: I was hoping he'd finish before Tess went to bed tonight because I really needed someone to vacuum.  No such luck.)

Weeping.  Wailing.  Gnashing of teeth.

Seriously, how many more years until this child graduates high school?  I don't want to think about it.

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Today I got spit on by a toilet.

No, really.

I was in my bedroom folding clothes, when I heard the plumbing from our bathroom making really strange gurgling noises.  I went to investigate and discovered that it was coming from the toilet.  Of course I opened the lid. 

Strange things were happening.  The water (which was clean, by the way) ((well, as clean as toilet water can be)) was jumping and gurgling and - all of a sudden - spitting!

I'll admit it.  Some got in my mouth.

Erlack.

I rushed to the sink, grabbed my tooth brush, thought better of it, and instead took a rather large swig of Listerine and let that swish around for a while.

If I die from dysentery any time soon I guess we'll all know why.

By this time the toilet was louder.  So I did something that was either very wise or very foolish: I flushed it.

Turns out, it was wise, because all went back to normal.  I have no clue what was going on down there.  Maybe Josh is flushing contraband rocks?  Or perhaps Spencer is flushing homework he doesn't want to do?  Whatever it was, I'm sure at some rather unfortunate time this will cost us a lot of money, because that's how we roll around here.