things we hate, by bb and Youngest

People who peel the cheese off their pizza.

People who blot their pizza with napkins.

Middle took his exam yesterday. I dropped him off, sleepy looking, at school at 7:40 AM and kept myself as busy as possible until I picked him up shortly after one.
He got into the car smirking and said: what is the smallest number you can add to 3000 to make it more than 4000 but less than 4500? QUICK! And I got it right.
He was very animated, which I guess one would be after sitting for a four hour test. He told me he ate someone's snack so he wasn't hungry. (I had offered him several things to bring with him but he "wasn't hungry THEN." That kind of situation never ceases to amaze me: how did he GET someone else's snack? Did he ask for a cookie? No. It turns out that a teacher said: whose cookies are these and he said: I'll take those. HAVEN'T I TAUGHT MY CHILDREN NOT TO EAT STRANGE FOOD? Indeed I have.)
Anyway, I grilled him on the way home and he had lots of things to tell me about each section but I don't remember any of it. It sounds like he did well. I was not happy to hear, later that evening at a party, that someone else's kid thought the test WAS INCREDIBLY EASY this year.
I prefer to believe that he was well prepared and comfortable with the test.
We will receive his scores in a few weeks.

Youngest has been working, day and night it seems, on his card tricks.
I had to bust him when he started using the marked deck I know I bought Middle a few years ago - I just could not suspend disbelief for that.
His little shtick with each trick is so funny: I saw a guy on a bus last week with a deck of cards...
What BUS? You don't take buses.
Mom! It's part of the trick! So I saw a guy on a train last week...
He's been perfecting one with a false shuffle.

Oldest was away overnight, with a friend, seeing a concert a couple of hundred miles away.
He called once and asked for directions to a particular restaurant and called back to report he'd eaten half a cow. Oh, and he was very popular with the crowd outside the show as he successfully popped the lock on a fellow concertgoer's car after they locked their keys and tickets inside it. (Note to me: add that line to his resume.)

K and I attended a little neighborhood shin-dig last night to celebrate the big horse race. The Tuvaluan Trot. There were yummy hors d'oeuvres and strong cocktails and we each put a dollar or two in a hat and then drew the name of a horse from another hat. I drew Old Glue Stick and Big Bird. I was very excited about drawing Big Bird as his jockey was wearing very pretty silks. (That's about all I know about racing, that the jockeys wear "silks.")
But the fellow sitting next to me bellowed: Big Bird will never win from that pole position! No horse has won from that position since 1936. (Apparently HE knew a lot about horse racing.)
I was not deterred. And THEN I saw the clincher, as it were.
As Big Bird was being lead from the stables he made a very large Big Poo, which they SHOWED ON TELEVISION.
And, you see, I remembered that I DO, in fact, know SOMETHING about horse racing.
My father (who art in heaven) taught me (a very long time ago, when he had a skybox at the track in Oklahoma City) that you always bet on the horse that poos. Because he can run better.

And so, I sat back on that couch and watched the Tuvaluan Trot with the smug satisfaction that the shitter is the winner AND I WAS RIGHT AND I WON $16 WHICH VERY NEARLY PAID FOR THE PIZZA WE BOUGHT THE KIDS BEFORE WE LEFT.

So. There.

There was a woman at the party who began the evening by announcing that she wasn't eating.
Oh good for YOU, said I, because I like to eat, I explained, and I will eat your share. Of course she spent the entire time EATING. She refused her strong cocktail too. I can barely stand to look at myself, I'm so fat and ugly, she announced to the group. I'd never met her, so I can only assume she wanted some attention - I don't know, I was too busy eating and drinking and making transvestite jokes with the Australian gent to my left.
And then she did the third thing Youngest and I hate:
She took a knife to a brownie and said: oh, I can't eat a whole one, so I'll cut it up and have just a little. Over the last hour of the party she probably ate two brownies that way - cutting them up into small slices and eating them one slice at a time.

Youngest and I would prefer that you eat your pizza intact and that you have the strength of character to say: oh, how lovely, brownies! I think I'll have one, thank you!

I'm off to church.
No. I don't think I'll be giving them my $16. Aren't I terrible?