A Moment to Relax

We all need them. I'm stealing one this morning. Staying home and not going to church this morning. It snowed last night and I just don't feel like dealing with snow on my van this morning. I was at church all day yesterday for my oldest son's Confirmation retreat too. I'm just plain tired. Last night I embroidered my 6th scarf and working on Nos. 7 and 8 today. Calling Pocono Sew and Vac later on to see if my sewing machine is ready to be picked up. (It's been 7 days, but who's counting...I AM!!!)

Yesterday I even made a chore list for the other kids to be done before coming home from the retreat. Here's a funny, and maybe not so funny story. I don't require my kids to do a whole lot of chores, that will probably be a bad thing in the long run. Between Sports, playing instruments, and maintaining High Honor Roll grades, that takes up a good chunk of timee. However, yesterday I was not going to come home to a sink full of dishes, a dirty kitchen table, and dirty bedrooms.

On to talk about IQ's. I know what my kid's IQ's are. They're high enough that they should make Distinquished Honor Roll every marking period. No excuses. However, I don't place much value on a stupid numerical IQ (and I'm a former teacher). It's simply an indicator of academic "potential". I know kids that have high physical/athletic "IQ's", high social "IQ's", high compassion "IQ's" and those don't get measured and perhaps they should. I especially admire people with high social and compassion IQ's but I don't want to digress at this point from my household story, which is a mockery of the academic IQ number.

DD#2 was given the task of loading the dishwasher and cooking sausage, the Jimmy Dean fat roll. So she rinses off the dishes, loads them into the dishwasher and starts the washer. She's so proud of herself. However, I had to go to the store after the retreat and knew we didn't have any dishwasher detergent left. So I asked her, "What did you use for detergent???" She said, "I have to use detergent in the dishwasher?" DUH! Yes, you do! Don't you have to put laundry detergent in the clothes washer??? "Oh, I didn't know that!" No, dear, you didn't.

That conversation took place after the sausage incident. I wrote on the chore sheet to cook the sausage with a little water in the pan. Well she cut the sausage roll up into cute little slices and covered (and I mean COVERED) the sausage slices in water. Those little slices were drowning! I walk in the front door and my husband says, "Your daughter is having issues with the sausage!" What kind of issues can one have while cooking sausage? Well she does indeed have issues. Here's the joke. The girl has a genius-level IQ. The same girl that once used a 1/4 cup of salt in a batch of fudge instead of using a 1/4 teaspoon.

So much for IQ. Like I said, it's an indicator of academic potential. Doesn't mean one is actually smart LOL. I don't tell my kids what their IQ's are because it's kind of a meaningless number for me. It doesn't factor in desire, motivation, and compassion--traits I highly admire. So next time she presses me for it, I will tell her it's a zero! Most kids her age know that detergent goes in the dishwasher and how to cook sausage.

'Nuff said.