For the first time since the Fall of 2001, my house has an greater number of humans than animals living in it. The closest we had ever come was in the summer of 2002 when my mom, brother, and mom’s dog were living with us. And then the number was simply equal. But now? We are the majority. The animals can no longer over-power the bi-peds in my home because for this week - we have six humans living under my roof.

My friends Stace is traveling on business for the week so her girls are staying with me. I am already having way too much fun with this as I spent the morning braiding not one, but two heads of hair. It was so cool! I finished one and said, “Next!” and the next one sat down. And we talked about lip gloss! And cute boys! LilZ never tolerates me talking about cute boys. And lip gloss? Bah. He just rolls his eyes and ignores me.

And NikkiZ has died and gone to heaven. She loves those two girls each more than MrZ and I combined. We have not seen the girl for almost 24 hours now. It’s bad enough with just her brother around, who she prefers over anyone else. But now, two girls who she adores as well? Yeah. MrZ and I are like stale dog crap on the bottom of her shoe. She just scrunches her nose at us like, “Ug. Gross. You again.”

I’m really excited about this week and kinda hope that Stace runs into problems on her trip that requires an extended stay. But don’t tell her I said that. Also, don’t tell her I used the grocery money she gave me on new lip gloss and beer. It’s not that big of a deal, the kids think eating raman noodles for dinner is fun! They think I’m the best Mom ever!

LilZ is taking a class this semester that is some variation of “Home Economics” - but they teach about all sorts of things. This week they learned how to clean toilets. They even had a video that LilZ warned the viewer to clean the seat and the area around the seat because “Some men don’t have proper aim.” HA! So many muttering comments, so little time.

Their homework for the weekend was to clean a toilet in their home and then have their parent grade it. LilZ cleaned his own toilet and I thought it was going to kill him. And my toilets are clean! I clean them once a week - so he had it easy. They should have made the kids clean the toilets of a random all-boy dorm room at the college here. That would teach them.

So, he cleaned my toilet and I graded him tough. Seriously. I am so mean! Can you believe I gave him a 23 out of 35? He can not. And he will probably complain on that to all of his friends at school today. That and the fact that I did a High School Musical dance outside my car in the Target parking lot. I though he and the other kids in the car were going to spontaneously combust from embarrassment.

If there were an award for the most evil mother a middle-schooler could have - I would win it with no competition.

I wrote about trying to be green the other day and Gwen introduced me to www.freecycle.org. It is a site that offers Yahoo! group areas for some people to post what they have to give away and others to post what they needed. They have a Huntsville group and the first time I scanned the list, I found a teacher who needed books for a classroom. 6 months ago, LilZ decided he wanted to donate a big chunk of books to charity. It was a perfect match. I contacted the teacher and we’re meeting this morning. I even threw in the copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows that I won from that radio contest since we already have two copies. I’ve very excited. LilZ finally gets to clear out some room on his bookshelves and a classroom in my area gets a library!

Thanks, Gwen. Now, if only I could find someone to take all of the dirty clothes and dishes off my hands so that I don’t have to wash them. That would be awesome.

• fagbug.com - activism on wheels
  Amazing. She took a random act of vandalism and used it to promote her cause.
  (tags: fagbug activisim)

Originally uploaded by lil zoot

Look who won 3rd place in his age group for Tracey’s photo contest. This is the winning photo and I just love it. He is amazing because he doesn’t have that voice in his head that says “That won’t work” like adults have. I wish I could afford to buy him a better camera, I let him borrow mine sometimes, but not as often as I’m sure he’d like. I’m not good at sharing.