THREE DOWN ONE TO GO!

WOOHOO!!!! ISMAIL PASSED TO THE FIFTH GRADE!!!!
We were a little worried for a minute or two. But he did...
by the skin of his teeth! He only passed Arabic and Maths
and Islam with the equivalent of a D but he passed, nonetheless.
Aiman got A's in Arabic, Maths, English and only a B in Islam.
Samiya got straight A's. The only one left to find out about is
Hamo. I forgot that his grades were coming out today and
didn't bother to go to the school. But I'll go first thing in the
morning, God willing! Keep him in your prayers, All.

Thanks.

Life and Death Reasons to Fist Fight OR Why My Kids Woke Me Up Early Today

**Due to over-the-shoulder-editing by one of my kids, I will refer to them in NO
PARTICULAR ORDER as Kid A, Kid 2, PITA, Brat and HeyYou. That way no one
will be able to identify which one irritated the crap out of me most today and Kid
A will get over his complex of having people know stuff about him.***

So I went to bed around 3am after staying up late with my hubby watching a really
lame movie (View From the Top with Gwyneth Paltrow, Christina Applegate,
Candace Bergin, Mark Ruffalo and a cross-eyed Mike Myer.) I got up around 9 to go
to the bathroom and was overjoyed to find the whole house still asleep. Happy, happy,
joy, joy! in the immortal words of Ren and Stimpy. For a brief second, Responsible Me
thought, "Hmmmm. Now would be a good time to get up and hit the vegetable market
with no one to whine "buy me some cookies while you're out" or "can I come????" or
"It's myyyyyyyyyy turn! You alwayyyyyyyyyyyss take PITA with you!" ResponsibleMe
also thought, "you can beat the scorching humid heat, too, if you go now." But then
SelfishNeverPassUpTwoMoreMinutesOfSnoozeTimeMe said, "EFFF THAT! Get your
arse back in bed!" And I did.

An hour and a half later, I heard a body slam against my bedroom door and PITA comes
flying in with a stuffed Clifford the Big Red Dog toy in hand and Kid A hot on his heels,
shrieking. PITA took a running leap across the footboard and bounced off my left ankle,
causing me to sit up in bed and yell, "WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING????!!!" Hubby
faked like he didn't hear anything and rolled over because...well, that's what husbands do,
isn't it?

Kid A started screaming, "HE TOOK MY CLIFFORD! It's MINE, I tell you. Baba bought it
for ME! And he TOOK IT right outta my hands!" PITA countered with, "THAT'S A LIE! I
had it first and HEEEE is not sharing with me!" After a few more exchanges like these and
decorated with various insults and bad words, I finally yelled, "GET OUTTA HERE YOU
FIGHTING FREAKS! One more fight over that stupid toy and I'll rip the stuffing out of it
and throw the shell away after burning it!" This, of course, was followed by screams and
wails of "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" Exit fighting boys.

Twenty minutes later, I heard another body slam against the door which then slammed
against the wall. Only this time PITA was chasing KidA and both were shouting insults
and bad words at one another and threatening to kill the other. HeyYou came in just as
I closed my eyes and asked for strength. KidA and PITA ran back out to finish brutalizing
one another in a different room. HeyYou climbed up between Hubby and me and I
smacked him on the back of the neck and said, "Look, if you're gonna tease your brother
go get the ass-kickin' you deserve and stay outta my bed!" He cried. It was then I realized
that I truly AM blind as a dingbat without my glasses. Poor HeyYou! He didn't do anything
to deserve that. So I let him cuddle with me and I apologized for smackin' him and then
excused myself to go beat the hell outta his brothers. I took the Clifford toy away from
whichever of the two had it (remember, I couldn't see still, no glasses) and hid it far away
from both of them. (Only HeyYou saw where it went and was sworn to secrecy!)

Then I realized no more sleep for me and both Brat and Kid 2 were on the couch watching
cartoons and waiting for breakfast. So, I got up, made breakfast, returned the toy 9mm
plastic gun with suction cup arrow-type bullets to HeyYou (he'd had that taken away from
him because he kept shooting the tv screen with it, as well as, PITA used the same gun to
shoot KidA in the face when KidA refused to give him a quarter they were fighting over.)
I am in search of vitamins that bring on maturity in teenagers. If anyone has any idea if
Flintstones makes a chewable vitamin that makes teens act their age and wards off tantrums
the likes of which would make 2-year olds shudder, PLEASE e-mail me fast! or leave me
the info in the comments block! Thanks!

What I WON'T Be Doing This Summer....

THANK GOD AND GREYHOUND, THEY'RE DONE WITH THE FINAL EXAMS!!!!!!

Finally, I thought this school year would NEVER end. It was like one
of those horrible nightmares where you think you woke up but didn't...
like the dream sequence in An American Werewolf in London. At any
rate, I'm gonna give the kids a whole two days to live it up...I'm even
planning a trip to one of the national parks here (they have HOT DOG TREE
HERE!!! yeah, they're really IS such a thing.) tomorrow for a picnic and
soccer and running around and playing with some friends of ours. THEN, I am
going to blindside them with chores. See, I let them slide all academic year long.
But summertime is "help a mother out" time. I figure it this way, if I have to
endure your asses all summer long, complete with fighting, whining, spraying
each other by pointing the bidet spray out of the toilet when someone unlocks
the bathroom door with a spoon from the outside and walks in on the other for
taking too long....then dammit I'm getting some recompense outta the situation.

Each kid will have one day a week to do dishes. While ideally I should have had
7 kids so I'd never have to do dishes, the ole uterus crapped out on me after 5,
so we had it scrapped. And since Randa is autistic and has issues with bubbles
unless she's blowing them with gum or sitting in them in the tub, I'll still be doing
dishes 3 days outta the week. BUT 4 days outta 7 I'll NOT have dishpan hands.
Woohoo.

Also, since Hamo and Ismail like to beat the hell out of one another from the
time they get up in the morning (an hour or two before I do) until they go to
bed at night, I've decided that another thing I won't be doing this summer is
buying bread. No sirree, Bob! I'll get out of bed long enough to hand each one
a bread basket and a one-pound note and send they're argumentative behinds
down the road to go stand in the bread lines for me. I'll be under the ceiling fan
dreaming blissfully of childless days of yore on the beaches of Mykonos, when
my thighs were firm and my ass hadn't fallen and hit me in the back of the knees.

The third thing I'll NOT be doing this summer is "vacationing" at my sister-in-law's
beach villa on the northern shores of Egypt. I lost 4 kilos in 10 days working my
butt off there last year and left pissed off, sunburned and not speaking to any of my
husband's relatives for 6 months afterward. No reason to burn bridges again.
Besides, I swore to God Almighty that I'd never go back to that place again. We'll
just go to the local beaches or rent a place by ourselves and have fun the way we
want with no familial differences.

What I will be doing is finishing the mosaic table top that the kids and I started two
years ago, sewing, painting with the kids, and taking them on as many outings as I can
manage without losing my so-called mind. I'm thinking museums, beach, parks, maybe
a soccer game at the local stadium provided the visiting team is NOT from the UK!
I think we'll have a boatload of fun...Happy Summer.

p.s. Only 90 more days until school starts again.

Not Really a Post...But at Least It's an Update....

We're in the middle of FINAL EXAMS....I've had diarrhea for nearly a week now
and haven't slept longer than 3 hours at a stretch in probably 2 weeks. Aiman
and Ismail have completed all of there testing (provided they pass. Otherwise
the studying will continue until the end of July when they give the last chance
retests.) Samiya finished day one today and tomorrow, God willing, she'll complete
her testing. Hamo starts on Saturday and finishes up on Wednesday. So, I'll try to
post sometime after that...you know, if I'm not comatose by then.

More drawings by the kids...

Here is another drawing Hamo did from Spongebob Squarepants by using
the Paint program on Windows:


And this next one is by Aiman: