Easy to tell which kid is mine, right? Guess this means I'll be going to the football games this year.

We ripped out the carpet in JoJo's room, two trips to the dump in a blinding rainstorm that must've given us two inches of rain, me nearly deliriously happy, running around to catch the produce being launched from the gardens. By bedtime I drug cucumbers and bell peppers over to Sarah's house, and finished putting up more Fire Hot Pepper Sauce for winter.

A glitch in the new floors, the salesperson conveniently forgot to factor in two things, causing me to balk and stall, wait 'em all out, yet they have the upper hand as I have to bedrooms raring to get done. They've outsmarted me.

I nearly fell out laughing at, "Mom, there's two fatties fighting," which was the report yelled up to my doorless bedroom the other night. An aside - no one here is fat, they're hardly even plump, but Tony provokes the description from others, as do Scotty, and a hapless Jonathan who was trying to pull them apart.

I was convulsed into inappropriate paroxysms of giggles at the two Sumo wrestlers, laughing so hard that both of my backups, Chuy and Martin lost it as well, it was such a ridiculous fight between the two of them and the word 'fattie' was the best they could come up with? What? Are we all first graders here? I laughed until tears ran down my cheeks.

It's hard to take it seriously when the two sweaty, huffing, puffing kids were doing their best to not laugh also, getting mad at me for tempting them to find this situation as silly as it ultimately was in the end.

Everyone calmed down, slammed doors, night over, go to bed. I snickered all the way upstairs.

Jonathan went into his black mood yesterday, calling everyone names, snarling at me, and I just walked off, disengaging and suggesting that everyone else do the same.

Eventually he came to me, "Sorry, Mom," to which I replied, "OK, fine, apologize to the others," glad that it had not escalated into a call the deputies moment.

Nerves are slightly frayed over today's anxiety-ridden anticipation of Open House at the schools. My very bonded, grounded, upcoming fifth grader, Jack, told me he wanted Miz Whitehead for his teacher, because she is so pretty and nice.

"Did you know she went to school with Sarah? Graduated with her?" I asked him.

"Oh, I didn't know she was that old," he slumped, lumping Sarah and Yolie with elderly folks apparently, they are 36 and 30 respectively. Honey, yo sporadically firecracker mama is 56, get over the age thing.

Tonight is a school night, what with tomorrow being the first day of the 2010-2011 school year, the kids have been home for over ten weeks, a right decent summer overall, and I'm ready for them to go back, and they're ready as well.

Here's to a great school year.