I don’t text and drive, not because it’s illegal, but because it’s really dumb. I occasionally read texts at stoplights, but that’s only because I am frequently parked at one particular light which lasts two full minutes.

That doesn’t seem very long, until you’re actually sitting there. It’s long. Last week, I applied all of my makeup while sitting at that light. I even curled my eyelashes. Don’t judge me.

If a text is urgent I will reply using Siri (yes Mom, texts can be urgent when you work on Twitter and you have a tweet about quilting about to go up in the middle of a national disaster…and, this is not to say that quilting isn’t important, because it is…to quilters).

Sometimes, though, Siri doesn’t cooperate. In fact, she’s taken to insulting me.

So I told my daughter to snap a picture of the screen so I could tattle on my iPhone like any adult would do, then I tried again.

Rude.

Clearly, Siri has selective hearing which makes her a lot like my children. And, my dog. I may as well ask her to clean her room, or unload the dishwasher, or stop rolling in dead animals.

But I will not cave. I will not text while driving even though I kind of want to just to show Siri that I CAN LIVE WITHOUT HER and her lack of help.

At least the quilters are happy.

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Today started with my 14 year old daughter making herself a peanut butter sandwich to take to school for lunch. As she reached into the cabinet to get a container, she asked her little brother to grab her a bottle of water.

Do you remember in The Sixth Sense when Haley Joel Osmet’s mom walks out of the kitchen, then returns a moment later to find all of the cabinets and drawers open? That’s what it sounded like this morning when my daughter turned back to her sandwich and found a water bottle stuck firmly into the middle of the bread.

My son just turned 11, and he is smart, so you’d think he would know better, but let’s keep in mind that this is the child who has secretly been taking pictures of people’s double-chins with my phone. I go to make a phone call and instead find 64 photos of fat necks; my own included. You don’t even want to see the search history on our iPad.

Sometimes his behavior is downright bizarre, so that’s why it was such a relief when my husband and I sat in a classroom at, what we hope will be, our son’s new school. Though I will admit, before the class started we were concerned the day would be filled with  nothing but chaos.

There was the student with personal space issues (BEEN THERE) and the other one who ran around the room only to stop and pet my husband’s jacket (BEEN THERE, TOO), one child was sleeping, and one child was rolling around in his teacher’s chair. My husband and I looked at each other with that same what are we going to do now look that we’ve given each other many times before.

But, then the class started. Though the behaviors didn’t come to a complete halt, these kids were learning and they were learning stuff that my husband and I were clueless about. No offense to Canadian geography, or anything. I couldn’t believe the difficulty of the work and I couldn’t believe how smart these kids were.

The teacher, who knew exactly what to do to get through to each individual child, had them focused, challenging themselves, taking a quiz without audible groaning, and speaking clearly as they read aloud. It was amazing to watch and I was flat-out honored for the opportunity. I wish everyone could do it. Ignorance is bliss, after all, but knowledge is power.

At one point a student raised her hand and started a sentence to her teacher by saying, “No offense, but maybe you should have…” Yeah, that whole “no-offense” thing? BEEN THERE, TOO. My son used to start most of his sentences with, “I’m sorry to say this, but…”

That’s when my husband and I looked at each other and silently thought, these are our people. And that’s a place where we’ve never really been before.

I can’t wait to see where we go next.

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So, you know how your friend’s husband dies while doing yardwork at the age of 42, then four days later the uncle whom everyone, and I mean everyone, adores passes away, and you’re mentally exhausted and you think you’ll sleep until next week, but instead you wake up at 2:25am and start asking yourself pressing questions like, “I wonder if Canadians watch reality TV?” and then you clean out your inbox, finish all your levels of Candy Crush, catch up on Words with Friends, send a Facebook update, tweet, pray, and briefly consider getting sucked back in to Draw Something before you get out of bed at 4:15 and turn on a boring documentary because you hope it will lull you to sleep, but instead it’s interesting and there are subtitles so you have to actually sit up and put your glasses on, then you finally fall asleep at 6:40 and your alarm goes off at 6:55, then 90 minutes after you drop your kids off at school your son’s teacher calls and says to come pick him up AGAIN because this time he tried to climb over a pew during mass, and that afternoon you have to drive your daughter to a softball game on the other side of the earth, then you go to a memorial dinner for your cousin who died last fall and you burst into tears during the Irish Blessing, and ohmygoodness why won’t people stop dying, then you get home and are REALLY emotionally exhausted and can only think about one thing, which is collapsing into your wonderful bed, and then your son walks up and says, “Mom, I think I have strep again”?

Yeah, me too.

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I often talk to my kids about addiction and how important it is to make the right decision the first time they are given the opportunity to try something. I also tell them it’s not a matter of if they will be offered something to try, but when.

This lecture usually includes my opinion that if you don’t say no the first time, your brain may not be able to say no the second time; addiction takes over and makes the decision for you.

I tell them that when someone approaches them and says, “It’s great! You’re going to love it! Come on, everyone is doing it!” to politely decline and walk away from the situation. Don’t start, because you don’t know if you can stop.

I wish I had taken my own advice.

Damn you, Candy Crush! Damn you!

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