This is a quick post, which I am sure everyone will appreciate, because it is birthday week in my house and I’m being interviewed this evening. I’ll tell you all about that in an upcoming post so look out for it.

Tuesday was my son’s birthday. Like all things I am unorganized with regard to birthday card and present. When I was a kid my parents would let my brother and me open our presents before we left for school. School started at 8:15am when I was a kid not 7:15am like it does for my son. We do not roll early in the morning at my house and the boy barely wakes up before he has to catch the bus at 6:50am. Our house in the morning does not look like a cereal commercial on TV with everyone sitting around the table eating a healthy bowl of sugar. If I am lucky I can throw a bagel at him and he might eat it on his way to the bus.

Because I missed the morning to give him his card and present I had it all figured out before he got home. Except for the card which I needed daughter to sign so she could be involved. I handed her the card and asked her to sign her name on it while I tried to quickly wrap his present before he got home. I was not paying attention. Daughter can not read and write yet but she can write her name. She is learning how to read and she can write a few words like “mom”, “love”, “dog” and “cat”. She announced that she was finished and handed me the card.

Let me just say here that my kids are ten years and four days apart. I thought by having such a large gap between them that I would avoid all of the bickering that my brother and I did as well as the sibling rivalry and all the other stuff that goes with having kids only a year or two apart. I was wrong. My kids pick on each other relentlessly. The daughter is the instigator but son will give it right back and he doesn’t believe in giving her a handicap because she is so much younger. I let them duke it out as long as there is no blood. I figure they will eventually come to appreciate the other and there are truly moments where they love one another.

I almost didn’t look at the card before sealing it in the envelope. Almost. I took a quick glance and this is what I saw under her name:

I H8 U

She is so not getting a cell phone anytime in the next ten years.

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