Groundhog Day

I simply cannot believe that the last time I blogged, it was Christmas. The last six weeks or so have been a blur--someone at work quit, and I took over her responsibilities, including a fractured department. The kids need to be run here and there. It has been The Money Pit with the rental house. Nita was scheduled to go on a four-day campout with her class, so we had all the attendant leaving home drama, only to have the trip postponed; then we had leaving home drama intensified, as if Nita got better at it with practice. EG's car died on the way to work. One of the bunnies had to have surgery. And I have been trying to hold on by my fingernails.

One good thing happened during all this. For the last twelve years or so, Rocky has lied, more or less on general principles, but mostly to get out of trouble. The discussion then becomes long, involved, convoluted, and frustrating for both of us, as he tries to remember what he has said, and I try to trip him up. He always gets punished twice for lying if I can catch him up and get him to admit to lying, which is usually. Last week, I sat him down and asked him something, and I said, as usual, "Now think about whether you want to lie or tell the truth." For whatever reason, he decided to tell the truth straight out. I don't know who was more dumfounded--me, or him. However, I simply said, "Okay. Your punishment is yada yada yada." He said, "Wow. That was a whole lot easier than lying."

I looked for the aurora borealis or angels singing over the house. The next time he got in trouble for doing something wrong, he said, "I should have lied."

I guess we haven't made that much progress.

So here it is February already. We have our own resident groundhog here, by the name of Crusty, as he doesn't back down from a meeting with any of us. With the weather we have been having, I am sure poor ol' Crusty wasn't able to reach his egress to check for his shadow this morning. Consequently, I have no clue if we are going to have six more weeks of this. Hopefully not.