Wait. Do I still have a blog here? Well, my God, of course I do. Except when I don’t. But Woodland Elementary School has gone into its usual end-of-school-year posture of standing on my neck and standing on it hard.

California has a legally mandated free school guarantee. Theoretically, my children are meant to attend school for free; due to the fact that Ben is disabled and I’m presently unemployed, they even get a free lunch. (And they say there is no such thing!) But even public schools always have their hand out. At the end of the year, for some reason, they hit us up especially hard.

Today was the Woodland Elementary Jog-A-Thon, where kids run laps for money with nothing to show for it but the free T-shirt. I pledged $25 per child — a pretty typical amount. Just this past Saturday, the Kaiser-Woodland carnival was held, whereby all the kids at both schools were exhorted to eat and drink and play, proceeds to benefit both schools. Last week I shelled out $10 each for two Woodland T-shirts for the boys. Every Friday they have Spirit Day, at which time (surprise!) everyone is expected to wear their Woodland shirts.

Next week is Open House. That will involve the Book Fair, which benefits both Scholastic and the schools, and a burgers ‘n’ chips dinner supplied for free by a local merchant and paid for generously by the parents, proceeds to the schools. Not to mention the end-of-year teacher gifts and the snacks for Jog-A-Thon and so on and on and on.

I’m not really complaining. (Or am I? I believe I’ve just kvetched at length.) We are fortunate to have a world-class school district with extraordinary teachers and maximum 20-child classes. Compare that to LAUSD which has teachers who border on illiteracy and class sizes of 30 or so. Newport-Mesa USD relies largely on local property taxes, which are hefty, meaning that we haven’t been touched by the waves of teacher layoffs that have touched other districts in the county. The fallout is a bit daunting — I had to attend a brief meeting and provide three forms of proof of residency and property ownership last month just to keep our boys in NMUSD schools — but the benefits are considerable.

Still, I’ll be glad when a month has gone by and they stop squeezing us for this year. The last day of school is June 19. For my boys and for my checkbook, it can’t come early enough.

The kids today at the local pumpkin patch.

Now that Sam is in second grade, his load of homework has increased considerably from what it was last year. He used to have a small packet of homework sent home every Wednesday, with the completed packet due the following Tuesday. Inevitably, we ended up doing it all on Monday night. When you have a first grader, his homework is yours as much as it is his. Maybe more yours. Most of the work, for me, is prodding Sam into getting it done.

This year, he has homework every night Monday through Thursday. The biggest element of his workload is his weekly spelling assignment: to write 10 sentences of at least seven words, each sentence using one of his spelling words for that week. He is actually better about doing the sentences than I expected him to be. But he does them the Sam way. Samples:

I saw a weird, strange floating apple in the room.

Don’t poke your brother with a stick.

It’s fun every Wednesday night to see what he comes up with. Tonight is sentence night, and I can’t wait to see what he will dream up.

Sam and Matt ended up having a good first day of school. Later in the afternoon, I brought them a bowl of Cheetos and a couple of Diet Cokes for us to share. Sam is going through a cootiephobia stage; no one else is allowed to touch his food or drink. Matt, you eat the Cheetos from that side of the bowl. This is my side, he said. And no drinking from my soda. You drink from Mom’s. He watched Matt like a hawk to ensure these rules were being followed.

Finally, exasperated, I said Jeez, Sam, don’t be such a picky-pants!

Immediately he pulled up his t-shirt to reveal his boxer briefs. No I’m not, he said. Do you see any pickies in there?

So now here is the thing about the spider.

I am crazy, because (1) this used to be MY spider, (2) I shipped him off to Erika’s house, and (3) as of today, he is my spider again. (Or, possibly, she. Have you ever studied how to sex a tarantula? I DON’T WANT TO THINK ABOUT IT. And I’m quite certain that you don’t, either.)

Shortly after Boolie’s birth, I dispatched all living members of the family who were not plants, Basenjis, Ben, children or Sea Monkeys. Because I already had enough living things to worry about, is why. I purchased this spider when he was a baby, about nickel-sized including legs. As you can see, he is All Grown Up.

And why was I insane enough to take him back? Because of this: When Sam started first grade nearly a year ago, he filled out a poster called “All About Me”. And in the spot for “If I could wish for anything in the world, I would want” he wrote and drew: A Tarantula. And I am a sucker.

I am trying to muster up the courage to pick it up and not be afraid enough to drop it on the floor. Because did you know? Tarantulas have exoskeletons, which means they wear their bones on the outside, which means that if you drop it, it will fracture and quite possibly die. I should also point out that they won’t bite unless you seriously fuck with them, and even if so, the bite is about equivalent to a bee sting. There are more poisonous breeds, but they’re not sold as pets.

Anyway. Tarantula. Like I needed this? Sometimes I am floored by my own stupidity.

My 7-year-old, Sam, is way into monsters and creatures, as befits a young boy. Over the weekend we were watching a show on the History Channel featuring such beasts as Bigfoot, the Yeti, and the Loch Ness Monster. And I said, Hmm, I wonder if they will do the Jersey Devil?

Sam’s ears pricked right up. The Jersey DEVIL? he said.

The Jersey Devil probably isn’t very well known apart from the Delaware Valley area encompassing New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Delaware. It’s a local legend that dates back to the 1700s, and I always found it charming. I was a huge Jersey Devil fan as a kid; I can clearly remember chanting The Jersey Devil! The Jersey Devillllll! The Jersey Devillllllllllllll! until my parents threatened me with mayhem if I didn’t stop.

My grandmother lived near the Pine Barrens, the southern bit of New Jersey the Devil is said to frequent, and I always looked for him when we drove through there. Once, when I was about six, I thought I saw him running through the woods. As a lark, I later reported this to a woman who maintains a Jersey Devil page and conducts Jersey Devil hunts, and don’t you know, she included my story in her list of Devil sightings.

All this I showed to Sam on the Internet first thing the next morning, and his eyes got huge. Mom. You’re famous! he cried. I said no, I just appeared on some random webpage. Yeah, but you have your own website, too! he insisted. Funny. Yeah, famous with all three of my readers.

Anyway, the Jersey Devil is Sam’s new obsession. He printed out various pictures of him from the Internet and tacked them above his bed, together with his own retelling of the story of the Jersey Devil’s birth, with illustrations. (I’ll bet come next hockey season, he becomes a New Jersey Devils fan.)

Ever since summer vacation started, the kids and I have been sleeping in on weekdays. Since my hours are flexible and I sometimes work from home, I don’t have to be anywhere at any particular time, so I wait until the kids wake themselves up instead of prying them out of bed at 7:15 like I do during the school year. It is SO nice, and it will be SO hard to get used to keeping regular hours when school starts again.

This morning, though, I had to get up early; I had to be at the courthouse by 9 a.m. to sit in on a hearing and take notes. Which meant that I had to have the kids up and at ‘em at the usual schoolday time, and boy, did they not like it.

Sam and Matt had been up half the night. Ben and I have a recurring problem with keeping them in bed, their lights turned off, and their door open. They wait until we fall asleep, then shut the door, turn the light back on, turn up the T.V., and proceed to stay up till all hours watching Cartoon Network. We catch them sometimes and make them stop, but in the morning we often find the door shut again and the light on, and them sound asleep. We have trouble staying up later than they do.

Last night was the worst. I came in at half past midnight and told them to get their asses to sleep, then went back to bed. Again, they outlasted me. I think they probably stayed up until 2 a.m. judging by their general sleepiness and crankiness this morning.

This was a tougher Monday than most. They probably napped all morning at day care, and here I am yawning and reviewing medical records. Little boogers.

I am sorely sleep deprived today, and I completely blame the Tooth Fairy.

Sam lost an upper front tooth yesterday. It’d been wiggly for some time, so I was ready; I’d had a nice crisp $5 bill tucked away for weeks so I wouldn’t get stuck with no cash when the tooth came out. I gave Sam and Matt the usual exhortations about how she won’t show up, in the manner of Santa, unless good children are in bed asleep. So Sam wanted to go to bed early. Matt? Stayed up past midnight. He was trying to catch her with a net, or failing that, get a look at her.

I went in there several times with the money in my pocket only to find Matt still awake. Finally around 12:30 or 1:00 a.m. I caught him snoozing. I managed to switch tooth with money under Sam’s pillow, although he did stir a bit. The guy was loaded for bear. As soon as it grew dark, they started hearing noises around their bedroom window. Which, of course, was the Fairy trying to get in.

At 3 a.m., Sam awoke, found the money, and descended upon our bedroom. So there is about two hours of sleep for me. I’m exhausted, not getting any younger, and painfully aware that I have probably five more years of this stuff before Boolie stops believing in magical nocturnal gift-givers. I’m sure I’ll feel better after an afternoon nap, which I’m about to go have, but really this is one of my least-favorite parenting jobs. Not the magical gifts, I mean, just the sleep deprivation.

Tooth Fairy: I hope you have insomnia tonight. Or today, seeing as you work the night shift.

Sam’s last day of school is next Friday, June 20, but already his brain is on vacation. He got in trouble at school both Tuesday and Wednesday for cutting up and talking and giggling in class. The teacher moved him to a different seat, away from his main cohort, but still he acted up. This is, I suppose, an occupational hazard of class clownism, and made all the worse by the knowledge that there are only a few short days left in the school year (and half of those will consist of field trips).

As of the beginning of June, homework stopped. The weekly Friday spelling test stopped. And so, apparently, has Sam’s concentration and self-control. The teacher is all Fractions and centimeters and adjectives while Sam is all Stink bugs and soccer and the pool. (He has recently learned to swim, and while I can drag him out of the physical pool, he’s forever swimming in the pool in his head.)

Poor kid. When I was in high school, we used to call it senioritis (although I have a college degree, I was never a high school senior. Did you know that?). I don’t know what they call it in first grade, but Sam has it and he has it bad. All he has to do is make it another week without getting his sassy ass suspended, and it’s all sunshine and swimming for the next three months.