but said she this butter's bitter

Emmett got what may or may not have been strep throat on Saturday. He's such a gigantic drama queen anytime he gets sick ("It feels like my neck is being chopped with an axe!"), who can say what was wrong with him? He was just on an antibiotic for strep a month ago, and I was not going to take him in again. But he refuses to take the home remedies we usually use for this, because he doesn't like the taste of garlic and honey and cayenne pepper mixed together. Baby. The outlook wasn't good, but with creative cooking, juicing, and judicious application of Satan's plan we were able to get a bunch of the necessary things into him, and he woke up fine this morning. Even so he's still going to want to go to Lee's Mongolian for dinner tonight, because he has blind, trusting faith in the curative properties of the Mongolian stir-fry.

Last Friday the PTA provided a luncheon and took the classes for a half hour so the teachers could have a leisurely meal all together. I took Emmett's class, and there was this crazy kid who was saying to his friend, "Your argument is clearly based on conjecture." He was not quoting, that's just the way he talks. I only had them for five minutes after they came back from art and before they went to lunch, but it was exhausting. Fourth-graders are old enough to smell blood in the water when there's a substitute, and they were just this side of mutiny until I made them say tongue twisters, which didn't start out as a vanity project, but became one when I blew the doors off the joint with my flawless rendition of "Betty Botta."

be sure to wear some flowers in your hair

We had another round of parent/teacher conferences, which are now called SEPs. I think it stands for Student, Educator, Parent, which is a smurfy name, and people are just going to keep calling them parent/teacher conferences.

Ike is a sweet, loving boy who is above the benchmarks for all those weird skills they talk about like nonsense word fluency and phoneme segmentation or something like that. He broke a pair of scissors today (he says accident) but came clean about it, and his teacher was proud of him. Speaking objectively, he's one of the best and smartest kids in that class.

Emmett got all good grades like Ike, and also an N (for Needs Improvement) because he is always, always talking. Talking out of turn, talking during work time, talking over other people, always talking. Basically he needs to shut up, and I'm like, "Tell me about it, sister." But it's apparent that his teacher likes him very much, and how could she not? He is a happy, fun little boy with an unslakable thirst for knowledge.

There was a woman there at the school with a display about Body Safety (i.e. not being touched inappropriately), so I decided to have a refresher discussion with the kids about the different kinds of touching and what to do about it if someone is a perv. They were all certain they'd tell (they actually said they'd break the person's spine, which shows that they're full of untapped vengeance, just like their mom!), and when I said that people will spend time getting kids to like and trust them so they won't tell, Emmett said, "I wouldn't have trouble telling on anybody." He's right. He is a way big narc. Narcing keeps us safe!

Grant's report was good, too, from what I hear. John kept the appointment because I was busy cooling my heels with the YW in the Logan Temple, getting yelled at by the towel lady. I almost had to go to Sam's Club with them and eat pizza, which would break at least two of my personal creeds, but then I had to get home so John could rehearse.

Willa had an ear infection yesterday, and I pulled out all the stops in my arsenal of Witch Doctory. Echinacea in glycerin, vitamin C with rose hips and pomegranate, "children's tonic" (all thanks to Magic Wendy), massage of the ears, jaw and neck with coconut oil and store-brand VapoRub, heating pad with eucalyptus oil, abundant fluids, all that stuff, repeated ad nauseam throughout the day. I said if she were still in pain this morning I would take her in to the doctor. I just hate putting her on antibiotics. She was on them a month or so ago, and I can't chance another course. At this point her digestive system works about as well as a used Kleenex, and I'm certain it's because of that nine-month nightmare of constant antibiotics trying to get a rash on her cheek cleared up when she was a toddler. I would never ever go back in time because it was bad enough the first time, but if I did, that would be a time I would revisit, and I would not do those antibiotics. Luckily she woke up fit as a fiddle this morning with only a little residual soreness in her ear, and copious amounts of residual coconut oil and VapoRub in her hair. Alternative medicine triumphs once again! I guess we'll probably start handling snakes pretty soon.