The Game of Life

We've just had a few of those days. The days that make you want to surrender to whatever force is opposing you, since it obviously is winning.

The same day we got $25 in bank fees, Elisheva knocked over a standing living room lamp that Avram and I bought with wedding money four years ago, and broke the victorian style glass shade - although the lamp still works, even if it is a bit glaring now.Notice the innocent lamp awaiting its doom in the corner, while Elisheva plots her evil plans in the foreground. My life has so much foreshadowing, if I only could read it.

Then on Friday Elisheva broke part of the base off from my Alabaster mortar and pestle that I bought in Egypt. Don't let the cuteness fool you. She has the full unleashed destructiveness of a toddler.

And Lydia, who has had access to 'craft' scissors for months, and has always been very responsible with them, and has only cut paper, Lydia planning the dastardly deed

got ahold of the kitchen shears, and gave herself a personal layered look, along with some bangs. As well as chopping up into dozens of pieces a favorite tie that emphasizes the waist that goes with a favorite sweater cardigan of mine.
She won't have darling hair-dos anymore, but she also won't have the common difficulty of hair in the eyes.I ended up chopping off all of Lydia's hair, to eliminate the odd layers. I almost cried. Lydia has had bangs cut twice, a year ago, but otherwise her hair has remained untouched. At first I didn't like the cut at all, and felt that I was seeing a stranger, but then today she looked cute in it - a little Fraulein Maria almost. Or perhaps a child of the depression.(She actually is happy in this picture. You just can't tell. Also, I do not know why a computer chip is her best friend.)

And several people at church commented on how cute she looked, and asked me where I got her hair cut. One sister even said she reminded her of how all the little French girls looked (she lived in France for a couple of years). And so I felt better, since I was worried the haircut looked bad, as cutting wiggly girl's hair is very different than cutting my own or Avram's hair. (Although Lydia was very good and stood still for the cutting, and did not seem to mind at all the disappearance of her hair.) (Which somehow this all reminds me of the time that my older sister Camilla, who was very young at the time, was found in the closet, cutting one of a swimming suit up into pieces, because she was trying to make a bikini out of it.)

Also I heard odd splashing, and went and investigated to see Lydia and Elisheva standing around the toilet while Lydia was ladling out dirty toilet water with a bath-time cup, and then pouring it back in streams. Yuck! I flushed the toilet, and it overflowed all over the bathroom floor, including onto the bath mat. Double Yuck.

My sister has asked me how I manage to read all the books that keep appearing on my sidebar. I tell her I just do it while parenting, and that they go together very well for me. Well, I may have been reading a book on Friday morning. And as we can see, apparently I don't parent and read at the same time. I just have wild hooligans instead.

Then Avram came home after a day spent writing a paper due on Monday (tomorrow), and as he started helping me rejuvenate from the disaster of the day, and rolled up his sleeves to do some dishes, it came out that the finished ten page paper he had emailed himself home was actually only the very first draft he had written, which was a page long. So we all piled into the car and raced down to campus to see if somehow the finished draft was still saved on the computer he had been using while on campus.

It wasn't.

Avram spent the next several hours trying to recreate his paper, while I herded the girls through dinner time and bedtime routine.

And then thankfully ended a Friday I never want to repeat. Forces that be: Six. Thora: Zero. What's your score?