869 Down, Four To Go

The second trimester of school is over, which means that the school year will soon be over and exactly three months from today, I will be enjoying a much-needed week of vacation on the Gulf of Mexico in Florida. Before my boarding pass is scanned, though, I will need to survive one more choir concert and an orchestra concert plus extra rehearsals for both of these, a high school tennis season, two piano recitals, six tennis tournaments and four more science projects. Yes, you read that right...

ONLY FOUR MORE SCIENCE PROJECTS!

In the past, the thought of having to do four science projects in an entire school year would have been enough for me to consider homeschooling. Since I'm not insane I wouldn't have actually followed through with it, but I would have considered it for about three minutes. Now I'm at the point where the news of having only four more projects is like hearing that a money tree has sprouted in the backyard. Or that Ketel One has decided to give me a lifetime supply of vodka. Or that the fries at Five Guys are now fat-free.

Then I found out that the fourth-to-last project is a group project, and it kind of felt like someone had just taken a chainsaw to my recently-sprouted money tree. And then Zach informed me that he was hosting the first group meeting at our house, and that was like the Ketel One prize turning into a lifetime supply of Jagermeister.

He scheduled the first meeting for an afternoon when I would be gone at Charlie's violin lesson, and that made me happy. While I've never been a big fan of leaving the house when my kids have friends over, I figured this was an ideal time to become a fan. After all, these kids were all old enough to be left alone, but young enough to not deviate from the original purpose of getting together (science project) into something else (hey, there's a wet bar in your basement).

Since these teenagers came to our house straight from school, I threw a random assortment of snacks on the coffee table, pointed at the bar fridge, said help yourself, call me if you need anything and goodbye. As I was going up the stairs I heard a couple boys say "Awesome! Gimme a Red Bull." Note to self: One kid's friends have officially outgrown juice boxes.

While I was sitting in the car waiting for Charlie's lesson to get done, I got a call from Zach. I would have welcomed a phone call for the following reasons:

• We're all hungry again, so can we order pizza?
• We're done with the project because we worked extra hard.
• We ended up playing video games the whole time and forgot to do the project. Could you do it for us?
• Just calling to say that I miss you, and my friends think you're really cool.
• The house is under attack by zombies.

Instead, Zach started yelling about how the dog had taken a dump in the house and "Oh my god what do I do now?" I could hear the other kids in the background laughing their asses off and saying "Oh man, it smells! Like shit!

I told him duh, grab some toilet paper, pick it up, throw it in the toilet and flush. "You mean with my hands? I have to pick it up with my hands? GROSS!" As soon as he said this the background laughter got louder and I'm pretty sure I heard Zach make some faint gagging sounds.

Apparently the thought of having to pick up dog shit made his brain shut down even more than normal because when I told him that there was a can of Lysol under the kitchen sink, along with some Clorox wipes and if the smell was really bad he should just crack a window open, all he heard was "blah blah blah my dog shit on the floor blah blah girls are laughing at me blah blah" and all he could say is "WHAT? WHAT? WIPES WHERE? WHAT? OH MY GOD!"

It really doesn't matter that there are only four projects left, because I hate science projects. In fact, I hate them almost as much as I hate knowing that my dog is getting really old and keeps crapping on the floor, and I hate all of these things almost as much as the fact that the fries at Five Guys will never, no matter how much I wish they were, be fat-free.