I give up!

I have never seen such whiny, fidgety kids. What did I do to make them think that whining was a good idea. And Madison had a tantrum when I decided I wasn't going to work with her on a subject after she whined about it. I'm in the admittedly-enviable position of being able to say, "Ok, I am just not interested in educating you today as you're behaving this way," and the response is not "GREAT" but "Oh, no, please Mom, please educate us." Usually I let them get a grip and ask me to work with them on a particular subject, and I do it. But today we've tried that and it hasn't worked. So I've given up for today.

And what does one do when one has given up?

Well, first I'm going to make chrusciki, because I'm going on the radio for a "what's happening Easter weekend around here" couple of spots in the morning, and I'm going to take the Fickle 93.3 folks some chrusciki. We always had it at Easter when I was a kid.

(Long parenthetical: My cousins are visiting with their kids on Monday. It's the first time I'll have seen them in almost 20 years. They actually sound nice...imagine that, blood relatives of mine who are nice. They are two sisters in their late 40s who married brothers, and so their kids are first cousins twice. They decided to take their kids on a little trip to Niagara Falls and so they're stopping in for dinner here on Monday, they'll stay in Pittsford overnight, and continue on Tuesday morning. They're bringing an 8-year-old boy, 14-year-old boy, and 14-year-old girl. I hope it's fun, I'm trying not to put too much emotional stock into it just in case. My one cousin has Celiac and as she had been the only other chrusciki maker in the family before she found out, those kids haven't had chrusciki in years, if ever. So I asked Linda if it would be ok if I made chrusciki for the crew, and she said that would be GREAT. She appreciated how I'd tried to make gluten-free chrusciki with my friend Susan last month. She's going to give it a whirl, too, with a different flour mixture, and see what happens.

Never had chrusciki? Picture a sinful dough made with egg yolks, sour cream, sugar, salt, vanilla, and flour and kneaded until your arms fall off and the dough is smooth and dark yellow, then rolled out thin, shaped into bow ties, deep-fried in Crisco and drenched with powdered sugar. Nothing like it. Clearly the best part of a Polish heritage.)

So that's what we're doing today. I'll have them just sit around and read for a while to get a grip, then we can make chrusciki and go to karate.

Oh, damn, I also have to get Madison to work on the German song that engendered the tantrum last night.