posting not edited yet, might get to it soon

Onto the homework.The notebook came out, as did the spelling list. Word number one: “Füller“. Capitalization was forgotten, as was one of the l’s. He happily killed his mistake, but forgot to use the other end of the killer pen and tried to write over the blank spot with the Füller. It didn’t work. He switched back to the killer. Both ends of the killer were now open, and one of the tops had fallen onto to floor- (swallowed up by the same monster that takes all the hair bands, socks, and puzzle pieces) - never to be seen again. Next spelling word, next mistake. Switch pens, back and forth, back and forth. Now there was a new problem. The killer wasn’t quite dry. Let me take this opportunity to share with you one of my favorite rules in life: Less Is More. In mascara, in garlic, and in killer pens. If you don’t let the killer dry completely you can’t write over it. Also, when killing a word, it takes a few seconds for it to disappear. Newbie’s don’t know this and scrub at the word on their paper. Then they try to write over it using a sharp fountain pen, then again with the killer marker. (yes, it’s a marker, not a pen as I kept writing. And isn’t a marker also in the category of things you SHOULDN’T give to a six-year old?) Anyway, what happened next was a damp, messy hole in the paper. By now it has taken him forty minutes to write six words. Frustration has set in and he has begun to cry. I couldn’t just rip the page out because they aren’t perforated. That, and there are only 16 pages in the notebook to begin with. (See previous Blog). I desperately try to calm him down and find a solution. I Offered to cut a piece of paper to patch the hole. It was useless. He was so overwhelmed from getting homework to begin with at age six, having a teacher that expects perfection, and the pressure of having a “dictation test” the next day, that nothing I said helped. EXCEPT… offering to by a new notebook. So it was back to Toto-Lotto. I bought three new notebooks and another killer. Home again, home again jiggity jig to start the whole thing over again.Eventually he got the hang of it, and soggy holes became a thing of the past. Inky hands, however, NEVER become a thing of the past. The fascination of checking the ink level, or taking the stupid pen apart just for the heck of it never wears off. One of my favorite tricks with the pen is to shake it. Like you would shake an old-fashioned fever thermometer, or a normal Bic pen. This causes the ink to fly out of the tip at an amazing speed and splatter everything within a six-meter radius. A good fight between siblings is a sure-fire way to get ink on the walls and possibly the ceiling. One of them grabs the other’s pen, and a fight breaks out. The owner of the Pen tries to grab the pen back, causing the other to whip it out of their reach in an arc like movement up and over his head. Up and over, left to right, back and forth. And while they do this, they run. Yes, one is running with the pointy pen, waving it wildly and laughing like Jack Nicholson in The Shining. The other is screaming hysterically like Jack’s wife Wendy.“Gib mir mein Füller du Arschloch!”And where is mom while all this is going on? She is sitting on the floor in the ink splattered living room talking through her right index finger, “REDRUM, REDRUM…” Sorry, back to reality. Oh wait, that was reality.I believe this is a good time to end this blog. And Remember, Tintenkiller is your friend.