I am in shock! The weather is actually NICE TODAY! Holy carp! 

We have one remaining problem with the kitchen remodel… The dumpster. You see, they started the process by placing a dumpster in our driveway on Dec 8. We’ve had approximately, 620 ft of snow and 12 inches of ice dumped on us since then. The dumpster is still in our driveway. As in frozen in our driveway. The company has been by twice to pick it up and they can’t. We have an inch of ice on that side of the driveway. Our driveway faces north, so our thaw potential is low.  We’ve decided that the first sign of real spring in our neighborhood will be when the dumpster is gone. Oh, and did I mention that the dumpster is now filled with snow? It was the only place we could angle the snow thrower. Sigh.

Last night, we attempted to help Soleil with her math homework. Luna was happily chicken scratching writing her classmates names on valentines. Star Wars Clone Wars Valentines, thank you very much! The homework seemed pretty darn challenging to me. She had 7 crabs and 5 sea stars (formerly known as Prince, I mean starfish). How many legs and arms together? Okay, Soleil, how many legs on a crab? 8. How many arms on a sea star? 5. So she easily knew 5×5= 25 and we counted by 8s to get 8×7=56. We added them together using the magic of 25 (56=25+25+6)… Then we got to the second page. You have 45 arms and legs together. How many crabs and how many sea stars? Find 4 different answers.

I am sorry, but when two astrophysicists can’t figure this out and in fact do a mathematical proof that you can only have 2 answers, you know something is wrong. I emailed the teacher. She actually checked her email from home. “We’ve been doing this unit for two weeks and we have 10 for the number of arms and legs on a crab”. 10. Ah, yes, 10 would work and be a hell of alot easier for a first grader! I asked Soleil. How many legs on a crab? 10. Why didn’t you tell us that before? Well, really they have 8 legs and two claws. The claws aren’t really arms or legs.

At this point, I throw my arms up in the air like there are no repercussions. Sigh.

We will be redoing the homework tomorrow night.