Kindergarten homework

Jacob and I have had a rough two days, mostly clashing over homework. He uses any excuse to put it off and I end up feeling like a bully for ordering him to do it after his snack. Today I decided I would try extra hard to make it a more pleasant day than yesterday, so even before we left the school I said I thought a cold rainy day called for hot cocoa. He agreed and ended up dumping semi-sweet minimorsels into it. Then he had a Twinkie (long story why I bought them and won't again) and went off to visit the dogs, who were in their beds because of the rain. I distinctly told him not to let the puppy out of her crate. Next  thing I knew Sophie came bounding into my office. His explanation? He wanted to try his sunglasses on her. That did NOT get us off to a good start.
But we turned to the homework.  Jacob's approach is to guess. One problem had five chickens. If you take two away how many are left? He looked at me brightly and suggested "Five?" Now this is not a slow child--he figures things out way beyond his years when he wants to. He just plain doesn't want to do his homework. We struggled through that math work, counting on fingers and counting animals on the page. Once he gets the hang of it, he whips through it in no time and generally is pretty proud of himself. That didn't happen today--I almost felt he was playing with me, and my string grew shorter and shorter.
Next we moved on to the new batch of reading words he'd brought home. The guessing was much worse. He'd look at "this" and I'd sound out "th" and "iss" and he'd say happily, "Green!" Then he wanted to love the dog; next he was distracted by the pictures on my computer screen. I got read of all distractions. We finally muddled through, and as he finally got each word I made him study it. Told his mom they should go over the words with him again tonight. Bet he doesn't remember them.
We parted friends. I got three kisses, a huge hug, and an agreement that tomorrow will be better. But Mom was quite strict about listening to Juju's dog instructions or losing his dog privileges.
I hate the way this whole business makes me feel, like it's ruining all the fun we usually have together. And I hate it when he says, "You're so mean. All  you care about is homework." I tell him "No, all I care about is you."
I honestly don't think my kids had homework in kindergarten, and I'm too old for this!
Rant over.

A political volunteer and a certain kind of fictional heroine

Can't resist. This is Morgan, my 5-year-old granddaughter from the Houston area, with her first project for kindergarten. Mom tells me she cut the letters of her name out freehand and chose the other images. She looks very proud, as rightfully she should.
There was an obituary for a fairly prominent gentlemen in the community in the paper this morning. He died at the age of ninety, and, God bless him, among his survivors, his fiancee was listed. That's the way to grow old!
I spent my first two-hour morning stint at the Bill White campaign headquarters this morning, working the phone bank. I can't tell you how many messages I left, finally got my spiel down pretty well. I accused the workers of giving me the geriatric list because they were all people in their 60s, 70s, and 80s. Got one woman who was listed as 110 and I was in awe--Willard Scott should be talking to her!--but it turns out that's a code they use when they don't know the age. Actually called six people I knew, which was fun. Most people were polite, several told me they were voting for White, even two or three who said they generally vote Republican. Only one man was firm but he was polite, sort of. Said he wouldnt vote for him for dogcatcher and added, "I'm a good Republican." I wanted to ask him to define that but I refrained. I'll go back once a week until the election. I could hear the staff laughing and cheering after some of my calls--they were eavesdropping!--and they told me I made many more calls than most volunteers.
I'm reading a mystery that will go unnamed. Actually I'm enjoying it, but it has the kind of heroine who drives me bananas. She refuses to level with the guy in her life (who is of course also involved in the mystery). Instead she keeps digging herself a deeper and deeper hole, while all she longs for is to recapture his love--and its obvious he wants that too. But she throws up these barriers, with the feeble excuse (to the reader) that she's not good at talking about feelings or lying to him because she's afraid she'll be accused of murder if she tells the truth. I know why it's done, of course--it spins out the plot, which otherwise would be solved in 50 pages. But you want to shake that girl and say, "Tell the truth, just this once!" It makes her a kind of transparent heroine.
Peter, Paul and Mary retrospective on public TV night--oh my, does that take me back in time, a happy trip.