Have you heard of Twitter? Are you on Twitter? We are - are you following us? Or following me? Or Ally or Jody?

I find Twitter to be a great way to share my thoughts, update everyone on my life, learn from others and as you can see, vent a little.

Rather than blog about my past two weeks of fun, I thought I’d post some of my tweets here instead - with explanations, since sometimes I can be a touch, um sarcastic. The #symbol indicates a thread that you are contributing to - but I often make up my own, as you will see. Can you tell that my kids went back to school this week? I may or may not be just a teeny bit excited.  And I might need to scale down my caffeine intake just a hair.

I’ll bet you can guess what kind of a summer I had with my newly minted public school 14 year old.  Freedom from polyester plaid jumpers, green knee socks and brown loafers escalated my life to an entirely NEW level of fun.

I have actually been to FIFTEEN back to school nights. Apparently going to back to school night is no indication of being able to count. I think, though, that I could lead back to school night in my sleep - and yet, I attend every year because I’m CONVINCED I’ll miss something.  And guess what…I never do.

Chores, chores, chores. Many of my tweets are about my kids and how mean I am to them. It never grows old.

I have NO idea who planned to throw a birthday party for my daughter at the same time as a baby shower for a friend - the day before school started. There actually was alcohol served - a delightful champagne punch, so classy - and yet, I did not imbibe due to the taking of migraine medication at said 12 year old birthday party.

I tweeted this from my van while sitting in the parking lot immediately after dismissal. (Of COURSE I do not text while driving.  Of course not.  Only in the parking lot.) You know that moment when everyone is so so so happy to see you and they all talk at once and everyone needs to tell you the MOST IMPORTANT THING EVER.  And then scream over each other? Yeah, this was that moment. Some days, it makes my ears bleed.

I think that this tweet is self explanatory. Also - UGH.

This, too, is self explanatory. I have a child with recently diagnosed learning differences, and I was dreading the first teacher email. Now that THAT’S out of the way, I guess I have nothing more to worry about, right?

I wasn’t much of a Twitterer (did I make that word up??) until I learned about Uber Twitter, a BlackBerry application. Now I lean more towards OVERSHARING - in case you didn’t notice.

What about you? Do you use Twitter? What do you think of it?  What’s your twitter name?  What’s your favorite tweet?  If you don’t use Twitter, tell us why not?

Not only is this one of my favorite lines from a really funny movie - 10 Zoints if you recognize it - but it’s also the really cool thing about books.

It’s been a long hot, WET summer for us - muggy, too.  Every time you step out of the house, it’s like being slapped in the face with a sponge.  The last two weeks have been filled with wild weather - severe thunderstorms, flash flooding, even some hail once. So, OBVIOUSLY, the pool, the beach and the water park are out - as well as bike riding, fishing, fruit picking, sidewalk chalk contests, running laps at the track, and just about any other outdoor activity that burns off energy and kills time. There are only so many times I can hear the theme song for The Suite Life of Zack and Cody before I want to ram Q-tips through my ear drums.  Attitudes run rampant, there is much eye rolling and dramatic sighing, and everyone has been ORDERED to give each other a three foot clearance at all times.

Exactly how long is summer break?  Just about 3 weeks too long, in my opinion. I was doing GREAT until this week. Sigh.

In the interest of not being the mom that shows up on the 6 o’clock news, I’ve started instituting afternoon reading time. Everyone, including me, benefits from that hour of down time, and I’ve noticed that, in some cases, they want to read even after the mandatory time is up. (I know I could read for an entire week without stopping.) There’s a slight problem though.  Because we’ve read a lot of books, the library (I’m sorry in advance for saying this) makes me crazy.  Have you ever tried to take six kids there and help each and every one look for a couple of books, keeping track of them on both levels and also trying to find a book for yourself? And there’s no way in the entire WORLD I can afford to take the family to the bookstore.  Even if I wanted to. Which, you know, I SO DON’T. So I decided to check on Zwaggle for some new reading material.  After all, I’ve gotten so many great things here before, there certainly might be a book or two available.  Right?

Well, color me blind, because right now, there are 12 pages of books up for grabs.  That’s an awful lot of reading that we can get done, in the three weeks that remain of our summer. I know that some of you don’t go back to school until after Labor Day, and so you have even more reading time on your hands. I’m going to list our family’s books that we’ve already read, and grab some new favorites, with my Zoints, for the whole family.  I’m ecstatic at the thought of all that fresh reading material up for grabs that I can get for free, easily and quickly.   How can you beat that?

If you need me, I’ll be locked in the bathroom.  I’m not hiding out, exactly - just enjoying the quiet. I can’t help it if a book or two found it’s way in there with me.  I have no idea how that happened.  I swear.