Maybe we can sleep now

Today was kindergarten registration. Little did I know that my son, Mr. Normally Laid-Back, would be awake every night for the past week obsessing over "the test."

They give the Brigance Assessment test to incoming kindergarteners - it tests all kinds of things like letters, numbers, colors, etc. Rumor has it that they are looking for kids to score 75% or higher in order to enroll in kindergarten. I'm assuming that kids that score beneath the 75% are subject to further assessments and testing to see if they need help.

The Most Expensive Preschool on the Planet has been drilling the kids for weeks. Name. Phone Number. Address. Birthdate. And all the other crap on the test. And apparently, my son is way more like I am in that he immediately began obsessing about The Test.

"Mommy, if I fail the test, will I not go to kindergarten?" This was at 3 AM last night. And pretty much every night for the past week he's been up at least once, worried.

This has been going on for over a week. It's exhausting. So no one at the elementary school saw me shed a single tear today as I filled out the reams of forms while Monkey Man was whisked away for The Test. I was ready to get it the fuck over with so we can get a decent night's sleep.

So when he came back, he scored really well - a 98.5%. Thank God. And what he missed wasn't anything earth shattering, either. The best part of all was that he said it was fun and that he can't wait to go to kindergarten in the fall. Whew.

But this whole thing makes me wonder - if he was this stressed out over a silly test for getting into kindergarten, what the hell are we going to do in the next 13 years? Ye gods.

*****

In other news, we met Cat Door M and the Mrs., his brother Bart, and their neighbor Steph at a sportsbar last night to celebrate his birthday. We had a great time - we gave him a bottle of Patron tequila that almost brought a tear to his eye. Cat Door loves him some tequila.

Y'all would be proud of me - I maintained a respectful buzz on just beer last night, which was great at the time but my stomach didn't like it so much this morning. Note to self: Fermenting beer plus oat bran cereal plus raisins = Not Pretty. Ahem. I should totally stick to liquor since it has less tendency to react to high fiber.

So before this last-minute sportsbar "party" was cooked up, I had already arranged to meet Cat Door for lunch today at Q'doba downtown. GMan was nice enough to rig up this great CD cover for a mix CD that I made for Cat Door called "Geriatric Mood Music" and has some totally kickass tunes on it. I'd post it on here, but it's got his last name and a very unattractive photo of Cat Door on there, so if he ever found out that I put it on the web he'd probably seek revenge on me in a most horrible manner. All I can say is that GMan hooked me up with something so hysterically funny that Cat Door almost fell out of his chair when he saw it. GMan, I so totally owe you one, I haven't seen Cat Door laugh that hard in a long time.

*****

In a most disappointing turn of events, I have discovered that apparently I am allergic to MAC foundation. The powder AND the liquid kind. This is highly disturbing in that I've spent a crapload of money in the past 2 weeks on primers and foundations only to have my face turn into a horrible pimply rashy mess. I switched back to my usual Clinique three days ago and my face is almost all better.

I wanted to be one of the cool kids. MAC has such great products and colors. Their foundation colors are simply fabulous. But noooo, I'm relegated back to Clinique where instead of getting trained makeup artists, you get college kids working part time that will sell you absolutely anything. Not to mention that every color Clinique sells is...well, safe. Too safe. I was hoping to kind of punch up my makeup look, but instead it looks like I got punched in the face. Bleh.

*****

Off to make some phone calls. And yes, I will call my parents.