What’s on the Whiteboard

We have this whiteboard in our kitchen that’s a holdover from when I was doing preschool at home with Little Miss last year. It’s not the most attractive kitchen accessory—certainly nothing you’d ever see in a hip Dwell spread—but because it gets a lot of use, we’ve left it up. Usually it’s filled with cartoon drawings, doodles and the occasional math formula or problem that Poppy is trying to explain to the girls.

Sometimes, after everyone has left for work and school, I’ll look at the board and get a flashback of what was going on at the dinner table the night before. This morning, I got the idea to do a “What’s on the Whiteboard” segment on my blog every once in a while, as it gives a little snapshot of what’s going on in our world—or at least our dinner table.

As you can see, the main focus of our conversation the other night was, and has been, about the new member of our family due to arrive tomorrow—an adorable yellow lab puppy named Cheerio, just like the ones you see in the Cottonelle and Estee Lauder commercials—but hopefully NOT like the one in Marley and Me. (I’ll blog more about him after he gets here.)

We  have been planning for his arrival since November, before he was even born in early December. So the other night, we were discussing the importance of consistency, and that we all need to use the same terms and commands with him for training purposes. Twin A decided to make a list of those commands on the whiteboard, such as “Drop it,” “Leave it,” “No biting,” “Stay,” and, my favorite, “Put it away.” (Anyone who has ever been around a male dog will know what this one means. Two words: Red. Rocket.) She also wrote out his daily schedule that the breeder has outlined and encouraged us to follow.

OK, nothing really exciting there. But what made me laugh the next day was seeing the diagram right in the middle of the board. You see, that was the day the big news came out that Oprah had an unknown half-sister. I found the story quite fascinating, not so much from Oprah’s perspective, but from the sister’s. Imagine finding out one day you have family you never knew about, but to find out she’s Oprah? (Just for the record: I would forgive my mom for withholding this secret–if the secret family member were someone as equally cool and famous as Oprah.)

So I was explaining the story to Mr. Buzzkill (BK), but he just wasn’t getting it. It was a confusing, convoluted story to begin with, but BK does not like the use of pronouns, which made it even harder to tell because there were a lot of “shes” to potentially throw around, between Oprah, her new half-sister, her deceased other half-sister, her mother, her nieces, etc. Making it even more confusing was that the new half-sister and the deceased old half-sister had the same name. And I’m trying to explain this to him? Sheesh!

He’s also known for asking questions that have nothing to do with the point of the story: ”Wait, now who owns this BBQ restaurant?” And, “Now whose house did they go to for Thanksgiving?” Honestly, I’m surprised he didn’t ask who made the sweet potatoes. I’m not even joking.

Sensing our communication breakdown frustration (a nice way of saying, “getting really exasperated with each other,”) Twin B jumped out of her seat and decided to diagram the situation for BK. (This pronoun-averse engineer processes things better in chart and graph form. Go figure.)

I still don’t think he got the story, though. Nor do I think he really cared, but at least he tried.

And that’s what was going on at our dinner table discussion the other night.

Stay tuned for future episodes of “What’s on the Whiteboard.” I know, it’s all so fascinating.