things that raise my blood pressure:

Bees

Not that I'm especially terrified of bees.  I mean, I try to avoid them whenever confronted.  But bees alone don't raise my blood pressure.  It's the combination of bees and my children.

Our neighbors (neighbors that we don't particularly know personally) have now heard exactly how impressive Opie's screaming is.  Because he stood in their driveway for about 5 minutes raising his highest, loudest voice to the heavens in horrendous bee anxiety screams. 

Why 5 minutes?  (Since that's a pretty long time considering the amount of screaming coming out of that kid.) 

Because I was busy gathering the rest of my screaming children and all of their bikes and scooters so that we could go inside where I could beat my head against the wall repeatedly while plugging my ears and humming a mantra.

Training Wheels

Before all the bee screaming started my kids were already warming up their lungs because I made them SIT on a bike without training wheels, while I held it steady.

I'm pretty sure my kids will have training wheels on their bikes until they learn how to drive a car, and then possibly we'll have to get training wheels for the car too.

Dinner

I hate making dinner.  It's just annoying.

Ghosts

I'm pretty sure there was a ghost in my house yesterday.

I was sitting on my couch, working on my dying laptop and watching Buffy.  Three of the kids were upstairs playing the computer.  Number Four was quietly playing at my feet. 

Then I started hearing a door.  You know when you have windows open, but the bedroom door is closed, and the pull of the draft shakes the door in it's frame a little?  It was like that.  For like a full minute.  And what with my excellent ghost knowledge picked up from all of those episodes of Ghost Hunters I've watched (I'm practically an expert now), I didn't immediately panic or anything, even though I panic really well also.  I just listened. 

I was pretty sure it was my bedroom door, downstairs, just down the hall a little from where I was sitting.  It sounded too close to be upstairs.  Plus all the kids up there were pretty imersed in Curious George or something equally entertaining. 

The thing is though, we had no windows open yesterday.  Not a one.  So I figured that I would just ignore it, and pretend that it didn't happen.  (I've been practicing that concept with my kids for years, so I'm also pretty expertly about that too.) 

But then Number Four stood up, and went down the hall to check the door.  So, clearly I wasn't the only one wondering what was up.  And Number Four is two. 

So we checked it out.  It was shut.  We checked the window, just in case.  Not open.  I checked the closet and bathroom and behind the shower curtain for creepy psycho stalker rapist killers.  There were none. (phew.)

So then we closed the door, went back to Buffy and pretended that it didn't happen.  (Number Four is pretty good at pretending too.)

Of course, this isn't the first time I thought there was a ghost in the house.  It's not the second either.  It's kind of the third time.  As long as we count out the times that I'm for sure just making stuff up in my overactive morbid imagination.