"You Owe Me BIG......"

We just came off Memorial Day Weekend. All I can think is that it's lame we still have 4 days of school after that. Lame. Honey was gone to NJ for the weekend. I was basically on vacation. We neglected the dishes, we played lot's of Wii, ate Sonic outside in the sunshine for lunch, played in the street with the neighbors, stayed up way too late. We had a swarm of honey bees move into the backyard. The boys got a rash all over their faces and Link got sick in the middle of the night and stayed home from school yesterday. So you can imagine how thrilled I was this morning, as I'm getting ready to run to the airport to pick up Honey, when the phone rings and it's Link from the school.

"Mom. I forgot my invention."
"What??"
"I forgot my invention."
"When is it due?"
"Today."
"What?? ::long pause:: When is the convention?"
"In about 10 minutes. At 8:40."
"What??? Where is it?"
"I think it's under my bed."

This is where I cut away from our lame conversation to tell you that now I'm walking up the stairs holding the phone, to look under Link's bed.

"It's not even put together Link. There are a couple of things here, but I don't see the pulley or anything. Where is that?"
"I don't know."
"What do you want me to do?"
"I don't know. ::very long pause:: I guess I'll have to tell Mr. C that I don't have it."

:: major mom-failed guilt ::

So we hang up and I start digging around in the lego box. After a lot of searching, I finally have his invention put back together, functional and by 9:00 we're headed out the door.

Link's invention is a ramp that runs along the stairs to our back yard with a little cart on it. The cart is attached to a pulley. The point of the cart is so our dogs can go up and down without having to use the stairs because they're old and their little extra long old lady backs can't handle it as well as they used to.

Anyway, I ran his little contraption over to the school and while all the other kids are in the classroom showing off their conventions, Link is sitting in the hall alone, retaking some math test. I gave him his invention and said one thing.

"You owe me Big!"

How does this happen? Where do you draw the line? He had two or three weeks to work on this thing. Is it my fault because I forgot about it and forgot to remind him? Is it his fault because he forgot about it and his mom never reminded him? Is it his Dad's fault because he's the engineer in the family and I was really really really hoping he would entirely take care of it? Sadly, I see Link's interest in getting good grades the way I was when I was his age. I went to school because I had to. I did the work cause they told me to. I didn't care less what the work looked like, or what my grades were. I just did not care. Heaven help me if he's exactly like that. Heaven help his father, because his father was NEVER like that.