What Super Bowl
Jennifer Flaten

Great play in the first half, right? Wasn’t Beyoncé fantastic? What about that M&Ms commercial? I wouldn’t know. I have children. Consequently, instead of watching anything associated with the “Big Game” I am watching a bunch of puppies romp around a room.

 Oh, and wait it gets better there is also a bunch of cats! Who the hell watches a program filled with cats? At least the dogs do something; the cats just sit there looking insufferably smug. I don’t even have to turn on the television to get that; I can look over and see my own cat wearing that very same expression.

 Plus, we have a puppy; the kids should be romping around with that puppy, not watching other puppies on television. Which I would encourage them to do, but the puppy is sound asleep on the couch and you know what they say about sleeping dogs-especially sleeping dogs that eat my good shoes.

 Anything I do know about the game, I learned by sneaking off to look at the internet while my kids watched the puppy bowl. It is okay, I guess, it’s not like anyone expects me to be on the cutting edge of what happens television wise or movie wise for that matter. I just watched something I rented 3 months ago, from Netflix.

Besides, I am not a huge football fan-I realize this is almost heresy in Packer country, but there I’ve said it. I don’t even like the commercials that much; most of them suffer from a case of trying too hard. My kids doing a fake commercial for their fake cooking show do a better job.

I do, however, like the snacks. Stores want you to buy snacks for the super bowl, so they have many samples out. You could make a meal out of the sample snacks, not that I did that this weekend or anything.

I turned off the puppy bowl before the kids OD'd on cuteness and insisted they do their homework. Moments later, there was a mad rush for the computer. The girls are in middle school and it seems every week there is a new project that requires a power point presentation.

It doesn’t matter what class it is science, health, social studies all of them have required presentations. I don’t know what career the girls will ultimately end up in, but I do know that whatever it is they will be able to make a hell of a power point presentation.

The kids love making the presentations. The girls can spend forty-five minutes deciding whether presentation background should be lavender or if it should be purple. Don’t even get me started about the animation choices! Call me cynical but I question the educational value of you tube video of a squirrel downhill skiing, but it sure looks nice in the presentation.

Problem is the presentations are fun homework, but there is still the un-fun homework to do. If I don’t keep an eye on the girls, they will spend the entire homework time futzing around with the presentation, neglecting their math. Surprise, math is the un-fun homework that no one likes to do. They still do math the old-fashioned way with paper and pencil, gasp, it pales in comparison to power point and you tube.