Mother's Day, It makes all those shitty diapers seem worth it."

Ahh...Mother's Day. The time each year that I'm reminded that I twice weighed over 1,700 lbs, that my vajanna is elastic enough to squeeze a human being out of it, and that because some pediatric asshole once upon a time, decided that "breastfeeding is best," I have no bazookas to speak of...only longish, little dried up things that, when placed into one of my pre-baby brassieres, flop around sadly as if you just tossed a couple of sun-dried raisins into a hot air balloon and let them fend for themselves.

The 5 year old charged into the kitchen earlier to say that she had trouble fitting her Rapunzel doll's "peeps" into her skin tight stripper gown.

"Since Rapunzel is a grown up, am I supposed to call them 'boobs'? she asks in a barely audible whisper.
"Why are you whispering, sweet cheeks?"
"Because daddy said that boobs are like ghosts in this house, and not to ever speak of them to you again. You know, since me and Morgan were like little infant peep vampires. You wanna' come watch me color?"

"What do you want me to get you for Mother's Day?" the mans asks.

 He's dedicated himself to providing a stupendous gift since he is still riding out the high of being on a recent all guys (and females with daddy issues and glitter addictions) weekend golfing.

"You're not supposed to get me a gift because I didn't give birth to you. If I had squeezed that noggin of yours out of my parts, I would have more serious issues now that sunmaid ta-tas."
"Like throwing a hot dog down a hallway?"
"Precisely...And thank the good pregnancy fairies that your mom had the benefit of a C-section. You just can't bounce back from that type of massive cranium."

Well folks, I am nothing if not a huge manipulator of a situation, and since his return from his boy scout trip where he earned his badge in competitive pole dancing,  I have taken every opportunity I could to request a nightly backrub, which is more than I could muster out of the fella'  during the course of 18 months of pregnancy.

Sure, since then, I've counted the times he's given a good ol' fashioned mineral oil rubdown to our fancy new Williams Sonoma cutting board, but should I have expected the same treatment when I was at my fighting weight of 3 tons, drowning in the sorrows of my sciatic pain, hunched over the toilet seat, apparently trying to vomit the evil out of my uterus from what I now know is one overly temperamental, and mildly bitchy second spawn?

Nay. For it was never written on my warning label that I would splinter and crack if I were not given at least one back massage during that whole uterine invasion spell. Some mother fuckers just need to get with the situation, and realize that stretch marks and these tiny, longish bosoms should be more than enough validation for that.

Also, he did not have to pay $49.95 for me. He simply gifted my father with a youthful goat and bottle of Vodka and it was agreed upon that we would be married.

 Instead, I made a note of it in my journal, every time the SOB broke out his bottle of mineral oil and started to rub ferociously on the slab of wood. (I mean the cutting board...not his penis. I only caught him rubbing on that slab of wood once...in the shower...when we first moved in together. He swears he has since ceased masturbating in our shared bathing facility).

I took it as a sign when he asked what I wanted for Mother's Day this year to cash in all my journal entry chips, and instead of the typical year when I demurely respond, "Nothing honey. You and the kids and this super awesome craft she made me out of dog fur and some dried up cheerios is ALL I've ever need!!!" I decided to request a rubdown with some sort of oil, from my husband of nearly a decade.

"Jesus....really? Don't you want some new shoes or something? I HATE rubbing your back."
"Oh yeah?  Well you know when I deposited those two 8 pound medicine balls out of my vagina who now consider you their "favorite parent?" You're welcome. You're very welcome for that."
"Don't you want some flowers instead?"
"Of course. Gift me with something else I have to try to keep alive. Thanks, but no thanks."
"Chocolate?"
"I'm allergic to chocolate, you asshole."
"How are you allergic to chocolate?"
"See this swelling around my midsection? I'm assuming it's an allergy. I'm not comfortable calling it a 'spare tire' just yet."

Boys, this Mother's Day, if you so insist on buying a present for your betrothed, let's at least try to put forth some effort in getting her something she may actually enjoy. Like a lousy, unenthusiastic backrub from your spouse who is too distracted by the viewing of the latest horse's head being chopped clean off in Game of  Thrones, that the massage turns out to be a less than stellar performance.

1. If the mother of your children struggles with keeping the house pets alive, maybe it's not such a good idea to buy her some flowers. Sure, they may look pretty at first, but over time, when said wife fails to water them sufficiently and fails to provide them with sunlight, opting to store them instead in the laundry room, since that's where she spends all her waking hours, the pretty flowers will shrivel up and droop more sadly than a fresh pair of mom-boobs.

2. If your wife is oft times caught cursing her mother-gut in the bathroom mirror, while manipulating her stomach flab to sing a little opera song out of her belly-button, then perhaps chocolate is not the way to go. Caught up in the recent fascination of the only4 minutes I could tolerate of  Les Miserables, the belly button would sing to the boobs, "Look down, look down, upon your fellow man, look down," to which the boobs would reply, "We already ARE looking down!"

3. Do not offer to  have your children make mommy breakfast in bed on this glorious morning. Mother doesn't want to wake up. Mother wants to lock the fucking door to the bedroom and bask in the glory of a silent house while Father takes the kids to IHOP for a plate of pancakes shaped like a smiley. What breakfast in bed translates to is an extra dose of sheet-laundering that will have to take place to remove the strawberry jam and bits of egg from the bed linens. Of course, the bedroom floor will have to be vacuumed and shampooed again too since the geriatric cat sampled a bite of turkey bacon and regurgitated it back out on the floor.

4. Jewelry. While some women may fancy this type of  bling, I've found no use for it over the years. For one reason, I can't find the David Yurman "House-pant" collection, and quite frankly, any sort of nice shiny thing does nothing to take away from the fact that I'm almost always covered in bleach and self-loathing.

If the simple idea of a backrub from your husband turns out to be impossible, due to the fact that  3 1/2 minutes in, he starts speaking like an Oriental woman and asking if he can "perhaps polish you off with a happy ending," then maybe you should smile and accept a vase of overpriced roses, because at least they temporarily spruce up the décor in your servant quarters.

Then again, you can never really go wrong with a heartfelt cheerio craft from your 5 year old that says "I love you mommy, more than andy-thing in the whOOOOle world!"

Totally worth it, that sweet little medicine ball...

"This is no longer a vacation. It's a quest. It's a quest for fun."

One of the really fun things about not having a "real" job, (as my 5 year old points out to me every day of my life,) is that I can seldom find a valid excuse to take a vacation.

A day before we left, I picked a fight with my vacuum cleaner. Surely, not getting along with one's co-worker constituted a valid reason for taking some time off. I thought that certainly calling ones' inanimate cleaning device a "son-of-a-bitch" guaranteed that I needed to spend some time away from him. Don't get me wrong;  Dyson has been very good to me over the years.

We've had many play dates, just the two of us, and he never, ever has lost  the ability to put up a good fight, nor has he ever lost suction,  except for the time he did! And right before I left for vacation, when I needed him most.

"Don't you go dying on me Dyson! We've got 10 pounds of cat fur to pick up before the morning. Just in case someone decides to break in and steal things while we're gone. How embarrassed would you be if the burglars saw this house in the condition it is now? Now suck, you sumbitch! SUCK!"

As I strolled him over to the play room carpet, he made that noise that vacuum cleaners make when they have indigestion.  It sounded a lot to me like sass talk, so I set him outside to blow off some steam, (literally:  his undercarriage was smoking), and went back inside to reevaluate our relationship.

I texted Jim to let him know that the vacuum cleaner and I were quarrelling again. He urged me to call the 800 number on the back of him and ask where our relationship went wrong. So I did...

"Shaloww? Shank you for cawling Dyson cowstomer serbice. My name is Deborah. How may I be of serbice?"
"First of all, let's cut to the chase. Your name's not Deborah. And secondly, my vacuum is growling at me and acting sort of snippy."
"Are you still with the vacuum now?"
"No. He left me for another woman, a housewife down the street, who really knows how to properly handle his extender wand...Of course it's still with me. He never leaves my side, that kind-hearted fellow."
"Haz you checked for clogs?"
"Of course I have."
"Haz you unplugged the S-shaped tube from out the back of him?"
"Hold please..."
************************************************************************
"Hello, Kuldip?"
"Again, ma'am...my name really is Deborah."

We went on like this for some time, until I finally managed to dislocate his tube and  managed to fetch out one dentist-office quality toothbrush, a pound of play-do, a dehydrated cat turd, 7 stickers, and my bra, that had gone missing sometime in December, after what I assume was a holiday party that got out of control.

Unbeknownst to me until I had an hour long conversation with "Deborah," but "bagless" vacuum cleaners do not necessarily possess the skill set to take pounds of dirt, animal fur, and oral hygiene devices and make them magically disappear like a cloud of filth into the earth's atmosphere.

According to Deborah, you occasionally have to empty the canister.

Jim came home from a 14 hour day to find Dyson still sitting outside on the porch, and me, with my fat ass propped up on 7 different pillows watching a recorded episode of "Cougar Town." This, my show of choice, because if there's one show that can make me feel more justified about what is technically a textbook definition of "overconsumption" of red wine, it's this show.

"Jesus, is this what you do all day?"
"Firs of all, I don't go by "Jesus" anymore. It's too confusing for Catholics. And,  yes. As a matter of fact, the magical rainbow-colored laundry fairies just left. They washed all your sweaty gym shorts and made the pit stains from your white t-shirts disappear. It was magical, I tell ya! Just magical!Also, they left a note, saying that if you want to leave a tooth underneath your pillow at night, they would start ironing your dress shirts. They also made you lunch for tomorrow."
"The last time you made me lunch, you put some frozen chicken nuggets and a leftover waffle fry in a Ziploc bag."
"They were dino nuggets. And besides, you have a microwave at work. It's not as if I left you out in the cold. Let's not be so ungrateful."

Regardless of my lack of need for a vacation, Jim agreed to let me accompany him and our children to the most magical place on earth, but only if I agreed to speak with a French accent all week and pretend that I was the family au pair, where I could chase the children around the pool screaming things at them like, "Si'l vous plait octo buerre!" which is actually how you ask someone to pass you some butter, but no one would really be able to tell the difference, I figured, especially if I wore a sunbonnet and apron and carried around a baguette to snack on.

Our hotel was Hawaiian themed, so everywhere we walked, employees would cheerfully greet us with "Maholo!" or "Aloha!" or "Ma'am, smoking is not allowed on the patios. You'll need to stroll over to the leper corner behind that smelly dumpster."

Jim began to get frustrated with all the foreign language...

"Doesn't anyone speak American in this godforsaken town?"

To really immerse ourselves fully in the Polynesian experience, we decided we would attend a luau.
Hawaiian luaus are nothing more than strip clubs for men and women alike. Jim got to sit back and enjoy a group of woman in coconut-shell brassieres flop around on stage in a condition very similar to nakedness. Meanwhile, a very sculpted and fit young Polynesian fire-eater flicked his pectorals towards our table.

"Jim!  Did you see that? We just got a bosom-flick from that young native boy!"
"Did that hula girl just give birth? What is that weird saggy part on her stomach?"
"That's called sacrifice, asshole. Sacrifice..."
"Oh, that's gross. He just flicked them again!"
"Just wait. If this show goes on any longer, that postpartum one's going to start shooting real milk out of her coconuts. Of course, I suppose as far as nursing pads go, you can't get any more protective than a coconut shell."

If it's one thing Jim and I are not, it is wasteful, so when we discovered that all alcoholic beverages were included in the purchase of our luau tickets, and because we really were naught too impressed with the chicken, we realized that we had to consume $60 worth of red wine and beer to make the ticket purchase really seem worthwhile.

"Challenge accepted!"

"So what do you think of the show so far?"
"Kind of disappointing. I mean, if I wanted to watch a "mom-stomach" dance around, I could put a video camera in the bathroom when you get ready in the morning."
"And if I ever get a hankering to watch that scene  in The Silence of the Lambs when Buffalo Bill dances around with his tom doodle tucked between his legs, then I'll put a camera in there when you're getting ready in the morning."

"You're ridiculous."
"If by ridiculous you mean completely accurate, then yes, by all means, paint me with that brush. Let's not pretend for a second that you don't kind of sometimes wonder what it would be like to have your own vagina."
"I'd rather have a skin suit."
"This is why I sleep with a meat fork under my pillow. I'm not sure you can be trusted."

After I shoved the rest of my dollar bills into the pec-flicking boy's grass skirt, the children were invited up on stage to participate in a hula dance. I guided my bald-headed baby to the stage and heard immediate loud and angry screaming!

I turned around and a very wrinkled and old grandmother was yelling at me to crouch down, because she couldn't see her fat grandchildren dance the hula. I was so completely caught off guard by the rudeness, that I stared at her for a moment, weighing my options. When I realized that it was neither A. socially acceptable to punch a senior citizen,  B. wise for me to set a poor example for my children, or C. I was not interested in taking a tour of the Floridian jail, because chances were, no one there would speak American either,  I took a deep breath and walked back to my table, but not before I leaned over to Memaw and told her that I sincerely hoped she had dementia, because no normal person would be so out-right rude, and that if this were back in 1927, we would have rumbled.

The general public are a big bunch of rude assholes, it turns out, and I'm reminded of that every time I leave the house. You should never underestimate the ability of grown people to run over small children with strollers in and attempt to be the first in line to buy a pair of Mickey Mouse ears.  Jim accidentally cut out in front of a family of hillbillies, and the woman, stellar mother that she was, yelled angrily at her 6 year old son, that "those sons a bitches don't know no better, Bubba Earl! Here, have some more of my Skoal. It's the mint kind, just like ya' like."

"No, but at least we DO know better than to use double negatives. But way to teach your son early cuss words. I'm sure he'll be a stellar part of society when he grows up. Maybe a possum-hunter, or something of that nature."

Hillbillies are an unpredictable species, so I only said these things back to her in the privacy of my own head. I thought a Magic Kingdom confrontation of this multitude would make a small argument with a blue-hair at a luau seem like small potatoes. Plus, I assumed she probably stored a shotgun down her pant leg and she would easily shoot me dead, mount me on her living room wall, and her husband would drag Jim's city ass out to the woods and make him squeal like a pig, Deliverance style.

We made multiple sacrifices to ensure that the trip was a good one for our loin-fruits. So, needless to say, it was a little disappointing to hear Kendall scream,

"Mooooom! This is so boring! I want to see Mulan instead!"
"Well, this is the best we can do. Mulan is still celebrating Chinese New Year."
"Where is Rapunzel then?"
"Rapunzel is in a clinic, getting cured off the wild turkey."

"Ugggh! I haven't gotten to do ANYTHING I wanted to do!"
"You met 8 princesses, had a crappy ham sandwich in the Beast's Castle, bought some mouse ears, went to the Bibbidi boutique, and got cursed at by some rednecks. What else on earth could you possibly ask for on vacation???"
"Can we go back to the hotel so I can play on the iPad? Then go to the pool?"

"I think you're all fucked in the head! We're ten hours from fucking fun park and you want to bail out. Well I'll tell you something, this is no longer a vacation, it's a quest. It's a quest for fun, I'm gonna have fun and you're gonna have fun, we're all gonna have so much fucking fun we'll need plastic surgery to remove our goddamn smiles! You'll be whistling Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah out of your assholes! I gotta be crazy; I'm on a pilgrimage to see a moose! Praise Marty Moose! Oh, shit!" -Clark Griswold

The Happiest Underground Sweat Shop on Earth

Nothing gives me greater pleasure in this world than seeing the look of pure delight on my child's face when I tell her the news that tomorrow, not at the decent hour of 5 or 6 o'clock, but at the crack of stupid, long before our house chickens start crowing to alert us that the sun is up, we will be cramming her, along with her sister, into the car to venture out on what I can only assume will be the most nerve-wracking and stressful road trip of all eternity.

Sure, we had the option to fly, on an airplane, shaving off a cool 8 hours from the trip, but we really like to challenge ourselves whenever possible. Plus, driving in a car seemed to be the lesser of two evils, considering the fact that you're not even really allowed to pace up and down the aisle of an airplane consoling a screaming toddler anymore, without getting pistol-whipped by a flight attendant, or have your child punched by a complete stranger. This, I'm told, actually happened on a flight. Though, if some deranged alcoholic stranger managed to tell me to "shut my honkey baby up", and then slapped her in the face, I may figure out quickly how to operate those emergency doors on the plane and throw that sucker out. But first, I would laugh, really hard, because calling someone a "honkey" always makes me laugh. And I'm allowed to use it to my heart's content, because I  actually am one. A honkey, that is. See? It's a ridiculous word, isn't it?

Driving is the lesser of the two evils, because, if push comes to shove, I can always fling my body out of the car door on the side of I-95, while cruising along at a cool pace of 75 miles per hour. This seems a bit of a drastic way to achieve some quiet time, but all worth it, especially when you take into account just how much the 5 year old can talk without wearing herself out, even a little bit.

"Where did mommy go?"
"Oh, she just needed some mommy alone-time. She'll be right back," as the children watch me tuck and roll all the way to the nearest Cracker Barrel in search of a shot of whiskey or a Mexican jumping bean souvenir wrapped in a colorfully crocheted stocking, "Hand Knitted by Esther Flanagan of Harnett County, NC. Jesus is Lord!"

In all honesty, I'm excited about going, but only because my parents had the common sense when I was a child to never, ever take me anywhere fun. They would ship me off to stay with my grandmother where we would sit around and watch the Lawrence Welk show, and she would teach me some snazzy dance moves she had developed with her walker, and also how to smoke 4 foot-long, needle-thin cigarettes, all classy-like.

My parents would go off to various "business trips," which I now know were really just vacations, where the entire board of education would go get shitfaced drunk on Catalina island or some place, without anyone having to worry about the distraction of their own flesh and blood offspring

Boy, would I feel like hot shit when my parents would come back home, severely dehydrated, with a classy T-shirt from the airport in Norfolk, Virginia. I would wear that shirt proudly to school and nod smugly to my classmates, who did NOT have garments as cool as I did, that proved that I had actually been to a dirty souvenir shop in an airport before. In NORFOLK, VIRGINIA. Which is not even at all where they were had been on their parents-only vacation, but was the best they could do, seeing as how the actual trip was spent trying to locate the Superintendent who had hit the bottle a tad too hard, allegedly pissed his pants at the bar on a ferry, and may or may not have fallen overboard.

Bringing home a cool present for your only child seemed to pale in comparison. Although once, they did manage to come away with a Abalone shell ashtray they were pretty tickled about gifting me with, because what 9 year old girl DOESN'T need a new Abalone shell ashtray to add to her collection of OTHER abalone shell ashtrays? No one, that's who.

Once, when my grandmother had recently suffered a minor stroke, my parents were left with no choice but to let me tag along on one of these drunken orgy trips to Florida.

"Come on, momma," I could hear my dad say to my grandmother on the phone while she was still in the hospital. "They said it was MINOR, and anyway, that unilateral facial numbness will clear up in no time. Are you sure you can't watch her for just 4 days?"

At the time though, I was already in the beginning stages of what I would soon find out what a terribly awful bout of adolescence, so I really already viewed myself as "a little too cool for school," and way too cool to be fascinated with a gigantic fucking mouse. Begrudgingly, I allowed myself to be forced to stand in a 3 hour line to meet this magical fellow, at which time I extended my hand and gave a firm, and very business-like handshake to Mickey. Then he autographed my dream journal, and I snuck away to take a cigarette break while my parents rode some rides.

"You know that's just some guy dressed up like a mouse, right?"
"I know! I know! But it's just...he looked...so REAL!"
"Get a hold of yourself."
"I can't! I mean, that's my first real CELEBRITY!"

*(In case you were wondering, these are the actual types of conversations I would have with myself, and no, therapy cannot fix this type of shit).


"But mom, is it going to take a really long time to get to Florida?"
"No sweetums. We'll be there in two shakes of a lamb's tail." Two shakes of a lamb's tail, 4 bottles of Prozac, 7 roadside meltdowns, 2 gallons of juicy juice vomit, and 3 or more episodes when I will accidentally slip off into a sort of unconscious delirium that is my mind's way of preserving itself from the torture of a stream of endless questions, including, but not limited to, "Mommy, if elves can't be witches, then witches can't have wardrobes. Right? RIGHT?"

This is only the most important reason I'm looking forward to our Griswold family vacation. The second reason may be that I can barely contain my own excitement at finally having a chance to meet the Disney princesses. IN REAL LIFE! I can finally confront Briar Rose and ask her how she felt when she woke to find a strange man's tongue shoved down her throat. Did she do the walk of shame all the way back to her sorority house, or instead, did she become a hermit and head off to spend her remaining years cohabitating with a group of middle-aged balding midgets in their cabin in the glen?

Oh wait, that's a different one. One that I simply must track down if I can figure out how to work the app on my pager to notify me when and where said princess has made an appearance out of the underworld. This is not something I'm making up. It is actually the way Disney World operates. There is a series of underground passageways running beneath the park and every once in a while, one of the princesses will emerge to hold some sort of meet and greet with all the young girls of the world, who aspire to be just like them.

Set your goals higher, little girls. Unless, of course, you fancy being locked away in a tower or being poisoned with a granny smith because of your dashing good looks, and long, unmanageable hair.

I imagine that this underground chamber houses multiple tiny Asian children who work their little hands to the bone, constructing these robot princesses and when one gets worn out from signing autographs in a child's 47 dollar "dream journal," or exhausted from being kissed in the face by one too many mucous-covered children, they descend back into the ground, to be immediately replaced by an exact replica, who is shot up a human-sized tunnel, (just like the ones at the teller machines at the bank), and deposited someplace different in the park. At which time, all the techno-savvy parents will be alerted by their smart phones that "Rapunzel has been spotted at Jellyroll's Piano Bar drowning her sorrows in the bottom of a Martini glass."

We think we have it bad as parents. These poor girls probably set out with some life goals, and somehow got sidetracked by the fact that they would never make it as accounting majors or in the pre-med building of an Ivy League school, because not only are they just too pretty to be smart too, but life always seems like it's missing something, what with the lack of dwarves and wicked stepmothers.


If I were a wicked stepmother, I would want to be the Charlize Theron kind of stepmother, and at least this more modern, updated version of Snow White comes with an interesting backstory.

"Hey Kendall, you know Snow White was actually sleeping with the director of this film, WHEN she was dating Robert Pattinson."
"You don't say."
"YES."
"Sheesh! What a tramp."



Sadly, this movie turned out to be almost more kid-friendly than the original Walt Disney cartoon version of the 1930's. Apparently, cartoons in the 1930's were designed mostly to scare young children to death, cause them to believe in evil witches, wall décor that tells you how insignificant and unattractive you are, that it's perfectly find to store dead bodies in your tool shed so you can look at them, and, most importantly,  that you should never, EVER pass out in the woods, because chances are, you will get "nap-raped" by a horny prince passing by on his steed.

 

The only concern Kendal had about the new model of movie was that the wicked stepmother had some creepy fingernails. Let's forget about the fact that she used those creepy talons to steal the youth from beautiful girls so that she would never grow old.

"It's a concern of us all, Charlize. I find that retinoids can offer some benefits. Then again, I haven't been carded for alcohol purchases since I was 12. I attribute that to my skin-care regimen of cigarette-smoking and severe alcohol-induced dehydration. On second thought, maybe some magical Lee Press-ons might not be such a bad idea..."

Public Enemies

Occasionally, a brilliant idea dawns on my husband. He's had more than a handful of such ideas over the years, and it never ceases to amaze me what sort of nonsense he has up his sleeve to serve as "family entertainment".

 While I'm content to ride out the terrible two's holed up in my parental turtle shell, or "laundry room," (potato-potawtoo),  he is constantly insisting that we go out and "do things," and "live our lives," "not act like a boring old cat lady," and things of that nature.

"We should go out to dinner," he says. "It will be fun," he says.

Less than two years into her life, the small child has gotten us blackballed from 90% of the fine dining establishments in our neighborhood, like Moe's, or when we're really feeling like a bunch of Fancy Nancy's, Applebee's neighborhood grill.

 Any place that offers a kid's night, where toddlers will be fed stale bits of quesadilla, free of charge, is right up our alley, especially if they start seating for dinner at 3:35 sharp. Even that is pushing it sometimes with our small child, the child devoid of the table manners her older sister seems to have been born with, and without any sense at all of how loudly she screams over senseless things, like not having the crayon that she feels is the appropriate color to color in a giant hotdog with a face.


"Eat me," the giant hotdog on the menu says, and I share his sentiment, as I watch the baby dump her cup of milk onto the floor, smash french fry into her hair and obsessively "mouth-fart" in an attempt to get a laugh or two out of her sister.

The waitress will inevitably cast a glance at the baby with a look that says, "Oh, bless her little heart..." like she's suffering from some sort of  mental ailment that makes her act like a fruitcake.

Can I really blame her? the 20-something food server who has no kids of her own, and still knows what it's like to have some sort of a life, and also what it's like to sleep past 6:30 in the morning?

When I was childless, other people's kids annoyed my balls off. I would see them in public, while I stood in line at the grocery store with my 40 ounce bottle of malt liquor and box of cheese nips, the weekly groceries Jim and I apparently thought we could survive on.

 The mother would be utterly frazzled, while the kid sat flailing about in the cart, snot pouring down his chocolate-covered face because he was apparently  upset about having eaten the last of his Little Debbie treat.

"Switch CAKE ROLLLLL GOOONE!! More caca Mommaaa!" and according to his mother,

"Widdle Timmikans is a sweepy boy, isn't he? Widdle Tim-Tim needs a nappy-poo."

Sweet baby Jesus, all swaddled up in your baby blanket, please, PLEASE promise that you'll never let anything that foolish come out of my mouth. Amen

"Excuse me, ma'am? I have an extra piece of nicorette in my purse, if your child would like to suck on that? It's  not chocolate, but hey, it's the best I can do. Also, just throwing this out there, but "caca" means "shit" in espanol. You may want to clear that up before he starts kindergarten."

On an airplane once, a woman obviously 11 months pregnant, spent the entire flight from London pacing up and down the aisle with an insanely loud, wailing infant. And funny thing to think about now, is that woman never, not even once, tried to cram the child into the overhead compartment, which at the time I thought may have been the best place for it.


"Jesus, the NERVE of this woman...bringing this child out of its cage and letting it make those dreadful noises. I'm trying to take a nap for God's sake! And anyway, what sort of horrible parent lets her child CRY that way? I'll NEVER have a child who misbehaves in public."

Well if there's one thing I can say about karma, it's that she's a bitch, and wouldn't you know it, but the second my feet touched down on American soil, I discovered that I was pregnant, and that flight was the last time in my life I ever had a nasty thought about a mother and her publicly-misbehaving child.

Now I'm the one in the grocery store, dodging ugly looks from people as my baby slaps me and screams and curses...(Of course I assume she's cursing, although the only real words she's really grasp hold of, are "No!!!" and "Mooooom!!!!" the only two necessary ones, it turns out).

While I've expressed some concern to her pediatrician that because she doesn't speak, only screams, she may have a case of the "simples," her doctor has reassured me that she's normal, and that she's probably just focusing more on other developmental tasks, such as punching me in the kneecap, dislocating the cat's tail, and biting her sister's face off.

So of course, when my husband sprouted the grand idea to take our two children to a hotel where there would be tons of other people's children, my gut reaction was to take a bubble bath with my hair dryer. Then I packed some clothes for the children, and 3 liters of wine and some earplugs for moi.

The lobby of the hotel was a magnificent sight to behold!

There were infants in their Baby Bjorns, flopping angrily about like  flacid cucumbers that sat in the crisper bin a week too long, preschoolers contorting their  bodies into backwards 'S' shapes in the middle of the lobby floor, 8 year olds thrown over the shoulder of their fathers and dragged away from the craft table fast enough to make their heads spin, all because they were shoving fabric markers up their nostrils and comparing the sizes of their boogers.

"It's not the size of the boat,  little Johnny. You just keep on diggin, pal. You'll get yourself a winner one day."

The wonderful thing about a resort for children, is that we realize, as parents, that none of us is perfect. Nay, in fact, I have come away from this weekend with the understanding that not just our child, but nearly ALL children of the world are tremendous assholes!

 As I sat in the craft corner and watched my tiny daughter get into a fist fight with a boy 3 weeks her senior, I thought of little Johnny and his mucus-covered fabric marker, and realized that all kids are public enemies. Until, of course, when they become teenagers, the tables will be turned, and they will refuse to be seen in public with us.

 One day, we will long to listen to the sound of a psychotic, screaming baby in the bunk bed next to us, look forward to the Friday night when our daughter wants nothing more than to sit on my lap and describe, with vivid detail, all the ballet moves a fucking cartoon mouse can perform, and then count to 270, over and over and over again, all the while singing  Christmas carols, on repeat, even though it's January.

You can take solace in the fact that one day, they will grow up, and have kids of their very own.

And you will get to laugh.

Politickin'

With the presidential election over, everyone can get back to their daily businesses of prowling the internet for  hilarity in some form of e-card, pictures of people "shaming" their housepets, updates on what our facebook pals are having for dinner, and asinine blogs of some sort, such as the one you're now reading.

Every now and again, it dawns on me that I'm 31, so I shouldn't have been surprised that this year, for the first time in my post-18 year old life, I actually gave a hoot about the election. Now, as a wrinkly old house mother, I actually cared who would become the next president.

I would probably also knit a pair of stockings later and catch up on General Hospital. I am one subscription to Ladies Home Journal away from hitting menopause...

When I first earned the right to vote, "politicking" was something that happened when a person held onto a joint a fraction longer than the allotted time, and failed to pass it directly to the fluroescent unicorn sitting on the couch to his right, giggling and singing the praises of wonderful inventions, like Mayonnaise.

 When I was 18, I was more concerned about why the task of voting for the American President fell into my hands, when all I was really concerned about, was finding a gas station where the clerk was  naive enough to believe that I was a New Jersey native, as my fake ID claimed I was, despite the fact that I walked in with a pair of overalls covering my plaid shirt, a goat on a leash, (who was my pet, Wilbur), and said things like, "Ya'll must cain't be getting naw kinda' good bidness here wid dem dare gas prizes like day are."

If I were lucky, the clerk would respond with a, "Yower ID, Mister?" and after glancing at the picture of a 50 year old, one-eyed Pakistani man from New Jersey, would respond with, "Have a great day, now, ya' hear," and slide my brown-bag of Budweiser across the counter.

Now that I'm a real live adult, with real live children who will have to grow up in this real-live country of ours, the election was as important to me as if I were a fellow watching the Superbowl, minus the skin-tight football pants, which, I think we can all agree, nobody wanted to see George Stephanopolous wearing.

For the first time in my life, I watched the debates, researched the candidates, and gathered all sorts of knowledge from valid political sources like Twitter, which must all have been completely accurate.

In the weeks leading up the the election, something as simple as posting a picture of an "LOL cat" eating a tiny cheeseburger, could result in the lashing out of political opinions.

"Oh my! That Charlie sure has grown slam up, hasn't he? Just like a weed!"
"Colorado's going to legalize weed, you know. Our country has gone to SHIT! Shit, I tell ya! I blame Obamacare. Who is Charlie, anyway?"
"The kid who is in every single one of your profile pictures?'
"Oh, I don't actually KNOW who that is. It's just a cause I've been sending monthly payments to...something about his foster mother needs new breast implants so that she can keep her job at the coal mine. Also, I think she's saving up to buy a prosthetic tail for the family labrador, because he's been suffering from depression ever since he lost it in a boating accident. "

My 4-going-on-17 year old sobbed into her bowl of peanut butter panda puffs this morning, because they were organic, gluten-free, and did not contain the required 47 grams of sugar she enjoys in her breakfast cereal.

She also sobbed because she "REALLY wanted Mitt Romney to win, because that was the one president flash card she didn't have already."

This, a more valid reason to choose a president than many I've heard over the past few weeks...from adults.

"Well, honey, when you turn 18 years old, you'll get to vote for whoever you want to."
"18 years old is NOT a grown-up. Rapunzel was 18 years old, and she's just a little kid."

*If you were previously unaware, once your female child reaches the age of 3 1/2, all references will be pulled directly from some sort of Disney princess movie, which is a bad thing when you have to explain to said child that mermaids are not real creatures, while she nearly drowns herself trying to breathe underneath her bath water just to prove you wrong*

They held a mock-election at her preschool this week, and I'm pleased to report that my child goes to a school that tackles the really important issues in our nation, such as whether chocolate or strawberry milk is best. She voted for strawberry, and I'm not sure why, considering the fact that she's never even tried it before.

Maybe she voted the way she did because it was something new and foreign  to her, and she thought that maybe it would be better than what she was used to. Maybe she voted for it because it's pink, and that's her favorite color. The most likely reason, though, is because her best friend, Delaney, voted for strawberry milk, and peer influence is a bitch, even when you're 4.

No matter the reason, her heart or her shoes, she stood there on election-eve, hating the who's, who voted for chocolate milk instead, because it was a landslide victory, and what that meant was that she would not only never have a Mitt Romney flashcard to add to her collection of old white men with wigs on their noggins, but she would also be forced to have chocolate milk for lunch. She's dealt with a lot of loss this week, the poor dear.

When she came home to complain about the injustices of the preschool voting system, I explained to her the important thing is that she gathered all the facts about both forms of milk, and voted however she saw fit.

"That's one of the great things about being an American preschooler! You actually have the RIGHT to vote!"

I stressed the importance of not posting endless streams of hateful words against cocoa beans in general on her leapster tablet the next day, and that it would be uncalled for to stick multiple flags in the yard with giant pictures of strawberries on them, alongside a nasty poster alleging things like,

"Cocoa beans are imported from foreign lands, like Venezuela! How Un-American those beans are! Terrorists, even!"

She shouldn't go to school the next day and punch little Ian in the arm because he voted differently than she did, because at least she was provided with milk during lunch, and not forced to stand in a Russian bread line waiting for her daily ration, or even more important, the fact that she's allowed to go to her school at all, and not forced to sit around in a burqua all the live-long day, for fear of exposing a sensual part of body, like her under-nostril.

When my small tirade was over, she stared blankly for a moment, then said,

"Well, I guess you're right, mommy. I guess any kind of milk is better than no milk at all.""

"You got it, sister."

The XX Files

Females are a vicious species. I have grown two of them, and can tell you from experience, that female humans are born into this world with attitude, an uncontrollable urge to be catty, an unfounded desire to hate other females, and an internal need to compete with one another.

 

I have made it my life's work to prevent these tiny persons from becoming teenage girls, or what's worse, adult girls, and have found that my efforts have not been able to hold a candle to the double-crossing chromosome they were born with, thanks to their dad.

You can imagine my frustration when I walk into the preschooler's room and hear her whispering conspiratorially with her father,

"Mommy was being really mean to me."
"Aww...why was she being mean, sweetie?"
"She told me I couldn't have some of those brownies for breakfast. Can you believe she made me eat some fruit instead?"
"That's horrible!"
"I know. She's such a bitch..."

"What are you two whispering about in here?"
"Oh, nothing, mommy. I was just telling dad how you're the best mommy in the whoooole world, and I love you more than anything."

The last time I socialized with a adult female, I found myself with one tiny foreign lady, who felt compelled to smoosh her plastic bosoms into my husband's face and sing "Happy Birthday Mr. President" to him, just like Marilyn Monroe, if Marilyn Monroe was an immigrant, and also swayed a little to the side of... I don't know how else to describe it...prostitution.

"Ah, no, si, in MY country, it es in ower colture to, how you say? Be a shovel?"
"A shovel?"
"Ah, no es correcto....how you call...a tool for garden?"
"A hoe?"
"Yes! That's it!"

"Let it go," my dear spouse said to me, likely because he was in strip club withdrawal, having gone an entire year or so without having some strange woman's leather-clad bosom flop about in his face.

In the midst of his withdrawal, he tried to convince me to let him attend the National Pole Dancing Competition in New York this past week.

"But I love ALL sports! You knew that when you married me!"

*In case you were previously unaware, this is actually considered a 'sport.' Some fitness centers offer aerobic pole-dancing classes. I know this, because at a recent child's bouncy house birthday party, I had the benefit of hearing another mother describe to me the classes she had been attending, and how, as a result of her new-found ability to "pole-dance,"  she had experienced little to no back pain, lost 3 inches from her waist, and her husband no longer had to "stay late" at the office every single night to work on a "project" with his 22 year old secretary.The More you Know...

"She was just drunk," Jim says, and boy was he right about that, but for some reason I can't explain, the "she was just drunk" excuse flew off the books sometime around the time I grew my first boob seed, or perhaps in the early twenties, I'm not sure which. Now, at the ripe ol' age of 52, which is how old my aching back tells me I am, I have no tolerance for that type of shit, and also, perhaps I should look into pole dancing aerobics to alleviate my back problems.

Nah, they'd never take you what with your 52 year old seedless grapes...

But alas! We could always PURCHASE a pair and join the  circus!

We could go on tour! Frolic about town slapping unsuspecting husbands in the face when them, right in front of their wives!

Yes! We could perform at all 30+ year old birthday parties!

Just ye wait and see how inappropriate we can be!


Nay, after the incident, I felt more and more convinced that my life-long aspiration to only be friends with boys was well worth it. Sure, The Mister and I have had some disagreements about it over the years, such as when leaving the gym, and I give the testicle salute to one of my fireman friends:

"Who the hell was that?"
"I don't know...I'm friends with all the firemen..."
"That's great. My wife, ladies and gentlemen..."
"Oh no, I don't serenade them with indecent birthday songs or anything...We just lift weights together. Just the other day, that kind fellow offered to spot me on the hip abductor machine."

 

 

"That's very funny."

"Why, thank you. I did get voted #1 class clown once in the 4th grade."

 

 

 I'm trying my darndest to form the toddler into the type of female companion I can actually hang out with, but sometime between her 2nd and 4th birthday, she upped and decided to be her own person, complete with 47 gallons of filthy, slimy attitude crammed into a three foot tall package.

"Hey! For goodness' sake! The light is GREEN! It's GREEN ! Would you just GOOOO?"

Then she turns to me, to complain about the injustices of 113 year old people who allowed to operate motor vehicles.

"What is wrong with these people, mom? Seriously... They should not have a license..."

Then she goes back to texting her preschool  pals on the retired old Motorola I let her play with..

WTF...I am soooo like ROFLMAO. Mom's is trippin' yo.

 

LOL.. Road rage?

 

SMH (:P)

"Who are you texting?"
"None of your business, mother. Take me to Target. My stupid sister used all my Hello Kitty body butter."


 All I've been able to do is wing it the best I know how, teach her that it's not okay to say ugly things about people, "Golden Rule" nonsense, don't make fun of that little boy at school because his bright orange hair "looks like a ridiculous jack-o-lantern," share her body butter with her sister, and above all else, have some manners,  beyond the manners her father teaches her of how to fart quietly at the dinner table, so as to make mother flee from the room when she is assaulted with yet another "silent-but-deadly" grenade from the crotch of a pair of polka-dotted leggings.

 Sure, they'll have a jolly good laugh about it later, but is it really wise to teach our female child to expel her gas in the middle of her entree? And what's worse...teach her to laugh about it?

The father is doing his part to turn these two female beings into boys, just as fast as he can grow them some little detachable penises in a petri dish in the kitchen, right beside his beer glass filled with live basil,  and grow them in time to have someone  watch a football game with him, and actually enjoy it.

It's a confused house we live in, the two and two halves of us...The Mister can't decide whether he'd rather play fantasy football or do what his heart tells him, and whip up a batch of homemade brownies, or polish up some landscaping errors he made in the spring.

"I simply MUST go dig up that Azalea. And what do you think about the japanese maple? It's not thriving, I don't think...the poor thing, hasn't grown an inch since I planted it..."
"Oh, honey, just give it time! The lil' fella' hasn't even hit puberty yet."
"Where is my hoe?"
"Probably dangling off a pole somewhere singing happy birthday to a businessman from Tokyo."

The girls will be fine, all because they have the influence of their dad to keep them in line, which is why it pains me so to hear the preschool-aged child scream at him,

"Daaaaddd! Stop pooting in my face! You're so gross! Why don't you just...GROW UP ALREADY!"

"Mooooom! Dad keeps pooting on my head...AND trying to give me wedgies. These are my new Ariel panties, you know."
"What is wrong with that daddy?"
"Well, I don't know, but YOU married him."

She says it accusatorily, like I committed some grievous act simply by saying 'I do.'


"What are you talking to mom about, Kendall?"
"What? Oh, nothing, I was just saying how I love you more than anything in the whole world, and you are the BEST daddy EVER!"
"You're the sweetest girl ever."
"Thanks, dad. You know what would make you an even BETTER daddy?"
"What's that?"
"Make me some of those brownies, and let me have them for breakfast tomorrow."
"Anything for you, princess."

Talked the old man into making some sweets :)

 

OMG!!!! Ur dad like does WHATEVER U say! Whut a CHUMP!

 

LOL. I know, right...SOOOO lame :)

 

Srsly...:P

Next time I get to choose a movie, it's going to be a cartoon...

"We've been married for 7 years. You do not get to choose to 'break-up' with me simply because football season has started again. Speaking of which, your parents offered to babysit so we can go out on a date."
"Ughh...and it's your turn to choose a movie. You always choose horrible movies."
"Go get started on getting yourself ready. I know your hair takes a while."
"I've decided I'm just going to shave it, buzz cut it all off."
"ALL is  a tad too strong a word to use there, and besides, you would look completely ridiculous with no hair, like a giant, white bowling ball, with a nose. on the front of it."

"I just don't like this look of 'balding'."
"Just hang tight for a while. You never know, next year 'balding' could be the newest trend in fashion. All the Nordstrom mannequins are already bald and feature-less. If I had a pair of shoes that cost 300 dollars, I may well have my whole face surgically removed too, simply because I could. I would have a nice handbag to distract everyone from the fact that I had no eyeballs."
"You're an idiot."
"Just for that derogatory name-calling, I think you owe it to me to get me a corsage for our date night. Also, wear your powder blue tuxedo."

Sometimes, though rarely enough, Jim is right.

I picked a horrible movie, not horrible in theory, but horrible for us.

While we usually go to movie theaters and find ourselves surrounded by a mass population of 4-10 year old squealing little girls, wearing some sort of Disney Princess ball gown and a plastic tiara they found in the dollar bin at the Wal-Mark's,  at this particular film, we found that we were the youngest people present.

We WERE the annoying children who couldn't stop giggling during a particularly grotesque scene when Meryl Streep attempted to give Tommy Lee Jones a hum-dinger in a theater.

"Oh my WORD! This is disgusting! Old people cannot FELATE each other! I thought the modern-day 'blow-job' if you will, was something invented by a young person, in recent years, much like the Internet."
"I'm about to throw up. I can't watch this anymore."
"I can't look at him and not see Two-Face from that Batman movie. That just makes it weirder."
"Just try to remember him in Men in Black...that's the Tommy Lee I like to think about...Shame on you, Tommy! Shame! You go kill yourself some aliens with Will Smith now...""

"Sssshhhhhhhh!!!"

We were shushed by the elderly woman sitting one row ahead of us who Jim swears was masturbating throughout a good portion of the film, because her chair kept squeaking, and it was dark, so we had no idea what she was doing with her hands.

"She is not masturbating, you asshole! She has Parkinson's, I think!"

Then, during another particularly disturbing part of the movie, Meryl, all 65 years of her, rubbed one out in her hotel room...

"What on earth...."
"Old people can't masturbate! Jesus!!!I don't care for dinner now. I need to go back home and reconsider every opinion I've ever had about my sweet lil' old memaw."

A plethora of unwelcomed thoughts came to mind.

So, what you're saying is that the three children my grandmother gave birth to were NOT delivered iy a stork? All swaddled in some bubble wrap in a FedEx box?

What's this? You mean that time I walked in on my parents, they were not actually 'doing their taxes'?"

For years of my childhood, I thought tax season was parental code for making whoopie, that a
W-2 was another word for ding-a-ling,  and that all CPA's were pimps.

"Not now, honey. It's tax season, you know. Your mother and I have to get some things taken care of in the office for a good part of the afternoon. I need to concentrate, so I'm going to have to keep the door closed. I've got to get this W-2 entered in before my accountant comes over to go over our finances..."

"Sure...okay, dad. And I'm going to go 'play with my legos,' and by that I mean I'm going to go smoke cigarettes and chug some Zima's out in my clubhouse."

"So, what did you think of the movie?"
"I'm just at a loss for words."
"I know. I wish I had that Men in Black wand thing I could shoot at my eyeballs to make me forget I ever saw that."
"I don't suppose I'll ever be able to look at our parents in the eye again...just knowing what these old folks do with themselves!"

As we left the theater, we got a few eye rolls from the elderly patrons in the front rows who were clearly upset with us for having interrupted their date night by being a couple of immature assholes in the back, who kept giggling and blurting out things, like "Noooo! That is soooo nasty!" "Ewwww! I bet everything is just...so...wrinkled!" "Old balls must look just exactly like raisins!"  

I leaned over to the geriatric gal who kept shushing us throughout the film,

"I hope you don't kiss your grandchildren's boo boo's with that mouth...dirty bird, you."

Because we had quite our fill of immaturity for one evening, we went to dinner, dedicated to behaving ourselves in public. The last time we went to this restaurant, Ivan, our waiter, used to regularly dealing with people who are in a constant state of "bitter asshole", would have been pleased with our general zeal for life and "fun-loving" attitude, in what can otherwise be considered quite the stuffy environment.


"I like to think that we were sort of a breath of fresh air for Ivan the last time we came."
"I like to think Ivan almost called the cops to have us removed because you put those decorative orb centerpieces in your bra."
"I just wanted to know what it would feel like to have metal boobs."

"Alright, well here we are."
"Okay, on the count of three, 1, 2, 3 GROWN UPS!"
"Let's do this."


"Good evening, folks, my name is Ivan, and I'll be taking care of you this... Oh God....Not you assholes again..."
"Nice to see you too, Ivan. I think I'd like to start off with a bottle of your finest screw-top wine... the mister will be tasting it this evening, as I don't really give that much of a hoot what it tastes like as long as it has alcohol in it."
"Very well, ma'am. Would we like to start with any appetizers? We have a a mixed green herb-encrusted, lightly panko dusted quail testicle salad, topped with fish sauce, the fetus of a wild-caught nutria, and a live octopus, which we then drizzle lightly with cognac, and set it on fire."
"Sounds tempting, Ivan, but I think I'd just like to dick around with those decorative orbs if you still have them."
"Excellent choice madam."

"I thought we were going to act like adults this time..."
"You know what? Tonight I have witnessed a senior citizen masturbate, Two-Face struggle with what may or may not be erectile dysfunction, and elderly people engage in a public display of fellatio, with what I'm going to assume is a very wrinkled and antiquish ding-dong. If we have learned anything from my poor choice of a movie, what is it?"
"That adults are gross and disgusting?"
"Indeed they are. Class dismissed."