I’ve always sorta* loathed the traditional Mothers Day celebrations. The brunches, the flowers, the various and sundry housekeeping presents. And don’t get me started on the things my less-bright male peers say, like “I’m gonna wash all the laundry for my wife!” Sweet. Maybe you should start doing this on a, you know, regular basis. And not just because Hallmark tells you to.
But single TM has started to love Mothers Day. Part of the reason is that the kids bring home gifts that are little treasures of honesty admist the typical saccharine and lace. Example? My first Mothers Day as a single breeder, Thing One brought home a construction paper card layered with tissue flowers. It looked every bit the stereotype, until I opened it. “You’re the funniest mom I ever known.” Later, she told me that her teacher had given them five or six things to write inside, things like “I love you Mom,” or “You’re the best mom,” but that none of them piqued the interest of the wee girl. “They didn’t sound like you,” she had said. Maybe it was that we were so different from the other families in her school, or maybe it was that I talked about being different openly, or maybe it was because I am funny, but I felt like that card actually meant something to the both of us. It wasn’t simply an empty token.
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Tags: Mothers Day, Obama, political rally
Filed under All Terrible Mother, All The Time, Have Kids--Will Travel, Parenthood in Mono, Procreation: It's What's For Dinner!.
My favorite piece of flash from this past week is this blog entry by blogger Jezebel. Seems the May issue of Vogue includes some super-hero haute couture that “begged” to be “lol’ed.” My personal fav? This “anjellic moddle jus got dammd” photo:
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Tags: LOL, models, Vogue
Filed under This Week's Shininess.
Last week, I had reason to purchase a bottle of red wine during my shopping excursion to Trader Joe’s. As the lovely cashier rung up my organic basil and saag paneer and hummus (among other liberal foods), we made small talk. When she scanned my $5 bottle of shiraz, she turned, looked at me and said, with utter conviction, “I need to see your ID, please.”
I almost climbed over that damn wooden counter and planted one on her lip piercing. She carded me! Me! Thirty-four-year old me! I nearly shook as I pulled my driver’s license out, all first-date nervous. She looked at it for a full 20 seconds, looking up at me, then to the license again, before giving it back, as though saying, “Well, I guess if they say she was born in 1973…but I dunno…”
I was ecstatic. So much so that I called both Friends One and Two to tell them. When they didn’t answer (was it because they knew Insanity was ringing?), I left messages wherein I gushed about the terrific service at TJs, while mentioning that someone carded me! Me! And no, THEY WEREN’T TRYING TO GET A TIP!
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Tags: Embarrassment, gray hair, kids, Trader Joes
Filed under Conversations With No One Important, Parenthood in Mono, Procreation: It's What's For Dinner!.
For the past month, Thing Two has been a mess o’ boy. Meaning, more or less, that he has suddenly taken to expressing himself in particular boy-centric ways, like pushing, shoving, calling anything and everything “stupid,” and spitting. He has taken to rough-housing with his sisters to the point that they get hurt (this not really all his fault, since his sisters love to play this way just until one of them sustains an injury. Often, Thing Two is merely playing as he would with his friends.). I dislike gender-stereotypes in general, especially when a person’s observations either stop at stereotype and go no deeper, or when the stereotypes become prescriptive. There is no reason why a kid should act “like a boy” if he doesn’t want to, and there’s no reason that our definition of “acting like a boy” should be so narrow.
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Tags: futbol, masculinity, soccer, Thing Two
Filed under Procreation: It's What's For Dinner!, The Fabulous Autie.
(note: there may, or may not be “spoilers” for the movie Juno in this here blog entry. Read at your own risk).
Sorry I’ve been MIA these past two weeks, Fan Base. I have either a perfect excuse or no excuse at all, and basically it’s this: I’ve been in a rut so deep, I could hang posters. Emo posters, even. Emo posters with black lights.
Said rut included this scene on Friday night: I dropped the kids off at a Parents’ Night Out event, and then drove to the dollar theater*, bought a soda and popcorn (with delicious Buttery topping), and watched Juno, solo. Solo! A movie theater on a Friday night with my own concessions! But it gets worse. I bawled, people. Not like a little crying, a little tear-in-my-Mr. Pibb affair, but a full-blown cry fest.
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Tags: Badfreak, depression, Friend 2, Juno, movies
Filed under All Terrible Mother, All The Time, Conversations With No One Important.
Several weeks ago, Thing Two hit a kid at after school care. I think they had been fighting over Legos, or some such thing, and Thing Two took a pot shot at the kid. It wasn’t serious in the realm of Boy Aggression: kids sometimes hit each other, and this after school program does a great job of making sure the kids talk out their problems. The teachers don’t let violence take over any period of play, but they also don’t become hysterical over all (even the smallest) acts of aggression. So they took the two boys aside and asked them what was going on. And when asked, Thing Two said the reason he hit the other kid was because “I’m autistic.”
Thing Two is a smart boy and his abilities at effective and delicate manipulation are legendary, being only surpassed, on occasion, by his sisters. The head teacher Mary knew this, and basically gave him the creed we’ve all adopted when dealing with him: she told him not to play the autism card. This is actually what we call it at home, and we’ve all called him out on it, and it’s not uncommon to hear me, or the girls, say “Stop playing The Card!”
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Tags: autism, custody, Thing Two, visitation
Filed under Parenthood in Mono, Procreation: It's What's For Dinner!, The Fabulous Autie.
I discovered recently that the Evil Threesome, formerly known as the Things Three, had given me something. They had given me their lice. I found this out when I took a shower one fair evening and discovered a giant dead louse in my hair. And not the good kind of dead. No, this thing was dead as in “died of old age” dead. This louse had lived out his retirement days upon the curly, thick locks of one Terrible Mother.
I have admitted all manner of things to you. I have detailed my failing marriage,my lackluster love life, and my purchase of a deluxe vibrator. I have talked frankly about poverty and the food bank and the soup kitchen. But I am appalled, Fan Base, to admit I have contracted parasites from the less-than-pristine scalps of my progeny.
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Tags: fine Nabisco foods, home remedies, lice, Ritz®
Filed under All Terrible Mother, All The Time, Nabisco, Procreation: It's What's For Dinner!, RITZ® Crackers.
First off, the last Friday Challenge brought some exquisite responses. So much so that I’ve decided that there must be multiple winners. This means that Gladstone’s personal will be posted on one dating site, while Badfreak’s will be posted on another, and Lalena’s will be posted on yet another. I’ll keep you updated on the responses each ad garners. I can hardly wait to see what happens.
***
As most of you know, I ventured with the Things Three to Seattle this week for three days of touristy-goodness. We rode the Amtrak, and got around entirely by our own bipedal awesomeness or the bus, except for the two occasions when friends drove us places.
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Tags: Embarrassment, Seattle, Travel with kids
Filed under Have Kids--Will Travel, Parenthood in Mono, Procreation: It's What's For Dinner!, The Friday Challenge.
Unlike most of my students, I decided to take the kids north for Spring Break. Thus, we are leaving from the tony city of Portland to travel to the tony city of Seattle by train, tomorrow. I leave in the next few minutes for Portland myself to join up with the Things, who are spending Easter with John. I am nearly packed, and running through the house trying to remember if I’ve forgotten anything. I packed band aids, Neosporin, and two kinds of pain medication, in addition to all the other normal items like socks and underwear.
All this for three days.
And I’ve been meaning to post for the past week, but I’ve bound to my students final portfolios and the massive amount of grading I had to get done before tomorrow. So, I apologize. If it helps, think of me, on the train with the Things Three. We’ll be hanging out with my oldest friend, Soft-spoken Rebel and her girlfriend, Angelic Coffee Girl (so named because she owns one of Seattle’s many excellent coffee stands). And we’ll be meeting up with Seattle Single Dad and his daughter. So, though there are few stories now, trust me Fan Base, they’ll be more at the end of the week*.
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Tags: Mothers, sex toys, trains, traveling with kids
Filed under Have Kids--Will Travel, Parenthood in Mono, Procreation: It's What's For Dinner!.
So, this past week I ordered some Easter presents for the kids and me from Amazon.
Thing One got two Spiderwick Chronicles books.
Thing Two got a Magic Tree House set.
Thing Three got two books from the Rainbow Fairies series.
And I purchased myself a vibrator. What? It had the word “rabbit” in the title. So it’s totally kosher. And I’ve never done anything like that before, and I thought, “Well, you know, it’s almost time for the yearly symbolic resurrection. I might as well buy something that will be symbolize the resurrection of my as-good-as-dead sex life.”
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Tags: children's books, insanity, sex toys, terrible mother's mother
Filed under All Terrible Mother, All The Time, Conversations With No One Important, Parenthood in Mono.
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