My brother walked the Mutt Strut and thanks to a lot of people who were as eager as I was to see my brother march around in a furry hot dog suit (Thank God there isn't a furry hot dog suit guy at the market) (Oh God, I'm sure I just cursed myself) (July is National Hot Dog Month.)
My sister in law sent along a few pictures and an email to say thanks. I think you'll enjoy them.
Yes! They reached the goal!
He's wearing the Hot Dog Suit with matching unitard.
Furry Hot Dog Suit. Unitard. Public Humiliation. My brother.
Dreams really can come true. Thank you to everyone who donated!
Pictures coming soon.
My sister in law emailed me a delicious recipe last night, saying she and my brother had made it over the weekend and even though I have picky eaters over here, maybe the kids would like this.
When I read the list of ingredients, my mouth started to water....olives, artichoke hearts, feta, sun dried tomatoes....these are all my favorite things.
This list reads like Logan's worst dinner option, you stick a pickle on top and you've got Logan's gastronomic nightmare. Scratch that, add some onions and a pickle.
I wrote back explaining to my sister in law that even though this recipe is free of mayonnaise and onions...it still will never pass in this house. I push the limits sometimes, I mean I have no choice or I'd eat poached chicken and broccoli every night of my life. Trying to pass off this dish at dinner here would mean certain death for me.
Here's her reply.
Eat it or wear it. I've been laughing about this all day. I love the nonsense things Dads come up with to say to their kids.
Additionally I think Eat It Or Wear It could become a lovely addition to the Did They Eat It? thing. We'll dump the "Try a taste of everything on your plate" and replace it with Eat It or Wear It.
It's spring break here this week.
I'd like to say I'm loving it, but you know, I'm not.
So I won't say that.
Hold....me......
My brother, Scott, is 6 years older than me. Like a lot of older brothers he had a way of a) making me believe everything he said and b) enjoying my suffering.
For example, once on a bike ride past the park around the block he told me the giant bubbles over the tennis courts (so you can play in winter) were actually giant caterpillars. I didn't believe him at first, but then he pointed out the fences around the giant bubbles. "Why do you think fences are around them?" he said. "They're there to keep them in."
This made a lot of sense to me as a seven year old.
Another time, we were brushing our teeth in the bathroom at the same time. I still ate Flintstone's vitamins at the time. But Scott pulled out an orange vitamin, a vitamin I'd seen my parents and my brother take with a glass of water at least 100 times in my life.
"These are new vitamins," he said. "You can chew them."
I doubted him for a while, but when he said they tasted like orange, I was intrigued. So I chewed the vitamin.
And spent the next 20 minutes, spitting green crap out of my mouth while my brother laughed in the other room.
My brother has spent a lot of his life laughing at me. Now, I'd like my chance. You know, with love.
I kept waiting for the holiday spirit to take hold of me and suddenly everything would feel less like a chore to check off my list and more of a joy to behold and savor.
Unfortunately that didn't actually happen. Though I had glimmers of hope when Logan pulled the roast out of the oven last night. Turns out that wasn't the holiday spirit, I was just really really hungry.
Oh well, at least that's over.
On the bright side I did make our Christmas much smaller and more reasonable. Something I've always intended to do since the year Maddie had just turned two and began to sob when, yet another, gift was placed in front of her to open.
Since then there has been less crying but more frantic ripping of packages and (in my opinion) a little less than appreciative kids.
I worried they'd freak out if there wasn't a lot of packages to open, but they seemed to get the whole idea that they got what they really wanted (within reason). So that reinforced my faith that I have not raised spoiled little monsters.
My friends got a puppy for Christmas and I thought that might make Maddie's head explode because I've told her over and over for the last 10 years, "No one gets a puppy for Christmas! That's a TV thing...."
Oops! Meet Suki, the fictional Christmas Puppy.
Logan and I also kept our gifts to each other simple. At least once a week, maybe twice a week, I listen to Logan in the basement swearing and screaming and fighting with the old wooden drying rack we've had for 10 years. It's falling apart and crumbles under the relentless use Logan subjects it to.
He has very strong opinions about how his clothes are dried, underwear line dried and jeans, JESUS CHRIST DO NOT DRY THEM ALL THE WAY!!!!!
Now, you may ask yourself, "Why wouldn't Logan go out to the store and buy a new drying rack for his precious unmentionables?" Logan is a child of the Great Depression. Yes, I realize he's only 40. But this is the only way I can explain his inability to get rid of anything even when it's broken.
I bought him a nice sturdy metal drying rack for Christmas and I think it was his favorite gift. Which was a relief since, you know, buying someone a laundry drying rack is really pretty lame. But that's us, a little bit lame.
I also bought him a bottle of Maker's Mark that's as big as his head.
His eyes glistened a little bit. A tear may have slowly fallen down his cheek.
The best thing Logan gave me for Christmas was a collection of pickled foods. Things he finds so disgusting he had to wear latex gloves to even touch the jars. This meant a lot to me, especially when he put the pickled pear tomatoes in a bowl for me and tried not to gag as he smelled the brine.
We're kind of romantic over here.
I know very little about who my father was before he became my father. My sister has spent a lot of time collecting information about him. She's looked through all his personal belongings which were sent to my mother after he died. She's looked through all the photos he took while in Vietnam, and has even found some of the other soldiers in those pictures. Through those men she's found out tidbits about the Vietnamese woman in many of the pictures. She's looked at his death certificate and knows exactly where he shot himself to end his life. She's spent time asking my mother about him, about the way he grew up and she's learned a lot about the man he became through those stories.
I know very vague things about my father. I know he shot himself in a motel room on a road not far from where we lived when I was 16. I know he went to Vietnam but never saw actual combat, though post traumatic stress might lead you to believe otherwise. I know he was married before he married my mother at just 20 years old. He lived in a nice house in a nice part of the town I also grew up in and he attended a good Catholic high school. He was from a large family and they all had a tenuous connection which usually involved a lot of alcohol, a lot of reminiscing almost always ending in loud angry arguments over nothing I could understand. His mother died many years before I was born, in some way no one really ever talks about, and I'm not asking.
My sister has always wanted to understand our father, she was 12 when he died and 9 when my parents finally divorced and he was forcibly removed from the house. I have spent the 19 years since he died trying to forget everything about him.
My father read books to us and taught me to ride a bike. He made the very best root beer floats because he once drove an ice cream truck. Which, when you're 6, is just about the best job you could ever imagine. In fact I spent many hours wishing he hadn't given up that line of work for his career in computer technology something-or-other.
But then there was his temper he couldn't seem to control. God knows I understand how annoying the bickering of little kids can be, but I've never thought it a good idea to hurl my kids onto their beds because of it. The fact that he hated our bickering would be less surprising except for the fact that he often had screaming matches with my mother over things like the Little Debbie snack cakes she brought home from the market. That wasn't just bickering even, snack cakes were thrown, along with the contents of the refrigerator for emphasis. We didn't hurl him onto his bed. Though, we wanted to.
My father was also a little prickly because he liked to drink a lot. He had a refrigerator filled with beer in our dining room, where normal people might think to put a buffet or perhaps a china cabinet. Instead my father kept his beer in his special fridge and from Friday night to Sunday night he emptied this fridge. As he emptied this fridge the desire to argue about snack cakes was heightened. His desire to listen to very loud music at 2 o'clock in the morning was also heightened.
That's the difficult thing about getting to know my father: he wasn't all bad, but he wasn't very good either.
My family likes to reminisce about my father, often viewing him as an affable sitcom dad. If Lucille Ball starred in a movie of my life, she'd play my mother and call out, "Pete-errrr" (ala "Rick-eeee") as he threw snack cakes at her head.
Our sitcom dad was manic about the condition of his lawn and would, when planes flew overhead, have flashbacks to 'Nam and begin screaming "Incoming!!!" We laugh about the night he drove our family home from dinner with his family while drunk, stopping at Quarton Lake to show us his favorite little bridge. When drunkenly jumping on a rock to cross a small river, (cue the laugh track), he landed wrong and sprained his ankle resulting in 6 weeks of crutches. Hysterical!
I have an uncle on my mother's side of the family who loves to spend a reasonable portion of our Christmas Eve gatherings discussing my father and his uncanny ability to bring the room to tears at every family gathering. Not tears of laughter rather tears of sadness, confusion or perhaps rage. And we all laugh, "Remember that Christmas I cried myself to sleep! What a riot!!!" Then we collectively sigh, our spouses feel uncomfortable and we play a game of charades to change the topic.
I think we laugh because it's easier to remember it that way.
Some memories even I can't muster the strength to laugh at. In those memories, my father is something worse than a bumbling drunken blow hard carefully mowing his lawn in perfect rows. In those memories my father is bringing me cough medicine in my dark bedroom for a cough I never had and he won't leave. Or I am left alone with him on Friday nights while my mother works, my brother is away at college and my sister spends the night with those people one calls "friends". Friends are something, by that point, I don't have any more.
It went on for as many years as I can remember. In first grade I would eat dinner and spend the rest of the night crying and clutching my stomach. The doctor sent us to the hospital for tests. For a week I couldn't eat anything but jello after breakfast until the next morning when they'd take more pictures of my insides. One day I snuck a handful of Trix cereal before we left for the test and the nurse could see it in my stomach as she took the pictures. As she ran the test, viewing my insides, I held my breath praying she couldn't also see the badness inside of me.
Later there were nightmares, my mother would sit on the sofa in the middle of the night annoyed, tired and unsure what to do with me. After weeks of this she took me to a psychiatrist where I drew pictures, talked about my nightmares and carefully avoided telling the truth. The best part of seeing the psychiatrist were the small gifts she'd give me, a barbie, a pack of crayons and my favorite candy bar at the end of the session.
Years later, just before my parents were divorced, I told my father I was going to tell and I was going to go live with someone else. Though I didn't know who.
Only I don't think I would have told, I just wanted him to leave our lives and I knew my mother was close to the end of her tolerance for him in general. That night he shut himself in his bedroom at the back of the house and shot himself while my sister, mother and I watched television in the front of the house.
Don't worry though, he didn't kill himself, he only shot himself in the shoulder like an asshole. Was this action meant to buy more time before my mother divorced him, to keep me silent or was it an act of desperate sadness?
I'm not really sure, but those two weeks he spent at an alcohol treatment facility were a tiny taste of what my life would be without him. I faked illness many times during those weeks he was away and my mother let me stay home probably because she felt badly about the trauma of one's father attempting suicide practically in front of you. I wasn't traumatized, I was angry he didn't die and I was mostly happy to be in the house alone. I could eat what I wanted, watch whatever shows I wanted and I wasn't afraid.
Of course then he came back and that feeling was almost worse than if he'd never left at all. Every day when I walked into that house after he came back it felt exactly like dying. When he finally left for good, escorted by the police, the nightmares came back and that horrible feeling of the freedom being taken away felt as real in my dreams as it had in real life. In the dreams, I would come home from school and he would be back. My mother would shrug saying, "Sorry, I can't do anything about it" and that sinking feeling in my stomach would start to choke me.
I think my sister tries to heal her sadness about who our father was by looking for answers about why he was the way he was. I've tried to heal by pretending he was only a nightmare or simply a monster because somehow that makes it easier to understand. My brain can't seem to reconcile my father as a drunken idiosyncratic dad and the night time father who tormented me for as long as I can remember.
I spent a lot of time studying the fathers I knew while growing up. I studied some really good ones so hard I'm sure their wives started to wonder if this 10 year old had a crush on their husbands. I knew I didn't want to marry someone like my father, but then since that was the relationship modeled for me my whole life I thought I might be doomed to a life of dodging snack cakes thrown at my head.
My daughter happens to have the father I always wanted.
Watching my husband and daughter develop a relationship has been incredibly healing for me, it's also opened up so many deep wounds in my soul I've gone rolling back to therapy in a heap of sadness more than once since becoming her mother. I've spent time back on the couch because motherhood is really kind of hard a lot of the time.
Other times I've been on the couch grieving from the darkest part of myself. This deep pit of sadness I mostly keep covered by not thinking much about how I grew up with my father.
The last time I was in therapy my husband and I stayed up late one night talking about the pain. The next day he left me a note before he left for work reading, "No child deserves to be betrayed by their father in such a profound way. I can't imagine destroying my own child."
Of course, that's why I married him and that's the part of watching my daughter grow up that heals the little girl I was. When Maddie was a baby, Logan always explained to me in serious tones that she was gifted. At three months old he said, "She holds her head up like a six month old! That's double her age, she's twice as good at it as other three month olds!" As a two year old when her talking started and didn't really ever stop he listened intently and reminded me she was talking as well as a four year old. "She's twice as brilliant as other two year olds."
Now Madison is nine and has the sensibility of an independence loving thirteen year old. She makes me literally insane and we often butt heads so hard I spend days massaging my temples and wondering how I ended up with this daughter I am not so good at mothering. Logan looks at our daughter and admires her maturity and complexity. He thinks she's twice as mature as other nine year olds. He thinks she's absolutely perfect.
When Maddie was three years old she had some gross motor delays the doctors were attempting to diagnose. We had to take her to the hospital for an MRI. Because the MRI machine is very loud, has a very small chamber and requires complete stillness, we also had to have her sedated for it. I voted Logan into the position of holding our daughter while they put a mask over her mouth to breathe in the gas that put her to sleep, I couldn't even be in the room.
She struggled against the doctor trying to put the mask over her mouth and Logan held onto her arms and tried to keep her head from moving so she could breathe in the gas. All Maddie saw was a scary man trying to hurt her while her father held her down.
We thought she would forget about it, she was only three, but for months afterward she would ask Logan, "Why did you hold me down while that man put that thing on my face Daddy?" Even better, she'd say, "Remember when they took a picture of my brain and Daddy held me down so the doctor could cover my face?"
One night after the MRI, I found Logan standing over Maddie's crib crying. He couldn't believe she thought he'd been trying to help someone hurt her. He'd explained to her over and over that the doctor wasn't trying to hurt her but he couldn't get over the betrayal she'd felt toward him in those moments.
I'm so happy my daughter has a father who loves every bit of who she is, I'm so happy she knows he would never betray her trust, I'm so happy she can feel safe and loved by the most important man in her life.
I like to think watching my daughter and my husband grow up together is helping to heal that little girl I was. Watching my daughter, it's easy to see how none of what happened to me was my fault, that my insides weren't bad, that I was betrayed by someone who was mentally ill. I was betrayed by my father.
Sometimes it does heal me, watching my daughter grow up having what I needed and deserved.
Still, it seems the older she gets the more aware I am of all I missed out on. As I watch her grow up, I continually grieve for the little girl I was and the father I wasn't given.
The computer is back, it was the thingie where the thingie gets plugged into the whole thing. They had to replace it and then they gave me $130! Well, they gave me $130 when they realized my battery was not actually faulty and didn't require a replacement.
I've been keeping busy working on Logan's computer this week. I posted more at Ordering Disorder on my Deceptively Delicious experiment and I seriously thought I'd love this book and I hated the early chatter about Jessica Seinfeld getting a book just because her husband is Jerry Seinfeld. But I don't know her recipes seem to suck huge amounts of ass, I'm going to end up using my leftover recipe purees in my regular recipes when appropriate and see how that goes. You should read about it there.
I also wrote a little about taking better Halloween photos at the Buzz Off. It's too bad I couldn't find any tips about photographing your kid's crappy $25 polyester costumes so they look reasonably creative or interesting. I did the best I could anyway.
My sister in law sent along some pictures from the big event last weekend, I put them in an album because I didn't take any photos from the night because I was too busy trying to hold onto my gallon jug sized solo cup of beer.
Sometimes, when I look at pictures of my siblings and I, I think I was adopted.
My sister in law came up with a great ice breaker for the party. On your name tag you were to write who you are to the guest of honor. Some were funnier.....than mine which sucked. Again, I couldn't think because I was trying to dock my jet ski in my beer. Here is George's tag, please note my brother is the union president.
This is proof my sister in law really loves my brother even though he wears garish pants to parties and attempts to lick her in public and then drinks his face off at his birthday. She bought him authentic German fornicating gnomes.
It plays You Are My Sunshine.
I only hope we all find that kind of love someday.
Maddie has been keeping a blog for a few months now. I kept this from you because most of the time the Internet is like a big bear hug but sometimes the Internet is like a sloppy grope in the dark and it makes you angry.
But Internet, I know if I show you my nearly 9-year-old daughter's blog you'll be cool.
Months ago she wrote this post. She was expounding on her very sweet relationship with my brother and sister-in-law's rescue dog Molly. The one who would only quiver in fear while in my presence.
Hello you may have or know a scared dog well here are some things I do when I see one if you want to pet it then maybe you should let it sniff your fist instead of your hand and if it starts to bark just walk away do not look at them later try again but push(not really push go up and pet it) a little because at some point your going to need to feel and pet it just remember you have to remember that every one gets scared some times.
I love this: "you have to remember that every one gets scared some times." She knows animals get scared as well as anyone.
On Saturday Maddie had some trouble with Logan and I going to a wedding. She cried and begged us not to go, just like she did as a three year old. We felt frustrated and frankly, annoyed, with her inability (again) to just roll with life.
While we were at the wedding, she went with my friend Andrea to a couple of soccer games and then a neighborhood party (we had to miss and it hurt....oh it hurt). When she called crying about how she missed us and just wanted to be home we tried to be patient and empathetic but really our annoyment may have come through our gritted teeth as we said, "WeWillBeTogetherAllDayTomorrowJustLikeEveryOtherDay....PLEASE LET US HAVE FUN WITH OUR FRIENDS."
She wrote a post early Sunday morning which seems awfully transparent considering all of this.
Let's re-title this post: Kids Are Kids!
Today I will share some thing every dog owner should know......................DOGS [Kids] ARE DOGS [Kids] ......I mean if your dog trashes things [kid has trouble going with the flow] and no matter how hard you try you can not get him [her] to stop you tried your hardest but that will be the way he'll [she'll] stay like my cat Gary he will always be hungry but I can not make him never be hungry again (even though it would save us a lot of cat food).So love your dog [daughter] even though it [she] has it's [her] moments.Remember DOGS RULE,CATS DROOL! [Loose Translation: Daughters Rule, Sons Drool]
If only she were a dog, we could just swat her with a newspaper.
The night before my sister's wedding The Hipsters showed up. When The Hipsters show up you better go to the bar with them and watch while they drink all the Miller High Life in the entire Upper Peninsula Of Michigan. Or at least all the Miller High Life at the bar that night.
I do not recall fighting with my sister in law but the pictures say otherwise. I think she was asking me if she is a hipster.
Please note Logan's index finger behind us pointing at that lovely curly haired Hipster.
Now look below and note my sister in law and I acting like feral cats readying for a fight. It looks
as if I'm limbering up my knuckles, but rather I'm considering my sister in law as a hipster.
Meanwhile, behind us, Curly Haired Hipster and Logan have come to terms with each other. He's quite handsome isn't he? My goodness when will Logan be home?
The next day we were at the reception location helping to hang about a billion paper cranes and scissors were hard to come by. My sister in law ran to her car and grabbed her emergency office supply kit. When she came back she said, "Do you think The Hipsters have emergency office supply kits in their cars?"
"Well, no....but they should. You're a new kind of hipster. One so hip they don't even know you're hip yet. You've got #2 pencils in there don't you? Next year all the hipsters will have emergency office supplies in their hipster jeans."
As we drove home, my sister in law text messaged me, "Your brother says I can't be a hipster if I have monogrammed beach towels. Is this true???"
I'm thinking we were definitely fighting about my sister in law's hipster-ness in the pictures above.
Tonight we're sitting by the trampoline and the wood fence trying to lure the neighbor's kitten, Maggie, into our yard with a dandelion. She's surprisingly easy to lure. Just shake a common weed through the fence and she can't help herself. She's coming over.
Maddie is in charge of the luring, because she knows how best to do it. Never mind we're just shaking a weed at Maggie to make her come under the fence into our yard.
Max and I are sitting in the grass watching Maddie do it best and his hand goes to my back.
Not to get my attention, just because he's talking to me. I swat at a mosquito on my arm and he pulls away. A minute later he puts his hand back where it was. "Remember the other night when Dad showed me that flip he can do?" [On the trampoline.]
I look at him, waiting for the joke or the goofy voice. No, he just wants to share that flip, earnestly.
"Yeah, I remember. That was fun," I tell him.
"I love those flips."
Sometimes at dinner, when he's sitting next to Logan he puts his hand on his back while he eats his dinner. He keeps shoveling food into his mouth, but his hand rests on Logan's back. It's as if he doesn't notice he's touching the person sitting next to him.
It's like he feels grounded by physically touching the person next to him.
It heals me.
My sister is the third child in our family. Because she is the third child there are four pictures of her as a baby in existence. I hear this is true, though I have yet to see one.
My mother told my sister a picture of me just home from the hospital was actually a picture of her. I know that is a picture of me because I have a weird almost cleft palate, the room is full of boxes because my parents bought the house the week before I was born and also because on the back it says 1973, four years before my sister was born.
There are precious few pictures of my sister even as a child and almost all of those are polaroids. My sister had a baby book. The first page reads, "Teri Lynn Williams Born May 31, 1977" Then, apparently my sister failed to perform anything more interesting than that.
Sometimes, because my sister is the baby of the family, I have trouble remembering she is no longer this child. Even though she hasn't worn a bathing suit in more years than even me.
Sometimes I forget she isn't this little girl who calls her tennis shoes her "Tenny Runners" and Mrs. Mitchell, the neighbor down the street with the seven kids, "Mitchell Mom".
Sometimes I forget she isn't the little girl who could eat her body weight in ribs.
I try to forget when we were forced to wear hideous dresses and she looked like a demonic child, but I'm having a hard time forgetting.
The other day my sister sent me an email because she'd gotten a dream job she'd been hoping for. The job with a large ad agency, with benefits Up The Ass (that's what her offer letter said) and more money than she thought possible. I screamed with joy because I was so happy and also confused. My sister is 17, how can she be making that much money?
Max had a friend over at the time and they both came running up, "What is it?"
"Teri got a great job. I'm so happy for her!"
The boys cheered and ran around the room like lunatics as they often do.
Then Chase stopped, "Who's Teri?"
Over Thanksgiving my brother was in town with my favorite sister in law so we had everyone over to our house for Chicken Shack because my brother lives for Chicken Shack and if my sister in law would let him he'd put a big greasy drumstick in one pocket and a pile of 'broasted' potatoes in his other pocket to have for later.
My sister came with her boyfriend Mike, who my sister in law named "New Guy" because there have been a few boyfriends for my sister, especially since she's still 12. One gave me a painting of a nude for Christmas one year. I think the model was my sister and that was awkward. One unemployed one told us he didn't have a job because even monkeys could work at a gas station. Which is kind of amusing because what he's saying is even monkeys have more motivation than him. My brother's head exploded. We like to get her boyfriends drunk at Christmas and do obscene things just so the cream rises to the top. ('Old Guy" rose to the challenge but then, I think Choppable scared him away.) "New Guy" we just fed a lot of trans fats and he loved it.
On Saturday my sister called me and I didn't answer because I never answer. She called Logan's phone and I worried something was wrong. She said, "Mike and I are getting married!"
And for a brief moment I was ready to do my Snotty Big Sister thing, "Are you sure?" Because she's only like 8. But then I remembered, because of that baby book with the one page filled in, she's going to be 30. She's a grown up.
She's having the best week ever.
When we told Maddie Aunt Teri was marrying Mike, she said, "Can I still call him 'New Guy' or do I have to call him Uncle Mike now?"
These are important questions.
Mrs Kennedy was contacted by Miffy's people and you know I love a good kerfluffle more than I like drinking until my kids are maimed. (Look how I do that! 10 years from now I'll be doing that! Stop reading now because it's not changing. Just ask the Presbyterians. It's been three years and I still make references to that one time....)
I guess the problem is that a long time ago Mrs Kennedy professed her undying love for Miffy. How can you not love Miffy? She's everything wonderful about the Netherlands. Besides being there with Alice. But apparently Miffy's people don't love free advertising and so they asked Mrs. Kennedy to shut the hell up about Miffy.
Okay.
So she replaced the Miffy image she had on her site with another drawing. A homemade Miffy compliments of a Sharpie and Jackson.
Miffy's people are still pissed.
I tried to leave this as a comment but blogger is having it's period and won't let me.
I asked Mrs Kennedy if Maddie could share her cell. Because Maddie is screwed if creating a 'likeness' is verboten.
I wonder if Miffy's creator, Dick, would appreciate Maddie's bondage version of Miffy.
What about Maddie's so called "Japanese Miffy":
Maybe Dick would like "Elvis Miffy" aka "Hitler Miffy'!" So cute! So Cuddly!
Maddie has a whole folder of this artwork. In a Miffy (totally legally obtained) folder. I dare the Dutch to come take it from her.
Take it from her cold dead hands.
Besides trying to bait Miffy's people into a fight, I also wrote a new post at the buzz off. Free coffee! $25 off $50 worth of clothing! 50% off a Janet Taylor approved 1 ounce sized flask! (I'll never move on. Ever.)
About a couple years ago Sarah Brown wrote about Bershon, which you've heard about at this point because Heather's hair demonstrated Bershon earlier this week. Sarah started a Bershon pool at Flickr and I resisted looking for pictures to contribute because it seems every time I venture into our attic I end up really sad.
This is because even though there are pictures from my childhood in the attic which would lead you to believe my life was pretty normal, I know better.
You think, look at that cute smiling baby! And I think, "She has no idea how totally screwed over by life she's going to be."
You think, 'Look at that little girl with her dad, how sweet.' And I think, "I think he's drunk here."
We both look at this picture and want to pinch my little cheeks. But then I want to grab this little girl and save her from what's coming.
Which is pretty much a totally depressing way to look at your history and not just because you become your very own Debbie Downer. It's also depressing because it would be nice to look back with a little more happiness in your heart.
I looked though because I remembered this one picture of my friend Molly and I, who is also pictured above, when we were 12 and 13-ish. Her parents invited me on a trip down the east coast and her father was really annoying. Not really but it seemed that way.
He seemed so annoying that I actually secretly flipped him off while he took my picture. And in my book, there's nothing more Bershon than that. Also, if you were wondering what Madison will look like when she's all Bershon at 13, here you go:
At the same time, some of the pictures in my attic make me really happy.
My parents could not buy me a barbie doll.
For four years I asked for a Barbie, just a regular Barbie, not even a special edition, just plain old "Crush-Your-Self-Esteem-With-Impossible-Bodily-Proportions-Barbie". For four years at all gift giving occasions I'd open some freakishly wrong Barbie which caused me grief when trying to play with my friends and their 'normal' Barbies.
The first barbie wasn't a barbie at all but Mabel from the dollar store. Mabel was fine but her head was shaped like a pumpkin and she just didn't fit in and as a child I was mostly about fitting in.
The next attempt was a real Barbie brand Barbie, but this Barbie was nearly three times as big as a normal Barbie and became Barb-Zilla in our games and would ruin Barbie bar-b-ques and Ken was helpless to stop it. When I opened that Barbie at my birthday party, my friend Molly said quietly, "It's okay, you can just keep using my Malibu Barbie."
On my birthday, my parents tried again and gave me a Barbie and it was normal sized and I thought they'd finally pulled their heads from their asses and given me a plain, simple, normal Barbie. I was wrong though, this was 'Model Barbie' and she came with a fake camera and a model walk. Each time her legs moved her head went side to side. Just like a model, I guess. This was fine until you tried to sit her down and her head spun around to face backwards.
My father worked for Michigan Bell for all his life. One year he attended a Michigan Bell conference in Columbus, Ohio. As an aside this is the one and only time my father travelled for work and it was a small taste of what life would be without him. What it would be was: "Awesome!" From that moment on I prayed for my parent's divorce. It only took six years of praying.
After the conference my father came home with a new Barbie doll for me! Only this one was a Lesbian Michigan Bell Repair Woman Barbie. She wore all denim and a tool belt and a hard hat and was also twice as big as a normal Barbie. The normal Barbie I'd been asking for for 3+ years.
It's clear to me as a 32 year old, my parents were mentally challenged and could not find their way to the fucking Mattel aisle of the toy store.
So, I thanked my father for my Michigan Bell Lesbian Mammoth Barbie (and silently prayed my mother enjoyed his time away as much as I did so she'd leave him finally) and promptly put it on a shelf in my room where it stayed for months without being played with.
One weekend after my father had been drinking all day he came to my room and noticed Michigan Bell Lesbian Mammoth Barbie sitting on my shelf. He stumbled over to it, picked it up and threw it across my bedroom at my head.
Michigan Bell Lesbian Mammoth Barbie happened to be African American as well as an oversized butch lesbian.
After he threw the doll at me he called me a racist because I was too God damned good for a black doll. Who did I think I was? Maybe I'll just give all your toys to someone who isn't a God Damned Racist.
It's funny though, I didn't care that the doll was black. I didn't play with it because, as a 9-year-old, I clearly had a problem with oversized lesbian phone repair workers.
My brother and his wife joined a swim club this year. They'd always thought it would be too expensive to join a swim club but once they looked into The Riviera Club they realized what I realized long ago: everything in Indiana is free.
Not really free but cheap enough that you'll overlook the fact that there's a church (or three) on every street corner in the entire state and they don't let children accompany you into the liquor store and your kids can't eat at restaurants which don't have a wall between your table and the bar and you can't purchase liquor on Sundays.
Who do they think they are? Utah?
On Saturday we went to The Riviera Club and I'm not sure I can put into words the joy that is 'Rivi'.
Let's put it this way, the way Logan put it as we sat around the pool as the old ladies nearby put their 'tomato juice' in their 'cocktail shaker'.
"Rivi: Built When Fun Was More Important Than Safety"
In the 1930's, kids got hurt sometimes and when they got hurt they realized what they'd done was a really bad idea and they didn't do it again.
They have a high dive, NO pools around me have a high dive, they took them out in the 80's when people started to realize you could sue people when accidents happened. (You'll break your neck!) They have metal slides, big metal slides, like the kind you'd find on a totally outdated playground in Detroit. (SHARP EDGES! You'll kill yourself!) These deadly slides are in the water for children to slide down into the pool. Well, for children or Logan and my brother.
(Overheard: Logan starts climbing the ladder to the big slide, my brother comes up behind him. One kid to another: "Look out everyone! Here comes another adult." Look out, indeed.)
Let's not even talk about the playground. Okay, just for one second, there's this crazy ass contraption on the playground I've never even seen in my life because I think you could get whip lash with it.
I'd like another tagline: "Rivi: Where Everyone Knows That Kids Get Hurt And What The Fuck? Why don't you put your kid in a plastic bubble if you're so worried about it."
We had a wonderful time at Rivi and I even wore a (borrowed) bathing suit and didn't die from it either.
"Rivi: Where you can wear a bathing suit and forget for a moment what a self concious freak you are."
Also, please note: No one was maimed or killed by the dangerous slide or the death trap high dive while we were at Rivi.
Every time I go visit my brother and his wife I come home with a new saying, like "Just so you know..." (Which I might finish with "....those sunglasses make my clothes fly off.") My sister in law has a knack for coming up with little sayings which grab hold of my brain and for the next 2-3 weeks I walk around sounding exactly like her, only less funny.
I sound exactly like her, except I never find myself saying, "Let's send a check to George Bush and hang his picture on the fridge." I will also never suggest you don't need a housekeeper twice a month because once the kids go to school you'll be bathing in free time so why not clean house? (Answer: I have cocktails to consume! I don't live in Indiana.) I also never say (and never will say), "Well I could have ordered a cocktail, but I don't need the calories."
The cocktail thing though explains a lot about the current condition of my body and the comparable (svelte and bronzed) condition of my sister in law's. But still? No cocktail because of the calories? Who do you think I am? Indiana?
Mostly I come back from visiting my brother and his wife thinking how awesome a husband and person my brother is. And sometimes, when we're sitting on their (tastefully decorated) screened porch playing cards and my sister in law is making me laugh until I can't breathe and my brother is doing the same, I look at him and I wonder what my parents actually did right.
Because he's a kind and loving person and he chose an amazing woman to spend his life with who fits him perfectly and, just so you know, our lives could have easily turned out a lot different.
Watching Max arrive was an incredibly surreal experience. No pain like with Madison's arrival but I wasn't able to think too hard about his arrival because as I watched them pull him from my abdomen...let's just say that's really weird and if you thought about it too much you'd vomit or pass out.
There were a few reasons I was thrilled Max was born on March 20th. I could not stand being pregnant for another minute, my body hurt and I'd already lost my voice twice from the incredible digestive acid eating at my throat. I couldn't sleep and it was also during those months Madison discovered that even though I said, "Don't run away from me." I couldn't actually do much about it once she went running.
I was also happy because I wanted a spring baby and Logan had been laid off two weeks earlier meaning we had about two more weeks left in our insurance grace period and three whole weeks until his actual due date.
Forget spicy food and nightly sex, the best way to bring on labor is to face complete financial ruin and paying for a c section delivery out of pocket. If only I'd known that when pregnant with Madison who was two weeks late and refused to budge.
I hate to go on and on about how much I love Max, because it's hard to say it in a new way. We all love our kids like this. Though I love Max differently than I love Madison. There's something in Madison which makes her my kindred spirit. She's smart and thinks things to death and all of that makes me think of what a complex woman she will be and I love that about her.
With Max, things are more simple. There was a time when Max was 9 months old where I'd catch myself staring at him with a stupid grin on my face. He's just utterly and completely loveable. He loves to laugh and have fun and he loves to be around people who like to laugh as much as he does.
It freaks me out a little bit to see my youngest child turning five, it freaks me out more than I was expecting actually. But then it's so fun watching Max have a life outside of us, to see him in school learning and making the teachers fall in love with him, to see him making buddies he loves with all his heart.
Watching him turn five is just watching him do more of the same. I can't wait to see what six brings.
Happy Birthday Max!
(You can see Max's bowling party here.)
(I'm still thinking about the Yates thing. I don't have time to form my feelings into a meaningful post. But I'll try...do not hold your breath.)
First, Lori, sent me an email the other day. I haven't responded to it because my email is a ridiculous mess. I've tried starting a ton of folders. One for Flogging Baby, one for Flogging Baby Comments, one for Suburban Bliss Comments, one for people I have an easy time replying to quickly, one for things I'll need to think about and get back to. The one where I have to think? Is a huge mess and my system has fallen apart about 14 days after I started it.
Anyway, Lori has is the foster mother to a dog who lost his people in Hurricane Katrina. He came to them in horrible shape. He was covered in cuts and those cuts were terribly infected. He's worn down his teeth attempting to chew through the chain which held him in his yard. Not broken, worn right down. He's doing great but needs more care than Lori can give him, but there is a place which can help him. Go see Lori's site to see how you can help.
Next up.
Remember last year at Valentine's where Logan showed me up with his great Valentine's day gifts?
We had great response and Logan made up a few for people who emailed asking about them, so this year we decided to put them up for sale.
I made the Happy Hour Shoppe and you should go take a peek around. We'll be adding more items over time and I'll be sure to let you know when that happens. But for now. Go on. Go look!
Remind me not to leave the house for the day after writing out the pros v. cons of Blogher. I like to come home to 8 or 10 emails, but 85?
Things that tipped it over the edge: Logan heard about how it is a L E S B I A N event and also Alice mentioned Pillow Fights! There's a penis behind everything on the internet.
But what I wanted to write about was this journal entry I found amongst Maddie's end of the year paper work. I will share the image and then transcribe the text.
5/25/05 One day my fat cat [Gary] scrached my eyelid. It was bleeding. My brother was my only hope! [Drama?] I didn't need an eye pach I needed medasine that tasted like bubble gum. My mom was naked. She was screaming. My mom was in the shower. [Thank you for that useful tidbit!]
I'd wondered what it would feel like if Madison had a blog.
Now I know.
**The cat scratched Madison while I was in the shower. Max came and told me, I told him to send Madison in the bathroom. When she walked in her eye was totally covered in blood and I thought he'd scratched her eyeball and her cornea was laying in the living room. So yes, I was indeed naked (thanks for remembering that!) but no I did not scream.
Also, no I don't typically just hang out around the house nude waiting for one of the children to injure themselves. **
We're always trying to find ways to make learning fun in this house. Like, for example, while in the throes of 'Lice Fest 2004' we created story problems out of the event.
"How many lice does it take to make your mother completely insane?" Then we'd count them and pretty much the first one made me insane so that probably wasn't a great example at all.
We're always thinking up ways to make our interactions into a game. Since Madison has learned to write, she has taken to writing notes to us to express her negative emotions. The notes read, "You are a big fat meanie. I hate you. But I still love you." (Seriously.)
Last weekend Logan told me something which wasn't appropriate for young ears, I don't remember what it was (come up with something raunchy) and Madison was very displeased we wouldn't share.
She wrote up a note which read. "Tell me. Tell me. Tell me. Or else I'll punch you."
Logan wrote back, "No No No I am the boss!"
She wrote back, "Bla bla bla bla bla bla."
He wrote back, "Fee Fi Fo Fum."
She wrote back, "Poop poop poop poop poop.
He wrote back, "I'll cover your head in snow pinky!"
She wrote back, "You're going down mister."
He Wrote back, "Get ready for a chocolate pudding bath pinky."
She wrote back, "Awhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. Baby Logan. Goo goo goo."
He wrote back, "Time for a potato chip treehouse monkeypants."
She wrote back, "Time for a poo poo bath."
She's a really good writer isn't she.
Every family has at least one member no one quite understands. That person who is a little off, maybe even crazy. That person who you hope doesn't get famous because you'd have to claim that person as one of you. Family events sometimes center around discussing how crazy this odd ball of the family is.
In my family we mainly sit around at Thanksgiving dinner and discuss the normal people, because the majority of people in our family are, to put it mildly, completely insane!
Instead of sitting around and wondering how that one person turned out so odd, we sit around and debate how that one person turned out so normal all things considered.
One of my cousins is seriously bizarre. At this point nothing this cousin does shocks me. Burning down a garage? Doesn't shock me. Smearing a stolen lipstick all over the women's bathroom during a posh country club family wedding. Not surprising. Juvenile hall stay? I wasn't shocked but did feel somewhat safer.
My cousin was a troubled child obviously. He's grown into a troubled and sociopathic adult.
One day not too long ago, he began calling my house. Frantically. Over a period of 3 days he called me literally 35 times. I counted them on the caller id because I refused to pick up until I had some idea what he wanted. I called my mother and he had talked to her.
Nothing my cousin does shocks me anymore, but his choice of careers shocked the living hell out of me. My sociopathic cousin is a knife vendor. Not just any knives, really sharp knives.
He was calling to see if I, and dozens of my friends would like to buy knives in my home from a sociopath.
Gee, sign me up!
"Oh hey Jennifer, Chrissy, Andrea.....do you guys want to come to my house to look at extremely sharp knives with my sociopathic cousin? Just be prepared to buy because I'm afraid of him really."
I didn't return his call.
My sister called this morning to see if I could come out and play today. She's on vacation at one of the lakes nearby at the cottage of a coworker. She thought a long weekend alone would help her mental state, (she hates people like I do!), instead she's realized she HATES spiders and the noises a 1930's cottage makes in the night. Also, she's lonely.
She called to see if I could dump Logan and come out for the day. Unfortunately for all of us, Logan was un-dumpable, since he was on his way to the How conference in Chicago. He was also on his way to the lap of luxury.....a fancy hotel, which, for a four day stay costs as much as my monthly house payment. When I saw the charge on our online banking statement I first swallowed my tongue, threw it back up and then ran into oncoming traffic screaming at the top of my lungs.
Since I couldn't come out by myself she suggested I bring the kids out, which I was all for. Because when the kids are on vacation and/or Logan is out of town, we're burning daylight.
When we arrived at the cottage, 45 minutes later (that's 45 minutes of daylight burned, you know), the weather was fair. There was sun and it was warm. We decided to eat some lunch before breaking out the suits, sunscreen and sand toys. Fatal Error.
We spent the rest of the day trapped on the tiny concrete porch while it poured. Then poured some more. Then life threatening lightning came down from the sky. Disappointing.
On the other hand, after spending a few hours with my extremely talkative children on a tiny concrete porch, my sister was ready to feel lonely. I offered to let her take the kids home and I'd stay at the cottage so she wouldn't feel lonely but shockingly, she said she was ready to be alone.
I don't think I ever knew how much talking kids do. I like talking, but even I don't need to talk this much.
I bet Logan's talking....or maybe he's quietly taking in the view from his high rise hotel room. Actually he's drinking his face off. Odd, so am I.
*Who recommended I read "Why I'm Like This"? I just finished it and loved it (though the end fell a little flat and schmaltzy for my taste). Thank you.
Max and I are incredibly bored today.
So I took his picture.
Logan called this morning to tell me he has what feels like the flu. When I told Madison that Daddy was sick in Arizona she said, "Hey! That means he's not a robot."
I LOVE HER.
Logan has been sick less than 10 times in the last nearly 12 years we've been together. It figures he'd get sick while away.
You'd think, since everyone appears to find me so offensive and horrible, I'd take some joy in Logan's suffering while he's getting a (relative) break from our home life. But instead he told me he was ill and I cried after I hung up the phone, feeling that much worse that we're both not enjoying this week.
We're not together, the kids are sad he's gone and he's not even able to have fun. I'd rather someone was enjoying this, and since I'm not enjoying our son getting up at 5am screaming for me to sleep WITH HIM NOW! You will! YOU WILL! (FYI: I've never slept with my kids in the same bed. Why is this happening to me now?) (Why at 5am?) I'd hoped Logan would have a nice week. Also, I feel a little guilty about the re-bubbling of the in law issue and he kind of deserves a relaxing week. Although I reserve the right to feel martyr-ish.
The other thing that made me realize I love Logan was something from a nice reader (Hi, Lily!). The "Logan Direct".
Take a look. My first thought was, "That looks like a kind of painful erection." Proof! I miss my husband! But then I thought, "It also looks like a flexing bicep."
Which is something Logan does ALL THE TIME because he loves himself. I'm not kidding. Usher said in an issue of "Men's Cosmo" that a 'Good body is a gift you give to yourself." So now, every time Logan returns from the gym I say, "Hey! Happy Birthday to you and your bicep."
Whatever the reason, the bus line to Logan airport from the Cape makes me miss my husband.
Tomorrow morning I have to drop off Max at preschool. Ask me how much I'm dreading this. Wait, don't, because I can't put it into words.
Logan emailed the other day:
To: Liss
From: Logan
Subject: Great News!
My company is paying for me to go to the How design conference in Chicago!
So I sent back:
To: Logan
From: Liss
Subject: Re: Great News!
Oh cool! The kids and I love Chicago!
He still hasn't responded. Gee, I wonder why.
This is a travel intense time for Logan and therefore for the kids and I.
I don't know if you remember, because I'm sure I've mentioned it many many times. In fact on Saturday night at a party to celebrate our friend's marriage, I think I mentioned it about as many times as I refilled my glass with Grey Goose vodka with a little lime.
Grey Goose is very good vodka but it still gives you a hangover if you drink it as much as you talk about your husband's upcoming TEN day photoshoot in Los Angeles or Arizona at an undisclosed time which may be next week, but could be this week. Not that the details are all that important to me.
The other day Logan came home from work and I was feeling quite accomplished at the end of the day and mentioned I got all the laundry done and folded and put away. Even his delicate underwear...which HE DOES NOT LIKE PUT IN THE DRYER! Jesus!
He replied, "Well, I finished a project today and my boss didn't come to say thank you to me."
And for a moment I thought, maybe that's true. But then I realized the one huge difference. Logan's boss says "Thanks!" every 1st and 15th when he gets a paycheck. I started to get angry, except fall of 2003 was the time of passionate arguing about these issues, now we have communication skills. About $1800 worth of communication skills via marital therapy. So I didn't get angry I thought to myself, 'This is a teachable moment'.
I told him I'd be expecting my paycheck next week.
He quickly said thanks for doing the laundry. (But next time..could I not put his jeans in the dryer for too long. He hates them bone dry.)
Today Max turned four and I'm really having a hard time coming up with both the time and the words to express what it's really like to watch my baby boy grow up.
And since I'm sick (sore throat is gone but now I'm coughing until that post partum incontinence rears it's ugly head) and since Logan's been home for just over 24 hours but has only been in our home for about 12 of those hours 10 of them sleeping. (God bless his robotic soul he's working his ass off)....I'm just going to show you a few pictures of those first moments of Max's life. Those moments I kind of wish we could freeze but it's probably good we can't because I'd have 10 children at this point with the memory of those times.
This is immediately following my c section. I think I was crying about the Virgin Mary over there out of the frame as I came off the anesthetic but Logan and Max were bonding. You'll notice Logan's JET BLACK hair. It took another year before he developed that hot salt and pepper look. You'll also notice how cute my baby is post partum. Being a c section baby he endured very little trauma in the birthing process. Unlike his sister who was traumatized by her birth.
Here I met Max on March 21st. At 1:30am. I look pretty happy and at peace there, except I was actually completely blitzed on morphine and praying to go to sleep. Hooray C Section!
Here is Max going home in the sweater I made him. Moments after this photo was taken he grew right out of this sweater. Thank God he was born 3 weeks early or else it wouldn't have fit.
Here is Max at 4 days old laying on my abdomen. How the hell did he fit in there?
I love this shot because Max looks totally wasted and awestruck.
I wish I had a picture of him from now but the thing is: I'm so sick. His birthday party with his buddies isn't until next weekend (ELEPHANT BIRTHDAY PARTY! No stupid party store bull shit!) and then I'll share the pictures.
I'm disappointing you I know but the nyquil is kickinnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn
"I" feel like "I" only talk about me all the time. "I"'m wondering what's going on with you? "I" mean as long as we don't stop talking me about me. "I" just really like talking about myself. No really, "I" do!
My brother loves St Patrick's day, they attended a party and wow those Krazy Katholics love to party. Not only did my brother end up in new clothes:
He ended up with an Irish Mullet:
And then an Irish Toupee:
Finally to celebrate the big holiday my brother got himself a transvestite amish wife who happens to be sort of Irish:
I hope your St Patrick's Day was fun. Logan's was spent in a Trader Vics in Beverly Hills and then Tiki Ti. Which means he is officially not inheriting a single penny from my Irish family. We named our baby after my fresh off the boat grandmother, and Logan spends St Patrick's day in a tiki bar?
Clearly he has a problem.
I was a horribly unpopular girl in school. Maybe the word wouldn't be unpopular, maybe the word is non existent. I was non existent in school. I have a keen sense about people and their moods which was most likely born out of my alcoholic parent headed household. There is a lot of watching when you're in a home with an angry drunk. My keen sense of others allowed me to avoid the radar of scorn or popularity. I was relatively invisible.
It's hard to make friends when you're invisible and the other invisible friend I had became highly visible when she found herself using various drugs and later pregnant. This was somehow frowned upon at Seaholm.
I remained anonymous and invisible until finally I was released from that hellish existence.
There is a little girl in Madison's first grade class who I can not stand. I know she's just a first grader and it's not nice to have negative feelings about a child but that's why I am not a teacher.
Every time I work in that classroom I find myself gritting my teeth and trying "not to see her" when she raises her hand.
Her: *Hand Goes Up*
Me: *Hey! What's that in the hall...I'd better check.*
Come back in.
Her: *Hand Up Again*
I try to be nice and I try to help but she and I don't mesh well and she is a sparkling reminder of why I abandoned that early education major.
Maddie doesn't like her either and we've had lots of talks about this little girl. Talks where I think to myself, "Of course you don't like her! Jesus did you notice how she......." but then I catch myself and realize that's horribly inappropriate.
Instead I started telling Maddie how it's okay if she doesn't like this little girl. You don't have to like everyone. In fact you can hate some people with a fiery passion, but even if Star Jones and George Bush are in your first grade class you have to be polite to them and treat them kindly.
Maddie mentioned how this little girl doesn't have any friends and even though I totally know why she doesn't have any friends, it broke my heart because as I've said I was invisible all through my schooling.
I told Maddie about my last years of high school where I didn't have a single friend and how hard it was to eat lunch in the orchestra room everyday. I told her how maybe it didn't seem like she could be friends with this particular little girl, but maybe she could leave her mind open to it. That maybe this little girl didn't know how to be friends and she needed help to learn how to be friends.
Just like I needed help.
Apparently I sent my teenaged heart to school with Madison in her back pack, because the next day at dismissal Maddie hopped up to tell me that she "Told Mrs Rutherford that we have to be nice to Sarah* because my mommy didn't have any friends when she went to school and it was really sad for her."
I'm so glad Mrs Rutherford knows how I struggled through school. No really, I'm glad.
*Made up name.
I often think about the super powers the members of my family might have. If Max had a super power it would be his uncanny ability to always offer up the foot which is opposite of the shoe I have ready for wearing.
Madison's super power is her incredible tastebud enhanced finger.
If Logan were a super hero and not just a robot, his super power would involve his titanium liver and a special emission of alcohol fumes which would render his enemies 'stupid drunk'.
We learned this at Mike and Rachel's house on Friday night. We also learned at Mike and Rachel's house that I am truly retarded. I SINGED THE TIP OF MY FUCKING NOSE WHILE SMELLING A CANDLE.
It would appear my super power is Jackassery™.
I've made progress on my New Year's Resolutions. There was the Mayo part which is going swimmingly. There was the Phone Phobia part, which isn't going very well at all.
The other day I contacted a woman about helping out during her knitting shop's inventory. She asked what I'd like to count, notions or yarn.
I replied, "Oh I can count anything!"
I can count anything! I should never talk on the phone. Or speak in general.
The hug part of my New Year's Resolutions though is an even bigger hang up. While I've made progress, and have dropped the 'tap tap tap' out of my elderly robot hugging routine, I still give horrible hugs.
Another super power for me! I'm the 'Empty Hugger'!
I realized my hugs were really not improving though at Sarah and Bryan's going away gathering on Friday night. I give empty hugs but when I'm preparing to deliver the hug I mean to deliver it with feeling. Instead it all comes out wrong and feels hollow. Also the attempts to deliver the hug feel awkward, often resulting with a punch in the face as I reach around or perhaps a poke in the eye or a trampling of your toe.
Why is the hug so difficult for me to understand? Logan's a hugger. He's a robot and he can give nice hugs that make people realize he considers them a friend and he holds them dear.
I, a warm blooded human woman, can't give a meaningful hug to save my ever loving life.
If I know you and you've been disappointed by my hugs, please know I'm sorry and I'm working on it. Also, I have excellent personal liability insurance so direct all calls about physical injuries incurred during an attempted hug to Jackson Mutual.
About 7 years ago, over Valentine's Day weekend, Logan and I went to the Old Shillelagh and later got unexpectedly pregnant with Madison, just seven months into our marriage. While on the pill.
I am terrible at these types of holidays.
This afternoon I debated what kind gesture I could make toward Logan, the love of my life, which wouldn't cost any money or require a lot of creativity because I'm not good under pressure. I came up with two ideas: I'd clean the bathroom because that's the thing in my life I hate doing more than anything. Not because I'm opposed to cleaning but because my bathroom is literally falling apart beneath the walls. So I mainly try to shower and dry my hair without really looking around. Cleaning forces me to see how horrid the bathroom is. The other option was a blow job.
I'm a romantic at heart so you can imagine which I chose in the end.
Logan on the other hand is perhaps the most romantic man I have ever known. Of course my father once bought my mother a freezer full of meat for Christmas so I'm not coming from a particularly romantic background.
The kids and I woke up to find cinnamon rolls, freshly baked, before Logan left for work at 7am. Next to the cinnamon rolls were a few small gifts.
Three books titled 'What I Love About....[fill in our names]'
I don't have Madison's because she hid it in her room tonight at bedtime. However can you guess which text is from which book?
So yes, my Robotic Husband is also incredibly demonstrative in his loving. I hope to be demonstrative later on.
The other gift Logan left on the counter this morning with the cinnamon rolls and the books was a magnetic notepad of his own clever design and construction.
At the bottom of each page:
I am so lucky. If having an awesome husband was a marketable skill, I'd have at least six jobs.
I read (saw in a movie? Saw on a blog?) somewhere that Frank Sinatra said, "I feel sorry for sober people because when they wake up, that's as good as they're going to feel all day."
I've been not drinking because when I'm seriously depressed, drinking just doesn't particularly appeal to me. Mildly depressed? Sure! Totally happy? Make it a double! Even when I'm mood neutral I like a few happy hour cocktails. But when I'm seriously depressed I lose my will to drink.
Each morning when I wake up and still feel mildly hungover, because I'm not a morning person. At all. I think of old blue eyes and how totally right he was. God bless him and his cirrhosis ravaged liver.
I have another interview set up for Thursday which has elevated my mood a bit.
It's a job which pays enough for my working to have monetary value in this home. It's a schedule which is totally livable for Madison, Max and Logan's ever demanding career. It leaves me time at home with Max (just not 24 hours a day, which is a bit much for me. I'm self absorbed!), time at home with Madison after school and time with Logan when he's not working.
It would be really nice if I walked in there on Thursday and it felt right and she liked me and I liked them and they said, "Every Thursday is cookie day and we bring your favorite kind of cookies! And Tuesday is Try a New Cocktail Day! and Wednesday is Take a Nap At Your Desk Day! And on Monday....we go shopping! With an expense account!"
Short of that, it would be nice if the people in the office smiled and it would be nice if the woman I'll be working for is nice and doesn't have halitosis and an overwhelming need to talk about her goiter. But maybe I'm getting too specific.
Madison has been sick since Friday morning and I'm pretty much totally over it. It's just a fever so far but she never runs a fever and our experiences with fevers have been unpleasant to say the least. I'll tell you about her febrile seizure sometime. Otherwise known as The Moment We Believed Our Daughter Was Dying In Logan's Arms. Good times those.
She did throw up tonight but it was very surreal. She was brushing her teeth, children who have stuffy noses and are mouth breathing have the most HIDEOUS breath you can imagine, and called me into the bathroom. "Mom, can you come in here please?"
I arrived and there was something on the bathroom floor but her calm demeanor made it seem impossible that she'd just vomited. She's a "Loud Puker" like her mother I'm proud to say.
I asked, "What happened?"
She replied, with a shrug, "I don't know. That stuff just came out of my mouth."
I guess I'm calling the doctor tomorrow. I called today but it was busy all morning. Literally from 8:00am until 11:00am, busy signal. Then I stopped calling because it seems to me the plague has arrived at my doctor's office and I don't want to catch anything else in that festering petri dish.
Max has been trapped in this house since Friday. His playdate had to cancel because of Madison's fever and we've been unable to leave the house. Though he did get out for a while with Logan on Saturday and Saturday night with my mother.
Today as we played I asked if he wanted to play with his race track set (must have toy for your 2-4 year old) and he said, "I think it will bother Maddie since she's sick."
And tonight he asked her how she was feeling while she was snoozing in her bed and even though she was as rude to him as ever (Eyes rolling, "I'm fine Max.") he said as he left her room, "Have a good rest sweety sweetness."
We may be stewing in sewage and financial doom may be swirling around our heads, but I love my kids. Also I love those costco sleeping pills.
good night.
Madison likes to ask me stories about the past. When Logan and I met and our first kiss and about the day she was born.
she'll say, "what did it feel like when I was born?"
I'll want to say, "I felt like I was breaking in two." But I want grandchildren someday so I leave out the 12 hours of labor and the 3 hours of pushing and the forceps and the slicing. I just say, "It hurt a lot."
She replies, "I don't think I want babies."
"You don't have to have babies that's okay."
She says, "Right, I know! I just won't get married and then I don't have to have babies."
I felt the need to clarify and it all went to hell at that point.
"Well you could get married but, remember when we talked about the sperm and the egg? And how they have to get together to make a baby? And there's a special hug that lets them get together? There are things you can do to make sure the sperm and the egg don't get together if you don't want to have a baby."
She ponders and says, "Okay so I'll get married but I won't hug my husband."
[Frantically thinking: WHERE THE HELL AM I GOING WITH THIS?]
"Well no, remember I said it was a special hug?"
She looks confused, "Okay, can you show me the special hug?"
...
...
...
"Maddie, maybe you should just be a lesbian."
[Job Interview: will pay $xxx.xx a month. day Care will cost $xyy.yy month. The difference between $xxx.xx and $xyy.yy is $44.00 a month. Still looking.]
Have I ever led you to believe I'm a calm and rational woman who is not easily flustered by the day to day grind of parenting?
Because if I did I'm terribly sorry. I am not at all calm or rational or even slightly sane. I am nothing but a flailing mentally unstable infant!
I don't really know why I bring this up right now, but I was thinking how I always totally fall off the deep end every time we experience a minor 'crisis' in this home. Potty training. I nearly died and you got to hear all about every moment of my come apart. The Big Deal. I'm not allowed to talk about, but it's going better and I've calmed down, mostly. Lice. Supreme freak out. I didn't shower for at least 3 days and roamed the drugstore aisles like a crazed lunatic. Loss of internet connection for a week. Meltdown! Meltdown! Meltdown!
I have a confession. Max will be 4 in March and he still had a pacifier. I know, I know. I can't believe it either. My 'I'd NEVER List' started out pretty short because many years ago a new mother said to me, wearily, "Never say never because you never know." It stuck with me and in six years even my short list of 'I'd Never's" has been systematically decimated.
But still, "MY child will never have a binky after age TWO!" stayed on the list, until Max turned two.
But then I had, "MY child will never have a binky after age two....out of his bed! But it will definitely be gone by age THREE!" on the list, until Max turned three.
Since then I've been blaming the Internet for my inability to take the binky away. Remember when that stupid, stupid Heather had the NERVE to think she knew what was best for her child and took the binky away from poor defenseless Leta? Remember how FUCKING PISSED the internet was after that?
I'm being sarcastic because I'm so jealous of Heather's supreme insight to take the binky away. I have been woken up in the night to find lost binkies for nearly four years now and I did it to myself. Jackass.
But really I sort of like it when the internet is pissed at me and throws insults I can't even understand at me, like, "Stupid Reatarded Bitch." I don't even know what reatarded is!
The truth is, I love my quiet time after the kids go to bed and I knew when we got rid of the binky I'd head back into Flailing Infantile Crisis Mode and since Lice Fest 2004 was just a few weeks ago, I don't think anyone is ready for that. Even you Internet, and you have it easy. Thank your lucky stars I don't have your phone number and this raging case of phone phobia because believe me the people I know have gotten some pretty obnoxious sobbing phone calls from me during various 'Crisis'.
I don't handle crying bedtimes very well. I like to read a short book, give a kiss, shut the door and go have a cocktail! I don't have time for tears at bedtime.
But then the binky's got impossibly disgusting. Also, Max got a big boy bed last week! In the past I could lift his toddler bed in the dark, with one hand, without my glasses and find the binky in seconds. With the big, heavy, (awesome) metal bed he has now (which Logan picked from the trash and stripped of all paint and sealed all the raw rusty metal.....Fuck, another thing he can do) I can't lift it without peeing my pants a little and bashing my skull with the side rails. It got really hard to convince myself that letting him keep his binky was easier than getting rid of it.
Also, I don't admit this very often. I have a soft spot in my heart for my children and the thought of taking away something which gave my sweet baby boy so much comfort and happiness, made me feel a little mean.
How would I feel if someone came and took away my cocktail hour? What if someone one day told me no more Text Twist? I'd be pretty pissed.
We put it off for almost two months. We had sitters coming over and we weren't going to leave an inconsolable (and also bi polar) 3 year old with an unwitting caregiver. We had friends without children coming over to our house for adult interaction and we didn't want Max screaming over the music and rendering our friends sterile with his unending wails for 'THE GOD DAMN BINKY!'
I built it up in my head and I pictured a detox period of weeks at least. Of cries and no sleep and screaming bedtimes and hell on earth.
Last Saturday we said we needed to send our binkies to our friend's baby, Mary. (She's so cute, I'm not even going to show you a picture because the Internet will then DEMAND she start her own blog.) We packed them up in a box and sent them C/O The Royal Oak Refuse Collection Department! Don't tell Max that part please.
Let me tell you about the first night.
Not. A. Single. Peep.
Not a word about the binky for 5 days. Then on the fifth night as I put him to bed he said, "I really miss my binky."
And I said, "I know. I bet Mary is really loving them because she's a baby and baby's need binkies."
He said, "Yeah."
The End.
Now, imagine how boring this blog would be if I didn't lose my mind anytime something even remotely challenging happened. Mental stability is so...boring.
Logan met a few of his siblings tonight to say good bye as one of them headed back home after the holiday. He called on his way home and said:
"Booty call for Liss."
Seriously, I love that.
Also, my sister? She has a band? And on her website they have paper dolls? And you should go see them because who knew my sister had the most 'back' of all her band mates.
Between you and me, Ike-ette is my favorite.
In other sibling news, my brother had to work for Christmas Eve. But even worse than working Christmas as a firefighter was telling my mother he wasn't coming up for the holiday.
In the email from his wife, whom I love in a deep and binding way: "Your brother, 'Run into a burning building? SURE!' however, 'Tell my mom I'm not coming home for Christmas? Uhm.......' "
Needless to say, I love my family but family just isn't the same without my brother and his wife.
Look I can't keep talking to you, my booty call is arriving soon.
Christmas Eve and Christmas Morning 2004
Gift Opening and The Favorite Gift (pirate ship).
Late in the day, still playing. Arrrr! and The Tower Of Capitalist Excess (in our kitchen!).
Here we started taking pictures for Maddie's new journal. Max was pissed off he didn't get to control the camera. Also a picture of Gary, the 'fat one' because that black blob there under his head is all his body. He's not fluffy, he's HUGE.
Maddie took both these shots. First you'll see me choking the cat. Second you'll see me kissing the cat. I have a confession. I think I've started to fall in love with our cats. Last week as I prepared for The Very Important Party Socks ran out the back door which mysteriously opened. When I thought of her out in the cold rainy night being beaten by all the street cats in our neighborhood I started to cry. Then, this week.....I can't believe I'm typing this. I considered divorcing Logan just so I can be a crazy cat lady.
Merry Christmas From The Cat Lady!
One day many years ago my brother and I were searching for something to eat and the cupboards were pretty bare.
Among the offerings was an inexplicable amount of evaporated milk.
At the time my grandfather was very sick with cancer and had a full time live in nurse. My brother called my mother at work and said, frantically into the phone:
"Mom! The nurse just called. She says grandpa needs evaporated milk right now! What do we do?"
And my mother, bless her gullible little heart, immediately, without ever asking why on earth a man dying of cancer would ever urgently require evaporated milk, said calmly and with authority, "Okay, go into the cupboard next to the stove. I have evaporated milk in the upper left hand corner. How much do they need? I have 9 cans."
It was as if she'd always known, someday grandpa would require evaporated milk to save his live so she stockpiled it and this, this was the culmination of all her dreams.
But then we laughed hysterically and my mother, my saintly mother, had been plunged into another of our jokes.
God bless her.
Last night was Buca night, and someone is impatiently waiting for me to write about it. I have two words for you: Hang and Over.
Saturday night where I had claimed I wouldn't talk about lice, but then, the minute I sat down and Cari asked me, "How are you?"
I said, "OH MY GOD!!!!! LICE LICE LICE!!!! And then! LICE LICE LICE!!!!!! You would not believe the LICE!!!!!"
I'm a wonderful conversationalist.
Last night I made it about 23 minutes without the subject of lice coming up. And Meg asked me, I didn't bring it up. The best part though was when Rebecca, bless her lice free heart, suggested I use a chemical shampoo. And then she took the beating I gave her quite well.
I don't really even know what I'll tell you about last night. You should know I consumed several beverages and I am about 50% embalmed at this time.
So for more you'll just have to wait. Sorry, I have nits to pick.
In other news: Does anyone want to babysit Thursday evening for my two adorable and incredibly well behaved children in my formerly lice infested but now unbelievably clean house?
Interesting, neither have the other 3 sitters we've asked. I can't believe we're going to miss a party. It hurts my soul.
This year the Christmas card shoot wasn't that hard. I was almost looking forward to it with the new digital camera but I yearned for the quality of my canon rebel. So I went with film after all and thankfully the kids mostly cooperated.
Lori sent me this option back in October and it's quite funny isn't it. Can you believe people send me these things? I can't help but love you Internet, even though you call me a lazy whore.
I don't know if I've shown this shot on my website before but I don't think you'll mind the walk down memory lane.
Here I tortured Madison by putting her on Santa's lap. For the first time, for the last time.
The inside of our holiday cards that year read:
Santa: What would you like for Christmas little girl?
Madison: I'd like off your lap....immediately. Also, new parents who don't think this is really funny.
I actually got a nice shot of the kids this year and I'm putting it below the cut so that if you know me you can choose to either be surprised when my card arrives or you can peek and ruin all the fun you impatient American. Why does everything have to be Now! Now! Now! With you? God!
Continuing on the same theme, sort of.
I need to move to Atlanta.
I already knew there were all sorts of new developments there which are exactly like our house only new but still beautiful and full of the same character we love in our current home.
The tour of this model made me throw an Atlanta or Bust sign on the mini van out back and start frantically packing up all our belongings.
Seriously, look at the coffered ceilings (which we put in our bedroom ourselves) and the bookcases, which are exactly like the ones in my own living room....except better because they're bigger.
And don't tell me you don't wet your pants a little when I show you the Chelsea, because you totally did.
Except then I remembered Logan loves his job and he's never leaving.
So tonight when a friend emailed me this, I knew it was destined to be.
We leave tomorrow.
All the praying and the manischewitz I've been drinking worked and I have an interview tomorrow. It's at a synagogue so bagels and matzoh here I come! Thank you God.
Now if you're Jewish you can't really say or even type the word God, correct? But the same friend who sent me the great news about Tiki Atlanta also sent me great news about taking the name of Jesus in vain instead of God. If I'm Jewish, I don't believe in Jesus so I can swear about Jesus Fucking Christ all the time!
I can't wait to say that in my interview.
You may have noticed this about me but I'm the type of person who likes to think about things. A lot. I like to think about things until they're begging me to stop thinking about them. I like to work through every possible scenario before I even have any idea what the real scenario is so that I have enough time to worry about every possible scenario.
Obviously if I waited for the scenario to be revealed I wouldn't have enough time to worry about every possible one. Logan just doesn't understand, but he's a robot so he just waits and waits until situations present themselves and then he figures them out as they happen.
Ha! What a fool.
So far today I've cried 3 times because Max got his progress report from school today. I know Max is seriously psychotic and he STILL wets his pants some of the time and I know he has that temper problem and I know that in the past I've thought about selling him on Ebay, but today he got his progress report from school and his Presbyterian teachers love him.
And I know all Presbyterian people gather in the moonlight and dance with Satan, but they really warmed my heart today with their nice words about my son.
"Max is a delightful boy. He is intelligent, well-spoken and has a sense of humor that is highly developed. In short, we love having him in our class; he cracks us up."
There were several areas of evaluation on this report and all of them were graded as 5's, which is the best you can do if you go to Presbyterian preschool. But after the area titled: "Communicates with others well." There is a hand written note which reads, "Max is extremely articulate."
And do you know what that really means? It means what I've been trying to tell all of you people all fucking summer. THEY TALK ALL THE TIME AND THEY NEVER STOP!
So I'm crying because I'm going to have to pull him from his Satanic Presbyterian preschool unless one of these jobs turns out to be a MWF type of position. And if you transform yourself into Logan and say, "Don't worry, it will all work out." I will lodge a matzo ball in your throat and you'll die while I say, "Don't worry, it will all work out."
I'm going to make a great Jew I think.
Tonight at dinner Logan and I were discussing the progress report and Madison heard us say the word 'articulate' and we ended up in a 20 minute long discussion about what articulate does and does not mean. It does NOT have anything to do with a particularly nice piece of art. Yes, just like the word 'Fart' doesn't really have anything to do with art. And on and on until I said, 'Why don't we turn on the idiot box now.' (which is the tv of course)
In fairness I have to tell you about Madison's report card which was all O's for Outstanding and O+ for She's Just So Great I Can't Even Believe You Could Do This With Formula! And also she got some S's and S+'s and those are just super too.
Guess what her highest marks were in?
Talking. If they gave grades for talking she'd have an OMFGSTATFT! (Oh My Fucking God She Talks All The Fucking Time!) But no really her best grades were in reading and her teacher wrote a nice note which reads: "Madison is making excellent progress in first grade. She is interested in learning, a hard worker and a good listener."
In my mind she wrote a note which read: "Could you try to talk to your daughter less because she's talking all the time and she asks so many questions I think my face melted off today."
At conferences Logan and I asked how she was doing socially. She just turned six a couple of weeks ago and most of the children in her grade have been six for quite some time. Some of the girls in her class even turned 7 in September and October. I worry all the time that she's not able to handle the pressure of being the youngest in the class.
The teacher said she had nearly forgotten about all the crying she did at the beginning of the year, because she's totally fine now. She's just like everyone else, except, the teacher said, she certainly talks a lot doesn't she. Then she laughed nervously.
And I said, lady, until she calls you into her room at 11:30pm to ask you what 'disembowel' means, I don't want to hear your whining.
Good night.
Logan and I recently watched 'Super Size Me' and we felt pretty assured we've taught our children the difference between McDonald's and what we call 'Energy Food'.
But teachable moments are everywhere so today Logan asked Madison why it's not a good idea to eat at McDonald's all the time.
"You can't eat at McDonald's all the time or you'll get the same toy over and over!"
Uh.........
When I'm a bundle of nerves you can usually find me in the kitchen spot cleaning the wood floors.
Since I started taking my medicine I haven't been very upset about anything and the floor is really suffering, but if the floor were sparkling I would be suffering. I'm sorry kitchen floor, we can't both be happy at once.
The problem with me feeling generally 'okay' most of the time is that the lack of angst leads to a lack of things to bitch and moan about. I used to be able to go on and on about the kids and their talking and their questions and the bickering, but that all seems so manageable now and really, since Bush was elected....it all just pales in comparison.
But then since I'm a bumbling idiot really who just happens to like killing babies and sodomy I don't really want to talk about politics either.
So what I've come up with is a particularly funny story from this weekend, but I must warn you. It's a bit revealing and though funny it may make some of the people who read this site and know me in my everyday life, a little awkward.
My mother comes to mind. My brother. My sister. Various co workers of Logan's.
But I'm telling this story anyway because, Internet, you want content! You don't want a dirty floor and no comedy! You need funny!
I'm just warning you...don't read this if you know me and will be uncomfortable.
On the other hand, my brother has licked his fingers and simulated rubbing his nipples in front of the entire family on the eve of the baby Jesus' birth and my mother once, while playing a charades game (again, on the eve of the baby Jesus' birth) simulated 'Stuffing A Turkey' in a way that can only be described as obscene and forced a guest to flee our house to shower before attending a midnight mass to cleanse his soul of all evilness before Christmas Morn.
So I don't know, I may be fine with this.
Continue reading "So many quotes you'll poke your eyes out." »
While pregnant with Madison I spent many hours looking over the patterns at the fabric store dreaming of the costumes I might make for my soon to be born child. I have this thing for costumes, and my 'thing' doesn't include going to the stupid party supply store and spending an exorbitant amount of money on a piece of shit costume that cost about 25 cents to make. In Taiwan. In a sweatshop by children who will never wear a piece of shit costume to go trick or treating.
I feel like Sally Struthers right now, only less raspy.
I thought I'd have at least the first 10 years of her life and 10 years of Max's to control what they'd be for halloween.
The high water mark was 2001 when I had a chicken and an egg. But then, Maddie wanted to be a princess. How thoroughly Disney of her. And every year since she's been a boring princess.
I'd like to do something fun again, but the children have sucked every last bit of creativity out of my soul. I'm forever doomed to have a stupid party store dinosaur. Damn you Party City!
(Funny thing about his costume that almost makes it okay: Doesn't it look like the dinosaur has swallowed him and only his head remains in the dinosaur's mouth waiting to be devoured? I keep saying, "Max! Look out! That dinosaur is eating your head!!!!" But he doesn't get it. These are the jokes people!)
This weekend, Logan experienced one of those moments where, as a parent, you think...'I never knew I'd be this guy....walking around on a regular autumn day with a dinosaur.' But there he was strolling through the market....with a dinosaur.
The best advice I ever got about parenting was this: "Never say never because you never know."
You never know when you'll decide that it's just not worth fighting about the stupid Party Store dinosaur costume your sons been wearing for 12 hours a day for the last 4 days. Five years ago I never thought I'd be eating dinner at a restaurant with my son dressed head to toe in green polyester, but here I am and I lived to tell.
Max is having his girlfriend over tomorrow. Her name is Zoe. She's his girlfriend because she's a girl and a friend. She's also his girlfriend because they both like to color their faces with yellow chalk (note the yellow tinge to the photo.) He's been touting this playdate as the "Fight Playdate".
I'm not entirely clear on why it's called the Fight Playdate, except that they've both agreed to wear their halloween costumes to the 'Fight Playdate'. Between you and me, her Pokemon is totally kicking his Dinosaur ass.
I'm always torn on this website between being genuine and trying not to hurt anyone's feelings. Also I'm torn between being genuine while still protecting the privacy of my husband or anyone I care deeply for. One rule I've given myself and I generally follow is to not write anything about anyone in my life here that I haven't or won't say to them personally.
Of course, my in laws are an exception to this rule since everything I've ever written about them here I've also said to them. Repeatedly. But life is full of compromise and I love my husband more than I love writing about my in laws and the most horrific details of our unbelievable relationship. So I guess I'm not genuine in that way. But then if you've been reading long enough you know I have unpleasant feelings about those people so I don't really have to write about it anymore, do I.
Sometimes though, I have to break my own rules because the comedy is too much.
On the off chance my cousin or someone else from my extended family comes across my site, I feel I must apply some loving disclaimers to the following recollection of our wedding weekend.
Let me start by saying, I'm not sure I've ever seen a bride more glowing than my cousin on her wedding day. She was radiant with joy and her new husband seems like a great match for her and my cousin certainly deserves to have love and joy and happiness in her life.
She also deserves to have the pleasant wedding of her dreams. Her first wedding involved a lot of powder blue tuxedos on a lot of exceedingly short men. Except my brother, who at 6'1", towered over all the other 5'5" groomsmen like a powder blue freak of nature. Considering the powder blue wedding of her dreams nearly 20 years ago, I'd say this was an improvement and I'm absolutely certain the groom is an improvement over the first one.
It seems a lot of the love and joy and happiness in my cousin's life comes from organized religion. Conversely, none of the joy and happiness in my life comes from organized religion.
When reading what I'm about to write you must understand this fundamental difference in my outlook as opposed to my cousin's outlook. This doesn't mean there is anything wrong with my cousin's love of PowerPoint presentations during her wedding mass, it just means I prefer a different, maybe a more traditional wedding mass.
I was raised in the Catholic church and things were a little more sedate there. There was singing, but generally there wasn't a projection screen at the front of the church making it some kind of Holy Karaoke.
There wasn't dancing in my church. Crazy dancing in the aisles and arms raised up to heaven and seizure like movements indicating joy. These things make me, being as demure as I am, uncomfortable. In my church while growing up the craziest things got was the part when we shook hands and offered 'peace' to our neighbors in the surrounding pews.
I sometimes waited with giddy anticipation for that moment. When we got crazy and shook hands with near strangers. Sometimes my sister and I would just shake hands with each other or dramatically hug one another over and over.
Then there was communion at my cousin's church which consisted of what appeared to be a big fat chocolate chip cookie. It was more likely a piece of whole wheat flatbread, but I half expected the pastor to do a Cookie Monster impression shoving The Body Of Christ into his mouth yelling 'Cookie cookie...me eat cookie....'
In the church I grew up in, we got a piece of styrofoam and we shoved it in our mouths and it stuck to the roof of your mouth and FOR THE LOVE OF GOD (!) don't stick your finger in your mouth to dislodge The Body Of Christ! Just wait for it to dissolve and try not to think any impure thoughts while it's in your mouth.
In my church there were no musical stylings, there was no band and there were no electric drums and like I said, there was no 'breaking it down'. Ever. In my cousin's church there was all of that. Plus a guy in a purple suit with a yellow t shirt who fancied himself the Don Johnson of christian rock.
My personal favorite part was the "Church Cheer" which goes like this:
Pastor: "God is good!"
Everyone else, except my own stunned family: "All the time!!!"Pastor: "God is good!"
Everyone else, except my very uncomfortable family: "All the time!!!"Pastor: "All the time!"
Everyone else, except my familiy who was now thinking, 'can't we just shake hands or something?': "God is good!!"
Then everyone hooted and hollered and it was weird.
At the reception it all started going down hill when my brother yelled out at our table, "God is good!" and I answered, "All the mother fucking time!"
This segued into Logan 'Putting 'em up for Jesus'
The rest of the night was littered with "High Five For Jeeeeee-SUS!!!"
Because we're a bunch of heathen assholes. Except my brother and his wife who regularly attend church and pray for our souls.
But really the wedding was exactly what my cousin wanted and it's nice to see my cousin looking so happy. She certainly deserves it after that first powder blue wedding and the powder blue marriage that followed.
I believe God was with us at the wedding, because he sat me at one end of the aisle and my sister, brother and sister in law were at the very other end. If we'd been sitting together, all hell would have broken out.
God really is good. Every mother fucking day.
Here are some pictures from the wedding. I didn't get a lot and my camera is so awful inside without the flash and it's also awful inside with the flash so the quality is lacking. Maybe in ten years I'll have my dream camera. Until then, enjoy these shitty pictures!
My mother is afraid of the air conditioning in her car. She refuses to use it. She truly believes her car is a fiery inferno just waiting to happen. Sometimes I force her to turn it on and she's tense at every stop light and if we get stuck in traffic, forget it and just put down the windows, because there's nothing worse than watching my mother wait for her car to burst into flames!
Once she drove to Indianapolis to visit my brother and his wife. When she arrived she was totally unrecognizable as our mother. Her hair was a wild tangled mess on top of her head, like Medusa and underneath the wild hair was nothing but a puddle of sweat.
When my brother opened the car door my mother seeped out onto the driveway.
My brother said, "Mom?""Yes, it's me! I made it!"
"But what happened to you?"
"What do you mean?"
Then my brother realized what happened. "Muth-errrr! It's 105 degrees....why didn't you use your air conditioning?"
The puddle of sweat with the wild hair on the driveway said, "I did...it's just when I got into the city...I worried the car would overheat so I turned it off. It's no big deal, I'm fine!"
Continue reading "I'm Pretty Sure Making Fun Of Your Mother Puts You In The Carpool Lane To Hell." »
My daughter is an incredibly picky eater.
I've mostly decided I'm not fighting about what she eats. She's mostly decided to poke at new foods on her plate and whine about them. Mostly I've learned to accept it. Gone are the days when I worried she'd starve to death or get scurvy.
Mostly at this point, if she did starve to death, I would have to tell her, "Well God Damn it! I told you to eat!"
Logan was away this weekend riding his bike for an unholy number of miles. 200 miles. 100 each day.
I tried to do this ride one year, it was a horrible mistake. A horrible mistake involving swearing and a man with a siren and a bike thrown over the side of a hill in a fit of rage.
You could say, I'm not into it...the biking thing.
But Logan loves this ride. He claims he does the ride because he's passionate about Multiple Sclerosis, but really he's only in it for the fashion (photo not of Logan). The body concious shorts and jerseys appeal to his obvious metrosexuality.
It also seems he loves the feel of a bike seat JAMMED into his ass for 7 hours (each day) until he has no feeling left and his butt cheeks are nothing but a bloody mess.
Personally, if I'm getting away from the kids and my responsibilities in this house for 2 days, you won't find me riding until my ass is screaming. But I guess we're all kind of different aren't we.
Last night he was telling the children the story of his adventure. He told Madison he rode his bike a very very long way. He explained how far he rode in relation to the long trips we take.
"It was farther than gramma and poppy's house. It was like I rode my bike to and from their house almost 5 times." (It's 45 miles to get to their house....though I haven't done it in almost 2 years....I'm just saying!)
Madison's reply assures me I am doing my job right.
"Why didn't you just drive?"
I ask you, how can I not worship this child?
First of all, I really have to send out a big thank you to whomever has been lacing Max's drinking water with Prozac. It really seems to have taken effect in the last five days and I'm suddenly remembering who he is.
I'm only exaggerating a little when I tell you that last week I was thinking about running away from home and leaving a scathing letter for Max to read so he'd know how it was all his fault I had to leave.
One of our friends is making some huge life changes. Not only in the 'life' department with this addition. He also sent an email announcing a total flip in his career...he's moving from an IT type position to a mortgage banking type position. In the email he said: 'So, I'm going to be just like your brother now!' (*my brother was in mortgage banking before flippity flopping into firefighting in January)
Of course all I can think is how, if he's really going to be like my brother, he's going to call me 'Pig Nose' from now on. He's going to have to call my sister 'Bubble Butt' and he's going to make lewd gestures at me while we play euchre. He's going to be completely oblivious when his wife paints the ceiling of the sunroom, he's going to wear horrible t shirts and he's going to be my mom's favorite from now on...even though he's really not her child, just because he's being just like my brother! My God, he's going to have to become a Republican even! Can you even be a republican and live in Ann Arbor?
As you can imagine my world is spinning. Up is down. Black is white. Red wine goes with fish.
I've been trying to get a hold of my house since the new year. Part of that process was making some sense of our finances, part of it was making dinner most nights of the week for my family and part of that was coming up with some routines to keep our laundry running smoothly and the house relatively clean at all times.
The whole thing has been going pretty well, depending on how you define 'well'.
Keeping the house clean and neat has been especially difficult. Not impossible mind you but the key to keeping the house clean and less chaotic is making sure we have a place for everything and everything in it's place. In order to do that in our 1200 square foot house we have to make sure there isn't so much stuff to find places for, since there are only so many places and they're already kind of filled.
This is no small task for me since I share this home with two cats, a three year old, a five year old and a thirty six year old man who loves to collect things and can't bring himself to throw out anything, anything at all.
Ineffective Things I Have Said (or thought about saying) While Trying To Convince My Son To Use The Potty.
"You know, I'm cool with not changing your diaper anymore. I mean I'm not 'married' to it. Really, it's fine if you want to use the potty instead. Seriously, I'm not going to freak out about it or anything."
(While I am on the toilet) "WOW! This is fun! I really love using this potty."
"Why can't you be more like your sister? She was using the potty at two and a half! On the side of the freeway! In the middle of Philadelphia!"*
*Did not say, but if I had it would explain a lot of the brewing sibling rivalry we're cultivating in this house.
Somewhere in my preteens my father went to rehab.
He was an alcoholic. The kind of alcoholic who has a 'beer fridge' in the dining room, in the spot where nice families would have thought to put a china cabinet. The kind of alcoholic who drank pretty much non stop from Friday after work until Sunday at black out time.
He was a harmless drunk if you call emotionally tormenting your son and verbally abusing your spouse 'Harmless'. If you mean 'harmless' as in destroying your children's chance for a childhood free of adult problems and fear of the unexpected...then sure, he was 'harmless'.
Tonight my husband said, as we did the dinner dishes, 'You know, I really think Madison is a 'Winter', which isn't really surprising because I'm a 'Winter' too."
This is intensely funny, not just because my husband has stopped fighting his metrosexuality and has embraced it, that's really old news.
It's hilarious because he was truly shocked when I began laughing in that annoying way I do when something is so incredibly hilarious I can't even take a breath because it's so fucking funny it's the only thing I can think about and breathing would take away from the laughing.
Eventually I stopped laughing and he said, 'What?'
Which started the whole thing all over again.
Continuing with the reporting of my miserable week:
My iBook still isn't back, devastated is the only word to fit in here.
If you would like to hear the most annoying cough ever, please call my house between the hours of 2am and 5am. These hours are the prime of my seal like barking, which keeps everyone in the house awake wondering where the hell the seal is. In the daylight I sound more like an old lady with the early stages of emphysema, and I do not smoke.
Also, I have officially crossed over with Bad Hair Day #34. Today was maybe one of the worst hair days ever, and I know bad hair. (Looking at that picture, do you think I'm a 'Spring' or more a 'Summer'?)
