Village

One of the greatest joys I have in this journey of parenting, aside from passing down functional knowledge of how to appropriately use fuck as pretty much all parts of speech, is watching my children develop their talents and interests.

Elizabeth, for instance, is a pretty kickass softball player.  She definitely gets that from her dad's side of the family as I have never been able to get the hang of any sport that required a ball.  Or athletic talent, really.  If wine bottle opening was a sport, I'd be a fucking Olympian, however. I did run cross country in high school but I'm pretty sure that since most of us looked like we were dying out there I blended right in...that and back in the day before children and poor life choices destroyed them, I had a pretty nice rack so most of the teenage boys were likely fixated on that.  

I love getting out to her games, even when it is cold.  If you know me, you know that I hate Spring.  One year I swear to God every single game was below freezing.  Because Spring is an asshole.  But by God, every game I could get to I was there.  Unfortunately I usually forgot my coat, so I also have likely done some frostbite damage...but I was there.  Why?

Because that's what good parents do, and I like to pretend that is what I am.  And also, because those young women worked their asses off, most days of the week.  They came back, game after game, and played their best every time.  Despite losing most games.  Despite being down a ridiculous amount of runs.  It was a pleasure and a joy to watch them grow throughout the season.  It was a pleasure to watch a coach of a team that previously won against them pitch a fit like a two year old when, at the end of the season, they beat his team and he couldn't get it overruled.  Those players EARNED that victory.  Elizabeth was part of a team and was learning important life lessons and shit.  Totally worth frostbite and having to be out in Spring weather.

Charlie and Alexis are on the competition dance team, which thankfully is an indoor sport and does not require me to be outside in weather below 50* for long periods of time.  It does, however, require travel to dance competitions and fun shit like putting fake eyelashes on and learning the best way to bobby pin a hat to your child's head so it won't fall off (the answer, just in case you are wondering, does not involve a staple gun.  I am neither going to confirm nor deny if I ever contemplated that.)  Alexis had started out dance at the age of two and a half and cried.  Every.Fucking,Class.  She then soon got over her hatred of people and public and socializing and realized that she loves it.  She is now getting ready to do her solo.  Charlie...well, it's her first year on competition so we shall see if she decides to continue it or not.  I'm not sure how much of her being on the team is related to her wanting to be like her big sister; however at this point I am just grateful that it is keeping her from hiring herself out for murder or espionage or other devious deeds so I'll take it.

I recently watched the two of them dance at an informal performance.  I still get choked up watching them, just as I do when I see Elizabeth doing her thing on the softball field as well.  All of the work, the injuries, the practices, the tears...all culminating in a performance where they make it look so easy.  These girls go out there and dance despite injuries.  Despite life happening, like cancer or the death of a parent or being bullied at school.  The cost is well worth it, for a variety of reasons.  The life lessons that they learn.  The importance of  hard work.  Or camaraderie, especially with other females.  The sting of losing along side the joys of winning.  The importance of being a part of a team, but also of doing your part and improving yourself.

I simply don't know that as a parent, I can teach these lessons as well as others can.  I am too involved.  Too attached.  Too protective.  Too anxious.  Would I make them take risks?  Would I push them to their limits, even as they groan and protest?  Would I stand by and let them fail when they don't do that hard work?  As hard as it is to admit, the answer to all of those is probably no.  I can't be that for my kids, for a number of reasons (and the first is likely that I am bat shit crazy...)  I freely give them to other adults, professionals in their fields, to shape and to mold.  To make them what I cannot, to say the things to them that need to be said.  To shape them into the young women they will be (or are, in Elizabeth's case).

It does take a village.  So to all of those coaches out there...the dance teachers...the school teachers..., baby sitters... daycare providers...4H leaders...thank you.  Thank you for giving my child, and many others, a chance to grow and learn.  Thank you for believing in my child.  Thank you for seeing worth in my child participating, and for seeing potential.  Thank you for putting my child in their place when they need it, and lifting them up when they are down.  Thank you for taking your time, whether volunteer or paid, to invest in my kid, even knowing that she may not become a professional dancer, or softball player, or whatever.  Thank you for seeing value in children's activities.

Thank you.

Stoned

Not the kind that people are trying to legalize.  Sorry.

My sister Alicia was recently in the hospital for kidney stones.  She had a pretty sizable one gumming up the works so the doctor had to go in and shoot the little fucker up in a urology drive-by, then place a stent.  She has the strings for the stent taped to her legs, which resulted in the following text conversation:

Me:  Little girls and I might come out so they can leave more shit at ur house

Alicia: OK sounds good lol. I can't put on real pants because there are these strings and they pull so I will be stuck in the house tomorrow.  Shorts are the only things that do not pull them in.

Me:  Sweet.  Is that your pull string like Woody?  What do you say?

A: Ha ha ha you pull them and you will hear an adult version of Woody.  It would probably start with a little prayer like Jesus Christ and then Mother fucker would soon follow.

Me:  So a religious Woody?  Great.  My kids need a little Satan beaten out of them and what better way to do that than a demented Woody.  Religion AND turning them away from the Disney brainwashing machine?  WINNING.

A: Kind of, I would be like the toys you see on the news that people are all up in arms because it sounds like it's saying fuck but I would really be saying fuck.


As you can see, crazy runs in the family.  So what better way to celebrate kidney stones than with baked goods?  Of course I went there.  She baked me a fucking cake.  Why wouldn't I make cake ball kidney stones?

Enlarged to show details, and sparkly, of course.  Again, why is there not a business to make these?  There appears to be a pretty solid, wide-open market for this kind of thing...

So to make these cake balls, I was Googling pictures of kidney stones because I had no fucking clue what they looked like.  Charlie was looking over my shoulder and saw them, so I explained what little I knew about them and that Alicia had had surgery because she was having problems peeing (simplest explanation I could come up with).  Charlie got very serious then and leaned over and told me, "I have to whisper this so Daddy can't hear."

Me: Um, OK.  

C, leaning in to whisper: You know how when you get older and sometimes you bleed when you are going potty?  Maybe that is what was happening.  Maybe she doesn't need surgery and you just need to tell her about that.

Me: You mean her period?  This was definitely not her period, Charlie.  And I'm pretty sure Daddy knows about periods.  It's OK for him to hear about them.

Bless her little heart.  As much as that child makes me want to tear my hair out, she has a heart of gold.  She and her sister even "let" Aunt Alicia win at Connect Four, because she just had surgery and all.  Baked goods to celebrate surgical procedures aside, I must be doing something right here.

Random VIII

I'm a little worried about what happens when I start to get a lot of Random posts and it goes beyond my comprehension of Roman Numerals. Or maybe I will go ahead and just start using actual numerals, not of the Roman persuasion.  I can do that, bitchez...ya know why?  It's my fucking blog.  Better watch out, it's gonna get all crazy up in here.

I'm talking about the blog titles, not my head.  Ahem.


Alexis is starting to move into the fun preteen years, which means that my alcohol and/or Xanax consumption will increase proportionally as well.  So far the extent of her rebellion has been NOT having me check her math homework for errors and dawdling before bed, but I am totally bracing myself for a full out rebellion in a few years.  I anticipate her advocating for a Trump/Palin presidency here soon, because really that would be the best way to rebel against me.  That and starting to mix her food on her plate.  I don't care what people say, if that shit was meant to go together it would be cooked together or be a food thing, like mashed potatoes and gravy.  Mashed potatoes and corn is not a food thing, and nothing you say can convince me otherwise.  Might as well make a bread sandwich for all the carbs and starches you are getting there.  It's just gluttonous.  And glutinous.  Well, the bread sandwich that is.  Potatoes and corn are gluten free I believe.  But don't fucking quote me on that shit.  I'm not a doctor.  Possibly need one for my head, but not because I am delusional.  There's many other reasons.


I wonder if I could possibly time it so that I will never have two females getting their periods at the same time again?  Two females who live here full time, that is.  If the two little girls get it at the same time, my fictional prescription for benzodiazapines might become a reality.  I'm not getting mine anymore, as we all celebrated with cake last year.  If I can get Charlie to hold off until she's like 14, Alexis will be getting ready to graduate and go off to college...so how could I make this happen?  I took my magic wand to work so I could use it there, but it might be worth me bringing back home so I can arrange this.

About that doctor...


Elizabeth cleaned the hamster's cages out a few days ago.  Bean was all nice and sweet when I held her while she was doing this, even if she did try to burrow into my boobs.  Must be talking to the Baby Daddy 2.0 cause he tends to try to do that too.  Reggie, however, was her psychotic self and further traumatized me by squealing loudly while staring me directly in the eye from her hamster ball.  I'm glad I am not fluent in hamster because I'm pretty sure she was detailing my future dismemberment.  I never thought I would be afraid of something that is less than three inches long, but her tiny little hamster squeaks are similar to the howls of demons from hell.  And her cold, beady eyes are dead inside.  I had nightmares that night.  No joke.


I'm going to relive a bit of my childhood after work with the little girls and dust off the most ridiculous of toys, the EZ Bake oven.  The name is really fucking misleading...who the fuck thought it would be easy to bake with a goddamned lightbulb?  Like, I wonder how many fuckheads out there tried to make like actual food in them, and not just the nasty bags of chemicals they give you that are supposed to pass for desserts (for the record, I bought a bag of sugar cookie mix from the store vs the ones strictly for the oven.  If we are going to eat crap, by God it is going to be somewhat good tasting crap.)  Do people try to make meatloaves in this?  How about Shepherd's Pie?  And also, I can't believe that Shepherd's Pie is a food thing.  I certainly won't eat that.  Good thing we won freedom from the British all those years back if this is what they come up with for their food things.

Relaxation

So we completed the gingerbread houses.  With minimal bickering and whining.  The girls did great too.

They tasted delicious, too.  Or at least the scraps did.  Can you guess which on is which girl's?

I was pleasantly surprised at how well the girls got along while doing these.  They shared the icing bags with the frosting in them and were generally pleasant about the whole ordeal.  I kinda want to make one for myself to decorate next year.

After they were done, I set to cleaning the house. Scrubbing floors, the bathroom walls, the counters in the kitchen.  Putting away all of my baking stuff that had overrun my counters.  Dusting.  Because that is what one does on one's first day of vacation, right?

Apparently not, according to my middle child.  Alexis questioned me as to why I felt the need to clean everything.  Why it was important to scrub the toilets, the walls, to get down on my hands and knees and scrub the floors.  Why I  had to do this in between decorating the houses and coloring with the girls and watching a movie.

(OK, I didn't actually watch the whole movie.  That almost never happens.  But I did sit down for a bit.)

I explained to her how it is very distressing to me to have a messy house.  How I don't like it when we have clutter.  How I really wasn't doing all that much.  How it was a lazy day.  I stayed in bed until almost 10, after all.

Alexis then looked at me and said, "Mom.  You have cleaned the kitchen, bathroom, and living room.  You threw clothes in the washer and dryer.  You cleaned the bathroom walls.  You put away all of the cookie stuff.  And you also decorated gingerbread houses, colored pictures, cleaned out the van, and helped me and Charlie get dressed.  How is that a lazy day?"

She has a point.  When did I stop recognizing what I did during a day?  When did having my self-sufficient girls allow me to lay in bed for a bit make me all of a sudden have a "lazy day?"  When did the idea of having to stop and actually, RELAX, become such an anxiety provoking idea anyways?  What am I trying to run away from?  And who the hell is telling me that I am not good enough if I am not constantly producing?

Tomorrow....tomorrow I am going to just chill.  Charlie had a cousin sleepover tonight.  Tomorrow, I will make them some cinnamon roll waffles.  I will play Angry Birds in bed.  I will drink a lot of coffee (wait, that's every day...) and stay in jammies until we have to leave for my sister's for Christmas Eve.  Hell, since the weather is closer to the actual time of Jesus's birth than to winter, I might even take the kids outside and go to the park with the dogs.  Don't worry; if we do that I will put on actual clothes vs my jammies. 

I took this time off from both jobs for a reason.  I need to refresh.  I need to reconnect with my family.  I'd better damn well use it.

But not until the house is clean.

Choices

This year, for some reason not shared with me, the little girls wanted to make gingerbread houses.  Since I'm all about doing crazy crafty shit like that, I agreed.  Then I made a fatal parenting mistake.

I gave them a choice.

Now, don't get me wrong.  I am all about choices.  I'll totally give choices all fucking day long.  Do you want to stay up for five more minutes or three more minutes?  Would you like peas or carrots for vegetable tonight?  Do you want to take a bath or a shower?  Do you want me to go bat shit crazy if you keep tossing your clothes directly in front of the hamper instead of into the hamper, or just slightly psycho?

In all of those instances, I am perfectly OK with either choice.  That is what you are supposed to do.  You never give a goddamned choice if you aren't OK with one of them them.  They will sense your weakness and swoop down upon it like a vulture does to that little dead fox in the middle of the road.  And they won't let up on it just as those fucking scavengers won't let up on that carcass, even though there's a semi barreling towards them at 60 MPH.

The choice was, "Do you want to use graham crackers or do you want actual gingerbread?"

The minute those words were out of my mouth I wanted to reach into the cosmos and pull them back and then box my own ears with them.  The.Fuck.Was.I.Thinking.  I don't work 7 days a week or anything.  I don't already have to make a bunch of cookies for my family get together.  I don't have three baskets of laundry downstairs and am rapidly running out of undies.  Oh wait...

I held my breath, hoping that they did not hear me.  That for once, that selective hearing they are so good at wielding would pay off for my benefit.  That I was using up that bit of positive energy in the cosmos that was sure to be coming my way and they totally missed me asking.

Nope.  Their faces lit up like Cheech and Chong on a day ending in "Y".  They were going for the fucking actual gingerbread.  And sucker that I am for those children, I'm making it happen.

So now I have to find a recipe for gingerbread because I have never made it before.  It didn't occur to me to grab a mix from the store until I was on the second fucking batch. Because you know, I might have slipped and gave a choice that I did not want to, but I was not going to borrow trouble and make them decorate the same house.  There is only so much alcohol one can consume in an evening and I did not particularly want to be hung over the next day, after all...

Let's not forget too, the whole making the cookies for the family thing.  Now I actually enjoy baking, so this was not a big deal really.  However, I also got struck with a streak of nostalgia for past Christmases and decided that I was going to make Mexican Swizzle sticks again.  My mother used to have a Super Shooter, a fabulous cookie press thing from the 80's, that made those things nice and skinny bundles of chocolate and sprinkles.  They don't make those things anymore and hers has since died a slow, agonizing death, so our Swizzle sticks were made using a cookie press and came out more like Swizzle Churros.

I also only had green and yellow sprinkles, so we are representing the Fighting Irish, I suppose.  Or my nephew's high school.  Either/or.

Then I decided to also make these cute little Olaf pretzels I had found on Pinterest.  And ended up with Angry Olafs.

It's the eyebrows, I think.  Move over Elf on the Shelf.  Disney's got a new creepy character to stalk your children and frighten them into good behavior.

So we haven't decorated the houses yet, but based upon my roaring successes with the cookies this year, I imagine that they will be as awesome, if not more, than the hysterectomy cake.  I will be sure to keep you all posted in what is sure to be a fabulous combination of train wreck and memory making with the children.

If I haven't gone completely crazy by then, that is.  Which might make a good story in and of itself.  Either way there will be hilarity ensuing.

Reggie

So apparently my daughter turning 18 is not just a huge ass deal to me, but her friends.  And also apparently, there must be like gifts that you are supposed to give like for anniversaries...like the gold anniversary, silver anniversary, paper anniversary, wood anniversary.  (Side note...I'd be pretty fucking pissed if my husband got me paper for our anniversary, and we don't even celebrate our anniversary usually.  Just sayin', whoever thought of that shit obviously was hittin' the Absinthe a bit hard...)

The 18th birthday must be the pet birthday, because not only did her best friend ask me if she could buy her a goat for her birthday (answer: no place to keep it outside as Wakeman bans goats and marsupials outdoors, apparently, and I'll be goddamned if I'm having a goat in my house...), Elizabeth got not one, but TWO hamsters for her birthday.

One hamster she is keeping in her room.  This hamster is all sugar and spice and everything nice and is named Bean.  She enjoys long walks on her hamster wheel and looks a bit like the devil when she has her pictures taken due to the red eye, but over all...well, she's a fucking hamster-y hamster.  Not much going on here.

Reggie, however...totally different story.

That little fucker has taken crazy and elevated it to a whole new level the way that Donald Trump has elevated a bad hair day to a whole new level.  She (yes, Reggie is a she...apparently she was already named when Elizabeth received her.  And had been almost killed by a cat.  More on that later...but point is, don't be so goddamned judgemental.  Jesus.) is bat shit, certifiably, and undisputedly crazy.

She's a dwarf hamster, which means that she looks more like a mouse than a hamster and is seriously like three inches long.  And before you go all, "Oh, that sounds adorable!  Stop exaggerating the Satan that is present in this adorbs little rodent" let me tell you...possessed by the devil doesn't even cover it.  That little shit runs around her cage and evades capture like the best of terrorists.  She seriously makes Forrest Gump look like he's taking a leisurely Sunday stroll.   She makes this God-awful squeak too when you try to pick her up, like the hounds of Beelzebub are escaping from her larynx.  She climbs up the side of the cage like a character from the Matrix, and I honestly think that she may be plotting my death in a way that makes that sucker fish look like he just wants to give me a hug vs strangling me.

Charlie convinced me, against my better judgment, to take her out of her cage and put her in that hamster ball and let her run around her bedroom.  I am now firmly convinced that Reggie is holding that humiliation against me and is going to slowly disembowel me because of it.  I went to go and put her back in her cage (and mind you, it took us a solid half hour to get her in the fucking ball to begin with...I apparently cannot take a hint...) and she leaps from the ball to the top of her cage, and then down to the floor.  Again, the cage is on top of a nice tall dresser.  She possesses Satan ninja skills.

 Satan in an orange ball.  Look at her glaring...

In her defense, she has had a near death experience with a cat when she had escaped from her cage at her previous owner's houe.  That being said...while I am not one to judge people on their mental health symptoms, she is beyond what one would see from a traumatized hamster.  She is just pure evil and likes to mind fuck you while darting around like a meth-addicted gnat.

That fucking hamster then proceeded to hide for about 45 minutes in their room.  She kept running away and hiding and then stopped running and just kept hiding behind the bookshelf and I couldn't move it so I had to wait.  And fear that she was going to come at me like some kind of tiny spider-monkey like killer and gnaw my nose off.

We finally did capture that little shit.  She's currently in her cage and she just GLARES at me when I walk past.

Fuck.  I think we found Charlie the perfect pet.

Mindfulness

It was a Tuesday evening like any other.

Got off of work, went to dance.  Ran in to check Lexi's homework and managed to find her missing jazz shoes that another child had accidentally grabbed last week.  Picked up Charlie to bring back home from her dance class in the preschool room and loaded her up in the car.  Gave the hubby a quick kiss after he helped her get buckled in, then headed home with all I  had to do on my mind.

Find some dinner for myself.  Not really hungry though.

Pack lunches for tomorrow.

Figure out my outfit for tomorrow.

Unload the dishwasher.

Sweep the floors.

Put a load of laundry in.  I should probably fold the two baskets that are down there too.

Eh, let's be honest.  That ain't happening.  The folding at least.

Clean up kitchen.

Get Charlie in the bath.

As all of this was running through my head, Charlie was keeping up a steady chatter despite claiming not five minutes earlier that she was not talking to me because I would not let her play a game on my phone because I am an asshole parent like that.  She started to talk about what we were going to do when we got home, and I teasingly told her we were going to poop our pants.  She started to laugh and said, "Mama, I'm not a baby!"

"Aren't you my baby, Charlie?"

"Well, yes, but I'm still big, Mama."

She then got quiet for a few minutes after this, obviously thinking.  She then asked:

"Mama, are you done growing?"

"Yes, I am."

"Well, then, why are you getting older still?  You aren't growing but you keep getting older and older..."

"You get older even after you stop growing, Charlie."

"So, are you going to die?"

(Now we need some background here.  Dorothy passed away a few days ago.  Charlie was pretty devastated and of course we had the whole death conversation and how it is pretty much a permanent thing and the opposite of sleeping and being awake, if you could have a third option for opposites that is.  So death was fresh on her mind; its not like she is going through some kind of emo/goth stage here.  Though Elizabeth did go through a period at just slightly older than Charlie where all she would wear was this black witch's dress from an old Halloween costume, so who knows.  Anyways...)

"Not for a long time, I hope baby."

"Will you live to be a thousand, Mama?"

"I'm certainly not planning on dying any time soon, Charlie."

This seemed to satisfy her, but it got my mind going.  All of a sudden, all of those things that I was planning on doing seemed unimportant.  I had no desire to plan for the next day until Charlie went to bed.  I did not want to do the housework that would still be waiting for me until the day I'm finally crazy and/or senile enough to be locked away for my own good (and let's be honest, for society's good as well).

So...I did none of that.

We decided to have some ice cream and read through a dancewear catalog.  I let her have a scoop of both mint chocolate chip and mint Oreo ice cream.  We chose the best outfits on each page and debated the merits of a flowy skirt vs. a plain leotard.  We rolled out the yoga mat and practiced her cartwheel.  I told her I would learn to do one along with her and we practiced mine.  We gave each other pointers.  Then we put on music and danced our asses off until it was time for her to get in the shower.

In typical Charlie fashion, of course, she managed to slip in the shower and bust her eye on the faucet and is now likely going to have a black eye.  As I was drying her off and comforting her, she asked me if people were going to make fun of her because she had the black eye.  We snuggled on the couch and held ice on it and she wondered if people would just think that she did a really bad job of putting some "eyelash" on (which is what she calls eye shadow).  She asked if I thought people would make fun of her (talk about another shot to the heart...)  She then wondered why she always is the one who gets hurt.

"First stitches in my head, Mama, then my chin.  Now I have a black eye!"

I wonder, had she not asked me about dying earlier, if I would have been as likely to let the comforting linger like I had.  Would I have taken the time to snuggle as much, or would I have felt antsy thinking about what I had to do?  When did I stop trying to be mindful and start being a stressed out, over exhausted, and burned out parent/wife/coworker?  Why did it take a question about my mortality to make me stop and start living?

I feel horrible about all of the potential moments I have missed out on because of lacking mindfulness.  Will my children remember it?  Is it too late?  Will my kids, when I do (hopefully decades in the future) die, remember me actually living, or will they only remember the stress, frustration, anxiety, depression, and illness?

What a wake up call.  What a re-birth.  Time to start living again.

18

Today is the last day that I have a minor child.  Tomorrow, Elizabeth turns 18.

This is a huge ass victory.  All of the people who thought I would never go anywhere or do anything because of her...wrong.  All of the people who thought I would not be able to raise a child as a young single mother...wrong.  All of the people who thought that she would be FUBAR'ed because of me...wrong.

Or maybe it was in spite of me.

My daughter is absolutely amazing.  I know every parent says that.  But.  She has overcome some pretty steep challenges against her.  A mother who lived at the poverty level for a pretty long time.  A single mother.  A mother and father who did not always get along so well.  A YOUNG single mother.  Somewhat dysfunctional families on both sides.

She is not a statistic.  She has grown up and evolved to be a pretty goddamned fantastic human being.

The kind of person who will make it a mission to make a perfect stranger she has never met, who got stood up for homecoming, have a great night.  The kind of person who will stop at Walmart on her way home from work to buy her baby sister five goldfish when the one she got her for her first birthday died.  The kind of person who will text her mother "go get em, tiger" when she is interviewing for a job that could potentially change all of our lives.  The kind of person who will stand up for her friends when they are persecuted for their religion.  The kind of person that other people tell me, without fail, is a genuinely nice, sweet girl.

Don't get me wrong.  That kid has her faults.  She is stubborn as hell.  I blame her father for that one.  She knows her mind.  Blame him for that as well.  She is messy at times. Again, him.  She has the Lambkins temper.  I don't know yet if she has the Lambkins tolerance for alcohol, nor do I want to know if she knows this yet.  I can't figure out a way to blame her father (or stepfather, for that matter LOL) for either of these so I guess I have to own those...

But the fact that she is not some god-awful hellion child that teachers wince and brace themselves for in the classroom...the fact that she is able to have a relationship with both sides of her family...the fact that she has an inherent sense of right and wrong and that she acts on this sense to make sure right is done...the fact that every employer she has had, every person she has babysat for loves her to pieces...

All of that is despite her parents' best efforts to totally fuck her up.  And trust me, all of us tried really really hard to do so.

Happy birthday, Elizabeth Carle.  Mamacakes loves you ever and ever so much.  And remember very very hard as you venture out into the world tomorrow morning as an adult:

You are my sunshine, 
My only sunshine, 
You make me happy, 
When skies are gray, 
You'll never know dear, 
How much I love you.
Please don't take 
My sunshine away.
 

Murdering

I wait up for Elizabeth every time she goes out.  Mostly because I am a ball of anxiety and I am usually firmly convinced that if I don't somehow she is going to be murdered coming from the driveway to the porch.  I'm usually dozing on the couch because I'm old and have thus far been unable to force the world to accommodate my night owl tendencies (which means that for me to wake up at a decent time, I can't stay up past midnight every night like I would do on my own if left to my own devices...).  Anyways, I still wait for her in the living room so I know she is home safe.

For some reason, the other night the front door got locked, and of course Elizabeth took offense to this and claimed that we "always" lock her out of the house.  Fine, tack on another 6 months of therapy there, but I swear this is the first time I've had to get up to unlock it for her...and she has a key, for fuck's sake.  Our conversation proceeded something like this:

E:  Why you always locking the door?

Me: It's not always locked.  I usually don't lock it till you come home.

E:  Yes, it is.  What are you afraid of?

Me:  Murderers coming to get me.  Do you want someone to murder me?

E:  Oh come on.  Who's going to murder you?

Me:  A murderer.

E:  No one is going to come in here and shoot you.  We don't have anything they would want to steal anyways.

Me:  They don't have to shoot me.  Maybe they are feeling stabby.  And maybe it's just a random murderer.  Why you gotta question their motives, Elizabeth?

E: We live behind the police station, for God's sake...

Me:  Maybe they are living dangerously.  Don't question their motives.

E:  Right.  The murderers are just misunderstood.  I'm going to bed now.


Like that parenting win there?  Not only did I diffuse a potentially teenager-y fight sequence that would have made me wish I had a real prescription for Xanax, I slipped in a bit of education about the importance of not second guessing murderers' motives.  Because they's all kind of crazy, I tell you what.  And I should know, cause I know crazy.

Sometimes I do get this parenting thing right.

Random VII

Hey, bitchez.  Go check out my co-worker's self-published book on Amazon...

Minutiae, by Steve Evans.

(Click on the different colored words, Mom, and it will take you to the book which you can buy for your Kindle.  Shit, do you even have a Kindle?  Apparently there's an app for that...)

Do your good deed for the year and support a budding author.  Because 2016 is rapidly approaching and your time to do good for 2015 is rapidly dwindling.  Me, I saved hobos and little dogs this year.

Fuck.  That was 2013.  I'd better get to trippin' here.



So you know that moving little saying about pennies from heaven being ones that our loved ones leave for us as messages that they are ok?  Am I the only one that:

A.) Finds that a bit creepy.  Like seriously, they are leaving pennies lying around for us where we randomly are supposed to see them?  Might as well just send me pictures of the inside of my house because how the fuck do you know where I am going to be?  Which leads me to...

B.)  How do you know that penny was really for you?  Maybe it was someone else's penny and you just picked up and stole, along with all their hopes, dreams, and love from their loved one.  Way to get some bad karma points there, asshole.

C.)  Why the fuck can't they send us like $100 bills?  I mean, seriously, cheapskates.  Aren't the streets up there gold?  Send me a goddamned nugget already!

Me, I much prefer to visualize people up in heaven using those fuckers as like Pogs that they are shooting at people down here on Earth.  Way more entertaining and totally removes the creepy factor if you accidentally grab a penny not meant for you because it just means that someone has lousy aim and missed.



So there seems to have been a trend in Pinterest-land (or for some reason it's just showing all up in my feed) of using wine glasses turned upside down to make candle holders.  I am horribly confused as I imagine that one would get burned, possibly light the house on fire, when one flips the glass over to drink.   And then it will no longer look like a cute pumpkin or Santa or whatever the fuck you decorated it like and more like something that a tripping preschooler would decorate.  Though I suppose that you could use the flameless candles if you wanted to be a problem solver.  But I'm still confused as to why you would waste a perfectly good wine glass...perhaps it is a sign of gluttonous America and people have an excess?  Or maybe you are planning on drinking the wine out of a mason jar?  I hear that rustic shit is totally hot right now...



My sinuses have recently decided to totally flip me the bird recently and have been giving me holy headaches from hell.  Actually they are holy in the same way that Marilyn Manson is that really sweet nun down at the convent.  Apparently they have decided to join forces with the rest of my body and escalate from being mildly annoying when the weather changes to being fully incapacitated.   It's a full fledged conspiracy launched by my immune system, and it leads me to totally anthropomorphize it.  The stupid fuckers have been flaring up something fierce and I'm not having it.  Now if only they would respect my authoritar and get in line.



I just watched some people on a TV show down 3 shots in as many minutes as well as drink some beers and they are totally sober.  Conclusion?  TV show characters have a hella tolerance.  And we should probably be super concerned.