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Thursday, April 23, 2009

Sunday Morning Coming Down.

I’m not sure if it's due to zealous religious education as children, laziness, indecision or the fact that we’re pretty much hungover on Sundays, but the Big Dude and I never really been hip on formal religion. We aren't heathens; there are rules, there are morals. There are most certainly commandments. “Thou shall not drink Mommy’s Pepsi if it smells like aged oak barrels from Lynchburg, Tennessee” being a big one…but we’ve never really scrubbed the little dudes behind the ears and drug them off in stiff clothing to sit on uncomfortable seats and be told by other people how to act. I don’t feel too awfully bad about it, because they’re very good, respectful kids, and they’re pretty much scared enough of me that I don’t need to add a village, thanks anyway Hilary, but every once in awhile I wonder if they’ll run for the first cult that approaches them on a college campus just out of curiosity.

Son number two, the one known as “Pete” even though that totally is not his name, is the most religious one in the family – most likely due to an eight-month stint at an Episcopalian preschool. The school wasn’t that religious if you showed up late everyday and missed the mini-chapel time – however, his teacher was a nice southern Baptist woman who began every meal and snack time with a prayer of “Dear Jesus…” when you read that make sure “Jesus” has about nine syllables in it please. When he was three, he did enough prayin’ for all of us.

I also am Godmother to two beautiful 14 year olds and I probably should have tried a little harder to be some sort of influence on their religious education…besides holding them at a midnight Easter service 14 years ago, my biggest contribution has been that they read this blog and learn new and creative ways to use the F word without, you know, actually USING the F word. (Frick. Fahk. Friggin. Effing. And so on.) I’m thinking though, that their parents really did a very good job, and the Godmothering contract is only in case something would’ve happened to their parents, and then I would have needed to step in and drag them to church. Right? And so now they’re old enough that they don’t really need that from me anyway, and now I can just advise them about boys and buy them beer. Not really. Maybe. I can’t be sure. We’ll have to see how that one goes.

Anyway, all this rambling about our somewhat lackadaisical approach is really just to get the point that this morning, the 9 year old unofficially known as Pete was having a dramatic moment dreading state standardized testing and proclaimed, “I just prayed to Jesus that Zeus would strike me with a lightening bolt.” So, maybe we might just kinda have some work to do. Hopefully it's not too late to get him a Godmother.

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Three reasons how it will be discovered that I had a secret affair with Jed Clampett 10 years ago.

1. The 9 year old son put a wooden dowel in the electric pencil sharpener to make an arrow.
2. For squirrel hunting.
3. He then proclaimed, “Wow, Mom! This thing is like an electric whittler! Check it out - my stick is as sharp as a pencil!”

I should probably ask for child support. I hear he's loaded.

Monday, April 20, 2009

For your listening pleasure.

Last Friday I was trying to work from home because kids had ANOTHER day off from school and taking them to the office in a blizzard didn't sound particularly effective. I spent the morning carrying my laptop hither and yon trying to get out of the cleaning lady's way and intermittently screeching at children to get out of her way and to get out of the places she'd already cleaned so that maybe they'd actually STAY clean for a few minutes. Finally, I'd banished them to the basement, wrangled all the dogs down there with them and was sitting on the staircase trying to respond to emails from work. As I scowled at the screen she asked me “Will this vacuum bother you, honey?” I replied, “No. Actually, hearing the sound of someone else operating it brings me to orgasm.” She just looked at me awkwardly, sprayed a little Lysol on the handle and made a mental note to work on her resume.

Friday, April 17, 2009

I hate this jackass.

Not content to simply eat the candy out of an Easter egg, this wiseass is eating the entire plastic egg. Because apparently, it tastes as scrumpdillicious as the electrical wiring in my car. Which he or one of his furry bastard brothers also ate. You know how sometimes you know your car needs a repair, but you just kind of let it go for awhile? Like, there's a crack in your windshield or your brakes are little squeaky and you just think, "Yeah, I think I'll take care of that eventually" but really you have no intention of doing it until it's absolutely endangering your life? Well, when a asshole rodent eats the wiring out of your car, you cannot actually ignore it because CARS DO NOT WORK WITHOUT LITTLE WIRES. Say goodbye, squirrel. I have redneck children with bb guns and they're not afraid to use them.

Thursday, April 16, 2009

Disclaimer: I am not one, but I love Barbies. Unless they are Lingerie Model Barbies, then not so much.

As a short person, I had a lot of toy cars, blocks, tinker toys, and even some baby dolls, but I never had a real true life Mattel Brand Barbie. My older sister did, and the coolest thing I could find about Barbie was the noise their legs make when you bend their knees back and forth really fast. What I did have was Barbie’s little sister, Skipper. I’m sure if I still had Skipper, she’d be worth loads of money, because no one except freaky Barbie collectors and me even know who Skipper is. Unfortunately, Skipper came to a slobbery end at the jowls of an odiferous basset hound named Towser, but for years, she endured me stuffing her behind the controls of numerous dump trucks and racecars.

In any case, Skipper was shorter than Barbie, and perfectly flat. Boobless, in fact. She had pigtails and freckles and plaid shorts and in my mind she was really probably much more fun at parties than Barbie. Skipper slouched, hung out with Ken and his friends burping and drinking beer and watching football…and even though the big K wanted to end his evenings in the Dream House, if you know what I’m saying, he preferred Skipper. Which of course, isn’t true at all, Ken was only hanging out with Skipper to get to Barbie, but whatever.

I am Skipper. I think my husband probably appreciates that I can get ready to go anywhere in less than five minutes, that my makeup bag is a Ziploc containing only chapstick, mascara and toothpaste. But sometimes I feel bad for him that he didn’t get a Barbie. Sure, he likes bragging that he got me a 12 gauge for Valentine’s Day, but deep down I bet he sometimes wishes I’d wear a bikini and heels while shooting skeet with him. Because, um, no. No I won’t. After all, WWSD? That’s right, she’d wear plaid shorts and bring a six-pack.

Turns out, though, some of my favorite people in the world are Barbies. My friend and neighbor Spanxy? Executive Barbie. My friend Pam-from-2nd-grade? PhD Barbie. Not saying either one would wear a bikini to the firing range, but they do bring home the bacon, fry it up in a pan and never ever let you forget you’re a man and all that. I think it’s interesting that they put up with me, although it has occurred to me that they only keep me around in case something breaks because they know I have my own tools and I can totally tell them what their husband is thinking. (Beer and boobs. He is thinking about beer and boobs. Everything else is just a means to the end of beer and boobs.)

The best example of a Barbie I know is my friend Cindy. Cindy owns more stilettos than Nordstroms. Oddly enough, her husband thinks flat clunky shoes are HAWT…but quite literally, Cindy is the Queen o’ Panties. She and her sister own one of the most successful lingerie stores in the fricking US of A. When Kathy Lee Gifford cannot figure out which bra to wear with her summer t-shirts and prim sundresses, she calls Cindy to figure it out for her. On TV. Cindy is Lingerie Barbie but she’s also Entrepreneur Barbie. And she still will hang out with me, which I don’t understand completely, but I’m grateful for. Anyway – she’s got billboards and magazine ads and catalogs of wispy but well-endowed women lounging about in their skivvies by jukeboxes or toasters or sofas and people see them and go buy panties by the dozen.
See Exhibit A:



Because I actually lived with an underwear model in college, I have special insight to their innermost thoughts. (Nothing. They think about nothing. Well, moisturizer. And People Magazine.) Oh, and can I tell you how extremely popular with boys I was while I lived with an underwear model? I highly recommend it.

Here for you, are the underwear models real thoughts....see Exhibit B:



Skipper would totally have a sweater on.

Friday, April 10, 2009

I'm totally writing this while hiding in the garage so that I don't have to create my own wealth with an amazing opportunity.

I kind of hate to admit it, but I have a cleaning lady. Well, she’s not really a lady, she’s more like my husband’s step aunt. So she’s kind of a cleaning relative-by-late-in-life-second-marriage. In any case, I would love to brag about how I can do it all and keep the house clean whilst living with three males and three dogs, but DUDE. I totally can’t keep up. There's three people who pee standing up and only one of me. Not only do I work 50 hours or so a week, I also cook most nights, pack lunches, do laundry, and oh – write this high-larious blog you’re reading, which just sho happens to rake in tens of cents per month to help nourish my ginormous children. AND remain THIS hot. I’m justifying, of course, because I feel guilty that someone else cleans my house. Of course, I totally clean it FIRST… because, seriously? She’s family. What if she found something embarrassing like a PBJ under the couch and told her sister who told her husband who is my husband’s dad, and what if then they all thought less of me because holy crap she didn’t even know there was a sandwich under the couch? A frickin’ sandwich? Oh, poor Doug. He really should’ve married that girl from high school with the big bottom and skinny legs. SHE would’ve found that sandwich. Anyway. I figure as long as she makes less per hour than me, it’s a frickin’ value, because then I’m not stomping around completely hating and resenting the shit out of the three males and three dogs that live here. Well except the bulldog. I would never resent him. Because you are perfect, aren’t you bulldog? Yes you are! Yes you are! Who’s the good bully? You are!

However – after a year of cleaning lady bliss, things are starting to get weird. I’ve mentioned before that I like things straight. In squares. Not angles, not circles, not anything slightly damned curvilinear. STRAIGHT. Not a control issue or obsession at all, by the way, just the way that THINGS SHOULD BE DONE. Therefore, accent pillows sit flat (properly) on one side whether they are on a bed or sofa. Decorative crap on shelves sits parallel to the shelf. Because that is how it should be. Apparently, not so in Cleaning Ladyland. I return home every Friday to a home that smells lemony-fresh but everything in it is slightly askew. Pillows sit at jaunty angles on their tippy corners, rugs are turned diagonally in a room, little statue thingys and vases and books for Pete’s sake, are all turned on their corners. Two square green vases that sit next to each other on a square damned shelf are turned into diamonds. It makes my frickin’ head hurt. Now it’s like a game. I make it all straight, she dusts it and puts it back at a perfect angle. I imagine her thinking happily, "Oh, that poor dear. She can't decorate at all, can she? Here, let me fix it for her!" (But, yay! She dusted it!) I come home and sniff out all the imbalanced yin and set it carefully back to yang, holding my breath the entire time and trying to figure out if it’s all worth it. Yes, I decide. Of course it’s worth it because I haven’t touched the vacuum cleaner nor murdered any offspring for their slovenly ways.

In other news, though – she’s decided that she aspires to more, and has ventured into the dangerous world of multi-level marketing. For which I applaud her, because hey, it makes her happy. Generally, when folks I know are brave enough to approach me with these amazing opportunities, I am happy to oblige by buying whatever it is they’re representing, even though what they really want me to do is schlep more of the unusable stuff for them…so when she asked me I was all set to be nice, but then I thought, “WAIT! What if she gets so successful she doesn’t have to clean my house anymore?” So now I just hide from her. Because that’s what families do.

I should mention before anyone judges me that she doesn’t clean my kids' rooms. She vacuums them, but only because she happens to be standing near them with a vacuum. They are completely responsible for the overall tidiness, dust levels and piles of crap content of those spaces. Unless they wanna get jobs and pay a relative to clean their rooms, it ain’t happening. Because not that I’ve lived this or anything, but I’ve heard terrible tales of mommies keeping their boys’ rooms clean for them, and then the boys never learn to pick up after themselves and then they marry nice ladies who go insane and have to hire their in-laws to clean the house even though said in-laws turn everything crooked and stalk them selling stuff.

Thursday, April 9, 2009

Should I suddenly disappear, check the 'blog ideas' folder on my desktop because it has at least 15 unfinished TOTALLY HILARIOUS posts in it.

However, in the meantime, I just want to let you all know that today I followed a car down the street. A brand new car with the temporary plates on it. A brand new shiny car that probably cost at least $40,000. And the new owner was so pleased with their purchase that they had already personalized it with two very awesome bumper stickers.

The first...a simple and lovely peace sign in a little circle. Ah. What a lovely and timeless bit of graphic design brillance - and a beautiful message to boot!

The second...a little circle with two words in Helvetica. "Want Less."

What the hell, new SUV lady? So...I should want less than peace? Or, I should want less than a new car? Or are you even talking to me? Because really I am pretty sure you have no right to boss me around, especially about wanting, especially because you're pretty much wanting an unattainable world fricking state afterall, and you have a brand new car. Or maybe you're simply describing your own mood...like, "Hey I am totally at peace and I don't have to want anything anymore because now I have a new car."

Either way, you're pretty much an ass, and you're damned lucky my husband didn't let me upgrade to the "Villian Package" at the Toyota dealership, or I'd have rocket launchers in my front bumpers and those totally awesome sawblade things on the side like the bad guys had in Grease, so when I pass you, I'd slice the shit out of your new, peaceful, unwanted car.

OH - but I would like to give total props to the frickin' GENIUS who is SELLING "Want Less" stickers to people. Dude, you ROCK. I bet it's completely awesome to hear people walk by your little sticker store and say, "Oh my God! I want this! It totally conveys my non-materialistic ways and will look awesome on my brand new car!"

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