Motherhood: FAIL

So I like to think I’m a fun Mom.  I do crafts.  I bake.  I sing dumb songs and dance around like an idiot.  I play game after game after game of Trouble/Connect Four/Sorry/Uno/GodForbidCandyland.  I snuggle and watch movies that make me want to poke my eyes out (Barbie Thumbelina – I’m looking at you.) I read the same books over and over. I help them find cool hiding places when they’re playing hide-and-seek, then distract the one who’s “it” until it’s safe to run for base. I go to the park, the library, buy them slushies when it’s hot and cocoa when it’s cold, make pancakes whenever I’m asked, laugh at all their ridiculous knock knock jokes, never even consider listening to grown-up music in my car, spend precious vacation time/money at Disney World (and not even to go on the cool rides – no, we spend our hours waiting in line to see princesses for Pete’s sake), walk all around the house with them holding onto my feet – acting like I don’t know where they are, wipe their butts and noses, get up at 4am if they need me, hold the red bowl when they puke.  (Okay, okay – those last 3 don’t really belong in the “fun Mom” list, but I’m feeling a little defensive here.  You’ll see why.)

Joe has a much, much shorter fuse than I do with the kids.  By lunchtime on Saturday he’s usually reached his patience threshold.  We have an ongoing discussion where he tells me he’d love to be the stay-at-home parent, and I assure him that the kids would eat him for breakfast, and he tells me no he’s pretty sure he could handle it, and then someone interrupts us for the 800th time to tell us nothing of import and steam comes out of his ears and I laugh and laugh.

That said, by the time he gets home in the evenings I’m usually pretty much done.  He walks in, and I kinda punch out.  I am very, very lucky to have a husband who is super hands on with the kids.  I’ve been told that some come home and think they should get to relax after work, as they have been “working hard all day” (as opposed to you, who just sat around eating bon bons is the subtext here.)  Joe is not like that. He runs in enthusiastically, the kids go wild, the three of them run around like fools while I get dinner on the table… and then that’s it for me.  I clock out for the night. He supervises bath/teethbrushing/stories/bed.  I swoop in for kisses, but other than that it’s all him.  Usually, I come out here and check Facebook and Flickr, chat with Suz, see what the weather will be like tomorrow, read a blog, whatever. Unwind. Relax.  I know you are waiting for the punchline to all this, and here it comes…

Yesterday Violet brought home a picture she did for Joe.  On the back it says “Daddy, when you are at work this will remind you what it is like to be home. I hope you like it. Love, Violet.”  On the front is a really cute, detailed picture of Joe in uniform, asking “Where is my hug?” and both kids running towards him, smiling.  In the far, far, far distance, through a door, there is a tiny stick figure sitting in a tiny office chair in front of a tiny computer.  Her word bubble says, and I’m quoting here,

“Good. It’s like I don’t have any kids.”

Is there somebody I can see about getting reassigned?  I’m obviously not in the right career field.

She totally gets her smarts from me.

Joe is reading Violet the Narnia books, a chapter a night, at bedtime.   He did this first with Charlotte’s Web, then with Around the World in 80 Days, and now they’re on their second book in the series.  Turns out, unlike Charlotte and 80 days, these Narnia books leave you on a cliff-hanger at every damn chapter end.  It’s like 24 for kids.

Joe is (of course) enjoying torturing V with this dramatic WHAT’S GOING TO HAPPEN NEXT??? ending every night (because he’s evil.)  Violet… not so much.  There has been actual crying and begging when the characters seem to be in particularly perilous situations.

The children found themselves in one such situation Saturday night. Violet’s argument: Tomorrow’s not a school day! We can stay up a little late! Keep reading!  Joe’s argument: It’s already late! And whether or not it’s a school day, you’ll still wake up by 7am! And then you’ll be a crankypants all day!  Go to sleep!

He made her this deal (and here is the proof that I am the one who passed down the smart genes.  Wait for it….  )

“IF I’m already awake when you wake up and IF it’s at least 6:30, THEN I will read you a bit more of this tomorrow morning before Mommy and Jonas get up.”

Can you guess what happened the next morning?  You can, right?  It’s obvious?

At 6:30 on the dot, Violet’s door BANGED open.  Then our door BANGED open.  Then something bumped into the bed, and there was some blanket rustling noises coming from Joe’s side.  He says she was “petting” him through the blanket – long strokes down his arm – until he opened one eye.

V: Ooh! Daddy! You’re awake!  Can you read to me now?

J: Violet. What did I say?  IF I was awake.  I didn’t say you could wake me up.

V: I didn’t! You’re eyes just opened!

J: Why are you petting me?

V: I wasn’t!  I just couldn’t see in this dark bedroom, so I had my hands out in front of me.  Also, I couldn’t remember if this was your side of the bed or not, and I was trying to tell if you were Mommy.

Me: (laughing into pillow)

J: Well now you know it’s me.  Me, sleeping.

V: No! You’re not sleeping! You’re awake!  So let’s go read!

And he did.  The man got out of bed and read to her.  Sucker.

Later that day, Jonas did something particularly moronic and I said “He’s cute, but he’s not that smart” and Violet pipes up “Well, that’s true for all boys.  I mean, look at Daddy……”

:rimshot:

I am sarcasm.

When Violet was two, my skeptical brother asked for proof that she knew what sarcasm was, (why doesn’t anyone just believe me?  I don’t make this stuff up!) so she explained it to him.  (Cue the squeaky, two-year-old voice…  )  “Being sarcastic means when Mommy says something, but she doesn’t really mean what she’s saying.  Like if she says “Great” when Jonas throws his Cheerios all over the floor?  But it’s not *really* great.”

She has correctly used the words sarcasm, and sarcastic, for three years now.  Recently, however, she mixed them up, and now we have this fun new catch phrase.  I said something, and she asked me if I was “being sarcasm.”  I could see her little wheels turning as soon as it left her mouth (“Was that right?  That didn’t sound right.”), but I immediately answered yes, yes I was being sarcasm.  A couple of these, and we get Jonas yelling “DADDY!  YOU ARE SARCASM!”

I…  Am…. SARCASM!

We may get tshirts made.

In other news, today I asked Jonas “Did you just make a giant mess, right after I cleaned all that up?”  (Styrofoam peanuts.  Bane of my friggin existence.) and he looked around, looked back at me, and said “Oh. My bad.”

Also,  (last one, and it’s the best – brace yourselves) Joe and I have been watching the original 1983 V, and it is awesomely awesome.  I have exposed myself to a lot of crappy, cheesy, sci-fi and horror movies in my time… but this one may top them all.  The special effects!  The hair!  The shoulder pads!  The halfway unbuttoned shirts and tiiiiight pants on the guys!  The musical score!  So awesome.

We were talking about it at dinner, and of course madam wanted to know just what the heck we were talking about.  “V?  What do you mean you were watching V?  Watching me do what?”  (Hmmm.  Seem to have nicknamed my kid after bad 80’s sci-fi.  This may be worse than naming one after a Weezer song.) So Joe starts telling her about it, about the aliens that come down to Earth and act like good guys but are really bad guys, about the fact that they are giant lizards, and then he tells her about the birth of the freaking alien/human twins (we got to that cliff-hanger last night.  Green lizard baby pulling itself out of Mom?  Awe. Some.)  “You see, an alien boy got a human girl pregnant, and she had two babies. One came out looking like a human – all cute baby girl – but then she made a face and she had a long scary LIZARD TONGUE!  Then the other baby came out and it was ALL GREEN AND LIZARDY!  BWAAAAH!”  and V looks at him making lizard faces and asks

“How did the alien boy get the human girl pregnant?”  (She has completely forgotten our birds and bees talk.  And Joe was so worried about me corrupting her.)

Me: The same way a human boy would get a human girl pregnant.

Joe(idiot): You want me to draw you a picture?

V(not the alien kind, the Twinkie kind): Oh, yeah!  Could you? Draw me a picture? So I can understand?

I am sarcasm!

The Plight of the Youngest

Joe:  Jonas.  You are not allowed to boss Daddy.

Jonas:  But VIOLET…..

Joe:  I don’t care what Violet does.  You. Do. Not. Boss. Daddy.

Jonas: But Violet ALWAYS bosses me!  I want to boss someone TOOOOOOO!

Thankful

Raise your hand if you have the most awesome kids on the planet.

Nope, sorry.  It was a trick question (unless you’re Joe.)  You see, I have the awesomeliest awesome kids that were ever born. Ever. The stuff that comes out of these kids’ mouths…  The other day Jonas was droning on and on about something and Violet said in the *snarkiest* voice I’ve ever heard “That’s GREAT, Jonas! No, really! Fantastic!” and then turned to me and stage whispered “Mom – thank you sooo much for teaching me about sarcasm. It really comes in handy when you have a little brother.”  See? Awesome.

But the reason I’m posting this here, today, is to tell you all what Jonas is thankful for this year.  Today the terrorist and I descended on Madam’s kindergarten class. It’s “Grandparents and Special Friends!” day and we didn’t want her to be the only kid in class who nobody came to visit, despite the fact that she has neither grandparents nor “special friends” (wth?) living nearby.  Her dad is out of town, so that left me and trouble.

I warned her teacher that I would be bringing 40lbs of terror with me, so she had an extra craft set up for him to do, along with the rest of the kids. They were making paper turkeys, and on the tail feathers they were writing the things they are thankful for.

Here, finally is the punchline of the post.  What Jonas is thankful for, in order of importance (fine, maybe just the order he thought them up in. But still – if it’s the first thing that comes to mind, you are obviously most thankful for it! Right?)

Mommy (duh!)

My Bear

George

Violet

….

….

(Honey – maybe you stop reading now.  Just assume that “Daddy” squeezed in there on the last feather.)

….

Wii Boxing

 

(Sorry, hon.)

 

 

Why Walmart is dead to me.

So we’re all familiar with Black Friday, my favorite day of the year.  (Ok, I like Halloween, too.  And my birthday.  And random Saturdays in the fall.  But shopping for the best deals of the year?  Ranks up there.)  This year several stores are getting in on the action early, with “Early Black Friday!” or “Pre-Black-Friday!” sales.  One of these, is everyone’s favorite “This store is too freaking big I can’t find anything none of the employees have a freaking clue why the hell am I here?” store – Walmart.

Walmart ran ads saying that Sat. Nov. 7th was going to kick off their season of sales by being the day to pick up electronics on the very very cheap.  Joe and I happen to be in the market for a flat TV.  The fact that we own 3 perfectly good TV’s doesn’t really matter. Well, it doesn’t matter to me.  Joe is of the opinion that one television per member of the family is crazy, but I am of the opinion that having a giant armoire holding a giant TV in the living room is crazy considering we can just buy one that hangs on the wall.  I have brought him around to my way of thinking, and showing him this ad finished the job.  Walmart was practically giving away televisions!  A 42 inch LCD w/ high resolution for…. $498!  Holy crow.  Look at this beauty!  Cnet.com called it “the best LCD TV we tested.”  We have never owned anywhere near a 42 inch TV before.  Never really even considered it.  But now it would be ours ours ours.

I went to the store on Thursday to scope them out.  They had one on display (wow – 42 inches is large), but none on the shelf.  I asked an employee how it would go down on Saturday, and he told me that they would start selling them at midnight Friday night.  Ooh!  Glad I had this conversation!  I drank coffee with dinner last night, and psyched myself up to do a little late-night-bargain-shopping.

Got there at 10pm, went straight to electronics… still no stack of TV’s. When I asked the guy behind the counter when they would wheel them out, how this would work, etc, he looked at me like I was a moron and said “Yeah – it’s a SATURDAY sale.  They’ll “wheel them out” tomorrow morning.”  Dammit.   I was all full of caffeine and aggravation, and now had to wake up freaking early on a Saturday.  Wonderful.

This morning I watched the sunrise while I got a breakfast sandwich (I like to get my week’s worth of fat all in one go) from McDonalds. The teenager at the window told me I was “looking very pretty this morning!”, so I guess last night’s make-up was still going strong. I waltzed into Walmart at 6:10 a-freaking-m, almost a full two hours before the stuff was going on sale, and about three full hours before I’d like to be out of bed on a Saturday. I strolled towards electronics feeling confidant, and when I saw a small line of less than ten people I practically did an undignified happy dance right there in the aisle.

I was pulling out my iPod and greasy sandwich when the employee in charge of crowd control asked me what I was there for.  I foolishly gestured to the line and said “I’m here for this!”, like the TV was the only thing they were selling today.  Yes, now that I’ve Googled all mention of the sale, I see that they were also giving away Xboxes and Blue-ray players, but when I was originally reading this stuff I only saw  TV! 42 INCHES! LCD! Less than FIVE-HUNDRED DOLLARS!!!!

Back to Wally World – the very tired and cranky-looking (“I can’t BELIEVE I pulled this shift with all these early-morning, bargain-hunting LOSERS!”) employee slooowly asked me again “What. Are. You. Here. For?” and I replied (also slowly – it’s my way.) “I’m. Here. For. The. 42. Inch. Television.”  Which is when she dropped the bomb – “We’re already out of those.”

Wha?

At my blank look she said “They’re gone.  They’re all sold out. It’s too late.”

Huh?

I looked back at the line.  Seriously – less than 10 people.  I looked at her.  She said… wait for it….

“We only got three of them.”

Three.  Three televisions for the only Walmart in Shreveport, population 200,145.  (Ok, exaggeration. I looked it up, and apparently there are four Walmarts in Shreveport.  So I guess there were 12 available TV’s today.)

She said this with no embarrassment, no sign that it was a horrible, vile, dishonest thing that her store was doing. After advertising online and in print, getting people to get out of bed (twice, if they were first told to come in the middle of the night. Jerks.) for this… they only had three.  Just enough so they could legitimately claim to have sold these TV’s for that price… but not so many to actually affect their bottom line.

I walked away from there, vowing never to bring my business back to Walmart. Ever. I’m done. They’re dead to me.  I’m Target’s girl, now.  Walmart can keep their bargains and their useless employees and their huge stores that it takes 15 min to “run” into to buy a gallon of milk.  I’m finished.  They can close down for all I care.  In fact, I hope they do.  I’m never going back again.  They will not see another dollar from me.  Hmph.

 

(On the way out, I bought Violet a Christmas dress.  It was only $16.50, and it is gold and sparkly and has puffy sleeves and a tulle skirt and Target’s start at $29 and are simpler and therefore less likely to make V squeal with delight.  But now that I”m out of the store – really – I’m done.  I’m never going back.)

(Wait – I just remembered that starting today they are selling turkeys for 47 cents a pound.  Dammit.  But seriously – after I get a turkey (Fine. Two turkeys.) I’m really, forever and ever, done with that freaking store and their ridiculous fake bargains.  Drag my butt out of bed before the sun.  Grumble grumble foul curse words grumble. )

200145d

See ya, suckers!

So have I talked about the year-round-schooling thing here?  No?  I haven’t talked about anything?  I took 9 months off then came back and got right to the business of quoting smartass children without ever feeding the blog actual information about our lives right now? Hmm.

Well – I certainly don’t have time to catch you all up tonight.  I’m busy packing.  Yes, packing.  Not unpacking.  It makes a nice change.

Violet’s school has a year-round schedule.  She doesn’t have a long summer vacation.  Instead, she gets a couple weeks off several times a year, and extra long breaks for holidays (next month she gets the whole week for Thanksgiving, etc.) Her first big break started today – she doesn’t have to go back to school until November 2nd.  So, of course, we’re going to Disney World.

(Now read the title again.  It really works as a closing statement….. here.)

Small post today – I have to go boil myself.

Giant freaking roach

just walked on my freaking foot.

Get. Me. Out. Of. Here.

So, it just shoots the water right in your mouth?

A while back, Sonic’s prize when you bought a kid meal was a silly straw.  Only the bag said “Atomic Straw!”  V looked it over and said

“Automatic straw?  Cool! So you don’t have to suck?”

.

.

.

(And that’s all you get.  Jonas is sick, which means I’m not permitted to sleep.  Or eat.  Or pee without either him holding my hand or standing outside the locked door screaming my name. All I am allowed to do is hold him, wipe his nose, and administer cough syrup and popsicles.  In the middle of the night last night, I was trying to find the silver lining.  “Look, this is actually a good thing.” I foolishly told myself. “If he’s sick RIGHT NOW, then he won’t be sick next week when we’re in Disney World.  Violet was the first one to have this (freaking kindergarten germs of death), Joe and I have already worked through it, now Jonas is bringing up the rear. This time next week, we’ll be getting pics taken with princesses, and other than a lingering cough everyone will be fine. ” Then this afternoon madam came home and announced that at rest time, the boy next to her had thrown up “all over the carpet!  It was GROSS!”  Shoot me now.)

Oh the humliation!

On Thursday we went to the park (We were supposed to go to the science museum, because the deal was if V finished all her homework for the week by Wednesday then we would do what she wanted on Thursday and what she wanted was the museum.  She finished, and we made a big deal of going to the museum mid-week – “Isn’t this great! We get to go to the SciPort on a school night!  We have all this time for fun stuff because Violet already finished her homework!  Isn’t this fantastic!”  Then we get down there and the parking lot we usually park in is full of tents – some big festival thing is going on.  No problem, we’ll park in the lots behind the museum… no, wait… they have big “VIP Parking ONLY!” signs in them.  Hmm.  How about in this Holiday Inn parking lot that’s about 1/4 mile from the museum?  Hmmm. “Hotel parking ONLY! NO festival parking! Violaters WILL BE TOWED!”  Hmph. Maybe I can go around to the other side of the SciPort and find parking over there?  No? Road closed? Hell.  Seriously – I drove around for 15 minutes trying to get within a mile of the damn place, but when it started raining I gave up.  Ridiculous.) after Joe got home from work.  As the four of us were walking away from the car, he broke out into TMBG’s Alphabet of Nations (“Zimbabweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!”) Violet whipped around and said “Stop it!  Daddy! Please stop!” while looking left, right, north, and south to make sure nobody but us had heard him.

She was embarrassed.

The kid who used to encourage us to “Do the tushy dance!” in the middle of Target.  The kid who demanded countless songs and games waiting for food in restaurants.  The kid who has been putting the tiara she’s tired of on Joe’s head while walking through the mall for the past 5 years, was embarrassed.

Awesome.  Let the torture begin.