My son and I were watching TV. A commercial came on that my son found funny, in a bad way. He made a derisive comment, then caught himself.
“I guess I shouldn’t make fun of a commercial about cancer,” he said.
“Pretty bad karma, I’d say,” I said.
“What would you know about karma?” was his reply, followed by, “Oh. Right. . .you’re a Buddhist.”
My daughter’s been learning the facts of life at school lately. Naturally, she’s had lots of questions, most of them about the workings of male-female relationships.
“Mom,” she asked me. “What happens when a man and a woman get married?”
Before I could answer, my son jumped in.
“When a man and a woman love each other very much,” he said, “they get married and then the man can’t have beer with his friends anymore.”
I often feel people who know me don’t really understand what it’s like to have bipolar disorder. Sometimes I don’t even understand, but I’m starting to work that out.
Here is a post from another blogger with bipolar disorder that very accurately describes one aspect of living with bipolar disorder. I hope you’ll read it, especially if you are close to me or are close to someone who is bipolar.
http://manicmuses.wordpress.com/2013/03/13/the-energy-post/
This morning, at 5:30, I was woken by the call I most dread, the one from my school district with the joyous news that my children will be home with me . . .all day . . .bored . . .and whining.
My daughter bounded up from the breakfast table, into her snow pants and out the door to make snowmen. Yes, they are still called snowmen; snow people just sounds so wrong.
We live one suburban back yard away from a huge barren depression in the landscape retention field where the neighborhood children sled. My daughter started her part of the snowman in our back yard; her friend started the other part in her backyard. The intent was to meet in the field for assembly.
“How’s your snow man?” I asked my daughter on her return.
“Oh, by the time I got to the field, my part was so heavy we couldn’t lift it, so we just left the parts next to each other and made snow boobs.”
My poor husband. He is frequently the butt of family jokes, particularly from my son and I. I’d like to say he’s laughing with us, but really, he’s not. Generally, he’s a pretty good sport. Every now and then, though, he’ll let us know he’s had enough. So, we’ve been trying to be more careful of his feelings, but still . . .
On a recent car trip, my daughter and I were tweaking Dad. He was being very patient, but I could tell we were getting under his skin.
“Aw, honey,” I said, intending to tell him we wouldn’t tease him if we didn’t love him, “We only tease you . . .”
“Because it’s fun!” said my daughter from the back seat.
I’ve said numerous times that my son’s sense of humor is so obscene that I can’t write most of what he says. I attempt to keep my blog relatively family friendly and he tends to use far too many F-words for print. A while ago, though, he uttered the following gem.
My daughter and her friend were in the back seat, singing along to a favorite song. It was something kind of Selena Gomez-ish or maybe it was Call Me Maybe. Regardless, they were young girls and sang in those screechingly high, thin voices that make even in-tune singing painful to hear. The girls were not singing in tune. It wasn’t bothering me as I will accept just about any sound that isn’t whining. My son, however, is a musician.
“My god, Mom,” he said, “It sounds like somebody’s grabbed a camel by the testicles!”
My daughter is a fountain of funny kid stuff.
Every evening, my daughter tells me when she would like to wake up. Last Thursday, she told me to wake her at 5 a.m. so that she would be awake by 6 a.m. to study for a test. I have no idea why it takes her an hour to wake up, but it’s her beauty sleep so I go along.
Five a.m. I woke her, saying “Sweetie, it’s 5 o’clock.”
“I’m tired!” she groused.
Five fifteen. “Peanut, it’s time to get up.” Grousing was the reply.
Five thirty. “You told me you wanted to me to wake you at five. It’s five thirty.” Again, grousing.
Five forty five. “Leave me alone!” was the reply.
At six a.m., I told her it was six a.m. and went downstairs to make my tea, telling her I was going downstairs to make my tea. I left her grousing self to get dressed.
At seven a.m., I came up stairs. (Even at seven, she had plenty of time to study.) I was greeted like this:
“IT’S SEVEN O’CLOCK!! I’M GOING TO FAIL MY TEST!!! YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO WAKE ME UP!”
“Sweetie, I tried waking you up for an hour.”
‘NO, YOU DIDN’T!!! A NORMAL MOM WOULD HAVE GOTTEN ME OUT OF BED!!!!”
Confused, I said, “What was I supposed to do that I didn’t do? I tried to wake you up and you kept telling me you were too tired.”
“If you were a regular mom,” she said, “you would have said, ‘GET YOUR ASS OUT OF BED!’ ”
I have come to the conclusion that this will likely be my daughter’s spotlight for some time. My son says very funny things, but most of them are so politically incorrect or obscene that they are, to my mind, not fit for publication. I may decide to write a heavily redacted version of some of the things he says, but until then, here is another gem from the Empress.
Empress is now in the orchestra program in our school district; she plays the viola. She related this exchange with the orchestra director from the middle school her brother attended and that she will attend next year. You may recall my son has ADHD, as did at least one other boy in the cello section.
Empress: She said my last name was familiar when she was tuning my viola, then she asked me if I had a brother or sister, so I told her who my brother is.
Dad: Did she say, “Poor you”?
Empress: Sadly, no.
I recently attended an event in which my daughter flipped her body around in ways that frighten me. In other words: a gymnastics demonstration. My son had to attend as well, much to his dismay. Rather than watch his sister perform, he sulked in the hall. Performance over, we headed to the car along with daughter’s friend and her mother. My son was nowhere to be seen.
Me: Where could he have gone?
Friend’s mom: Maybe he ran away with the circus.
Daughter: Nah. He hasn’t got the talent.
Giving a boy with ADHD responsibility for the family’s laundry probably wasn’t our best call. All too often we found ourselves with nothing but air in our underwear drawers. One night, my husband wondered when he would see his tidy whities again.
“Son,” he said. “Are you planning to do the laundry soon?”
“No, Dad. Why?”
“Well, because tomorrow morning I will have no underwear to wear to work.”
Our son considered his dad’s dilemma and said, “No problem. Just borrow some of mine. We can be Boxer Buddies.”
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