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.”
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!’ ”
You may have noticed that I have not posted anything other than my daughter’s smart aleck remarks in a while. This is largely due to the shit bucket that my life has become. Not only were my children on a break long enough to make it appear as if going to school were the break, but my husband was also on the same schedule. He has a tendency to not use up vacation days until the last minute, the last minute being the week between Christmas and New Year’s and whatever straggly bits there are because Christmas landed on a Wednesday or some nonsense like that.
Finally, every one went to school/work and I had my life back. I made progress on my website, I ran, I identified companies to target for writing assignments, I read “The Outsiders” for work (how cool is that?).
Four days after my real life began again, my husband came home from work early. He came home so early, in fact, that my daughter and I were still in bed. I was convinced a prowler had entered our home so locked the bedroom door. I heard footsteps on the stairs and grabbed the phone when the door knob jiggled.
“Why is the door locked?” came my husband’s voice.
“Because I thought you were a prowling rapist thief!”
Turns out my husband did not throw his back out, but was passing a kidney stone. A rather large one, apparently. Six millimeters for those of you in the know. Two trips to the ER later, he had a disgusting sounding procedure that had me thinking of Luke Skywalker shooting into the Death Star. Actually, the doctor inserted a camera/laser thingie, located the stone and blasted it into chips. I’m hoping husband will be home soon, but then he’s likely to be HOME, not at work, for a while. Sigh. This is all about me, you know.
In the interim, I’d like to introduce you to a friend of mine and her blog. Emily, author of “Not the hardest part,” chronicles her adventures as mom to one of the cutest babies in the world. She’s kinda sassy, has more than one degree in English and is therefore immensely cool.
Here’s a link to Emily’s latest post. Make sure to click around on her blog and find those adorable baby pictures.
I got an iPad Mini for Christmas. I love it. I particularly like conversing with Siri and pretending I’m Samuel L. Jackson. Naturally my kids think Siri is pretty awesome. Actually, only my daughter will admit Siri is fun; my son will not admit anything is fun unless he discovered it.
The more you use her, the more Siri becomes accustomed to your voice, so she’s pretty down with me. My daughter has a much higher, brighter voice. It gives Siri fits.
Daughter: Siri, what is the wind chill today?
Siri: I’m afraid I don’t understand.
Daughter: What is the wind chill today?
Siri: I don’t know. Shall I search the Internet for “My fellatio football”?
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.
I was working on a post for today when my husband called. He had that “somebody’s died” heaviness in his voice, then he told me about the shooting in Connecticut. My post was, I had hoped, going to make you laugh. I don’t have it in me anymore. Running is my meditation, so I’m going to go run right now. I’ll probably cry, too.
Snide Reply 