Tag: venting

A “WTF?” moment for Friday

I had the pleasure of taking Morgan with me to the Y this morning as she had no school.  I finished my workout and went to collect her from the childwatch.  On the way out to the car, we happened to fall in step with an elderly man who had just finished his workout. 

“Well, hello there!” he says, to us. “What a beautiful little girl you are!”
“Thank you,” says Morgan.
“Yes, what a beautiful little girl.  I’ve got three granddaughters myself. Yep, three little girls.  What a beautiful little girl you have.” He went to expound about the branches on his family tree and peppered his comments with his delightful question.
“So did you have her yourself?” 
What the hayle?!
I pulled up short, almost giving Morgan nursemaid’s elbow in the process and just looked at this guy.  But he didn’t even notice, he just kept on talking. “Of course you did. She’s just beautiful, blah, blah, blah, blah “
I just blinked at him in disbelief. I’m always caught off guard when someone flashes gargantuan amounts of ignorance in my face, and his total lack of couth was winking and blinking like the Vegas strip.  
I’d like to say this was my first exposure to the colossal gall people have, but we all know that’s not true.  And still, I am always unprepared with a response, partly because I’m so surprised that it happens in the first place and partly because, well, I just can’t come up with a scathing enough retort in time.  I’m too busy picking my mouth up off of the floor. 
I will say that of the more ridiculously nervy questions I’ve been asked, this one makes the top three.  The runner’s up include:
1.  Do your daughters have the same father? (seriously, what makes you think it’s okay to ask me this? I don’t know you and even if I did, don’t ask me stupid shiggity like that!)
2.  Do you like the family that you nanny for? (because even though they’re calling me ‘Mommy’, because I’m pushing them around in the stroller at the mall on a Tuesday at 10am, I’m the nanny.)
You know, I used to love to read Mad Magazine, especially Al Jaffee’s sketches called “Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions.”  Time to dust out some back issues.  
Either that or a shiv.

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IN: ON: March 26, 2010 TAGS: , BY: Hilary
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Have You Seen It?

I can’t find my cell phone. Again. I hate how dependent I have become on an electronic device! And the worse part is, my phone isn’t even a state of the art slide-phone with apps and GPS and bells and whistles. I can make calls. I can take calls. I can text. That’s it. Yet, when the phone decides to grow legs and take a personal day, I’m left feeling like I’m missing a limb.
I was 20 when I got my first cell phone. We’re talking 1999, people. I had this Sprint flip phone with a digital display window. Mercifully, it wasn’t the size of my shoe, but it surely wasn’t high on style. It was to be used only in case of emergencies, like when my car broke down on the side of the road or when. . .well, when my car broke down on the side of the road. That’s it. And that was okay. I left it in the charger most times, I took it to and from work with me, but mostly forgot that I had it. Fast forward ten years and while the cell phone model I have is just as antiquated, I count it among the things I have to have when I leave the house. Wallet? Check. Keys? Check. Cell? Check. I have those three things and I’m good to go. Wait, I’m supposed to have something else. What. . .was. . .it? Wallet, keys, cell. Wallet, keys cell. Oh, the kids! Right.
Anyway, the cell phone has been gone for about 48 hours and I’m starting to worry. It’s not as though I haven’t misplaced my phone before. I lost my phone when we were living in our last apartment. I looked everywhere, I called it from the house phone, nothing. I was worried it had gotten stolen and some yahoo was racking up long distances calls on my nickel. So, I got T-Mobile on the phone and was getting ready to have the whole thing shut off when it occurs to me to ask the sales rep when the last call was made. She gives me the info and I’m puzzled because not only did I make the last call, I know exactly where I was when I made it and what I did when I finished. Cut to the front hall closet, and there, in my jacket pocket, on vibrate (of course), is my phone.
But back to my current predicament. I asked the girls if they’ve seen it, which elicits a “yes” from one and a “no” from the other. I’m not even going to pursue it with them. I ask DH if he’s seen it, to which he replies, “Last time I saw it, you had it.” Thanks, honey.
I channel my inner Sherlock and start re-tracing my steps. Of course, the problem is, if I knew where I had it last, I wouldn’t have to do that, right? So, I just start working my way through the rooms of the house. I check our room, the bathroom, the closets, the girls rooms, the guest room, the other bathroom. I head downstairs, and I ransack the laundry room, the kitchen, the living room, and the family room. In the family room, I upend all of the cushions in the sofas and find the following:
1. several popcorn kernels
2. half of a princess tiara
3. 28 cents
4. two pencils
5. a Netflix envelope with no DVD (whew!)
6. a Barbie brush
7. a Barbie shoe
8. a Valentine’s Day sticker
9. 1 broken potato chip
10. my lovely disposition (I was wondering where that had wandered off to)
I go back upstairs and go through my pocketbooks, even the ones I’ve forgotten I own. I look in my gym bag, I look in shoe boxes. I go back downstairs and look in the pockets of all of my coats (again), even the ones I know I haven’t worn in the past 6 months. I even open a package I had wrapped for the UPS guy hoping that maybe I boxed it up by mistake.
No phone.
I call the phone. I mean, I call it using the house phone, though I’m getting to the point where I’m not above calling out to it, “Phone! Phone, you better answer me when I’m talking to you!” Clearly, this is driving me crazy.
I’m thinking about where I had it last. What was I planning to do? Charge it. So it’s probably somewhere without power. Great. Okay, but where was I going? DH and I were going out of town and I planned to charge the phone when we got to our hotel. But the thing is, I realized on the way out of town that I had forgotten the phone. Ugh, I’m just going down one dead end after another. I figure that I’m take a zen approach and stop looking for it. The phone will come to me. Yeah, that lasted all of an hour.
I got up this morning and started going through the house all over again.
My last resort was to check my car. Again. It’s early, about 5:15 am and I look like Zippity-Do-Dah in my pajamas/sweats and winter coat as I head outside. Turns out we forgot to re-arrange the car seats from DH’s car back to mine, so I figure, I’ll handle that before I look for the phone. I unlock his car on the passenger side and something tells me to stick my hand in that little catch-all pocket affixed to the door.
Sonofa–
I’m getting a leash and a bell for this flippin‘ thing.

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IN: ON: December 14, 2009 TAGS: , , BY: Hilary
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Arts and Craps

Let me just set the record straight. I don’t do arts and crafts, despite what the Scholastic website would have you believe. You all know how I’ve suffered for my art in the past. I thought that with the girls going to school, I might be able to get off the hook with having to drag out the box of glue sticks, pipe cleaner’s, finger paints and googly eyes. Yeah, so much for that.
On Friday at school, Co was sent home with a large construction paper turkey feather Accompanying instructions said to ask your child what she is thankful for and provide a pictorial display as well. I figured this would be a good activity for me and the girls on Saturday afternoon.
Mo, Co, and I sat around the table, crayons and paper in reach and got down to business. I asked Co what she was thankful for and she said “My mommy and my daddy and my Morgan and my me and my mommy and my daddy and my Morgan and my me and. . .”
Mo said, “Um. . .turkey, green beans, rice, carrots, lettuce, potatoes, and walnuts.” All of this from the child that only eats Chinese chicken and broccoli and chicken nuggets?
We select some pictures for Co to glue onto her feather and Mo is busy working away on cutting out pictures from a magazine.
So far, so good, but by now I should be able to recognize the calm before the storm. In a matter of minutes, the grabby-hands come out. Snatching of colored pencils begins, pencil shavings are dumped on the floor, a glue stick is being used as chapstick (though in hindsight that probably wasn’t a bad idea). Co is using rubber stamps and the stamp pad to decorate her face. Mo is yelling out orders to me on how to clothe her paperdolls.
“I want tights!”
“I want shoes!”
“I want different shoes!”
“The dress needs peplums!” (What is this? Project Runway?)
“This isn’t how Daddy does it!”
And wham-o! Mo is dissolving into a toddler sized puddle of snot and tears. She’s upset because Co won’t share the scissors. She’s upset because she can’t find a black crayon. She’s upset because she needs a new brown paper bag with which to make a paper doll because there’s the faintest trace of yellow crayon on the bag she has. She’s upset because Mommy has no idea how make ballerina princess paper dolls like Daddy. She’s upset because the moon is not in the seventh house and Jupiter is misaligned with Mars.
Her eyes fill with tears the way a glass fills with water. When she closes her eyes and opens her mouth to cry, those tears ping out of her face with surprising velocity.
I implore her to calm down. I beg her to stop crying. I tell her that I can’t help her when she’s so upset. My Greek chorus of one (a.k.a Co), says, “I’m calm down. I’m not crying. I’m not upset” which is like squeezing a can of lighter fluid onto a bonfire. Thanks, Co.
My patience for this entire project evaporated the minute I brought that construction paper turkey feather home on Friday so you can imagine the Herculean strength it is taking me to keep it together. I reach back into my Mommy arsenal desperately groping for some type of something to diffuse the situation. Hugs! Of course!
“Mo, come get a hug!”
She hiccups herself over to my lap and wipes her nose ofn my shirt. I wrap my arms around her, pushing scraps of paper off to the side, opting to forgo chastising Co as she rouges her cheeks with an inked-up rubber stamp — it’s non-toxic and I’ve got Lever 2000. When we’ve cooled our jets for a while, I ask Mo if she’s alright and she mumbles something into my chest.
“What was that, sweetheart?”
She lifts her head, her eyes round and glassy, and she says, “My dress needs puffy sleeves, too.”
Right, of course it does.

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IN: ON: November 7, 2009 TAGS: , , , , BY: Hilary
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Suffering for my Art

Mo really likes to color. I mean she is definitely like this kid here:


And she will get out her notebooks, crayons, markers and stickers and do it up for quite some time all on her own. Until she thinks, “I haven’t heard from Mommy in a while. Hey, I bet Mommy wants to color, too!” Which wouldn’t be so bad, if a) I really did want to color and b) I could just take the crayons and scribble my heart out. To Mo, Mommy coloring equals sitting next to Mommy while barking orders at her like an overbearing, milk-breathed hyperactive, three-year old drill sargeant:

Now draw Cinderella!
With a tall hat!
And a long dress!
And a ring!
And long hair!
No, long hair!
No, I said LONG hair!!!

For the love of Pete! I’m drawing as fast as I can. I feel like Sandra Bullock in Speed, except, if I don’t draw the right thing, the right way, before she barks out the next order, hello toddler combustion! Good gracious! I have been reaching deep into my patience reserves whenever I see the crayons come out or whenever I hear her imploring little voice stringing the words “will”, “you”, and “draw”. See the thing is, I don’t mind it, really. I have gotten pretty good at whipping out those DP’s and their assorted accessories and paraphenalia. It’s just the threat of Toddle Def-Con 5 that makes me apprehensive.

Yesterday, we (I) were drawing at the kitchen table, Co contentedly gnawing on a hot pink Crayola while Mo shouted out her wishes in the chair next to me. As I drew, she inched closer and closer, up under my arm until I couldn’t even see the paper anymore. I kept reminding her to park her can on the seat, otherwise, I wouldn’t be able to draw anymore. The storm was brewing behind her eyes, but I nipped it in the bud with a quick, “Alright, what should I draw next?” (Did you guess Cinderella? Again?). Yeah, I need to start getting paid off of this or something. So I’m drawing and she’s issuing forth requests. We’ve got a tall, cone hat with hair coming out of the top, we’ve got a ring, we’ve got shoes, we’ve got it all. Mo then asks for tights. “Um, they’re under the dress,” I tell her. “You just can’t see them.” You’d a thought I promised her I was going to open a six-pack of whoop ass on her.

“NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!! I WANT YOU TO DRAW SOME TIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIGHTS!!!!”
and her whole body went stiff as she propelled herself out of the chair and onto the floor. Tears shot out of her eyes like she was a cracked out Pez dispenser or something. Co looked at me like, “What’s up with that?” and I just shook my head. On the inside I was thinking, “Oh hell to naw. I am not going to deal with this. I’mma just pack this up and we’ll figure out something else.” but what I said, which took a Herculean effort, was, “Now Mo, I can’t draw anymore if you are going to carry on like that. Can you please stop crying?”

“Nnnnngggggggggghhhhhh! TIIIIIIIIIIIIIGHTSS! SHE NEEDS TIIIIIIIIIIGHTS!!”

“Mo, why don’t you stand up and wipe off your face so you can see the tights under the dress?”

“Uh-uh-uh-uh-uh (I think that’s the sound of snuffling and blubbering).”

You get the general idea of where the whole thing went. We decided to give the crayons a rest and try it again when everybody was a little more pulled together. Still, I’ve developed a type of involuntary shudder/ negative Pavlovian response to the word “draw” or seeing Mo approach with bag o’ crayons in hand. *shudder* I freakin’ love coloring. . .

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IN: ON: October 22, 2008 TAGS: , , , , BY: Hilary
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