Pissed-Off Mom

Down the Rabbit Hole Day

2009-01-28T09:40:00.003-06:00

Apparently, yesterday was Down the Rabbit Hole Day, when bloggers are supposed to write a blog post different from all the other ones. Not that I follow blogging trends particularly (or, you know, post that often) I thought I'd give it a shot:

Reasons Why I Love My Life
See? Different.

1. I live in a place without miserable winters. Seriously, how does anybody cope with dreary weather month after month? Here in Austin, if you don't like the weather this time of year, just wait a few hours. Like today, where we had freezing rain (imagine!) last night but can expect a high today around 50F.

Not so happy about the drought, though.

2. There are still tomatoes growing in my yard! True, they take weeks to ripen this time of year, but just the other day we had a salad with a home grown tomato. Ok, a cherry tomato, but still...

Now all I have to do is be sure to keep Stella the Free-Range Outcast Chicken from eating them all.

3. We are stepping up our commitment to sustainability, with a vegie garden and chickens and all kinds of stuff. And the raised beds are made entirely with leftover, scrounged or found materials--rebar abandoned after a nearby remodeling project; leftover construction lumber; bamboo cut from the creekbed behind the house.

4. SweetBabyGirl continues to be the most adorable child ever. Allow me to elaborate: the girls at school are all into princess and pony stuff and she is, too, but she gives it her own twist--she's also been watching the Star Wars movies with her dad and so the other day, when she wanted to play ponies, she wanted to be Jedi ponies with light sabers. Jedi Master Rainbow Dash battles evil! Whooo hoo!

5. Our neighbors are back in town and owe me free babysitting for feeding their cat.

6. We have a new president, one who doesn't go around saying that I (and people like me) hate America and embolden terrorists and are weak losers for thinking that it's wrong to waterboard suspected terrorists.

More seriously here, I wept while I watched the inauguration and still get teary now and then thinking about what we, as a nation, have been through and how good it feels to be hopeful again.

The other day, SBG and I (with some participation from Humphrey) were running up and down the hall upstairs, sliding in our socks. I could feel that I was using muscles I hadn't used lately. I was a little sore the next day, but it felt good, too.

Likewise, being an optimist, for a change, feels good, like I'm using muscles that haven't been worked in a long time.

Hello? Hello?

2008-11-21T20:20:00.004-06:00

I'm kind of appalled to see how long it's been since I've blogged. I suppose I can summarize the intervening months pretty quickly:

1. Wow, it sure seemed like a good idea to drive 2 days each way to go to a weekend family reunion. What was I thinking? Who would have thought that the wide-open spaces of the Texas Panhandle weren't sufficiently boring to put the child to sleep?

2. Wow, flying to Boise to visit the in-laws wasn't nearly as bad as I'd feared. And thank God, because the month of August was long--it was good to have a break. Long and hot. And boring. I owe the local PBS station bigtime, because without PBS kids on TV there would have been blood.

3. SweetBabyGirl hates her new school! Loves her new school! Hates it! Loves it!

4. Also: "I don't like Audrey anymore! She's not my friend! She's mean to me!" And repeat, over and over, substituting the names of just about everyone she knows.

What exactly does "being mean" entail? Not doing exactly what SBG says, immediately.

5. "I want to be a skunk for Halloween!"
"No, wait, a mummy!"
"No, wait, a fairy princess!"
"A vampire!"
And so this went on, for the entire month of October.

For the record, she was a skunk at school, then a fairy princess to go trick-or-treating. That is, trick-or-treating at a total of 4 houses, before it got to be too scary.

6. Finally, the weather turned cold, as of this very morning. At which time I had a flat tire on the way to school. And had left my phone at home. I tried to convince SBG that walking a block-and-a-half through the cold wind to the nearest shoot-n-scoot to use the payphone was An Adventure! and she didn't buy it for a second.

Also? She had never seen a payphone in use before. She was all, you put quarters? In the phone? No! Way!

Like A Baby

2008-07-14T09:29:00.002-05:00

I tend to avoid being one of those moms who's always sneering at other parents for the way their kids are behaving--mostly as a there-but-for-the-grace-of-God-go-I sop to karma, but also because I generally try to mind my own business. But Saturday I found this policy hard to maintain.

I was browsing in a kids' clothing store while Hubby and SweetBabyGirl finished up in the shoe store next door* and I noticed another mom with her little girl, who appeared to adopted from China just like SBG. Other Mom was browsing, too, and girl was fretful and started crying when OM moved out of sight. I had a moment to think, hey,my girl does that too when she's tired,maybe that happens a lot with adoptees and then OM started in with this: "Stop crying! You're crying like a little baby." Which of course upset the girl more, not just the words but the tone, which was dripping with disdain.

I, meanwhile, tried to keep my face neutral. It's not so much that I cared what OM thought of me--I've given up seeking approval from Other Mothers who aren't my friends--but I thought she'd think my frown was at her girl's behavior, not at the way she was talking to her little girl, which made my heart ache. And it went on, with more talk of acting like a baby and threats not to go to the playground.

Why on earth do parents talk like that to their kids? SBG and I have an ongoing struggle, in which she wants to pretend to be a baby--often at inconvenient times, like when we're at the mall--and talks in a baby voice and refuses to walk. I tend to react by saying eh, babies are boring and being a baby is pretty dull, too. Plus babies don't get to eat chocolate. That sort of thing. But yesterday, without thinking about OM and her girl, I did something different: I just picked up SBG and said, I like you the way you are. You were fun as a baby but you're more fun now.

Because, really, since when is being a baby, or acting like one, so shameful? Most of the time they're fairly agreeable creatures, and when they're not, well, they can't help it.

Also: when Hubby and SBG caught up with me at the clothing store, OM and her girl were still fussing at each other. And Hub made one of those classic shopping-with-a-kid errors: he let SBG try on a $75 flower girl dress, which of course she loved and made preliminary I'm-gonna-cry noises when he told her she couldn't have it. (Honestly, I suspect that I didn't occur to him that a little girl dress could be that expensive--he leads a fairly sheltered life when it comes to insane spending on kids, bless him).

And what did he do? Simple: he took the dress off her, scooped her up and took her outside for a chat about how to behave in public. (Bear in mind: she was wearing her regular clothes under it--not that the little nudist would have minded her taking her outside naked, but still...) And here's the important part: I don't have to have been there to hear what he said, but I know that it was about her behavior, not about her being. Because he's a good parent, he knows to talk about behavior, not to shame her for having unpleasant feelings.

I wish more parents were like him.

* So what were SBG and Hubby doing at the shoe store? She was making Daddy try on shoes, of course, because that store specializes in comfortable shoes and all they had for kids was Crocs and Birkenstocks, which SBG dismissed out of hand as too unattractive for her own use.

Fashion Girl

2008-05-27T07:57:00.004-05:00

How did I end up with such s chic daughter? This is one of her little outfits that she put together--at least, it's one that covers her Private Parts, something that, up to now, I considered essential for clothing. Now, though, SweetBabyGirl has shown me that, indeed, that requirement is Just So Over.

Goodbye Forrest

2008-04-16T08:44:00.002-05:00

You know what's so hard about losing a dog? Well, a lot of things, but a big one is that a lot of people think you're silly to be grieving for a dog.

But I am, and I miss him more than I can say. What a wonderful, sweet, noble creature, who made my life so much richer.

RIP, Dogboy.

Guilt and Reconciliation

2008-03-13T10:14:00.002-05:00

Yesterday I was puttering in the kitchen and thought, o I feel awful because the place is a mess and I should be cleaning things up--

And then I came to my senses: it's spring break so my SweetBabyGirl has been home (and desiring entertainment) all week. And I have a nasty cough. And I had already baked whole wheat bread and made homemade yogurt that morning. So I thought Jeez, woman, what more could you demand of yourself, anyway?

But I come by it honestly, because my mother does the same thing. One time we were talking and Mom was berating herself out loud for not keeping the house neater and I said, offhandedly, you know, Mom, as virtues go, neatness is overrated. Mom laughed and laughed, relief clearly evident on her face. And I thought, yeah, she did teach me to feel guilty about stupid crap like how messy the house is, but she does suffer much more than I ever did.

Note to self: work on modeling sanity for my kid. Cleaning house isn't as important.

By the way, when I had the page linked to in the title on my screen, SBG looked over and said I don't like her! Yeah, me neither...

What I Do All Day

2008-02-29T11:21:00.003-06:00

I get interrupted, is what I do. Constantly. I'm lucky when I get to shower in privacy. Given that I am both an introvert and an inhibitionist (ie. the opposite of an exhibitionist) I find it intensely annoying when I hear the patter of little feet and the door banging open. And given that SweetBabyGirl is perfectly comfortable running around nekkid, I'm not surprised that she doesn't seem to get the idea that Mommy wants privacy.

Oh, and she positively hates it when I insist on privacy when I'm in the bathroom. If I lock the door she stands outside sobbing brokenheartedly until I emerge.

You know how some characteristics skip generation? That seems to be the case here because my mother never let me have any privacy when I lived at home, either. Amazing, considering that my mom and SBG are not genetically related.

The house is always a mess because there is no household chore that can't be interrupted by a 4-year-old. Sometimes it's a demand that I play with her (hard to turn down completely so I end up cutting what I'm doing short) or a demand to help that tends to end up making a mess and more work for me. Sometimes I can get her involved in some kind of parallel activity (like running naked in the yard while I plant herbs) and that helps.

When I'm trying to accomplish something despite all the interruptions SBG will sometimes ask, Mommy aren't you happy? I end up saying, I'm fine I'm just tired, sweetie. I've tried to explain that I get tired when I'm interrupted all the time but I don't think she understands. How can she? She's just four years old.

And SBG has an uncanny ability to know when someone on the phone has reached a crucial part of the conversation so that she can start yelling at me and make it impossible to get a phone number or directions. Today, I actually hissed "You! Shut! Up!" at her while I was on the phone, thus setting back my efforts to teach her not to say shut up AND persuading the person on the phone that I'm an evil bitch.

Eh, whatever. If evil bitches get some respect, that's fine with me. Then again, I don't think I want my kid in therapy describing me that way. Isn't that always the way?

Preschooler Games

2008-02-23T08:18:00.002-06:00

I thought it might be helpful for my readers (both of you!) if I shared some of the games that Dada and I play together.

1. Let's Make a Mess
Includes snipping paper into tiny bits all over the floor; toy-scattering, and wet-paintbrush-waving. Can be used as a sort of overlay for other games and activities.

2. Fun With Fluids
Also known as Wipe Hands On Mom. Materials used for this game include snot, sand (not technically a fluid), mud, anything sticky. Also a great overlay for painting activity.

3. Let's Drive Mommy Insane
Another overlay. Includes activities like Endless Annoying Chanting, Annoying Nicknames For Mommy (the worst was Puppy, which for some reason I loathed) and Who Needs English When You Communicate By Pointing and Squawking.

This one can be a timed event.

4. I Want. Great for shopping trips.

5. Let's Humiliate Mom In Public.
A favorite tactic is to select a carpeted area at the mall, throw oneself onto the floor and wave our legs in the air so as to display panties prominently while saying, "Look, Mommy, here's a little baby who wants [fill in what the child wants here]." Bonus points for doing this in a high-traffic area.

6. I'm Nekkid, Wheee!!
Related activity: I'm nekkid and covered with sand/sidewalk chalk/paint/food.

7. Boss Mommy Around.
Behave like a 3-foot-tall tyrant of the theatre as you tell Mommy or Daddy exactly where to stand, what to say and how to say it. Claim that this is really a game of reenacting a Superwhy episode.

8. Let's Get Crumbs in Mommy and Daddy's Bed
Other locations include the couch and the car. And any computer keyboard.

9. Annoy The Dog

10. Annoy The Cat
Less popular now that the cat his demonstrated her ability to terminate the game by "accidentally" clawing the child. Stupid cat.

Rage

2008-02-19T10:51:00.003-06:00

By which I mean, other people's, not mine.

Namely, what's up with all the road rage lately? Driving home from Houston on Saturday I was beset by three different guys driving BFPs (Big Fucking Pickups), all of whom attempted to intimidate me by tailgating. One guy flashed his highbeams. As we say in blogland, WTF??

And, no, I was not driving slow in the fast lane, far from it: in each case I was driving slower than the rest of traffic because the cars in front of me were going slow, too. So, picture it: I'm driving on I-10 in intermittent rain, occasionally find that there's a big, slow truck in the right lane and I move to the left only to find somebody going the same speed as the truck. Rolling roadblock ensues and I generally wait for slow-left-hand-lane guy to make his poky way around the slower truck, move to the right, and then voila, roadblock's cleared. But no, instead, some dickhead in his BFP feels compelled to tailgate in that situation. Dude, you're up high. You can see that there's another car in front of me. So back off, already.

But he doesn't. Instead, I get treated to tailgating so that my entire back window is filled with a view of his grille. Sometimes, I get a chance to move to the right and I can see his face with his lips pulled back in a snarl.

So for a while there on I-10, there were three black BFPs leapfrogging down I-10, taking turns driving right on my back bumper. We're all traveling at about the same speed and nobody wants to back down.

When people try to intimidate me, my usual response is to get very tense and quiet and stubborn. But in this situation I wasn't sure what to do. Luckily, my own SweetBabyGirl solved everything by saying, I'm hungry, I want lunch. So we pulled over, stopped at Jack in the Box and when we got back on the road it was better.

I was in a hurry to get home but realized that it's more important to get home alive, even if some dickhead gets to tell himself he's won.

And where does all this rage come from? These appeared to be middle-class, middle-aged white guys. What have they got to be pissed off about? And why do they have to put us all in danger to vent their fury?

[By the way, click on the title to this post to see a nice little video about road rage revenge.]

Too Much TV

2008-02-07T21:06:00.000-06:00

What's a Pissed Off Mom to do, anyway?

I've been letting the SweetBabyGirl watch waaaay too much TV because I just haven't had the energy to do much else. And, as the link above would indicate, the stuff on PBS for kids is pretty darn educational. And yet, there's some major drawbacks:

1. The theme music for Caillou is one of the worst ear-worm melodies ever. It. Won't. Stop.

2. While Super Why does a pretty good job as a reading tutorial, it's excruciatingly dull for adults. And it inspires SBG to run around the house with a wand pretending to be a magic princess. On the plus side, she's been consistent about pronouncing Princess Presto as Princess Prestone (who apparently has Antifreeze Power in addition to Spelling Power).

3. SBG really really wants me to stay with her while she watches. Which the good folks at PBSparents.org recommend, too, so that we can talk about the lessons that she's learning. Bringing us to moments like Mommy, why do you have a pillow over your head?

4. I thought there'd be some respite from adding Pingu to the mix (courtesy of PBS Sprout, the on-demand kid channel) but instead it's inspired the child to add an annoying MOO MOO to her impressive array of irritating verbal tics. She's imitating the penguins' pissed-off call, which is really more of a skraaak skraaaak than a moo. At least the claymation is interesting, plus I've been learning to speak penguin.

5. Compared to all these other shows, Curious George is quality television. If only they'd show some new episodes, I think I might actually find the will to live.

No, no, I haven't really lost the will to live. I mostly just want to wait until the nasty pollen season is over and I can go outside again. Saturday, after days of howling wind that blew the pollen into every crevice of this house, I had a migraine that didn't abate for a full day, with the usual photophobia and vomiting. I still have almost daily headaches but as long as I'm not nauseated I can soldier on, timing the pain meds for when I'm not driving. The nausea is the worst since I can't take anti-nausea meds if I'm going to drive--I'm fairly sure I'd totally forget to, like, hit the brakes to stop, assuming I was awake to notice.

But being stuck indoors (or risking misery if we spend much time outside) and feeling crummy has been a drag and I'm ready to send her to a 5-day-a-week preschool so she can watch less TV.

Happy Gorilla Suit Day!

2008-01-31T20:31:00.000-06:00

...and wouldn't you know my gorilla suit's at the cleaners. Dammit.

Bad Idea

2008-01-30T18:17:00.000-06:00

Today I was hurrying to make dinner (a pot of chili) and as I was motoring down the home stretch, I dropped an open 28-oz can of tomatoes. And I caught it before it hit the floor.

(An aside: yeah, I put tomatoes in my chili, so just back off, you food purist freak. Don't judge me. And sometimes I put in beans, too, so there! Just not kidney beans, because that would be terribly terribly wrong. By the way, Muir Glen Fire Roasted Tomatoes make a great addition to chili. FYI. Assuming you actually get the tomatoes into the pot.)

Anyhoo, here comes the bad part: the can ricocheted off the stovetop before it headed for the floor, splattering me, the stove, cabinets, etc etc so that the whole scene looked something out of a slasher movie. A messy slasher movie.

And I also caught the can by the lid.

So I cut my hand, which made me scream (more in anger and pain than in fear), which brought the Hubby running, who saw the mess and thought I'd been shot. It might have been the chunk of tomato on my cheek.

Two things still piss me off: my hand really really hurts. And I didn't think to take a picture of the scene so that I could post it in the blog.

aaand we're back!

2008-01-29T06:28:00.000-06:00

Holy cow, the holidays really kicked my ass this year. We had a lovely Thanksgiving and Christmas, but there was way too much travel and fuss. There were some lovely moments, some of which I'll try to write about here, but I'm still catching up.

Here's a quick rundown of the Things I Learned This Holiday Season:

If I'm nuts, I come by it honestly because my mom is nuts, too. There were 18 people on the guest list for Thanksgiving and all but one showed up. I actually like large holiday gatherings but it requires an oh-what-the-hell attitude to actually be fun; instead, my mom went into overdrive to ensure that everything was perfect. And it was. But in the crazed run-up to the big day, she didn't have time to focus on her granddaughter, she couldn't hold a conversation about anything besides The Big Day, and she was wrecked afterward.

SweetBabyGirl and I spent way too much time watching TV and going to the playscape at the mall (where I caught some persistent bug that didn't depart until after Christmas).

Christmas was shaping up to be even worse, with more than 20 guests, but one lobe* of this extended gathering split off when it became clearly insane.

I also learned a thing or two about my own reaction to stress: I'd started planning Dada's birthday party--her birthday's December 29 and I was going to have a party at home with a bunch of kids--when the ax fell: I woke up with a headache, worrying about the guest list.

I got up, took something for the pain, then commenced with the vomiting and runs for much of the rest of the day. (Sorry to be so graphic, but the latter problem was why the anti-nausea drug wasn't working: couldn't keep anything down, couldn't keep anything up. So to speak.) Got more meds at the doctor's office and started to see daylight.

And the next day, I called the Spaghetti Warehouse and booked a table for Dada's birthday party, then invited the neighbors and a handful of others, all wonderful people willing to wear silly party hats to honor a 4-year-old. And we had a great time.

Lesson learned: the Perfect Gathering is a crazy goal. And the birthday girl had a blast--she kept turning to me and saying, thank you for my birthday party, Mommy. What a great kid. She deserves a fun party and a sane mother, which was just what she got.

*The lobe would include the following people: my mother's boyfriend's daughter's boyfriend, his brother, mother and stepfather and the stepfather's twin sons. Got that?

Another Reason Why I Love Austin...

2007-11-14T21:19:00.000-06:00

is because in Missoula, Montana they want to outlaw chickens in the city limits. A compromise ordinance would limit owners to six chickens and no roosters. [Click the title to this post for a link to an awesome video.]

Obviously, it needs saying: when roosters are outlawed, only outlaws will have roosters. You're safe with us, Stanley, rest assured.

Edited to add: I hate the way Blogger handles links. Hate.

Anger and Motherhood

2007-11-06T07:27:00.000-06:00

Part of the reason I chose the name "Pissed Off Mom" for this blog is that I'd discovered an ugly little secret about motherhood: you spend a lot of time really, really pissed off. The word "maternal" carries connotations of love and serenity but in my experience there's a huge measure of frustration, anger and craziness.

Case in point: a few weeks ago, SweetBabyGirl decided, out of the blue, that she wouldn't go with her beloved Coach Kelly into the gym for gymnastics class. Would. NOT. Do. It. The child had, up to then, adored 'nastics class and her coach.

And I got mad. Really mad. Seeing red. Literally, seeing red. Finally, I hauled the child to the car, drove home like a fucking maniac, and handed her over to her father so I wouldn't make it even worse. (So glad he works at home.) She spent at least an hour alone in her room while I ran a couple of errands.

Later, discussing my behavior, I had to admit that I was ashamed about my tantrum and my friend said, sensibly, well that's what people do.

The reasons for my anger aren't hard to figure out: I had been looking forward to some time where I could just knit and watch her have a good time (with somebody else in charge for a change). Hubby had been out of town earlier in the week. SBG had been a refusnik for days. I had needed a little break.

Anyway, here's the thing: parenting can make you crazy in lots of ways. For instance, every single day, there's something I can't find because either SBG wandered off with it, or I took it away and put it someplace where she couldn't reach it and forgot where it was (because I was busy dealing with the protests and explaining why it's not ok to play with whatever-it-was). Also, you have to deal with some baffling logic, as in this exchange:
Sweet Baby Girl: I want to play with [some toy].
Pissed-Off Mom: You want your [toy]? It's in your room--go upstairs and get it.
SBG: No! I'm scared!
POM: Huh? Of what?
SBG: I'm scared of the alarm! [meaning the motion sensor thingie on the wall with a light that flashes when somebody walks by]
POM: The alarm isn't on. It's not going to beep. [because a beeping alarm--or even the idea of it, is a horror to end all horrors.]
SBG: The light flashes at me! And that's rude.

Ok, then: how do I argue rationally with that? And we have conversations like that every day. She wants to be naked and then complains that she's cold. Getting her to wear clothes is a constant struggle. Keeping shoes on her is impossible. She refuses food at dinner and then announces, just as we're settling her into bed, that she's hungry and thirsty, even though we discussed this at length at dinnertime.

And she's not even that difficult a kid, by three-year-old standards.

No wonder the song refers to Mother's Little Helper, meaning Valium, or Miltown, or that old standby, alcohol.

I don't want to model anger like my parents did: seething that erupted in a rage that included throwing things or wielding the hairbrush. Plus bursts of irritability and cutting remarks. I do ok, most of the time, by taking a breath and stepping away for a minute. Timeout for mom AND kid.

And here's the lesson: some behavior (in this case, unexplained refusal to go along with the day's activities) might result in an angry parent who throws a fit, rants and raves (without calling names), then steps away when it's safe to do so, followed by a calm discussion of the behavior and future consequences of similar behavior.

Could be worse. I haven't managed to give up on my ideas about the Perfect Mother quite yet but I also know this: a perfect parent (if there could ever be such a thing) wouldn't do much good for showing their kid how to live life as an ordinary human being.

Gratitude List

2007-10-03T21:02:00.000-05:00

I've learned a great way of putting life into perspective, which is to make a gratitude list. Here's mine:

1. I'm grateful that my little darling girl can still be persuaded to eat vegetables, provided that I remember to make the rice using V-8 juice along with the water. Plus she still will eat wasabi peas. Sometimes edamame. And she demands that I let her use enough salt on them to de-ice the entire driveway, assuming we ever got that much ice. But still, it's a vegie. Technically.

2. I'm grateful that my neighbor didn't catch me laughing snidely at his little dog, who usually likes to do stuff like crap in our driveway in order to piss off our dogs when they're locked inside. Only Lucy was outside and all she had to do give Benito A Look and zip! he was gone.

The last time they tangled, Lucy had him on his back and was telling him all about how she was gonna eat his entrails and barf them back up in his face. I intervened and the neighbor was all, yeah, he's pretty obnoxious, he had it comin'.

3. I'm grateful that ragweed season is especially hellish this year, so that the cool early mornings--so perfect for sitting on the porch--are also enough to make me claw frantically at my eyeballs and clutch my sinuses in agony and ... wait, what exactly am I grateful for? I forget.

4. I'm grateful that my sweet baby girl refuses to wear clothes because it really makes it simple to do laundry. Except when she decides to take all her clothes out of the drawers to play fashion show--tying them around her waist and head, mostly, leaving most of her bits still enjoying the breeze--and then drag them around on the floor

Aw, who am I kidding.

Hair! Hair!

2007-09-03T21:07:00.000-05:00

My kid cut her own hair. It's a rite of passage, isn't it? Right? Hello? Why is everyone laughing?

My mom was visiting while the Hub was out of town for a week and I had the most exhausting week ever. Because we decided to reupholster chairs. Six chairs. Because we're nuts.

And while we were working, SweetBabyGirl was playing in the other room and said something about scissors and I thought hmmmm and went to check and... And! And!!

Well, at least her hair was in a ponytail and she couldn't cut it all the way to the skin. Like she did with the dog, upon whom she'd practiced before turning to her own hair. Good news: she didn't actually harm the dog. Bad news: the dog's got cancer and the steroids that are keeping the cancer at bay apparently slow down fur growth and said dog still has a bald patch where they shaved her for the IV when they did the MRI. And now several more, on her neck, and her sides, and the tip of her tail. She's a very patient dog.

The child's hair looks like a longish shag, circa mid-70's, only kind of asymmetrical, starting at the earlobe on the left and ending up about mid-arm length on the right.

I was so sad. Her hair was almost waist-length and so beautiful. I haven't even gotten around to scheduling a proper haircut because our regular hair cutter (for more than a decade!) moved to Scotland. Sigh.

Naturally, my mom thought it was freakin' hilarious. She managed not to laugh, at least not too much.

By the way, I never did that when I was a kid. Never.

What goes around...

2007-07-16T19:21:00.000-05:00

I've just figured out something downright cosmic. Behold:

This happened a few years ago: I was at Whole Foods, getting something out of the freezer case, and a mom with her toddler in the cart passed behind me. The boy was making mouth noises, a steady pflghgt, pflghgt, pflghgt, dopplering by behind me. I smiled and probably even chuckled a little. I turned in time to see the mom smile wearily and say, you're funny, you know that? to her kid.

Fast forward to today: I'm at HEB with SweetBabyGirl in the cart. We're in the organic food section (yes, our HEB segregates organic food from the rest of the food, the inorganic food, I guess). She's been peppering me with an unending stream of questions: What's that? What's tea tree oil for? Do we drink it? Why not? Why do you use it in the sauna? In the water that you throw on the rocks? Why? What's that? What's yookulippus? Is that for the sauna?

And on and on and on. I heard something and the guy stocking the shelves was smiling benignly and chuckling a little. And I smiled wearily and said, you're funny, you know that? to my kid. But what I thought was, you know, buddy, someday you're going to have a kid just like mine.

After I got home and was fixing dinner, I remembered that other mom at the store and wondered: did she have the same thought about me? If so, fair enough.

Broody

2007-07-05T09:21:00.000-05:00

One of our hens, Blanche*, has decided that she wants to hatch some eggs, so she's taken to sitting on the nest on some eggs. Her feathers are all fluffed and her head all scrooched down. Whenever I open the door to check on her she sort of coos at me.

The chicken-raising books suggest that I put her back to work laying eggs--they stop laying after they've accumulated a clutch of eggs--by taking away her eggs and shoving her off the nest. If she'd been pecking me viciously (as some of her sisters do when I grab eggs out from under them) I probably would, but instead she lets me stroke her feathers and just clucks and coos softly. How can I shove her off the nest after that?

Broody hens are kind of a remarkable phenomenon: they hatch any eggs that are on the nest, whether they are their own or anyone else's. Some chickens have been to known to hatch and nurture chicks of other species, like ducks or turkeys. Chicken raisers sometimes slide fake eggs under a broody hen, let her sit on them for a few days, then (at night, when she's sleeping) gently push day-old chicks from an incubator or the feed store under her--and she'll raise them as her own.

So, if she stays on the nest, we'll need to build a pen for her to raise her chicks in, so we can protect her and the chicks from varmits and the other chickens.

The urge to nurture apparently doesn't require a brain any larger than a smallish pea.

*Since we can't tell them apart, all of the Golden-Laced Wyandottes are named Blanche. All of the Rhode Island Reds are named Stella.

Aw, so cute. Also: being an adult sucks.

2007-06-30T16:01:00.000-05:00

I had this exchange with the SweetBabyGirl first thing this morning:

Pissed Off Mom [opening door to SBG's bedroom and approaching]: Good Morning! Did you sleep well?

SBG [smiling]: Yes. I sleep all night.

[Everybody smiles.]

SBG: What did you dream about?

POM [staring into the distance]: I dreamed that it rained and the roof came off of the garage and then the house fell down and then I woke up.

SBG: .....

POM: What a silly dream! [Laughs unconvincingly.]

SBG: [stretching luxuriously] I dreamed puppies and kittens and mommy puppies and mommy kittens.

The P Word

2007-06-08T22:48:00.000-05:00

She's said it twice now: Princess. As in, look at me, I'm a princess [wearing this thing I just put on backwards].

Could be worse, though. We had this exchange today:

SweetBabyGirl: When I grow up, I'm going to be a princess! Named Emily Elizabeth Ami!
POM [with fake smile]: Oh, really?
SBG: Yeah! [waves hand with three-fingered "devil" salute] ROCK AND ROLL!!!

Toddler Etiquette

2007-05-18T07:54:00.001-05:00

Here's a list of important social lessons I've had to teach my own Sweet Baby Girl:

1. Don't spit on Grandma's kitchen floor. No, really, I don't care if it's fun.

2. Don't point at someone you've just been introduced to (or even just happened to notice in the supermarket checkout line) and announce dramatically, I DON'T LIKE HIM!! It's ok not to like people, but it's not nice to tell them in a really loud, tragic voice.

3. Don't spit in the swimming pool. Again, even if it IS fun. Don't.

4. Watching TV while buck nekkid is fine, and so is playing in the kiddie pool. But we wear clothes to the bank.

5. Don't pick your nose and hand the result to Mommy. Give her a little warning, at least, ok?

6. Don't lick ketchup directly out of the shiny little cup that the waiter brought it in. And don't put that cup over your mouth and inhale so it stays there, looking like a little silver pig snout. No, it's NOT funny, Mommy was laughing at, um, something else.

7. We don't drink sauce directly out of the little cup, either, dear, we dip food in it first. No, not your napkin. And eat the food, too, dear, don't just suck the sauce off the food and dip it back into the sauce.

8. Use a spoon for ice cream, not chopsticks.

9. No, I don't care if the dog stole your ice cream when you dropped it. Let her have it, sweetie. No, you can't get it out of her mouth, it's Lucy's now.

Mother's Day, Looking Better

2007-05-18T07:47:00.000-05:00

Last year I complained about Mother's Day being a drag for the nominal honorees: crowded restaurants, cranky kids at same, blah blah blah. This year was better because we eliminated the restaurant part.

See, my mom's in Mexico with her Young Man, who takes her nice places,and we stayed here and I had biscuits and gravy prepared by my own personal Young Man. Plus, he said I could call him Pool Boy all day, as in "Dance, Pool Boy, Dance." Which was fun, too.

Lunch was less fun, as we had it at Costco: a quarter-pound hotdog at Costco, with mustard! Whoo hooo. Plus, I had to tell Pool Boy to go get me some flowers, dammit. Like, now. And hand him my Costco card.

Heh. Anyway, we go celebrate my own personal mom next weekend at her lake house. Where I intend to spend my time laying about calling, refill my drink, Pool Boy! And dance, while you're at it! You hear me? Dance!!

The worst part? I had a hideous migraine yesterday, almost certainly caused by the champagne in my mandatory Mom's Day Mimosa. Dammit. It was Piper-Heidseik! That's some seriously tasty (and not cheap) stuff.

Pool boy was out of town but managed to line up a babysitter before he left (thank God for the neighborhood kids) so that I could sleep off the drugs, which eliminated the nausea but not the actual pain.

Still, a very nice mother's day, especially now that I've lowered my expectations appropriately.

Snails

2007-05-02T16:50:00.000-05:00

What you see here is proof of how weird and obsessive we are at my house: I've been waging a personal War on Snails, OCD'ing my way around the yard (and the neighbors' yards) gathering snails in my little orange bucket so I can feed them to the chickens.

The chickens are getting less enthusiastic about the whole thing. Typically, when I approach the coop with the bucket, they cluster around the door, clucking happily. Household leftovers make them happiest, especially the leftover muffins. They also like anything leafy and green. When I dump snails, though, they all cluck, Aaw, snails again? Hmph. I have watched the girls eating the snails, and I love the clever way they grab the fleshy part and shake them out of their shells. (Stanley the Rooster, by the way, has shown zero interest in the snails, aside from a brief glance when I accidentally bounced one off his back.) Besides, it's free protein (and the chickens are providing us with lots of protein, five or six eggs a day, total).

Most of all, though, I loathe snails. I hate it when I forget to watch where I step and crunch on one (barefoot is really nasty) and I hate they way they have proliferated in the recent wet weather and have been everywhere, stripping plants and leaving slime behind. I loathe them almost as much as slugs, and count myself immensely lucky to have not been enduring the kind of slug plagues we saw now and then in North Carolina. I used to keep slug tongs handy (no lie) to pick them off the plants. But now I get to feed their repulsive cousins to creatures who are much more deserving. Even if the deserving are getting tired of the constant Escargot Supplement to their usual pellets and grain.

The other weird part? Is that my husband set up a tripod and took a dozen lovely photos of a bucket of snails. Whatta freak.

Disney Tat

2007-04-27T22:57:00.000-05:00

Good news: the moustache eventually washed off. Now she's rocking the body art.