Stupid Things I Did Today & Other Oddities & Observations

Winters were different when I was a kid!

2010-06-21T17:09:00.000-07:00

There is no way around it, if you live in Michigan, it’s about to snow, like it or not, it will happen, all those people who say "oh it's so beautiful" are nuts, the snow and sludge and the flu are right around the corner.

This brings up the subject of my son and the designer $21 hat. My son has been begging for this hat, watching ebay auctions daily for this hat, but I simply could not handle paying that much money for a stupid hat, I don’t care what letters are on the side of it, or how cool it is, I’m not paying $21 for a hat. He won’t even wear a winter coat, but he must have the hat with so and so, what cha ma callit’s letters on the side, so grandma made sure to tell me to buy him that hat with the money she gave me to help pay for his school clothes.

When I was young, and it really snowed, not the small little pretend amount of snow we get today, I remember having to get up an extra half hour earlier, just so I’d have time to get dressed to go out in the snow to go to school. First, I had to put on two pairs of socks, not because I had bad socks, but because it’s cold out and that’s what we did one pair of regular white socks and then a pair of my dad’s itchy wool socks to “keep us warm”. Then we had “long-johns,” keep in mind this was before the advent of designer jeans, or even wearing jeans to school in the first place. After the long johns, we put on some lovely polyester pants that grandma sewed for us, and then crying and whining we’d hear “why didn’t we like the color, that’s just too bad, the material was on sale. So we shut up or we’ll have something to really cry about” and put on a shirt, then a sweater, then snow pants, then a jacket, then a scarf, and then of course a hat, no, not a cute hat, one that grandma crocheted. Next, with the balance of a world class ballerina, I'd slide across the kitchen floor to the cupboards and grab the bread bags, one for each foot, so on top of the two pairs of socks, one regular and one itchy kind, we slid our feet into the bread bags, then at last into our boots (One size too big so they'll fit for one more year).

Finally, sweating like fat men in a sauna, we put on our mittens (not gloves, “they don’t keep you warm”, mittens!) trying to hold on to my homework that slid right out of my mitten hands, we tromped through the snow and off to school. Stopping to throw snowballs at all the other kids forced to dress like some kind of crazy clown people, from a crazy clown person planet, my homework ended up a wet glob in my pocket and falling over, not once, or twice, but at least ten times on the way to school, which wasn’t even a whole 200 yards from my front door, was somewhat of a daily ritual. When I’d finally try to get up, my boots slipping and sliding on the ice, somehow, someway an elusive chunk of snow would find its way past the purple polyester pants, slide through the long johns, up and under and around, the snow pants (that were too big so they’d last more than one year) through the wonder bread logo under two layers of socks and freeze my toes. Now, I would have to stop, make a pile of snow to sit on, take off my mittens and the scarf around my face (because I was now sweating up a storm and couldn’t breathe), take off the offending boot, get the wonder bread bag off and take off the soaking wet socks, to get to that chunk of snow. Once I managed to get rid of the snow, I had to remain balanced as I hopped on one foot to catch the bread bag had taken flight and would most certainly get away. Then I'd go through the entire process of putting the wet socks on my wet freezing foot, put on the broken bag and get it just right so the wonder bread logo faced out, put on the boot, and make it go back under the snow pants and then of course find my hat. I lost it somehow amongst the drama of getting the snow out of my sock. I was sure to get frost bite if I hadn’t removed to gigantic chunk of snow from my sock, and then I’d have to go to the hospital and get my foot cut off. My mom said if I didn’t keep the bags on my feet the frost would bite them and they would get cut off.

Hearing the school bell I was well on my way to my first ulcer because I was so worried and I would have to face the fact that mom was not going to be happy that I lost another hat, she swore I threw them away, and that’s the whole reason I didn’t get store bought hats, because I’m just going to lose them anyway. As the school bell rang in the distance, I wasn’t even close to the door, the teacher would call my mom, and I would have to explain why, even though I left a half hour early to get to a location only 200 yards from my front door, how in the world, could I lose one piece of homework (the soaking wet blob in my pocket, that was once my spelling homework) and also be late. I must have been dawdling, I swore I wasn’t dawdling, I didn’t even know what dawdling was, how could I be doing it. Of course, my mom would never have understood the dramatic series of events that ended in a phone call from the teacher (the ultimate crime), and the paper that was eventually shredded into a million pieces in the dryer, what was supposed to do?

Occasionally my mom would attempt to crochet a hat herself, oh my goodness. I got to pick out the yarn, so I’d have the baby blue I wanted, but she, being the original type A personality (probably where I got it from), would crochet and take apart, and crochet and take apart the same hat so many times, that the yarn was just some sort of pieced together assembly of fringed string. I better wear that hat, after all the work she did making if for me because I wanted that baby blue, I better wear it and I better not lose it, or she’d give me something to really cry about.

Did grandma think of any of this when she plopped down $21 for the object of my son's desires, that designer hat, the one he had to have? I don’t think it even occurred to her, but the thing is, my kid loves that stupid hat, he wears it 24/7, I’m not kidding, it’s his favorite thing, if it gets lost I’m the one who will be hearing it and I’ll be the one in trouble for the hat getting lost. I guess some things just don’t change, but one thing I am sure of, never in a hundred years will we find a bread bag big enough for my son’s size 13 foot.

Made of sugar and spice

2009-10-03T19:45:00.001-07:00

I take care of two little girls for 5 hours every day. I brought up boys, so I figured I could handle a couple little girls 3 ½ and 1 ½, I think I may have mislead myself in thinking that girls could not be any more difficult than boys. I am beginning to learn girls are very strange little creatures and I was crazy to think kids are kids; little girls are very, very different, from little boys.

The people I babysit for live off in the woods, I grew up in Detroit, where there are an occasionally squirrel or rat, but not too many varmints roaming around. When we first moved to the “country” we would all look in awe at the pretty deer off in the cornfields, now we know them for what they really are, car smashing, grill bashing monsters that jump in front of cars for the pure pleasure of having you go get yet another estimate for body damage. I really think they are conspiring with the car repair shops in the area. Needless to say, I am still not used to the creatures and bugs that live here. It took two years to finally fight the cricket noises and get a whole night’s sleep. I’m used to sounds of traffic, sirens and garbage trucks, but crickets caused me many sleepless hours when I first arrived in the country.

On a gorgeous summer afternoon, the older girl (let’s call her Annie) and I were outside enjoying the last of the warm weather when I heard an earth-shattering scream… I thought Annie had been shot. Seriously, I have never heard a scream like that. She wasn’t more than 10 feet away from me, and hunting season is still a month away, Annie bound off the swing like an Olympic athlete scaring me, scaring herself, and scaring all the little forest creatures that were playing nearby. There was no blood to be seen, she seemed to be in perfect working order, as she ran her little butt off to jump on me, still screaming (I had an ear ache for a week) I quickly assessed the situation and she didn’t seem to be in any pain. So screaming, “what’s wrong, what’s wrong” all I could get out of her was a finger pointing towards her swing set. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to investigate or not. By the sound of the scream, I might be in for some sort of fight. Slowly, very slowly, I walked, practically tip-toeing towards the object of her torment, and I saw nothing.

As we approached the swing set her grip became comparable to Hulk Hogan’s, leaving a bruise on my arm that stayed purple for a week. Her little heart was beating out of her chest as she pointed at the offending object. It was a stick, that is it a stick, stuck to the swing set, I couldn’t see anything else, until the stick started to move. Ughhhh, I wanted to scream myself, it took all of my power to remain calm in this very scary situation. The stick was moving, it had a little head and a bunch of little stick legs, and I was in fear for I had never seen anything like this in my life, except maybe on the discovery channel.

Once we deduced the stick wasn’t going to harm us in anyway, Annie became the explorer, inching closer and closer to this weird bug. I wanted to hang back, but curiosity got the best of me too. Well a long story short, we named him Mike, and after playing with Mike for a while he seemed to slow down quite a bit. Oh, no, I thought we killed him. Annie is quite the animal lover and if Mike died now, I’d never hear the end of it. So, after getting Mike to walk on to another stick, I carried him off into the woods, so he could go visit his mommy and daddy.

For about a week after that, we had to check all around in the woods for Mike, keep in mind, he looked like a stick, so for the many little sticks there are in the woods, Annie would say, “here he is, look, look”, an equal amount of times, and then no, it was just a stick, it wasn’t Mike. I feel very silly searching the woods, full of sticks, trying to find a stick bug that at one time almost gave me a heart attack.

The good thing about babysitting little kids, is that I can act like a little kid, and no one is the wiser. I can search the woods for little stick bugs, and make sand castles all day long if I want to. Growing up in the city, all I ever knew about animals was what I saw on National Geographic, there are no stick bugs in Detroit, I’m pretty sure of that. So, I get paid, to investigate where little creatures come from and what berries are ok to eat and which ones aren’t. I don’t know, but Annie does, she tells me “that’s a mulberry silly”. I wonder, is this the stupid berry they sang a song about. Annie pops them in her mouth one after the other, her daddy taught her which ones were ok and which ones were not. All I know is, I still refuse to put anything in my mouth that did not come from a grocery store. If it hasn’t been processed and shrink wrapped I’m not going near it, I gotta draw the line somewhere. I am still a city girl at heart.

The magnificent common scents of motherhood!

2009-09-29T21:50:00.000-07:00

I just gotta know, why do boys take such pleasure in how much they can stink up a room. You know I'm right, farts, of course, the louder the better, but they are not embarrassed they are proud. If you don't happen to be in the room when it happens, you'll hear, "hey mom, come here I gotta show you something", walk into the room and it's like you got hit with a freight train. Mom's you know this is true. But it's not just farts.

Smelly arm pits, they never want to hug you, but look out when they've just got done playing football, or exercising and sweating up a storm, "come here mom", I just throw the soap at him, and run in the other direction. As you may know we went out of town this weekend to see my mother. Imagine my embarrassment when she says to me, one of the boys needs a shower bad. I'm like, oh, great, they both had showers before we left home, we were only in the car, how can they stink already. So I go and check it out, no smell, I'm not shy about it, I tell them, "come here", and I smell them, it's a mothers dream isn't it, to find the source of the offensive odor so we can somehow get rid of it. But, they don't smell, I ask my mom, "are you sure?". We haven't been to visit in almost 2 years, and we are there for less than an hour before my boys are stinking up her house, talk about delighted. Well a few hours later we discover the source of the offending odor. SOCKS, yikes, enough to just make you sick. Well you can't convince the boys, if you don't wear socks, then you get your shoes all smelly, then you wear socks after that, and the smell gets passed around, etc. etc.

Since this recent observation my son has now become quite proud of his new odor and he will hide his socks in my room. Funny kid, why does he think it's so humorous, and why will he choose to put up with the smell, just to terrorize my nose. Teenagers have so many issues, problems, hormones, so why does it give them such pleasure to hold the title of the smelliest shoes?

I don't understand why a kid who has to have the best, most expensive, pair of air somebody's shoes, (seriously they cost more than my first car did), why does it give him such pleasure to be smellier than his brothers. "Here mom smell, who's are worse, mine or his". Why in the world when something smells bad do you need to get confirmation, "here mom, does this smell bad?" OMG! Why does he need me to confirm, that yes indeed, he wins the award for the most expensive smelly shoes in the house.
These are the boys who have to have the most expensive soaps, body washes, shampoos, deodorants and colognes, for what? I spend more on my sons cosmetics than my own, but no amount of cologne will cover the smell of dirty socks, I'm not sure how to convince them that it only makes it worse, a combination of socks and cologne is just as raunchy, there is no way around it, they need to take a shower, and wear clean socks, they go together, you have to do both, that's it, no way around it, no amount of expensive smelly stuff can ever cover the odor of a teenage boy after football. Gotta love em... The joys of motherhood are magnificent!

Can you hear me now?

2009-09-27T23:34:00.000-07:00

I know they hear me! I know it! They just pretend they don't, who? teenagers. Won't listen to a word I say, clean your room, stop doing that, let the dog out, do the dishes. Why do I have to repeat these things over and over and over? But, say I'll probably be able to take you to Game Stop next week. It is as if it's written in stone. Then I hear, "but you said", "when are we going", will you help me buy this or that, can I look on the computer to see how much it costs. I say, "when are the dishes going to be done?", here comes every parents favorite word. "LATER", can't I do it later?, then he goes to bed. Hmm? He's snoring away and the dishes are stacked to the ceiling. Nope, I'm not going to do them, I refuse, the next day the stack gets higher. As he jumps off the bus, mom, "when are we going to Game Stop". UGH, I say when are you doing the dishes, "LATER", ok, no stop. Now my "nerves are a million" as my best friend likes to say. But he wants to know when we are going to Game Stop. Grandma gave him $10 he must spend it! Everyone knows there is NOTHING at Game Stop for $10. It's obvious I'm going to have to "help" pay for it. I'll do anything, if he'll just wash the dishes, that now are over flowing everywhere, flies are swooping down around my head, comicazi bugs are flying everywhere. I swear to myself, I will not do the dishes! We can't eat cuz there's not a dish to eat off of. The Boy wants to know when I'm going to cook dinner again, we are very much sandwich people. But I refuse to cook "real food" if there is not a real plate to eat off. I have taken to using paper plates, a teen age boy's idea of clean dishes and mine differ quite a bit! Once upon a time when he was about 7 he decided that if a dish got broken, then he'd get out of the dishes somehow. The boy managed to break about 14 dishes before I caught on to his motives. Then I made him buy new dishes with his allowance money. Money he has to earn, by what? By doing the dishes! I have stopped going behind him and re-washing them. It's only me and my 14 year old son. I don't eat off of dishes. There are never any clean. But if they are "clean" there's greasy stuck on stuff I can't identify on them, and honestly I'm afraid of what food borne illness I'm about to be telling the emergency room doctor about next.

Why is it that I can be having a conversation with a friend, across the room, whispering, and the boy can hear every detail of what I said, but when I yell "let the dog out" in his face, he can't hear a thing?
I went out of town for 2 days. I simply can not see everybody in 2 days, less really when you consider sleep time. I can't help it, when I go back home I'm so popular, why didn't anyone want to see me when I lived there?
But I saw who I could and had a great time, chatting it up with my best girlfriends, and then I come home.

It was a good trip, when we got home life hadn't skipped a beat... "mom, when are we going to the store, but you said......" I say, "but you said.... you'd do the dishes..."

Come on the whole reason I had a kid was so I wouldn't have to do the dishes anymore, it would have been cheaper just to buy a dishwasher, but a dishwasher can't hug me like my son can, so I'm sure I'll end up taking him to the store and "helping" him, and I'm sure the dishes will quickly stack back up again. But, ya gotta love him. Thought I'd buy a dishwasher but I have nightmares of hearing, "why didn't you put the dishes in the dishwasher?"

When Will I Ever Learn?

2009-09-21T23:10:00.000-07:00

Do not wipe a smudge off the wall, do not do it, it is tempting but… I am about to make a grievous error in judgment, now there's a big clean mark on my dirty wall. I can't just leave it there, a big white spot on a cigarette stained bathroom wall. The marks from condensation running down my cigarette smoke stained wall are like little streams of cleanliness. Now what am I going to do about the clean mark on the wall? Ok, I know I’m not the only one who does this, but most people have the good sense not to admit it for all the world to know. I on the other hand can't think straight enough to write what I am supposed to be writing so, I'll share the events of the evening with you.

Now that there is an obvious clean smudge on the wall, to tackle the other bigger smudges, I have to actually get the cloth wet. There is no way I am going to clean the whole wall, it’s 1am for God’s sake, and here I am cleaning the bathroom, how did this happen? So, cautiously using the cloth I carefully smear and smudge the dirty parts of the wall into the clean parts, blending it together as I go. After many years of practice I have perfected the technique, you must have the dampness perfected to prevent a bigger clean mark on your dirty wall. The wall is now smudged all over, so you can’t tell what is dirty and what’s clean anymore. Obviously, I have just made the whole wall dirty again, but it’s not AS dirty as when I started. At this point, I've done just as much work as it would have taken to just clean the damn wall to begin with. But I'm exhausted

At 1am, I wonder how did I end up cleaning the bathroom? Why aren't I sleeping. That's what I should be doing (in a perfect world, but not living in the Brady household, nor is my last name Jetson or Flintstone, due to circumstances beyond my control I am in fact, to my dismay, cleaning the bathroom in the middle of the night.

The following mistake is just as bad, if not worse. While smudging the wall forced to bend over, I was unfortunately made aware of the mess around the bottom of the toilet (especially true when you have teenage boys in your household, although girls are certainly just as guilty as boys). It is too tempting, so I push the stupid little toilet rug that never stays in place anyway, and use it to wipe up the puddle of who knows what with the bright blue rug that doesn’t match anything.

On sale for only a $1 at Wal-Mart I purchased that ugly blue rug to use as camouflage. I have never cared for those ridiculous toilet cut-out fuzzy rugs, and really don't understand the rug that goes on top of the toilet seat, that makes the toilet seat fall down (that's a whole other topic) but I had to cover up the cigarette burn marks on the floor. Come on, if you smoke, and you are honest, I know you have smoked the evening’s last cigarette while on the toilet for your last pee for the night. Just sitting down feels so good, so I just sit there and feel the sensation of ahhh, relaxation, sitting there no one is bugging me (they had the good sense to go to bed hours ago. So I sit, and I smoke and I might possibly doze off slightly (understandably) I might drop the cigarette, and wake up because my butt is numb from the toilet seat, and the cigarette left an ugly brown mark on my cheap tile floor. What am I going to tell the landlord, darn, and why don’t I ever learn, it happens a couple times a month, you would think I would stop doing it, for Goodness’s sake? Now, totally exhausted I think to myself, well it’s half clean anyway… before I get out of bed tomorrow the bathroom will be trashed again anyway, so what’s the point.

At 2am I am going to get into bed, that is it, this day is over. Lighting my second last cigarette for the night I fall asleep, the cigarette smolders up some paper I told my son not to put in the ashtray. Why should this time be any different, I am tired so I do the dumbest thing you can do, but I do it every time something catches fire in the ashtray, so why should I remember not to BLOW in the ashtray this time, after all it will only spew ashes and burning paper all over my bed? Maybe I should quit smoking just because of the fire damage.

Wide-awake again I remember that when I sat down to write my blog and assignment for the night; was when I originally made the God-awful smudge wiping error. So my brain being mush, not being able to think, much less write anything sensible I say to myself, if I don’t laugh I'm gonna cry, so why not share the experience with some of my closest friends. So please enjoy my new additional blog to my original blog, I believe it will be titled, stupid things I did today!
It's 3am, now, I’m going to sleep…