The Bigger They Get

Dona at Clutch Cargo Lips tagged me for this meme.  She said in her post that she tagged six people whose blogs she reads but who don’t read her own.  She couldn’t be more wrong.  I read her faithfully but Dona, I swear I’ll stop if you keep scaring me.  Your post today brought back long repressed memories of all those afternoons I spent as a kid glued to the TV screen covering my eyes and peeing myself in fear.

But wasn’t Quentin adorable?

So, six unspectacular things about me.  Hmmm.  Too  many to choose from…

1.  Re: The Above - I don’t watch scary movies or read scary books anymore.  I used to love scary stuff, especially Stephen King novels.  That ended when I read Pet Sematary and found myself terrified of my own two year old when the main character reanimates his dead child with horrifying results.  Besides, real life is a whole lot scarier than fiction and I now spend all my time covering my eyes during the freaking evening news.  And also the cable news shows.  And when driving, I’m sticking my fingers in my ears and singing NAHNAHNAHNAH during political commercials which isn’t safe since my hands are supposed to be on the steering wheel.

2. I’m so agitated by current events and all the @#f*csh!t going on right now in politics and the financial sector that I have a raging case of uncontrollable mental and verbal f*&^*Sh!tLIPsticK tourettes and can no longer &%#BitcHbailOUT* discuss any of it rationally or present any sort of respectful, dignified ^#%@gddamCr00ks&*% arguments.  Yet I can’t tear my eyes away from the train wreck that is our economy and our uncertain political future to the extent that I have to remind myself to shower and eat.  I had a nightmare last night in which all American women were told they must style their hair just like Sarah Palin’s but mine was too short.  I awoke in a panic.  I’m also thoroughly pissed that I’m too chickenshit to put an Obama sign on our lawn for fear of offending any potential home buyers who might be McCain supporters because we can’t sell this damn house because of the ECONOMIC POLICIES (OR LACK THEREOF) OF THE CURRENT REPUBLICAN ADMINISTRATION &*%bAsTARds$#@.

3.  The thing I love most about Shake ‘n Bake chicken is the swill left in the bottom of the pan.

4.  I read.  A lot.  As in ALL THE TIME.  Whatever I can get my hands on.

5.  I am using this meme as an excuse not to work this morning.

6.  Like Mrs. G., I have a few secret boyfriends but CHOCOLATE is my lover.  I dream of hot, steamy chocolate dipped in gooey chocolate covered in chocolate smothered in chocolate layered between satiny soft chocolate rolled in chocolate drizzled in chocolate.  Mmmmmm.  Better yet, all of that delivered by George Clooney.  Wearing chocolate pants.

Okay, I’m going to tag some of my favorite academic chickies who need to do something unrelated to things like composition and rhetoric and literature and literary criticism and textual theory and thinking up assignments and grading papers and attending classes and, and, and…well, they NEED a distraction.  So, Lady Audley, Rhetorical Twist, Teacher Poet and DocHoc, spill…Also gonna tag Nutmeg and Jen at Thursday Drive.  Have at it ladies.  Here are the rules:

Meme Terms and Conditions

1. Link to the person who tagged you.
2. Mention the rules on your blog.
3. List six unspectacular things about you.
4. Tag six other bloggers by linking to them.

What does it mean for the coming year when I wake up on the morning of my birthday to find the scroll wheel on my mouse suddenly working backwards?  Or is it upside down?

Down is up and up is down and I had to get Son Two to confirm it was the mouse and not me having a stroke.

It’s like I imagine it would be to wake up and find myself driving a car in England or flushing a toilet in Australia; a little dizzy-making.

Some great big Cosmic Birthday Joke, I guess.

So NOT funny, Universe…

Dear Son Two,

Thank you for your patience this week.  This letter is late and I’m ashamed of myself.  Not because I got drunk at the pig roast on Saturday (turns out I didn’t) but because I should have written this last Sunday.  Instead I spent the day visiting Scarlett and Rhett at Tara and listening to Scarlett rave about the funeral she went to last week.  The BEST music.  The MOST BEAUTIFUL flowers.  The TASTIEST lunch.  Promise me that when I start viewing funerals as exciting social occasions you will smother me with my pillow.

Then I should have gotten to it Monday, but a good friend’s dear child was experiencing a meltdown and I was needed there.

Then there was Tuesday and I too much work to catch up on from Monday.

And then on Wednesday we were ALL busy helping said friend’s child and wreaking the havoc that shall not be spoken of here.  You know what I’m talking about.  Wednesday evening I came down with the Black Death and Thursday was a blur of misery.  Now here it is Friday and you have been 20 for six days already.

Just because I didn’t write your letter doesn’t mean I didn’t spend any time on your birthday reminiscing about the day you joined our family.  The details might be a little hazy to you, but I remember them clearly.  You, sweet child, are our favorite souvenir from our two + years in New Hampshire, even if you were born three weeks late during the hottest summer on record.  We did nothing but play Scrabble for those last three weeks.  I have always been a sore loser and not a particularly good winner and I was fat and grumpy and hormonal and it took Dad 15 years to agree to play Scrabble with me again. Heh.

When my water finally broke, it was Labor Day.  I should have guessed that would happen.

You were my easiest labor and delivery and an absolutely beautiful newborn.  The time we spent in the hospital would have been perfect if we hadn’t gotten the roommate from hell.  She was loud and whiny and had a grating, nasal voice that made me want to stab myself with a fork.  She kept going on and on about how beautiful you were and how ugly her baby was in comparison.  I found her disloyalty shocking and infuriating.  How could she say such a thing about her own newborn child?

And then she showed me her baby.

Oh. My. God.  The poor child was proof that Sasquatch exists and can successfully mate with homo sapiens.  I think I mumbled something about how cute his fingers were.  I was polite enough not to mention his tail or his unibrow.

You were gorgeous, but you didn’t make him look bad, believe me.  He did that all by himself.

When we brought you home, you proved to be the kind of baby sleep deprived moms of cranky babies accuse other new mothers of lying about.  You slept through the night on your first night at home and every night thereafter (except for some nights during your teen years when I innocently thought you were sleeping but you apparently weren’t home.  I’m not quite ready to laugh about those yet, so wait a few more years before bringing that up at the Thanksgiving table, okay? )

When you turned three and began experiencing chronic - ah - digestive upsets, we were scared to death.  The doctors tested you for all kinds of horrible scary things and we had to wait days and sometimes weeks for the results.  This went on for over a year before you began experiencing migraine headaches and it occurred to the doctors that you’d been experiencing abdominal migraines all that time.  On the one hand we were incredibly relieved to find out that the problem wasn’t life threatening.  On the other, those damn chronic migraines colored your entire childhood, affected your school experience and social development, and made your life so difficult that we despaired.

You, however, knew nothing different.  As painful and bumpy as your life was, your experience with chronic illness helped shaped you into the sweet, compassionate man whom we are SO PROUD of and love so deeply.

Of our three children, you are the one who seems to have been gifted with the most massive quantities of your dad’s redneck genes; you are the NASCAR fan, the one whose political views I sometimes find shocking.  But you are a thinker and your arguments are informed and reasoned and your knowledge of so many topics is broad and often surprising.  Sometimes I fear your views of the world and certain issues in particular are too bleak and too black and white, so the other day when you told me you thought you might actually vote for Obama after all because you see more hope and optimism coming from his campaign I was thrilled.  Not necessarily because you’d vote for Obama (although I’m still doing a happy dance) but because I take that as a sign that your world view continues to mature and deepen.  You are already AMAZING and getting more amazing all the time.

You are an incredibly talented photographer.  I hope you find a way to make photography your life’s work if that’s what you want.  I see how passionate you are about it and how happy it makes you and I wish for you to always be that passionate and happy about many things in your life.  Except maybe the Death Metal and the mosh pits.  Oh, and the Urban Exploring.  It’s risky.  You could get hurt.  Or arrested.

I know, I know.  You’re saying, Stop being a mom.

Sorry, pal.  No can do.

Happy, happy 20th birthday, sweetheart.  I love you.

Mom

…isn’t a good idea.

Dear Son Two,

Today is your 20th birthday!  The beginning of your 3rd decade!  I must write your birthday post.  However, see above post title.

I know you got enough of your father’s redneck genes to totally appreciate why your birthday post will be a little late.

So, for now, I love you and I’ll write soon.

Happy Birthday, Sweetheart!

Mom

P.S.  For some reason I was unable to find a photo to steal online that was a good representation of “drunk blogging from a pig roast in a hurricane”.  But I expect to have suitable photos of my own by tonight.

Lots of moms are blogging this week about their back to school experiences with the kiddies.  Not me.  While y’all are packing lunches, driving car pools, filling out and signing forms, shopping for school supplies, handling early morning meltdowns (theirs and yours), and helping with homework, I’m SLEEPING LATE and thinking about you and thanking God we’re done with all that.

I will avoid the temptation to say NEENER, NEENER, NEENER!!! Because I’m totally mature now and also because I know if I said that you’d just say, “Well, yeah, but you’re OLD!”

And you’d be right.  But not too old to remember what it was like.  And truthfully?  I’d rather be old.

I admit, all of the back to school bloggage this week has made me a little nostalgic.  So I dug through some of the papers I saved (three kids x 12 years of school each plus preschool - I have LOTS of papers) and found some oldies but goodies to share with you.  Those of you with really young kids will get an idea of what you have to look forward to.  Those of you with older kids will nod your heads and say, thank God my kid’s not the only one…

There are plenty more where these came from (I’m still looking for the list of things I found in my 7th grade son’s locker when we cleaned it out in June of that year.  Oh my, my my).

First up,  Daughter was in fourth grade when she wrote the following:

In the event this is difficult to read, let me clarify: Daughter did not go to school in an Elm tree.  That was her 4th grade abbreviation for Elementary.  The line that slays me is, I went in a normal child and came out a mature person.

And she spent the next few years insisting we treat her like an adult.  Fun times.

I can’t wait until she has kids so I can ask her to define “normal child” for me.

On to Son One.  This first paper is from 10th grade.  Oy.

If you need to click to enlarge that so you can read it, it’s worth it.  It will make you feel SO much better about your kid.

Son One also brought home this evaluation of a speech he gave in Public Speaking:

“Could be more engaging?”  Really?  He seems like a total sweetheart to me.  My guess is that teacher had it in for him…*choke* *splutter*

And our last example of gray-hair-and-wrinkle-inducing schoolwork for today comes courtesy of Son Two, written while in 7th grade:

Does anyone else feel like the next line should be “Before I’m forced to eat Coma Guy”?

I don’t have a clue what instructions Ms. Dauhmer gave the kids for this assignment, but my mind spins with grisly possibilities.

Well, that’s it for today folks.  I’ve got to get going if I’m going to have time to not pack lunches while not helping with homework and not looking for forms that don’t have to be returned tomorrow and that didn’t get lost somewhere between school and home.

If I have a chance when I’m not so busy not doing school-related stuff, I’ll see what else I can dig up in the Kids’ School Stuff Box to post here from time to time.

The little Brownie Girl Scout in me who marched in parades carrying the flag in small white-gloved hands, who saluted that flag proudly every morning in grammar school, who laid wreaths at the war memorial on the high school football field, who decorated her bike with bunting and streamers every 4th of July and who grew up so proud of America, believing with all her heart that she could do anything because she was lucky enough to be born here - she’s BACK!

She spent the last eight years curled up in the fetal position sucking her thumb, frightened, depressed and, worst of all, ashamed - and feeling ashamed for being ashamed - but during Obama’s acceptance speech her ears perked up and her heart swelled and she stood up and sang at the top of her lungs:

I HAVE SOMETHING IN MY POCKET THAT BELONGS ACROSS MY FACE,
I KEEP IT VERY CLOSE AT HAND IN A MOST CONVENIENT PLACE.
I’M SURE YOU COULDN’T GUESS IT IF YOU GUESS A LONG, LONG WHILE,
SO I’LL TAKE IT OUT AND PUT IT ON
IT’S A GREAT BIG BROWNIE SMILE!

I was so happy to see her I found myself crying tears of joy.

I’ve really missed that kid.

P.S. I must also say this: While Obama brings many kinds of wonderful to this election, one of the qualities I most admire in him is his maturity. For instance, I know for a FACT that had I been the one delivering that speech there’s no way, upon reaching the word “nuclear” in the text, I could have avoided the temptation to say:

NU-CLEE-AR. GEORGE, DID YOU HEAR THAT? I SAID NU-CLEE-AR.

While driving through Licking County, Ohio I found myself wondering, Do Licking County residents eat tongue sandwiches?

Found while traveling through Maryland yesterday:

Nanny Goats in Panties wrote a terrific post about running away from home as a little girl. Her post brought back memories.

I ran away once. I was eight.

I don’t remember what I was pissed about. My kid sister probably touched something on my side of our bedroom and no doubt Mom refused to beat the crap out of her, banish her, or shave her head and lock her in the basement. She always was Mom’s favorite.

Whatever, it was The Final Straw. I huffed and I puffed. I stomped outside and found myself a hobo stick. I stomped back in slamming doors and mumbling all sorts of nastiness. Mom was sewing at the dining room table. Right under her nose, I tied up a bandanna filled with peanut butter crackers, M&M’s, a book, and a deck of Old Maid cards. Mom said nothing. I hung it from my stick. Still she said nothing. I slung it over my shoulder. The bandanna came untied and it all fell out. She smiled.

I tied up my provisions again and stomped to the front door yelling, I’m leaving and I’m never coming back.

I just knew the threat of losing me forever would be more than Mom could bear. She would come running, apologize profusely and, sobbing, she would beg me to stay.

Any second now.

Right………now.

Okay. NOW.

Crap. She couldn’t let me just leave, could she?

Please don’t shout, she said. You’ll wake your baby brother. Oh, and you might want to take a sweater. It’ll get chilly when the sun sets.

If I had known the word, at that point I would have thought Oh, shit, now what? But in 1968 polite little girls didn’t know that word. And prideful little girls followed through on their threats. So I left, slamming the door again on the way out. That, at least, was satisfying.

Our street dead ended at a small ravine with a creek running through the bottom of it. We were forbidden to play there, so naturally that’s where I headed. I sat and ate my crackers, read my book, imagined how worried Mom must be, played with my cards, dropped rocks into the creek, fantasized about the police finding me and then lecturing Mom about how she’d better be nicer to me. I ate the M&M’s, got my feet wet, looked for tadpoles…

All of this took about twenty minutes.

Nobody came looking for me.

I was bored and the shadows were getting kind of creepy. I swallowed my pride and went home.

I never ran away again because my early experience of life on the street taught me an important lesson - a lesson I made excellent use of throughout my teen years. This is what I learned: I could make my mom’s life a lot more unpleasant without missing any meals or risking exposure to the elements by simply staying home and being a miserable bitch.

What about you? Have you ever run away from home? Write a post about it and send me the link. I’ll post all the links next Saturday. Please share this with anyone else you think might want to participate. The more the merrier…

When you start to suspect that your good days might be the hormonal ones, that’s bad isn’t it?