Monthly Archives: April 2012

I jot notes down to myself when something comes my way that might be fun to write about here on Mama Boe.  Sometimes when I don’t have paper, I’ll just send myself an email via my phone, and jog my memory that way.  Then, when I have a moment to write, I open up my emails, and see what topics hit me throughout the day.  It’s a pretty good system.

Sometimes, though, I’ll send my self messages so cryptic, it’s like it wasn’t even me who sent them.

For instance, today I was going though my mailbox and came across one such email from a few weeks back.  I cannot figure out what subject matter I was suggesting I write about.  I’m hoping you can help me.  Here it is:

Fix the port side& fix the port side battery. Change places-chinese fire drill. Hold on, i gotta think for a minute.

Do you have any idea what this blog is supposed to be about?

‘Cause I sure don’t.

My mind is a scary place.

I don’t know what the heck got into me.

We had gotten the kids off to school, we were out and about getting errands done together, we were being productive.

And I couldn’t stop being a pain in the butt.  I was teasing, and annoying and bickering.  I rolled a shopping cart over his foot on purpose.  Twice.  I kept pulling things just out of his reach when he was trying to load them into the truck.

I was being a total butthead.  And it was funny.

And he just took it.  Rolled his eyes.  Smirked that handsome smirk a couple of times.  Let out a puff of frustration a time or two.  But he remained calm, and for the MOST part, unreactive.

He knows better than to feed my sense of humor when I’m in a mood like that.

And then, out of left field, he zings me.  Completely zings me.

We’re at the check out counter at Lowes and he grabs all of our purchases but a broom as he starts walking out towards the door.

I said, “Do you want me to get this?” and picked up the broom.

“Yeah,” he said as he walked away, “You can just ride that out to the truck.”

Wow.

The cashier started snickering.

So I locked him out of the Truck and made him stand there until I felt better.

A match made in heaven, yes sirree.

My Varmint’s softball team, The Poolesville Lightning, won their game this weekend.  It was a game played against a team they had lost to the weekend before, so it was an especially sweet victory.

During breakfast this morning, I was reminiscing with Critter, Varmint, and My Captain about how funny it was that I had yelled out that she would get her favorite Chinese dinner from The Oriental Gourmet Restaurant in Poolesville, as motivation to win while she was pitching.  And as I did so, she struck out 3 in 5 batters (not bad for the second game of a 10-year-old girl).  I was bragging at breakfast that it was my unusual coaching/motivating/bribing technique that helped win the game.

And then My Captain, who had heard enough bull for one meal, allowed that we lost the last game because I kept feeding the team cookies….during the game.  He actually suggested that!  He said I distracted the girls by promising them, and then feeding them, cookies.

Look, these were homemade Oatmeal Whoopie Pies.  It’s like eating a piece of America, right there.  You’ve got your baseball and hot dogs, and you’ve got your softball and cookies.  The way I see it, feeding them cookies during the game is not a distraction, it’s American Pride.  It’s patriotism.

Then he pointed out that I did not give the girls cookies during the game they’d just won.

I said, “Shut up and eat your breakfast.”

We’re loving like that.

My Varmint and Critter asked me incredulously if the stories I write on Mamaboe are true.

A couple of things occur to me:

1) Am I so full of beans that my kids question my veracity, even when publishing my words across the world?

2) Are my life stories so ‘out there’ that it is inconceivable they actually happened?  Am I that much of a freak?

3) Should I admit it to my children, thereby signing them up for what could be perhaps years of adult psychological counseling?

The answer is, YES.  The stories are true.  Yes, I pee in my wetsuit, (along with the rest of you).  Yes, the size WAS marked FXXL.  Yes, I tend to fart or spill food on my chest in public regularly, not because I want to, but because I’m a horrific multi-tasker who eats a healthy amount of fiber on any given day.

I prefer such a wacky, embarrassing, weird life to something more mundane or plain.  What is the use of a life ill-spent?  It becomes nothing more than a use of world resources, and I’d like to think my time here is worth more than that.

And if I teach my kids one thing, besides ‘no, you cannot wear your underwear more than one day in a row’, it is this:  Jump in with both feet.

Pee in your wetsuit.  Fart if you need to. Do not make excuses, just be YOU.

Oh yeah, and if you mean ‘it is’, then it is ‘it-apostrophe-s’. I can never remember that one.

My kid’s attend a sweet little country school called Monocacy Elementary, here in the Agricultural Reserve of Montgomery County, Maryland.  I love this school.  It’s small, rural, and innocent.  It’s well-supported.  It’s full of tradition.   It’s campy.

I love campy.

This week, the school is having its Spring Book Fair to earn money for the school.  My kids get SO excited.  We plan out a budget beforehand, they figure out what they wish to have, and we play the “I can’t afford it game” even though we all know I’m going to buy every book I can afford on the list.   I’m all about words and reading and imagination and entertainment that doesn’t leave one slack-jawed while holding a Wii remote.

So why do I play the “I can’t afford it” game?

It’s a Scottish thing.

What is so dagnab frustrating is that every stinkin time I attend the school’s book fairs, I end up buying another cookbook.  Every. Stinkin. Time.

I have enough cookbooks.  I do not need any more cookbooks.

What I need is books on exercise and books on how to effectively manage my time.

And books on how to get grease spots out of blouses.

But I’ll go this week, and I’ll probably by another cookbook.

And the kids will make their list that I will claim to be too poor to fulfill, but will fulfill anyways.  It’s what we do.

Tradition.  It’s a beautiful thing.