Monthly Archives: October 2012

I sat in the back of Varmint’s class, watching her teacher work with a Promethean board instead of a chalk board.

And I wondered if any of these kids had ever known the joy of being picked to clean the teacher’s chalkboard erasers…beating them as fast and furiously as you could to make the biggest cloud of chalk EVER.

And then I doubted that any of these kids had ever known the thrill of sniffing a freshly mimeographed page, warm, still from the turning drum of the ditto machine.

And I pitied these kids because they would never know these simple joys and so many others like them.

And then it occurred to me that my grandparents and parents probably felt the same way about change like that.  Like my generation never knew the joy of being the first person to arrive at school and hence be the one to get to stoke the fire in the pot-bellied stove.

Or strapping your schoolbooks together with a belt and carrying them over your shoulder that way.

Or carrying your lunch…probably a leftover breakfast biscuit wrapped in a flour sack cloth…in an old tin pail.

And I looked back up at the Promethean Board, and missed my old Wonder Woman lunchbox.

….and they call it progress. Hhhhrumph.

It’s been a hard few weeks, between trying to fix up a rental house that got the tarnation beat out of it, trying to navigate the landmine that is parenting a rambunctious 9-year-old boy, trying to keep a marriage together when the bread-winner is working 70 hour work weeks to keep us afloat (see: rental house nightmare in ~ The Rental House From Hell ~), and trying to advocate for my children in their respective educational institutions…..well, I’m beat.

Fried.

Cooked.

Stick a fork in me.

So this morning I kind of fell out of bed, in a very “whupped” mood, and I didn’t feel like taking on the world in my usual Landlady in Kung-Fu Hustle kind of way.  (Thank you David Williams for defining me so accurately.) I woke up dead tired.  And a little bit cranky. (re: Bitchy)

And then I drove a mile over to our neighbor’s house (where Varmint had participated in a sleepover party,) caffeine shot in hand, ready to just pick up my darlin’ and hustle over to the rental house to continue the painting and cleaning we’ve been working on.   My mission was clear:  Get in, grab the kid, make a brief pleasantry or two, and get out.

My error?  “… a brief pleasantry or two.”

Who was I kidding?  I’m a social critter.  I may have been draggin-ass the moment I flopped out of bed, but being with people energizes me.

And when I was greeted with smiles and fresh coffee (which, if you recall, only fortified the caffeine shot I’d just downed) my mood lifted in .0134 seconds.  They had me laughing, and telling stories, most of which were almost true, and I ended up spending damn near an hour just being re-energized with great people.

It felt so good to not be focusing on the weight I’ve been carrying on my shoulders (which is not the same as the weight I carry on my butt and thighs.  I’m actually very adept at not focusing on those).

And the fact that these friends were new meant that I could pull out all of my old re-run schtick and they found it funny and fresh. New friends are great for that.  I wish all of my friends were new.  They are so easy to please.  They have no bar, no standard by which to expect anything out of me.

And my juvenile potty humor still works on them, as opposed to my old friends, who have since figured out that I’m stuck in some toddler-esque developmental stage.

I dread the day when my new friends begin to roll their eyes at my humor.  It’s only a matter of time.  But until then, I’ll make use of my entire arsenal of childish humor, and have a darn-tootin great time doing it!

God bless new friends!

Let the pee-pee and poo-poo jokes begin!

I have spent the past three weeks of my life, more or less, fixing up a house we own and haven’t been able to sell in this horrendous market.  So, we have been renting it out. This is the main reason I haven’t been posting much lately.

You see, the previous renter was apparently sent to us from that awful bitch named Karma.  I mean, we must have done something REALLY bad earlier in our lives to have deserved this kind of trouble.

I won’t go into detail, but the abuse this house took is nothing short of criminal.  And don’t get me started about the past-due-you-know-you’ll-never-see-the-money rent.

So we’ve been trying to fix everything to get it back into rentable shape, in the hopes that our next renters will be Amish.  Or something very close to it.

And I now have paint in crevices I would rather not define, and I have absolutely NO idea how that happened, but hey, the walls look good!

We’ve power-washed, we’ve sanded rust, we’ve painted, we’ve caulked, we’ve de-limed, we’ve weeded, and mowed, and trimmed.

And it STILL isn’t ready to re-rent.

I’ve tried not to get bitter.  But I can’t wrap my brain around the lack of responsibility that caused this.  So I took my Varmint and Critter to the house for a couple of days to 1) help out! and 2) learn from this.

You see, THEY were so angry the previous renter did this to our house, and THEY were so mortified that they had to clean up someone else’s horrendous mess, that they learned a valuable lesson:  Treat others they way you want to be treated.

And clean the toilet more often than once every 3 years.

Word.

My textbook 9-year-old Critter suffered a few unpleasant consequences over the past few weeks.  We won’t go into details, but suffice it to say that the fact that we had to pull out the “No Electronics until you are like, 40 years old!” punishment should tell you we meant business!

I like to think I’m pretty darn strict around here.  But anyone who knows me, knows I say that in the same breath I’m asking what kind of home-made cookies they would like me to make them for their after-school snack.

Consistency has always been my strong point,…. in a hardly-ever sort of way.

But this time….this time….we were sticking to our guns, by golly.  Me, Critter’s Dad, My Captain, and Grandma Jane…all four of the adults in Critter’s life, were a unified front of “Don’t even think about playing with anything that has an ‘ON’ button, young man!”  I mean, we had him fearing that he wouldn’t be playing with anything electronic until well after his own kids were grown.

And a funny thing has been happening in these past two non-electronic weeks…. Critter has re-discovered the other toys in his room, re-discovered all the awesome books in the house, re-discovered his creative outlet when it comes to drawing, or making shields out of paper plates, or thermonuclear reactors out of marbles, dental floss and chewed up bubblegum.

And the paper air-planes that are coming out of this kid….GEESH!  He’s actually designing his own, discovering what works and what doesn’t, and enjoying every blooming minute of it. He runs around the yard for hours in his quest to make THE PERFECT  paper Stunt Plane

I love this!  I love this re-engagement into the real world.

I never would have thought that laying down consequences in an effort to merely re-direct a non-desireable behavior would result in getting my son back.

Crazy.

My Captain wished me ‘Happy Anniversary’ this morning.

And I said, “For what?”

And then there was a pregnant pause.

And then I said, “Oh CRAP!”

And then he smirked and said, “I win.”

And I grumbled.

I TOTALLY forgot that today was our wedding anniversary.  I’m talking not even remotely on my radar.

It’s not that I don’t care.  It’s just that the date doesn’t really mean much to me.  All I care about is the fact that he loves me, that he puts up with my, er, challenging personality, and that he’ll be there for me when I run out of toilet paper when I’m trapped on the potty.

Sure, roses are nice.  Chocolate and jewelry are wonderful.  But I don’t need those things as much as I need a guy who will be home when he says he’ll be home, or a guy who will put band-aids on my kid’s boo-boos, or a guy who doesn’t bat an eye when I make a clown of myself.

Repeatedly.

So when he reminded me today that it was our anniversary, and I finished grumbling about the fact that he’d one-upped me, I slapped him a hearty High-Five, congratulated us on our forbearance, and we both continued on with our day quite content.  And that’s enough for both of us.

Last year, our dear friend Peggy made us this cake to celebrate our union:

I mean…if ever a cake epitomized a relationship, it was this cake:

If you look closely, you can see the resemblance.

Just imagine us dancing on a pile of chocolate fondant.