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At 8:30 tonight we realized that we hadn’t had dinner. It was too late to cook and we were too tired anyway. We decided to go to the Golden Corral. I know buffets are gross but I had my reasons. It’s close, a five or ten minute drive. It’s a buffet so the kids can always find something they like to eat. There’s no waiting, and the kids were pretty hungry.
After we ate some real food, I took my son to the dessert bar. He was looking at everything to decide what he wanted. There was this awful pan full of green jello. I wish that I had taken the camera because I can’t describe this vomitous bilge accurately. It was the most awful mess of nasty stuff I’ve ever seen.
My son says, loudly, “What is that gross stuff, Mom?” I took one look at it and busted out laughing. I told him that I though it was ogre snot. We were still laughing about it when we got back to the table, so my daughter had to know what we were laughing about. She made a special trip to the dessert bar just to see it. My husband refused to go look at the jello. Sometimes he can be a real fuddy-duddy.
My daughter then mentioned that they had gummy bears for ice cream topping and that was pretty gross too. I told her that the gummy bears weren’t for the ice cream; they were for the green jello. This started a whole new round of laughter.
Our poor server was in close proximity cleaning tables and doing whatever they do when they are getting ready to close and was hearing every bit of this and trying to keep from laughing.
I took my son back to the dessert bar to get another brownie and decided to fix my fuddy-duddy husband some dessert. I got an ice cream bowl and put gummy bears in the bottom. Then I buried them with the green jello. Of course my son and I were laughing so hard about this that we got the employees behind the dessert bar to laughing too.
We went back to the table and sat the bowl in front of him. Then he did the unthinkable: He picked up the bowl and slurped the jello and gummy bears down. Me and the kids almost got sick while he sat there laughing at us.
A little later when the server by to take our plates, my husband told her she earned a good tip for putting up with us. I said, “We weren’t that bad. All we did was make fun of the green jello.”
She said that it was green because it is March. I said, “Oh, for St. Patrick’s Day?” She agreed.
Then my husband, without missing a beat, says, “Oh my God! It’s been there that long?!”
I was so proud of him that when I stuck my fork in my apple pie I somehow flipped it into the air and it went flying.
We decided to leave.
The preceding has been a first and only draft, rife with grammar problems. I’m tired. Deal with it.
Yesterday was the big day that my mother came to town. My mother needed to go to the scrapbook store and a few other craft supply stores while she was in town to get supplies to make the invitations, bouquets, and other things for my sister’s wedding. Not wanting to go there with my kids, she went straight there when she got to town and I arranged to meet her on the other side of town with the kids for lunch since we needed to shop for my daughter’s flowergirl shoes and my dress after lunch.
I loaded my kids into the Crapmobile. I could write an entire article about why my car is the Crapmobile but for now suffice it to say that it has expired tags because it won’t pass inspection until I remove the duct tape that’s holding the headlight in place. The tags just expired the last day of February so I should have been safe from being pulled over until April. They don’t usually bother you if you’re tags have been expired less than a month.
Just a few blocks from our house there is a cop hiding to catch people speeding. My daughter picks the very moment that I drive by this cop to take off her seatbelt and hang half her body out the window to get some air. She’s on the phone with my sister, who hears me screech, “Lexie, get back in the car! We’re going to get pulled over if you keep hanging out the window!” The cop did not pull out so I figured we weren’t going to get stopped.
After we turned onto the next major street we passed another cop. He was going the opposite direction on a five lane street so he wasn’t going to stop us. We got stopped at a red light and I look into my rearview mirror only to see a cop behind us. I don’t know if it was the first one we passed, the second one, or a third one. But I did know that we were likely done for. The longer he sat behind us at that light the more likely we were to get stopped. The light turned green and I breathed a sigh of relief as I stepped on the gas. That’s when his lights and siren came on.
As the cop walks to the car, my motormouth daughter smiles and waves, batting her big brown eyes at him. “Hi Mr. Police Officer! How are you today? It’s too bad you pulled us over. We’re going to meet my Mama Di for lunch and we’re starving to death. Are you taking my mom to jail? She said if I didn’t stop hanging out the window we were going to get pulled over. I stopped so why did you pull us over? If you take Mom to jail who will take me and my brother to meet Mama Di?”
The cop asks, “Do you know why I pulled you over, ma’am?” (Why do they always ask that?)
I say, “I figured it was for my expired tags.”
He says, “Oh. I didn’t even notice that.”
I say, “Crap. I told on myself.”
My son’s voice from the back seat says, “Oh great! Now we’re all going to jail.”
My daughter, who hadn’t ever really shut up, says, “But Mom, you should always tell the truth to the police!”
The cop asks me where my front license plate is. That must be why he pulled me over which is funny since it’s never been on the car and I’ve been driving it that way for years. I say, “I think it’s in the glove box here,” and open the glove box to dig for it. It wasn’t there. I turn around and ask my son, “Eric, did you throw my license plate out the window or is it back there somewhere?” My son handed me my license plate after finding it buried under happy meal bags on the floorboard and I handed it out the window to the cop.
He says, “They expired in 2006?”
I say, “No, I just never stuck the sticker on it since it wasn’t on the car anyway. I think the sticker is in the glove box here. There’s a sticker on the back plate. Will that do?”
My daughter tells him that she has some Disney Fairy stickers he can have.
He tells us to have a nice day and gets in his patrol car and drives away. I think he just wanted to get away.
I’m glad he didn’t ask her why she wasn’t in school.
This is when I should have turned the car around and went home. But I didn’t and a lot more happened to us yesterday.
Cast:
The Pot: Played by yours truly, aka Mom
The Kettle: Played by my motormouth daughter, aka Lexie
Striped Hair Guy: The stylist lucky enough to get assigned to the motormouth kettle, God rest his soul
Extras: All the other people in a large salon on a busy Saturday afternoon including my stylist
It’s been winter. The dry heat has frazzled our hair and we look like the wicked witches of Bad Hair Day Land. We haven’t had a haircut since early November just before our family portrait. And we’ve got a serious case of the grey-day winter doldrums. It’s time for mommy/daughter day at the salon! That should fix us right up.
And it did. I’m now too mortified to be depressed.
On a positive note my daughter is an out-going, friendly, never met a stranger, perky little thing. When people like my stylist or the neighbors are trying to make me feel better they say, “Well, at least she’s happy.” Really. I’ve heard those exact words before and I heard them again today.
As I was being shampooed I heard her voice all the way across the salon. Her voice carries well. She needs to go into politics. I am certain there was no one in the salon that wasn’t hearing her. She began to talk and she did not stop.
I was hearing her voice as my hair was cut. I stopped hearing her for a bit while I was being blow-dryed. I don’t know if that’s a good thing or not. I heard her while I was being styled. I heard her while my uni-brow was being ripped off with hot wax in the very back of the salon.
I heard her stylist suggest that maybe is she closed her mouth she wouldn’t get hairspray in it. I heard that more than once. I don’t think she heard it.
Now I’m waiting for DFS to come and take my kids away to foster care and cart me off to jail or something. I should probably be getting ready for that instead of sitting here writing this.
She told them about every time in her life that one of our cats has pooped outside the litter box. She told them about my bulimic cat that eats too much then barfs all over the place. She told them about the time her brother made the mess in the bathroom. She told how much she loves being homeschooled because she can stay up all night playing the Sims. She told about our naked pregnant snowlady and how we used strawberry marshmallows for nipples. She pretty much shared every single embarrassing thing about our family and our home.
By the time she was done it sounded like we live in filth and squalor. It sounded like we’re a bunch of backwoods idiots that don’t need no learnin. I was mortified.
Then she asked her stylist about his sexual orientation in regards to his multi-colored striped hair.
Even as this was happening I was planning my lecture series. The lecture about not sharing embarrassing things with strangers and the lecture about what happens at home stays at home. The if-you-don’t-have-anything-nice-to-say-don’t-say-anything-at-all lecture and the don’t ask people if they’re gay lecture. The “Oh, my God, don’t tell people how far behind we are with our schoolwork” lecture. The “No one needs to know how laid back your mother is about bedtimes and R-rated movies” lecture.
Even as I’m forming my lectures in my head I realize that I have told many of the same things to strangers on Gather. I have told even more embarrassing things on Gather that my daughter (thank the fates) isn’t even aware of. To read my articles you’d think all my cats ever do is poop and barf and never where they’re supposed to. You’d think we haven’t touched a schoolbook since before Christmas and you’d be right about that one. (Hey, we have all summer to catch up.) You’d think nothing ever happens around here that isn’t a total fiasco. You even know that I flirt with strange men in the condom aisle.
So the pot has to sit the kettle down and have a talk. I feel like such a hypocrite.
