Category Archive

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.

Tonight my husband has the guys over to game. I cooked a very nice dinner and thought I’d have my evening to catch up on Gather. I’m a couple of days behind reading and commenting on my people. First I posted a few recent photo collections and was going to spend the rest of my evening reading and commenting.

Not.

My son frantically called me into the bathroom. I walked in to find this:

My naked son standing in front of the toilet in a pool of toilet water about half an inch deep that covered the entire bathroom floor. A bath towel half in the toilet and half out, dripping everywhere. My son’s cast-off clothing laying in the pool of toilet water. My son yelling, “Mom! I can’t get the poop off!”

Remember, we have guests.

The towel in the toilet was not just any towel. It was one of those decorative towels that people hang on a towel rod in the bathroom and don’t ever actually use. Pale yellow with satin daisies sewn onto it, it now sports streaks of human feces. At least I guess it’s human feces. I never did determine where the shit came from or why it was now on the towel which was now in the toilet. Beats me. Not only is there an ample supply of Charmin in the bathroom, there is also a full container of shea butter baby wipes on the back of the toilet for cleaning one’s ass.

Every bit of laundry in the house was clean for a change so there were no dirty towels to mop up the toilet water with. No, we threw the clean, neatly folded and stacked towels on the shelf into the floor to soak up the toilet water.

Toilet water dripped down the hallway when we carried the soaking towels from the bathroom to the laundry room.

I ran a bath for my son since he was already naked and really, there was shit involved at some point in this debacle. Now he is running naked in front of my husband’s guests and I do not care. I will not care. I am going to sit here and Gather.

Meanwhile the Ro-Tel dip I was making got scorched on the stovetop.

Lucky for you I forgot to grab the camera.

My daughter’s ninth birthday is the day after tomorrow. We were looking at cookbooks together tonight choosing a cake to bake for her birthday when I remembered the year of the Broiled Birthday Cake.

I said, “There’s a Gather article.” Then I said, “There needs to be a group for these kitchen disasters.” And now here we are.

My daughter was turning three years old that year. We had invited friends and family over for a birthday party. Because of this, we cleaned the house. Thoroughly. Part of cleaning the house thoroughly involved removing all the knobs from the stove for cleaning.

Then we made the chocolate cake. It went into the oven less than an hour before the guests were supposed to start arriving. We set the oven dial to “bake” and the temperature to 350 and put the cake in the oven.

Shortly after putting the cake in the oven to bake we began to smell smoke. We opened the oven to find the cake being broiled. The house was full of smoke, the cake was ruined and the guests would start arriving any minute. How did this happen?

Whoever put the knobs back on the stove put the oven dial on wrong so that when we turned it to “bake” it was actually on “broil.” That’s how.

It’s been six years so I don’t remember enough details to make this story as good as it should be but I wanted to share it anyway. I am now leaving for the store to buy ingredients for the chocolate cake she chose out of the cookbook. Wish me luck.

Originally published at Gather on 1/19/08. 

The Tale of the Quarter:

I had a bad day with my four year old son a few weeks ago. We had dropped my daughter off at her reading tutor and were on the way home. Since we were driving by Aldi I decided to stop and get a spiral ham.

If you aren’t familiar with Aldi there are two things to know. First, a person can’t spend much time shopping there. There is only one brand of anything so you don’t spend any time comparing prices or deciding what brand to buy. I can get a cart full of food in twenty minutes. My son was not going to have to suffer long. We’re not talking Wal-Mart the week before Christmas.

Second, you have to have a quarter to get a shopping cart. You get your quarter back when you return your cart. This way they aren’t paying anyone to round up carts. Because you have to have a quarter to shop at Aldi and because I frequently stop at Aldi, I keep a special Aldi quarter in a special section of my wallet. The Aldi quarter does not get spent. It is always there when I need it. My Aldi quarter had been with me longer than my son has. Key word is had.

Once inside Aldi we found a wooden train set on display. They often have special buys on toys during the holidays and this was one of them. My son decided he wanted to play with the train display only to discover that they had glued all the trains and things down. I don’t blame them. However, this discovery triggered the worst public temper tantrum I have ever seen in my life, from my child or anyone else’s. I had no choice. I had to abandon my cart and haul a kicking, screaming, cursing child out of Aldi.

My Aldi quarter was gone. Left behind in my abandoned cart. I grieved for my lost Aldi quarter. I thought about going back to see if I could recover it. I haven’t been back to Aldi since. Not because I’m embarrassed, but because my quarter is gone. My husband doesn’t get it. He thinks any quarter will do.

The Tale of the Nickel:

Today my daughter and I went to the library. They have a little gift shop in the library. She purchased four pieces of nickel candy. I gave her a quarter to pay for it. She asked if she could keep the nickel she got back in change.

Our next stop was K-Mart so that she could pick up a Christmas gift for her brother. There was a bell ringer at the door. She said, “Oh, no! I forgot my money!” and turned around and ran all the way back to the car to get that nickel for the bell ringer. Let me just say we weren’t parked near the door. It is Christmas time.

I know a nickel isn’t much but it was all the money she possessed and she ran all the way to the car and back to get it for that bell ringer. I was proud of her.

Is there a moral to this? I doubt it. I was just thinking of my shame and anger with the quarter and my pride with the nickel and all the ups and downs of motherhood.

originally published on Gather on 12-20-07

It’s been quite the month and when I ever have time I’ll be writing an article titled October, the New Monday, but I must share this little tidbit with my Gather friends without delay.

I had purchased a costume several weeks ago. It was a Renaissance gown and my daughter actually chose it. I’d have never chosen purple. I finally tried it on a few days ago to discover that it was itchy and made my chest look even flatter than it is. The costume had to go back.

Last night I returned it and the clerk at customer service asked me if anything was wrong with it; I presume she wanted to know if it was still saleable. I answered that there was nothing wrong with it but that it itched and I couldn’t tolerate it. My daughter then piped up  in her voice that she only uses when saying something embarrassing in public, the loud voice that carries for miles. She wanted to share that the real reason mom was returning the gown was that it smashed her boobs and made them look littler than they are, which is pretty little.

With the itchy, unflattering costume returned, I went in search of a different costume. I could not find one at that store since I am so picky. I have to be able to wear my silk thermal underwear underneath it since it could be 30 degrees when we take the kids trick-or-treating. It has to be acceptable to wear to the homeschool Halloween party. It can’t be itchy. I’m picky.

My husband insisted that we head over to the costume shop as he did not want to go to every K-Mart, Wal-Mart, Target, etc. in town with tired, hungry kids in tow only to go home empty-handed. I was initially against the costume shop since it is so much more expensive than the discount stores but I saw his point and we headed to the costume shop.

On the way there the conversation turned to boobs when I addressed the concept of TMFI to my daughter who is just beginning to develop breasts. At some point we spoke of implants and the fact that I’d get them if we could afford them so that I could actually buy bras and bathing suits that fit me. My bras are the Almost A cup size and I can’t even fill them up. My husband said that maybe someday he would be able to buy mom some boobs.

We wandered about the costume shop and eventually found ourselves in a little back area by the fitting rooms. Unnoticed by me, this is apparently where the more adult costumes are.

Remember that voice I told you about? The one that kids only use when they are saying something embarrassing in public? This time it came from my four year old son.

“Look Mom! Don’t you want to buy some boobs?”

Up on the wall, well above eye level, was a pair of huge strap-on rubber boobs with large, hot-pink nipples.

At first the silence was deafening. Then everyone in the store began to laugh.

I’m still considering buying the boobs when I go to return the costume that I bought last night. I don’t have enough boobs to fill it up.

I hate Monday. You wouldn’t think that I would since I don’t work outside the home. It should just be another day but somehow it never, ever is.

I don’t especially like kids. I love my own kids. Sometimes I even like my own kids. But if I’m smiling at your smelly, bawling baby you can bet it’s a fake smile. If you are showing me your hundreds of crappy photos of your kids you can bet I’m planning my escape. If you’re bragging about your “gifted” child who knows their ABC’s for the 127th time this year I’m probably choking back bile in an effort to not puke on you.

I’m not answering my phone today. When the phone rings on Monday it’s because someone that has me on their speed dial list for free, short-to-no notice babysitting is calling. It’s always because they are having a bad day or because they have so much to do that they can’t get done with their kids underfoot or because they’re in the middle of the 42nd emergency requiring child care this month.  Why, oh why, did these people give birth if they can’t stand the thought of actually spending an entire day with their own kids?

I am having a bad day. Not answering the phone was ineffective since we still have a door and people know where we live. I somehow have a child here that is not my own even after I thought I had made my stance pretty clear. At least it’s only one this time. I figure they knew that a) I was not going to answer the phone, and b) once they were at the door my kids would make my life a living hell for the rest of the day if I sent their unexpected “play date” away.

I’m not stupid. When you call it a play date, telling me what a great opportunity it is for my poor lonely little homeschooled kids to socialize, but then flee my house leaving your brat behind on your way to go enjoy something I probably haven’t got to do in years, that is not a play date. It’s babysitting.

I have lots to do. eBay auctions that I do for a third party who pays me money are over a week late. My house is filthy. My daughter’s schoolwork is behind. I need to balance the checkbook and pay bills before we incur late fees. All but one of these things would be easier if I could pawn my children off on someone else for the day. They would at least be possible if I only had my own two children under foot. I haven’t been to the doctor or dentist in years. I can’t go and take two small children with me. I haven’t been out with my husband, just the two of us, in several years.

I’d rather be having a root canal than babysitting someone’s kids today and probably any other day.

My husband has forbidden me to ask anyone to babysit for me under any circumstances since I would then be expected to return the favor tenfold. He’s tired of coming home from work and finding a houseful of other people’s kids instead of getting to relax with his own family. He’s tired of having kids still here, not picked up on time, well after midnight on nights when he has to get up early to go to work the next day. He’s tired of having our life disrupted.

I’m thinking of starting some horrible rumor about myself in hopes that I can avoid being coerced into babysitting in the future. It needs to be bad enough that no one will want me watching their kids but not so bad that I end up getting my own taken away pending an investigation. Any ideas?

I tried forwarding my phone to the Child Care Referral hotline last week but my husband got freaked out when he called and left work to see what was wrong at home. I’d hate for my mother to drive seventy miles to check on us if she were to get the same results when calling my phone. Besides that won’t help with the “play dates” at the door that don’t call ahead.

It felt good typing this rant. Perhaps I will make Monday Rant a regular feature. I’ll probably lose all my connections when they find out what a disagreeable curmudgeon I actually am.

Coming soon: Customer Disservice Hotlines