How the Motormouth Saved Me From a Ticket

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.

Pot and Kettle Get Their Hair Done

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.

Hey, That’s My Doormat!

Spotted at icanhascheezburger:

moar funny pictures

Who Are These People? MO Primary Thoughts

This is not really a political article. I’ve had a rotten, terrible day from hell with power outages, hours-long loss of internet service, torrential downpours, children from hell, and so on. My life sucked today but a couple of things made me laugh tonight and I’m here to tell you about them.

About 6:00 p.m. I drove to my polling place. The lines were long. Very long. I didn’t mind the long line; I think that’s great.

Finally, I get my ballot. WTF? Kucinich is on it. So is John Edwards. Didn’t they drop out of the race? “How many people that are uninformed are going to waste their votes on people that aren’t even running anymore?” I think to myself as I fill in my oval for Obama. I also noticed a line for “Uncommited” on my ballot.

Shortly after the polls closed my husband logged onto our local newspaper website to check the returns so far. Sure enough, many people had voted for John Edwards and Kucinich. I have to wonder if these voters knew that those guys weren’t even running. Oh, well. Then we noticed the really funny part, the part that leaves me asking, “Who are these people?”

A great many people had gotten into their cars and driven through a torrential downpour and even occasional hail on flooded streets and driven to their polling place. Those same people then stood in line for half an hour only to cast a ballot for…

Uncommitted.

Who are these people? Why not just stay home?

Why Me? How Does This Shit Always Happen to Me?

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.

The Cactus Tale

I originally sent this email to our local homeschool group on 12/14/06.

Go ahead and laugh at me now because you will be as soon as you read this. Add to your list of famous last words, “I wonder what that tastes like?”

Several few months ago we were given a very large cactus. Our neighbor was moving to Florida and couldn’t move it. It spent the summer and fall outside. When it got too cold out I brought it inside. Well, the dog was chasing the cat and knocked the thing over. It shot out this milky fluid all over the place when it hit the floor. And I say, “I wonder what that tastes like?”

Turns out it tasted bad, very bad. It was downright painful, burning like fire, swelling up my mouth and throat. Nothing helped. Not water, not milk, not mouthwash. Then I got dizzy and developed a migraine-like headache. I was sick for 24 hours.

Upon googling I discovered that it is not a cactus at all but a succulent of the Euphorbia family. It is highly toxic. Some euphorbias are used to make poison arrows. I have to get rid of it. We have six cats, one dog, and two small children. This thing is only suitable for a home without pets or small children.

It is a lovely plant and I really think it’s too beautiful to simply put out in the garbage. It is in the laundry room under a fluorescent light until I can find a home it. I had to rescue it after my husband evicted it into the bitter cold and I hid it in there. He’s bound to find it and evict it again. So if you have no pets and your kids are older please take it.

What does this have to do with homeschooling? Not much. Sorry about that. But homeschoolers do have a natural curiosity that could cause a story like this to be told.

Tax Time

Yeah, me!

Our 2007 taxes are filed and our refund will be in the bank on February 8th.

It did not cost us a dime to e-file federal or state. If you meet the income guidelines you can file for free at http://turbotax.intuit.com/taxfreedom/.  It does not have to be a simple 1040 or EZ. I have to file Schedule C for self-employment and it was still free.

Kindergarten in 1970

In 1970 I was five years old and I went to kindergarten. Kindergarten was a one room private school across the street from the big and scary public school where the big kids went. There was no public kindergarten then. My mother had to pay for me to go to the little school. We were poor. Dirt poor. I don’t know how my mother managed to pay for me to go to kindergarten.

We lived in what my mother called The Chocolate House. I don’t know why; maybe because it was brown. It was the closest thing to a tenement that Joplin had. A little over ten years later I would live in The Chocolate House again but that’s another story. I think it burned down recently and I’m glad to know that the chain is broken and my own daughter will never live in The Chocolate House.

The money wasn’t the only sacrifice my mother made the year that I went to kindergarten. I remember some things vividly. In fact, this whole stream of thought came about while discussing fire drills with my husband.

In kindergarten we had regular fire drills. I remember them like they were yesterday. The thing that stands out is this: When the fire alarm went off, we were supposed to pick up our desks and carry them outside. I look at my son, nearly five years old, close to the age that I would have been then. He looks so small, too small to pick up a desk and carry it outside in a fire. I’m sure I was smaller then than he is now. Why did we have to save our desks? Some things never change. It was all about the money. If the school was going to burn down, at least those expensive desks could be saved. So now, carrying my desk out of the building once a month for a fire drill is one of the main things I remember about kindergarten.

I also remember class parties for holidays. This is where that other sacrifice my mother made comes in. She was one of our class party hostesses. She would always be there at those parties organizing games for us, serving treats that she had baked, and all that sort of PTA-mom-type stuff.

Looking back, I cringe for my mother. This had to be the one of the hardest things she ever did. She doesn’t like kids. She didn’t then. She doesn’t now. She doesn’t like excessive noise or chaos. She doesn’t like snotty noses or unkempt clothing. Looking back, I’m certain she’d have rather been having a root canal that be at that school hostessing those parties and putting on a smile for the other moms. She probably didn’t like the other moms either.

I never realized before now, as I type this article, how very alike my mother and I really are. Just last month I signed up to help with a Christmas party for science club even though I’d rather be drawn and quartered than be there surrounded by other mothers and other people’s kids.

At some of those parties, my mother would have been pregnant with my baby sister. I only know that because of the math involved. I didn’t know it then.

In 1970 my husband wasn’t yet born. My baby sister was on the way. I was in kindergarten carrying my desk around.

And my mother was doing the absolute best job she could do at being the kind of mother she thought she needed to be.

Now my kids don’t go to school even though kindergarten is free for everyone. That’s me doing the best job I can do at being the kind of mother I think I need to be. She sacrificed so I could go to school and I sacrifice so my kids don’t have to go to school.

I wonder if some day my daughter will be sacrificing so that her kids can go to school while suffering through hostessing some children’s party that she’d rather not even attend.

Thief in the Night

There is a thief in my house.

My daughter belongs to the Toys R us Birthday Club so today when she went there to choose her birthday gift she was given a cardboard crown that says, “It’s My Birthday!” and a Mylar balloon. She also gets a birthday card with a $3.00 gift card in the mail before her birthday and we get a $5.00 coupon by separate mail so it’s worth joining. But, anyway…

Her baby brother’s birthday is in three weeks. He has not been happy that Sissy gets her birthday first. He had a tantrum when she chose a cake from the cookbook. He had a tantrum when she went shopping. He had a tantrum when his grandma delivered her gift today.

Tonight after he had his bedtime story and was tucked into bed, I snuggled up on the sofa to read a chapter from Little Town on the Prairie to my daughter. Out of the corner of my eye, I see him sneaking down the dark hallway into her room. Moments later he sneaks out and heads down the hall back to his room. He was wearing the cardboard crown. He had stolen it.

The Broiled Birthday Cake

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.