Children’s Cautionary Tales: Part I

TD’s best friend Katie (my BFF Paige’s daughter, cooincidentally) rocked the hizzouse with her science fair project this year. After we watched the video I was all, “See, kids?! DO YOU SEE?! THAT’S how you do a science fair project! Good times for ALL!” Of course, now they’re all jazzed up to produce their OWN videos, and will likely give me no rest until I help write, film, and produce them, so thanks a WHOLE LOT, Katie! GOSH!

Oh, I kid. Totally kidding! Kid, kid, kid! I’m a kidder. It’s what I do. So it’s all good.

Anyhoos… Katie’s hypothesis? Well, why don’t I just let her tell you herself… (Gives me time to finish my American Idol recap. SHUT! UP! I can’t help myself! It’s a sickness.)

“This girl ain’t going to be nobody’s bitch…you better recognize!”

Gosh. You let down your guard and watch ONE STINKING EPISODE of American Idol (Ladies’ Night! Rock on, my sistahs!) Good LORD those gals can sing… blow it out da box, if you will.

Honestly. Just when I think I’m out, they pull me back in.

Damn it! It’s like I can’t stay away! Or something! Plus, my momma threatened to disown me if I didn’t start recapping the show, so what’cha gonna do?

*sigh*

And so it begins. Yo, yo, yo, dawgs! Bring it ON, America. Bring it ON, Simon Cowell. Bring it ON, my wee Ry-Ry who totally missed his opportunity when he didn’t pick me for the Red Carpet Challenge (your loss, Ryan Seacrest!)

BRING IT.

(I’m so ashamed.)

Fog

When I am sitting under the buzzing fluorescent lights that illuminate my desk in my cramped little cubicle—lights that are just bright enough to light the office without any alleged global warming repercussions, but do absolutely nothing for my complexion, I assure you—my concentration slips away from me, coiled in foggy tendrils of twisty thoughts and worries and wants, and I find myself scooting my chair just a smidge to the left so I can peek my head out of my cubicle and peer through the large window at the end of the long aisle of too many other pasty-faced, fluorescently-lit, cubicle-bound employees.

A small patch of barren trees and grayish blue sky, that’s all I can see—a distant conglomeration of earthy browns and murky oranges and purples—yet it is enough to clear my head and steal my breath because it is just… so real…so genuine… it is!… and mine, that tiny patch of scenery is mine at that very moment, a reservoir of beauty and balmy light to fight the murkiness that clouds my mind. And even though my chest tightens and my breathing shallows, the tendrils of fog loosen and fall away, and right then, right that second, everything seems bright and shiny. Clear. Exhilarating.

I struggle to capture the moment, paint it indelibly in my mind and heart, because deep down I know this is only an ephemeral exhilaration, a momentary thing, and once I look away it will be gone, and I can never get the moment back—not really—because I can never see it exactly the same way again. And even though it was never mine in the first place, it was never mine to take… still, I feel the loss. But it’s worth it, always worth it, because I know that the earth and trees and sky are out there, genuine… beautiful… real… waiting… and if I just hang on a bit longer, I’ll be out there, too.

Lately as the days speed by me in a whirl of obligations and restlessness, and my family time fades into a blur of distant voices and disconnected conversations, I realize I can’t slow down, can’t make time stand still for just… one… second… can’t catch my breath, and I am MISSING THINGS… things like decorating Valentine cookies and training gerbils to run in the hamster ball without leaving poops all over the house and cuddling up in bed with the kiddos to read ghost stories or watch cartoons. And I feel that loss, too.

And while twisty thoughts and worries and wants seem to be clouding my view, I have to believe that the window I am searching for is out there, and that the exhilarating glimpse of clarity I crave is just a scoot away. So I keep looking.

I’ll never stop looking.

Tell me what to do now, ’cause I want you back.

Well, this is certainly disheartening… I seem to have misplaced my mad blogging mojo.

Whither hast thou gone, oh mighty mojo o’ bloggafictorious? Whither?

I blame current events.

Honestly. K-Fed ain’t lookin’ so bad now, eh, family courts? Eh?

In other news, I’m pretty sure Friday Night Lights is quickly becoming my latest television obsession. And not just because of Coach Taylor –Hot Bomb Guy! Blown to smithereens! Which totally ruined pink lemonade for me! (AKA: Kyle Chandler)– and his pretty pretty hair, either. Nope. FNL is keeping it real, dawgs. That’s right, y’all. You better recognize.

But whatever. I miss my mojo. 

Kids say the damnedest things…

At the end of this last grading quarter, as a treat for good behavior (and to give the teachers extra time to slap together some grades, of course), Hannah’s third-grade class was allowed to watch the movie The Indian in the Cupboard. Her teacher was apparently surprised– and a little embarrassed– to discover that the movie version of the book contained the words “hell” and “damn.”

“Well, the movie was obviously rated PG, wasn’t it?” Ms. H told her giggling class after the movie.

Hannah piped up from her desk, “Oh, that’s okay. My dad is PG-13!”

Surrender

It’s wrong that I’m SUPER excited to hurry home and play Guitar Hero… right?

Veronica Mars REWIND: Poughkeepsie, Tramps, and Thieves

This week, it’s Veronica Mars meets Pretty Woman! and Risky Business! and The Girl Next Door!

Featuring “Sick of Chicks” by Brother Love and “Booty Voodoo” by Lee Coulter.

(Oooh! As soon as it’s available, please do that clicky thing and give us some love over at VEOH, mm’kay?)

Amsterdam, Dammit

Yesterday, as I was taking my daughter to an urgent care facility for a minor-but-just-painful-enough-to-be-urgent ailment, the song “Amsterdam” by Guster began to play. This reminded me of a Wee Sing Silly Songs song that my mother-in-law used to sing with my kiddos, called “Three Jolly Fisherman”:

There were three jolly fisherman,

There were three jolly fishermen,

Fisher, fisher, MEN, MEN, MEN!,

Fisher, fisher, MEN, MEN, MEN!,

There were three jolly fishermen.

Which, fun! With the boisterous, staccato “Men!Men!Men!”? WOO!

Now, apparently these three fishermen were called Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and they went on a little trip to a place called Jericho. If I recall correctly, the city of Jericho had this ginormous wall around it, and that wall was full of snarky French peas armed with purple slushies that they used to bombard those wacky Israelite veggies marching around below– which is just wasteful, in my opinion, but that is so not the point– so when the “Three Jolly Fishermen” song goes on to speculate that “they should have gone to Amsterdam!”– well, it’s fairly obvious why Amsterdam would have been the wiser choice. I mean, the dry-cleaning bills ALONE… but I digress.

Because squabbling is inevitable when my three kiddos are squashed together in the backseat of a car, I decided to distract them with memories of the song. I asked the kids if they remembered the first time I ever heard the song, and they all began to giggle. You see, the song continues:

They should have gone to Amsterdam,

They should have gone to Amsterdam–

Now, being a relatively intelligent person, the first time my mother-in-law sang the song to me– my kiddos gustily singing along– by this point in the song I had obviously discerned the pattern. Yep. Had it down cold. So, being the enthusiastic momma that I am, and enjoying a good Silly Song as much as the next gal, I joined in:

“Amster, Amster, DAM! DAM! DAM! Amster, Amster, DAM! DAM! DAM!”

Okay, so apparently? Me? Not the sharpest tool in the shed. Because my mother-in-law and my children sang it, “Amster, Amster, SH, SH, SH!” with finger to lips in the universal shush gesture and e’rything. Okay, so seriously? There was a PATTERN, people! You can’t just go messing with a pattern! I mean, it’s not MY fault some uppity Silly Songs songwriter recklessly changed a perfectly good song pattern all willy-nilly-like. With absolutely no type of warning whatsoever. Hey, I’m just saying somebody messed with the pattern. I was tricked, y’all. TRICKED.

So the song came to a screeching halt, and there I sat facing three wide-eyed kiddos, frozen in shock because I said the D Word. Six whole TIMES. In a ROW. In front of GRANDMA. Who never even said “CRAP.” And would not APPROVE.

Now, genetically speaking, TGIM has to have inherited that wacky sense of humor from somebody, right? Yay, TGIM’s momma! So when she burst out giggling, my kiddos sighed with relief, then began to giggle, too. It was a whole giggling thing. Naturally, I joined in. Honestly, who am I to pass up a good giggle? Even if it IS at my expense? But did I mention the part about being tricked?

Back in Backseat Land, Tanner and Hannah mocked me again for being duped into singing inappropriate language in front of Grandma, but Alli was concerned.

“Um, Momma? You keep saying the D-word, and that’s not ‘propriate.”

Tanner rolled his eyes. “Oh my gosh, Allison! Dam isn’t the D-word if it’s the end of Amsterdam, right Mom? And what about the dams that hold back water? Huh?!”

Tanner’s observation naturally segued into a reminiscence of the time I traveled to a big youth conference on a chartered bus full of young teenagers and a few extraordinarily unlucky chaperones. I told my kids that as we approached the Hoover Dam, my friend Nat suddenly shouted out, “Hey! Look at all those dam tourists!”

At this revelation, Hannah giggled nervously and Allison wailed out, “Mooooooooooom! Saying damn isn’t ‘propriate!”

“Hello? Homophone?” Tanner responded with brotherly derision.

I shook my head and gave Tanner the stern stare in the rear view mirror. “Just let me finish,” I said.

I went on to tell them that the chaperones? Not so happy with Nat’s outburst. I admit, I had been a little shocked, myself. I mean, saying “damn” was so blatant, so inappropriate, so disrespectful, so… ohmygoshIGETit! Flippin’ GENIUS.

“Stop the bus! I want to take the dam tour!” I shouted out.

It only took a few more seconds of shocked silence for the others on the bus to grok– then embrace– Nat’s brilliantly-conceived homophonous swearing loophole.

“Wow! Look at all that dammed water!”

“I want to ride the dam elevator!”

“Stay on the dam sidewalk!”

“Where is the dam bathroom?!”

Oh, that Nat. Good times, those.

By the time I finished sharing this memory with the kids, we were at the urgent care center. We all climbed out of the car, still giggling.

Later, as we sat in the waiting room, Allison began to sing under her breath. She attracted the usual indulgent smiles from the other parents in the room, until– in her usual fashion– she lost herself in the music and was swept away by the joy of singing. In other words, she was LOUD, yo?

“Amster, Amster, DAM! DAM! DAM! Amster, Amster, DAM! DAM! DAM! They should have gone to AmsterDAAAAAAAAAAAAM!”

Of course, I just did that thing people do, you know, when you scoot away from your child and look around at everyone like, “Dude! I wonder who THIS kid belongs to? Gosh! How embarrassing for her PARENTS! One of whom is NOT me!” Then I spent the next twenty minutes congratulating myself on my wicked awesome parenting skills.

After the appointment, we all piled back in the car, and I made sure not to play any more Guster. I turned on the news.

“Dam! Dam! Dam!” Allison happily sang from the back seat.

Honestly. I’m an awesome momma, y’all. There will be awards.

Damn.

How to Charm Me OR Acronym Fever

After I pick you up from school and explain to you that when the Kiss and Ride lady said “TGIF!” to you she meant Thank Goodness It’s Friday– the T for Thank, G for Goodness, I for It’s, and F for Friday– just pause for a moment of thoughtful silence, then ask, “Okay, so… how would you say ‘Thank goodness it’s Groundhog Day’?”

Then, later, after I tell you that I made some yummy bran muffins, and you can have one when you get home– but only one because, you know… bran?– as we’re walking up to the house, skip along behind me and happily yell out for all the neighborhood to hear “Yay! Mom, Come on! Let’s go eat a BM!”