Looking back on the last year, I think it's safe for me to say I was depressed. Not the can't-get-out-of-bed kind of depressed, but the gained-40lbs.-and-don't-have-anything-positive-to-say kind of depressed (see future blog titled "How I Single-Handedly Killed my Kids' School Spirit With My Incessant Griping").

It was supposed to be My Year, you know? My baby had gone off to kindergarten. I had freedom again for the first time in nearly a decade. I had been waiting for this moment to go back to work for a long, long time. And I actually had work to go back to (Hey! My book was published one year ago TODAY! Cool!).

Yet as the year went on, the more and more bummed I got. Going back to work was stressful, especially given that my work suddenly warranted me doing a whole lot of public speaking (which is not really my thing) and a little bit of solo traveling (which is REALLY NOT my thing). It was such a departure from what I'd been doing as a SAHM, I wasn't sure I could do it. My skill set included changing diapers, playing at parks, and getting kids to eat their veggies, not renting cars and giving keynote speeches and handing out business cards with confidence.

There were other issues, too. I was working full-time again, but without cutting back on my SAHM job. Somehow I was still the only one doing all of the housework, all of the cooking, and was volunteering several hours a week at the elementary, just as I'd done as a SAHM, but trying to fit it all in between the end of the school day and dinner. It was overwhelming. I got sick -- no, I mean S-I-C-K -- of the housekeeping, to the point where I almost couldn't make myself get up and do it every day, so the house started to get messy, which stresses me out. I ended up on the receiving end of a stomach scope (earning me a daily Prilosec and Zantac cocktail. Yippee.). And I seriously gained 40 lbs. It wasn't a pretty year.

Funny thing, once summer break got here I felt great again. My kids were home! I was a SAHM again! I was in my comfort zone. I (mostly, save for a few columns and some novel revisions that needed to get done) took the summer off.

My kids are readers. Well, of course. It would pretty much be impossible to live with me and not be a reader (have I ever mentioned that I actually love reading more than I love writing? I do.). But, where I'll pick up just about any book and give it a go, my little readers are picky. Picky, picky, picky.

My 9-year old boy, especially, is picky. He likes series novels only. And he must read them in order, beginning with the first. And they must be adventurey (oh, yes, he read the Harry Potter series; began reading them in Kindergarten), but also have a little learning involved (yep, we also devoured the Magic Tree House series. All nine billion of them), and if there's a shot the series will someday be made into a movie, that's the best (Hello, Percy Jackson!).

I never seem to know what is going to "hit" with him. He didn't seem to like any of the books I grew up with. Ralph the mouse was a flop. Fudge was only mildly interesting. And he's way too sensitive for me to even go there with Where the Red Fern Grows. What is WRONG with this kid?

So I do the only thing a mom can do -- keep suggesting. Twice, I've put Artemis Fowl books in his hands. And twice he has refused to read them. I checked out The Red Pyramid for him. And he didn't finish it. But then he went and read an entire autobiography of Rey Mysterio, which I would have never have guessed to suggest to a 9-year old.

So I keep suggesting.

This year, I've made a goal for myself to read 100 books. I'm not going to make it, but I'll be close. I've read 61 books so far, and the list has been heavy with young adult books. This way I can suggest to two out of three Brown kids knowledgably (the third, still learning to read, is all about Fluffy and Fly Guy).

I could talk books with you all day, but today I just want to talk about boy books. Books that I read over the summer that had great boy protagonists, great boy situations, and great boy humor. Because I figure I'm definitely not the only one who finds it hard to find good boy books.

So here are my top five boy books that I read this summer (in no particular order):

The Dark Days of Hamburger Halpin by Josh Berk (grade 8 and up): Part murder mystery, part coming-of-age, this is a terrific light story (yes, it does manage to be light, despite the murder mystery aspect. In other words, nope, no blood and guts, Scoob) about a chubby deaf new kid at school named Will Halpin, who finds himself (and his super-geek new friend) trying to solve the mystery of who offed the popular quarterback. Great humor with a little romance to round it all out nicely.

Mamba Point by Kurtis Scaletta (ages 9-12): Twelve-year old Linus Tuttle is the new kid in town when his dad gets a job at the US Embassy in Liberia. Ready to make a change, Linus wants to become the new, fearless version of himself, but that's kind of hard to do when the very first thing you see when you get off the plane is a mamba -- one of the world's deadliest snakes. What's more, Linus fears he may actually be a kaseng, someone with a connection to certain animals, and his animal is actually the mamba snakes he's so afraid of. Pretty soon Linus is doing all sorts of daring things that he'd never have dreamed of doing before. Loved this book, for the main character, the setting, and, of course, the snakes!

Food, Girls, and Other Things I Can't Have by Allen Zadoff (grade 8-10): Andrew Zansky has never been popular. His life has revolved around Model U.N. and, of course, eating, eating, eating. But when he falls in love with a new girl in school, and when the star quarterback saves Andrew from a bully beatdown, he begins to get an idea of how he can change his image. Football, food, romance, and great humor!

Crash Into Me by Albert Borris (grade 9 and up): Four online friends get together for a road trip. Only thing is, the friends met in a suicide chat group, and their road trip is a plan to visit the graves of famous people who've committed suicide, then in a grand finale, kill themselves together. Told from the point of view of Owen, who is the most sure he wants to kill himself...or is he? Definitely for older boys, and for boys who like darker story lines. Probably one of my favorite books of the year.

I Am a Genius of Unspeakable Evil and I Want to Be Your Class President by Josh Lieb (grade 7 and up): Part comedy, part sci-fi/fantasy, this story is about a 12-year old named Oliver who has the whole world convinced that he is mentally slow, when in reality he is a genius and the third richest person in the world. To get his dad's attention, Oliver decides to run for class president...and the comedy ensues. This reads like an episode of The Simpsons, and I laughed out loud more times than I could count. Hilarious, and one of my favorite reads of the whole year.

What about you, Moms? What boy books do you like? What books do your boys devour? And do you find it as hard to find good boy books as I do?

Happy reading!

There are a lot of cruel things about an August heat wave in Kansas City. Humidity that makes you wish for gills. Losing nine layers of skin on the bottoms of your feet just walking the length of the driveway to pick up the newspaper. Forgotten sunglasses fusing with the dash of your car while you wait in line for 30 days at the school supply store.

But perhaps the cruelest of all summer heat cruelties comes in pairs. Feet. Little boy feet, to be exact.

Holy mother of mittens, what happens inside those little plastic-and-rubber movie character light-up shoes to create that sort of stench?! The best I can tell, it’s some sort of chemical reaction that could surely end wars. No sock, no sprinkled baking soda, no baby powder or perfume or air freshener could defeat the summer feet. Odor Eaters would be eaten alive. I fear looking at the feet directly, afraid my face might melt off, sort of like the bad guys who didn’t close their eyes in Raiders of the Lost Ark.

What’s worse, the boys are proud of the unholy stench emanating from their extremities. They giggle whenever someone in the house starts sniffing, muttering, “What do I smell?” only to find a discarded shoe behind the recliner. They laugh when a sock has been declared “too far gone to contaminate the washing machine with” and thrown away. They get all puffed-up proud when someone mistakes their feet for a passing leaky garbage truck.

And they use their putrid pedal extremities as weapons. Yesterday, I got caught in the crossfire of a particularly nasty foot war. In an enclosed minivan.

Just so you know, 30 minutes face-to-reeking-foot in an enclosed minivan is more than long enough to make a person lightheaded. I’m surprised I made it home and am not, at this very moment, driving disorientedly through a desert somewhere mumbling, “I can’t get the mayonnaise smell out of my hair….”

“You took your shoes off!” I heard The Destroyer say. Sure enough, I looked over, and Speed Demon had his bare toes splayed over the air vent that was pointed directly at the back seat. He had a grin stretched across his face that reminded me of Jack Nicholson sneering, “Heeere’s Johnny!” Shot clearly fired.

“Fine! I’m going to take mine off, too!” The Destroyer cried.

“No! Please! Have mercy! I’m innocent,” I shouted, but it was too late.

I heard the two thunks of shoes hitting the floor, followed by maniacal laughter. Immediately, my eyes started to water.

And then, as I writhed in agony in the driver’s seat, wondering where I could score some of that stuff medical examiners smear under their noses to block the death smell, I swear The Destroyer got all serious and mumbled to himself, “Hey, there’s a beaver on my foot.”

I really need to look into getting that kid some professional help.

Because I know there’s no possible way a beaver was on his foot.

No living creature could survive in that environment.

I guess I should get used to it. The smell appears to be permanent. Even after scrubbing with the manliest cologne-scented soap we have, one of the boys will say, “How does my foot smell now?” And my best answer is…like someone tried to spruce up a rotted chicken carcass with a bottle of Polo.

The only thing I can do is buy them new shoes and hope this heat breaks soon…at least before whatever mad scientist living down there perfects the shoe-sized nuclear weapon he’s been working on. I’d hate something catastrophic to happen to the beaver.

One of my friends tipped me off to the best place to go for school supply shopping. A place where I would find stacks upon stacks of unused colored folders—the expensive plastic kind. Where I’d find enough composition books to overwhelm even the most angsty journaling tween. Colored pencils, full reams of wild rule paper, scissors in every color and size. And it’s all free.

I won’t have to bump anyone with my shopping cart so I can elbow in to the No. 2 pencil bin. I don’t have to endure tantrum-throwing children, moms-on-the-edge, or perky dads who somehow manage to look completely unfazed by the supply-buying process…and maybe like they’re even enjoying it a little bit (how do they do that?).

It’s about time I found this magical place where rivers of unused Elmer’s flows freely. It’s about time I capitalized on my years of cash blown on rulers that are maybe pulled out of their desks two times a year (three, if a kid can get away with whacking a 4th grader on the back of the head on the way to P.E.). It’s about time I found the school supply wonders of…

The basement.

It makes so much sense! That’s where all the old, unused supplies that were sent home on the last day of school last year are stored (see future “If You’re Not Going to Use the Orange Folder That Can Only Be Found on Alternate Wednesdays in a Cobwebby Bin in the Back Corner of a Tiny Gas Station in Tucson, Why Put it On The Supply List in the First Place?” column).

We’ve got everything down there. Glue sticks? Want them in groups of three, nine, or 12? Pink rubber erasers? I use them to keep my desk from wobbling. Three-ring binders? Pfft. Please. Challenge me.

Why buy a red spiral notebook when there’s an unused purple one downstairs collecting dust (see future “Remember the Good Old Nonconformist Days When You Could Bring Any Color Notebook to School and It Worked Just as Well as Any Other Color Notebook?” column)? Hey, I have 25¢ that says purple is the new red.

Of course, the kids aren’t loving this new shopping arrangement.

“But that’s not new, Mom. I want new stuff!”

“Oh, yeah? Remember all those times I bought you the good new stuff and it all went into a box that the whole class shared—even Eugene, the boy who claims that swishing Crayons in your nostrils makes them color brighter?”

“Hey, Eugene’s technique works. I tried it.”

(See future “I Think I Know Why My Kid is Sick All the Time” column.)

“And you ended up having to use the fake Crayons that broke when you picked them up and the glue stick that was always dry and the colored pencils with the wonky lead that made your face twitch if you smelled it too hard?”

“Yeah.”

“And remember the time I couldn’t find the dry erase board eraser and you complained that your life was over every day until I finally found one, and by then you were so attached to the old sweat sock you’d been using as a replacement, you didn’t want the eraser after all? And what about the time I found two unused boxes of Kleenex under your bed because it was ‘too embarrassing’ to take them to the teacher?”

“Oh, yeah. That.”

“And at least I’m not making you carry the backpack that says ‘Parks and Recreation Assistant Coach 2000’ again this year.”

“Thank you.”

It’s the perfect system, really. They get their supplies, and I get to keep my sanity.

Plus I can save my money for the important new stuff: Clothes.

(See future “How Does One Child Lose 27 Pairs of Socks, a $60 Jacket, and a Pair of High Tops, and Ruin the Knees in Every Pair of Jeans He Owns Before the End of November?!” column.)

On a recent road trip, I discovered that there are two things that apparently go together: tourist traps and fudge.

I used to fancy myself a fudge connoisseur. I could scarcely pass a fudge counter without stopping for a little free sample of this, a little pound or 3 of that. Fudge made me weak at the knees. It was the Chachi to my Joanie, the Kryptonite to my Superman, the Carmine Ragusa to my Shirley Feeney.

This was back in the days when there were two fudge flavors – chocolate, and chocolate with nuts. Not pecans or walnuts or hazelnuts. Just nuts. It was up to you to figure out what kind of nuts you were eating. And if you couldn’t, nobody really cared.

Every now and then you might run across a high-end fudge shop that would bust out a gritty block of peanut butter fudge, and maybe swirl it in with some chocolate fudge, just to prove that they could get fancy.  But otherwise, fudge was fudge. Anything else was called Divinity, and you only really ate that at Christmas, so it didn’t count.

But after running into my 90th road-trip-tourist-trap-slash-fudgery, I realized it had been years since I bought a piece of fudge and disappeared into a corner with it. So I decided that this trip would be my reintroduction to fudge, since there was so much of it to choose from.

It was everywhere. Every kitschy little shop, every café, even every gas station. I felt like every time I turned around there was a case of fudge and a kindly-eyed woman in an apron asking if I’d like a free sample.

There was chocolate fudge and peanut butter fudge and vanilla fudge and swirl fudge and chewy fudge and flaky fudge and a whole lot of fudge with so much stuff thrown into it I could no longer identify it as fudge.

What the heck happened to my fudge?! Since when did it turn into a recipe consisting of chocolate mixed together with pretty much every other sugar-sodden confection you could think of? Candy bars and marshmallows and sprinkles and nuts with names and toffee bits and hunks of sugar and cookies and…and…and…STOP MESSING WITH MY FUDGE, PEOPLE!

At one point I found a counter that had 12 varieties of fudge, not a single one of them just plain chocolate.

“I’d like some chocolate fudge, please,” I ordered.

“Dark Chocolate Choconut or White Chocolate Nut Trio?”

“Just plain chocolate.”

“…What’s that?”

“Um. Just. Chocolate.”

“Oh, you mean like our Creamy Chocolate Chocolate White Chocolate Swirl with Chocolate Sprinkles?”

“No, just…plain chocolate.”

“Oh. We don’t have that.”

“This is a fudge counter, but you don’t have chocolate fudge.”

“Nope. But would you like a free sample of our ‘Secret Flavor of the Day’?”

I peered at a mound of lumpy white chocolate filled with sprinkles, marshmallows, and about 9 other ingredients, not all of which I’m actually convinced were food.

“That looks like dog vomit. And is that a set of car keys floating in it?”

“Maybe our Triple Mint Gummi Bear Orange Swirl Cookie is more your speed.”

“Uh, I’m pretty sure one bite of that would have me speeding somewhere. But not somewhere good.”

Here’s the deal. Call me a fudge snob if you like, but you can’t just throw a bunch of sugary stuff into fudge and call it a new flavor. Coming up with a new flavor of confection takes years of practice and dedication and maybe a little culinary experience. In other words, if you’ve dedicated your life to perfecting the art of fudge and you know a little about ingredient combination, keep up the good work.

If your idea of creating a new fudge flavor is dumping your lunch leftovers into some chocolate and selling it in the same place where you sell windshield washer fluid, frozen burritos, and 14 gallons of unleaded on pump 4, just…stop.

And give me back my car keys, please.

We were sitting in the parking lot at a home improvement store, having just loaded 247 tons of mulch and rock into the back of the van, when a man walked by with two toddlers and a piece of wood a good three times the length of his car. He unlocked the car, chased the two boys inside, and then just stood there, board in hand, staring at the car forlornly.

I knew exactly what was going through his mind. I’ve heard it so many times before.

Here’s a typical scene in a home improvement store parking lot for our family:

Hubby and I stand with hands on hips, staring at the van while the children swing off the ripped roof liner and plot to overthrow us inside.

“It’s not gonna fit,” Hubby will say, glancing at our purchase, still on the trolley.

“It’ll fit,” I answer.

“It’s not gonna fit.”

“It’s a tarp and two paint stir sticks. It could fit in the glove box.”

“There’s no room. We’ll have to rent a moving truck to get this thing home.”

“You said the same thing when The Destroyer was born.”

“It’s not possible. It’s going to have to hang out the back of the van.”

“Speed Demon’s wearing red shorts. We’ll tie him to the end of it.”

It’s our little dance. We buy something big, Hubby takes one look at the car and is certain it will be easier to move the house to the Home Depot parking lot than to transport the item home, we bicker about it for a minute, and then I cram that puppy in there and drive home with a smug smile on my face.

I’ve had lots of practice with this. I used to drive a Volkswagen Beetle. After a couple years of hauling around carseats, strollers, Barbie and her beach house, Hot Wheels, diaper bags, and an impressive Oreo farm, I was so good at the smash-and-cram I could have fit two other, bigger cars inside my little Bug.

I got quite adept at disassembling bicycles and pulling playground equipment out of boxes in parking lots. I’ve driven with my foot in the glove box and someone’s earlobe in my mouth, and packed the back seat so artfully a grain of sand would have thrown off the whole balance.

I am a car-packing machine.

Hubby, on the other hand, finds a bag of marbles a space-challenge not worth pursuing. While I’m contorting over the back seat, pulling in a dining room table and telling the kids to “just breathe shallowly on the way home,” he’s pacing around the car intoning, “You’re never going to be able to close that door. This is silly. Why don’t we just call a friend with a truck? You can’t possibly think you’re going to get that in there.”

He doesn’t tend to say much on the ride home. Could be because a table leg has his face smushed up against the windshield, but more likely because it’s hard to talk around a mouthful of crow.

He’s learned to trust me, I think. He only grumbled about the 247 tons of mulch and rock once, and even that was without a lot of vigor.

As I put the van into gear and started to pull out of the parking space, past the man with the wood plank and the two toddlers, Hubby placed his hand on my arm.

“You may want to stick around. That guy’s going to need you.”

“Why’s that?”

“If anyone could get that board in there, it’d be you. You’re the best I’ve ever seen when it comes to loading cars.”

I smiled. That may have been one of the nicest things he’s ever said to me.

“He’s on his own,” I said, driving out of the lot. “That dance is ours.”

For a long time, I pined for a TV show kitchen. Enormous and airy, scrubbed to a shine, bowls of lemons artfully placed on the countertops.

In TV kitchens, the only food ever being prepared is fresh vegetables. Someone is cutting a carrot or peppers on a cutting board while they talk about Johnny’s grades or Melinda’s shopping addiction. Never do they stop to complain that the pepper sure is rubbery for $1.50, never do they slice a finger in half because they’re distracted by Jamie’s confession that the baby isn’t Paul’s. Never do they forget to wear their aprons. And never do they seem to really do anything with the vegetables once they’re cut. Makes you wonder if they all just sit around a pile of chunky-cut raw veggies for dinner, sort of like a pack of guinea pigs.

Occasionally, in TV kitchens, a pot of spaghetti sauce will be simmering on the stove. Never any spaghetti; just the sauce. And it simmers neatly, never popping big splotches onto the bottom of the microwave. That would be because microwaves don’t exist in TV kitchens. Why would they when all that is ever eaten is a cut-up carrot with a side of spaghetti sauce?

Still. It looks so cozy.

Nothing like my kitchen.

My kitchen isn’t “enormous” and “airy” so much as it is trying to balance on a postage stamp in a steam room. Mountains of unopened mail and Things Nobody Wants to Put Away dominate the only stretch of countertop. I have to balance mixing bowls on top of clutter, and when I pull a cookie sheet out of the oven, nobody is allowed to use the sink for ten minutes.

I couldn’t find my cutting board if you paid me, which is okay because, despite all of my home ec teacher’s warnings, I use my hand as a cutting board. And rarely am I cutting a single pepper, because two out of three Brown children think they taste funny.

As soon as I start cooking, my kitchen turns into an obstacle course. I repeatedly trip over empty dog bowls and discarded baseball bats. The dishwasher door hangs open as I fruitlessly search for The Good Spatula (I’ll find it later in the bathtub). And a kid almost always chooses that time of the evening to decide that spinning in a circle in the middle of the kitchen floor and randomly shouting, “Mom! Hey, Mom! Guess what? Guess, Mom! You’re not guessing!” is a really good idea.

And the phone rings nonstop. And there are salesmen at the door. And the basset hound lays at my feet hoping to snatch up a dropped morsel. And sometimes someone gets a good game of tag going and I have kids who aren’t even mine streaking through.

And I never wear my apron. Or high heels, earrings, skinny jeans and lipstick for that matter.

And I get really good at creating not-curse-words. “Aw, Tootsie Pops, who left their flabberjabbit socks on the diddlefargit counter again?! There is toe lint floating in the noodlefoodle cake batter!”

But at some point, I decided I kind of like my kitchen this way. It’s cozy in its own right. A place where we don’t just talk about life while slowly tearing lettuce leaves into a colander, but where we actually do a lot of living instead. A place where there is steam and messes and sometimes shrieking laughter and sometimes shouts that I’m the Most Unfair Mother Alive. And lots of, “Get your fingers out of that bowl, Mister!”

Not a place where storylines happen. A place where family happens.

I imagine the kids coming home for holidays when they’re adults and I already know exactly where they’ll congregate. I know this because it’s where my brother and sister and I congregate at our mom’s house.

The kitchen.

Right over the pot of spaghetti sauce.

(Moms, is your kitchen cozy or cluttered? Is it the hub of activity in your house? And what does your dream kitchen look like?)

I am a movie person. I eagerly await release dates. I sit in dark theaters excitedly whispering, “Oh, that’s a must-see” during previews. I take the kids to the cheap summer movie programs, even though they’re showing films we own on DVD. Just the smell of a movie theater makes me happy. I love movies.

But even I have had a little too much of the 3D thing.

I am a child of the 1970s. We know 3D. And call me a snob, but if there aren’t shark teeth popping out of the screen, making me jump so hard I throw my popcorn all over the guy behind me, it isn’t 3D. It’s just another gimmick to squeeze a couple extra bucks out of me.

Recently, we went to see the non-3D version of a popular movie. When I told the cashier what we wanted to see, she winced.

“That’s not the 3D version,” she said with a physically pained expression on her face. “Is that going to be okay?”

As if she’d just told us we’d have to stay after the movie to scrape gum off the bottom of the trash barrel with our teeth. As if we’d just discovered we would have to sit in the parking lot in the rain and watch through a peephole in the side of the building. As if…we were just watching a plain old movie with our plain old $2 cheaper eyes.

Immediately, my mind started reeling through familiar images. The Destroyer wearing his 3D glasses on his chin and sticking Milk Duds to his eyelids through most of the movie. Speed Demon looking green and hovering ominously over the popcorn bucket because 3D makes him feel pukey. And Teen Goddess complaining on a loop that the 3D glasses won’t fit over her regular glasses and that she’ll have red marks on top of her ears.

“Um, yeah. I think we’ll manage,” I told the cashier.

It used to be only special movies were 3D. But now everything is “eye-popping,” every movie audience-immersive. I fear what the future of movies might look like if this trend continues.

Chainsaw Facelift, in riveting 3D: And for an extra $3, we’ll send someone creepy and unshaven to your house to hide in the bushes and gaze through your windows while breathing loudly through the holes of a hockey mask.

PsychoStalker, in spine-tingling 3D: Jeremy, the boy who cleans the popcorn machine, will follow you everywhere you go, complimenting your beauty until you’re freaked out and fairly certain he wants to make kitchen wallpaper out of your skin. For an extra $5, he will send you love letters from the high-security psych ward they send him to after the trial.

Romeo-mance, in spellbinding 3D: For an extra buck, Jeremy will be legit.  

You’re a Horrible Parent and Everyone Will Judge You and Your Children Will Call You Bad Names in a Memoir Someday if You Don’t Let Your Kids See This Movie in glorious 3D: Oh. Wait. I actually think that’s the alternate title of every animated movie that’s come out over the past two years.

Soon, if this more-vivid movie trend continues, we’ll be racing to the theater in a fiery, high-speed chase, dodging enemy sniper fire on the way to the ticket counter, sweeping the knee in a high-stakes karate tournament at the concession stand, and having our hearts broken by our soul mate, who, due to a misunderstanding, took the first flight to Peru while we were in the restroom.

Meh. I’m a parent. I’ve got enough “eye-popping” situations in my life. Enough “riveting dramas.” Shoot, just last night The Destroyer left some “spellbinding artistry” on the hallway wall. I am up to my eyeballs in 3D.

Although, if someone were to bring back a good old set of shark teeth, I could probably be talked into things.

Moms, do you shell out the bucks for the 3D versions of movies? Do you have a favorite 3D movie (mine is actually Philharmagic at Magic Kingdom in Walt Disney World)? Any 3D movies you think didn't live up to the 3D hype (*coughAvatarcough*)?

When I was a kid, I had a favorite record. On one side was the song “Puff, the Magic Dragon,” sung by some guy who had a creepy warbly voice and sounded like he wore flowers in his hair and washed his feet only during full moons. On the other side was a spooky little story, the story of “The Teeny-Tiny Woman.”

“Once upon a time,” the story went, “there was a teeny-tiny woman who lived in a teeny-tiny house in a teeny-tiny forest…”

I’d bet dollars to doughnuts that teeny-tiny woman was searching for a teeny-tiny electronic device lost by one of her big, loud, whining children.

Earlier this week, Teen Goddess schlumped into the kitchen. She flopped into a chair and issued the patented teenager Woe-is-Me-My-Life-is-a-Shambles sigh.

“I lost my iPod,” she said. “I can’t find it anywhere.”

Now, right away I knew this situation had the potential to become A Huge Deal. For starters, she bought that iPod with her own money, and things bought with her own money are somehow far more expensive and devastating to lose than if they’re bought with our money. She could lose a diamond-encrusted Rolls Royce and as long as someone else bought it, wouldn’t understand why it was “such a big deal.” But a rubberband bought with her own cash goes missing and look out, world, heads are gonna roll!

Secondly, I hadn’t seen her without her iPod in well over a year. Her ears looked…short. And her thumb kept twitching.

We immediately started searching, and it wasn’t long before I realized that finding this gadget in an entire house full of stuff was going to be like looking for a box of Tic-Tacs in a landfill.

I immediately started griping. “This is probably good detox for you. Instead of pouting, maybe you should pick up a book. You know, those things with words in them that make you smarter? It’s hard to lose ‘War and Peace’ in the couch cushions. And let me just point out, we never lost our entire music library when music was on vinyl. Whoever decided to market $200 digital devices the size of wart removal bandages to teenagers was a genius!”

But if marketing miniscule and very expensive electronics to children is genius, actually buying them must put me somewhere between a Simpsons character and a moldy piece of cheese on the IQ scale. I know the second The Destroyer yanks an itty bitty video game out of its box, I will be searching through a vacuum cleaner bag for it by day’s end. Every time the air conditioner kicks on, I will hear faint Mario Brothers music emanating from the air ducts. Yet I continue to bring these things into my home anyway.

A few years ago, Speed Demon saved up his money to buy an iPod. He knows where it is exactly 6 days out of the year. The other 359 days are spent searching for it, grumbling that it never worked right anyway, or accusing a distant relative of stealing it during a birthday party in 2001.

I imagine that on the day we move from this house, we will unearth somewhere around $327,000 worth of lost electronic toys. And perhaps a hamster or two. But that’s another story for another day.

After three days of reaching down inside the couch where Skittles reproduce, cleaning her bedroom from top to bottom (oh, the horror!), wandering the lawn with a flashlight, and relentless hard-core pouting, the iPod was found. At a friend’s house. In said friend’s purse. Where it had been all along.

She’s happy. Which makes me happy.

Now she can help me find that lost copy of “War and Peace.”

The arrival of summer can mean so many wonderful things—giant, swollen mosquito bites trapped in the crease on the backs of your knees, a billion rained-out baseball games (followed by a billion games so hot and buggy you wish they’d been rained out), and moms going hoarse trying to get their kids out of the swimming pool.

There’s always one reasonable request. “Okay guys, it’s time to get out of the pool. Let’s go.”

I’m going to blame it on Play Day delirium. Or maybe I just got caught up in Last-Day-of-School giddiness. Perhaps I had a fever. Hard to tell exactly what caused me to utter the four most insane words I’ve ever uttered in my entire life: “Let’s have a sleepover!”

I haven’t hosted a full-on, giggle-till-you-vomit sleepover since Teen Goddess was a mere Kid Goddessette. But I remember those days fondly – manicures at the kitchen table, NSYNC sing-offs in the front yard, Titanic on a loop in the DVD player (along with continuous squeals about how Leonardo DiCaprio was so adorable there needs to be a pocket-sized version of him to carry around in your wallet for emergency cuteness needs) (And the girls liked him, too).

Several months ago, my mom bought herself a pair of shoes. She fell in love with the shoes. The shoes were the best thing to ever happen to her feet. The shoes could wash her car and do her taxes and make her toes sing like Sinatra. The shoes belonged in a museum of awesomeness. These were The World’s Best Shoes.

Thus began her Jennifer Must Have a Pair of These Amazing Shoes Odyssey 2010. Every time I talked to her, she reminded me that I simply must buy a pair of these shoes. Every time I saw her in person, she made me gaze at and appreciate the shoes. Every chance she got, she tried to coax me to commit to the shoes.

I did not.

So she switched to a new tactic. She waited until my birthday rolled around. She would gift me the shoes.

“I’m going to take you out shopping for your birthday,” she said one day on the telephone, “and you’re going to get a pair of these shoes, whether you want them or not.” Translation: I know you’d rather duct tape scouring pads to your feet than wear a pair of these shoes, but from whom do you think you inherited your stubbornness, missy?

So we went shopping.

And it turns out that even at age 38, when you go shopping with your mom, your Inner Petulant Teenager just might come along for the ride.

“You need clothes,” she said, steering me toward a rack of shirts. “This shirt is cute!”

“It’s pink. I don’t wear pink. I like black.”

She assesses my black t-shirt, black earrings, and black fingernails. “What, are you Johnny Cash now?”

“Har har. You’re walkin’ the line, woman.”

“Why don’t you branch out into another color? You know, like dark gray. Or charcoal. Maybe deep brown.” She pulls out a shirt so cute and frilly I expect it to come with a Sesame Street character attached. “This one’s adorable!”

I stick my finger down my throat gag-me-with-a-spoon-style. “It has bows on it. Next you’ll be asking me to wear the color melon. Or lime.”

“There’s nothing wrong with melon and lime.”

“In a fruit salad, maybe. Which reminds me – how come nobody ever wears a bacon-colored shirt? Or pork chop. Only fruit colors. Ever notice that?” I randomly pull something off the rack. “Here. I’ll buy this one. It’s not black, it’s red. With heavy black overtones. I’m done now.”

“Aren’t you going to try it on?”

“I don’t need to try it on. It’s my size.”

“You have to try it on. You can’t buy clothes without trying them on.”

I sigh, stomping to the fitting room. “Parents just don’t understand!” I yell. “I will never do this to my child!”

This is the way the entire shopping excursion goes. I hear about how my niece is a much more proficient shopper than I am, and that my daughter is right about my lack of shopping patience. At one point she questions whether or not I can even see colors or if all I see is a big, bare store with a few black shirts hanging here and there. She tries to make me wear things with sparkles. I choke on my gum when I see a $70 t-shirt.

And I can’t stop humming “Ring of Fire.”

By the end of our trip, I have four t-shirts (for the record, they are red, white, brown and purple), a desire to name one of my boys Sue, and a plan to go to Jackson.

Oh, and a pair of the shoes.

Because, well, from whom do you think I inherited my stubbornness, anyway?

(They are kind of comfy, these shoes.)
 

 I’m in big trouble. Here it is, nearly the end of May, and I am without a plan.

It’s hardly my fault, you know. It’s not like I’ve been sitting around watching “Minute to Win It” reruns and painting my toenails all day. It’s May. Any mom will tell you, it is flat out impossible to make a plan in May (much less hone your ability to shake four ping pong balls out of a Kleenex box strapped to your tushie in 60 seconds or less).

Next to December (with October a close third), May is the busiest time of the year for moms. Not only do we have soccer ending and baseball beginning, but for some reason, everyone saves up nine months’ worth of Frenzied Fun and Frivolity for the last three weeks of the school year. There are field trips galore. Class parties. Play Days. End-of-the-year this and celebration that. Student Councils are selling anything that isn’t nailed down. There are movie days and beach days and Children’s Book Week. There are teacher gifts to be bought, food items to be donated, the PTA picketing houses for volunteers. And don’t even get me started on Prom. May should come equipped with “I Survived” t-shirts.

We moms bump into one another at Target, sometimes quite literally, as our triple espressos wear off and we find ourselves asleep at the cart… again.

“What’re you here for?” one mom asks another via complex yawn.

The other mom pulls out a list so long it unrolls to the automotive aisle. She began this shopping excursion on April 30th. “Um, let’s see. Toothpicks. Sponges. Sunscreen. Bug Spray. And 97 bags of chips for picnic day.”

“You’re sending in chips? I volunteered to donate chips!”

“I thought you were donating juice boxes. I remember in September, you vowed to provide juice to every picnicking child in the school. You even quoted one of the founding fathers.”

“Oooh, yeah. Stupid beginning-of-the-school-year euphoria. So that’s why my Capri Sun stock went up this morning.”

Other times we moms whiz right past one another, each saying a prayer that the other won’t want to stop to chat. This is the end of the school year, people – there is no time for cultivating friendships.

“Hi, Sandy!”

“‘Lo, Margaret!”

“Are you going to be at the…?

“Nope. I’m going to the…”

“Have you talked to…”

“No time. She talks in full sentences. I’ve gotta…”

“Yeah, I should’ve already…”

May is the month that we don’t see the bottoms of our car trunks, the tops of our kitchen counters, positive numbers in our check registers, or anything resembling productivity. We hire movers to send our kids and all our donations to school every morning. While they’re gone, we race to the store for the next day’s supplies, bribe our bosses for days off for the next week’s barrage of field trips, and hire service people to fix our overtaxed washing machines, dishwashers and all the stuff the kids broke over the winter that we’ve been too busy to have repaired. Such as our sanity and will to live.

We are at May’s mercy – we have no choice but to hang on for dear life and hope we don’t fling off until the ride has come to a full and complete…

June.

Otherwise known as summer break. Otherwise known as the time when the kids are home all day breaking the stuff we just finally had repaired. Otherwise known as Mom-we’re-bored and He-started-it and I-swear-it-wasn’t-my-fault and That-police-officer-wants-to-talk-to-you month.

And here I am with no plan.

Well, at least I’ve got all these leftover juice boxes.
 
 

Remember that old saying, “Be careful what you wish for because you just might get it?” Yeah, I’m having one of those wish I’d wished for something else moments right now.

It was about a month or two ago. I’d stepped on one too many plastic anime cartoon character toys.

“Gah!” I cried to Hubby, rubbing my foot with an anime cartoon character trading card lying nearby. “I wish those boys would find something new to obsess over. Our house is being overtaken by bad animation. Watch my mouth. I’ll bet the movement of my lips doesn’t match my words right now.” I blew my nose on an anime cartoon character poster for emphasis.

I was tired of listening to hours of imagined battles between one creature’s fire skills and another’s water mastery. I had all of the characters’ “evolutions” memorized. I could imitate their voices. Some days I spoke nothing but gibberish all day long, and once I even ordered a pizza before I realized I was speaking in anime cartoon characterese.

Yet I should’ve been careful what I wished for.

Yes, thank goodness, the anime cartoon characters are So Yesterday over here. But the boys have replaced that obsession with… heaven help me… pro wrestling.

They’ve spent their allowances on stacks and stacks of wrestling trading cards, and now leave those all over the house instead. You have no idea how unnerving it is to wake up with a photo of a grimacing, extremely tan, muscle-popping, shiny man in a pair of very small underwear stuck to your cheek.

Our DVR is stocked with recorded episodes of various pro wrestling matches, which is sort of like watching soap operas, only with worse acting and more drama.

Our couch is no longer a place for sitting, but has turned into a place where one can practice his “finisher” – one of my boys can’t so much as walk into the room without another boy twisting an arm over his head and flinging him against the couch with a mighty growl. Okay, to be fair, they’ve always done that. The only difference is now I’m not sure if I should hover nearby with their health insurance cards at the ready or put on a half shirt and fake eyelashes and ask to be tagged in.

When I call them in for dinner, they yell back, “I will destroy dinner! Dinner is no match for me! I am the greatest at eating dinner!” And then they shake and hold their breath until their faces turn red for maximum fierceness.

So, yes, around The Brown House, pro wrestling is 24/7, and it has begun seeping into my brain. Worse than the anime ever did.

Two nights ago, Hubby looked at me and said, “You do realize you had a discussion with the boys tonight about who is the best pro wrestler, don’t you?”

“I did?” I responded, sewing rhinestones onto The Destroyer’s jeans. I seemed to recall a discussion whereby I debated swiftness versus sheer power and the detriment of wrestling in jean shorts or a mask. Dear lord… had I said those things out loud?

“Yeah. You argued them down pretty good.”

“Well, they were wrong,” I said. “And dude. You’re sitting on a championship trading card. You shouldn’t bend it. It has five stars of fighting power. It’s kind of a rare card. Respect, dude. Respect.”

I’m pretty sure I later heard him wishing his wife would find some friends her own age to play with.
 
 
 

Lane Olinghouse said, “The quickest way for a parent to get a child’s attention is to sit down and look comfortable.” Any parent who’s ever had a recliner, a fresh box of Cheez-Its, and a whole season of Glee on the DVR knows the truth to this quote. But any parent worth his salt also knows there’s another way to get a child’s attention: be busy.

In fact, be so busy you have to write “blink” from 2:30 to 2:31 on your calendar, or you’ll certainly miss your chance. Be so busy, bees give lectures about you. So busy, you actually catch up with yourself (Whoa. Deep.).

  I will begrudgingly admit to occasionally pining for the days when life was easier. Back when, if someone called your house and you weren’t there, they simply had to wait until you came home. Back when you knew a rainstorm was coming, not because a fancy radar interrupted your favorite TV show to tell you, but because you looked outside and saw the clouds. Back when Kermit and Miss Piggy were the only celebrity couple you knew anything about.

But I don’t like to admit to pining for the pre-Twitter, pre-texting, pre-complicated days, because it makes me sound like a dinosaur. My grandma used to complain about the complexity of the ‘70s. And she was o-l-d.

But right now I’m pining. I’m pining over something that used to be easy, and has become what seems to be almost ridiculously difficult these days.

Raising dogs.

Do you remember when raising a dog was one of the simplest tasks in the world? So easy, a whole host of young fictional characters could do it on their own just fine. So easy, it was often the one stipulation that 11-year olds got when presented with their new family friend: “Okay, Jimmy, you can keep the dog. But you have to take care of it. Your father and I won’t help you.” And, as long as the dog wasn’t eaten by a mountain lion or bitten by a rabid wolf while trying to defend the family, everything was fine.

Remember when you used to go to the pound, pick out the dog who looked the least likely to eat your face while you slept, name him something totally unimaginative like Duke, buy a $2, 40-lb. bag of kibble on your way home, and give him water out of an old butter tub?

Man, those were the days.

The dog ate the couch, dug holes in the flower beds, and jumped the fence daily, but it didn’t really matter because that’s what dogs do.

And he lived to be 105. And he was still drinking out of the same butter tub on the day he died.

Now, you agonize over breed types, try to come up with something clever and somewhat regal for a name like His Barkesty or Sir Runsalot, shell out $80 for a week’s supply of dog food that will “make him poo less,” and buy a stainless steel Olympic-sized water bowl that matches his custom-made collar.

And take him to the vet. A lot. This week for a bladder infection, that week for a dental cleaning, the following week for toenail-trimming and to have his itchy ears checked. Miffy’s bark is off. Mr. Wiggletail is leaning to the left. Buffy Puffleton is just not wagging with her usual vim.

Seems to me our old mutts could eat a rusted trash can and wash it down with swamp water and dirty diapers and they’d be just fine. Today’s malady-ridden dog needs prescription food and regular appointments with a masseuse or their fur will fall out.

Aw, maybe I’m just crabby. Turns out my dog has allergies. Possibly to dust. Maybe grass. Could be a food allergy. Or she could be allergic to… me.

At first this shocked me. I’d never heard of a dog having an allergy to “people dander” before. But it makes sense now. If someone were naming me Ursula the Great, taking me to the vet to have my gums inspected, and forcing me to eat boring, tasteless poo-depleting food, I might suddenly develop an allergy to humans, too.

Poor thing. I kind of feel sorry for her, scratching and scratching like that, trying to get the icky human feeling off and just be a dog again. Like she’s supposed to be.

Maybe I should buy her a shiny new butter tub.

When my kids were learning to talk and I was clapping my hands and praising them for being linguistic geniuses, I never stopped to think what encouraging this behavior would mean for me later in life.

I mean, it’s great when they can finally tell you what’s wrong with them and you no longer have to spend hours standing over a crib trying to decipher the “hungry cry” from the “bored cry” from the “why are you staring at me, crazy lady with the huge head cry.” And nothing beats the warm fuzzy feeling a mom gets the first time her precious one looks at her and says, “I love you, Mommy.”

But the more words they learn, the closer you get to hearing the rest of that sentence. “I love you, Mommy. More than Dora the Explorer and PlayDoh. But not more than iCarly. iCarly doesn’t have one of those hairy mole things on her chin like you do. And her tummy isn’t sweaty.”

By the time they’re three, thanks to their linguistic genius, there’s nobody in the city who doesn’t know that you fed them Tootsie Rolls for breakfast and then let them watch soap operas so you could take a nap. And it gets worse from there. They start to learn… questions. By the time they’re five, you find yourself petitioning to strike the word “why” from the English language.

“Why are we leaving, Mommy?”

“Because we have to go to the grocery store.”

“Why do we have to go to the grocery store?”

“Because we’re out of food.”

“Why are we out of food?”

“Because there was an America’s Next Top Model marathon and Mommy was having a low self-esteem day, okay Perry Mason?”

“But why do we need to get new food?”

“Because we’ll go hungry and die, okay? We’re all going to die! Me first, if you keep asking why!”

But, as frustrating as “why” is, nothing beats the frustration of 9-year old boy with questions.

“Hey, Mom, I have a question.”

“Oh, dear Lord, are the police at the door again?”

“No. I swear. It’s just… well, do you think Dad will be on the roof again anytime soon?”

“Why?”

“Oh, no reason. Just… we might have accidentally gotten some stuff stuck up there.”

“A Frisbee?”

“Yeah. That. And some other stuff. A baseball. Couple backpacks. The hose. My cleats. Some newspapers. The cat. Oh, and speaking of the cat, I have another question for you…”

But nothing, and I mean nothing, is more frightening than the questions that come out when a 17-year old opens her mouth. Mostly because those questions all end in dollar signs.

A teen comes to you with “a question,” and you’re sure to be hit up for something that will make you channel your parents for half an hour, using language such as, “when I was your age,” “young lady,” and “kids these days.” It’s not pretty. It’s best to shut it down before it even starts.

“Hey, Mom, I have a question for you.”

“No.”

“You haven’t even listened.”

“Don’t need to. You can’t get your eye socket pierced. I’m not taking you shopping on the Miracle Mile for your un-birthday. You can’t road-trip to Newark to see a concert. And you’re crazy if you think I’m going to buy you Justin Timberlake for the weekend.”

“But it’s just a hypothetical question.”

“Good. Ask your hypothetical parents. They might say yes.”

Of course, I suppose even the teens aren’t as frightening as we thirty-somethings. Our questions are so, so loaded.

“Hi, Mom. I have a question for you,” I say into the phone.

“Oh, no.”

“No, it’s not a big deal. I was just wondering… you doing anything this weekend?”

“Um, I don’t know. Wh-why do you ask?”

“I could really use a babysitter. Don’t worry. You’ll be fine. Just as long as they don’t speak.”

“I hope you like beans,” I snipe over my shoulder as we head out of the sporting goods store. “Because, after this shopping spree, that’s all we’ll be eating until you’re in college.”

My biceps groan as I try to keep the bag full of this season’s “necessary” purchases from dragging the ground.

“And speaking of college…” I hoist the bag up over my shoulder, getting a loud aluminum thwonk upside the head… which does nothing to improve my mood, by the way. “Can you say ‘baseball scholarship’? Because the bat with the cool red stripe? It cost more than a semester at Yale. What the heck is that bat made of – unicorn tears?”

Speed Demon gives Hubby an exasperated eye-roll, which I’m fully aware of, even though they’re behind me and I’m still kind of loopy from cash register shock.

Hubby responds with a pursed-lip head shake – the universal male sign language for, “Just be quiet and hopefully she’ll lumber back to her den, get distracted by maiming small animals, and will leave us alone.”

“I saw that!” I snap.

Hubby raises his eyebrows in the “I tried to tell you” sign, but Speed Demon is either way too brave for his own good, or can’t see the waves of irritation radiating off of me.

“Mom,” he says. “You can’t play baseball without proper equipment.”

I drop the shopping bag into the back of the van, which is already crowded by two lawn chairs, a tee, helmets, extra gloves, bases, nineteen pounds of baseball diamond grit, and a rogue Louisville Slugger that’s been rolling around in there since 2003.

The added weight of the shopping bag lifts the front tires off the ground. I sigh. There is no car big enough to hold all of this family’s baseball dreams. For that matter, there is no closet big enough, either. Or, well… house, really.

“Yes, I know,” I say. “I just spent eleven hours digging last year’s ‘proper equipment’ out from under the bunk bed. Oh, and I found that hamster that we lost two years ago, by the way.”

“That’s last year’s stuff. Last year’s stuff is too small,” Hubby complains.

I glare at him. “Really? And when do you think you’ll stop growing, Jethro? Because if I recall correctly, there’s a new glove for you in that shopping bag back there, yet I pulled a perfectly good glove out of the boys’ closet yesterday afternoon, and it had your guilty grown-man fingerprints all over it.”

“That was a softball glove…”

“Dad!” Speed Demon hisses, then gives him the wide-eyed sign for “Stop while you’re ahead, man!”

“Just drive,” I say, rubbing my temples. “We’ve got to get home and get this stuff unpacked before practice. I’ve got to figure out how to weight The Destroyer’s shoes so he can carry that bat-bag he just had to have. He looks like he’s going off to spend a year backpacking the Amazon with that thing.”

We get home and they feverishly fish out their new gear, strapping on cleats and pulling baseball caps down so low their ears bend forward like little satellite dishes. They can probably hear my internal groaning about heat and bugs and boredom from the outfield.

Someone lobs a ball into the ceiling fan and I break my big toe on a discarded “softball glove” (note to Hubby: I totally know the difference between a softball glove and a baseball glove, but nice try). And then out the door we head for practice, the boys feeling oh-so-proper in their “proper equipment.”

 And when we get out there onto the field and they’re squinting into the sun, their hands on their knees, waiting for that pop fly to come and make them great, I can’t help but think they’re a little bit cute, wearing their dreams so big on their faces like that.

 …I just didn’t realize dreams would take up so much van-space.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Seems I’ve passed on yet another ineptitude to the Brown children. Along with the inability to make non-clumpy macaroni and cheese; the disaster-courting lack of dance moves; and the always-catastrophic parallel parking skills, I can now add to my list of Things The Browns Can’t Do, kite-flying. Or, rather, kite-cussing-while-dragging-along-the-ground. Or, sometimes, kite-cussing-while-caught-in-a-gutter.

I’ve always loved kites. They’re pretty and eye-catching, and it doesn’t matter if it’s 1810, 1910, or 2010 – kites make kids smile. Plus, flying a kite just seems so easy. I mean, all you really have to do is stand there and squint, which is the kind of sport I normally excel at. I went pro at the stand-and-squint when I was a mere teenager!

But I’ve never had any luck with standing and squinting while simultaneously making something fly.

This is somewhat ironic, given that I have lost countless gas station receipts, hats, and restaurant balloons to the wind without even trying. Yet, try to get a flimsy, meant-for-flight-shaped item up into the air, and I’m a flop.

My failure, however, doesn’t keep me from trying. Every spring, there I am, running like a crazed woman in a park somewhere, a battered plastic ladybug or Pokemon or airplane bumping along on the ground behind me.

“Up!” I’ll shout, as if kites take orders. “Fly! Be free!”

And the kite will toy with me. It’ll flutter, catch a breeze, and zip upward so fast I practically sprain my wrist trying to give it line. Crowing in victory, I’ll get a good squint going… and then suddenly the kite will turn just a tick to the right.

“No!” I’ll shout, lunging to correct the flight path, contorting my body into yoga poses. “Don’t worry, kids… I’ll have this… kite up in… no… ouch, my back!”

The kite will suddenly float back to upright position, just long enough for me to relax, and then will dive-bomb straight to the ground. Not even a killer Downward Dog could save it.

“That’s okay,” I’ll say, panting and winding in the string. “All it needs is a little more tail. Someone go rip that loose upholstery off the back seat of the van. And give me your jeans.”

Last weekend, I introduced The Destroyer to the fine art of kite-flying. We grabbed our kites and headed to a park so windy I half-expected the practicing t-ball team to be spontaneously relocated to Kearney. With that kind of wind, there was basically no way we could get this wrong.

Within mere minutes our kites were soaring high. We were both standing and squinting like nobody’s business. Success!

Until my kite string slipped through my fingers.

Before I could react, the kite took off toward the treeline. I chased after it, making little yelping noises and cursing the irony that the one time one of my kites actually takes flight, I’m not hanging on to the other end of it.

Just as I got to the treeline, I saw a blur whiz past me. The Destroyer, running to catch my kite, while still holding onto his.

“Stop! You’re going to run your kite right into the…” I tried, but it was too late, “…trees.”

For the next 45 minutes, we tried to figure out how to get our kite strings unwrapped from the limbs. On a positive note, you can get a lot of standing and squinting done when peering into a tree for most of an hour. But even with The Destroyer on my shoulders, it was no use. The kites were gone to us forever. Again.

That’s okay. I have a few backup kites lying around. I’m nothing if not optimistic.

In the meantime, he’ll just have to get his standing-and-squinting done the old-fashioned way – t-ball outfielding!

It’s sort of amazing how many natural-but-horrible things can happen to skin over the course of just a few months. Proof, really, that we don’t grow old by years, but by days. Hours, maybe. Okay, actually just one bowl of chocolate peanut butter cup ice cream and Project Runway marathon at a time.

I know this because last September, I put my sun-glowy, summer-exercised legs into a pair of jeans for the winter, only to yesterday pull blotchy, pale, cellulitey legs that surely belonged on a “before” photo spread, through the leg holes of my shorts. I’ve seen prettier legs popping up through mossy cemetery grass in zombie movies.

The Unveiling of Winter Legs Day has to be my least-favorite day of the year. Worse, even, than two days after Christmas when you spend the entire day untwisting twist-ties off the back of Barbie Doll boxes while feverish with the stomach flu. Worse than the day you come home from vacation, only to discover that you never turned off the lawn sprinkler before leaving. Worse than kindergarten shots day, parent-teacher conference day, and the day your 4-year old learned all the words to that Black Eyed Peas song, all rolled into one.

I know plenty of women my age who simply give up on this day. They gift their shorts to their younger friends. They donate anything that could be folded small enough to be stuffed into a Ziploc baggy to their sisters who bothered to work out during the winter and didn’t cook even one recipe that called for an entire box of butter. They buy cartloads of lightweight slacks, floor-length summer dresses, and Capri pants.

Not me, by gum. I will not give up the good fight. I will wear my shorts loud and proud. I will show off my legs, no matter how stomach-upsetting it might be for passersby to witness. No matter how many times I have to apologize to crowds of repulsed picnickers and their frightened children.

Yeah, I basically can’t afford a new Capri-laden wardrobe.

This means I’m back on the treadmill – my old friend whom I love so dearly I drape my favorite outfits across the top of it all winter long. I’m back to partying with Billy Blanks, Jackie Warner, Jillian Michaels, and all my other On Demand workout buddies whom I secretly suspect are not human, but some sort of exercise droids created to make the rest of us feel like gasping, sweating sacks of partially-set Jell-O. I’ve got a new box of Body Bands. The hand weights have given up their day job as doorstops. I’ve knocked the spider webs off the yoga mat.

I’m back to finding myself, almost daily, lying face-down on the carpet begging someone to, “Please, for the love of all that is holy, make the techno aerobics music stop… and bring me a barf bucket. And a Hershey’s bar.”

Back to buying the expensive body lotion and the cellulite cream and the muscle warming ointments and praying that the chemical mix might give me a Lily Tomlinesque Incredible Shrinking Woman Thighs crisis.

Part of why I refuse to just duck and cover this time of year is simple – it forces me to get back in shape. Well, a shape other than Pinwheel cookies, that is. I’m a working-out fool!

Which means I’m so sore I can’t walk, crouch, sit up from a lying down position, twist, lift my arms over my head, point my toes, lean too far to one side, smile too wide, or bend my legs. And sneezing makes me cry real tears. And I walk like the Tin Man.

Anyone have some Capris I can borrow?

Easter is one of those holidays that always seems to sneak up on me. Probably because in this house it doesn’t ever really go away.

I never find a candy cane wedged under the stove in Mid-May, or a black-and-orange-wrapped Mary Jane suddenly appearing under a couch cushion in September. It’s always a jelly bean. Or a speckled malted milk egg. It’s always the rogue strand of Easter grass mysteriously found floating at the bottom of the bathtub in December or a flimsy Reese’s Peanut Butter Egg wrapper in the dryer in June.

Once, I even found a whole abandoned dyed egg under the refrigerator in late-July. It was like finding a meteor in your backyard – strange and wonderful and irresistible and a little bit frightening. Of course I opened it up, narrating in my best Captain Kirk voice:

“Worlds are conquered, galaxies are destroyed… but an egg is always an egg. Peace or… utter destruction… it’s up to you, alien from Planet Bunny!” (It was gross.)

But even though Easter sneaks up on me every year, it will never slip by unnoticed because it’s a proven fact that Easter has the best candy of all the holidays, hands-down.

Chocolate eggs filled with gooey guts; pastel candy-coated crispy balls of bliss; 3-lb. solid hunks of chocolate shaped like beady-eyed wild animals. The Easter candy aisle even smells better than the Christmas or Halloween candy aisles. It’s what I imagine Heaven smells like.

But of all Easter candy, there is one untouchable winner: Peeps.

Yes, I know, Peeps are kind of like fruitcake and Dancing with the Stars – you either love them or hate them. There is no in-between. I happen to fall in the Love Them camp. Okay, I built said camp and am the lead camp counselor.

I can’t help it. Even as a kid, I could appreciate the sheer gift that is Peeps. Here you were on a Sunday morning, itchy in your church clothes, and your parents would hand you a box full of lined-up wads of sugar rolled in sugar with little sugar eyeballs, and then tell you to eat them fast before the dogs got a hold of them.

(There’s something both irresistible and utterly perplexing about a Peep to a dog’s palate, and the ensuing mess is so horrifying you’d almost rather they eat a box of actual live chickens on your living room carpet instead.)

But Peeps are more than delicious. They’re also multi-functional.

A stale Peep, for example, can come in very handy when a sibling is sleeping just a little too soundly. A cute little marshmallow chick left out for a few days and then winged just right at the side of a snoozing head will issue a solid thwump that will raise the Homeland Security Alert up two notches. Gotcha, sucka!

In junior high, my friend and I discovered that a bitten Peep has quite the adhesive power as well, which makes me fear a little for my digestive system, but can provide hours of fun called Let’s Stick Half a Peep to Dad’s Windshield and See How Many Laps Through the Car Wash It Takes to Get Him to Say The Really Bad Word. Bite a Peep in half, stick it on your forehead, and you’re going to have to get custom-made hats for the rest of your life.

Recently, Hubby told me about a new creation – chocolate-covered Peeps. Be still, my fatty, enlarged heart! Is there a candy more scrumptious?

Yes. Yes, there is.

The Black Jelly Bean.

Wads of sugar coated with sugar flavored with… iodine, I think.

Best eaten in September. With a little couch cushion lint for garnish. Yum!

Moms, what are your favorite Easter candies? And what do you think -- Easter, Christmas, Halloween... which candy reigns supreme?

You know the pothole situation is bad when little boys are afraid to step in them.

My boys live to wait until I’ve wrangled them into the first pair of clean socks their ankles have seen in months, then take three steps in a parking lot and jump directly into the first oil-slicked, silty collection of mudslime they can find. If a couple Bandaids and a dead animal are floating in it, all the better. If they can ruin someone’s new khaki pants in the process, triple-score!

So when my boys skirt a pothole, peering down into its depths warily, I know some re-paving is desperately needed.

I first noticed the post-thaw pothole situation a few days ago when I took them to the movies, only to find the entrance to the theater parking lot to be the most frightening cinematic adventure I’d experienced since my step-sister dropped an entire box of Goobers on the floor during a Nightmare on Elm Street chase scene.

“When did they put in underground parking?” I muttered, stopping mid-way through the entrance. “Holy mother of missing asphalt! Kids,” I said, “Looks like we’re swimming from here. Who brought Nerf weapons? You’re taking point.”

Since then, every parking lot and street has become an adventure in offroading. “Hold on to your teeth, guys,” I’ll yell, strapping on Speed Demon’s old karate sparring helmet. “We’re going in. Grocery store, ho!” Thunk, bump, creak, squeal, thump, moan, crash! “All parked. Now, peel yourself off the ceiling and grab your spelunking gear. I think we can zipline to the cart corral, but from there it’s up to fate.”

Once we leave the safety of the minivan, there’s a whole new adventure called Get to the Doors of the Building Without Dropping a Kid, Keys, or Cell Phone Into the Earth’s Core. Made all the more fun by the fact that my boys have to stop at every single hole and look for the meaning of life.

“How far do you think that thing goes down, Mommy?”

“I don’t know. Maybe we should ask that Kraken floating around in it.”

“What do you think is in there?”

“Well, my oil pan, for one. Oh, and summer vacations in the Caribbean for a whole lotta car tire manufacturers. And… is that… a hobbit… holding a ring over a lava pit?”

“Cool! The hole echoes! Let’s sing the name song into it! Chuck Chuck bo Buck banana fana…”

“No. C’mon, let’s go before one opens up beneath us and we end up hiding from the surface-dwellers in a Tim Burton movie.”

“Wait!” one of the boys screeches. He very carefully toes a piece of gravel into the pothole, counting and listening for a splash. “Twenty-nine.”

“No, you’re doing it wrong,” his brother says, toeing his own pebble into the hole and counting with his head cocked to one side.

For the next 40 minutes, the boys stand in the middle of the parking lot tossing every pebble they can find into the abyss, arguing over whether the hole goes 26 or 32 miles down, while I try to map out on the back of a receipt what the orange cone obstacle course will look like come summer.

By the time we get home, I’ve got a bag of groceries, but I’m missing a shoe, the van needs a new paint job, and someone’s ear lobe is permanently attached to the rearview mirror. And I’m limping. But I’m elated.

“Guess what,” I tell Hubby, putting away the groceries. “Good news! There’s a new crater opening up right outside!”

“That’s good news?”

I nod. “Yes! I finally found a place to store all the crap that's been buried under the snow!”

A couple years ago, I bought Hubby a GPS. He treats it like it’s a human. A female human, to be exact, complete with a British accent and a name: Amelia.

Amelia is perfect. She speaks only as loudly as he wants her to. She tells him exactly where to go without making any lewd suggestions about where that might be. She’s never wrong. She doesn’t curse when trying to re-fold a map. And when he misses a turn, she never crosses her arms and huffs, “Great. Now we’re going to wander around forever, subsisting only on Sonic ketchup packets and half-drunk cans of strawberry Shasta.” If Amelia were a human, she’d wear skinny jeans and stilettos and use sweet ninja moves to take down muggers.

I hate her.

But over the years, I’ve learned to ignore her. I only kind of roll my eyes when he sets her to guide him home from the office. I have not threatened to lock her in the glove box in a very long time. And I’ve long since stopped responding to her every sentence with, “Your mother.” We’ve come to an agreement, Amelia and I – she stays out of my car and I don’t draw devil horns and mustache on her screen with dry erase markers.

Until this weekend. I was traveling by myself and Hubby demanded I take her along.

“Here,” he said, handing her over somberly. “Take good care of her.”

“You didn’t just really say that.”

“What? I told her the same thing about you.”

“You are not natural.”

At first I was going to fight it, but begrudgingly I came to admit that driving while cursing and trying to re-fold a map was probably not the safest way to travel. Plus, I don’t know any sweet ninja moves. So I brought her along.

I won’t say it was a smooth trip. Probably I started it, when I told her she wasn’t fooling anyone with that phony British accent, right before I silenced her for 150 miles.

When I found myself finally in a place where I needed her, I turned her voice back on, gritting my teeth when she immediately told me to “bear left.”

“Nobody says ‘bear left,’ you hoity toity know-it-all,” I grumbled.

After that, all weekend Amelia had a knack for malfunctioning at just the wrong time. Just as I plunged into city traffic, the suction cup on her mount gave way and she slid across the dash, thunked against the window, and plopped to the floor. Every time a light turned green, her satellite connection mysteriously disappeared. She insisted that the restaurant I was searching for was in the bottom floor of an abandoned warehouse. She “couldn’t find” a tiny little street called Main Street in her database. Her favorite word of the weekend was, “Re-cal-cu-lating.”

By the end of the weekend, I was frazzled. All I could think about was getting home and the frightening prospect that the only thing standing between me and finding my way there was The Other Woman. I decided it was in my best interest to make nice.

“Look, Amelia,” I said. “You’re perfect. You’re beautiful and smart and patient and… I can see why he loves you so much. Please. Just get me home.” I reached for my water bottle in the cup holder and pulled it out, only to find that Amelia’s cord had somehow mysteriously gotten wrapped around it. Just as she was about to direct me to the exit which would lead me back to Kansas City, she became disengaged from her mount and flung to the back seat. I swear I heard a derisive chuckle.

“You did that on purpose,” I fumed, fumbling for her and snapping her back into place.

“Prove it, human.”

“He snores, you know!”

“Re-cal-cu-lating.”

“…Your mother.”

I am so getting out my dry erase markers.

Looks like spring is going to show up in Kansas City after all (I’ve had my doubts). I’ve seen the sun and a few blades of green grass. Which means I’d better stock up on my Kleenex now.

No, not for the allergies. For the end-of-the-school-year music programs and classroom plays and (sniffle) awards ceremonies.

For someone who’s not ordinarily a big crier, I sure turn into a blubbering baby any time one of my babies hits the spotlight. When I was expecting Teen Goddess, I thought I was fully prepared for The Big Crying Moments. You know, those days that Moms are expected to snivel and sob: The day your baby is born. The day you deposit said baby safely in her kindergarten classroom for the first time. The day she graduates. The day she gets married. That about wraps it up.

Wrong!

A speaking part in a fourth-grade play – a part that they mumble into the microphone and I can’t tell if they’re reciting The Declaration of Independence or singing Louie Louie – will have me pretending I’ve got something in my eye faster than four score and seven seconds ago.

An orchestra concert where I sit back unable to believe that the same child who’s broken three mirrors and a Plexiglas window practicing at home is actually playing a song in tune with the rest of the orchestra, will have me faking a sneezing fit.

A basketball game where the team wins it all in the last few seconds will have me praying for a stray ball to fly into the stands and smash my face so I can have an excuse for the red nose and blotchy cheeks.

And Lord help me if my child is a part of anything in a theater where it’s dark and quiet. I’m the one sniffing a lot and defensively mumbling about mold and pollen and dust.

And The Firsts. Oh, The Firsts! And I don’t mean first words or first steps. I was surprisingly dry-eyed for those.

Yet I cried like a baby the first time we saw Barney Live. It was the same at Sesame Street Live and Disney on Ice. To have that innocence back, the kind of innocence where you’re totally willing to believe that there’s an actual purple dinosaur in the room with you and not just some guy with really big pit stains in a purple velvet suit. Makes me feel weepy just thinking about it.

I cried during the fireworks at Walt Disney World, praying that my kids would remember the message of “hold onto your dreams” before it was too late and their dreams were interrupted by the water bill, lawn maintenance, and a j-o-b.

Lately it seems that my tears have extended, however, to other people’s kids, as well. I can hardly watch American Idol without bawling over a note hit just right or a performance that wowed. Talent shows, kid heroes, young athletes: Waah, waah, waaah! Most recently, I cried like a baby while watching Undercover Boss, and if that isn’t a sign that something is truly wrong with me, I don’t know what is.

This week we celebrate Speed Demon’s first singing solo, rocking This Land is Your Land in the 3rd grade music program. He’s so proud of himself and so ready to do us proud, I stand a good chance of needing someone to carry my limp, sobbing body out of the gym. It’s pink eye, I swear. A bee flew up my nose. I swallowed a cough drop. Someone stepped on my foot. Just… look away!

I probably should get over it now, while I still have a chance. Next year, Teen Goddess will be a high school senior. Which means we’ll be celebrating the one thing worse than The Firsts.

The Lasts.

Wail!

Pass me the Kleenex, would you?

I hope you’ll forgive me if I’m a little surly today. I had my first “procedure” and I haven’t gotten over it yet.

Sure, I’ve had “procedures” before. Childbirth. Wisdom teeth removal. Laser eye surgery. That kind of thing. Nothing too gross or traumatic (although the eye surgery was close).

But this was the first surprise procedure that began with me casually mentioning heartburn at a routine physical and ended with me standing dazedly in a cubicle holding a flimsy hospital gown and pondering that in mere moments the inside of my stomach would be projected onto a TV screen.

Ew.

And by “mere moments,” I actually mean an hour of agonizing waiting, whereby I recline uncomfortably in a hospital bed fearing fire drills and freak hallway winds and surprise visits from the Queen, and all those things could mean for someone wearing a hospital gown too small to cover all the embarrassing parts.

I try to ignore Hubby, who is enjoying my discomfort just a little too much and thinks his wife’s endoscopy is the perfect time for whipping out his best Henny Youngman routine, and distract myself by repeatedly asking the nurse if the pager they gave him might work in the parking lot. Of Starbucks. In Houston. And also by doing my impression of a moth in a spider web, using the 47,000 wires attached to my body.

Soon they wheel me, in my scowling be-gowned glory, to the procedure room, which is down the hallway, past the vending machines, through the parking lot, down a parade route, past a reunion of all my high school boyfriends, and through a televised Senate meeting. I’d be embarrassed, but I’m too busy panicking that maybe my sister was right about the whole swallowed-gum-doesn’t-disintegrate-in-your-stomach claims she made when we were kids, and the doctor would discover that my gastric distress is due to the fact that my stomach is, in fact, a massive ball watermelon Hubba Bubba.

After a while the doctor comes in and the room bursts into a flurry of motion. This must be what it feels like to be a racecar pulling into the pit. An army of nurses descend upon me, twisting my body into various Village People dance poses. I think at one point we spelled out M-Y-L-E-G-D-O-E-S-N-T-B-E-N-D-T-H-A-T-W-A-Y. Or maybe it was just P-A-I-N. I can’t be sure; I blacked out about halfway through the YMCA. All the while, the doctor is asking me impossible-to-answer questions, such as, “Have you ever had a surgery before?”

“Huh?”

“Have you ever had a surgery before?”

“Uh… I… um… huh?”

Seems like past surgeries would be something I’d easily remember, but I’m sort of distracted by Jim Morrison singing Peace Frog into a canister of cotton balls by the doorway. Or… looking back… that could have been the Demerol kicking in.

At the same time, a nurse is shoving a Frisbee into my mouth and giving me advice to, “Swallow when he inserts the scope, to help with the gagging.” I start gagging just thinking about it.

And then everything happens in a blur: A nurse in a hockey mask coming at my face holding something that looks like it belongs in a professional car wash, glimpses of something disgusting – my esophagus – on TV, an urgent thought of, “I hope they use a different scope for the colonoscopies,” and then next thing I know I’m singing the Three Little Fishies song for the recovery nurse (“Boop boop dittum dattum wattum choo!”).

So you’ll forgive me today if I’m still just a bit on the surly side.

Not because of the procedure, mind you. Nah, that was a piece of cake! Easy and painless. And already I feel tons better.

I’m surly for another reason entirely.

Jim Morrison never autographed my hospital gown.

When I was a little girl, I used to imagine myself an Olympic ice skater. Not that I could actually ice skate or anything, but I was enchanted by Dorothy Hamill. And my ears were just the right size for a wedge haircut.

After watching the skaters on TV, I’d spend hours pretending to be one. I would hop through the living room with one foot extended behind me, wave my arms about wildly, and spin and spin and spin, a blanket wrapped around my shoulders for maximum billowiness, until either my mom yelled, “Stop it! You’re going to throw up!” or someone else yelled, “Move! You’re blocking the TV!” My “skating” skills were unappreciated. I wonder if that’s what it feels like to be Tonya Harding.

My mom used to quote the saying, “Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt.”

Probably, I should have listened to her.

Once again, we're preparing to celebrate one of my least favorite holidays of the year. Valentine's Day. Otherwise known as the day that I look forward to slightly more than Lumpy Rug Day (May 3rd) yet far, far less than Make Your Own Head Day (I swear, it really exists – on November 28th).

No other holiday has quite the potential of Valentine’s Day to make a person feel like a complete and total loser. Not even March 8th (Be Nasty Day) or January 15th (Humiliation Day).

Note: I've done some calculating recently, and it turns out that after more than 3 years of column-writing and more than 2 years of blogging, I've written well over 300 essays about my life as a mom, wife, and general dimwit. This isn't even counting the humor writing I did for another mom blog site before coming here, nor does it include the random essays I've written here and there for other publications over the years. No wonder I feel like I've been running out of material! So in an effort to let the well fill up again without leaving the blog, I am going to be running my print column as my blog for a while. Thanks, Kady, for helping me out!

A few months ago, a kid at school taught Speed Demon how to play chess on the computer. Speed Demon took to it the same way he takes to almost any endeavor of skill and concentration – he spent every waking moment in front of the laptop, learning the fastest and easiest way to mercilessly beat the pants off of every living creature, past, present, or future. And then do a little dance.

After just a few weeks of playing on the laptop, he announced that he wanted a real chess set of his very own. We considered this a significant win in The Battle Between Real-Life Parents and Virtual Reality Fun. But, actually… it turns out it’s just not satisfying enough to announce, “Checkmate” if you can’t see your opponent cry and put his foot through a TV screen – a somewhat  noteworthy loss in The Battle of Good Sportsmanship, which sort of evens things out.

So, bolstered by shiny visions of our son playing an actual game with actual pieces that could get sucked into an actual vacuum cleaner, we agreed that a chess set would be a good investment.

“Yahoo! I want an onyx one!” he crowed.

“Wait. How do you know about onyx?”

“Or I guess ebony would do. Although there are these really cool camel bone ones…”

“What on earth are they teaching you at that school?”

We explained to him that he was going to have to choose between a new, richer set of parents or the $10 plastic chess set at the toy store. He chose the plastic set. But it was a close decision, seeing as how the warranties on this old set of parents ran out years ago, and you never can predict when one of these antiquated things will break down (I come close about 10 times a week).

We got the set and brought it home, giddily imagining the boys sitting still for seven or eight hours at a time, not speaking, not moving. Just silent concentration and skill.

Every night since bringing that chess set home, the quiet concentration and skill between Speed Demon and The Destroyer has been palpable. It goes like this:

“Dude! You can’t move that there!”

“Yes, I can!”

“No, you… DUDE! What are you DOING?! You can’t do that."

“Yes… I… CAN!”

“No, you CAN'T!"

In unison: “Da-a-a-ad!”

We’ve broken up more arguments in a single evening than Jerry Springer’s bouncers do in an entire season. And we’ve spent enough money on Krazy Glue gluing knocked-off knight’s heads to cover the cost of three ebony chess sets and a pair of new parents made from camel bone.

And at some point someone came up with the hilarious pastime of Teach Mom to Play Chess and Then Beat Her in Three Moves or Less. It’s a riot. It goes like this:

“Your move, Mom.”

“Okay, I’m going to move this horsey-thing over by your guy with the helmet-looking top.”

(Cracking up) “Check. Go.”

“Check? Already? Well, I guess I’ll move the one that looks like a Hershey’s Kiss over here.”

(Bursts into laughter) “Checkmate. Are there any real opponents in the house? Bwahaha!”

“Bwahaha! We’ll see who’s laughing when you get your liver-and-dog-hair sandwich for dinner,Chess-ter!”

(Yes, I will admit, he gets his mature competitive side from me.)

I consider doing something even meaner: summonsing his sister. She doesn’t believe in mercy. If you don’t believe me, you should go clothes shopping with her sometime.

Nah, let him have his fun. Besides, I don’t mind a little razzing here and there, as long as it gets them thinking outside the video game box every now and then.

I’ve got enough liver and dog hair to last me a long, long time.

Checkmate!

It should be said that I never have great ideas. NEVER! I'm always the one reading about someone else's great idea and thinking, "Dang, I wish I woulda thought of that!" So when I land on something that works... on purpose... I just feel like I have to share it with the world (and if you already thought of this idea first and feel so inclined to tell me that this really isn't all that novel of an idea and really if I get this excited about this little already-done idea then you actually feel really sorry for my kids, just remember: I have spraypaint and I know where you live.).

It's so common it's almost a cliche. Kid goes to school. Kid comes home from school. Mom says, ever-so-brightly, "SOOOO, what did you do in school today?" and kid shrugs and goes, "Nuttin'."

The first book I read for my 100 Books for 2010 goal was George Carlin's LAST WORDS, a "sortabiography" of my all-time favorite comedian.

It may surprise you to find that I love Carlin's comedy, because it doesn't fit the soft, nice, mommy mold that my humor fits into. Nah, that's exactly why I love him so much! He's bold. And, yes, sometimes offensive and vile. But boldly offensive and vile! And he makes me laugh.

So I was surprised, in reading his book, fo find how unsure he often was with his material. How he felt unhappy, and untrue to himself. Maybe his boldness came from his cocaine habit, or maybe he was faking it. But one thing's for certain -- the George Carlin I've watched and read avidly over the course of my entire life... was not the George I thought he was.

Ironic to be discovering this, at a time when my belief in my humor is at an all-time low. Those of you who follow me on Twitter or are connected with me on Facebook have probably noticed a trend -- for months now -- of Friday posts that look something like this: "I hate my column! My jokes are stupid!" Somewhere along the line I lost faith in my ability to be funny (and, as much as I try for it not to be, some of it was stripped away by hateful emails from readers).

Don't get me wrong. I love humor! Our house is a haven for hilarity! I encourage jokes -- even if they're off-color -- and laughter, and even had the kids sit down recently and watch one of Carlin's cleaner skits (the "Stuff" skit, which, I think, is a genius show of observation). For Goddess' Sweet 16, I threw a comedy party, complete with Finish The One Liner and Old Farts vs. Whippersnappers Joke Trivia games, followed by a massive group trip to Comedy City (if you've never been to Comedy City, you simply MUST go. The early show is appropriate for younger children).

I really dig humor! ...Just not... my... humor.

The other night, I told the boys one of my favorite jokes:

A guy was walking down the sidewalk and he passed an insane asylum that was bordered by a really tall privacy fence. Behind the fence, he could hear the residents chanting, "Thirty-two! Thirty-two! Thirty-two!" He wanted to know what was happening, so he found a knothole in the fence and looked through, and out of nowhere, a sharp stick came through from the other side and poked his eye. Then the residents started shouting, "Thirty-three! Thirty-three! Thirty-three!"

They thought it was hilarious. I can only imagine how many times it's been repeated since I told them.

Reading the Carlin book was a really good move for me. I've learned a lot about confidence in your work. Basically what I learned was -- You Gotta Fake It. Probably that would apply to most everyone's work (except brain surgeons. I'd probably prefer they weren't doing any faking when they're digging around in my head, thankyouverymuch!). You've got to manufacture confidence when the natural reserves run dry.

So maybe 2010 will also be the Year of 100 Laughs for me, too. You never know.

Some asides:

*Recently, a book blogger held a contest to give away a copy of HATE LIST. To enter, readers had to submit their favorite joke, and I got to choose the winner. I chose a guy whose middle schoolers perpetrated a practical joke on him. And I totally fell for the practical joke, too. It made me laugh. A lot. Basically, they told him that he just HAD to check out the pens on this awesome new website called Pen Island (dot) com. Go ahead, check it out! (Note: NSFW! Don't try it while at work or in front of your kids!)

*The One-Liner I've told more times in my lifetime than any other one-liner:
"What's worse than Scooby's Doo?"
"Gomer's Pile."

*My Favorite Knock-Knock Joke (taught to me by The Destroyer, who probably heard it on iCarly or something):
"Knock, Knock!
"Who's There?"
"Interrupting Cow."
"Interrupting C--"
"MOO!"

*My Favorite PG-13 Joke (I read it in a novel somewhere, but I can't for the life of me remember where!):
A pirate walks into a bar with a parrot on his shoulder and a steering wheel on the front of his pants. The bartender says, "Hey, you have a steering wheel on the front of your pants," and the pirate goes, "Yargh, I know, and it's driving me nuts!"

*My Favorite Carlin Joke:

When I was in elementary school, my parents paid us for good grades. We got $1 for each A; $5 if the A was in Math. To this day, I still don't know why it was so important to them that the Math grade was tops, but suffice it to say I never got that $5. Not once. I suck at Math, and apparently I was born that way.

So? Who gives a rat's behind?

I'll admit, even though by Jan 1st I'm mostly holiday par-tayed out, there is something that I like about the New Year. It's a new beginning. A do-over. A fresh start. A place to begin again.

I always get a bit manic this time of year, making Big Promises and Big Plans, knowing that I'll ultimately only see a few of them through to the end. But resolution-focus was yesterday. Today is the day to look ahead at the fun stuff awaiting us in 2010. 

Right now I'm still Fa-la-la-la-la-ing, drinking my eggnog, wondering WHY I always wear sweaters to family gatherings where it's so dang hot, and watching my kids play with their new stuff. But I know plenty of moms who are doing something else today. Something I'd never in a million years do on the day after Christmas: Shopping.

I know moms who like to hit after-Christmas sales, and I will admit the lure of a good bargain is strong... just not strong enough to actually get me out there in those crowds. 

A running monologue of my house for the past month:

*rustle rustle*

I know some people who are really excellent at the backhanded compliment. You know, they're all, "You look amazing in that shirt! It would never look good on me. You really need to have some meat on your bones to fill out a shirt like that," and at first you're all, "Thank you! I got it on sale at Target. I'm glad you like it" and then you feel really great about yourself. You walk around strutting your, uh... meaty bones for everyone to get a gander at how great you look in your shirt. And you even inwardly declare it your favorite shirt ever.

And then...

It takes time to accumulate your holiday decor. Think back -- when you were 21 (or 18, like me) and living out on your own for the first time, you didn't have a lot of flashing lights and sparkly balls and little musical thingamajigs to hang on your walls. And you didn't have money to buy it all, either.

You have to work up to that.

I've been dying to post this for weeks. Dying to! But I know how most of you moms feel about listening to Christmas music before Thanksgiving, so I've held off. But now it's safe to listen, and I simply must bring up a particular song that, though I love Christmas music in general, I HATEHATEHATE!!!

I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus

I can tell you one thing I'm thankful for this year -- I don't have to cook Thanksgiving dinner. Nope, we still go to Mom's for Thanksgiving, leaving me, thankfully, off the hook. Not that I mind the cooking part. Actually, we'll make a mini-Thanksgiving meal at home, because some time around 9PM on Thanksgiving every year a cold leftover turkey sandwich is a must-have so ridiculously pressing that you find yourself in the Taco Bell drive-thru, trying to make yourself feel better with a Thanksgiving Fiesta Feast.

It's the cleaning I don't want to do.

Let's say you were trapped on a desert island with your kids. Okay, okay, I know. If you're heading someplace tropical, the kids would SO be staying home with grandma so it's not even really very conceivable that you'd be trapped on a desert island with your kids. But this is pretend. Work with me. Let's say you're trapped on a desert island with your kids.

What five Mom Tools would you want to have with you?

The alarm clock rings. I roll out of bed. Brush my teeth. Put on the coffee. And spend hours staring at my luxurious wardrobe, trying to decide which outfit will make me look the most Sarah Jessica Parker fabulous today.

...NOT!!!

Normally, I'd be the first one doing the Yay, Halloween on a Saturday! jig and carefully planning my costume and loading up the kitchen with popcorn balls and bags and bags of "the good candy" and inviting all the kids in the neighborhood over for post-trick-or-treating hot cocoa, served in a kitchen cloudy with dry ice fog.

The last time Halloween fell on a Saturday I did just that. Served little smokies "fingers" and noodle "worms" and a giant spider cake filled with green vanilla pudding so when you cut into it simulated guts fell out on the plate (because nothing says yummy like bug guts, right?). I even had my geisha girl costume all laid out. 

NOTE: To take the load off on a couple crazy busy weeks, my friend Susan Vollenweider is blogging for me again today. Thank you so much, Susan! Your blogs are terrific and I know everyone is loving them!

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Prerequisite: Mom101, and a round or two of basic kid crud. Working knowledge of use of thermometer, kiddie fever reducers, as well as memorization of doctors’ phone numbers and the three closest urgent care facilities. Basic disinfecting and barf collection practices strongly recommended.  May test into course with passing score on Cold, Stomach Virus or Flu? Exam.

Course Number : MOM Ei-Ei-OHNO

Course Description: Students will learn the next step in parental home health care. Focus will be on juggling multiple offspring/spouse recuperation with multi-symtomic illnesses. During the course we will spend time developing a working plan for dealing with the eventuality of this occurrence with accompanying skill set based on the experience of moms who have gone before you.

Wouldn’t life be easier if there was such a course? Just go sit in a room with other parents for a couple hours a week and learn what to do when the poo hits the fan? What to do when you have a 4-yr old yaaking on the sofa, your husband out of town on a business trip and the phone rings. You see the caller ID and know it’s the 11-yr old’s school calling telling you of a spiking fever and red spots.

It’s going to happen. It happens to every parent. One kid or 9... there will be a moment when you are dolling out Chuck Buckets, and wondering if the battery in the thermometer is fresh because no way can all three kids be running exactly the same 102.9 temp. You will be trying to remember who got the last 3 tablespoons of Pedialyte (and wondering why it comes in colors) and who is due. And you will be desperately hoping that no one comes to the door because all your good bras got hurled on (with your shirts) and you are down to the sports bra with the expired elastic over the inside-out frat party t-shirt you swear you made your husband throw away when the first kid learned to read.

It’s the moment when all that you know about nursing your kids back to health is just not enough. You need more learning, STAT!, but the only place to get it is the School of Hard Knocks. In that moment, you have entered the gates of those hallowed halls-- and there is no exit.

Everyday I hear from another mom who is hitting this moment, who is relying on her experience and that of those around her to make it to the other side with her wits and humor intact. This is an early and fast Crud Season. Deny it all you want, but living in denial isn’t going to make it go away.

My Moment came when the two younger kids were about 5 and 4. Rotavirus. It comes out both ends in rapid succession. Fever, lethargy, it’s tricky to keep them hydrated. Both were in the sick ward- our living room covered in towels and sheets. Both Masters of their own Whoopie Buckets. They both had Pullups on, although they were long potty trained. It was just easier. I thought I had it all under control up to the magic moment when I didn’t. I was suddenly overwhelmed by the length and breadth and stench of this virus. When I finally emerged with healthy kids, and cleared the funk from the house I developed my tool kit. I share with you now my Mom: 201 Survival Kit.

BRAT Diet: Bananas, rice applesauce and toast. That is all they can eat until they aren’t puking for more than 6 hrs.  I might put some apple butter on the toast, cinnamon on the sauce, or honey on the rice, but that’s all they get. Other viruses I give them a bland food diet menu. No discussion.

Pedialyte: Even the older ones get it. When they are puking only a few tablespoons at a time. Maybe they can have some weak jello-tea (sugar free jello with hot water) or a Popsicle slush (melted popsicle) if the puking seems to slow down.  Respiratory viruses they get anything but milk or soda.

Poke Straw Plastic Thingy- Open cups get spilled. Press-n-Seal wrap over a cup with a bendy straw popped through keeps the messes to a minimum.

Lysol/ antibacterial hand wipes: Everything gets wiped and sprayed down. Including the phone that I use to call my fellow moms for wisdom and encouragement.

Bed Tray: I actually like to give them as wedding gifts. Suggesting romantic newlywed breakfasts in bed but knowing full well they will get the most use from it after they have kids.

Whoopie Buckets: (not pictured) old Tupperware with “ DO NOT PUT FOOD IN THIS, TRUST ME” Sharpied on the bottom and stored in medicine cabinet. One for each child. They can man these at a pretty early age.

Wedding Veil: The week before I had My Moment I went to a bridal themed party and had worn my wedding veil. While on a dash for a clean shirt, I saw it and popped it on my head. I was instantly transformed from Serf to Queen. I glanced in the mirror and saw a peek of myself on the day of my life when I felt the most special and beautiful. The antithesis of the day I was living.  I left it on. The kids thought it was funny and I got energized with Princess Juice each time I saw my reflection in the toaster. Now it resides on a hook on my bedroom wall. I use it all the time.

And I conclude, Parents of the Crud Class of 2009, go forth with your Survival Kit and be prepared for that which there is no preparing: how often you are gonna need that wedding veil.

 

 

 

 

NOTE: To help take the load off on a couple crazy busy weeks, my friend Susan Vollenweider is guest-blogging for me today. Thank you so much, Susan!!! You rock! (Does this mean I owe you a Thank You note now? *grumbles*

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Dear Brother,

Thank you for the RC Dragon- Luke loves it! It does scare Noah to pee his pants levels, and the volume button is non-existent, but you made an 11 yr old very happy. Where shall I send the hearing aid bills?

 

Dear Other Brother,

 Thank you for the Road Atlas. What an unusual gift for a 2 yr old!

 

My Dearest Aunt Rose,

Beks really thinks the blanket sleeper that you sent is adorable! The little rose embroidery really is sweet. On a related note, Beks is really happy in Middle School…

 

Dear Cousin George,

 Thank you for the 6700 piece K’nex set. Luke is working to build the bomb pictured on the box, and it also gave us a few great opportunities to use our Heimlich skills on the 4 yr old. Brian thanks you in his own special way each time he steps on a piece in his bare feet.

 

 The Thank You Note. A symbol of a graciously received gift. A fine art of writing which tells the receiver that you appreciated the time and thought that went into the gift. It says “ I know that this gift was sent out of love and I write you back in kind.”

 

But sometimes no matter how gracious and appreciative we are, writing that note is a very hard thing to do. Teaching to write that note is even harder.

 

I have always written thank you notes. If someone has gone through the effort to send me a gift, the very least I can do is jot a timely note of thanks. It is how I was raised. It was how my husband was raised. It is how my husband and I are trying to raise our kids.

 

We began when they were very young, as soon as they could talk. We would get out crayons and have them “ sign their name” as they dictated the note to me.

 

Dear Gwamma,

 

Tank you for da twuck. I wuv it and I dwive it all over the place and then I had chicken nuggets for lunch and mommy took away my cwayons cuz I colored on the wall.

 

We controlled the project. It was done because we sat with them and made them do it. I let them use their own words, otherwise they would have sounded like the notes above.  We rarely heard a whine. Ok, maybe once in awhile. Ok, maybe every time we sat down. But manners are hard learned sometimes. And the notes went out. Every time and on time. And the hair we pulled out getting it done always grew back.

 

Now that the two older kids are 11 and 13 we are trying to give them free reign over the notes. I walked into Beks room the other day and saw a pile of thank you notes. Mostly written, but not sent , for a party she had over a month ago. AAKKK! A Month! That’s not timely! I think I will give her this weekend to get them out in the mail, but if not, I might have to do an intervention. And if anyone wants to do one on me, I might be ok with that.

 

Part of me is proud that she wrote them on her own without my suggesting. Ok, maybe I gave her a little suggestion.  A kind reminder. Ok …fine, a teeny nag, but she got them done. She liked all the gifts, is it asking so much of her to tell that to her friends and family?

 

Maybe I should try a different hands on tactic. Maybe I should write the notes for her.

 

Dear Mom,

Thank you for the beautiful starfish necklace you gave Beks. It’s beautiful.  I stole it.

I just happen to be one of those really annoyingly energetic people. I don't require that much sleep (as long as I'm asleep before 1AM and awake after 6AM, I'm good), I wake up fully and immediately (I don't know what two alarm beeps in a row even sound like), and I keep going, going, going all day long until it's bed time.

But lately it seems like I've never stopped moving. And by lately I mean for the past six months or so. 

We just got notice that we'll be having our first kindergarten field trip of the year soon. And... of course... we're going to the pumpkin patch.

Well, it may as well start sleeting now.

Last year I made Speed Demon the coolest mummy costume ever. I'm sure you remember... the Great Glue Fiasco of 2008... when I hot-glued the mummy hat to my son's very real hair. You may remember suggesting that I use fabric glue that I swear you could use to assemble bombs with. It was a sketchy few weeks, but turned out a mummy costume that was impressive (thanks again, Moms, for the tips).

So what does he want? Another homemade costume, of course. 

This is not the blog I wrote for this week. That blog -- the one I wrote early in the week, thinking I'd be all ahead of the game and be on top of things and oh-so-cool-writer -- has been deleted. Why did I delete half a morning's worth of work? Because it was snarky. It was gripy. Feisty. It was... how my mood's been for weeks (months?) now.

A lot of us have mentioned it lately. When the man in WalMart slapped that toddler across the face. When Rep. Wilson shouted out during Obama's speech. When Kanye took away Taylor Swift's big moment. We've said it: GAH! PEOPLE ARE CRABBY THESE DAYS!!!

As much as I love doing the Manic Giggly Celebratory Kid on Crack Partying Down stuff (Really, I'm just embarrassing at DisneyWorld), I've never been big on kid birthday parties. I'm not crafty. I'm not creative with games. I'm not patient.  I don't like to clean my house.

And they're just too damned expensive.

Our family has been invited to camp for a weekend with another family. Actually with five other families. Five other camping-comfortable families. Five other families who will soon get a weekend of gut-busting laughs out of us.

This is how not-campy we are. When we found out we were going to be heading on a camping adventure, I made Hub dig out our camping gear (under the stairs, behind the Christmas decorations, in the pitch black corner where the mousetraps, Eddie Munster's pet dragon, and my old Prom photos live). We took it to the back yard to see if we remembered how to put it up. To my pleasant suprise, it only took us 9 or 10 hours to... mostly give up on ever getting it assembled and check into how difficult it would be to build a Howard-Johnson's close to the campsite.

To say I was dreading Open House at Teen Goddess's high school was to put it mildly. For starters, I'd had a collossally bad day. Hub had to work late, requiring me to pay a babysitter (it really irks me to have to find a sitter in order to attend a school event, but that's another blog for another time). And I was sick.

Not to mention I'd been to Open House last year and knew that the one thing I'd learn is how much I'm not like a teenager anymore. In other words: I'm OLD.

Now that all three of my kids are in school (pause for dramatic sobbing and random cries of "My baaaybeee..."), I've had lots of time to ponder the telltale signs that school is back in session. Look around you. Take inventory. I'll bet your house is full of signs, too.

1) There are socks everywhere. Seriously, how can one kid wear so many socks in one day? Does he grow extra feet in his backpack? Wait... smells like... yes. Yes, he does.

"Do you realize," I said to my sister, "that in just a few days I'll be free? Completely and totally free?"

It's hard for me to even comprehend, really. I have NEVER been completely and totally free. I went straight from high school to full-time job, then to job and college together, then to job and college and mothering together, then to Real Job and mothering together, then to full-time mothering. 

We were sitting in the uber-swank dining room of a really nice hotel, trying to disguise that the only reason we could afford to be there was the 50% off deal we'd gotten (and even then it was about double what we'd consider an "expensive" dinner), when in walked a couple that just reeked of money.

She was one of those rich ladies who's about a thousand years old but still wears Juniors department clothes and manages to pull it off. Everything she wore was sparkly and gold and looked like it cost more than my car.

Last summer, as we hiked Seven Falls in Colorado Springs, I was a nervous wreck. Shaky, knees buckling, wanting nothing more than to just sprawl out flat on the ground, dig my fingers in, and hold on for dear life. By the time we reached inspiration point, I was literally crying I was so frightened.

I hate heights. 

By now you've probably heard all about Alexander Draper, the 555-lb. 14-year old whose mother, Jerri Gray, was arrested and charged with criminal neglect over his weight (if you haven't, here's the story). By now you've probably heard Gray's attorney argue that Gray was doing everything she could to help her son lose weight. You've probably heard the slippery slope argument, and the outcry that this woman and her son should have been educated and aided rather than punished. You've probably even heard the argument that a child wouldn't be taken away if he was anorexic, the parent charged with neglect over an unhealthily thin weight (which, if you ask me, is an excellent point).

But you know what I've yet to hear? What about all the other people who gave Alexander his food? Why aren't they responsible?

When I was pregnant with my first baby, I noticed that any time I found myself in the presence of older women, and they discovered my pregnant state, they'd pull out all their best Childbirth Horror Stories.

"I broke a blood vessel in my eye, pooped on the delivery table, and tore from my armpits to my ankles. Was 18 months before I could use the bathroom without squeezing my husband's hand in agony..."

I always knew it angered parents for their kids to blow curfew. Makes sense, right? They're disobeying. Making Mom and Dad have to stay up late. There's the cliche scene of Mom and Dad in bathrobes, faces haggard, arms crossed, meeting kid at front door ready to ground her from... life.

But I never, until now, understood the fear that fuels the anger.

When I was a kid, July 4th was one of the best holidays ever. Running around outside, making very loud noises and setting stuff on fire... what's not to love?! But now, as a mom, July 4th sparks just a little bit of fear in me. 

Here are 10 Reasons Why I Cringe When July 4th Gets Here:

I am one of the most fiercely independent people I know. I think I can handle it all. Hell, I think I do handle it all.

So I didn't think anything of it earlier this week as I prepared to drive The Goddess down to Springfield for debate camp all alone. In fact, I felt so confident about it, I decided to take the boys along... drive down to Silver Dollar City for a day... and drive back. All in one day.

On the Sunday before Memorial Day, we went to Ginger Sue's, an adorable little cafe on the square in Liberty that has amazing food. Hubby got the Crab Benedict (Eggs Benedict stuffed with crab meat that I'd heard were the best Eggs Benedict in the history of the world... and, yes, he's confirmed the validity of that claim) and I went out on a limb and got the Black Bean Burger.

Uh. YUM!

Recently I was watching TV with the kids when an actress on the show mentioned using PMS to get out of gym class. I knew what was coming before it even happened. I even had my eyes squeezed shut, bracing for it.

Speed Demon raised his inquisitive little 8-year old head and said, "Hey, Mom! What's PMS?!" 

Two weeks ago I made the biggest mistake I've probably ever made as a mom. I taught The Destroyer how to ride his bicycle.

Ever since, I've spent every second of my day holding my breath and wincing, knowing that certain disaster is around every corner. The child has fear of everything... except the things he should be afraid of. You know, like careening down a hill on two wheels straight into a chain-link fence (then standing up again and cheering, while I'm feeling woozy and double-checking my wallet to see if I can cover an emergency room co-pay in cash or if I'll have to use the Mastercard).

It's 10PM. Dark. The neighborhood is quiet. Still. And, bathed in the floodlight on a deck in a backyard, five morons whoop it up, talking smack and tossing pieces of paper into the grass below.

Just another summer night at the Brown house, as we compete for today's homemade paper medal (the "Red Baron" award, for distance paper airplane tossing). 

Not that I ever had a lot of experience in social gatherings, but never was I so lame at a party as I am today.

I'm shy. I can't help it. I don't like eye contact (is that the sign of a psycopath?). I detest small talk. I always feel fat. And gawky. And like I'm drinking not enough or too much or the wrong thing and that there's spinach in my teeth (even when I haven't eaten anything with spinach in it). 

With the new season starting up again on Monday, surely you're asking yourself all the important questions. You know, as any good bachelorette looking for love... on a TV show... would do.

How hot will my bachelors be? Will I have a super-cool hot tub in my mansion? Should I pack ten bikinis or eleven? Does the green dress make me look fat? Do I cry in the third week and then again in the fourth or should I save all my crying for one night so I don't look like a creepy unbalanced chick?

I was probably the worst one of the three of us kids about it -- Forever "rescuing" something small and fuzzy, bringing it home to my mom, handing it to her knowing she would be thrilled to work her naturey magic on the poor thing.

My mom is all about nature. She gardened organically before it became "the in thing." She communes with bugs (Yes, she's one of those, "Look at that beautiful spider! He's your friend!" types). She likes dirt. And flowers. Trees. And animals.

I guess I must be Gynecologically Impossible to Please (I so want a t-shirt that says that! Wouldn't that be a conversation-starter at Sunday school?!). No, not that I mind that "annual" day of fun and frivolity (really, I mind the dentist far more), it's just that I've never been there and not been jealous of someone.

When I was pregnant with The Goddess, I would sit in the waiting room, pining that I was, like some of the other women in there, juggling mulitple kids while pregnant out to Tulsa. It looked so... I don't know... maternal. While all I had was a lousy singleton baby bump, everyone else, it seemed was up to their (very tired-looking) eyeballs in children.

I know I'm taking a risk here. I know that somewhere out there it is 4AM and there is a mommy reading this, bleary-eyed and yawning miserably while her infant parties, wide-eyed, as if it's Spring Break in Boca Raton. But I'm taking the risk anyway, fully understanding that, at any given moment, said mommy could wing a frozen block of breastmilk or a Dora the Explorer DVD at my head.

Don't care. I'm whining anyway.

If someone said those words to you, what would your reaction be? Would you believe it? Do something to stop it? Would you talk to your child; try to get to the bottom of it? Or would you rest in a knowledge that it's just not true -- you know this because you've seen/experienced bullying yourself and you talk to your children about it and you've raised them to Just Know Better.

With the recent suicide of 11-year old Carl Joseph Walker-Hoover, who hanged himself after enduring "gay" taunts and school bullying, April 17th, or Day of Silence, has gotten tons of press. In case you don't know what Day of Silence is, here's an explanation, found on their webpage.

It's tough being Mrs. Bunny. Making sure you have jelly beans and that plastic green grass that you're pulling out of the dog's butt for about six months (apparently when you ransack a human's Easter basket, it's alot easier getting that grass in than, uh... getting it all the way out)... Where was I? Oh yeah. Icing bunny-shaped cookies, dyeing eggs (making sure you have vinegar on hand, which we NEVER do), ironing frilly dresses for church, cooking ham and mashing potatoes and... and... and...

But there's one thing I don't have to do. Hide Easter eggs. That's Hub's job (I call him "EB2". As in Easter Bunny 2. Which makes me... yeah... "EB1". And we talk to each other in code. "EB1 to EB2, the principal has dropped the stapler." I know, we're so dang cute, it's sickening, isn't it?). And hiding Easter eggs is a job Hub LOVES.

So picture this:

Steel Magnolias (pause for collective Best-Movie-Ever sigh), the collapse scene. Jackson (Dylan McDermott) comes home from work only to find dinner boiling over, baby sobbing on the kitchen floor, his beloved Shelby (Julia Roberts) lying unresponsive on the steps leading outside, phone clutched in hand. I can barely even recall the details of the scene without getting tears in my eyes. 

Like every other teen girl in the free world, my kiddo read Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series. It was a pretty incredible thing to watch, actually. She did nothing but read whenever a new Twilight book came out and would literally close the back cover (finished), flip the book over, and start it again from page 1.

Okay, when I say "incredible," I mean creepy. It just wasn't natural how addicted she was to those books. 

Last weekend, Hub and I were standing on the front porch watching the kids play, doing the silent side-by-side thing. After a while I gazed longingly into the street and absently began stretching my calves on the porch steps.

Hub looked at me. "You're thinking of running again," he said.

Of all the cruel school activities I get suckered into volunteer to help with, this is the cruelest: judging high school debate tournaments. Not that there's anything wrong with debate. I actually quite enjoy listening to a bunch of teenagers who are way smarter than me (or should it be "way smarter than I"? Were I debater, I'm sure I'd know)... er... argue with one another. Using words that are above my head. About topics I've never heard of before. In clothes nicer than mine.

But being married to a die-hard debater and mother to a die-hard debater... let's just say in our house, between the months of October and April, everything's up for debate. I'm stuck. I have to judge.

Once again, I've found myself ridiculously sucked in to the new season of American Idol. I know this because I've found myself saying some of the following things:

*"Well, you know... Von can totally outsing Megan, but what Megan has is the whole package, so of course Simon is going to want Megan in the competition, but I'd say Megan only has three, maybe four, good weeks in her and besides, nobody's going to be able to beat Adam, anyway, unless, you know, Scott wins everyone over with his sweet personality and then there's Danny, I LOVE Danny and..." 

To be honest, I really haven't given a whole lot of thought to the whole Octomom thing, but this week I've found myself trying answer one very important question: How on earth is that woman going to get through Parent-Teacher Conferences?!

It's like a marathon over here -- so bad, I call them the Parent-Teacher Conference-a-Thons, and dread them almost as much as the Party till You Barf Week Before Christmas Class Celebration-a-Thons. 

Ever notice that when it comes to heredity, it almost never goes in your favor? Photographs of your family tell a tale you'll never get to know: big boobs, flat stomach, dimples, creamy skin, non-hairy toes that all point perfectly forward and don't look like they were plucked off a sickly ape during an expedition in Malaysia (do they have apes in Malaysia?). You were born of beeyootiful people. Healthy people. Shining, happy people.

Do you inherit any of THOSE traits? No, of course not. You get the diabetes, sure. The heart attacks. The hairy chin and brittle hair and the twitchy eyes that make you swear some mornings you could be a great stunt double for Hannibal Lecter. You get the lactose intolerance and the moles and the anxiety disorder. But no way would you inherit a perfect set of teeth or hourglass shape or dimples (other than the ones on your butt, but those aren't cute).

Guess I've been hanging around on Facebook too much lately, reconnecting with high school classmates who were supposed to get fat and ugly but instead turned into supermodels somewhere during the '90s. What's worse, our 20-year reunion is only a frightening one year and three months away and I'm considering... I can't believe it myself... going. Gulp. Supermodel and Jennifer Brown hardly ever go into a sentence together. Unless the sentence happens to be, "You know who will never be a supermodel? Yeah, Jennifer Brown."

So suddenly I've begun getting self-conscious about things I ordinarily wouldn't think twice about. My waist(s). My graying roots. My crow's feet. Double chins. And, the worst, my teeth.

I've always been one of those lucky people who never really had to think about teeth before. Mine are naturally straight -- no braces or even retainers for this girl -- and have never had a cavity. They were even just naturally white. But it seems 36 years of dedicated blueberry-eating... oh, who'm I kidding?!... 20+ years of obsessive coffee-consumption has left them a little on the dingy side.

So I gave in and bought something I ordinarily would never buy... a teeth-whitening kit. Here's what I learned about Teeth Whitening 101, for the Lame Mommy:

Step One: Ignore reality, claiming that your teeth aren't yellow; the rest of the world is just slightly purple. Consider going by the name Billy Bob Jimbo Axle Junior and touring the Hootenanny Circuit for a year, getting famous as The One With the Real Purty Teeth. Perfect your Katie Holmes shy smile for public situations. When that doesn't work, beat the crap out of innocent bystanders who happen to come too near you with a camera. Try to explain yourself by claiming you're in the witness protection program.

Step Two: When your 5-year old continually peers into your mouth and asks if you're chewing Juicy Fruit, snap at him that you prefer inner beauty, then sneak off to Wal Mart to buy a teeth-whitening kit. Have a mini-meltdown when you look at the price tag, and reason that, for that much money, you could just purchase a shiny new set of pride from Donald Trump. When your 5-year old crows, "Look, mommy! Your teeth match my teddy bear!" sell the minivan and buy the kit.

Step Three: Drop the first strip face-down on the kitchen floor, but after tallying how many bowls of Ramen noodles you'll have to eat to make up the budget for what you spent on it, use it anyway, even though dog hairs, three Cheetos, and mud shaped like shoe treads are stuck to it.

Step Four: Realize, once you get the strip in, that it only covers your front teeth. Feel really guilty about the self-esteem of your back teeth for a few minutes and wonder if it's a fashion crime for your teeth not to match each other.

Step Five: Stare in the mirror hard for five minutes, waiting for the stuff to work. Snarl inwardly when you see no noticeable effects, reasoning that for this price you should be unable to look in the mirror without sunglasses at this point. Try to take your mind off of it by staring at other parts of your face instead. Realize that was a bad move when you come to the conclusion that you not only need teeth-whitening, but also Botox, liposuction, a root job, and a pool boy named Jacques.

Step Six: Fumble with toothbrush and toothpaste while attempting to not taste the goo left behind on your teeth when you removed the strip, which, incidentally, has caused teeth too sensitive to bite air, watery eyes, runny nose, uncontrollable drool, and cellulite. Look at yourself in the mirror and think, between gags, "Oh, yeah. This is sexy."

Step Seven: Repeat. Thirty times.

Step Eight: Throw away empty box and look in the mirror. Your teeth are so white they're invisible to the human eye. But...

Great.

Your face doesn't match.

With just a few days left to go before Valentine's Day, my boys are ramped up on box-decorating and card-signing. I bought each of them a box of cheap character Valentine cards for their classmates.

So I'm not a prude or anything, but I was shocked when I saw the card my older boy was filling out for one of the girls in his class. It featured a fiery-looking character, with a caption that read: "Valentine, You're HOT!" 

There are two things you should know about the photo attached to this blog:

1. No, my daughter and I weren't bound, gagged, and held captive by a gang of insane Mary Kay distributors. Nor were we extras for a filming of Dog, the Bounty Hunter or a remake of Hairspray (the '80s version).

For the record, I know it was someone here who talked about watching “How Clean is Your House?” and I now officially hate you.

I can’t stop watching that show. Never before has my house been so clean. So sparkly. So… omigod I have no life now. My life is all about white vinegar and nylon scouring pads and trying to figure out what exactly is biological powder and designing my own line of couture rubber gloves.

But that’s not why I hate you.

I hate you because now I will be forced to address The Issue that is and always has been our master bathroom, AKA: The Disgusting Mold Factory.

That bathroom has always been a pain in our butts, thanks to the corner our builder cut to save a buck (don’t get me started on Corners My Builder Cut to Save a Buck, AKA: How a Breeze in the Living Room Can Turn an Ordinary Mom Into a Homicidal Maniac, AKA: Seriously, People, the Skylights Literally Blew Off of My House One Night!).

Our master bathroom, large enough for vanity sink, toilet, shower, and corner Jacuzzi… has one HALF of a vent in it. One HALF. They literally took a metal vent cover and sawed it in half to fit the tiny hole that is our sole source of air circulation in that room. WTF?!
 
After just a few months living in that house, we noticed that our towels, if we hung them on the towel rack to dry, would smell mildewy the next day. Why is that? Because the half-vent is not only all the way across the room, it’s also under the lip of the vanity cabinet, so it blows directly onto wood and not actually into the... oh, I don't know... AIR maybe?

Our shower mildews every day. The black nasty (potentially dangerous -- although not all black-looking mold is THAT black mold) kind. It gathers under the shower door and in the grout and lines the lip at the bottom of the shower door (you know, the lip that takes me a friggin’ hour and every curse word in my repertoire to clean out. I’ll admit… there are days I’d like to use our builder’s toothbrush to get it nice and sparkly.)

And our Jacuzzi. Sigh. This was the selling point of the house for me. I wanted that Jacuzzi tub so badly. I planned to relax in it every day. Guess who was President last time I used that manky thing? I have tried everything to clean out those jets, which spew black nasty mold into the water when you turn them on. I’ve tried vinegar. Bleach. Dishwasher detergent. I even pumped two canisters of the professional stuff through there. Nothing worked. You want a Jacuzzi bath in my house? You better have good health insurance.

Watching that stupid show has renewed my gusto in figuring out a way to get and keep that stupid bathroom clean. I’ve tried everything, short of commissioning a new air vent. Every cleaner, scrub, powder, concoction, sponge, liquid, spray, rub, and mist. If I could just manage to get the soap scum off the shower doors for longer than a day, I’d feel at least a little bit satisfied. But so far… nothing.

So to whomever of you it was who brought up watching How Clean is Your House, I’m asking – begging! – for help. Before Kim and Aggie break down my door with their bacteria swabs and their reproving looks and their adorable couture gloves.

I’m out of ideas and looking for new ones. What mold-busting tips do you moms have?

P.S. You know I could never really hate one of you moms here.

So I was all ready to post a typical Saturday nonsense blog. I had a great one written about my latest library foray where I checked out a book that had a giant booger wiped across nearly every single page. Seriously, a chance to legitimately write about boogers is like gold to a humor writer. But something happened this week that I just can't stop thinking about.

I wimped out.

Like the unbelievably long and tedious song that is The 12 days of Christmas, my Real Life 12 Days of Christmas are the longest 288 hours of my year. The 12 Days of Christmas are the 12 days AFTER December 25th… not leading up to it. A more optimistic and cheerful mom would look at this fact and rejoice. “Yay! I get to extend the Joy and warmth of Christmas for 12 more days!” But in my world, the 12 days leading up to Christmas are so crammed full of merriment and activity that come sunset on December 25, I’m done. Wiped. Finito.  I am ready for my Annual Christmas Detox. While those following religious calendars are awaiting the day they can celebrate the arrival of the Wise Men -- I am trying to remember where my couch went, what that mystery stain is on my carpet and what I put over it to hide it. In honor of making it through this period for another year I offer up my alternative song… The 12 Days AfterChristmas.


On the first day AfterChristmas my true love gave to me... A hangover. Seriously. Thanks alot to the M2M moms with their hot tea recipes and their How-to-Make-a-JellO-Shot and their, "Careful, it'll knock you on your butt and you may or may not end up mooning your neighbor while singing 'White Christmas' and doing the 'Chunky' dance." Wait. Nobody actually said THAT one. Uh... might have been helpful.

On the second day AfterChristmas my true love gave to me... Two returning sweaters: Oh joy, more shopping… and when I get in the car and turn on the radio I go into Christmas Music withdrawal…. Celine Dion? Are you kidding me?! How about some Bare Naked Ladies and Sarah McLaughlin, God Rest ye Merry Gentlemen? I would even settle for the cheesy oh-so-inadequate  Madonna, Santa Baby. I Drove All Night just is NOT doing it.

Maybe you rang it in all cozy-like, playing rummy with the fam and watching Kung Fu Panda. Maybe you got a rare night out and came home in a Care Cab (do those still exist? Yeah. It's been THAT long. Great. Now I feel old AND lame.) wearing someone else's shoes. Maybe you forgot it was New Year's Eve entirely and spent the evening scrubbing your bathtub.

However you rang it in, 2009 is here, baby, whether you like it or not. So what will your year look like? Well, if the big night of the big ball drop is any indication, here are some predictions of what it could look like for some of you party animals:

I don't even know where the bat came from.

All I know is one day everywhere I went, there it was. An aluminum baseball bat, AKA: the last thing on earth I want in my living room with TV, Clothtique Santa collection, annoyingly intrusive Christmas tree, various animals, my head...

When The Destroyer fell and hit his head at school, they couldn't get a hold of me. They tried home, they tried cell... No dice. They ended up calling The Hub and making him drive like a madman from Overland Park all the way to Liberty. The Destroyer, stuck at school for over an hour with a gashed head, intoned miserably, "I want Moooommy" every few minutes. I felt terrible.

The reason they couldn't get a hold of me was because I was at the doctor's office with Speed Demon, getting him swabbed for strep. For a change, I'd followed the signs' directions and turned off my cell phone. Hub had to call me on the land line at the doc's office to tell me I was needed back in Liberty, asap. Being with a sick kid at the doc's office is a good excuse for being unavailable for another kid, but it didn't feel any better to know that my 5-year old learned that Mommy isn't always right there like she always promises she'll be.

It must be exhausting to be one of the Line Obsessed Moms (LOMs). You know the ones I'm talking about. They hip-check you just as you sidle up to the window in front of the lion habitat at the zoo. They crush six of your toes with their oversized stroller wheels to get through the movie theater doors the very second they open. They drag their kids behind them, bumping and jostling everyone they pass, all the while snapping, "Come ON, Suzie! Do you want to see the tree with the giant Christmas balls or NOT?! Get MOVING!"

I understand that these moms exist. And exist everywhere you go. Science City. The elementary schools. Wonderscope. McDonald's. Chuck E. Cheez. Public restrooms. Something about those moms... they just have to get their kids to the front of every stupid line first or goodness knows what will happen to their lives. Dr. Phil, help! We were... *gasp*... second to sit on Santa's lap!!!

The only thing I’m worse at than cooking is keeping up with chain correspondence. I’m amazed, quite frankly, that my face hasn’t caught on fire or my house rolled into an ocean due to the accumulation of threats I’ve shirked off in letting the chain die in my hands.

But I couldn’t help but answer fellow M2Mer, Margo’s, call to try an Amish Friendship Bread Mom2Mom Challenge. Would I be up to it? Absolutely not! But, hey, some weeks I’m writing three humor pieces and I can use all the material I can get.

So without further ado, here is my Amish Friendship Bread diary:

Day 1: Well, it’s actually Day 7 because it took us that long to get coordinated around our various preschool and volunteer and momming duties (because, you know, we stay-at-home moms just sit around and do nothing all day). I meet Margo at Panera for coffee. She brings me a bag of goo and a piece of paper telling me everything I have to do to turn the bag of goo into something edible. I sit across the table from her, alternately praying that my 5-year old won’t barf the early-morning mongo hot chocolate and cookie on her and repeating to myself: It’s just goo. This will be easy. We talk for about an hour, during which Margo visibly worries about the bag of goo sitting in a shaft of sunlight on the table. Already the stress has set in. I hide the goo under a jacket on the floorboard of the car for the drive home. About 7PM I realize I’ve left it there. When I rush outside to rescue the goo, it stares at me ruefully, tells me Margo was a far better mommy, and threatens to tell the school counselor on me.

Day 2… I mean, 8: At 3AM I wake with a jolt. I’ve left the bag of goo on the kitchen counter above the dishwasher. DH runs the dishwasher when he goes to bed and the counter above, I know from experience, heats to roughly nine million degrees. I’m afraid to go out there in the morning. Afraid I will find a giant ball of goo with random socks, dog legs and the TV sticking out of it. At 7AM I creep down the hall. I smell something yeasty. Not a good sign. When I round the corner into the kitchen, there is the bag of goo. It’s bloated, about to pop. In fact, it has blown the zipper seal and some of the goo is dribbling out onto the counter. But the dogs are still alive so I feel somehow accomplished.

Day 3… er, 9. What-ever!: After a restless night, during which I endured dreams of my goo killing me in my sleep, me beating it back with wire hangers to save my innocent Hubby, I awake to find my goo happily perking away in the bag. I burp the bag, swaddle it in a receiving blanket, and put it in a swing in front of a Baby Einstein video. I notice that it smells a little like beer. I think, hey, anything that smells like beer can’t be all bad. Through most of 1993 I smelled like beer. Now I’m sort of looking forward to baking the beery goo.

Day… whatever: It’s Baking Day! I’m oddly nervous. And it’s not just performance anxiety, either. I realize with a start that not only am I trusting my friend, Margo, to give me good goo, but all of her friends and their friends and their friends and… do you see where this is going? See, maybe, I think, Margo has blogged something that has upset her friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend. Her slightly-psychotic friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend with revenge fantasies. Maybe Margo’s off-kilter friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend has laced the goo with massive amounts of laxatives. This could make my upcoming 5-hour flight to Orlando mighty uncomfortable.

I push past my fear and buy the ingredients. I decide to mix it all together while talking on the phone to my other M2M friend, sahmiam, who, quite sagely, says, “…Friendship Bread, huh…? Hmmm… I don’t know… good luck with that…” (Darnit, I can’t pawn a bag of goo off on her like I’d originally planned.). When I get off the phone, I realize with some amount of shock that the batch of batter is gigantic. What, was I making enough to feed the entire Amish community? What’s worse, I promised the kids I’d make one batch each of the cinnamon and the chocolate variety. The house smells wonderful and the bread is delicious, but good Lord, I’ve got goo and bread on every surface of the kitchen.

What’s worse… I realize… I don’t exactly have any friends. Who am I going to give this stuff to? The mailman? The meter reader? The guy who comes to scoop dog-doo once a week?

For a second I consider going to WalMart and forcing random strangers in the parking lot to Just Take the Goo and I’ll Go Peacefully. Then I realize it’s too much trouble and I chuck it in the trash.

Sorry, Margo.

Another chain broken. Why does my face feel hot? And is that an ocean I see out my kitchen window…?

Mark this as the first Thanksgiving ever where I wore jeans to dinner. Not elastic-waistband jeans, either. Nor did I wear them with a plan to "pop open the hatch" and slouch back with my top button undone after dinner.

I knew I wouldn't eat that much.

1.“Mom, when do we get to open presents? What? No presents? I had to get dressed up and all I get is stupid turkey? I hate turkey. Do you have any chicken nuggets? Is McDonald's open? I want a Happy Meal.”

2.One of my angelic, scrubbed-clean children will decide to honor our dear, departed PawPaw by singing old WWII Navy songs that PawPaw taught him. Nothing says warm, fuzzy holiday like hearing your toddler belt out, “There’s a German in the grass with a bullet up his *ss…” right after saying grace.

3.Someone will inevitably insist on rehashing old wrongs such as, oh, I’ll throw one out randomly… how about the time SOMEBODY held me down and made me shove my own finger up my nose and I got a nosebleed and when I told on SOMEBODY Mom totally didn’t believe me because SOMEBODY is such a mama’s boy and SOMEBODY better watch his back because I watch CSI and I know how to poison people and make it look like an accident, just sayin’.

4.Just as you take a bite of your sister’s sweet potato casserole, she says, “Oh my gawd, I was so sick this morning, I was puking my guts up. I don’t know what that was. Weird.”

5.Apparently it’s considered bad table manners to call someone a snot-sucking lump of lard-packed fly-ridden flesh who should be duct-taped to a treadmill instead of stuffing his stupid face with the LAST PIECE OF PIE. Hunh. Who knew?

6.“I said I want chicken nuggets! No, I don’t like stuffing! It comes out of a bird’s butt! You said to never eat anything out of a butt, remember? What? What’s wrong with what I said? You did say that. You said, ‘I can’t believe I have to say this, but don’t ever eat anything that comes out of a…’ Why is Grandma crying?”

7.Just as you take a bite of your sister’s sweet potato casserole, she goes, “Omigod! Look! I’m missing a fingernail! Huh. I wonder when THAT popped off. Weird.”

8.No matter how hard you try, you always miss most of “Alice’s Restaurant” on the radio, even the “I wanna kill” part that cracks you up every stinkin’ time you hear it and are stuck with having to be satisfied with singing the “You can have anything you want” part only one time and then it’s stuck in your head, which is completely maddening because you know that you’ll have to wait another whole year before the radio will play it again, which isn’t fair because they play “Miss American Pie” all the time and it’s like a thousand minutes long, too, and who says “Alice’s Restaurant” is about Thanksgiving anyway?

9.“I don’t like pumpkin. Do you have Oreos? What? What’s wrong with me asking for Oreos? …is Grandma crying again?”

10.Just as you take a bite of your sister's sweet potato casserole, she looks at you and whispers, "Kind of looks like baby poop, doesn't it?" And that's the only funny thing you've heard all day. You totally laugh at it when you're done heaving.

("Walk right in, it's around the back. Just a half a mile from the railroad track. You can get anything you want at Alice's Restaurant..." and all that other Happy Thanksgiving-type stuff, Moms! May everyone here survive the fam this week!)

I'm not sure how it's even possible that someone who's lived in Kansas City her whole life is caught totally by surprise by the first cold snap of the year, but it is. 

I mean, you grow up in a place like KC, you'd think it might sink in that, yeah, seeing your breath in November is hardly cause to get Josh Gates on the phone. You can remember sleet and even snow in Octobers past. Heck, you can count on one hand the number of Halloweens in your lifetime where you didn't have to totally lame-i-fy your costume by wearing a coat over it. You know the restrooms at Arrowhead intimately because you've spent so many hours in there sitting under the hand dryers just trying to bend your frozen fingers. It gets COLD in Kansas City and if you've lived here for a year or more, you should know it!

I just know there were times that my writing hero, Erma Bombeck, walked into a room in her house and found her children shaving the dog's butt. Or using her best china to make mud pies. Or found her boys in the backyard having a "swordfight" (anyone with a potty-trained boy knows what I mean by that). Or overheard her youngest tell her pastor about the "funny noises mommy and daddy make when they're 'wrestling' on Saturday mornings..."

I imagine she saw these things happen, and sighed in frustration. Not because they were happening, but because she couldn't share them with other moms. Oh, if only she could write about those things in her columns!!! Alas, you can only push it so far in the newspaper.

Between 1987 and 1990, most weekends around midnight, you could hear me shouting those words in a darkened movie theater as a giant pair of bright red lips filled the screen and began singing: “Michael Rennie was ill the day the earth stood still…”. Oh, Rocky!!!

That's right, I was a devoted Rocky Horror Picture Show fan. Man, I loved that movie.

Have you ever...?

Gone out and bought all the gross Halloween candy you could find so that you wouldn't be tempted to eat it between the time you bought it and the time you handed it out on Halloween?

The other night I was at a party talking to a friend when I received a text message from my daughter, who was at a debate tournament. I read the text, laughed, and showed it to my friend. It said:

"OMG. Pit stains."

It never fails. You sit down at your table in a nice restaurant or in your lawn chair at a soccer game or are hanging out at the doctor's office and you hear this:

"Alexander, stop it. I said stop it, Alexander. Don't do it again, Alexander. Not one more time, Alexander. I'm not going to warn you again. Not one more time, Alexander. I said stop it. Stop it. I'm warning you. Don't make me say it again, Alexander. Alexander, I'm tired of saying this. Stop it. Stop it. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Don't make me come over there, Alexander. I'm going to take you out of here. That's it, you're really starting to push my buttons, Alexander. Don't think I won't do it, Alexander. I'm warning you. Stop it. Stop. Alexander, I asked you to stop. You're going to be in big trouble, Alexander..."

I am the baby of the family. Explains a lot, doesn't it?

You would think that being the baby of the family means I'm coddled, treated like a child, considered unimportant with irrelevant things to say. Nope, that's not how being the baby of the family works. At least not in my experience.

Recently I heard that the economy is so bad, sales on luxury $5,000+ purses have gone down. To which I screamed in outrage: "A $,5000 purse?! What, are these people insane?!"

But I guess I just may not be able to understand the attraction of a Coach or a Hermes or a Prada bag. In fact, given the fact that my purse was technically free, some might say I would probably be incapable of understanding what might make someone buy an Old Navy clearance purse.

I’ve decided that not only is the customer rarely right these days, but businesses just don’t seem to impress upon their employees the importance of always putting your best foot forward in front of customers anymore.

Yesterday I was at the grocery store, checking out, when the checker suddenly apologized.

“Sorry,” she said, picking up the bananas and scanning them. “I know I’m moving slow today.” She wiped her nose on the back of the hand holding the bananas.

“That’s okay,” I said.

She picked up the 2-liter of Diet Coke, scanned it. “It’s just that I feel horrible today. I woke up with my sinuses going crazy.”

I glanced at the cucumber—my un-bagged cucumber—she was spinning in her nose-wiped hands. “Allergy season…?” I prompted.

“No,” she fondled the granola bars. “No, I took my allergy medicine. Didn’t do any good.” She coughed into her palm, then used the palm to pick up the paper towels. “I haven’t had a thing to eat or drink today and I don’t care to. I was white as a sheet earlier and I just don’t have a clue how I’m going to make it to the end of the day today. It’s like my body’s just shutting down, you know?”

“Um… Maybe you should’ve called in sick…?” I grimaced as she smeared her germy hands all over a bag of Doritos. I imagined my kids picking up that bag, their hands coming away furry with sinus/stomach critters as they stuffed Doritos into their fragile illness-ready mouths.

“I wish I could, but I need the money.” She belched softly into her fist before picking up the next item. “Hoo-boy, my stomach just doesn’t feel good at all.”

“Come to think of it, suddenly mine’s not doing so hot either,” I mumbled.

“It’s going around.”

“Apparently.”

I drove home with the van windows down, hoping that a breeze might knock some of the illness off of the $200 worth of groceries I’d just bought. I prayed I’d have enough Germ-X to take a bath in when I got home.

Okay, and I’ll go ahead and say it, at the risk of sounding ultra-insensitive: I was annoyed. I can't fault the woman for being sick. And I can't fault her for not being able to afford a day off work, but she sure could've done me a favor and not gabbed about her rotting insides while putting her hands all over my food. I’m sick of getting the tawdry “inside scoop” into strangers’ lives while out in public. Can't anything be a mystery anymore?

I had a checker once spend ten minutes going on and on about how her husband dropped his wallet in a bad part of town and she was sure “those Mexicans” who live down there had surely already robbed it blind. I’ve had cashiers tell me about their estranged husbands, their ne’er-do-well adult children, their ill animals, their problems, their issues, their “gunk.”

(My favorite: a computer technician dispatched to our house to fix a virus proceeded to regale DH and I with a story of how his wife left him after finding porn on his computer at home.

“It was one a-them animal porn sites,” he explained. “It’s not like it was that bad. Don’t you think she was overreacting?”

I let DH deal with that one while I locked the dogs in the bedroom and searched for the Lysol.)

I suppose there might be bigger employee issues to deal with these days—such as how to pay them, provide them health insurance benefits and basically keep them working in this faltering economy—but I for one really miss the days when customer satisfaction was key, when people had a modicum of privacy to their lives and when you could expect to go through a checkout line without hearing the life story of someone going through a bad time.

How about you? Do you find yourself the embarrassed insider into complete strangers' problems way too often these days?

(DS was sent home from school sick on Thursday. Damn those Doritos!)

In elementary school I was tested for the gifted program. I didn’t make it. Not a huge deal; at the time I didn’t even know I “didn’t make” something. I’d thought everyone had been tested.

Come to find out, my mom had intervened.

“I went up to that school," she told me a couple years ago, "I marched into that counselor's office and I told him, ‘This child is no prodigy!’”  

At the time I was appalled. Had Mom held me back from a potential opportunity that might have made my life different, better, more complete? Might have I been more respected in high school? In college? Might I have grown up to have a more respectable career, one that didn’t, for example, make fun of diarrhea commercials? More importantly, didn’t my mom think I was smart enough to be gifted? Weren't all moms supposed to think their kids were smart enough to be gifted? I felt like I had been robbed of my right to be amazing.

So when my oldest was tested for the gifted program in elementary school, I was thrilled. At last! Redemption! Unlike my mom, I’d be cheering my kiddo on. Marching into the guidance office to make sure everyone knew what a prodigy she was!

Alas… she didn’t get in.

Ah, well. No big deal. The kid is still scary-smart, even if she’s not technically gifted-smart (and if she’s not gifted-smart, there’s NO WAY I was gifted-smart. I probably wouldn’t have made it into the program even without Mom’s sabotage). Smart enough that in ten years of school she’s yet to receive a grade lower than an A in any class, and she's always been placed in the highest "advanced" classes the school has to offer, outside of the gifted program.

But over the last few years I saw something happen with her. She began to morph from confident, eager learner in the regular classroom to someone who was “challenged” to a point where she no longer felt good about herself in an advanced one. Routinely in junior high, she sobbed that she was “no good” at Math and was convinced that she was “struggling.” Yet the kid brought home A’s every semester and the teachers all reassured us at conferences that she was doing great. It was so perplexing. You couldn’t convince her she was doing great. She was mastering Math concepts I didn’t even master in college, but feeling “dumb.” These advanced classes... to use an altogether  un-gifted term... sucked.

So last year, as she was enrolling for high school, I pulled a Mom.

“You know,” I said. “You’re not going to be a Math major. You don’t want to major in Science, either. Or Engineering. Why don’t you just… you know… take the easier Math class?”

There it was. I dumbed her down. I might as well have been in the guidance office saying, “This child is no prodigy!”

In the meantime… here we go again! Last year, DS7 was tested for the gifted program. I really considered hard whether or not I’d even let him test, afraid he’d end up like his sister, challenged to the point of feeling dumb when he’s actually achieving amazing things. In the end I (reluctantly) let him test.

And he got in.

I’ve been a nervous wreck about it all summer, just waiting to see what the gifted program will bring us: a nurturing learning environment for someone who learns in a different style from the other kids? Or stress that will have him crying over his pre-Calc homework by 4th grade?

After listening to the gifted teacher talk on Back to School Night, I feel better. But only a little bit better. I’m still just worried that my kids are being put under too much pressure to be “perfect” and “smart” and “advanced.” Not by me, but by... the school?... by themselves?... by society at large...? Why can’t they just be kids--not smart, dumb or otherwise--just normal kids?

The other night, both of them came home from school a bit down. DD explained that she’d gotten a high B on a History test and she was beating herself up over it. No matter how much I insisted that a high B was an excellent grade, she repeated, “Not for me. I can do better,” over and over again. DS7, who had spent the day with his gifted class, lamented, “Math was hard. And we had to do it for two hours.”

It occurred to me that maybe the smartest one of all of us just might be my mom.

I’m the world’s most easily-swayed voter. With this election in particular, who I’m going to vote for depends on who I last heard speak. Hillary gives a speech at the DNC and I’m standing on my couch, burning a bra and shouting, “You go, girl!” Obama speaks and I’m wiping my eyes and booking tickets for a march on Washington. Palin stands before the cameras and I’m bursting with Mommy Pride and filling out paperwork to rename one of my children Willow (I do love that name!). McCain gives a speech and I’m overcome with an urge to enlist.

I have no doubt in my mind that if there were an Acme Party, I’d be sporting a Zippy the Clown 2008 button and vehemently defending the benefits of going Acme for president:

*Red noses and balloon animals for all at cabinet meetings.

*A fun squeaky horn on Air Force One.

*Ending Senate sessions by seeing how many Republicans can fit into one of those tiny cars.

*“Where’s your tax reform? Where is it? Oops! I found it! It’s behind your ear! It was there the whole time!”

*The Oval Office gets a bigger desk to accommodate massive clown shoes.

*Rainbow wig voted Best Hair on Capitol Hill, beating out John Edwards’ hair by a narrow margin. Al Gore steps in and demands a recount. Zippy dumps bucket of confetti on Gore’s head. The confetti is recycled. Everyone is happy. Zippy gives Al a ride home in eco-friendly clown car.

*Added bonus of squirting opponents in the eye with cool new Acme Squirt-o-Rama Veto Pen.

*Titillates pundits when pulling speech, which is attached to a chain of handkerchiefs and a pair of polka-dot boxers, out of coat pocket.

*Begins every State of the Union speech with rousing tug-of-war mime.

*Homeland Security Advisory System changed to green, blue, yellow, orange, and ah-oooooga!

*Campaign song is the Beer Barrel Polka.

*Town Hall meetings held in colorful tents and feature amazing painting elephant and chimpanzee in cute beret.

*Replaces Supreme Court justices with Cirque du Soleil dancers who hang from the courtroom ceiling on giant bungees and silk banners.

*Nuclear hand-buzzer revolutionizes warfare.

*Face paint confounds private detectives, making sleazy illicit affairs much easier to pull off.

*Whoopie cushions to lighten up meetings with scary foreign dignitaries.

And the best reason of all:

*When the losing candidates complain that ignorant American voters put a clown in the White House, by golly, they’re right!

Whichever side you're on, embrace your politics: It’s good for the complexion.

If you regularly read my blog, it’s no secret to you that I hate commercials. I have a particular distaste for the bowel-obsessed Lunchtime Lineup. But those, by no means, complete my hate list of commercials.

Some commercials are good (remember the "I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing" Coca Cola commercials? Those were awesome!!!), but there are a few that I watch and just can’t help but think, “Who on earth wrote this crap and who on earth spent money on it thinking it would make people buy their stuff?!”

My current peeve: commercials that present women as manipulative, deceitful, image-obsessed and mean. The following commercial manages to do all of these things at once, which is why it currently tops my hate list:

A woman is having "friends" over. She lights a Glade candle, but rips off the Glade label because she is either A)so neurotic and shallow she can’t possibly have her friends think she would let a grocery store candle debase her home, or B)her friends are so neurotic and shallow they would care that she lets a grocery store candle debase her home.

Oh! But there’s a faux pas! When she bumps the trash can with her hip after throwing away the offending label, the label gets stuck to her butt and she doesn’t know it! *gasp! swoon! twitter!* Horror of horrors! What will happen next?

Well, what happens next is what appalls me the most about this commercial. The "friends" immediately notice, upon entering the front door, the wonderful smell in the room and inquire about what the lovely smell is. Because, you know, this is exactly what you do when you walk into someone's home: try to get to the bottom of the ambient smells before you even take your coat off.

But back to the commercial. So the "friends" simply MUST know what that amazing scent is and… The hostess is so embarrassed she LIES about the candle, saying it came from France.

And do the "friends" look at her piteously because they know she’s never been to France and she’s a compulsive liar and is perhaps just a tad too wrapped up in putting on airs? Is there even an uncomfortable beat of silence or a knowing glance between the "friends" that might be read to say, “Uh-huh, see? I told you. Maureen is such a phony…”.

No. Instead, the leader of the “friends” rips the sticker off of the woman’s butt, holds it up to the rest of the “friends” and ridicules the woman, saying, “What, you’ve never heard of Glah-day?”

And they all raucously laugh in her face. *Nyah-nyah! Loooooser!*

And so there I am on the couch, rolling my eyes and screaming this:

“Well, no wonder she’s so insecure, you mean *censored*! If it were me, I’d have a Glade candle on every surface of the house and laugh at YOU for not having one! I’d make Glade so much cooler than your snooty overseas candles. You go, Cheap Lying Woman! Sucker-punch that nasty Queen Bee in the throat, see if she's still laughing then! Next time I’m at the store I’m going to buy a friggin’ gross of Glade candles and I pity the mother who thinks she’s going to laugh at me. Go ahead, *censored*, I dare you to laugh at me and my grocery store candles! Woop, woop! Glade Power!!!”

…Can you believe it?…

The stupid commercial worked.  

Well, I’ve done it. I’ve re-joined the PTA.

This is a big deal for me. I haven’t belonged to PTA since my oldest, now a sophomore (*sob*), was in 1st grade.

Back then, the PTA was like The Mafia—full of scary moms, unafraid to buttonhole you in the video store checkout line, willing to “make you an offer you can’t refuse.” They ran the school, those women, with an iron fist. I swear, there were days I wasn’t sure the PTA would let my own kid go home with me due to my lack of proper involvement.

“Halt. Step away from the child. Who are you?”

“I’m her mother, I swear. Honey, tell the nice woman I’m your mother.”

“Don’t speak, child. We’ll get to the bottom of this. What’s the password, lady?”

“Password? I don’t know any password.”

“If you’d gone to a PTA meeting like you’re supposed to, you’d know the password. We’ll let it slide this time, but if you miss the November meeting… you sleep with the fishes.”

You weren't safe anywhere. Once I was even accosted in the grocery store by a PTA member.

“You know, Jennifer, your name came up in the last meeting.”

“Oh…?” (translation: Oh, crap!)

“Yes, how would you feel about being next year’s president?”

“Of what?”

“Of PTA, of course!”

“I’ve only been to one meeting.”

“That doesn’t matter.”

“I don’t know anything about leading anything. Ask my kid. She’ll tell you. I’m totally ineffectual. I can’t even balance a checkbook.”

“We have a secretary for that.”

“But… you guys scare me.”

“What’s scary about us? Answer that carefully or I’ll put a horse head in your bed.”

“I just don’t think I’m the right mom for the job.”

“No, you don’t understand. The boss strongly suggests you really consider this opportunity.” [insert sinister gaze and The Godfather theme song here]

The next year at Back to School Night, I didn’t even sign up. I’ve stayed away all these years. Eight years. Each year, I’ve volunteered to work in the classrooms, send in food for conference dinners, help the school with whatever I can, but I’ve never signed the card, never been to a meeting.

But over the years I’ve been watching. And there’s been a changing of the guard. Fresh blood. The new PTA seems pleasant, willing to work as a team. They seem… nice. They seem… gracious. Understanding. Willing to work with you. Like nobody's going to tie cement blocks to your feet and toss you in the river next time you're caught missing a meeting.

So this year I decided to give PTA another try. I signed the card. I even signed up to work on a couple committees.

If I end up sleepin’ with the fishes this year, you’ll know what happened.

Today we’re celebrating a milestone. Our youngest… our baby… turns five. So to keep my mind off of how quickly they grow (AKA: to keep me from sobbing inconsolably into a bathtub of margaritas that I’m "getting so ooold" and "my babies are all grooowing uuup," followed by forcing Hubby to get an appointment to “look into that whole vasectomy reversal thing” and then spraining my entire body trying to do a cartwheel in the front yard to prove my youth has yet to leave me) we’ll be having our very first “friend” party for him.

I’ve been around the playground a few times. I’ve thrown more birthday parties than I can count (in my estimation, the toughest woman on earth is the woman who can withstand a slumber party of 11-year old girls). I know how this day’s going to go before we even begin.

7:00AM: He wakes up completely and fully, his very first thought being, “I’m getting new stuff today!” He bursts out of bed and wakes every person and animal in a three-mile radius with the exuberant Olympic-level bed/trampoline routine he performs on my face.

7:02AM: He asks, “Is the party about to start?” 412,334 times, in rapid-fire. (It’s impressive. I consider calling the Guinness Book of World Records.)

8:00AM: He eats half a donut for breakfast. Scratch that. He eats the sprinkles off of half a donut for breakfast. This is integral because if he were to eat an entire donut for breakfast or, God forbid, an actual breakfast, he might not get carsick on the way to the party.

8:02AM: He asks, “Is the party about to start?” another 326,989 times. (Seriously. I think maybe this kid’s got a future in auctioneering. Or on America’s Got Talent.)

9:16AM: The dog eats the treat bags, so I make an emergency candy run… um… and carpet cleaner run.

9:22AM: Driving home I realize I forgot to pick up the cake while on the candy run and have to turn back. I invent 32 new curse words en route. (It’s impressive. I consider calling The Guinness Book of World Records.)    

12:09PM: “Is the party about to start? Is it? Is it? Huh? Huh? HUUUUUUUUH?!” (Forget Guinness and America’s Got Talent. At this point I’m just considering making a run for it when Hubby gets home. I could be in Vegas rolling a seven by nightfall…).

1:30PM: We leave for AirZone. He pukes half a donut in the back seat of the car. Ironically, I’m thankful that he didn’t eat a full breakfast.

2:30PM: He opens up a lot of presents. A LOT of presents. I calculate the storage space in our house and immediately call a realtor. Then I remember that he’ll break half of them in the car on the way home and lose the other half outside by noon tomorrow. Crisis averted.

4:00PM: The last kid has gone home. We go home, too. As we wearily drag the last bag of New Stuff into the house, the birthday boy pops into the living room and gets out his favorite (old) stuffed toy. He plays with it for four hours. The only time he even looks at the new toys is when the cat climbs into the bag. He plays with the cat.

9:00PM: As I put him to bed he says, “This was the best day ever!”

…and somehow…

I couldn’t agree with him more.

(Except for the whole baby growing up thing. That part sucks.)

Kid #1: Mom, what's that sign say?

Me: It says "No Poaching."

Remember all those times in May when we turned to one another and said, “Boy, it’s so mild this year. Hard to believe it’s even summer…” Well, now we’re paying for all that bragging, big-time.

Kansas City has brought the heat and with it has sapped the will to do much of anything. Have you been afflicted by the Too Hot to be a Mama blues? Here are ten warning signs:

1.    When you remove your bra at night, it’s so soaked you think you must be lactating again. …And your youngest is 13.

2.    The kids complain that you’re taking up all the space in the kiddie pool. You warn them to put a cork in it and bring you another lemonade or else you’ll go home. Later, you tell on them for standing in your breeze.

3.    You work up a sweat from the effort of getting out of the shower, and then need to stop for a cold drink on the walk from the bathroom to the couch.

4.    You wipe baby’s boom-boom too quickly and the friction catches your living room drapes on fire.

5.    You pay your children to sit on someone else's lap.

6.    You decide that weeds are flowers, too, and write an angry missive to the Homeowner’s Association President about your lawn (which you haven’t mowed in three weeks), claiming he’s impeding upon your horticulture study and did he know you’re a professor at Duke University and the entire free world is counting on you to complete this project because it could end global warming and save the fate of humanity…? (You decide God forgives little white lies like this in the case of extreme heat, but worry that you may not have pulled it off because you misspelled the word horticulture and signed the letter, “Kiss My Petunias, Baldy!”)

7.    You invite the annoying kid who talks too loud, wipes boogers on the walls and breaks stuff into your house to play because you realize the two puddles standing with him on the front porch have eyeballs and favor your husband's side of the family.

8.    Dinner is popsicles and unthawed frozen pizza. …Again.

9.    At night you pray for your air conditioner first, your children second.

10.    When your significant other approaches you with The Look, you ask if he’d be willing to settle for lying next to one another thinking naughty thoughts.

If you answered more than one of these questions “yes,” you can proudly assert yourself as One Hot Mama. Buy yourself a hand-held fan, store your undies in the freezer, and hang in there: We’ll be complaining about being too darn cold before you know it.

Lunch. It’s my oasis in the Desert of Daily Grind. It’s my intermission in that great musical called Mom: A Story of Fatigue and Desperation. My moment to catch my breath.

Breakfast I eat standing over the kitchen sink. Dinner is spent popping up to refill water glasses and plates. But lunch. Lunch is My Moment.

I feed the kids first, let them eat, so my midday breather won’t be interrupted. Once they’re finished, I make myself a sandwich and maybe, if I’m feeling particularly indulgent, a side salad. I pour myself an icy glass of tea. I carry it all to the living room, sit down on the couch, put my feet up, and turn on All My Children.

I take a bite of my sandwich. Curse at Erica and Jack for splitting up again. I spear a piece of lettuce. Get teary-eyed when Babe and JR kiss. Sip my tea. Scream, “Annie’s the murderer!” at the TV screen. And just as I really begin to relax… the screen segues to this commercial:

Man in Woods: “I have genital herpes.”

Woman in Woods: “And I don’t.”

Hmmm.

Lunching with someone’s STD. Not exactly the respite I had in mind.

But that’s okay. I’m nothing if not determined to get my sanctuary. I’ll wait it out. I put down my fork and watch as the herpes commercial turns to something more palatable. Like this:

Bus Driver Clutching Stomach and Writhing in Agony: “Sometimes my constipation gets so bad, I can hardly go about my day…”

And then:

Size 14 Woman Trying to Cram Herself into a Size 12 Pair of Jeans: “During my period, I’m bloated like road kill left on the side of the highway on a hot July day…”

Followed by:

Woman Horseback Riding at a Precarious One-Butt-Cheek Angle: “After my third child was born, I practically had to name my hemorrhoid and give it keys to the car…”

By the time I’m ready to dig in again, I look down at my plate only to discover that it’s turned into a heaping helping of Feminine Itch Sandwich with a side of Irritable Bowel Syndrome and an icy glass of Bladder Control Problems.

What the…?

What advertising brainiac decided that noon was the best time of day to swamp the TV with ads about diarrhea and “embarrassing gas”* and Viagra? It’s like the networks are simply not allowed to advertise during the lunch hour for any product that might be used above the belt.

As if it’s not uncomfortable enough trying to eat lunch during the Potty Hour… during the summer, when the kids are home, there’s the added bonus of Fun Lunch Commercial Questions:

“Mommy, do you have erectile dysfunction?”

“Er… Um..”

“Will you buy me a box of Tampax? I want to go rock climbing like that lady!”

“Well… Er…”

“Do you feel less-than-fresh, Mommy?”

“Um… Well…”

“What is genital herpes anyway? Do you get it in the woods? Is that why we never go camping?”

“Uh… Um…”

It’s just not fair. Do you ever see a “gotta go” commercial during a hockey game? Ever have to sit through a Summers Eve spot in the middle of baseball play-offs? Ever once see a woman playing tennis with her sporty panty-liners during The Superbowl? No! The guys get cool commercials—funny talking-frog beer spots and sexy Pepsi segments featuring Justin Timberlake. We get the squatty bald guy clutching his stomach in a Pepto Bismol commercial.

It’s almost enough for me to turn off the TV at lunch time altogether. To protest. Show my distaste.

… Uh… but I really have to know if Erica ends up with Samuel or not…

*Okay, for the record, the Gas-X commercials actually crack me up. Especially in the job interview scenario when the assistant interrupts to tell the interviewer, “Excuse me, your son Rip is on line toot…” Cracks me up every time.

My neighborhood runneth over with solicitors. They swarm in the summer, banging on the front door (usually at dinner time, or while your youngest has his head wedged between the slats of the deck, or just as you sit down…in the bathroom) just to let you in on the amazing opportunity to score a magazine subscription and send them “to college,” “to Hawaii,” “to Branson,” to anywhere but a job flipping burgers.

There are restaurant coupons to be bought, petitions to sign, charities to donate to, services to sign up for…all at a low, low price that will simultaneously earn you a stained glass likeness in a church somewhere for having helped “launch a young adult into a new career,” having helped “a charity bring services to thousands of needy people,” or having helped “your lawn/paint/landscaping/deck/roof/window/face live up to its beauty potential.”

Recently a roofer, who had been dispatched to our house to fix a minor leak, put his foot through our kitchen ceiling. I thumb-tacked a trash bag over the hole and went on about my day.

"That clinches it!” cried Hubby when he came home and saw our new ceiling décor. “We are the neighborhood eyesore.”

I’ve decided that it’s not that my kids aren’t listening to me, it’s that they can’t hear me. I don’t scream loudly enough. I can’t drown out the cartoons.

Remember the good old days of cartoons? You know, the ones where there was no dialogue at all? Tom chases Jerry, Jerry gets the best of Tom, all to the soundtrack of some whistles, a little orchestra music, and an ah-ooga horn. Every now and then Tom would totally shock us by saying something like “do-o-on’t y-o-o-u belie-e-eve i-i-it,” in this creepy voice that would give us nightmares for a week.

Mile 1:

“Okay, Mommy’s going to be running next to you the entire time, Sweetie. You just pedal and steer and don’t worry about a thing. Mommy’s got a hold of you. I promise I won’t let you fall. I’ll catch you if you start to fall. See? I’m right here with you. Just keep peddling. Yes, just like that. …Okay. …Okay… Oh, my! You’re going really fast! Wow! Mommy’s having to really… run… to keep up with you. Wow… you’re doing… this is a lot faster than I thought…”

Mile 5:

“Are you tired? Need a little breather? …No? Okay. Well, no, of course I don’t… need a breather. I could run beside you all day. You’re doing such a good job. But I have an idea… if maybe we could just go a little slower this time… you know, give Mommy a chance to catch her breath… and find her fingernail, which popped off somewhere in the cul-de-sac. Okay… and see… Mommy’s not exactly wearing a sports bra and… well you’ll understand gravity someday... So if we could just go a little slower… oh, I see you don’t want to slow down. Okay, good job. Don’t worry… I’ve got you. I’m right here with you. I won’t let you fall… I promise.”

Mile 15:

“How about… we take… that little breather now? Mommy’s just going to lie down here in the front yard for a minute and pray. No? You want to go again already? Okay… well, you get started and I’ll be right behind you. Don’t worry. I won’t let you fall as much as last time. Just be careful steering around that thing in The Brennen’s driveway. What is it? Oh, it’s just Mommy’s kneecap. But that’s okay, I have another, I can keep going without it. But try not to run over Mommy’s spleen that’s lying in The Knapp’s driveway, okay? I’m probably going to have the doctor try to put that back. Good job, sweetie. You’re doing… great… I’ve… got… you…”

Mile 20:

“Still not tired? Did you sneak into Mommy’s coffee and Snickers bar stash this morning? Ha ha, just kidding. Mommy doesn’t keep a Snickers bar stash. If she did, she’d be too fat to run beside you for half the day and would be really regretting all those times she thought she ‘deserved a little indulgence every now and then’ and that would be so stupid of Mommy… and then if Mommy could lift her legs, Mommy would really be kicking herself for all those times she ate a Snickers bar instead of getting on the elliptical like she said she was going to do… No, no, you go… I’ll be right behind you… just try to fall into the grass this time… Don’t worry. We have lots of BandAids…”

Mile 62:

This week we visited my sister’s house, a rare summer treat. We were greeted at the door by her demonic Pekingese, Riley, who we haven't seen since he was a puppy. The second we stepped foot in the house, he began snarling uncontrollably, jumping up on his hind feet to snap at my boys.

“Um, has he ever been around any little kids before?” I asked.

[growl bark bark barkbarkbark…]

“No, but he’s harmless.”

[grrrr… bark barkbarksnooooort…]

“Are you sure he won’t bite?”

[bark bark grrrrrrowl barkbark snap]

“He’s never bitten before. He’ll be fine.”

[snap snapsnap snort grrrr bark…]

About ten seconds later, one well-placed snap and my son’s finger was hamburger. There were twelve puncture marks total, all of them deep, and a self-satisfied grin on that dog’s smug little underbite as my boy shrieked and bled all over the place.

I whisked my son to the bathroom to doctor him up. The dog actually followed us into the bathroom, grimacing as if to say, “Go ahead, punk. Make my doggy day.” He eyed the other two kids menacingly, growling deep in his throat at them as they wrapped themselves in the shower curtain in fear.

“Riley,” my sister cooed in a sing-songy baby voice while digging BandAids out of a first aid kit for my son. “You bad boy, Riley. Oh yes, that’s right. You’re such a bad, bad boy…” He wagged his tail at her. Something tells me he missed the stern derision in her voice. Oh yeah, that’s because there wasn’t any.

I consoled my son, doctored him up, assured my sister that he was okay, but inside I was seething. Why didn’t she lock up that horrible Tribble Gone Bad when he met us at the front door all but tying a bib around his neck and holding a shaker of Mrs. Dash?

Once I had a friend whose Labrador Retriever quite possibly had a stellar future in gynecology, giving everyone a “check-up” as they came into the house.

“Oh, he must smell your dogs,” she would say, as I did the Personal Bubble Dance.

“Um, I’m pretty sure he smells my crotch. And if he goes much further, pretty soon he’ll be smelling my tonsils. Maybe we should give him some privacy…” What I really meant to say was, lock up your doggone dog, lady, or pretty soon we're going to be legally married in three states.

My sister-in-law’s dog snarled menacingly in my son’s face and left long scratches down my other son’s back, yet sis refused to lock the dog up, insisting that the dog was “playing.” Uh-huh. She was playing Rip the Face off the Giant Human Squeak Toy.

I’ve been in houses where the dog yaps incessantly; where the dog hops in your lap the second you sit down, shedding all over your shirt; where his face is planted on your pant leg and you trip over him every other step; where the dog begs at the kitchen table where you’re trying to eat; where the dog jumps on you and knocks you down when you walk through the front door.

And in each case I've acted nice. Forgiving. I didn't want to cause a stir or embarrass anyone. But in each case I was screaming on the inside, "He may be YOUR best friend, but just because you think his 'quirks' are cute doesn't mean I do!"

Cook Like a Mom. The Concept: The top ten up-and-coming chefs of the country must take on cooking challenges such as, “Oh crap! I only have $10 and five kids to feed today,” “How could the store possibly run out of chili beans on Superbowl Sunday?” and “What do you mean you don’t eat meat on Mondays?” Each chef must drag three cranky kids through WalMart without cursing anyone out (not even the lady who steers her cart directly over their foot while making a bee-line to get to the last box of Peanut Butter Crunch) on a Sunday… the Sunday before Thanksgiving. No dish should contain tomatoes or eggs (the 7-year old is allergic), look “too peach” (the 9-year old is passionately against certain colors), contain seeds (the 6-year old is… 6) or actually resemble food of any kind (toddler). The winner is the chef who manages to survive one whole dinner without bursting into tears, spanking anyone or running away from home. The Prize: the satisfaction of seeing the children grow and be healthy (What? Did you actually think there’d be money involved?)

Fool the HOA (this one's for you, Tasha!). The Concept: Suburban residents must take on a summer-long competition of seeing how much they can get past the Homeowner’s Association without being sent nasty letters, visited by irate HOA board members, or sued. They must take on such challenges as parking a boat in the driveway for three weeks, erecting a 3’6” fence, leaving their trash bags untied on trash day, parking a car on the street for half a day, planting a petunia without first asking permission, and leaving their garage door open all day long. The finale challenge will have contestants each painting their houses…[insert ominous music and dramatic gasp here]… yellow (not cornbread or cheesecake or crème brulee, but out-and-out banana freakin’ yellow). The winner will be the contestant who receives the least official letters from the HOA lawyers. The Prize: A brand-spankin’ new clothes line in the back yard.

Dear Cable Company:

I would like to take the opportunity to offer my services in your upcoming ad campaign. I think I’m a perfect fit.