Year: 2013

#CTWW Preschool May Not Have Prepared You For Life

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I’m completely busy today, as in, “save the whole cave from a herd of angry mammoths”-busy, so for my change the world post today I’m completely ripping off this guy’s very poignant video about how we lie to children every day and tell them that the things that are great about being in preschool are preparing them for life. Remember that sweet poster about all the things you learned in kindergarten, and how awesomely they apply to the rest of your life? Not a chance. As this guy points out, NO ONE WILL EVER PRAISE YOU FOR POOPING once you graduate college. I mean, preschool. It’s time to stop the lies!

If you can make it all the way through his video without having your whole world view on the education system permanently scarred, I’ll hug a dinosaur.

In actual realistic news, we can also change the world by only listening to Jon Stewart’s take on the whole NSA-Whistleblower thing. Anyone other than Jon Stewart who wants to get on TV and talk about how some guy leaking the news that our government spies on people without a warrant is actually committing treason (eyeballing you on this one, Glenn Beck and Bill O’Reilly), also needs to hug a dinosaur. From underneath. While I praise it for pooping.

It Finally Happened. I Couldn’t Laugh At My Child.

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I never thought this day would come, but it did. My twelve-year-old had to have emergency surgery, and I couldn’t mess with her.

I had great plans to get her home, tuck her into bed, then put weird things on her head while she was asleep and take pictures, pictures that I would then post on this blog. I even told her I was going to, naming awesome things like this weird crocheted Viking hat I was going to photograph her in. The more she cried and begged me not to, the more determined I became.

Then something horrible happened. Apparently, I either grew up, or I developed a conscience. Either way, it’s a very unsettling feeling and I’m not really sure what to do with it.

We got to her surgery appointment, and I had to hold my scared 12yrold in my lap while she cried quietly. That’s not an easy thing to do when the 12yrold is as tall as mine is, and when my lap is making a steady progress towards disappearing like mine is. But the best thing ever happened: during her quiet little tears of fear, I asked her what would make her feel better and she said, “Can you tweeze my eyebrows while I’m still under anesthesia?” I held her close and assured her that I would climb over the nurses to get to those eyebrows, if that’s what it took. (Sadly, I forgot all about it, but even that’s not my fault because she looked really, really bad when she came out and trust me, eyebrows were the last thing wrong with her face. She still has all of her eyebrows, in fact, because now that she’s recovered she won’t let me near them with anything pointy.)

So even though groggy pictures of my daughter with the dog perched on her head never happened (the dog happened, just not the pictures), I did manage to sneak a few pictures with my phone of my daughter’s attempts to communicate via dry erase board. It’s not even in English.

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Does This Dead Bug Make Me Look Fat?

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In an effort to be a good person and store up some much-needed karma points, I’m volunteering this week at gardening camp. Yes, it’s every bit as thrilling as it sounds. Our opening activity each day is to wash the trowels and our physical game is to go weed the large garden. Seriously, if I was an illegal immigrant, I’d be making 25-cents an hour to do this. I’m very much looking forward to the fact that my daughter has to have her wisdom teeth out this week because it gives me a great excuse to NOT go to gardening camp the last two days of the week.

NOTE: I am NOT a horrible person, but yes, I signed my older child up to have her wisdom teeth out tomorrow just because I can’t handle any more time spent with children who are allergic to the sun but whose mothers decided to sign them up for gardening camp anyway. Unless we’re going to teach the kids to grow marijuana hydroponically in their closets under grow lights (which I was all for, by the way, but the state funding for this camp wasn’t on board with it), you’re going to encounter the sun at gardening camp. We also have a few children whose mothers decided gardening camp was perfect for their kids because their kids have the social skills of a wet cardboard box, and plants can’t call you names or take your toys. As for my daughter, I’m making it up to her because she really wants her eyebrows waxed but she’s an even bigger chicken than her mother, so I’m going to pluck her eyebrows while she’s still under anesthesia.

I can handle the twenty-or-so kids who signed up for the camp (I’m pretty sure I should know how many there are, but meh…) and I can even handle the activities designed by a helicopter mom somewhere (the biggest camp rule is No Running… really? No running? At camp?). And we do get to go stick our feet in the creek every afternoon if everyone was good that day. But the thing getting me is the bugs.

We’ve got your typical mosquitoes and wasps buzzing overhead, and I am very proud of myself for not shitting every time a spider crawls out of the ground beneath the weeds I just helped some six-year-old harvest. But I think what’s freaking me out are their sheer numbers. Screw the zombies everybody keeps going on about, it’s the bugs that are going to organize. They’re plotting as we speak and they’ve got the numbers to back up their threats.

While my instinct is to start stomping like the cast of Riverdance with my size-11 shoes every time I see one, I have to realize that I’m setting a horrible example for the impressionable children, and it’s bad enough that their mothers have convinced them it’s not okay to venture outside to pick up the shovel they left on the ground without a fresh coating of sunscreen (seriously, I have one camper who’s allergic to hand gel… how in the world are you supposed to survive tetanusy things if you can’t use hand gel? We have to take her inside for the special soap her mama sent, because soap is also on her list of objects she can’t touch.)

In order to teach the kids a teensy bit of environmental responsibility, today’s lesson is on the environmental impact of killing even one little bug and the chain of events you could accidentally set in place. For now, I will forgo the discussions of time travel and the Dr. Who diagrams, and just tell the little beasties not to kill every single insect they see, and especially not to make that horrible high-pitched noise they use when they see one.

There’s Some Scary Stuff on the Internet

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Sorry, everyone. Just… sorry. I got up really early today to get a lot of work done, and while I was working at my computer, I felt our little dog lay down at my feet and brush her silky long ears against my toes. All was right with the world. And then I remembered that the dog was actually downstairs in the guest room with the kids, since they all had a big sleepover and watched movies all night. By the time I realized that the five minutes or so of soft toe-tickling was being done by a giant wood roach running back and forth across my bare feet, I pretty much lost it. I sprayed my entire office with Raid.

But then had to keep working. I’m pretty sure I’ve either now been repeatedly licking envelopes, or I’ve lost my taste buds. And I keep seeing midgets dance in the corner.

All of that is to explain why I felt the need to share these pants with you. Seriously, this is probably one of those images you really never should have stumbled across, and coupled with the horribly inappropriate footwear, it’s best to just click off this now. But here it is, in all of its droopy britches glory. I think the purpose of these pants is to shield the world from the fact that you’re wearing Depends, and that you’ve been wearing them for about twelve hours too long. It’s possible you’re supposed to carry things in there, like a kangaroo pouch, but wouldn’t you think they’d have a woman model them? Since the boy kangaroos don’t have pouches?

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UPDATE: I just had to Google “do boy kangaroos have pouches?” and I’m sad to say that not only are there some very mixed views on the subject, but there were also some very disturbing images of men in kangaroo outfits carrying other men in their pouches. Run. Run away. NOW, before I inhale some more household chemicals and decide to share those pictures.

My Future Self is Kind of a Snot

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Thanks to either a wormhole in the space-time continuum or an abundance of black Toyotas in my town, I keep seeing myself driving places. It’s really eerie, then it becomes cool when you overthink it.

Every once in a while, I’ll see someone driving off in my car. My instinct is to chase them down while calling the police, but the only problem is when I think I see these people driving off in my car, I’m actually driving my car at the time. It’s a very unsettling, Dr. Who-ey feeling.

My twelve-year-old and I decided that the only logical explanation (and the only way to avoid looking like a total dipshidiot when you scream, “Stop! That guy stole my car!” from inside your own vehicle) is that the people driving off in our car are actually…(prepare yourself for this)…us.

Yes, my friends, thanks to my ability to time travel from the future, I have managed to see myself from the future and let me tell you, the future is looking pretty good. Apparently, I’m blonde in the future, and really skinny. I’m also a man. But we don’t have to talk about that.

I am a little bit upset that in the future I’ve become a total bitch who cuts people off in traffic, and I don’t wave. On one hapless time-line-bumping-into, I actually watched myself honk at an elderly person who was crossing the street. I pretended not to know myself at that moment, and refused to make eye contact to let myself know that I do not approve of my behavior.

On the plus side, future me listens to some rockin’ tunes while driving around in my car, and I also have a really outdoorsy-looking kayak carrier on top of my car. Either I plan to take up kayaking, or I’m a hopeless granola poser.

The most important thing I can do now is be sure not to accidentally get in a car wreck with my future self. That would be both awkward and possibly alarming, for everyone involved. And I’m pretty sure the consequences would wipe out several major species in the future. I’m already a snotty car thief, I don’t need animal killer hanging over my head, too.

 

Happy Something Crawled Out of Your Vagina Day

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Face it, you know I’m right. When you really get down to the definition, the only reason I woke up to a torn Target sack containing a Yonana frozen banana smasher this morning is because not-one-but-two real-live humans clawed their way out of my lady garden. Call me cynical, but we’ve always known Mother’s Day is a made-up holiday intended to sell stuff. Mostly cards and flowers. And now, thanks to kitchen appliance technology, crap-ton car loads of bananas.

You might already be wondering how my husband is faring after presenting me with a kitchen appliance for Mother’s Day, but I immediately realized that if its blades are tough enough to turn frozen bananas into something the has the texture of ice cream, this little gadget might be handy in getting rid of the body. It’s a keeper.

Speaking of keepers, book mark this video and watch it later with your girlfriends while drinking stupid amounts of margaritas.

Let The Games Begin…

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If you follow this blog, and especially if you follow my other blog, you probably know by now that things aren’t going so well with my daughter’s school. Her school system was able to cure her of her autism, so she doesn’t need special ed services next year. Now, we’re not talking “a little bit autistic” or “somewhere on the spectrum.” We’re talking about a child who has had a full-time aide by her side for five years, who has had several bathroom accidents this year, who can’t tie her shoes even though she’s going into middle school next year, and who has been picked up by the police alongside a major highway after an elopement episode. But the awesomeness that is public education was able to fix all of that. She’s cured. And will have her services slashed when she goes to the middle school next year.

Now, if you’ve been following this blog, you also know that I am one little blue pill away from going absolutely ape shit on someone. Mostly just for fun.

So after yesterday’s horrible IEP meeting where we once again did not come to an agreement on what the school should do for my daughter, I show up on campus this morning and this has happened:

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Yes, that is my car. And yes, those are orange traffic cones that were placed there to keep me from driving onto campus to take my daughter to her classroom. For well over a year I’ve been told to park behind the school and walk my daughter to her classroom because her aide has cafeteria duty in the morning. But after yesterday’s meeting, I’m being blocked from parking by four rubber tubes that a vice principal snuck out there and deposited in the road.

I did the mature thing. I took a picture of it and texted it to the school board person over special ed, and then explained that this smelled a lot like retaliation. They disagree. The school just felt that child safety was at stake, and they had to take action.

Let the games begin…

#CTTW: You Changed the World a Little Bit

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This is another one of those rare posts that isn’t supposed to be funny (as opposed to my posts that happen to not be funny because I’m just not that good a writer). You would think this one would be a hoot since yesterday I went to the dentist to have a crown put on and I totally misunderstood the whole process. It does not, in fact, result in me being named the Queen of anything. In fact, it resulted in the dentist breaking the tooth he was trying to fix and then having to pull the mother fucker out of my head in four different pieces.

You would also think this post would be funny because I’m now on really good drugs (see story above). Sadly, if I’m this bizarre when I’m supposedly sober, I should be awesome while high. I’m not. Instead, I make tree sloths look like steroid-abusing Olympic athletes.

But here is the serious post: you changed the world a little bit. You, my good internet people, answered the call and filled in the gaps. When I was given twenty copies of Fahrenheit 451 to give to my students for World Book Night, all of you took to the internet and sent gift cards for me to buy extra copies for the remaining students. I not only ended up with enough to give to every student, there are about five leftover copies on my desk that I give to new students coming in.

One student was actually in the facility with me last year and remembered being given last year’s book, The Book Thief. He said it was the only book he’d read at the time, but that he’s read “way more’n dat” since then. His face lit up when I handed him this year’s book.

Other students told me a much more heart-wrenching tale. Several told me that they read it one time just because I was nice enough to give it to them, and that it was good enough that they had to read it again. MANY students told me a different story:

“If all those people on the internet bought this book for me, the least I could do is read it for them.”

You. You did that. And I’m clapping for you right now.

I Want That on a T-Shirt

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It’s always fun to delve into the bowels of this blog and figure out what makes it tick. So far, all I’ve come up with is illegal amounts of cheap merlot and Cheetos. But the readers… they are a whole different animal. There’s no telling what makes them tick, except for their obvious love of the grotesquely misunderstood inner workings of my brain.

And horses. They do love horses.

It’s been a known fact for about two years that people find my blog by searching for horses on the internet. I have no idea what the tie-in is, except that I’ve now posted twice about horses just to validate those readers’ feelings. I was going to write a post about how I was driving down the road one day and made the awful mistake of calling out to my two little girls, “Look! There are horses in that field!” only to discover too late the two of the horses were having sex right next to the side of the road while a third horse either waited his turn or was just cheering them on. Sadly, the not-so-innocent bystander horse was actually the creepier part of the equation, even though seeing two massive farm animals having sex is very alarming.

It’s now become a “thing” with me to check my blog stats and see if there are any horse fans out there, but today’s search made sexy horses seem fairly normal. Someone searched for “Rosemary’s Baby T-Shirt,” and ended up here. Thanks, SEO gods of the internet. That felt really good.

My biggest issue with the Rosemary’s t-shirt search is that now I desperately want a t-shirt with Rosemary’s Baby on it, and I can’t find one. You know those shirts for pregnant women that say “Baby on Board” and they have an arrow pointing down to their bulging tummies? I’m going to get filthy rich selling “Rosemary’s Baby on Board” t-shirts. For those “just in case” people.

Think it through all the way. That shirt would become the hottest new baby item. It’s the all-purpose baby shower gift. It’s right for moms-to-be with a sick sense of humor, it’s the perfect eff-you gift for moms who really don’t like you but only invited you to the shower hoping to get a stroller out of you, and for some other moms, it’s really just a fitting warning to society that there’s a slim chance this child will be the Antichrist. It works on every level.

Lessons We Teach Our Children

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See what I did there? I got you to click on the link to this post because you thought it was going to be touching and profound. Instead, it’s going to possibly be the most disturbing and asinine twelve minutes of your day. You’re welcome.

My daughter approached me and said, “When you kill somebody,” (yeah, let that sink in for a minute… my twelve-year-old came to me with a question about a scenario that started out AFTER having killed someone…), “When you kill somebody, why don’t you just take the body to the place that cremates people, instead of trying to find a place to hide the body?”

The most important thing I probably need to do is modify my parenting style. I’m not sure that it’s healthy for someone her age to a) assume there’s already a dead guy and b) be thinking about logical ways to dispose of him. I sat her down for a chat. Kind of like the this-is-your-period-this-is-where-babies-come-from talk, but ultimately, this chat could actually have farther reaching consequences.

“Sweetie, when you kill someone, the last thing you want to do is put him in your car,” I pointed out patiently. “The police can trace the body back to you because there will be hair, clothing fibers, or blood left in your vehicle.”

“Oh, I get it mom,” she said, smiling sweetly. “But can’t you wrap the body in a plastic bag? Like those heavy duty contractor garbage bags?”

“Well, you could, but there will be a receipt from the hardware store where you bought the giant bags. And then the funeral home where you’re trying to have him cremated is probably going to report you for having a body in your car that you’ve wrapped in a giant plastic bag.” I brushed a loose strand of hair from her forehead and patted her back.

“Wow, that’s a good point. Can’t you rent an ambulance and just pretend you’re bringing him from the hospital?” I’ve never been prouder of her.

“It might be worth a try, but then there’s going to be a paper trail showing you rented an ambulance. And I’m really not even sure you CAN rent one.”

“You could hot wire a hearse from a different funeral home, one that doesn’t have a crematorium,” she suggested. “I mean, you’ve already killed someone, it’s not like grand theft auto is gonna make it a lot worse or something.”

“That’s true honey, but you’re still going to have to bring a death certificate with the body.”

“Sheesh. I can make one of those on the computer, no problem.”

“Well, actually, it’s not like creating your own Star Student certificate. Death certificates are a little more involved than that. They have to have certain official-looking features.”

“I know! I can open an internet business making death certificates for people who need them!” She brightened immediately, her braces gleaming on her giant grin.

My husband stuck his head in. “What the hell are you two talking about?!”

My daughter smiled at him. “We’re talking about trying to get rid of a body while making it look legit. I’m going to start an internet business forging death certificates!”

(NOTE: This is where my husband totally should have intervened and put a stop to this. You just can’t count on him.)

“Oh, they already have those. Google it, there’s tons of them,” he replied before going back to watching TV, crushing her dreams and making me wonder why he knew that.

I’m fairly certain this entire conversation happened because there has been a lot of talk in our household lately of having to kill certain people if they don’t get their acts together and do their jobs. I’m happy to report that at this time, my other daughter will supposedly have her special ed services for next year and no one will need to come bail me out or print me off a fake death certificate. For now.