Daily Diatribes

Thursday is a terrible day for me.  Josh has to be at soccer practice at 5:00 and Abby has to be at soccer at 5:30, 15 miles in the other direction.  In rush hour traffic. 

We started at 4:45 yesterday.  I turned on a movie for the blonde goddess and we hit the road.  Abby was in a fury because she could not find any soccer socks and it was my fault.  It’s always my fault.  I take the socks and hide them because nothing gives me greater joy than hiding socks.  I’m sure it has nothing to do with her taking the socks off in my car, where they sit and fester for several weeks before the smell finally gets to me and I am forced to excavate them from under the floor mat and remove them with a stick and bury them. 

Anyway, we dropped Josh off first.  The goddess was whining, but I did not pay much attention to her because she is always whining.  The ride to Abby’s soccer practice is windy and twisty and with the traffic, it is start and stop as well.  Abby and the goddess were whining in sync, with Abby complaining she didn’t feel good and Anna just whining.  As we rode over the Cahaba, I briefly fantasized about pushing them both in, but I restrained myself.

We got to the soccer field and I threw Abby out the door.  One of her teammates saw her and Abby underwent an instant transformation from sulky hell child to bubbling, giddy 6th grade girl.  The goddess was continuing to whine, saying she had a headache and she felt sick.  I felt her forehead, and it felt cool, so I told her to hold on and she could lay down when we got home.

“But what if I throw up?” she wailed.

There was a duffel bag in the backseat and facetiously I told her to throw up in it if she needed to.

I pulled out of the parking lot and went 1/10 of a mile and the vomiting started.  I looked up and she was vomiting into the duffel bag.  I felt really bad and I started to pull over, but then I reasoned she was already puking, so I might as well keep going.  After it was over, she looked up at me woefully, a chunk of vomit on her chin.

“All better now?” I asked her compassionately.

“Yes, but I threw up cheese,” she said.

Well, there you go:  cheese chunks.  I rode the rest of the way home with all the windows down, but the smell still settled in my nose.  Ahhh, the aroma of freshly puked cheese!!  We got home and I threw the duffel bag straight into the garbage can.  They are easily replaced and I had no particular inclination to clean the chunks out.  As I lifted the lid, I suddenly remembered I had a supply of vomit bags in my glove compartment that I had stolen from the ER at Children’s Hospital last year.  It would have saved the duffel bag, but it was too late.

We walked into the house and she was skipping, nearly 100% better.  I put her in the shower and she started belting out “This Land is My Land” at the top of her lungs.  When I went to check on her, she told me she was starving.  By the time she got out of the shower, she was weak with hunger.  She proceeded to eat three chicken fingers, a helping of mac and cheese, one of mashed potatoes, a huge quantity of fruit, and a glass of milk.  It all stayed down, so I am going to assume she was carsick.  Next Thursday, when it’s time for soccer, I am going to put the vomit bag right next to her carseat. 

HALLELUJAH!!!  A MIRACLE HAS OCCURRED!!!  STRIPES HAS RETURNED FROM THE DEAD!!!

Upon discovering his tiny corpse this morning, parched and dry, his miniscule tongue lolling out to one side, I dumped some water over him in an effort to conceal my crime.  I did not want the blonde goddess to know I was responsible for the death of Stripes.  Although, all she has to do is walk past the dead pansies on the porch to know how good I am at providing water to living things.

Well, I went up to get the dirty laundry out of Josh’s bathroom and LO, STRIPES HAD MOVED!!  His feet were splayed out and his head was out of his shell.  And I didn’t even have to give him mouth to mouth!

Needless to say, this afternoon’s funeral festivities have been cancelled.  Too bad, because I had already bought the drink ingredients!  However, if you would like to come over for a healing session with the great resuscitator, give me a call; I will be performing miracles between the hours of 7 and 9 and I accept all major credit cards!!

Stripes the Turtle, age 4 months, of Birmingham Alabama, died today (or maybe last week, who knows?) of apparent dehydration.  He is survived by his loving owner, the blonde goddess, who had absolutely nothing to do with him whatsoever, aside from the occasional visit to his tank where she would tap and say “hey Stripes”, and by his beleaguered handler, Jennifer.

Stripes was born in a small creek in Louisiana and was rudely harvested right after birth by illegal turtle traders.  Stripes journeyed to Alabama with thousands of other tiny turtles and found himself in a Harley Davidson shop, where he was snatched up for free by a doting grandmother. 

Stripes lived his short life confined to a small plastic box on the back of a teenager’s toilet.  The teenager was extremely resentful of Stripes and constantly complained about his lack of privacy.  “You try peeing with a turtle staring at you mom!” he was heard to say quite often.

Stripes was cared for by the adult female in the house, who also resented his presence, but couldn’t bring herself to flush him down the toilet for fear of him mutating and becoming a giant, killer turtle, stalking through the city and eating innocent bystanders.  She grudgingly changed his water twice a week, and then once a week, and then once every ten days and then, she sort of forgot about him.  Because she has nothing else to worry about but changing a stupid turtle’s water.

Stripes was discovered this morning, unmoving, in his bone dry plastic home, by his handler.  Several attempts were made to resuscitate him, although she drew the line at mouth to mouth.  She briefly considered dropping a hairdryer into his water to see if the electric shock would restart his heart, but feared blowing out the electricity in the whole neighborhood, so he was pronounced dead at 10:12 a.m.

Funeral services will be held this afternoon.  The family will be receiving visitors from 3:30 to 5:00.  In lieu of flowers, please send contributions to:  Greenpeace, Save the Turtles Division PO Box 325, Birmingham Alabama 35123.  The family is grateful for the prayers and good wishes of their friends during this painful time.  

The Maytag Repairman is doing a happy dance in Hell because yet another one of my appliances has expired.  At the end of last summer, we had to replace not one, but two air conditioning units to the sum of college tuition for a year at the Ivy League University of your choice.  The vacuum cleaner quickly followed, and then the dishwasher, and just last week, we got a new water heater.

Tuesday, as I piddled around in the kitchen, talking to Gina, my washing machine began making a loud and ominous grinding sound.  It sounded like a load of rocks was going through the spin cycle, not a good sign, since I only launder rocks on Fridays.  Tears welled in my eyes, for I knew a death rattle when I heard one. 

I hurried to the laundry room, and beheld my faithful washing machine, shuddering and groaning, unable to complete one final cleansing of the blonde goddess’s peepee sheets (which, FYI, it turns out she has a bladder infection!).  I opened the machine and stared down, hoping for a light bulb illumination into the problem.  Like I’m so mechanically gifted that I would be able to fix anything!  Still, it doesn’t take a brain surgeon to figure out that the spin cycle was no longer spinning.

Tim happened to arrive home a few minutes later and he made the final diagnosis:  the motor had burned out.  I wrung my hands in dismay and said “Oh dear, whatever shall we do?”  Or maybe I said “G**D****t, how in the hell am I gonna get the laundry done?”  Or some combination of the two.

So yesterday found us in Lowe’s looking for a new washing machine.  I know lots of people take this seriously and research for weeks and compare prices and try to get the best deal.  Me, I just wanted a freakin’ washing machine, preferably one that would wash, dry, fold and iron.

I got there first, and was immediately drawn to a candy apple red machine with more buttons than the space shuttle.  Bargain priced at $1400, I knew it was the machine for me.  When Tim got there, he told me I had to base my decision on more than just color.  “But it’s so shiny,” I said in my best whiny ’i want what i want’ sort of tone.  But he insisted we look around and try to make a more informed consumer decision.

The salesman came over and immediately recommended a Whirlpool, which he did not have in stock.  “But we have a truck coming in Friday and I’m pretty sure there’ll be a couple on it,” he assured us.  I stared at him in disbelief; my dirty laundry would be spilling out into the next county by Friday and he was only ‘pretty sure’ that the machine might be on the truck.  Nope, next model please.

So he led us over the Samsungs and gave a detailed description of what you get for $1200.  “Now this one,” he said “has a built in water heater and it can heat water up to 160 degrees.”  He smiled proudly as he said this, expecting us to beam along with him as we handed over our credit card.  

“Well, why do I need the water that hot?” I asked.  

His smile faltered and he hemmed and hawed for a second and then said “well, um, if someone in the family gets sick, you can sterilize their laundry.”  Well, damn, I’m all in, here’s the American Express!!  

“What else does it do?” I asked him.  

“See this button that says ’silver’?  You push this and it activates a current and millions of silver ions are shaved off a silver bar that’s installed in the washer.  Silver has incredible cleaning properties!”  I stared at him; why do I need silver ions in my laundry?  People have been washing clothing for thousands of years without silver ions and we’ve all done just fine.  For the price, the sucker ought to be solid sterling.  Next machine please!

He sensed he wasn’t getting too far with us, so he wandered off to help another customer.  Tim and I walked up and down the rows and rows of shiny washing machines and I silently pleaded with the appliance gods to help me make my decision.  Tim was trying to talk me into going to Sears and to do some comparison shopping, when a heavenly chorus sounded a beam of golden light appeared over one of the machines.

There it was, on the first row, previously overlooked by me, the biggest freakin’ washing machine on the planet.  A top loading, Whirlpool and it was under $1000!  I hurried over and got the salesman away from the woman looking at the cheapo, $300 machines.  He was only too happy to rush off with me, knowing a sure thing when he saw it.  “How do you feel about this one?” I asked him.

His eyes gleamed, and he ran his hand appreciatively over the lid, like a jockey sizing up a thoroughbred.  “Well, we just got these babies in,” he said, “and it’s the biggest machine in the store.  You can wash twenty pairs of jeans in this sucker!”

“I could wash my youngest child in this sucker,” I told him.  “How does it clean?”

“I’ve only sold a few, but I haven’t had any complaints,” he said.  “And it’s huge….4.5 cubic feet.”

I looked at Tim, he looked at me, and we said “we’ll take it.”  Because after all, bigger is better, especially when it comes to appliances.  And I’m telling you right now, I could stuff my whole couch in there and still have room for a couple of pairs of thong underwear.  

We went to the register to pay, and I insisted we buy the extended warranty.  I told Tim the way our luck has been running lately, it was worth the extra hundred bucks to have peace of mind.  It’s being delivered today and I can’t wait to see how well it washes the blonde goddess!   

I have just returned from our family sojourn to the piney woods of Tannehill State Park.  We experienced much family bonding and did not lose a single child, no matter how hard we tried.  We took Kiki’s daughter AW with us and our friend Tom met up with us on Friday night with his daughter.  We had fun, but I need to rest up before I go camping again.

We arrived at the state park late Thursday afternoon.  Tim had the foresight to go earlier in the day, pick out a camp site and set up our tent.  So all we had to do was cruise in and unload our sleeping bags and gear and we were ready to camp. 

That first night was pretty easy.  The camp site wasn’t very crowded and we cooked dinner and ate in relative peace.  After dinner, I went into my section of the tent to change into my pajamas because I was cold.  In the zippered privacy of my tent, I inadvertently broke a bit of wind, which I hoped no one heard.  Unfortunately, it was a trumpet blast in the silence of the woods.

“Oh mom, that’s so gross,” they hollered.

“Well, um, I was hoping you would think it was a zipper,” I said defensively.

That sort of became a catch phrase for the rest of the trip as in “look out, here comes a zipper.”

The next day, we ate breakfast and hiked in the morning.  Then we came back, had lunch and the kids played in the creek for hours.  Tom arrived with his daughter Kelsey, and they set up a croquet game and played in the field, while I read.  It was all going so smoothly, and I was enjoying this time of family bonding.

But at about 3:00, the people started rolling in, looking for campsites.  They filled in all around us and I feared we were in for a long night.  The blonde goddess had tired of the croquet game, which had gotten a bit violent.  Considering my son joined the game with a cry of “I love to hit things!!”, brandishing the mallet like a weapon, it’s not hard to see why she decided to quit.

So we hiked up campsite 21, which led straight up the side of a steep hill to a boulder field.  Once we got up there and my heart stopped trying to shoot out of my chest, I was glad I had done it.  We were on a ridge high above the campsite and it was beautiful.  We found a path and followed it through the woods and came out onto a broad trail.  Tim turned back, but we followed it a bit and were rewarded with the sight of a doe nibbling at the underbrush.

She didn’t acknowledge us, but continued to step through the tangle of leaves, looking for green shoots to eat.  We got really close and snapped several pictures.  This sounds so stupid, but I have never been that close to a wild creature in the actual wild.  It was pretty cool.

As we headed back to camp, I asked the blonde goddess if she could ever shoot a deer, now that she had seen one up close.  You see, she fancies herself quite the huntress and is always pestering her Uncle Bob to take her bear hunting.  She seriously wants to shoot an animal.

She responded to my question immediately in her sweet little lisp.  “Well, no mommy, I wouldn’t shoot that deer because it was a girl deer.  I only want to shoot a boy deer.”

This puzzled me, so I made the mistake of asking why she would only shoot a boy deer.  “Because I want to chop his head off and hang it on my wall,” she told me sweetly, batting her big baby blues at me and looking at me like I was stupid.  I mean duh, mom, of course you don’t hang a doe’s head on your wall.  I got this visual of a buck’s head, severed raggedly at the neck, terror filled eyes bulging from it’s head as blood pooled beneath it on the floor.  Such a sweet child I have! 

Tim looked at me and said “where did that come from?”  I shrugged; if there’s one thing we know about the goddess, it’s that she has her own mind!

We got back to the campsite and to my dismay, we were now surrounded by tents on all sides.  It was going to be a long night.  We cleaned up the kids and loaded them into the car for dinner at the restaurant in the park.  Since it was Friday night, we had to eat fish and the restaurant had a seafood buffet.

We got there and were seated and it all started going wrong.  I asked the waitress if those were chicken fingers on the buffet because I was trying to figure out if there was anything on there I could eat and I was hoping it was fried fish.  She said “well, uh, I really don’t know,” so Tim helpfully said “she means the things behind the frog’s legs; those are frog legs right?”  I thought the waitress was going to throw up on the table.  “Oh my God, oh my God, that is soooooooo gross,” she said, going green around the gills. 

“Never mind,” I said.  “I’ll just order off the menu.”  She took our drink order and then never returned.  I took the goddess up to the buffet to get her some food.  Tim pointed out the frog legs to her and she looked at me puzzled, so the ancient gentleman in front of us helpfully said “look here honey, you got to keep them from jumpin’ off the plate,” and made the legs jerk like they were trying to escape.  Needless to say, we skipped right over the frog legs. 

By now, I was wishing we could just all go to McDonald’s and get a nice, safe Filet o’ Fish, but I gamely went back and sat down, waiting for the waitress to appear and take my order.  But she was not showing any signs of returning.  Meanwhile, AW had discovered that the claws on the snow crab legs were jointed and she was happily brandishing a pincer and snatching napkins off the table with it and doing little shadow plays.  Abby was moaning about the grotesqueness of being in a restaurant that served seafood and I was dehydrating and starving all at once.

A waitress came by and brought Abby’s food (she had ordered while I was at the buffet) and asked what else we needed.  “Well, our drinks for starters,” Tim said, “and she needs to order.”  She apologized profusely and went and found our waitress who finally appeared with the drinks.  By the time she had handed them all out, Josh and Kelsey had already drained theirs, so she had to go get more.  But she did take my order.

When we finally escaped the restaurant, we went back to the campsite and found the people behind us had multiplied; there were now six tents on the site, and they were still setting up.  We sat up until 11:00, but finally threw in the towel.  They were only just getting going behind us; I had taken some Advil PM, but I knew this would not be enough.  In desperation, I reached for the godess’s MP3 player and plugged myself in. 

This should indicate for you how desperate the situation was; her playlist is bizarre, to say the least.  But it did drown out the noise.  The first few songs are from a Disney cd, then out of nowhere, Gloria Gaynor starts belting out “I Will Survive”.  After the disco, there are three songs from the Barbie Princess and the Pauper soundtrack (”I’m just like you, you’re just like me….”) then Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody plays.  There is no rhyme or reason to it at all.  The MP3 player used to be Josh’s, so when she assumed ownership, we just added her songs to his, creating a truly eclectic mix.

But it did the trick and I was able to fall asleep.  For two hours, then the battery ran out.  Fortunately, my flashlight had brand new Double A batteries, and I popped them out and resumed my musical interlude.  Thank goodness I had it, because the people behind us partied until dawn. 

I had it better than Tim though.  Josh didn’t bring a sleeping bag (idiot boy) because he thought it was going to be hot, so all he brought was a liner.  In  the middle of the night, he threw up (outside, thank God!!!) and Tim ended up giving him his sleeping bag because he felt sorry for him.  The goddess’s cute little pink bag was evidently not designed for real camping, and he gave her the fleece liner and wound up sleeping on the floor of the tent with nothing.

By that morning, the kids were refreshed and ready to go again and Tim and I were 3/4 of the way dead.  Tom had suffered a severe disagreement with the seafood buffet, leading to a midnight trip to the bathhouse to rid himself of the $18 buffet.  Tim made breakfast and we broke camp and hit the road, eager to get back to civilization and mattresses.

All in all, we had a great time for our first family camping trip.  But I will need a couple of months to recover.  And next time, I am bringing my own MP3 player!

Your Happy Blogger is on hiatus this week for spring break.  She is spending it enjoying the company of her beautiful children.  She will return when she has something interesting to say.  Like when she’s in prison for eliminating her beautiful children after one fight too many over who is going to sit in the front seat and annoy the hell out of me. 

Anyway, Happy Spring Break!!

First day of spring break, and I was up at 5:30 on the treadmill.  I was taking the kids down to see Bubbacus Maximus and I figured I better get in a workout before I confined myself to a car for three hours.

There’s not much on TV at that time of the morning; most of the regular programming is preempted by infomercials (and that’s a whole different subject!!) so I decided to watch music videos.  Believe it or not, there are still random hours of the day devoted to videos on the music networks.  I picked V-H1 because it doesn’t frighten me quite as much as MTV.

I remember when videos used to air on Friday nights only.  Gina and I would wait all week for Friday night videos so we could strut like the Stray Cats and giggle over Boy George’s latest incarnation.  We used to watch the ones on TBS, although we would occasionally stray over to USA, which had the slightly edgier Night Tracks.  The first video I remember seeing was “I Want Candy” which has since turned into a teeny bopper song by Aaron Carter.  I vividly remember the video; people buried in the sand up to their necks and bobbing their heads around enthusiastically shouting “I Want Candy”.  I would watch in awe and wonder how they managed to sing without getting sand kicked down their throats.  Those were the days.

So I turned on V-H1 with some trepidation, not sure what I would find.  But I am happy to report that videos have not changed a whole lot in 25 years.   Gwen Stefani looks a lot like Madonna did.  And there has been a whole new British punk invasion of sorts.  My only complaint is they show 1 video and then 14 commercials.

Lately I have discovered I like newer music.  I’m never going to love rap, but I can listen to it.  What I really like, though, is the alternative, edgy bands.  I like the sounds, especially the drums.  I like Nickelback, The Fray, The Killers, All American Rejects and Panic at The Disco, to name a few.  I love the edgy, hard-hitting beats I hear in the songs, and the raw desperation of the lyrics.  But especially the beat.  Because I have decided, at age 37, that I want to learn how to play the drums.

On the trip down to Dothan, I scandalized my children when I announced that.  I then added I also wanted to learn how to shake my hips.  I thought Abby would bust a gasket.  “Mo-ooooom,” she howled.  “you are so disgusting!”  I can’t shake my hips.  It’s physically impossible; hula hoops fall straight down to the ground whenever I try to hula.  I can’t shimmy or shake.  The most I can produce is a circular motion that makes me look like a human screw, trying to drill myself into the ground.  I just performed the move for Abby and her friends and they pronounced it “disgusting.”  Oh well, at least she’s consistent.  So if anyone knows of a class that can teach me how to shake my hips, let me know.

Anyway, back to the subject.  I love new music and we listened to my new cd’s most of the way south.  But when we hit Ozark, which is where I went to high school, I was overcome by nostalgia and I switched over to the 80’s station.  Olivia Newton John was singing “Let’s Get Physical” and I was immediately overcome with a longing for leg warmers and mousse.  Abby listened to it for a minute, then turned her head and said to no one in particular “and they think our music is bad.” 

At first, I was stunned.  What could possibly be offensive about Olivia Newton John?  What could be more pure than leg warmers and neon spandex work out clothing?  But then I started really listening to the song and a small neon light bulb pinged over my head:  I guess the song is about sex!!  I was so overcome remembering the video and how cool ONJ looked in her outfit, I failed to recognize it was a filthy, perverted song, full of lyrics about getting horizontal.

Which led me to muse that every generation despises the music of the next generation.  I listen to Fergie or The Pussycat Dolls and I am disgusted.  I am appalled that my beautiful, innocent daughter (who will NEVER have sex by God, because she is going into the convent!!) is listening to these filthy songs which are so degrading to women.  

But didn’t Elvis provoke the same reaction in the parents of his listeners?  Remember Marvin Gaye crooning about “Sexual Healing”?  And what about George Michael screaming out “I Want Your Sex”, something he was busted for later in the men’s bathroom.  For the last 50 years, music has been about sex.  Sex sells, especially if it has a good beat.

When I listen to the radio and Abby is in the car, we talk about the songs.  She knows I don’t like The Pussycat Dolls and a lot of times, she changes the channel herself.  But I can listen to Fergie singing “Fergalicious” a song my daughter knows by heart.  Fergie rapping about “making them boys go loco” really isn’t worse than ONJ crooning about “I want to get physical, let me hear your body talk…” is it?  Although ONJ does have the leg warmers….    

My middle child is nearsighted and was prescribed glasses almost two years ago.  During that time, she has managed to wear them for about 12 days total.  I can’t really fault her, since I recall behaving in a similar fashion during my own misspent youth.  There is something so humiliating about having your eyes magnified into gigantic, staring orbs by a couple of pieces of plastic.  It’s so much more desirable to squint and sneer in an attempt to see anything that’s more than five inches from your face.

Long time readers will recall that a few months ago her glasses suddenly disappeared after she left them on the bumper of my car.  She and her brother were playing basketball, and she thoughtfully removed them from her face and placed them on my bumper so they wouldn’t get lost.  Unfortunately, she forgot to take them off the bumper, and they drove away into the sunset, never to be seen again.

So we replaced them with a brand new pair and lots of lectures on wearing the glasses and not leaving them in ridiculous places.  Unfortunately, she remains obstinate about keeping them on her face.  Two to three times a week, I am reminding her to wear her glasses.  The looks I get have been patented by the US department of defense as a weapon.

Last week, the glasses disappeared.  I noticed she wasn’t wearing them and I asked her where they were.  “They’re upstairs,” she told me nochalantly. 

“Fine, go get them,” I told her.

“I will later,” she replied.  This scenario was reenacted several times during the week, wth her always assuring me they were in her room and she would get them in just a few minutes.  Only the few minutes turned into a few hours and then a few days.

Last night I had had enough.  I ordered her upstairs to find them immediately.  She was upstairs for about thirty minutes and when she finally came down, she was visibly rattled. 

“I can’t find them,” she said defiantly.

My vision was immediately obliterated by a red glare of rage.  It’s hard to maintain your composure when you are being informed a second pair of glasses has gone AWOL.

“Let me tell you something right now,” I said, oh so quietly, “if you do not get upstairs and find those glasses, you won’t get a single thing for you birthday EXCEPT A NEW PAIR OF GLASSES!!!!!!!!!”

“Fine,” she said huffily, and stomped back up the stairs.  Fifteen minutes later, she was down again, and this time the defiance had been replaced with something like fear.  I correctly interpreted the signs as failure to locate the glasses.

“Are you sure you left them in your room?” I asked again, my voice quivering with rage.

“I DID,” she shouted.  “I put them on my vanity table and they’re not there.  Someone took them!”

Well, there you go.  A nearsighted thief came in, waded into her room and snatched her glasses right off the shelf.  Happens all the time.  He left the silver (well, ok, we don’t actually have any, that’s called dramatic irony), left the jewelry and left the electronics.  His mission was to snatch a pair of corrective lenses and run. 

She went back upstairs wailing.  I sighed heavily.  I huffed a little.  Then I paused American Idol and dragged myself upstairs, resigned to helping her find them.

I paused at the door to her room fearfully.  Crossing the threshhold is like crossing over into a minefield littered with live mines.  Clothing was strewn everywhere.  There were pens and pencils and notebooks all over the floor.  Tiny pots of makeup covered the surface of her vanity table.  No square inch was uncluttered.

Gritting my teeth, I started my search behind the door to her room.  As you walk in the door, the vanity table is immediately on the right, against the wall next to the door, so I figured I would start there and work my way around.  I reached behind the table and pulled out a fistful of garbage.  I repeated this maneuver several times, but no sign of the glasses.

I opened the drawer of the vanity and she immediately said “I already checked there.”  I looked at her and then pulled it all the way out of the dresser.  

Her eyes widened as she beheld the variety of crap that was underneath the drawer.  “Wow,” she said, awestruck, “how did all that get there?”  Well, we all know the crap fairy visits at night and deposits junk in our homes so we will have stuff to sell on E-Bay.  Yeah, the crap fairy and the glasses thief.  I think I have the makings of a great children’s book here….

Well, I pulled all the drawers out, looked underneath the vanity, behind the vanity, on top of the vanity, and clearly, the glasses were not there.  Sighing, I moved to the chair beside her bed.  Normal people use chairs for sitting.  My daughter uses hers as a storage place for her clothing.  That way, she won’t have to clutter up her empty dresser drawers with clothes.  I piled all the clothing on the bed and ordered her to put it away.  No glasses.  

She was grumbling under her breath as she tackled the clothes, but I ignored her.  I crouched and looked under her bed.  She looked at me and said “They’re not under there.”

“Did you look,” I asked her in disbelief.

“Well, no,” she admitted, “I started to, but it was too scary.”

Now that’s bad, when the person who sleeps there every night can’t bring herself to look beneath the bed.  Fearlessly, I stuck my arm under the bed and raked out a bunch of stuff.  Most of it was candy wrappers.

“When did you eat all these sour straws?” I asked her, trying to imagine where they all came from.

“Oh when Anna had her birthday,” she replied airily.  I looked at her in disbelief; the birthday party was in JANUARY!!  I’m surprised the wrappers didn’t mutate and breed.  That there are not colonies of roaches living in her room is a huge surprise.

Well, several rakings later, I was forced to concede the glasses were not under the bed.  By now, I was getting pissed; I was tired, it was late, and the room was an endless sea of junk, rendering a small pair of glasses virtually undectable.

I moved over to the small TV stand in front of her bed.  There was a lot of garbage around it, so I thought the glasses might be hiding in the debris.  I moved a few things on the shelf and I didn’t see them.  There was an Abercrombie shopping bag right next to it, and I grabbed it, thinking to put the garbage in it.  I opened it and rummaged around it, making sure there were no stray articles of clothing inside and….I found the glasses.

Why I didn’t think to look in the shopping bag across the room from the vanity where she said she left her glasses is beyond me.  Perhaps the nearsighted glasses thief tripped over the pile of dirty t-shirts and they flew across the room and landed in the bag and, being half blind, he was unable to locate them.  Or maybe the crap fairy accidentally dropped them in the bag as she made a recon flight through the room.

Whatever the reason, the glasses were returned to their owner safe and sound.  She did not seem at all fazed by their location; in fact, she was most blase about it and displayed only mild surprise.  Silly me to get all bent out of shape about her glasses being AWOL for a week, only to turn up in a shopping bag.  I really do need to lighten up! 

I glared at her, told her if the glasses ever left her face again, I was having them welded on permanently and I left the room.  This morning she appeared with them on, so at least for now, the glasses thief has been foiled!

This is why I am not fit to chaperone children or be put in any position of responsibility:  I am a dweeb.

We took the band to the mall for lunch and, since I was starving of hunger, I propelled myself off the bus and led the charge into the mall.  We strode fearlessly into Macy’s, with my son proclaiming he felt like a viking on the Capital One Commercial, only with no helmet.  Yes, vikings in blue bow ties and cummerbunds, that was us!

The kids all assured me they knew where we were going, so we cruised through the jewelry department, past the make-up counter and into fine china, leaving stunned employees reeling in our wake.  We plowed through the crystal and into housewares, an unstoppable, bow-tied force of nature.  Through the furniture department we marched, only to come to a dead halt.  We were at the back door and were facing the parking deck, not the food court.

Ooops.

Ok, well  I never said I knew where the damn food court was.  I never go to this particular mall!  The kids wheeled around and screamed “TO THE ESCALATOR”!!!!  They took off like stampeding cattle, leaving ME reeling in their wake.  I felt like a cartoon character as they raced around either side of me, with my hair standing on end and a dazed expression on my face:  Which way did they go George???

I followed along behind as quickly as I could, but they were already on the escalator, having stampeded through the china department AGAIN.  Fortunately, nothing was broken and we all made it to the food court alive.  They were not serving alcoholic beverages this early, so I ended up eating a healthy sandwich instead.  Damn, I could have used a drink for the bus ride.

My only other observation is that teenagers smell really bad!  After the concert, I got trapped in the middle of the sweaty, stinky mass of adolescents as they fought their way to the bus.  Imagine taking a sweaty athletic sock and burying it in a vat of cabbage underground for a month and you might get a notion of what it smelled like.  Renee, the personal Ionic Breeze cannot be developed soon enough!!

The rest of the day was uneventful, and the kids did pretty well on stage, although not as well as they had hoped.  And I did not manage to embarrass my son a single time, since I was unable to locate the orange shirt.  Dammit!!  Oh well, there’s always next time!!

Today I am chaperoning a band field trip.  For those of you shaking your heads, saying “I thought she was going to start saying no…”, this is the sort of stuff I like to do.  I won’t be asked to go along too much longer, so I want to enjoy it while I can.

However….this morning, I was in the bathroom, putting the final touches on the blonde goddess’s coiffure, when my son wandered in to get a comb.  He looked at me suspiciously and sized up my outfit.  I was still in my pajamas and for me, pj’s are all about comfort, not style.  This morning’s pj’s consist of a pair of pink pajama pants with Grumpy all over them and a white t-shirt with a yellow dog.  Not exactly haute couture.

So he looked at me, at my mismatched pajamas, and said “mom, when you come today, don’t dress all tacky.”

These were his exact words:  “all tacky”.  Do I need to be worried about him?  Has he watched too many makeover shows?  Do other 14 year old boys know the word “tacky”?

Now to the best of my knowledge, I don’t dress tacky.  At least I try really hard not to dress tacky.  I admit I am not gifted with a superior fashion sense, but I know not to wear plaids and polka dots, and I know when to wear straight leg jeans versus bell bottoms.  I’m not on the cutting edge of fashion, but I think I look ok most of the time.

So I asked him “when have I ever dressed tacky?”

He said “well, last time you wore these black pants and some orange shirt with big puffs.”

LIAR!!!  I do not own anything even resembling that description!!  I don’t wear orange; my skin is too dark and orange tends to make me look like an oompa loompa.  And I would NEVER wear anything with puffs.  Who wears puffs these days??  I mean honestly, what in the hell is he talking about??  I don’t wear black pants!  This coming from the kid who is going to be sitting in the band wearing a blue bow tie and a blue cummerbund and I’m supposed to worry about looking tacky???

Right now he is sitting at the piano, pounding out Beethoven’s Fur Elise with great gusto while I contemplate the tackiness of my wardrobe.  Should I wear the mini skirt, tank top and thigh high leather boots that make me look like a porky dominatrix or should I go Goth and wear all black with white pancake make-up and black fingernails?  Do I have time to go get a t-shirt emblazoned with his face and the words “I love My Little Pooky Bear”?  Maybe I’ll do the sponge curlers, mud mask and bathrobe with fuzzy slippers.  The possibilities are endless.

Then again, maybe I’ll just wear jeans and a t-shirt like I always do and continue to try and puzzle out where in my closet the orange shirt with puffs is hiding.