Daily Diatribes

And just like that, the saga of the cell phone ended. Monday night, into Tuesday morning, I nagged and hounded MA about the phone. I kept telling her to look for it, kept trying to get her to ‘fess up to her loss. But she wouldn’t budge. Not because she knew she had left it in Jackson; she really believed it was somewhere in her stuff and that it would turn up eventually.

But all good things come to an end. When she went to soccer on Tuesday night, Cassie told her about it. The problem with my blog publishing itself on Facebook (which I don’t even know how I set that up and I can’t figure out how to turn it off) is that it gives the children access to the inner sanctum, the most intimate chambers of my being. Brats. Turns out Cassie is not only a thief, she is a STOOL PIGEON as well! She sang like a canary and told MA I had the phone. I can’t fault her for her loyalty, but I will get even. Watch your back Cassie; I know you’re reading this!

Tuesday night, MA was reunited with her phone and Napoleon purchased a new one for himself. Just like that, my family was reconnected to the information age. God’s in His heaven, all’s right with the world….now WHAT the heck am I going to blog about????

If you recall, MA’s phone was deposited in my purse. Last night, she wanted her IPod which was also in my purse. I pulled the IPod out and handed it to her, but she still tried to snatch my purse. I snatched back, not wanting her to discover her cellular device just yet.
“Stay out of my purse,” I snapped, tugging it toward me.
“Why?” she asked, tugging back.
“Because it’s mine,” I growled, and yanked it out of her grasp. As soon as she left the room, I pulled out the phone and slid it under a stack of laundry. It was simply too early to reveal my prize.
So today we were driving to soccer practice. The goddess was in the backseat, happily playing with her IPod. MA was sitting next to me, sulking, because she didn’t want to go to soccer conditioning. If I recall correctly, Hannah Montana was crooning softly on the radio. Then it happened. Out of the blue, MA asked “Mom….are you pregnant?”
I choked, the car swerved and the world went dark. Was….I…..WHAT???????????!!!!!!!
“OH MY GOD NO!!!!!” I gasped, getting the car back under control. “What in the HELL made you ask me that????”
“Well,” she said thoughtfully, “you wouldn’t let me see what was in your purse last night. I thought maybe it was a pregnancy test.”
Never, in a BILLION years, will I understand how a child’s mind works. What steps did she take to deduce that a pregnancy test was residing in my purse?? You have to pee on a pregnancy test in order to activate it. This renders it unfit for the purse, since the ammonia smell is a real downer. And who was I going to show it to anyway?? Who carries around a pregnancy test and waves it in peoples faces, yelling “I’m PREGNANT”? My mind was reeling at the sheer weirdness of the conversation.

Then the goddess chips in from the back, interrupting her Bon Jovi love fest, “yeah mom’s not pregnant; she doesn’t want a kid, she just wants a baby.” Ouch. Ok, maybe I’ve made that observation a few times too many in her hearing.

But since we were on the subject of my purse which, in fact, had contained her cell phone which, in fact, she did not even know was missing, I brought up the subject of her phone. “So,” I asked innocently, “how come you didn’t answer when I called you this afternoon?”
She rolled her eyes at me and said in that tone which conveys I am the absolute biggest dumbass ever to walk upright “Well, Mom, I haven’t exactly unpacked my bag from this weekend have I?” Aha…so that’s where she thinks the phone is: in her luggage.
“MA,” I said, “are you SURE it’s in your bag? Where did you have it last?”
“Well,” she said thoughtfully, “it was in my soccer bag, but then Cassie dug around in the bag and I’m afraid (her word choice there) she might have knocked it out of my bag.”
Oho…so now the TRUTH comes out!! MA did NOT leave her phone in the bathroom at all!! Obviously that thief Cassie STOLE the phone out MA’s soccer bag and hid it in the bathroom at McAllister’s in a plot to ruin MA’s life!! That brat. The moment MA got out of the car, I called Cassie’s mother immediately. And we both howled at the deductions MA was making regarding her cell phone that she hadn’t even acknowledged was missing.
So….cell phone is still in my bedroom. MA….still in denial. Me….I’m having waaaaaayyyyyyyy too much fun with this!!! If I had known torture was this much fun, I would have signed up to be a guard at Guantanamo Bay!! Waterboarding anyone????

Both of my elder children are nitwits. I love them dearly, they have many fine qualities, but at the end of the day, they are peabrains. Let us consider the respective fates of their cellular telephones and I believe I will have proven my statement.

Napoleon had some friends over last Sunday. They had a marvelous day, watching football inside on the big screen and playing football outside. They tore around the house like maniacs, flush with the exuberance of youth. They ate their way through my pantry like a swarm of locusts. A good time was had by all.After they left, Napoleon discovered his cell phone was missing. When I say this was nothing short of a major catastrophe, I am not exaggerating. For HOURS he stumped around the house, searching in vain for his phone, keening in despair. He literally could have lost his right arm in a horrible industrial accident and been less upset about it. As long as you have at least one arm for texting, it’s all good. He and his girlfriend maintain constant contact via text message and with no phone they were cut off from each other. Think Romeo and Juliet for the millennium. And because they communicate primarily through text message, he DOESN’T KNOW HER PHONE NUMBER AND COULDN’T CALL HER!!! Idiot boy!!

I am sad to say the phone has yet to appear. We have torn apart the basement, his bedroom, the family room and anyplace we thought he might have been. We formed a search party, fanned out with linked arms and combed the neighborhood, in search of the missing device. Nothing. My hunch, one that is supported by my intimate knowledge of my son’s colossal idiocy, is that he set it on someone’s bumper when they went outside to play football. Sadly, teenagers do not investigate their bumpers before they peel away in a cloud of burning rubber and I rather suspect his cell phone has been reduced to so many shards of plastic on an interstate somewhere. Ah well, c’est la vie. On the bright side, he’s learning how to communicate verbally again, and his thumbs have almost stopped twitching.

Moving on, we will consider MA. We went to Mississippi this weekend for a soccer tournament. As an aside, let me say I have developed a lasting hatred for the state and hope to never darken its borders again. This has a lot to do with our disappointing loss in the final game to a bunch of cheating, redneck, overweight, pimply soccer playing thugs who were probably in their mid thirties, judging by their size. No, I’m not a bad sport at all; what makes you say that?? Also, our coach’s car was broken into during one of the games and the thieves took everything. Yes, I am happy to condemn an entire state based on the actions of a few, treacherous individuals. The thievery, combined with an exceptionally bad meal at the Chili’s in Meridian are enough to convince me to stay home in Sweet Alabama! But I digress….

On Sunday, we had an intermission between games, so we grabbed a quick lunch. I was already seated, sipping my drink, when one of my friends walked up to our table. She said “does this look familiar to anyone?” and brandished a cell phone, festooned with a large “A”. I recognized it immediately as MA’s phone. She handed it over, remarking “I found this in the bathroom.

My blood pressure immediately escalated. I calmly took the phone and just as calmly dropped it right into my purse. Where it stayed. Because nitwit number two had no idea she had lost her phone. There she sat among her soccer peeps, giggling and having a good time, never realizing her most prized possession had gone missing, been recovered and was now residing in the dark depths of my purse. The other mothers were giddy with anticipation, waiting for her to realize her right arm was gone. But she NEVER EVEN NOTICED!!

That’s right, we finished our lunch, got in our cars and drove away, and she never so much as mentioned her phone. They played the game, lost the game (to that bunch of thirty year old androgynous, testosterone infused prison inmates) and then we headed home. And nothing was said about the phone. I dropped subtle hints. “I need Brittany’s (Napoleon’s girlfriend) number; do you have it?” I asked her during the infamous Chili’s meal.

“Why do you want it?” she asked suspiciously.

“I want to call her and see how the play was; you know Napoleon doesn’t have HIS phone.”"It’s somewhere in the car,” she lied breezily.

Back in the car, one of the mothers whispered to me “look at her fidget; it’s like her fingers are texting, only there’s no phone.” Sure enough, she was in the throes of cell phone DT’s. This condition has not made it into the Diagnostic Manuals yet, but it’s only a matter of time. A patient in Cell phone withdrawal exhibits physical symptoms, including, but not limited to: nervousness; irritability; muscle cramps; dizziness; tremors; hallucinations; impaired motor function; loose bowels; and a tendency to tap ones fingers aimlessly as if texting. MA was displaying that last symptom.

However, she has not once acknowledged the lost phone. As of this morning, we are continuing to maintain the fiction that she has a phone and knows where it is. When she left this morning, I asked her to text me if she needed a ride home after school and she cheerfully agreed to do so. However, we both know she cannot text me because the phone is STILL in my purse. Where it will stay until she confesses that she lost it. She’s pretty stubborn, though, and I think it will be a while before she cracks. I bet it will be next weekend before she ‘fesses up that it’s gone. In the meantime, I will take great delight in tormenting her by asking her to use a device she no longer possesses. Should be great fun. Yes, I am a sadist, but parenthood has that effect on me!!

And there you have it. Two children, two phones, two completely scatter-brained nitwits!! I have presented my evidence and I rest my case. The jury is free to deliberate based on the evidence presented, but I have every faith I have proven my point. Napoleon and MA have many delightful qualities, but at the end of the day, they are both NITWITS!! Ladies and Gentlemen of they jury, you may begin your deliberations!

Courtesy of Willow!! I love you man!!

Operator: 911…What’s your Emergency??

Caller: (sobbing quietly) I’ve lost my zest for blogging. I can’t blog at all. I have mental constipation. I write and I write but nothing productive comes out and I don’t know what to do!!!

Operator: Uh…ma’am…you are aware you’ve called 911? Do you need help?? Is this a medical emergency?

Caller: Of course I need help!! It’s worse than a medical emergency; it’s a mental emergency! Haven’t you been listening??? None of my blog topics will gel into a decent post. I have a dead, maggot infested chipmunk in my front yard; what could be funnier than that, but I have NOTHING to say about it!! I am in crisis here!! We had six soccer games this past weekend and I have nothing to say. At one of the games, the ref looked exactly like Colonel Sanders, I openly mocked him (”what’s wrong with your eyesight Chicken Man??? Terrible Call!!!”) but I CANNOT write a blog about it!! I left a plush rat on my doctor’s car door, but you won’t read about it in my blog because I am CLOGGED!!! OBSTRUCTED!!! STOVE UP!!!

Operator: Well….um….we don’t really deal with those kinds of emergencies here ma’am….”

Caller: Well Good God, who am I supposed to call??? I could have written an entire blog about getting my daughter ready for her first Homecoming dance, but I had NOTHING!! In my mind, I worked out a great piece comparing her to a Greek goddess and me to the Travelocity Gnome (I have the same fashion sense as the gnome, and we really bear a startling resemblance, except for the facial hair), but I couldn’t make it work. I don’t understand where my blog has gone. If I had a blood clot, I could call you so why can’t I call you for a brain clot???

Operator: Ma’am, I’m afraid if you don’t have an actual emergency I”m going to have to….

Caller: (openly sobbing now) I want to write. I need to write. I need to share with the world my views on the space tourist who spent 35 million to go into space to bring attention to the problems of access to clean water in the world. Why didn’t he just spend the money on building irrigation systems and ride Mission to Mars at Disney World instead? I need a place where I can openly say I HATE HOOVER HIGH SCHOOL AND VESTAVIA HIGH SCHOOL FOR WINNING, I HATE THE CRIMSON TIDE FOR WINNING, AND I HATE THE SOCCER TEAMS THAT BEAT THE GODDESS’S SOCCER TEAM YESTERDAY!!! I’m a bad sport and a terrible person and I HATE TO LOSE!! So go back to Mississippi you vile little soccer demons and just know the only reason you won is because Colonel Sanders was on your side, not ours!!! What’d you pay him off with? Eleven Herbs and Spices????

Operator: Ma’am, you’re clearly distraught. I’m going to go ahead and send over a unit just to make sure everything is ok….

Caller: I couldn’t even blog about the damn dog barking at 1:00 in the morning when Stalin wasn’t home and me laying awake for hours convinced there was an armed maniac at my front door about to burst through and dismember us slowly with paperclips. Every time I’d drift back off, the damn stupid dog would growl again and then I’d snap awake and be convinced all over again that we were about to die. Who knows what she was barking at; probably a cloud of killer gnats flew past or maybe a blade of grass rustled or something threatening like that. But could I blog about it???? Oh no!! Because My Blog is Clogged!!!!

Operator: (soothingly) I’ve gone ahead and sent someone out to you; perhaps you can get some help….

Caller: Help!?? It’s only going to be helpful if the guy shows up wearing an adult diaper, a clown wig and carrying a pink poodle!! That I could blog about! I just need some cohesion here. Just need a way to bring it all together. I go to the soccer game on Saturday and show up at the wrong high school….who knew there were two high schools in town?? I sat in the parking lot, surrounded by the projects and realized the barbed wire around campus probably was a bad sign. And later that day, while I was watching the game, Stalin called to tell me he was going to buy a new TV. The old one works fine. We don’t need a new TV. Funny how we always have plenty of funds for new TV’s but if one of the kids needs, say, new underwear or something, the man goes berserk and carries on like we’re on the edge of financial ruin. And I’M THE ONE WHOSE PRIORITIES ARE OUT OF WHACK??? I don’t need a cop, I need a computer and I need it now!! I think Baby’s Got her Blog Back!!! (disconnects the call)

Operator: I don’t get paid enough for this shit.