Tag Archives: Humor

December 1, 2011 · 1:27 pm

Still Time for Adventure

“It’s real smooth,” he explained. And so was he, my brother-in-law talking me into riding a roller coaster over Thanksgiving break. The Alpengeist. I watched as it looped and twisted through the night sky, dozens of feet dangling in midair while hands braced the harnesses that kept occupants inside the car at all times.

I knew no one else would ride with him so I agreed. I like roller coasters, the ones that aren’t scary, but I really feel like I’m getting too old for this stuff. I don’t think my heart can take it anymore. I knew the ride would be quick. I just tried not to think any more about it.

As our turn approached, I made two requests: no front row and I had to have an inside seat. The less I saw of the ground and the fact that I was nowhere near it, the better.

When we boarded, two gray-haired men took the seats next to us. They were father and son. The son kindly tucked in his dad, put his hood on him, and asked, “Dad, are you OK?”

My brother-in-law turned to me and said, “Do you scream?”

I said something like, “Uh, you better believe it.”

I locked my eyes on the row in front of me and as the coaster started downward, let out a scream that lasted half the length of the ride. More screaming followed. Panic set in. I couldn’t tell whether we were up, down, left, or right. Could this entire ride be upside down? What was this? When would it end?

When we finally stopped, my trembling fingers couldn’t undo the harness. I could barely stand on gelatinous legs. As we walked to our family, the man who had been sitting next to me turned to me and said he was 87 and he just thought he’d try it. What?

If I hadn’t had a mouth full of cotton, I would have asked him a hundred questions. He seemed OK. And except for my screaming, he probably had a great ride.

My kids, mother, and sister wanted the verdict. “Mommy, did you throw up? We heard you screaming. We can’t believe you rode that.” Very funny. This ride is touted as “one of the tallest, fastest, most insane coasters in the world.” I’m convinced.

I’m not adventurous or spontaneous. I’m a hardcore planner and I painstakingly think things through. I don’t care for adventure that takes my breath away, but every now and then I can be talked into something stupid. There have been times when, through sweaty palms, knocking knees, and not being able to catch a breath, my prayers have included more than a few curse words. But I feel like sometimes you get a free pass when panic sets in.

Deep down, I know it can be a good thing to make sure there’s still blood pumping through your veins, that it hasn’t seized up like water in molten chocolate. I need to know my heart can take a jolt, especially with teenagers coming my way in four years.

So maybe I shouldn’t write off adventure yet. Maybe there will still be hope for me at 87, and my kids will still be able to talk me into a little something stupid. What will I have to lose? Maybe nothing but a pair of false teeth.

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November 28, 2011 · 10:22 am

The Top 10 Reasons I Can’t Wait to Get Home From a Trip

Our recent Thanksgiving trip reminded me of the joys we face each time we travel. We do it to see loved ones. We do it for fun. We do it because we can’t spend 365 days holed up in this house together. Why not take our craziness on the road, spend a load of cash, and wonder why we don’t do this more often? That’s what I’m wondering by the end of every trip….

10) My daughter, who can hold it all day no matter how much I beg, suddenly has to go when we’ve reached the rural part of our trip and no businesses can be seen for many miles.

9) When the cooler is empty, the kids can’t agree on which disgusting fast-food restaurant we’ll dine at. Then whoever picked it will inevitably not like their dry, crusty meal. Someone always has to return to the counter for sauce, and the workers don’t see you standing there no matter how long you patiently wait.

8) At any roadside location the bathroom stalls, hardly large enough for me to turn around and squat in, can be excruciatingly small when you are trying to avoid the liquid on the floor, cover the seat with tissue, and keep your daughter’s pants from touching anything. Somehow I have managed on past trips to hold an infant on my hip, expertly maneuver button and zipper with one hand, and keep my toddler standing and out of said puddles with my patented whisper-scream all in this 1-foot-by-1-foot space. Oh it can be done.

7) The kids fight for the top bunk, bottom bunk, left side of the bed, or right side of the bed, and the loser makes sure the night is ruined for the rest of us. One kid wants the light on; one wants the light off. One wants music on; one does not. Just GO TO SLEEP!

6) The later the kids go to bed, the earlier they wake up in the morning.

5) Forgetting my husband’s deodorant means he has to use mine. He smells lovely and breezy for a few hours. When I use my tube the next day, I find some really, really long hairs glued to it. Gross.

4) No matter what thrilling event you have spent hours planning for the next day, the kids will gripe that it’s boring and their feet hurt, and you can forget any educational stuff you looked up. They don’t want to hear it.

3) The last hour of the trip, they must ask every two minutes, “When are we going to be there?” Now I know how my dad felt.

2) When we finally pull in the driveway, the kids can only carry one thing and they both have to go to the bathroom—the same one—at the same time.

1) Man, I don’t care how much laundry there is. There’s no place like home.

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November 21, 2011 · 1:07 pm

Thanks a Lot

This is the time of year when we’re supposed to stop and count our blessings. As parents, we know better. Most of us pause several times daily, thankful for every little thing we have.

In honor of this holiday, I’ll tell you some of the many things I am thankful for.

I'm grateful for seeing the beauty of the world through my kids' eyes.

My husband. My partner in the perils of parenthood. I can’t count how many times he has walked in on the tail end of a flaming tantrum after work, and instead of walking out the door, he takes it like a man, often the hero of the hour. “Daddy!” All is often suddenly good with the world. He does the dishes, then plays with the kids for an hour before bed. No computer, no cell phone. Real quality time with his family, whatever the night may bring us. I am grateful for this man.

I am thankful for the two spirited, smiling beings who have stolen an incalculable amount of sleep from my life and nearly every inch of freedom with their demands and the insane amount of thought I feel compelled to give them. My kids, who from day one have been harder to figure out than any math class I have squirmed through, have upended my life so incredibly that if I really knew what having kids was about, I may have never wanted to have children in the first place. The rewards: Just hearing the word Mom is good for me.

As a mom, I’ve wished away many fevers, cuddled sick babies, and worked myself into a frenzy over the countless horrible diagnoses I’ve given my children from the Internet. I’m thankful that my children are healthy.

I’m secretly grateful for hurts only cured by Mommy’s hugs, books that are better read by Mom, and unexpected hugs. When my kids give me their worst, it’s these little things that get me through. I am grateful for every one of them.

I am so incredibly thankful for friends who can relate, who can laugh at our misery, and who don’t even flinch when I tell them we’ve just infected them all with strep.

I am thankful for the food we eat, the meals I slave over that the kids sometimes stick up their noses at and squirm in their chairs over and make an otherwise lovely meal unbearable.

Our home, though often cluttered and never glamorous, keeps us warm, comfortable, and safe. It is filled with love and silliness and often more dirt than I can keep up with. But I am ever so grateful.

I’m thankful for laughter. We make time together as a family. We play together. We eat together. We do so much together that we drive one another crazy, but we can always make each other laugh. It’s the unexpected that keeps us going, like when my husband tries to lick the cinnamon roll icing off his plate without being caught or jumps in the car and locks it during a rollicking game of tag. (Well played.) Or the many moments when the kids say something so out of the blue, there is no other choice but to laugh, no matter how inappropriate.

I’m grateful for family. We don’t have any family nearby, but emails and phone calls keep us connected until we can meet in person and remind each other of why we’re all so crazy. Darn those blood lines.

Being a mom has been so much more challenging and sometimes more painful than I ever imagined. I honestly thought it would be a breeze. Then I realized you can’t mold people. They’re already who they are and you have to learn to deal with their idiosyncrasies from the start. But I’m grateful that every day is new, my kids don’t hold grudges, we forgive, and we love.

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November 18, 2011 · 1:31 pm

Sometimes the Kids Win the Battles

It has been weeks now since she’s seen it, asked for it, given me big blue eyes swelling up with tears. I try to stand my ground, be firm and strong. But those kids know how to break me sometimes. And sometimes, they win.

With my kids being 8 and 6, I felt like the days of noisy toys were behind us. On a shopping trip this month, my daughter fell in love with one of those annoying toys that barks and moves when you walk down the aisle. No, I said. A firm NO.

She has asked for that dog several times since, batting her eyelashes at me. Giving me puppy dog eyes so sweet that I have to turn away and think about how horrid she becomes when she screams about her homework and how mean I am for making her do it. “Please, Momma,” she whimpers for the little brown dog.

She already has something similar…that I hate, that she doesn’t play with. The answer is and always will be no. I won’t buy it, and even she can’t buy it. She cannot put it on her Christmas list.

But kids have a way of chiseling through a mom’s tough outer exterior. They chip and chip away. They wear down that enamel, tear through the layers. They beg and plead so much that I am sick to death of hearing about it. They break me down like a prisoner about to sign a confession to a crime I was nowhere near just to stop the harassment. Yep, those kids know what they are doing all right. And I had taken all the batted eyelashes and puppy dog eyes that I could until I found myself saying, “Put it on your Christmas list.”

What was that about? Ugh. She got me. She broke through and now I’m going to have to live with that annoying puppy dog yip and squeak for weeks until it breaks or she grows tired of that stupid toy and it ends up at the bottom of her closet.

I broke down. I gave in. Just get the stupid thing. I can’t take it anymore. Sometimes my kids wear me so completely down, it’s just not worth the fight at all. Parents are supposed to pick their battles, and I do. But it’s rough when you realize that after putting up what you think is a good fight, you realize you were outwitted all along and you just never really had a fighting chance. I should have saved all that energy for a battle that really mattered.

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November 16, 2011 · 1:04 pm

The Picture—and What the Boys Saw

For a week my son had been waiting for the new Lego Club magazine with all the vigor of a dirty old man sitting on a park bench watching for the next caboose to jiggle by. I could almost see him licking his chops, chuckling in creepy delight.

When my son revealed to me that this new magazine had a naked girl in it, I knew better but he couldn’t be swayed. “She’s naked and they show her back and her butt,” he giggled in delight.

The boys at school had already brought in their copies. I could just see them huddled around this fantastical image of something they thought they were seeing, pointing and whispering at things that surely weren’t there, hiding this golden gem when the teacher walked by.

Each day after school, my son groaned when his magazine turned up absent in the mailbox.

I asked him why he was so interested anyway. The answer? Simple. He wanted to see a naked girl. Son, you and most of the rest of the boys in the world.

He said he knows what he looks like. And it’s been many years since he’s walked in on me getting dressed. As hard as it is when your kid starts thinking about that, it’s normal. It’s innocent. What is so secret and hush-hush? Kids are curious. And when you think you see something in a magazine that you’re not supposed to see, that makes it all the more tantalizing.

When my son’s magazine finally did come, I handed it to him and he took off wearing a smile. He tore through the pages and I heard those giggles again.

What did I find when I came to inspect this naked lady in all her bare-bottomed glory? A 1×2-inch photo of the Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides cover. The woman was the size of my thumbnail. I needed a magnifying glass to see her parts.

Good grief. Males. Idiots.

I went online and blew up the photo, along with his dreams. “Do you see this picture?” I asked him. “Do you see what she is?”

“A mermaid,” my son answered.

“Yes, that’s not her butt. There’s no crack. She has a fish tail.”

His face went blank. For a second.

“She still doesn’t have anything up top,” he countered.

I guess sometimes you don’t have to see to believe.

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November 7, 2011 · 1:40 pm

A Boy and a Camera

One thing my family can agree on is animals. Watching them, learning about them, it’s something we all get in on. But my son can read a book about animals, absorb it, and relay the facts to you repeatedly. Often more times than you want to hear them. He constantly begs us for sometimes bizarre pets: a huge saltwater aquarium for his room, lizards of all sorts, alpacas, sheep, horses.

When he learns about an animal, his first question is always, “Can you have it as a pet?” My frequent response is, “If you live on a farm.” When he grows up, he plans to live on a farm and have all of these animals, but he’ll need my help of course. Well, he is welcome to do that but I’m no farmhand.

In your face. Taken by my son, 8.

This weekend we went to a nearby science center. My kids love to visit the animals and have been bringing the camera on recent visits. Soon I fear we will have more pictures of these animals than we do of the kids.

The kids fought over the camera, each having to get a shot of each animal. I’ve been through this more than once now. But I see something there, a talent that my son doesn’t yet feel. He is actually pretty good at this photography thing. I try to give him a few pointers without interfering too much, you know, that nagging thing moms do. Animals are like kids and you have to be patient, I told him several months ago. Wait for the shot. Zoom in. Hold still.

And this weekend he did. I think he’s a natural.

So many times, for other things, I have to constantly remind him. But not about this. He takes the camera, seeks out a subject, frames it, shoots. Unfortunately, past subjects have included my rear end in a pool with plans of making a poster-size print for his wall. And other than that one, some of his pictures are pretty darn good.

My daughter’s unsteady hand captures shaky, fuzzy images. She’s only six. It’s hard to push the button, hold the camera, and get the shot before the animal darts away in a playful frenzy. Maybe she’ll get there too.

These guys are huge and my son loves them. We say hello to them at every visit.

Even sometimes now I don’t get close enough to my subject. My images sit too far off and framed by too much space.

But my son seems to know how to do it with not a lot of guidance. It’s neat to see something develop in your kids right before your eyes. To me, his pictures are worth more than words.

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November 4, 2011 · 9:25 am

Box of Germs

There’s a public place crawling with cooties, infested with every sickness known to motherhood, and filled with ear-piercing screams that frightens me, almost worse than any bathroom (not all of them, come on now). It takes my germophobia to a whole new level. It’s the pediatrician’s office.

As my kids and I waited one day this week to find out whether my daughter had strep (she did), my hysteria settled in.

Any time my kids and I visit that box of germs, I know we are gambling with our health. It’s not like school where there is a chance of getting sick. Real, live sick germs crawl all over this place day and night. You go in there, you will touch something that a sick person has touched.

My brain goes into overdrive. What do these kids have? Is it worse than what we have? What will we end up getting on our way out? I plop my kids in the seats farthest from anyone. I shriek-whisper to them not to touch anything. Repeatedly. We hand-sanitize several times a visit if necessary.

It’s a house of horrors where tortured kids scream in pain. My kids and I slink down in our seats and hope that’s not what’s in store for our tiny room. The other day a kid down the hall was screaming, “I can’t take it! You’re killing me!” Well, we couldn’t take it either. We were about to get our coats and tiptoe for the nearest exit.

Our doctor said it was an ear problem. I nearly collapsed at the memories of someone prodding in my ears as a kid and adult and my own threats to punch them if they didn’t stop. Who do these doctors think they are?

The good news is, I don’t need a therapist to help me figure out the traumatic event that triggered my germophobic behavior either. Many years ago during our first after-hours visit, my kids and I sat crammed into “the sick room” waiting for an hour to be seen. Everyone in that room looked sweaty and miserable and coughed. And coughed. And coughed.

I thought I had died and that was my hell. I tried to disguise the fact that I was using my hand as a germ shield over my nose and mouth. I stole bits of clean air when I could. I fought off a panic attack. I fidgeted in my seat. I made sure the kids didn’t touch anything or anyone. When would the stinking nurse call our name?! We were only there for an ear infection for Pete’s sake! Don’t they have a separate room for that?

When the kids were younger, one trip to the doctor so often led to a return visit within a week with what we caught there. We could have caught it somewhere else, but my kids weren’t in preschool at the time. The pattern fit. It was a running joke when we left the doctor. “I’m sure we’ll see you in a week.” Most of the time, we did.

I’m always thankful for our doctor’s wisdom—goodness knows he has shared a lot—and the medicine. But I am always ready to run out that door and into the fresh air because that’s a long time to hold your breath.

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October 28, 2011 · 1:51 pm

The Strange Case of Hyde and the Four Green Beans

We’ve had a few rough afternoons lately. Sassy mouths. Crying fits under the kitchen table. Rude remarks.

I’d blame it on the full moon, but that’s already passed. Is it the promise of an insane amount of candy in a few days? A sugar high from the vapors escaping from bags of it hiding in the pantry? Whatever it is, it sits, pent up all day to the point of boiling, until 3 o’clock when the kids release this energy like a mad teapot.

Yesterday, I felt pretty proud of myself when, after a day of back-to-back-to-back meltdowns, I actually didn’t lose my cool, managed to handle my kids without yelling, and sent them to their rooms for a very long time to calm down.

I relayed the events of the afternoon to my husband only when asked, and it was the short story, not the long version.

He then told me that when he pulled up to the house after work, our daughter was standing at the front door crying. I wondered what she could have been crying about. Oh, green beans.

“I didn’t know whether to just keep on driving,” he said.

He didn’t. He asked her why she was crying and she pointed to the green beans on her plate. All four of them.

I was upstairs telling my son, Mr. Hyde, why we don’t talk to adults that way as I bit my tongue hard not to mouth at him in return. It was difficult, but I was good. I deserved an award, a trophy for Mother Who Kept Her Mean Thoughts to Herself. They have those, don’t they?

Just when it seemed everyone had kissed and made up, those damn green beans ruined everything. Withering away on my daughter’s plate. I had told her to try them. She was going to make it difficult. While she screamed at my husband in a way I have rarely seen her do (no doubt picked up from her brother a few hours before), I hung over my plate laughing and fighting back tears in the same sad breath because after the day I’d had, I really didn’t know what was about to come out of me.

Bedtime can never arrive fast enough on days like these. But no matter what has happened or how infuriated or exhausted I am, I take a breath, march into their rooms, read to them, and tell them I love them. Then I skip out of there as fast as I can and hope tomorrow is a better day. And that Jekyll is back. And that I don’t forget that I will not be serving green beans for a while.

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October 26, 2011 · 2:06 pm

Lots of Miles on This Baby

This week our van passed 100,000 miles. Not a big deal, really. But it kind of is. I was four months pregnant when we bought that van. That kid is now almost 9. I used to feed him in the backseat, change his diaper in the trunk, wrestle him into his car seat, and listen to him exercise his lungs at top volume on eight-hour road trips.

Early on we discovered long car trips were unbearable with young children. Not only did we have to pack the whole house, all teetering in the rear, but that van has heard more curse words than the Eagles’ stadium. The steering wheel has taken a beating, all thanks to I-95 traffic and a screaming toddler.

No diapers back here. Just smelly game-day stuff and lots of dirt.

The side door cup holders still hold the rocks from our many trips to the park when my son was a toddler. The carpet is stained with milk shakes, ground-in Goldfish, and matted raisins.

It took me five months to learn to park that van. Let’s be honest, I still have trouble.

I’m not sentimental toward it; I’ll be glad to see it go when the time comes. But when I look back, I’m amazed at the ground it’s covered, not to mention what it’s been covered with, and what it’s seen us through. Man, my kids aren’t babies anymore.

Car seats have given way to booster seats that the kids can strap themselves into, their heads hanging like limp rag dolls when they fall asleep.

The screaming has given way to giggles and after-school discussions, sometimes in whispers from the back too far away for me to hear. Or sometimes both kids yell at once, “Hey Mom, you’ll never guess what happened at school today.”

The trunk now holds chairs, soccer balls, and dirty cleats, while the sweaty kids with the crumbly snacks relay the good plays of the game.

The van has only seen one speeding ticket. Unfortunately, the kids saw that too. The son who “really had to go” suddenly had to go no longer. The cop, not sympathetic.

The van has left me stranded only once and that was in our driveway. Like people, it has become stubborn with age. The side door latch gets stuck and takes repetitive slamming and a few choice words to whack it into place. Sometimes the key won’t turn in the ignition…unless you open the driver-side door and say a few more choice words.

Our van is like a pair of broken-in jeans: It’s the perfect fit for us. But I know the time is near when we’ll have to start all over, worrying about spills and muddy shoes. Though I love the idea of driving around in a sportier model, wind in my graying hair, I can’t get over the comforts of a van. I look forward to the adventures the next new van will hold: seats filled with tweens gossiping about the latest and greatest, dating, learning to drive.

But for now, candy wrappers stick to the console, favorite toys go on every trip, and the DVD player still features Disney favorites. Soon the kids will be taller and surely smellier. And thankfully, they can sit in the way back.

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October 21, 2011 · 1:26 pm

Confessions of a Germophobe

When you have kids, it happens. Or at least, it happened to me. All that guck spilled forth on you each day. The shriveled-up, days-old food they’d slowly bring to their toddler mouths on gooey fingers. Rubbing their hands over every public surface before wiping their eyes, nose, mouth, and tongue with furious pleasure. It didn’t take long for me to become a germophobe. I’m trying to break free. But I still have many moments. And now that sick season is upon us, my soap sits at the ready.

I know what my kids touch every day. I know it’s good for their immune systems. Still, they don’t need to touch every germ, do they? They don’t need full exposure. Last year my daughter brought home everything from kindergarten. And I mean everything.

Now those are clean hands.

We wash our hands when we come inside from anywhere. I think that’s a sound rule. I hear and see what goes on. Toilets flush and sinks spray on for two seconds. Boogies go in places. In places. Raggedy dolls need to be washed. Hands rub over the bottoms of shoes that step in who knows what. It’s a nasty world out there.

And school? That warm bubble of sweaty kids, crammed into classrooms, sneezing and talking in each other’s faces? I’ve been there in classes where kids have coughed in my face. They go outside and never wash their grubby hands before lunch. I deal. I cringe, but I deal.

But I heard those four little words from my son on the way home from school this week, those words I dread every year.

“So-and-so threw up today.”

Great. Just great.

“And she didn’t even go home.”

Stop. The. Car.

“What?! Why didn’t she go home? She sat in your class all day?”

“Yup.” I think he knew that bothered me a great deal, and I think he liked it.

The interrogation began. As always, I wanted to know if he was anywhere near this vomiter at any point of that day or the days leading up to it. Did she breathe on him? Does she sit at his table? Did anything splash in his direction? (That has happened before…and it involved his lunch tray. Ew.)

Her being a girl means that there is likely no way he had any contact with her whatsoever.

Throw-up scares me. We had held out for seven years. Seven years, people! Until my daughter started kindergarten and brought that nasty bug home to us last year. She suffered for a fraction of our misery. My husband, son, and I were laid out for a weekend while she did nothing but beg us to play with her. I lay motionless and let my husband do almost all of the cleanup. He is great about that. I make an effort, all the while gagging and convulsing like a dog in the yard retching up dinner.

Kids, this is the reason we only put food in our mouths. Not thumbs or boogies. We don’t touch our nasty shoes while we’re eating dinner. We wash our hands for more than two seconds. We don’t pick up strange things off the ground and say, “What’s this?” It’s your ticket to the doctor, that’s what it is. Put that nasty thing down.

I just can’t get over my phobia yet. Sorry. Sick season is here, my soap is ready, and my nagging resumes today.

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