Now that I'm someone else

  Remember when you were a kid, and your mean mother sent you to your room, yet again, for hitting your sister, who totally deserved it, and you stomped in your room, and slammed the door thinking “I can’t wait until I’m 18, then no one can tell me what to do!”

  Oh, poor, misguided child. I remember when I turned 18 and moved out, because, now, I’m the boss. But wait, my husband wanted dinner and clean underwear and a house the health department wouldn’t shut down. And my boss actually expected me to work for my paycheck, you know, come in on time, take lunch when he said, all that bullshit.

  I had no idea how bad it really was until I had a child. Suddenly, I wasn’t the boss of anything! ” No, we can’t go to our friends house  Honey because that’s during Mo’s nap time, and you know what she’s like when she doesn’t have a nap. I’ll just stay home.” I didn’t eat warm food for two years, because , without fail, every time I sat down to eat, Mo needed something.

  When they are little you don’t think of it as being bossy and controlling, they need you, so of  course, you comply. What they are really doing is training you. They start the day they are born, it’s just little things, like you want to sleep and they want to nurse. So you nurse. Then you want to sleep and they have shit completely through their clothes so now you are up, bathing the baby and washing crib sheets. Then, you want to sleep, they decide it’s a good night to get a new tooth. Again you want to sleep, but your two-year old decides that since the sun is awake, Mommy should be too.

  You wanna have sex? Forget it, they won’t  sleep anywhere but between the two of you. You sing at the top of your lungs through Toys R Us to cover the giggling from the doll in the cart that your cute little three-year old just asked Santa for, on Christmas Eve.

  All of that is cute, small potatoes, but, it’s training all the same. One day they will be sixteen and on a Sunday night, about 9 o’clock, after your bubble bath, when you are in your warm pajama’s ready to curl up with a book, she will say ” We need to go to Walmart and get construction paper, and glow in the dark stars, and string, and something to make planets out of for an Astronomy project that is due TOMORROW. So you get off the couch, get dressed, go to Walmart, spend 50 bucks on supplies for a project she  WILL NEVER TURN IN! You know why?

   Because you are not the boss of her and the truth is, the only time you get to do what you want to do, is when you are sixteen and you are sneaking behind your parents backs.

  I wanna be sixteen again, and do what I want to do, all while driving my mother crazy! Oh, the good ole days!

 Some days, I don’t blog. I want to, but I don’t think I have anything to say. Today I realized, I have lots to say, not all of it makes sense, but damn it, it’s rolling around in my head so I’m going to subject you to it.

  First of all, really Target? WTF!!! I went to buy a space heater and an electric shovel because it’s 5 degrees and snowing it’s ass off- just for the record, it’s not hot in hell, it snows, ALL THE FREAKING TIME!  Anyway, I’m freezing, I have on a skirt, with nylons, under armor, and stretch pants underneath, a turtle neck, a sweater, a winter coat, hat, gloves, scarf, AND I STILL CAN’T GET WARM!  And this from a woman subject to frequent and uncontrollable hot flashes.

  I  grab the space heater, thinking if I could marry an inanimate object, this would be it, I also grab the electric snow shovel, because did I mention, it’s freezing AND SNOWING! I’m heading to the check out and what to my wondering eyes appear? No not Santa———-SWIMSUITS! 

    That’s right, 2010 summer season bathing suits, bikini’s, tankini’s, one pieces, suits with skirts, anything your heart could desire. If your hearts desire was to get naked and try on various shades of dental floss while icicles drip from your nose and the hair on your girlie bits freezes up and breaks off.

    Do retailers really hate us that much? At this point I can’t even imagine getting naked for sex, not that I have to worry about that, but a girl can dream. Also, you know, this time of year is sacred to women. Come January 1st we start starving ourselves, going to the gym, passing out from hunger, all those things we do to look hot in that bikini.

    Come August, all bets are off for four glorious months. We eat what we want, dont’ work out, have permanent chocolate breath, but hey, that’s why winter clothes are bulky.

   Now, I have to start dieting in August to fit into the swim suits that hit the stores after Thanksgiving, you know all the cute ones will be gone before President’s Day!

   Someone must pay for this…

  Now that there seems to be an abundance of little people in my world and I’m spending some time tending them,I’ve started thinking, ” Do their parents have any idea who they are leaving their child with?”

 Oh sure, Mo is seemingly well-adjusted,  babies and animals like her, but I’m sure, one day, on some therapists couch it’s all going to come tumbling out.

 My journey into being the best aunt in the world started long before Mo was born. My beautiful little niece Kay, Shirley Temple curls, face of an angel, mouth like a sailor. Thank you very much Aunt Missi.

 As soon as that little cutie learned to talk, I taught her to call her mother a bitch. It sounded like ” Mommy oo a bish” but it made me laugh till my sides hurt, mostly at the smoke that poured out of my sisters ears.

 Then, like the good mother she is, my sister taught her baby girl the proper names for all her body parts so she wouldn’t grow up calling her girlie bits a Suzy, like we did.

 One day I was in the kitchen and my cute little Katie comes skipping in because she has something important to tell me.

“Guess what Aunt Missi?

“What baby girl?”

“I gots a gina?’

“A what?”

” A gina, Mommy told me, girls gots ginas boys gots peanuts.”

I was starting to get it, Kay had a vagina and boys have penis’s. I catch on quickly.

“Is that what she told you, Kay?”

“Yep, we all gots gina’s cause we’re girls, you, me, Mommy, even Grandma gots a gina.”

” Mommy’s lying to you Katie, you don’t have a vagina.”

“Do too, Mommy said.”

” Mommy is teaching you silly words and all the other kids will make fun of you, little girls have pussy’s and little boys have peckers.”

I can see the confusion in her eyes, Mommy doesn’t lie, but neither does Aunt Missi, what to do, what to do.

 Kay left the kitchen and I didn’t really think about it anymore until later that afternoon when my sister is hiding behind the curtains frantically stage whispering to Kay to get off the balcony and come inside. I peek out the window, there she is, my beautiful Kay, naked as the day she was born, standing on the railing, singing ” I gotta a pussy” to all the neighbors walking by. I almost wet myself.

My torture of parents didn’t stop there. My best friends little boy was a nose picker and would wipe what he found everywhere, on the door, the wall, the couch, whatever was closest.

 Poor Tree, she had tried everything, it was driving her nuts, so being the good aunt I am, I picked that chubby cheeked  toddler up, looked him in the eye and said, ” Hey Jax, you can eat those.”

 The wiping stopped being a problem. I thought that was very resourceful of me. Tree was not impressed.

 I was reminded today of the therapy I may have inadvertently put in Jax’s future. When Mo and Jax were little, Tree and I found them “discovering” each other. We had the standard talk about our bodies, our own personal space, privacy, not touching each other in areas covered by our underpants, the usual. Such good Mom’s are we. I should tell you, I passed on the name Suzy for Mo’s girlie parts. So, since they were two the lecture mostly consisted of ” Don’t touch Jax’s penis, don’t touch Mo’s Suzy.”

 About a week later Tree’s mother in law babysits Jax. Tree and her ex husband pick Jax up and on the ride home they are asking if he had fun with Grandma. After talking about cookies, and playing and TV, Jax starts saying, “I told them not to touch the Suzy Mommy, they wouldn’t they just keep petting the Suzy. I told them no Mommy!” By this time Jax is crying he is pretty upset and Tree and D have no idea what he is talking about.

 When they get home Tree calls her mother in law to see what happened at Grandma’s house. Grandma tells Tree about Jax’ strange reaction to the neighbors new dog, Suzy, she couldn’t figure out why Jax was so upset, he usually loved dogs. Whoops.

 As I sit here writing this post, I think the harm I’ve done to my child is starting to surface. She is heating up food in the microwave.

“Mom, where are those things I can cover my food up with?”

“What things?”

You know, the things in the drawer to cover up food?”   She being highly descriptive.

I walk into the kitchen to see if she needs saran wrap as she pulls a green cloth napkin out of the drawer.

” I’ll just have to use this.”

“That’s what it’s for, it’s a napkin.” We do try to be environmentally friendly.

“Where are the yellow napkins?” Mo doesn’t take change well.

“The green and red ones are the Christmas napkins.”

“I want the yellow ones, I don’t like being confused in my drawers.”

She actually said that. Then I tweeted it and put it on Facebook. Nothing is sacred.

 Have you ever listened to people  talk, I mean really listen? We all have favorite words, the ones we use over and over again without even realizing it. Some people abuse this and have one or two words that have become almost a trademark for them because they say them  so much.

 I work with a guy who is an ass. He does something in IT so of course he thinks he is smarter than the rest of us. He also has a speech impediment. He cannot say the letter R, it comes out as W, just like little kids  when they are first learning to talk.

 His trademark work is “roughly”. He is hard enough to take seriously as it is but when every other word out of his mouth is roughly, it’s just about impossible not to laugh at him. Yes, I’m aware I’m going to hell.

 We are having trouble with a new application at work so he is our point of contact. Joyce’s cubicle is directly across from mine so we can see each other all day long. She’s going to hell too.

 So this guy, lets call him Dickhead, stops at my cubicle to let me know what’s going on. He stands in front of me so I can still see Joyce out of the corner of my eye.

” Cawol, just wanted to let you know we think we found the pwoblem. Woughly, theiw sewvew was bouncing us to sevewal diffewent places befowe we connected. So, woughly, now we awe connecting stwaight to theiw sewver. Woughly, I don’t think we will have any mowe pwoblems.”

 Yes, he really says roughly that much. Out of the corner of my eye I can see Joyce pointing and laughing, trying to get my attention.

 I have to fake a coughing fit because if I don’t laugh soon I’m gonna die. I throw whatever it was I had in my hand at Joyce because she is over there busting a gut.

“Woughly, let me know if thewe awe any mowe pwoblems.”

And he walks away. I look at Joyce and her entire face is beet red from trying not to laugh out loud.

Roughly, I”m sure he knew we were making fun of him.

 Are you one of those people whose Christmas tree has a “theme”? Or, like me, do you throw everything on there but the kitchen sink?

 I love ornaments. All kinds. I have pretty ones, sparkly one, one’s Mo made, one’s Mo’s friends made, ones my sisters, momma and friends have given me, my Mommy ornaments plus lots of balls to even things out.

My favorites are the two in this post. One is a baby’s first Christmas ornament that my mother bought Mo, it used to spin around, now it’s tired. It’s the first thing Mo looks for when we open the boxes. The second is Joe Montana, if you are going to name your daughter after the greatest quarterback that ever lived, he should have a place of honor on your tree. Joe does.

Oh, Mo just ran in to change for work and said, with a smile I might add, ” It smells like pine in here.”

“That my darling daughter, is why we have a real tree.”

“It’s still deformed.”

What does she know?

 Anyone who knows me, knows that I am possessed  by an elf at Christmas time. Everything must be decorated! The mantle! The tablecloth! The bathroom!

 I put up three trees every year. Overkill? I think not! I love Christmas. When I was married to Steve he wasn’t all that happy about this Christmas demon possession, but he tolerated it. He hung the lights on the house every year. There was lots of bitching, but he never made me do it, something that I am now very grateful for.

 Anyway, every year something new has to be added. This year it was LED icicle lights, I’m all about saving the environment through over consumption of things I don’t really need. I didn’t need the lights, I have 57 ( yes I counted them) perfectly good strands of lights, but, whatever. So while my darling Mo was at work I put up the icicle lights and turned them on so she could see them when she came home.

 I was excited!

Me- Did you see the icicle lights?

Mo- They’re blue.

So much for excitement! But wait! There’s more! This year we got a real tree. My friend Joyce cut it down in the forest and drug it down the mountain for me. Again, I’m excited. Let’s decorate the tree!

 I had forgotten, that unlike artificial trees, real trees are not meant to hold heavy ornaments. After about ten minutes of trying to get her ornaments to stay on the branches without dragging the floor, my darling daughter says ” Remind me again what’s so great about a real tree?”

 I think she’s adopted.

 My beautiful little blog that I have ignored. It wasn’t me, it was that pesky second job. Well, now that I’ve taken care of that, I’m back, with a head full of wonderings I just can’t wait to spew at you!!

  I saw a movie recently and a woman in the movie said she cut her hair because it was interfering with her drinking. I love that line and on Saturday when I was raking leaves and  cleaning up dog shit in the yard I started thinking about drinking.

   When am I going to drink now? A glass of wine with dinner? I dont’ freaking think so. Why you ask? Dinner is now a hot pocket in the car on the way to my second job.

  I think it would be really hard to juggle a fresh out of the microwave hot pocket and a glass of wine. Plus, I think there is some pesky open container/drinking and driving law.

 So let’s drink after work! Not gonna happen my friend, I’m lucky I can stay awake to drive home and kiss Mo goodnight.

  Drink on the weekends! Well, since I am the new kid on the block I work Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Somehow I think if I had a few drinks and went to work it would be a problem, and working would kind of kill that wonderful wine buzz.

  What to do, what to do? I guess I will just have to live vicariously through everyone else’s drinking. So have one for me, or two, maybe five, trust me, I need it!

 I haven’t had much time to blog because I got a second job. The house needs a new roof so until I can pay for it I will be working and sleeping.

 My new job is one of those mindless ones that will allow me to make extra money without taxing my brain.

 A few nights ago I had to do computer modules to learn how to operate a register. Better known as Register Training for Idiots. I actually wrote this post while taking the online course.

  Not only does the module walk you through it twice while you sit with bated breath watching the computer monitor for the next exciting step, it also has you do it twice with plenty of computer instruction and then you take a quiz.

 By the time the quiz came up I wanted to gouge my eyes out and my brain had turned to mush from all the training on how to scan items. Seriously, is it that hard?

 I decided to purposely fail the quiz. I did everything I could to get a wrong answer, but oh no, that was not going to happen. What I discovered is no matter how hard you try, you can’t fail. The nice lady who lives in the computer will patiently explain to you over and over and OVER, exactly what you need to do to correctly to pass this quiz.

 This explains why the lines everywhere are so long and so slow, they need to have that woman living inside of every register to keep cashiers on the straight and narrow.

  So, I tried to fail and failed at failing. Should I feel bad about that?

What  happened to growing old gracefully? What happened to being proud of the life you have lived? Have we always been such a youth obsessed culture and I just never noticed?

 I don’t watch much TV but this weekend I decided to be lazy and stay home in my pajamas all weekend while my daughter worked so I watched a lot of TV.

 That Pantene commercial scares the hell out of me! What is wrong with that woman’s face?  She scares me, every time the commercial comes on I have to look away. 

 Just like everyone else, I don’t want to be any more wrinkled than I have to be, so I use lots of wrinkle creams, moisturizer, get chemical peels and I even went to get Botox. I just want to tell you that the people who give you botox are scarier than the witch in Hansel and Gretel.

 I went to a salon that offered discounted botox shots. Okay, my first clue that this was not a good idea should have been the “discount” Anyway, I went, a lady at work, her daughter worked at the salon and told her about the discounts and the “doctor” who was going to be giving the shots.

 So I went, all excited to suddenly be younger than my 30 years ( shut up, my story). I took Mo, because they had discounted massages as well and she took full advantage of that special.

 Anyway, my coworker and I were treated to a lovely facial by a very nice woman and bought tons of over priced snake oil to save our youth.

 Then, the moment we had been waiting for! The “doctor” was in! I use that term loosely, just because you are wearing scrubs does not mean you are a doctor.

First this lovely gay man, and I want you to know, I’m very gay friendly, I’ve been called a fag hag more than once in my life so I am not bashing his sexuality. Some of the  people I love best are gay. Any way, this very lovely gay man, with a horribly snooty attitude, started telling me what was wrong with my face.

 Now coming from a long line of women who are more than happy to bash ourselves, I interrupted him when he was going on and on about my forehead lines and told him only the lines around my mouth and eyes really bothered me.

 This lovely man with the perfectly smooth face looked down his nose at me and said, ” Well, Sweetie maybe once we get rid of those other lines you will start paying attention to these gouges on your forehead.”

 Ok, enough, you little butt slammer, I don’t know why you worry about your forehead wrinkles, he only sees you from behind anyway. I didn’t say that out loud but I was thinking it pretty hard. I wanted to kick his little gay ass up around his shoulders.

 Then over comes Elvira to examine my face, she was the one who actually administered the shots, because as we found out, Flamer is not a real doctor, he doesn’t even play one on TV.

 Elvira, not her real name, but I want you to get a sense of this woman, is scary. She is only about 35  and is pointing out to me how young botox keeps her.

 If that is young, please God make me old right now! She is a chubby lady but her skin is pulled so tight over the bones in her face that she looks plastic. And she has no expression, her mouth barely moves when she speaks.

  Her eyebrows are part of her hairline as she explains all the wonders that await me in my quest to stay young. Laser peels! Derma fillers! Mini face lifts!  ” And look how young Dana looks, she is 28 but has been getting botox since she was twenty-five, preventative maintenance you know, always a good idea, but never too late to start!”

 Dana has two huge red tumors slowly growing between her eyebrows. The more I stare at them, the larger and redder they get.  There is also one growing on each side of her nose and several on her forehead.

 ”This reaction is unusual, ” Elvira explains, ” Dana is very sensitive and always has this reaction, but it goes a way in a day or two, doesn’t it honey?”

 The lovely Dana with the Klingon face explains that it is a temporary reaction and “totally worth it”

  I tell Elvira I left my wallet in my other pants and, darnit, I’ll just have to come back another day, and then I run from the salon, lock myself in the car and text Mo. No way am I going back in there.

 I will just have to keep trying every new wrinkle cream that Oil of Olay sells and be thankful that the older we get, the worse our vision gets. So, in the right light, at just the right distance, I’m a freaking knock out!