I’m a sick, twisted woman who for some perverse reason gets pleasure out of embarrassing my kids for no reason at all other than I think it’s funny. Personally, I see no problem with this except for the fact that my kids are pretty damn clever, quick witted and are giving me a run for my money.

D, a friend of mine, and I decided to take our kids to see Spider-Man 3 this past Saturday. His three children and mine match in age and gender, and are best buds with each other, so it made for a nice little outing. We arrived, purchased our tickets and got in the snack line for some popcorn, drinks and goodies to munch on during the movie.

While we were waiting for our turn in line I told all the kids to be deciding what they wanted so we would have enough time to get in the theater and find enough seats for everyone before it got too crowded. Since kids, especially our two younger girls, can take so damn long to decide when faced with so many delectable options, I shoved them up under the elbows of the crowd ahead of us so they could be looking and save us some time once it was our turn.. I’m such a smart cookie.

Well, it turned out they were not the hold up this time. It was me and my oldest son, because like I mentioned above.. I just really dig embarrassing my kids and the opportunity presented itself to embarrass my son, I just couldn’t pass it up. It also turned out to be a mistake.. all of it, the not passing it up part and thinking that could still one up my son damn it. I am so NOT a smart cookie.

Everyone was telling me what they wanted and I was placing the order, when my son said he wanted chocolate covered peanuts otherwise known as Goobers. Now being the the extremely immature soul that I am, I decided he should place his own order and tell the cute young girl behind the counter what he wanted, by its proper name. So I smiled and said.. “Sure honey.. tell her what you want.”

Knowing me all too well and completely having my number, he told the girl he wanted a box of chocolate covered peanuts and smirked at me. So I told the counter chick, “No, no, no.. don’t give them to him until he asks for them properly, by their correct name.” She gave me a huge smile that lit up her whole face and readily agreed.

My son laughingly tells her, “Don’t listen to my mom, she has a mental problem.” To which she replied, “She seems fine to me, now what did you want to order?” He sighs loudly and repeats that he wanted the chocolate covered peanuts. Of course there wasn’t anything in her counter “named” chocolate covered peanuts, she told him so and asked if he knew what the “real name” was so she could check again.

He, thinking I wouldn’t carry it so far to get the poor girl in trouble, told her, “If you don’t give me a box of chocolate covered peanuts, I may have to tell the manager you won’t take my order.” Meanwhile, D is thoroughly enjoying himself because I did the same thing to him several months ago. I’m pretty sure he was just happy it wasn’t directed at him this time.. plus he’s an easy going fellow who is just as warped as I am when it comes to gaining pleasure from humiliating our kids.

Anyway, the girl smiles and asks him, “Would you like me to get my manager for you?” He glances over at me, I grinned at him with a “whatcha gonna do now” grin, he looked back at the girl who was giving him his second “whatcha gonna do now” grin in the span of 3 seconds and said.. “Yep, I want you to get your manager.”

Well shit! D started laughing his ass off and gave me a “whatcha gonna do now grin”, the girl looked at me with a “You bitch! You are going to get me in trouble” look and walked over to some dude that looked like a damn linebacker for a professional football team, who I assumed was the manager. I elbowed D in the ribs as hard as I could to get his ass back in line and on my side.. it didn’t work, but I did get a satisfying ‘oomph!’ out of it, while my son, in a matter of fact manner told me.. “You’re going to be sorry.”

The manager and all of his bulk came over to see what the problem was. Very loudly, my son tells him and probably everyone else in a 20 block radius of the theater.. “My mother loves Goobers! She loves to suck on them real hard until there is nothing left but the nuts, then she chomps down on them and crushes the nuts between her teeth. Do you have any Goobers back there that she can suck on? She’ll pay you.”

Well crap! I very successfully lost round one, and missed practically the whole movie because I spent my time plotting out a way to get even with him. Having Goobers on my mind I thought okay, that’s what that vile mixture of peanut butter and jelly all in the same jar is called. What the hell Smuckers was thinking when they invented that shit and decided to call it Goober is beyond me.. but completely beside the point.

So on the way home I told D to stop by the little family owned store that’s located a few blocks from my house. Most of the people who work there on the weekends are students.. students my son goes to school with, which could possibly be a source of humiliation for him since getting even with him was now a must. I described the mixed nastiness to him, told him I couldn’t remember the name of it and sent him in to purchase a jar.. yeah a poor excuse for payback I know, but I had to do something.

He goes in and comes back out to the car shaking his head. We’re all laughing at my really lame attempt to get even, he hands me the bag holding my jar of Goober Grape and says.. “You just won’t ever learn will you? They were real busy in there and Mr. H was having to help on one of the registers. He rang me up.”

Oh shit.. Mr. H is the owner of the store. He’s a divorced man that hits on every woman that comes in the place.. he also lives one street over from us, knows of my separated martial status and has attempted on a couple of occasions to “hook up”. Let me just interject here.. EEWW!

“I told him you were addicted to Goobers and to ask you about it the next time he saw you.”

Round two.. successfully lost. I give up.

Note of apology to all the blogs I usually frequent… I have been somewhat out of commission for the past several days due to funeral proceedings for the teenage son of a friend of mine. Please don’t think I’m rude and have quit visiting all of you who are so kind to stop by, read my nonsense and comment. Thanks ya’ll.

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I was in the dentist office the other day with the kids for yet another appointment of not knowing whether to spit or swallow. We were just sitting there waiting for our name to be called, thumbing through some magazines and playing a rambunctious game of rock, paper scissor, when in walks a lady with something in her hand.

This something, draped down from her hand, extended back behind her and she was tugging on it. So having my curiosity piqued and being the nosy bitch that I am, I kept on looking at her as she made her way in through the door. I wanted to know what the heck it was. It looked like a leash.. no make that two leashes.

Holy shit, I thought.. surely to God this woman was not bringing her dogs into the dentist office with her. Granted it was hot outside and it would have been inhumane to leave them in a locked up car.. but still, it’s a dentist office for Pete’s sake.. leave the beasts at home lady!

Finally, she works her way over into the waiting room, sits down and gives the command to “Sit”. Obediently they sat on the floor at her feet, giving me my first good look at them as she reached down and gave each of them a pat on the head for their good behavior. There is no other word to describe what went through my mind at that moment but appalled. I was appalled.

It wasn’t two dogs sitting at her feet getting a loving pat on the head, it was her two children who looked to be around 2 and 3 years old. She had her kids on leashes! Not out on a busy street, busy parking lot or busy shopping mall. She had her kids on leashes to walk through a parking lot that is on a relatively untraveled side road, a parking lot that holds maybe 10 cars and to wait in the serene surroundings of a professional business.

I’m sure some of you out there reading this may not see any problem with this, or perhaps you use or have used leashes on your children yourself. So let me just go ahead and say that I really don’t want to offend you, but.. OMG! I think you absolutely suck for doing that! That is a horribly degrading thing to do to your children. To have them on a leash! Like a dog! On. A. Leash. Like. A. Dog!

I sat there trying not to look at this woman and her dogs children, but it was like my eyes were drawn to them. They persisted in drifting back over in her direction. I kept hoping that once she got settled she would release them from captivity. Did she? Oh hell no she did not! Instead, she opens her purse, takes out a book and starts to read.

Then the office staff called her to the counter to fill out some forms. She got up, gave a couple of tugs on the leashes and the children got up to follow her. While she was digging in her wallet, one of them started drifting over to the side a little bit. Instead of simply telling the child to come back or reaching out to keep him from roaming off, she gave a hard yank on the leash that snapped him back to her side. I kept biting my tongue and repeating to myself.. “None of your business, keep your mouth shut. It’s none of your business!”

She completes the forms, sits back down, ties the leashes onto the frigging chair and continues where she left off in her book. One of the children tugged on her pants leg. She didn’t look at him or say anything, she just reached in her purse and pulled out what looked to be a baggie full of Cheerios. She scooped some out and held her hand down to the two children. I was expecting at any moment for them to bury their faces in her hand to gobble down their treat, or for her to make them play dead, roll over or perform some other kind of trick to get their reward, but thankfully they took them from her hand and quietly sat eating.

They looked so pitifully sad sitting there tethered to that chair. I had this inappropriate urge to set them free and tell them to run like the wind while they had the chance.. or scratch their bellies, get them a bowl of water.. something, anything.. I just felt so sorry for them.

I looked over at my kids whose eyes appeared to be as equally drawn to the scene as mine were. My oldest opened his mouth to say something.. to me, to her? I dunno. I put my finger over my mouth and shook my head no. Yes, I know, we were rude for staring, but it was virtually impossible to look away. My youngest son was looking her way too but whispering something to my 6 year old daughter who was staring at them as well. I was sure he was telling her to just be quiet about the whole appalling situation. I wanted to shout out in superiority, “Lookie there! I have mine trained too you old hag.. and without leashes!”

And just wouldn’t that have been embarrassing as hell had I yelled that out? Because right about then our name got called and we got up to make our way to the back of the office. I looked back to tell my daughter to come along with us and to my horror, there she was.. on all fours, in front of the woman and her children, pretending to be a dog. My oldest son started saying, “I was trying to tell you what he was telling her to do!” Meanwhile, I hear my daughter say, “Woof, woof! Can I have a Scooby Snack too? Woof!” HOLY SHIT!!!

Apparently, my dogs children need a little more training… or leashes. Pfft, screw the leashes, mine need muzzles.

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Around this time last year I was sporting a lovely black cast from my knee down due to.. okay let’s call it what it was.. stupidity. There is no other word to describe 4 broken bones in the foot of a 43 year old woman that just knew she could grind a rail on a skateboard because her sons made it look so easy.. and like so much fun. Trust me it’s neither.

Anyway, last night, in what looks to be a yearly trend, another skateboarding accident took place. This time it was my 15 year old son that was hurt, not me. He landed some kick flip vert doodad hickey majigger wrong and landed standing up on his ankle. Ouch! Since he couldn’t walk on it at all, and the last time he broke a bone I told him he was fine (I know.. I’m a bad mom) and waited a whole day before I took him to see about it, I figured we better not take a chance on this one. Plus it had swollen up to the size of a cantaloupe and it scared me.

So off we go to the emergency room where we spent way too many hours to be told to put ice on it until we could see an orthopedic specialist this morning. They did, however, give him some really good drugs, which was great for him, but sucked for me since it was 4:20am when we finally got home and he was out like a light.

Hmm.. what to do? He is 5 inches taller than me, weighs about 20 pounds more than I do, no one is around to help me get him in the house and I can’t wake him up. So I did what any good mom would do, I went and got him a blanket and some pillows and left him in the car. I did lock it though so he would be safe. No I didn’t really. I did get the blankets and pillows but I stayed out there with him until around 6:15 this morning when my neighbor knocked on the car door and woke us up wanting to know why the hell we were sleeping in the car.

Anyway, after seeing the orthopedic specialist this morning, we now know that my poor baby has a 3rd degree sprain which they say is worse than a broken ankle.. but lucky him.. he has two broken bones in his ankle too. Apparently, there is an inner and an outer bone, the outer one is broken, the inner is fractured. Oh! And he tore the ligaments. Unfortunately, nothing can be done about any of it until the swelling goes down, so until then he has to wear one of those boot brace thingies and use crutches.

This is what a pissed off 15 year old looks like when you won’t let him stay home by himself while you go to pick up your other children from school…

I couldn’t leave him alone. I had a fear the house was going to catch fire, explode, have a gas leak or something and he wouldn’t be able to move swiftly enough to get out in time.. so he had to go with me.

Now, for your viewing pleasure, hahaha.. this is a video of his and his skateboarding buddies in Atlanta last week. It shows them in action and pretty much how an injury of this nature could take place. I believe I kind of upset him when I remarked, “Geez! It’s no wonder you broke your ankle.. you guys are terrible!” Then he very haughtily informed me that this was a video of their bloopers. Yeah, sure.. whatever you say sugar, but I certainly hope it is, otherwise they should just hang it up.

I am very proud of his video making ability though. I think he did a great job on it…

This next extremely short clip that takes place at some house I’ve never seen before.. see how good of a mom I am? I don’t even know where my child was when he tried to win the stupidest stunt of the year award. Anyway, this one shows why I should consider myself lucky that he just has a broken ankle and not a broken neck…

In case your wondering.. yes, he gets his graceful moves from his mom.

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Yesterday afternoon my phone rings. It was our extremely funny priest. He used to be a Baptist preacher and converted to Catholicism then later became a priest. I am trying to talk him into starting a blog, hahaha.. he’s probably one of the most interesting men I know, but that’s a different story.

He was calling since he couldn’t talk to me after mass because I didn’t go. I’m a sinning heathen and a bad Catholic.. not really, I just liked how that sounded… okay, maybe the sinning part is true, hmm alright damn it.. it’s all true. My kids did go though, with my mom.

Anyway, he said something interesting happened after church service down in the Parish Hall. They serve donuts and coffee in there every Sunday after mass. Everyone goes down to partake of the free grub and chat, you know since they have just been cleansed and it’s a new week and all.. gotta get it started off right with some gluttony and gossip!

Okay, where was I.. he said he wanted to tell me an interesting story that involved my 6 year old daughter…

Priest: “Your little girl asked me if I wanted to play a game with her, so I said sure, what do you want to play?”

6 y/o: “We could play Hide and Seek.”

Priest: “Okay that sounds like fun.”

6 y/o: “We have to see who is going to be ‘it’ first. Put your foot over here.”

Priest: “So I put my foot over next to hers and she started saying a little chant thing while alternating touching our feet.”

Me: “Oh like an eeny meeny miney mo thing?”

Priest: “Exactly! But hers went something like this…”

6 y/o: “King Kong had a rubber ding dong, what color was it?”

Me: “Oh holy hell! No she did not! *laughing* What did you say?”

Priest: “Well after I quit choking I said.. Ummm black? And she proceeded to spell out b-l-a-c-k on our feet. I was ‘it’ by the way and hell isn’t holy in case you were unaware.”

He’s such a cool guy. But the moral to this story is, when your young child comes up and asks you, like mine did one day last week, “What’s a ding dong?” Don’t tell her/him it’s a snack cake made by Hostess.

That is NOT what they mean when they ask you that question.

30 Groovy Comments

Last night my 14 year old son came into the room, kissed me goodnight and told me there was a note on the kitchen counter I needed to sign. Then he took off running for his room.

Have I ever told ya’ll how smart he is? He was wise to run.

I ever so sweetly called after him to come back and bring me the note.
- You better get your butt back in here right now and bring me that note! -

So of course I was thinking.. he’ll be here any moment now with the note in hand. - Yeah that’s right little man.. run and hide, run and hide. -

Instead, from the distance of several rooms, a hallway and a flight of stairs, I heard a rather wimpy, “I love you Mom.. g’nite” and the slamming of a bedroom door. - Crap! I’m going to have to actually get up! -

Since I’ve become quite accustomed to getting notes from one of his teachers, having been weekly pen pals for the last three months and all, I pretty much figured out who the note was from. So I anxiously jumped up from the couch with a smile on my face and a little skip in my step, and made my way into the kitchen. - Grrr.. what in the hell has crawled up that man’s ass and died this time? Worse.. what has that child done now to tick him off? -

I was looking so forward to reading the 10 billionth pleasant little handwritten note on plain white paper I knew was waiting for me, but I couldn’t find it. - Where is my plain white paper note? No, no, no.. surely not! WTF?!? RED paper? -

It wasn’t a note at all. It was a form letter with lots of little check boxes (all empty) with offenses out beside each one. It had my son’s name on it, directly under the bold black heading that said, Notice Of Detention, and a fill in the blank line that had been completed to say, Report to school at 7am to carry out 3 day(s) of detention on 4/11, 4/12 and 4/13/2007.

- O-k-a-y! - Well that explained why he ran, but it didn’t explain why he got detention. I didn’t start to worry yet though because his teacher, being the proficient man he is at expressing himself, left me a clue. It was written slanted across the paper, very large and underlined three times in what appeared to be a black Sharpie..

“I HAVE HAD IT!”

Now I don’t know about ya’ll, but when I read that I kind of got the impression that the man was a wee bit perturbed. Obviously, this was a situation that needed to be addressed immediately and since I didn’t want to wake up the entire household, I called out to my son as quietly as I could but still loud enough to be heard. - C! GET . IN . HERE . NOW!!!”

He came dragging into the room, looking down at the floor and scratching his butt. He was trying his best to look like I had just woke him up from that sound 5 minute sleep he had enough time for.. pfft. I remained calm and in a soft spoken voice told him to tell me in his own words what had happened. - Start at the beginning! Leave NOTHING out! If you do, you WILL die before daybreak!” -

Here’s his story that came out in a couple of long run-on sentences. Needless to say, the detention is obviously deserved…

“Well you know how Mr. J gets mad if I do stuff with my teeth right? Well Z and I thought it might be funny if I put them in his desk drawer, so I did and when he opened it up, he screamed and everyone started laughing. He yelled at me to get my teeth out of his drawer and I told him I had my teeth in my mouth and then I smiled at him to show him and everyone started laughing again and I got detention. Then after class R told Z to ask me if I wanted to “go out” with her, she thinks I’m pimpin’! *insert his huge grin here*”

I suppose adding these…

… as a gag gift inside his Easter basket wasn’t so funny after all.

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