The Last Lasts

If you are a parent of a senior in high school you join me in gliding through senior year trying to take in the last lasts.  The last school picture, the last homecoming, the last high school sport tryout, the last holiday performance, the last prom and sadly for many of us, the last year they will be coming home to us every night.  We have entered that time as our children hit that milestone and prepare for their futures.  It’s a time of extreme pride but coupled with that of a jab in the heart that you can do nothing about.

I have always had the theory that I wasn’t trying to raise the best 7, 10, or 14 year old, but rather raising a responsible adult.  That’s our goal, right?  Our kids are not perfect, nor are we, but we dump all we have into teaching them and preparing them for the future so when they leave our homes they will become contributing members to our society.  So is it wrong to wish you could hold on to them just a bit longer?  Hide their text books so they can’t study and fail 12^th grade, hack their social media accounts so no one likes them but family, or even Tonya Harding them so they are stuck being dependent upon us a bit longer?  Of course it’s wrong – we need to send them out to the world so everyone can see what a fabulous job we did raising them!

In a year like we have had, the last lasts have been exacerbated by so much missed time and opportunity.  The last lasts were not the tremendous ordeal we had thought they would be – sports have been cut or deeply altered, homecomings were canceled, holiday shows were over You Tube or Zoom and hanging out with friends has been deemed dangerous.  But our kids stood tall, took on the challenge and came up with solutions that made the best of their last lasts.  This is how we know we did a hell of a job raising them AND that they are ready for what comes next.

As we run out this year of last lasts, I have decided to focus on what I call the next firsts to get me through.  I believe there will be so many more exciting things to look forward to as our kids enter adulthood and take on college, jobs, partners and families – although I am fine waiting about ten years on those last two!  Parents of younger children, don’t let my optimism fool you, when you get there it’s going to hurt like hell but rest assured that you have done your best and that you will be ready for your children to take on this next step- mostly!

So take the time to have any meal together you can, listen to them complain about the little things or the drama in their lives, try not to ask when the last time they showered was too often, don’t freak out when the car comes back with just enough gas to make it ¾ of the way to the gas station and unless they are committing a felony keep telling them how awesome they are doing.  Celebrate the small things and shower them with so much love so when they have had their official “last last” night at home they will look forward to the first time they get to come back to you.

Dead Parent’s Club

This year I joined the group I had been dreading for years, the dead parent’s club.  It’s not a club I wanted to belong to; I didn’t ask to join, I would have refused if given the option, and I may have even kicked someone’s ass to keep out of it.  I want to be honest, it sucks to belong but there are others that feel your pain and give you strength.  My parents both made us kids promise two things; first no matter what we do and how much we disagree we would always love each other and second, that we would not mourn their deaths and focus on the good times.  My dad was a funny guy, probably where I get most of my charm and sense of humor.   He was always trying to do things to make us laugh and when we got too old for his antics he just switched to our kids.  My brothers and I had several things about my dad that drove us crazy and made us laugh, my kids love these stories and actually beg me to tell them at least once a week.

My dad loved a good buffet, actually he loved ANY buffet.   The cheaper and dirtier the place, the better – or so he thought.  He had one place in particular that he loved to go, it was a Chinese buffet in a rundown strip mall, and while he got food poisoning every single time he went he could not help but return.  I would try to lay out the logic for him every time he called and said he had gotten the “flu” after eating there, but he wasn’t buying it.  I would tell him he couldn’t catch the flu 6 times in one month and that shitting yourself silly wasn’t actually the “flu”, but he thought I was crazy and would still invite me to go every time he went.  My kids ask why grandpa would keep going there even after he got sick, I finally told them I thought it was some type of diet where he could consume 8,000 calories but crap out 10,000 and other people would probably catch on to it eventually.  We call it the Larry diet!

My dad was a collector of junk and could not physically pass up a yard sale sign, it was like his car was programmed to stop.  When we were kids they would pack us up in the car and we would drive around for hours, hitting every yard sale in our county.  I seem to remember getting a Members Only jacket with someone else’s initials on the front of it and being told to wear it anyway cuz it was 50 cents.   While I don’t think he was a hoarder he would buy things that he knew he would never use.  “Check out this quesadilla maker I got for $6, it was only used once!”  The fact that he hated Mexican food and would not cook anything other than a fried egg had nothing to do with his decision, it was a good deal and he was getting it.  In the garage he had boxes of every size screw you can imagine and all sorts of scrap metal, just in case he was ever going to weld something (did I mention he didn’t own a welder?).  I have a severe aversion to clutter and clean out my closet every three months, I am guessing I don’t need a therapist to tell me where that issue came from.

Sometime after age 50 my father became obsessed with gas prices, weather and certain politicians.  I have no idea what triggered this to happen, it was like an overnight change, and it was how he opened every phone conversation we had.  Sadly whenever he asked me what the current gas price in Virginia was I had no answer for him and I could hear his disappointment through the phone.  He really wanted to be able to get worked up over what I was paying per gallon and all I could tell him was I think I paid $56, and no I did not remember how low the tank was when I fueled up.  I sensed he had a calculator out and was trying to break it down to overcome my lack of gas price knowledge.  When driving from Michigan to Virginia at Thanksgiving, my 9 year old pointed out that gas was $2.07 a gallon and wouldn’t grandpa be thrilled if he were alive.  I told them my best guess was that grandpa got the Gas God in a full nelson and was squeezing him until the prices drop back under $2.00.

Losing him was hard, but remembering him is easy.  I do my very best to think about all the fun we had for more than 40 years and how lucky I am to have had him all that time.   Even now when I have tears forming in my eyes I look up one paragraph and see the Gas God comment and I laugh out loud and I am reminded to give all the love I can to my own little darlings, and to offer up some kind of bribe so they don’t repeat all the crazy things their mom did to strangers one day.

Germcation

This year our family decided to take our family vacation to one of the larger water park resorts.  Actually the kids decided and knowing Disney was their next recommendation, and we couldn’t afford that this year, we agreed on the water park.  Now, I am a germ-a-phobe, things like hotel rooms where 2,000 other people have slept, arcades where kids touch every orifice they have before hitting the one button your kid needs to touch and water parks where everything is possible (pee, poo, vomit) with the rule that you close it down for 60-90 minutes and all the germs miraculously disappear.   The whole thought makes me shudder , but we committed to doing this thing with our kids so I made the reservation and for a mere $300 a night I could subject myself to the things will most likely result in my needing counseling or meds to ward off the nightmares.

You have to enter into this whole thing with the idea that you’re going to be doing a lot of waiting, and you are going to want to punch a lot of people, but cannot, unless you want to spend additional money on bail and Lord knows my kids are going to need that money for souvenirs and the arcade.  It’s not so much the waiting that bothers me, as the fact that people take no responsibility for their kids when they are waiting next to you.  If your kid is zigzagging in and out of the line and whacking people with his magic wand, it is time to sit his ass down somewhere – I don’t really care where, just as far away from me as possible.  Also, to the lady with the kid that just stands behind me and whines the entire time, “How much longer, mommmmmmmmmy”, I saw your husband walk off (as I would have if that were my child) get his ass on the phone and have him remove your brat, preferably outside.

Of course, the first thing my kids want to do after check-in are the things that are not included in the price of the stay; the arcade, rock climbing, mini-golf, wizard game and having their caricature done by some art school drop-out.  These are the creepiest things in the world and where the hell are we going to put it?  You kids want it hang that up in your room, because I guarantee when you wake up at 1:00AM one night you are going to take one look at that thing and start screaming at its giant, malformed head.  We decided to do that wizard game, which includes running up and down four flights of stairs with 700 other kids that have no issue slamming into the back of you and stepping on your feet and apparently have never heard the term ‘Excuse me’.  After an hour of that I offered up ice cream or any other treat they wanted if they were ready to head to the pool (don’t judge, I have never claimed to be perfect).

The water park is the loudest place that I have ever been, between the 10 million gallons of rushing water and the kids screaming it is the equivalent of standing next to a jet taking off.  My kids pretty much get whatever they want while we are in there because I can’t hear them and just keep saying “yes” to everything they ask.  What really bothers me is the attire of my fellow swimmers.  There is appropriate, there is inappropriate and then there is what I would call offensive.  First, swimsuits should cover your body in a way that does not call attention from the people around you.  If you are large, a bikini is not the way to go, and men, a Speedo thong is meant for people in the Olympics, not for chasing your kid around the water park structure when you are dangerously close to that next grid on the doctor’s weight chart.   There are so many things I saw, that unfortunately I cannot unsee, however to the very large woman that wore a long shirt over your bathing suit, your efforts did not go unnoticed and I applaud you. 

While I am on a people observation rant, why is it that the people with more than five kids and really bad tattoos are the ones that get into some kind of lover’s quarrel right after they decide to make out in public?  Of course it was like a Jerry Springer episode and I could not look away, even when my husband kept saying, “Poker face honey, they know you are staring right at them!”  I couldn’t stop, at some point I was waiting for a producer from Cops to have me sign a waiver because I had a front row seat to one of the uglier domestic disputes, sadly it ended in the man stomping away while his wife stood in place crying.  I really wanted to go to her, hand her a kleenex and say, “Don’t worry sweetie, he’ll be back and you will be knocked up with baby six any day now”.

I think what bothers me the most is the people that bring their kids to a restaurant and let them run around.  We purposely leave the resort to go to nice restaurants to avoid the people that somehow lose the ability to see what their kid is doing when they sit down at a table.  One evening we went to a nice place that thankfully had a full bar.  One family had a younger child, about 8, that apparently had a spring in his seat because every time he tried to sit down he bounced back up.  At one point the servers were dodging him, as he was having an imaginary sword fight with some sharp object he picked up and the parents did not even look his way.  Once the sword wielding calmed down, the child started doing karate directed at the people sitting at the next table and then when I finally thought a parent maybe took him outside for a nice “talk” I realized that he had gone to the ground and was rolling from table to table all over the dirty floor (the least of his worries).  I assumed he began digging a tunnel and was going to pop up under our table at any moment, if he had spilled my wine I may be in jail instead of writing this.  At some point apparently I was looking their way with what my husband calls my ‘non-poker face’ and the mother caught my face and said something to the child.  Rest assured, that did nothing to slow him down and she went back to her drink and conversation.  So much for thinking that spending $100+ on dinner would keep you away from the low-class.

At some point in our live we come to the realization that we are going to have to do a lot of things we don’t want to do.  Like most things, we have the opportunity to turn it into something fun and positive and while my silver lining was people watching, I also got to spend time watching my kids enjoy themselves.  So I will continue to go on bad vacations and hope for less than favorable service and bad kids so I have something to continue to ramble on about and entertain you.

Common Senseless

I don’t know if it’s the fact that I am getting older, or that I am just burnt out from the summer, but lately I have found myself with such a short fuse that if I were to take up smoking I would spontaneously combust. I was raised in a home where common sense was a driver in decisions that we made and not some optional topping at the local ice cream shop. Again, maybe it’s just me and the fact that I have been locked down with young ones all summer, but I ask, where has all the common sense gone?

About now you are asking yourself what could have caused me to reach my boiling point. Well, in an effort to seem like a better parent, since I have spent so much time yelling at my kids for the past 5 or 6 weeks (or years, it’s blurry now) I decided to take them on some outings and have some “fun”. This has resulted in my enjoying my kids, but becoming highly irritated with other people and their children. A couple of days ago I took my two kids to an event at the local library and maybe it was the lack of alcohol provided or a sudden rush of hormones, but I found myself actually thinking about hurting people.

My first point of irritation? Bringing infants or extremely young children to an event where being quiet is required. I know your baby is cute, and most people LOVE babies, but not in a 15 x 15 room where we are trying to hear one person speak or give directions. I know that I heard the speaker say at the beginning that crying children need to be removed and are welcome back once they have calmed down, apparently I am the only person that heard this directive. When they said you, they meant YOU not just the one person they were making eye contact with at that very moment. It should have been clear that it wasn’t an option, if your kid is crying you need to leave. I made it a point to make eye contact with these people and give them my best sneer or shake of the head that I could muster.

Next, why have adults stopped wearing shoes in public? I am not talking about in your front yard or running to the mailbox, I am referring to the dozen or so people I saw at the library bare foot. So many questions are running through my head but mostly, where are your shoes? Did I miss some kind of mat at the entrance where we were supposed to take them off? Is there some kind of new rumor that wearing shoes will stunt your growth? Newsflash, you’re adults, you have stopped growing – at least vertically, shoes will not hurt you. Also, stop playing with your feet, there is nothing more disturbing than having to sit next to a 45 year old digging at their nails and peeling off dead skin and dropping it on the floor next to me. It was traumatic enough that I considering counseling to cope.

I am also highly irritated with the most important people in the world, those that MUST use their cell phones not matter what is going on. During the event a woman stayed on her phone talking during the entire show, I don’t even think she stopped to breath (or bother to look for her kid who had come over and was digging through my purse). Once again, when the speaker said , “Silence your cell phones or turn them off” it was a collective YOU. There is always the occasional person that has to make the point loud enough for everyone to hear; “I must keep my phone on in case of emergency”, but let me say that an emergency phone call requires an answer and then I should see you running like a cheetah to get to your emergency situation. When you sit on the phone for 56 minutes talking about yourself it’s not an emergency. Turn off your damn phone or step out of the room – and for God’s sake take your purse digging kid with you (P.S. I would like my roll of Certs back from the little thief!).

As we left I was feeling a bit edgy and thought, it must just be me. However when the first words out of your kids’ mouths are, “Did you hear that lady on the phone the whole time?” and “You would think that lady would have taken her baby out of the room instead of letting it scream”, I felt quite validated. The old motto, ‘If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all’ is being replaced with, ‘If you can’t respect the people around you, please know I will make it a point to talk about you to anyone that will listen’. Of course, that should just be common sense!

Dark Skies, Brighter Sun

Have I mentioned lately that I don’t have an incurable disease or terminal illness?  Or that my kids are healthy and were born without any disabilities?  That life is good and that I am looking forward to the future?  That’s because most conversations don’t start out this way and honestly I would love it if they did.  Most of us discuss the drama and trauma in our lives because people have come to expect it.   Bad things seem more fun to share than good things and I don’t know what twisted part of our brains accept that, but what would you rather watch Little House of the Prairie or Happy Hookers vs Serial Killers III?

Let me back up a bit here, my husband and I (mostly him) spent more than a month redoing our kitchen and family room, it was hard work.  We had contractors do the countertops and paint, but we burned a lot of time and energy getting it done.   Three days ago it was complete and it looked fantastic.  Twenty four hours later we found that the painter may have pushed our fridge in a tad too far which resulted in a water line break and mass water damage.  You know the kind I am talking about, when you find your ceiling on the ground  and you require a dinghy.  After hours of clean-up and calls to insurance we dropped into bed exhausted and heartbroken.  When I woke the next morning I decided to come up with a list of things that are worse :

• House burning down
• Losing sentimental stuff
• Tornado carrying the house away (and not landing in Oz)
• Having herpes
• Diagnosis of a terminal or incurable disease
• Losing a loved one
• Pet dying (although I am getting tired of cleaning the hamster’s cage)
• Losing your job (been there, done that)
• Losing a limb
• Running someone over
• Getting run over
• Going to prison
• Living in a third world country
• Teaching FLE to fourth or fifth graders

You get the idea, there is a whole lot of shit that could have happened and while I was depressed for 17 minutes or so I kicked my own ass and then came up with reasons that we are fortunate:

• Our family of 4 is happy, healthy and probably could pass a mental health inquiry
• Both sets of parents are still alive and well
• My husband has a job, me too but far less meaningful
• We are able to afford insurance to cover disasters like this
• The fact that the house has been 95 degrees for  48 hours means I can just stand still and sweat off weight and don’t need to vomit after the brownie I snuck
• I don’t have herpes
• I haven’t been run over
• I am not in prison

So, yes, life sometimes throws you a curve ball and you decide how you want to throw it back or if you just want to keep it, put it on your desk and occasionally glance at it for a reality check.  Heck – all I have to do is open a new tab while I am typing this and go to the CNN page and I can quickly count off 10 things that are WAY worse than water damage.   So count your blessings, kiss your kids, enjoy life or just be happy with the fact that you don’t have herpes.

Sunscreen & Hair Brushing

There isn’t much I despise more than applying sunscreen or brushing my children’s hair.  It is like God’s true test to see if we are worthy or not, and apparently I am not.  I have never once been able to get through either of these activities without crying, screaming and being accused of trying to hurt them on purpose.  There is so much grief involved in these two things, that I find myself excusing us from doing things just so I don’t have to be bothered with these painful chores.

 

It is summer and I know my kids need to be protected from these harmful UV rays.  Our dermatologist echoes this with his scare-the-shit-out-of-you tactic to earn his semi-annual visits and $40 co-pays.  Let me throw in the fact that I have been watching ‘The Big C’ on Showtime and I am constantly diagnosing my family and self with some sort of potential melanoma.  For many years I have used that spray on sun screen that is one of the most brilliant things ever created, however this year the article in the dermatologist’s office warned of any sunscreen containing oxybenzone or retinyl palmitate, as they have a tendency to cause more harm than good.  Of course I take that one article as gospel and on my next trip to the store I find one sunscreen that doesn’t contain these two chemicals and guess what, it’s a lotion.

 

Applying lotion sunscreen to two kids is similar to wrestling a female alligator trying to protect her young.  I am really not sure how I get out alive each time, but there is a black out period I experience and I can’t be sure what happens or be held responsible for my actions.  I begin the process by warming the lotion in my hands before I start to rub it in, before I even touch them their motion detectors go off and they start pulling away from me.  This only causes me to grab them and pull them back toward me resulting in, “You are hurting me” or “I think you dislocated my arm”.  Yes, I am sure I did, you want to go to the pool or not?  Apparently massage therapists have it all wrong, because there is nothing relaxing about having someone rub lotion into our skin, in this case for the rub-er and the rub-ee (are those even words?).

 

I always wind up getting sun screen in the kid’s eyes no matter what tactic I try, so I am not even careful anymore.  “Look, it’s getting in your eyes either way, so let’s just speed this up and go with the squirt and slap around method!”  By the time we finish this entire process, stop crying and making accusations about inflicting bodily harm, two hours have gone by and we can now go to the pool for about 25 minutes before our next obligation.

 

Hair brushing is probably still more painful; for me, not them.  I have bought every kind of brush, comb and spray and the results are the same.  My six year old starts crying before I even finish the sentence, “You need to comb your hair”.  For some reason, even after my kids comb their hair it looks like they just rolled out of a static filled blanket.  I am so envious when I see kids with perfectly kempt hair, are they aliens?  Do their moms comb it using special glue that keeps it in place?  Whatever the secret it, I am willing to pay.

 

I have started to bow out of things, just to keep from having to comb their hair and the frustration that follows.  Even as I type this I know I need to go to Walgreens, but I would need them to comb their hair, so maybe I can just wait until my husband comes home and avoid the trauma.  I am really thankful that my oldest child has chosen swim as her sport of choice as I don’t even bother with her hair in the morning, why would I comb her hair just to have her jump in the pool and mess it up?  I am all about efficiency, spending ten minutes combing out her hair when I know she is going into the water is not a wise decision and would go against all those models I studied in grad school.

 

So, if you are wondering how I am spending my summer, I think it is quite obvious.  I will probably burn as many calories chasing my kids around the house with a tube of Banana Boat or a Goody brush, as I would climbing a mountain in stilettos.  It’s still not enough calories to get me into a bikini, but we got two months of sun screening and brushing to go, and I am feeling optimistic!

Pubic Etiquette

We are five days into the neighborhood pools opening and I already have enough material to write about 15 separate blogs.   I am not just talking about what people wear (or don’t wear), but how their children act and what “Rights” people think they have.   We belong to a community, where we share resources and respect each other.  At least that’s what it says in the proprietary guidelines, which I think most people missed reading.

 

I really just wish I knew what some people were thinking before they dressed and headed out to the PUBLIC  pool.  I feel first and foremost that I need to define the word public, which is not to be confused with the word pubic; however after seeing many people at our pool, I know it has been.  The word public has been defined as, ‘open to all persons, or affecting a population of community’.  It does not mean that you can forego shaving or that you should wear anything that allows us to see those areas reserved for your gynecologist.  They get paid a lot of money to look at that, we don’t!

 

I admit I wear a one piece or one of those tankinis, where the top overlaps the bottom – You’re Welcome!  There are many women that can still wear a bikini and look awesome (bitches), but there are even more that shouldn’t.  There was a lady actually wearing a thong on Saturday, or maybe it was just a normal binkini that her ass sucked in.  I don’t know and don’t care, still unacceptable.  And here’s a tip for you, if you are going to shove yourself into a tiny bathing suit, enjoy a piece of fruit, don’t be the woman waving down Domino’s for your meat lover’s pizza, cheese bread and chocolate lava cake.

 

Now, I am all about men looking manly, but a little laser hair removal never hurt anyone.  I have some tips to make pool time better for us all.  If it looks like you brought your cat into the pool with you, it is time to shave or put on a shirt.  If your belly hangs past your balls, it is time to put a shirt on.  If you are covered with pimples that are festering, it is time to put a shirt on.  Oh, and I don’t care how good of shape you are in, Speedo bikinis are for professional swimmers, not middle aged men.

 

This year I have bought myself a badge and will be enforcing my own pool toy martial law.  Your kid hits me with their toy – it’s now mine and just try getting it back.  Ever had an enema with a swim noodle?  That is how you get your noodle back!  In the five days since the pool has opened, my kids and I have been hit numerous times by dads trying to show their kids how bad their aim has gotten with middle age.  Yesterday a ball hit my 6 year old in the face hard enough to bring tears to her eyes.  After checking to see if she was ok, I turned around with the ball in my hand to see where it came from and when the person held up their hands I threw it as hard as I could in the opposite direction.  I only wish I could have thrown it over the fence.  Yes, my child is fine, thanks for NOT asking asshole!

 

For those of you that let your toddler wander into the pool while you chat with your friends or try to read a book, you are an idiot.  It is important to know that the Lifeguards at our pool are not there to save your kid’s lives and have no vested interest in your children; sure they might feel bad for a day if something happened to your kid, but that’s about it.   Their primary focus is to tell you the pool is too full for you to enter, yell at kids for running or eating on the pool deck and get awkward sunburns that make you question their intelligence.  Watch your damn kids!

 

As you can see, I have plenty of things to say about our community pool and the ‘community’ that goes to the pool.   That being said, I will be a regular with my kids since our teachers are too lazy to keep them all summer and now I have find ways to entertain them daily.  Of course I will need to find ways of entertaining myself, which means I will be people watching and taking notes which will be coming to a  Facebook near you soon.

 

My Link Turns 50

Many of us are fortunate to have one person in their life that makes them a better person.  We have them and we call them best friends, besties, BFF, soulmates or lifers.  I have found that one person in my life plays such an important role that calling her something like a best friend just isn’t enough; as it doesn’t clearly indicate what she means to me.  The person that I am describing is that final link that connects a chain that makes me the person I am.  Today that person hits a tremendous milestone and turns 50, which means she has graced this world for half a century.

 

Our friendship began in a cloud of Bud Light which led to what we dubbed “front yard parties” and the occasional all-nighter.  These are some of my best memories, as we never had to stagger more than a few feet from where we had originally plopped to get to our front door, and hopefully our beds.   I clearly remember when our friendship had matured when I asked my husband to stop giving her a hard time and be nicer to her.  After a week of that she pulled me aside and said, “I don’t like him being nice, it’s creepy, I want him to go back to treating me like shit, it’s better for our friendship!”  Nuf said, he has been terrible to her ever since, but it is done with great affection.

 

This friend I speak of is full of light and love.  She makes everyone she speaks with feel special and is one of the few people in this world that people flock to.  She lights up a room when she enters, and because she is usually the last to leave, the light leaves with her.  She has a laugh that reaches into you, and when she isn’t saying something funny she may do something like mispronounce a simple word like tree as “T-ree” or eat some crumbs leftover from lunch out of her cowl neck sweater.

 

So I dedicate today’s blog, to some of my real “Bliss” – Sue.  You have made such a tremendous difference being in my life and I can’t imagine how I would have turned out without you.  While I am not with you today, I will be drinking many toasts to you and I will spill some red wine down the front of me in your honor.  Happy birthday to my very special link, I love you with all my heart, but in a totally non-lesbian way.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Opportunity Cost

My eight year old daughter recently completed the economics unit for her third grade social studies class.  I have to say that I have always felt this is a topic that should be taught early, as it has such a direct relation to our daily lives.  It is some good shit to learn, especially in this age of giving our children everything just to keep up with our neighbors or relieve our guilt for not spending enough time with them. 

 

My daughter’s favorite term from this unit is opportunity cost.  She uses this as frequently as possible to point on the many ways I could have made better choices, which by the way I truly appreciate.  It started out cute; at the grocery store she would point at the Chips Ahoy and tells me if she chooses those then she will be giving up the “opportunity” to get the Oreos.  I agree and tell her I am glad that she sees what she is learning can be applied outside of the classroom.  She then goes on a dissertation about how difficult it is to make the choice and it would be easier if she could get both because then the people making them would stay employed.  A noble response and I commend the manipulation that goes along with her statement.  I tell her to pick one and when I turn around to yell at her sister she puts both packages in the cart anyway.  Later she defends this action with some more economic BS.

 

She has also chosen to analyze my life and the choices I have made.  On our way to some activity that is clearly not for me (because what is these days?), she will ask why I chose not to work and make money so we can do more things.  WOW…there are so many ways to answer this question, but not many that will make sense to an eight year old.  “Well, mommy works part-time so that I can be home for you and be able to take care of you and your sister.  This is also a job, so it is like I work full-time.”  I know it fell on deaf ears like most things I say, but like most things I say, it is for myself more than the kids.

 

I have decided to come up with some of my own examples of opportunity cost that I may use in our point-counterpoint discussions, because it is healthy to argue and keep score with a child.  So here we go:

 The cost of my comfort is allowing you to come to my bed after you wake up with a nightmare

The cost of my ability to do anything for myself is being available 24/7 for you and your sister

The cost of my privacy is your ability to interrupt my 45 second trip to pee

The cost of my enjoying a meal while it is warm, is ensuring you kids are eating

The cost of my relaxing is being a maid for everyone

 

You get the picture, as a parent anything you want or desire is always trumped by our children’s wants and needs.  I have decided to re-define the economic terms she has been using so that they more accurately reflect the way kids understand them:

Opportunity Cost – Getting what I want instead of what mom wants

Want – Something that I ‘Need’, but mom calls a ‘Want’

Need – You know; DSI, ice cream, TV in my room – things I need to survive

Scarcity – My mom’s sanity

Income – Something mom doesn’t make enough of

Limited Resources  – ??? Does not compute….

Spending – I could do more if mom would work more

Specialization – My special ability to have mom get done what I need (also known as manipulation)

 

It is important that you become familiar with these terms, as you will be tested on them regularly, as will your patience.   Since the kids are in school today, I am going to give up the opportunity to clean their bathroom and take a trip to Macy’s to acquire a want, which after looking at my sorely outdated wardrobe is more of a Need.

Got An App For That

My husband thinks that Facebook is the most ridiculous use of anyone’s time and swears that as long as he has testicles he will never use it.  I am not glued to it by any means, but as a mom that works from home and doesn’t get out much it gives me a place to air my grievances and keep up with what my “friends” are doing.  I have to admit, it can be addicting, especially when you throw some comment out there with bait and you want to see if anyone is biting, so you log in every 20 minutes or so.  I admit it is distracting and does keep me from things I don’t mind like laundry and exercising.

 

My husband does have a smart phone which he seems to use for anything under the sun.  He has an ‘app’ for everything and feels the need to tell me constantly.  “Did you hear that song, know what it is?  No and I don’t really care.  Well, I just click this app and after a few seconds I can tell you what song it is and who sings it.  Wow how did we live before that?”

 

He also wants to load all these really useful apps onto my phone, you know in case I suddenly needed to locate the Big Dipper or find out how many calories are in the super size Snickers I am shoving in my face.  I don’t need any more shit on my phone, I have so many things on it now that I am constantly calling someone when I am trying to use the GPS and I keep moving my icons to other screens with my oversized earrings and then freaking out when I can’t find my calculator icon. 

 

My husband, always wanting to be helpful, is always trying to add some new app on my phone that will make my life easier.  You know what would make my life easier?  It starts with a nanny, a housecleaner and someone to entertain the kids, you got an app for that?  Yeah, I didn’t think so.  That app he downloaded for all my key ring codes has been nothing but a huge pain in my ass, it never works causing me to hold up lines and have to curse at the a-hole behind me bold enough to make mention of it.  I don’t have an ass kicking app, but I am pretty sure this magnum bottle of wine I got in my cart can handle the job! 

 

He is always messing with his phone for everything and apparently is completely unaware of it.  Recently we were out to dinner with the kids and he is checking fantasy football or using one of his apps to tell him what to order or what the best way to drive the 3.3 miles back home is, so I grab my phone and he says, “What are you checking Facebook again?”  First of all, Yes, I am.  Second I use my phone as little as possible and I don’t need smart ass comments when I do.  Of course I give the silent treatment through dinner and he asks three times if anything is wrong.  “Check your phone, don’t you have an app that tells you that you have pissed your wife off and might want to consider sleeping on the couch tonight?”  There’s an app they all need.

 

I know many people will disagree with me and tell me how important these precious apps are and how their convenience and the magic of technology should not be underestimated or unappreciated.  I am sure these people also have apps to deal with their apparent social retardation as well.  I am ok trying to figure things out on my own, as civilization did before smart phones and the Internet.  And guess what…..I have SERVICE all the time in my head and you don’t have an app for that!