Hairy, gangly and grunting

The son is currently a hilarious caricature of a teenager. He’s anti-social, monosyllabic and most of all, hairy. Gone is the sweet little thing that would sit on my lap and let me pick which sweater vest he’d wear for picture day. In its place is this insanely tall, awkwardly sullen kid with nothing to say in the morning (“I’m not a morning person, Mom.”) or after school (“Bad day, Mom”) or before bedtime (“Too tired, Mom.”) This kid wants less to do with me than I do with fleas in my underwear.

Yet, there are moments when I see a glimmer of the sweetheart who used to let me tuck him in and who would rush to show me the good grade he got on his spelling test. Every once in awhile, a smile will crack the carefully maintained façade and my heart will leap and butterflies will flit around my head. Then the crack will slam shut, to be replaced with that look that says, “Mom. You are so lame. And so are your stupid butterflies.”

He was such a sweet little man. And I hope someday, he’ll be a sweet grown-up man. I just have to survive the next few years with my butterflies intact.

hug THIS, kid

I tried to hug my daughter this weekend and she stiff-armed me with a stern, “Mom. No.” I said, “Why?” She said, “I don’t hug family members. Only my friends.”

Well, let me tell you something, missy.

I gave BIRTH to you and I wiped your hiney and I taught you cuss words and you know the one normal thumb you have? I gave you that. Half of your chromosomes, your brown eyes, and your chins. All me, baby.

If you weren’t bigger than me and freakishly strong, I would’ve hugged you anyway. Instead, I put cat food in your dinner. Hug THAT.

Love,
Mom

more effing character than Disney

I was reminiscing to my kids about what life was like when I was their age and I got the feeling they think I’m full of crap. I could tell by the way they kept saying, “Mom, you’re so full of crap!”

My kids are wrong.

For instance, I remember rolling down the highway in the back of my Dad’s truck. Not in the back seat of my Dad’s truck, sillies. In the BACK of my Dad’s truck, with the leaking gas can and the toe-squishing spare tire and the sharp, stabby, dead pine needles.

As strict believers in Darwin’s law of the jungle, the bigger kids always laid claim to the coveted “spot against the cab”, where they were slightly protected from the 55 mile-per-hour, eye-piercing tornado of sawdust, twigs, and dead bugs. The younger and smaller you were, the closer to the tailgate you had to sit. That was the worst spot because your lips were all that stood between you and French kissing some bug guts.

My kids, raised in 3-strap industrial strength car seats until the 3rd grade, can’t fathom it. In fact, I suspect they wistfully think riding in the back of a truck was actually some fantastical form of tingly transportation.

Now, it’s worth noting that we were country kids, not townies. We had rattlesnakes while other kids had pesky sugar ants in their pantries. Our parents, out of a desire to escape the asphyxiating confines of convenience and electricity, moved us to the official Middle of Nowhere the summer of my 13th year. We were 1 mile up a dirt driveway and almost 25 miles from the nearest town of notable size. Their plan was for us to build a house and some character*, not necessarily in that order.

(*This was our parents’ battle cry: it builds character. The harder/messier the wound/work/lesson, the better the character. For example: My brother: “Dad, I cut half my thumb off splitting kindling.” Dad (slapping a well used back-pocket bandana over the wound): “Scars build character.” If that’s the case, my brother has more character in his thumb than both of my kids put together.)

My siblings and I did things every day that my kids think only exist in really lame old-timey movies. Manual labor *gasp*. Making do with less *ohthehumanity*. Entertaining ourselves without electricity *horror*.

The fact is, I can make these totally unembellished statements about my childhood and I swear on my precious angels’ pampered little lives that I am 100% not full of crap:

We had a cliff on our property. I played on it, 40 feet above jagged rocks that would’ve looked lovely with my blood all over them. There was a rattlesnake den in a cave underneath the cliff. I liked to throw rocks in there just to hear the rattles go off. (Sorry, Mom.)

We had a pet goat. He was so stupid, he hung himself one cold winter night. I poked his dead tongue with a stick before my dad told me to get away from there.

We once found a bear (see: a mammal with claws and an appetite) in the treehouse above our sleeping baby cousin’s playpen. It got shot.

A spray bottle of undiluted kerosene spritzed on kindling gets the morning fire going RIGHT NOW. (Sorry, Mom.)

The closest my kids can come to my childhood is that they once saw a bear in a book, and there’s a cliff on Gramma and Grampa’s property where they’re absolutely not allowed to go. They just haven’t built enough character for it.

My kids think I'm lovely

I was having a random, wandering conversation with my kids the other day about their day at school, when they hit me with this zinger:

Becca: "Hey, Matthew. I was at your school helping in the keyboarding class and I saw Mary..." Matthew interrupts: "I think she looks like Mom", while Becca continues "...my friends say she's a fat whore."

There followed a great silence...and then we laughed so hard, Becca ran off to the bathroom before she peed herself.

It reminded me of the time I was playing gin rummy with my dad. I was about 12 and I accidentally flipped him off. Or the time my little brother accidentally told my mom to shut up. I can vouch for the fact that teenagers don't have any control between what they MEAN to do and what they ACTUALLY do.

I can also vouch for the fact that while I may be fat, I am no whore. After their hysterics died down, the kids assured me that this is, in fact, true.

Phew.

this is not about Tiger's wang

Tiger Woods’ (you thought I was gonna say penis, didn't you?) daughter goes to school, which wouldn’t strike me as odd…if she wasn’t two years old. That’s a bit younger than the typical kid is forced to learn that 2+2=blue, isn’t it?

When my kids were two, they still had potty incidents and managed to spill their spill-proof sippy cups. Their days definitely didn’t include English Lit first period.

When Becca was two, she climbed into the garbage dumpster and ate from the sugar canister someone had thrown out. When Matthew was two, he stuffed a banana in his toy-box and I caught him eating it days later. Trust me, they were in no shape to sit still and listen to a teacher for hours at a time.

Now, before you consider the source and decide my kids were probably paste-eating grunters until they were six or seven, please note: my kids were very smart (and still are, though they’re currently teenagers so that takes some of the smartness right out of them by virtue of chemistry and hormones).

I’m just not sure what two year old would tolerate a structured classroom environment without absolutely losing their sh*t. I think it’s cruel to force that on 'em. At that age, they should be frolicking freely, pretending to be boogers or raindrops or pink polka dots or something.

Hell. Who knows. Maybe little Miss Woods is a child prodigy. I know her DAD was a prodigy by the time he was two and look at him now. Quality.

I’m just thinking they should give the kid a break. Just let her be two and smear pudding on her face and take a nap when she’s tired and spend time with Mom instead of Staff. But that’s just me.

Quality time with Becca

I was sitting on the couch next to Becca last night. We were watching TV and she slowly leaned toward me and lay her head lightly on my shoulder. Awww, I thought, pleasantly surprised, my heart swelling…then she farted. Apparently, more important than snuggling with her mom, she was just freeing up some space.

May the guilt be with you forever and ever and ever

When my kids were little, I spent all my time worrying about the decisions I was making. Was the movie I just let them watch going to turn them into crazy, shotgun-toting, clown-loving cult members? What if the way I taught them to tie their shoes wasn't the right way? Was I feeding them enough preservatives?

But now that I'm the mother of teenagers, I don't worry about my decisions any more; I worry about theirs. It's the natural order of things. Look it up.

Their past, present, and future decisions make up about 99% of my worrying nowadays. (The other 1% is worry about my mustache. Don't pretend you didn't notice.)

I remember being a kid. I wasn’t sorry I DID whatever I was in trouble for, I was sorry I got CAUGHT. Made me more careful. If I caught my kids doing some of the stuff I did at their age, I’d just cry and Steven would take everything away from them but their underwear.

It's time to face the fact that there may realistically come a day when Matthew's privileges are as follows: FM radio and toilet paper.

And I just know that the booking officer will turn to me and say, "This is all your fault."

boy, 1. mom, 0.

Mom, singing, "What do tigers dream of..."

Matthew, "Mom, who sings that?"

Mom, "Umm...Ed Helms, I th..."

Matthew, "Let's keep it that way."

ZING!

Random musings

The other day, Becca described a guy as "tall and dangly". I assume she meant gangly, but might be wrong.

Christmas decorations left up after New Years are a visual example of how it feels to be clinically depressed.

I realized I root for the movie bad guy more often than not.

Large groups of small children in an enclosed room smell like a herd of goats. And small groups of large kids in an enclosed room smell like Frito chips. It's science. Look it up.

She's got BALLS.

Hosanna, the cat my alleged daughter brought home a few months ago, has quickly become a snuggly part of the family. She's sweet and cuddly and she sure does love to sleep. Kind of like my big sister, but with slightly more fur.

She's getting big and growing up, so I was just starting to think about taking her to the vet to get her parts fixed/removed/cauterized/shut down when my alleged daughter came to me with a seriously concerned look on her face.

"Mom. I think Hosanna's got balls."

Guh.

"No way. Are you sure?" I dare ANY ONE OF YOU to have a quicker comeback upon encountering unexpected testicles. There's NEVER a good time for surprise balls.

"Yeah, Mom. I know what balls look like."

Uh. That's not something you want to hear from your teenage daughter. But at that moment, I had more important things to deal with. I grabbed the cat and flipped it over and sure enough. Balls. BALLS, man!

The alleged daughter just crossed her arms and said, "See? I told you she's got balls."

What could I say? My daughter knows balls when she sees them.

La syphilis

So, Becca and I were watching a movie about a girl who travels to France & meets a guy who invites her to a party. Using this as an opportunity to hammer home an already well-hammered point, I told Becca, "Someone can get an STD in France just as easily as they can in America."

Her response? "But in France, they have fancier names."

Let's test the theory.

English: "I caught syphilis."
French: "J'ai pris la syphilis."

By golly, SHE'S RIGHT! Why, the french version sounds almost fun!

Fact: It's never, EVER boring having a conversation with Becca.

Sabotage, thy name is Mom

I don't think it's a secret that I would prefer it if we lived in a completely segregated society where boys couldn't get anywhere near my daughter and girls couldn't get within a brick wall and barbed wire fence of my son. Unfortunately, that's called a CULT and is frowned on by most. That being said, I insist that other preventative measures must be taken. Applying butter to their faces while they sleep to clog their pores, hiding their deodorant, filling their shampoo bottles with mayonnaise...there are many ways, grasshopper. This mom knows.

Becca's youth group has the right idea: boys are red, girls are blue, and there shall be NO PURPLING. But that doesn't mean there aren't shades of violet and a wee bit of perriwinkle every now and then. Nice try, Church Lady.

Matthew's school has a rule against "flirting", and their definition of "flirting" is wonderfully hazy and abundantly unclear, thus confusing the awkward 12 and 13 year olds, and making this mom very happy. Matthew says, "Mom, I got talked to by Mr. X today because he says I was flirting with (*insert harlot's name here*) but all I was doing was asking her for a pencil." I reply, "You need to be more responsible. You're grounded."

The guy who does our yard (I can't call him our "yard boy" because that may imply that he is a hot Latin gardener in nothing but 501s and work boots...and he's not that kind of yard guy at ALL) has been bringing a helper, a strapping fellow about 18 years old. Becca and her friends press their faces against the livingroom window and watch him. I stand in the next room with a sign pressed to the window, "My scissors + your balls = don't be a hero, boy."

So far, my subterfuge has prevented Becca from making any progress whatsoever towards dating. However, my 17 year old niece already has a boyfriend. I consider that my own personal failure. I will not let it happen again.