Puppy Love

Morgan: So my friend Nina told Adam that I sort of had a crush on him and now I am bummed.

Me: Why are you "bummed"? (When did she become a teenager from The Valley?)

Morgan: Because now I am too embarrassed to talk to him ever again.

Me: Well, I don't think you need to be embarrassed.

Morgan: Mom, I'm done with it.

60 seconds later...

Morgan: Do you know why I like Adam?

Me: Why?

Morgan: Because he is nice and funny and kind and loving and sharing. (Oh yeah, she's got it bad.)

Me: Well, he sounds very nice. I think it's okay for you to still like him.

Morgan: And do you know why else I like him? When I ask him a question he talks back to me. Not in a mean way. I just mean that he answers my question. I think that is nice. But now I don't think he will answer me anymore.

Dear Morgan,

Boys suck. The ones you like, like someone else. In elementary school, it is probably the girl that punches them. In junior high, I regret to inform you it is the girl with the biggest boobs. In high school, it's whoever is the most popular. I suggest you stick with punching them until you turn 18.

The ones you don't like will most likely sneak attack you when you are at your locker and ask you to every dance ever created by the girls that actually get asked by the boys they like. I hope you can let them down easy by remembering what it is like on the other side, but if you do...he will still probably ask you for every slow dance and you will have to hide in a bathroom stall the majority of the time. Hiding in the bathroom stall will most likely prevent you from being asked to dance by the boy you DO like.

Unfortunately, you don't have an older brother that might have kind friends that take pity on you. On the bright side, this will not lead you to have completely hopeless crushes on football players that call you "Chuck's little sister."

With deepest sympathy,

Your Mother

Voted Most Likely to Remain Awkward

AKA "To a smart and funny girl"

P.S. If by some chance you are the popular girl. Please use your powers for good instead of evil.

Dirty Cups, Volume 429

Background:

Scott has been taking a class at his bike shop that begins with spinning and ends with yoga. The first time he has ever done this.

On Sunday, I left the kids with my parents in the morning, because we had a barbaric corpse viewing later that afternoon (the opinions expressed in this blog belong to the author alone and do not reflect the opinions of other perfectly sane people.) Scott had gone into the office, so he sent me a text asking if I wanted to do some yoga before that.

Observations:

I may not have completely mastered the breathing technique, but Potter totally makes up for it. His Darth Vader impression is spot on.

Scott is more flexible than you would imagine.

It is really weird to do yoga in your house with one other person when that person isn’t a little kid that doesn’t know if you are doing something incorrectly.

Scott and I both have trouble knowing our left from right.

It may be a prerequisite for yoga instructors not to have any boobs.

When I fell down my steps last October, I really screwed up my ankle. How is one supposed to meditate if they can’t comfortably cross their legs?

Background:

There is a whole lot of opinion out there on how to raise confident girls that aren’t obsessed with body image. (Basically, don’t let them watch television or read magazines. Ever.) I don’t try to over analyze it too much, but the other day I read a blog that got me thinking about certain things that I say to Morgan and Zoe.

So now, when they model their outfits for me or show off the lipstick they smeared all over their face when I wasn’t looking, I have a pretty standard response. “You look very pretty. But what’s more important than being pretty?” I’m looking for something along the lines of “being a nice person.” Below are some select responses from Zoe in no particular order. Exclamation is hers.

Babies. (naturally)

SWIMMING!

Brushing your teeth. (shout out to Papa Turtle, DDS)

Rugs (wtf?)

Background:

We were thankful recipients of children’s theater tickets, due to poor little Ian being too sick to go. There were three short performances based on the books of Eric Carle (The Very Hungry Catepillar; Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See; and Papa, Can You Get Me the Moon – or something like that…I had never heard of it.)

I got halfway out the driveway and realized I had left the tickets on the dining room table. Upon finally finding a parking spot and walking halfway to the theater I realized I left the tickets sitting on the front seat of my car. Moral of this story: I am an idiot.

The announcements prior to the play noted that this was a “No Shhhh Production” and that the children were welcome to clap and laugh and shout out what was coming next.

Basically, most of the children immediately erupted in laughter just at the mere sight of the caterpillar. In several instances I felt this laughter might have been a little forced. Just laughing because they were told they could. Which I suppose is better than laughing just because they were told not to.

“I’m just trying to make a point, Frank. You don’t have to celebrate it.” – Beanie (Old School)

Zoe was not so easily led astray. She calmly sat through each story, sometimes leaning forward, sometimes resting her head on her hand in a pondering manner. She looked neither excited nor bored.

The eight-year-old kid behind me kept kicking my seat and making completely irrelevant comments. Most of you may think, “Surely, as a mom, you can understand that.”

But this is where I admit I rarely feel like putting up with my own kids annoying habits. Why the hell would I want to put up with yours?

Adult Truth #21

Haven't done this in a while, but I felt the need to write and nothing was coming to me. Follow the Adult Truth label below to check out the others.

Adult Truth #21
Shirts get dirty. Underwear gets dirty. Pants? Pants never get dirty, and you can wear them forever.

I personally try to wear pants at least 10 times before washing them. I’ll admit one reason for this is that I don’t want to buy bigger pants and they fit better stretched out a bit. I have no shame.

If I didn’t have a slobbery dog, I could probably skip washing my work pants for about three months. I should note that I usually don’t notice the dried slobber until I actually get to work and have to spend the first ten minutes of my day in the restroom trying to blend it in.

A lot of times I fold Scott’s jeans up and put them back in the drawer without looking. Then, come the weekend, he points out that the hems are caked in mud or he spilled salsa down the front of them. I will refrain from pointing out the easy solution of putting them directly in the laundry instead of leaving them on the floor of the bedroom. (Oh, maybe I didn’t refrain.)

Unfortunately, this rule does not apply to my kids’ pants - mainly because my kids don’t wear pants. They wear leggings. Leggings are in the pant family, but share more DNA with underwear. Because if you put leggings on for even ten minutes they have to be washed before you can wear them again or you will have saggy, elephant knees.

I have made every attempt to get my kids to wear real pants, but the closest I’ve come is jeggings. They won’t even wear sweat pants (Rare case of “not my kids”).

I take this back…Zoe does have some stretchy pants that are neither leggings nor structured pants. I do not know how to categorize them. But considering she changes her clothes a minimum of four times a day (“Look, Mommy!”), this fact does not cut back on my dirty laundry.

Kryptonite

It should come as no surprise that heating a century home is not always an efficient or consistent process.

You have the heating apparatus itself – a boiler the size of small tent city – taking up valuable real estate in your basement. To add to the annoyance, the real estate is in the dead center of the largest part of the basement – the part most people would convert to additional living space. The part where currently all toys go to die.

This does not take into account the pipes that weave their tapestry overhead, preventing us from having a ceiling that doesn’t resemble the inside of submarine. It should also be noted that on the exact opposite side of the basement is washer/dryer/hot water tank. Why someone felt the need to separate these compatible items is beyond my comprehension.

Next you have the heating conduits – massive radiators encased by even more massive covers – parked in what always seems the most inconvenient spot for furniture placement. To be fair, I’m not sure there is an actual convenient spot for a radiator.

If you’ve never had radiators, you may not know that occasionally (read: most of the time) when the cold condensation in the radiators caused when the thermostat is turned down hits the hot water caused when the thermostat is turned up it creates a sound not unlike someone pounding on the metal coils with a hammer. (Author’s Note: I’m not actually sure that’s what causes the hammering, but is sounds scientific and shit.)

Then there is the programmable thermostat set to turn the down at bedtime and up in the morning. If you remember back to my previous paragraph, you now know what my alarm clock sounds like in the winter.

Counteracting the phenomenal illustration of thermal comfort is the high-tech ventilation system that came with this piece of historical architecture…old windows.

Despite all of these things, our bedroom is usually pretty comfortable. Upstairs holds the evening’s heat pretty well, so we just throw an extra blanket on in the winter and are good to go.

But a couple weeks ago…right when heading back to work…I made a fatal error. I decided it was cold enough to throw the flannel sheets on.

The flannel sheets put us over the edge. It’s never good to be in complete comfort in your own bed. The bed becomes the den of sloth. It is a Bermuda triangle of warmth, weight and fluffiness. Two will enter, none will leave. Even Scott has missed some morning run wake up calls in the past two weeks, which is practically unheard of.

The sheets are kryptonite. We are powerless against them. The thought of taking them off my bed gives me the shakes.

Wardrobes Are Like Rabbit Holes

Ever since we saw our cousin’s play, the girls have been obsessed with Narnia.

We had to watch the movie immediately…several times. They started pretending they were the Pevensie children on an adventure. And all Barbies got renamed to Susan and Lucy. Since we don’t have any Ken dolls for some reason, Peter and Edmund were stolen from the Fisher Price Little People households.

After the fourth viewing I said, “You know, there are two other movies that came after this one…” And thus I was off to the library in search of *sigh* Prince Caspian. While there, the friendly librarian pointed to the counter and showed me that someone had just returned The Voyage of the Dawn Treader so I took both home.

If we are not watching the Disney Channel in preparation for the Family Wizard Tournament in which we will finally know if Justin, Alex, or Max get to keep their powers (the girls want Alex, but frankly it would be irresponsible of Disney to give it to anyone but Justin); we are watching Narnia.

And after our next trip to the library, we are now reading Narnia (in publication order, thank you very much – none of this chronological BS that the publishers impose upon us). Both girls willingly head to bed earlier upon the promise of another chapter.

Morgan adores Peter. When Susan kisses Caspian at the end of the second movie, she giggles and tells me, “Susan should be with Peter and Lucy should be with Edmund.”

Hmmm…considering they are siblings, I’m pretty sure even West Virginia doesn’t go for that sort of thing.

Personally, I’m with Susan. Peter is kind of patronizing and bossy. Caspian is a much better adolescent literary crush, right along with Henry Huggins from the Ramona books. Then she can move on to the Sweet Valley High twins’ brother Steven (who turns out to be gay in the adult follow up installment – huh?). Then, if precedent is followed, she’ll make the huge leap to the classics and fall for Atticus Finch, Colonel Brandon, and Nick Carraway (not sure how he snuck in there with the old men).

All I need to do is keep her away from the cartoon Transformers so she doesn’t fall for a yellow punch buggy and insist if he was a real person he would be cute and want to marry her.

In case you’re wondering, I didn’t have many friends as a kid.

The Depression Otherwise Known as January

I had thought that my first day back to work after my two week vacation would suck, but…it was more like changing explosive baby poo blow out diapers ALL DAY.

Nothing actually went wrong. It just wasn’t vacation. And it’s not like my vacation was a picnic. It just wasn’t work.

The worst part was waking Morgan up for school, which I knew – no matter how much I had prepped her the last couple of days – was going to feel like rubbing the aforementioned poo in my eyes.

6:30 AM I enter the lion’s den. Which really isn’t very much like a den, because they use up to four night lights and insist I keep the blinds open so the street lamp can shine in. (This would be the downside to my kids watching PG and PG-13 movies, but it’s really the only one.)

Morgan immediately lets out one of her long, droning groans. Then she says, “I’m just not a morning person.”

Oh, yes. She is my child. I refrain from informing her that if she lives to be 100 she has 94 more years of hating mornings. At least I only have 63.

Zoe, on the other hand, is Daddy’s girl and I’m pretty sure would happily go out on his 5:00 AM 10-mile runs – as long as he pushed her in her stroller, because she’s pretty damn lazy.

So after a few modified sun salutations…modified because the sun isn’t actually up at this god awful hour and because my kids do not understand that they can touch the floor without bending their knees…we were on our way.

Honestly, we did well. Mainly because I had anticipated all of this and packed lunches and book bags the night before. If only I could establish that habit for the entire year.

Highlight of my day was trying to explain to the financial analyst that will begin his rotation in my department on Monday what it is we actually do. Seriously…after five years…still don’t know. Yes…highlight!

So now I’m sitting back, watching a little Storage Wars and looking forward to crawling into the flannel sheets I finally put on the bed this week. I resolve to have a more positive blog post next time.