Category Archives: humor

Important friendship criteria

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uklifecoaching.org

 

My friendship criteria….were I to actually  have time to cultivate a friendship…..

  1. Must be funny, but not the annoying funny that just laughs at everything. The kind of funny that can be light and dark, funny ha-ha, and funny “god my life is depressing”.
  2. Must not judge my parenting. Unless I ask. And then always follow up judgement with a story about how they are even a worse parent than me because….etc..
  3. Must be able to keep the secrets I tell them, that are secrets I’ve promised others not to tell. The buck must stop somewhere after all.
  4. Must not be evil or possessed by any sort of demon, this is kind of a deal breaker.
  5. Sarcasm is required

There are more things of course, intelligence and wit, integrity-but not too much, don’t want me to feel bad about myself…… kind of difficult to find someone with all these requirements, probably just easier to continue hanging out with the kids……

What made me start to think of what qualities a new friend of mine would need to have? A conversation with Jenna about a boy at school she’s chosen as her friend. I don’t know if he shares the sentiment, but every day I hear his name.

What made her choose him, out of 13 other kids whose names she’s not in the hurry to remember?

Jenna’s friendship criteria:

  1. Must have a Blaze and the monster machines lunch box.

A simple and effective method to weed out those not worthy……

 

Image result for blaze and the monster machines

Blaze in all his glory…….

 

Dinner observations

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I took the kids to dinner the other night, only because Sammy had it in his head that we should go and I liked the idea of not making dinner. Besides, we needed a break at the end of a loooooong week of school.

He picks Cheesecake factory, and we are seated outside. The tables are so close together, you can’t avoid sitting in the middle of the conversations around you.

On my left, is a family of 5. Two parents and three children, all seem to be under 5. They are loud, kids take turns screaming, actual screams…. and the parents both speak a mixture of English and Italian to them. I like the sound of the Italian, but not when the mom is speaking in a constant yell, right into my ear.

Jenna likes to watch other people, she’s still too young to realize it’s rude. And knowing her, she probably wouldn’t care. I keep directing her attention to our own table, but the noise and activity next to us are hard to ignore. First she comments that one of the boys goes to her school. I don’t look over, but I sense the mom turning her head toward us as though she knows they are being mentioned. Jenna says later that one of the boys is looking at her, as she continues to stare at him. I feel eyes on us again, and lightly tell her to just look at me then.

She continues to watch the progress of the family, parents attempting to stop the screaming and fighting of their kids and not doing a great job of it. During a lull in the noise, she comments to me “Yeah, I like the dad better than the kids”… Since the mom is practically in my lap, I am sure she hears it. The head turning toward us confirms it. I think I tell  Jen to eat her dinner and keep her eyes on her food.

But she’s so right. He was definitely the quietest…..

My little monster

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Don’t be fooled by my innocent smile…..

 

I just want to say, the 15 year old was right. As much as I hate to agree, his baby sister is kind of a monster. Sometimes.

She loves school, grabs my hand and drags me into the building in the morning, and is beaming when I pick her up at the end of the day. She believes it is “her” classroom, and the other kids and teachers are there for her entertainment. She does not miss me at ALL.

Monster, right?

And suddenly, she’s way more independent and impatient with the rest of us. As I’m sitting in the car, waiting for the cars in front of me to move so we can park and walk in….she starts to get belligerent in the back seat. “Mommy!, why are we taking so long! My teacher is waiting for me!” She doesn’t seem to care that I literally can’t get out of the car yet, and so threatens to stop being my best friend if I dare continue to keep her away from the teachers who are desperately waiting for her inside.

On the way home yesterday, she is holding her water bottle in the back–thirsty after school. As I’m on the highway, and in no way able to turn around and help her, she decides she can’t hold it a second longer and I need to take it from her now, now, NOW!

I tell her no, hold it herself…. and Sammy starts to talk about wanting to go out to eat somewhere. He’s listing the choices of places for me to choose from, and Jenna breaks in:

“Well, YOU both can go, I’M not going with you! I’m going to stay home all by myself!” (Complete with wide eyes and head bobbing for emphasis) “Because YOU won’t hold my water bottle!”

We have some back and forth, with her emphatic that she will stay home alone, and will also not let anyone in to HER house, and me wondering if I’m going to get pegged with a water bottle in the back of the head…..

And poor Sammy in the background trying to tell me “don’t talk to her momma….” (because she’s mean of course….)

As much as I worry about her strong, super sized personality…… I still love it. I love the attitude and I love knowing she’s got something I never had at her age–call it confidence, bravado, an unrealistic sense of self importance…whatever…..  she’s not afraid to speak up for herself and it took me decades before I could do that.

And then late last night she called out for me, having a bad dream and wanted me to sleep next to her. And I loved cuddling up to her…..it was great for about 5 minutes…. then she asked me to move over and stop touching her 😦

Definitely monster.

 

Friday flop

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Now that school is back in session, we don’t get to stay up late until Friday rolls around.

This week I kept reminding the kids to motivate them through waking up early and going to bed early…..Friday’s almost here!!

We usually let them stay up pretty late, watch movies, eat popcorn, play games. Daddy can always depend on them to wait up for him when he finally gets in from work.

So tonight, we were all set… went to the park for a couple hours after school and got home by 8pm. Everyone had a snack, showered, settled together on the couch to pick out a movie. I had my laptop appropriately in my lap, and was catching up on some emails.

Next thing I know, I wake up to the sound of Dora and her friends singing about how they couldn’t have done it without me…….. and no signs of life around me.

Lightweights…..

Clearly, we need to build up our Friday late-night stamina.

 

 

 

I hate those litter box dreams

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Last night I had a dream that I tend to have every once in a while. The location, and people, and all other details change….but one thing remains the same.

I’m going along my merry way…. and then suddenly I become aware that I have a cat. Sometimes it will be a cat that I thought died, or had been given away or something… other times I just realize that I’ve had this cat but wasn’t aware of it until now.

And then I realize there must be a litter box somewhere. I have a little anxiety attack in my sleep as I think about how many days/weeks/months/years???  have gone by without any litter box attention. I search for the box, not wanting to search for it, but knowing I HAVE to.

Usually, it will be as horrible as imagined. Once it was a huge pile of dirty litter making a mountain in my parents basement. Last nights dream was me finding a new litter box, and conveniently finding big box of clean litter in my shoe closet. As I’m scooping, I realize the clean litter isn’t clean. It’s full of lumps, clearly the poor cat was tired of waiting. Last nights dream was probably the least disgusting of my litter box nightmares.

Cats roamed: In the garage were dirty litter boxes and empty cat cages where the five dead animals may have once been kept in the disgusting home

In addition to finding horrendous amounts of filthy cat litter, the whole mood of the dream is kind of dark and angsty. I wake up feeling gross, like I still have dirty litter lurking around somewhere in my subconscious…..

How do I interpret this dream? One person suggested I must be going through a lot of stress, and the dirty litter shows up when I’m the most stressed out. Or you could think that maybe I have a dirty secret……. But I think it’s not as exciting as that.

I used to have cats. I was the only one who scooped the litter box. I was terrified of dirty litter, scooped it daily, and would freak out if I left it for anyone else to do and it wasn’t done.

I think I’m scarred from my fear of having a dirty litter box. And that sucks because although that made me extra attentive to it in real life, I’m still suffering for it in my dreams. 😦

 

 

 

Kids in the hall for dummies

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A tragedy has come to my attention.

A grievous injustice.

At what point did The Kids in the Hall become unknown???

If you don’t know what I’m talking about….then you are partly responsible for the senseless loss of humor occurring at this very moment.

I can’t let it continue. Click on that link. Educate yourself. Don’t allow my secret crush, Dave Foley to fade into obscurity.

I tried to explain the magic of this particular comedy group to my oldest…. she walked away, leaving me watching YouTube videos on my kitchen floor. I feel sorry for her. She will never understand why I sometimes crush her head when standing across the room from her and she’s not looking. I alone have that power for now.

They’re from Canada. Another reason to love Canada, along with Justin Thoreau…..

So now, I have given you the tools…. watch, learn, repeat.

 

 

 

 

 

When things go missing

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I had a plan the other night…. it was about 8:30 and I was going to let the kids watch something before bed for a treat…. and to keep them away from me so I could get some computer charting done for work.

But where was the remote?

It’s always in a predictable place, but after checking the usual places, and then more places, I started to worry. I couldn’t focus on anything until I found it. Grilled the little kids, checked with the older kids….no ideas for me.

I thought back, and couldn’t recall when I last had the TV on, could it have been days ago? Did my toddler nephew hide the remote when he was over Sunday? Possibly in the pantry where he likes to hide and poop? Nope, not in the pantry. Not under the tables, in any of the other rooms, in the toy boxes, on the mantle. Not in the basement, the bathrooms, my room, my kids rooms…..

Time ticked by…. no remote. After a good hour, I was standing on a chair, looking from a higher place to see if I could find it. Then I saw it. Tucked in next to a dish filled with decorative flowers, the highest shelf of the entertainment center, way off to the side…

The babysitter hid it, then forgot to put it back.

This she does because she has a hard time telling the kids “no”. So she hides the remote, and tells them she can’t find it so they can’t watch TV.

Sometimes I will be cleaning, and find a hidden cache of annoying toys that have been silently tucked away and forgotten…… in an unused cabinet in the basement, or under a couch….

 

Leave us alone!!!

 

I found the kids Easter baskets, full of candy, hidden in the top of the pantry last month. Those poor milk chocolate rabbits just dying for some attention.

I’ve asked her not to hide things…. the kids are used to being told “no” if I don’t want them to have something. Besides, they’re on to her, the 6 year old seeing through her excuse that his kindle disappears when she comes over…. but she can’t help it.

I expect when we eventually move, we’re going to find all sorts of things we will have long since forgotten, hidden by a well-intentioned sitter who doesn’t like to be the bad guy. I guess I could put a positive spin on it, and treat every day after work like the scavenger hunt it is.

 

theme-party-queen.com

 

 

 

Boys are from outer space

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Sometimes I feel like my boys just don’t understand me. I wonder what makes it so hard for me to communicate with them meaningfully, because it seems like they will do the exact opposite of what I say-with a smile on their faces, as if it is a good thing they aren’t listening. Almost as though they come from some other planet, where ignoring your parents is actually good manners and expected.

Sammy has become amazingly good at misbehaving in public places, strategically avoiding eye contact, thus avoiding “the look”, and staying just out of arms reach,thwarting my attempts at a quick swat when no one is looking. It is uncanny how he just knows exactly when he will be able to get away with something because I’m powerless at that moment to stop him. Weird alien sense of self preservation?? Perhaps.

Boys don’t come from a stork… it’s a space ship

 

Exhausting. And so hard to understand when I am told by everyone how well behaved he is at school. Unless he’s got them all brainwashed with his alien mind control powers.

I am fed up with finding all sorts of weird objects stuck at the uppermost and difficult spots to reach in the house. Socks. Rubber dinosaurs. Plastic balls and frogs, a million of them. Every time I drag a ladder into the house and try not to die in my attempt to remove them….. more just appear.  I think this might be some sort of extraterrestrial home decorating that I just don’t appreciate. It must be in their DNA to do it. I’m sure they can’t help it.

I don’t know how the teen manages to get out of most chores I ask him to do. It all starts the same way, I’ll ask, or suggest that he vacuum something….. and suddenly everything goes fuzzy…. I have vague memories of some sort of verbal dialogue between us, he appears to be offended and suddenly far too busy….. and the next thing I know he’s gone. And I’m vacuuming. Possibly more alien mind control??

They have secret handshakes. Elaborate ones that involve a lot of fist bumping and weird finger moves. I think the secret handshake is just a cover for their secret alien communication…. they’re plotting against me, I know it.

I don’t understand them at all. Frankly, they scare me. They seem to stay pretty mellow and not aggressive as long as I keep enough things in the house they like. Yogurt, beef jerky,  pancakes, basketballs, Pokémon.

You have boys??

Word of advice. It’s pointless to yell at them about all the dirt they track around your house. It’ll just confuse them. On their planet, dirt is a status symbol…. they’re programmed to carry as much of it on their bodies and into the home as possible. All in the effort of improving your rank in the alien community. Probably better to just thank them.

super successful and popular boys/aliens

How to win a trophy

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Sammy finished his first T-ball season yesterday, and the coaches surprised the kids with a trophy for each of them.

Of course Sammy was feeling pretty self important and strutting around holding that trophy for the rest of the night.

We took it with us for celebratory ice cream, the trophy displayed rather blatantly at table center.

Jenna trailed behind Sammy the whole time, just wanting to be near. Of course she wasn’t allowed to get too close. I didn’t hear his explanation to her as he shut down her last attempt at sneaking a quick touch. But it all became clear…..

“Mom…..”  she began, with those big, earnest, brown eyes….

“So I can get a trophy when I’m six…..and a boy?”

Uh. Yes?