The Family GPS

   It appears that I am the family GPS. “Mommy, can I have my Pokemon Book, my dog pen, my slippers, my hat, my ‘you name it’ ?” I have no goddamn clue what my girl did with most of her possessions yet somehow I am expected to know where they are. My husband’s questions just begin with “Have you seen my.....?” but are otherwise the same. I don’t have the house memorized at any given time. In fact, if it weren’t for caffeine, it’s a miracle I leave the house with pants some days. 

  Through some miracle, mommy radar works remarkably well. Nine times out of ten, I find the missing item and nine times out of ten, it’s almost right in front of the searcher and doesn’t take more than two minutes of looking.  

  Like a bee trying to fly out of a closed window, I keep harassing the farm animals in my home to put their crap where it belongs. I have this insane idea that if you keep something in the same place all the time you won’t have to hunt for it. Why do that when you can just ask Mommy?

   My spouse isn’t much better, in fact, I’m convinced that’s where she gets her “handicap”. My husband is a dedicated purchasing manager and he is amazing at his job. The man not only purchases but finds things for a living. I have heard him time and time again handle things over the phone. He will give elaborate directions that Ray Charles could follow and I am certain that although I have never set foot in his warehouse, I could find whatever doohickey he’s describing. 

  The problem is he shuts down when he gets home. We’ve been in our house for about 10 years and he can’t find his ass with both hands once his car hits our driveway. I live with Captain Oblivious and his sidekick, The Messmonster. 

   I get that in any home there are some things that just sprout legs, like scissors or those “cheater” glasses. It’s the other things that “go missing” that have me scratching my head. “We have a shelf for the keys, that’s where I’d put them.” “Whaddya mean you can’t find the leftovers? Are your eyeballs open??!!” It’s also where I find the hunted for items that mystifies me. I’ve found the remote in the powder room and some items, like his name badge wander the whole house.

   My father, it turns out, had the right idea in one respect. He would say, “Don’t know, don’t want to know”. This was originally meant to apply in cases when my mother would ask him to do something. I think I need to follow that example, just to see what happens. The problem is that a part of me already knows what would happen. My husband would just go out and replace whatever the missing thing was. I find this to be an annoying waste of money, although it usually flushes out the hiding item into the open. Maybe I should hide the atm card first before I test this theory.

   There is also the option of asking annoying questions like “Where were you when you last had it?” and “Did you look where we keep them?” until the seeker decides to leave me the hell alone.

   Perhaps my biggest problem is that I seem to be the only brain in my house that thinks belongings are to be taken care of rather than strewn. It’s also a small house, people can’t be leaving their crap all over the place like a trail of breadcrumbs in case they get lost. It just feels that way. When I’ve gotten really frustrated, I’ve busted out my pointy hat and a trash bag and anything left undefended on the floor was history. I wasn’t expecting to have to do that to my spouse.

   I admit that sometimes I lose things and I am by no means organized. I just try to keep my belongings in logical places. If it takes ten seconds to put something back and that would save you a half hour of looking why not do it? I know, you can just ask mommy.

   

Small Victory

   Recently, when faced with yet another joyful episode of getting our daughter ready for school, I found a way to fix my problem. Upon approaching the body, I checked the clock. Luckily, there was enough time to execute my plan. I climbed into her bed and grabbed one of her books. As I began to read, I enlisted her help with the story. “Nellie waved to the kids from her boat.” I picked up a dead arm and waved it. “Then cousin Allistair waved back!” I picked up the arm again and this time I said, “Helloooooo!”. “Dan walked up the beach.” I horse clomped up the back of the body. It starts giggling. “The wind was blowing hard.” I grab a clump of blonde hair and wave it around. “Ok, Ok, I’m up!!” Darn, I thought, I didn’t get to the rain storm. Guess I’ll have to skip the cup of water. Score one for mommy, finally.

RRRRoooooaaaaarrrrr!!!

  It’s time to go poke a bear with a stick, again. This always puts the extra fun in a Monday. Part of the problem is that it’s all my fault, or mostly anyway. My little girl is every inch her grandmother’s revenge and getting her ass up for school is frequently too much fun for humans. My little apple not only didn’t roll far from the tree, I’m lucky it even fell off the branch. Our morning routine could best be described as some warped rendition of beat the clock for the deaf. I am constantly repeating myself louder and louder. “It’s time to get up.” “We gotta get moving!” “Will you get up already??!!” 

   Tuesdays are still painful. Wednesdays and Thursdays are better but by Friday we’re back to ugly since it’s been four days of shoveling our butts up. I’m grateful her majesty is not fussy about what she wears although I try to give her a choice of two things. That’s at least one small advantage of her not being fully awake. I also don’t have to chase her to brush out her hair. She saves that crap for the weekends.

   In a way, I feel sorry that I can’t give my eight year old coffee. The problem is, she’s like an old fashioned plane.  Once she gets her propeller going, she’s off like a shot, it just the wind up that takes a lot of work. Caffeine would cost us dearly later, I’m sure. Mommy, on the other hand, can’t even enter the room without at least a half a cup consumed. I completely understand the hostility I get, too. I don’t expect happiness in the morning, but I’d settle for cooperation. One morning she rolled over and I’d swear she farted at me.

   I suppose it’s good that she’s not one of those happy first thing farmer kids who get up ungodly early. I don’t think I could handle that. The polar opposite, I guess, is preparing us for the teen years. I’m theorizing that this part of the morning can’t get worse. If it weren’t for the snoring I could draw a chalk outline in her bed. The alarm clock is completely ignored. We need a better clock to be sure. I haven’t looked online but if I could find something that say emitted a SWAT team yell, or a howitzer, it may help.

  When I was a kid, I watched a cartoon in which a coyote’s bed stood up and threw his ass out. In our case, it would take some hydraulics, I think, a pantload of money and maybe even a bigger room. Then there’s the matter of breakfast, or to dream the impossible dream. I have tried smoothies but got really sick of our little food critic giving me the thumbs down. In desperation, I have had to resort to powdered breakfast drinks and oatmeal cookies marketed as granola bars.

   The never ending sugar battle has forced a few concessions in order for me to hang onto my sanity and more of my hair. I read a lot of labels and use half packets of drink mix but the main objective is to get something in that tummy before school. It doesn’t matter how cute she is, tired and hungry turns her into an even bigger hemorrhoid to deal with. Her teachers don’t deserve that.

   I am baffled as to why this kid does not do bananas. She climbs like a monkey and occasionally smells like one, so why not eat like one? They are also good for you, portable, and require no cooking. God forbid we get off that easy. I can still manage peanut butter once in a while but I have to try to remind our girl to wash her hands after eating it if she’s going to school. They treat peanut butter like nuclear waste at her school but at least we’re not the ones dealing with the allergies directly. That’s a whole separate hell we are lucky to dodge.

  So, dear reader, how do you get your kids up in the morning? I’m open to suggestions aka I’ll take all the help I can get.

    

Still more lessons

    It’s been getting tougher as time goes on. Homework is the child equivalent of death and taxes. Resistance is futile, unless you’re Polish, then it’s genetic. “Why do I have to go to school at all?” “Why can’t I just stay home and play video games?” “You don’t need math for video games!” Our worldly eight year old has some how convinced herself that she has amassed a wealth of knowledge and experience far beyond her parents. I’m told this comes with the territory. 

   Every day after school, I ask our girl if she has her homework. Frequently, I check the backpack (trust but verify). Once she has had a break and a snack, the harassment campaign begins. It’s not so much the getting her majesty to sit down and actually start it. It’s the dragging out 12 math problems into the equivalent of a doctoral thesis that makes mommy want to drink herself into a stupor, sometimes by Tuesday night. My grown up brain can’t understand why just putting this crap in the rearview so we can move on just does not compute to my offspring.

   The other bonus wrinkle is the endless redirection. I’ve said many times that it feels like you’re dealing with an overcaffeinated squirrel. This kid has a talent for distracting herself with nothing. When there is nothing around her but just a table, a chair, a pencil and paper, that tablecloth had better not be fuzzy. She will have pencils battle erasers, sing songs about how homework is stupid, and suddenly she’s absolutely starving. Is duct taping someone’s ass to a chair illegal?

   I have about a fifty fifty shot at being able to do something else like make dinner or doing dishes but as often as not, I’m the homework gestapo. 

  My husband is blissfully unaware of this. On the rare occasions when he is forced to feel mommy’s pain, it’s almost a drama contest. There’s a monumental effort on both sides. For a person with a college degree, we sometimes have to explain what our third grader’s homework requires. What’s almost funny is that he will tell me about how difficult the whole process is as if I was not in the next room and had never been through this??!!   

   ‘My God, she’s a huge pain in the ass!’ ‘Welcome to my world, Sherlock!’ (Not that I’m bitter or anything.)

   It would be really helpful if we could somehow collaborate on the problem since the homework is only going to get uglier from here. We haven’t even scratched the surface of studying, research papers, presentations or other herculean feats. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. I’m guessing the best way to handle things without too much alcohol is to eat our elephant one bite at a time.

  This is going to be as much fun as forks in the eyes but unless we hit the lottery, my options are pretty limited. This kid is going to have to grow up to support herself, which for now, at least, means a decent education. I have also learned the hard way not to ignore study guides. The first time one was sent home, I figured we had enough to contend with and that anything that even smelled like extra homework was too much hassle.

   I’ve often said, my daughter is in school but I’m the one getting educated. We ignored her first math study guide. Fortunately it took only one epic bomb of a math test to end that practice. I have to sneak that stuff in small doses on days when there’s not a lot of homework or before bed on the weekends. I’m about to find out if this tactic will work, another test is coming soon. 

  If I could only figure out how to get pokemon into her homework maybe she would stop complaining although I’d settle for cooperation. 

   

The Good Old Days?

  I recently attended my husband's high school class reunion. My spouse remembers a lot about his high school years. I can't say I have a lot of fond memories of those years. In fact, you couldn't pay me to be 16 again. The 80s hair alone could give me nightmares if my recall was good but thank God it's not. College was marginally better but mostly I remember working my ass off, not having much money and occasionally drinking. The only person I knew there was my spouse so it was my turn to take one for the team.

  I've also heard of grammar school reunions. If there was ever any group of people I was happy to put in my rear view it was those brats, except for one person I stayed in touch with and two people I didn't. These were not nice people. I was bullied but I don't think they called it that back then. Nowadays it's a huge deal in schools. We are lucky to live in an amazing school district where we couldn't ask for better teachers for our daughter.

  There are all sorts of meetings, programs, books and public service announcements about preventing bullying. What I'm wondering is why can't we just teach our kids to leave each other the hell alone? To quote the philosopher (or maybe it was Will Smith?) 'Don't start nothin', won't be nothin'.' We can't expect the schools to raise our kids for us. 

  I know there are plenty of people out there who say that bullying is always going to be a thing and kids need to stop being 'wussies'. That may be true but only up to a point. First, bullying should not always be a thing.  I firmly believe that the problem starts at home. Whether it's lack of parenting or poor behavior being modeled at home, I firmly believe we are products of our environment. I also believe that kids will do whatever they feel they can get away with. I live with cute but evil.

  It would be great if we were all born with a thick skin. Unfortunately, much to my dismay, I discovered recently that I can hold a grudge like a nun. An old friend let me know she reconnected with an old bully on Facebook. She let me know the woman has a disabled daughter. I don't know if I said it out loud but my first thought was 'It serves her right', not exactly magnanimous! 

  If we're supposed to enjoy karma, why do I feel like such a rat bastard for even thinking such a thing? While I admit the problem is mostly mine, it's a lot like the old therapist joke, 'If it's not one thing, it's your mother.'. I most likely went to school with a bunch of people who were not taught how to behave. Some wounds fester and it appears that I was swimming in a fish bowl that was never cleaned. It's now up to me to clean up. Beware, lest your offspring become the victim of someone else's bad parenting!

  Don't get me wrong. I do plan on teaching our girl how to defend herself (preferably verbally first) and eventually how to agree to disagree. First, since she is still young, I want her to understand how to be a good friend. Fortunately, the rule is simple, treat others how you want to be treated. The execution part can be complicated. She hasn't asked me yet 'But mom, what if the other guy is an asshole?', for example. I'm still working on my response to that one. There's a fine line between nice and doormat but that can be hard to explain to someone who is 8.

  I do plan to make sure she understands that greeting someone with a punch in the face is not acceptable behavior ( especially at a reunion).

We survived, now what?

   After what felt like weeks but was really only days so far on Facebook I've finally decided to get political but only here if I can.  First, I am glad it's over. The political ads made Halloween seem like a prelude to Easter. The presidential campaigns were bad enough. We were also subjected to the local ones, not even in our state, just to add to the nauseum. I was really concerned about the effect they'd have on our daughter but they were repeated so much that she started to tune them out. Still, it was really getting old for all of us.
  I had no clear idea what I was going to do when I got into that voting booth. It was a lot like a martial arts test. I try not to think about it until it's on top of me. For most elections, I end up voting for the person who seems the least evil. What do you do when you're faced with a tie? I was used to holding my nose on election day, but full on hazmat suits?! I've left my screaming pumpkin on my porch in honor of the results.
  I admit it was also hard to ignore the commercials for us grownups, too. Hillary's commercials were the worst and best ones. They were the most effective in that the most negative shots at her opponent were nothing more than clips of him speaking like an ass. The bad part for me was hearing more venom than policy. Trump's commercials were God awful because they were full of pie in the sky promises with next to zero clue how to get there.
  I cannot understand how in a country of millions of human beings, these two bozos were the best we could come up with?!?! I wanted a woman president, for obvious reasons. I am one, I'm raising one, and men have been screwing this up for so long, why not try a woman? My problem was that it shouldn't have been That woman. If she had any class, she would have resigned or offered to resign after the Benghazi disaster and who knows, maybe if that had happened, Americans would have forgiven and forgotten by now.
  When the big day finally came, I found a way out. I voted, but I couldn't bring myself to vote for either one and the alternatives were underwhelming, too. Fortunately, I found a third option, you were able to type in someone! I typed in the name of Alan West, no not the guy who played Batman. He's a political commentator, of sorts. (Google him.) It was an emotional choice, I know. Many people said 'You wasted your vote', I get the logic but I went the emotional route.
  Like most other white people, or rather, not enough of us, I was surprised at the outcome of the election. More than that, I found myself in a real funk for a few days afterward.
  I also couldn't watch the concession speech and definitely not the victory speech. The concept of our nation putting that thing in office was bad enough, I couldn't hack hearing it speak any more than necessary. Beside the whole shitty attitude toward women thing the other thing that bothered me about what we elected was the I-love-me attitude that was so overt it could be seen from space. If Hillary had the same attitude, she at least hid it better. Did I mention I left my screaming pumpkin on my porch in honor of the election results?
  Facebook has been depressing mostly because I'm watching friends argue back and forth over who they voted for. I read one really good post that said basically I'm disgusted at people who voted for Trump because they were supporting his attitudes (racism is ok, it's ok to treat women like shit, we don't care if you make fun of handicapped people etc.). What I'm wondering is whether that's really true. How many of my friends chose to ignore Trump's behavior because they would rather have put Daffy Duck in the White House over Hillary? That's understandable.
  The problem I have with the protestors is that I see them as a bit misguided. Our election was legal according to the laws we currently have. What the protestors should direct their energy to is to change the electoral college law. From what I understand Hillary won the popular vote and she would have won had the law been different, but it's not. We're stuck with who won, legally.
  My mother I think, had the smartest take on the whole thing. She said 'I hope he surrounds himself with smart people and listens to them.' I'm hoping that, too. None of my friends would treat women like shit or make fun of handicapped people. I wish they had voted for None of The Above but that guy was too smart to want the job. My friends are still da bomb, no matter who they voted for. I just hope they agree to disagree, even if it's for four years.

What's a holiday?

 I would like to take an informal poll.  What constitutes a holiday for you? Most would say family. I am, or at least partially, with that crowd. Thanksgiving is well on its way and hence the annual decision is upon us.  Since our family is not only small but largely older, we don't seem to have a consistent tradition when it comes to Turkey Day. This holiday, as a kid, was always spent at my grandmother's house. Now that many people have passed away and I have a family, I am down to my Mother and the inlaws to consider.
  It's frustrating that I'm the only one who feels this way.  I get the feeling that my inlaws consider us as an afterthought. We are informed of what his family is doing for holidays after the decision is made. I guess because I'm the last one to join the family and most of them are older it makes sense.  My problem is their choices.  They are restaurant people. Maybe someday I'll get there but I'm not there now. I have no interest in making someone else cook a huge dinner for my benefit, I get it, it's a lot of work.
  Here's where the question of environment versus the company comes in,  Am I wrong to feel like Thanksgiving is not a holiday when you're at a restaurant.  For some reason every year we go out with his family, I feel like I'm missing out. On the other hand, I don't want my husband to not see his family on a major holiday. Our house, while not completely far away from everyone, is also not centrally located. Although in previous years, they have selected restaurants close to our house. ( I don't think they've had much of my cooking so how could they deem it inedible??)
   It could be that the grass is always greener. Would it feel better if some people came here for dinner?  A lot of the people I grew up with are gone. There's something about walking into a house and smelling a turkey that's irreplaceable for me. I understand the appeal of taking the easy way out and when you work full time, the prospect of having company and all that entails is especially daunting. This is all the more reason to have people over our house, at least this year. I'm a stay at home mom.  I have the luxury of a little more time and energy. 

  We also have the miracle of supermarkets. If I asked everyone to bring maybe a side dish or dessert, doesn't that make things easier and certainly cheaper than a whole restaurant dinner? I admit I have another motive. I get to use a turkey out of my freezer and not have to deal with a stupid amount of leftovers. We are a family of three without company so a huge turkey is not something I would normally consider. 

  For some reason, I don't mind Christmas with the in-laws, mainly because it's at someone's house. Still, I am still trying to figure out how to start our own tradition even if it is just us three. It would be nice to have people over that day, too but let's not get greedy. I may have to settle for Christmas Eve at some point. We still have one tradition left from my youth. There has always been a fish dinner and  Mass with my mother. Currently, we gather what's left of my side of the family and my mother prepares the Polish fish recipes I grew up with. 

  That tradition may change locations but it will never be a restaurant.