Archive for the Category »Kids «
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Have you ever seen a more irritating, poke-your-eyes-out-with-a-stick, vein-throbbing-in-your-forehead phrase in all your life? MY BAD.
I have teenagers. They used to be children. They used to say “Oops. I’m sorry.” when they screwed up or forgot to do a chore or stepped on someone’s toe. Not anymore though. Now it’s MY BAD.
DUDE, I KNOW IT’S YOUR BAD! Otherwise, I wouldn’t have said “you forgot to pick up your towel from the bathroom floor.” I would have said it to your sister.
Is it because I take the shackles off to let them leave the house and go to school every day? Is that where they pick it up? Is it Nickelodeon, or Radio Disney? Do we let them watch too much PG-13 television?
I really need to know… how do they suddenly go from “I’m sorry, Mommy” to “Oh. MY BAD”???? And how do you get them to go back, short of threatening their life (cause that didn’t work)? Otherwise, someone tell me how to turn off the twitching, because that look is so not working for me.
Since starting middle school 2 1/2 years ago, my middle child has had a friend whose mother just refuses to be responsible for. It never fails that if there is an event at school (or THIRTY MILES FROM SCHOOL) that this child is participating in, I will get the following phone call:
“Mommy, can we give Niki a ride to (home from) the performance? (dance, pta meeting, etc) Her mom can’t come get her (after dark, in the pouring fucking rain).” In the beginning, I felt bad that Niki wouldn’t get to participate in these things if I said no, so I became the cab for someone else’s kid.
But you know… it’s been 2 1/2 damned years. Not once has an adult in this child’s house shown up for a performance she’s in, or provided transportation for something that they signed the permission slip saying she could attend.
This weekend was my middle daughter’s birthday party, so color me shocked when (an hour before the party) I got the question.. “Mommy, can you go pick up Niki? She wants to come to the party.” ……. uh, no. We’ve got 20 guests arriving in an hour, I’m not playing taxi tonight.
“Well, she’s going to walk and she wants to know if I can walk half way and meet her?” … uh, no. We’ve got 20 guests arriving in an hour to see YOU and you’re not going to be walking down the road in the dark when they do. And if she comes, I’m NOT taking her home!”
Amazingly enough, someone managed to find it in their heart to drop the child on my doorstep during the party. Of course, she ended up inviting herself to the sleepover afterward, because she couldn’t get a ride home. Raise your hand if you’re surprised! Yeah, me neither.
Finally, yesterday about 3:30 in the afternoon, my husband had to take the girl home because it was raining and still nobody at her house would come and pick her up.
How do people do this? How the hell do they just dump their kids off for everyone else to be responsible for? How do they promise that the kid can participate in things at school and then let them down EVERY FUCKING TIME? How do they break their kids’ hearts at every turn? And, even more importantly, how do they teach their kids that it’s acceptable to beg, whine, needle, cajole, and negotiate to get other people to pick up their sorry ass slack?
Some people need to wake the hell up, get off the sofa, and be parents to the people they brought into this world. And some of us (or me) need to stop enabling those other people to dump their kids off for us to care for.
To say that I’ve been under a little stress lately might just be the understatement of my life. So yesterday, while dangling at the very tippy edge of my sanity, I posted this on Facebook:
C.R.A.N.K.Y. ……. if you love me, you will find me a nice quiet warm place to be with nothing breakable within reach and shove chocolate under the door. #thatisall
A while later, while puttering on Facebook during a conference call (which he can do… because he works from home… 
in his underwear… and nobody can see him surfing on Facebook during his calls. fucker.) my husband left this comment on my post:
My arms work?
Did I say fucker? I meant … I love you hunny bunny and always will!
After the FOREVER LONG DAY I had yesterday, I drove my cranky self home … and sat in the driveway for 5 minutes flipping a coin to see if I should go in or just go crawl into a Mexico Lindo margarita. I went inside, bracing myself for the “ZOMG MOMMY YOU HAVE TO HEAR ABOUT MY DAYYYYYY” deluge.
I opened the front door, ever so cautiously… to a nearly spotless living room. Something was definitely wrong here. I sniffed and asked “Uh, what the hell is that smell?” and a child responded (sedately…?? WHAT) “Oh, M lit candles for you.” and then “Oh, and he poured you a glass of wine too. Here you go, mommy.”
Sounds from the house started penetrating the fog that is my brain. Washing machine going. Dryer going. Someone washing the dishes. At this point, I MUST have had the confused tilted head look on my face. I mean.. it looked like my house on the outside. These looked like my children.
My husband is the most amazing guy on the planet. He marshaled the troops (kids) and they all pitched in on a “Take care of mommy” night. After asking just a couple of procedural questions, he got dinner started while I puttered on a couple of chores. With a stern look, he picked up my wine glass and told me to follow him to the bedroom. (Get your mind out of the gutter!)
He took me to our bathroom where there was a row of lit candles around the bath tub… and a small dish of chocolate truffles… and began to run a bubble bath for me. Smiling from ear to ear, I reached into the tub to stir up some bubbles. And then…DUN DUN DUN….
I stood up and collapsed into a heap of giggles in my husband’s arms. Just when I started to believe that I came home to the wrong house… NO HOT WATER. The youngest didn’t take a shower before school, so she took one after school instead and used up all the hot water.
I blew out the candles, ate all of the chocolates and checked my email. But I’ll tell you what… I was smiling the entire time.
Dear Asshole in the SUV,
I would just like to take a moment to THANK YOU for providing my 16 year old daughter a Valuable Driving Experience this weekend. You see, if not for you deciding that her RIDICULOUS adherence to local traffic law was incredibly offensive to you and completely unnecessary, she wouldn’t have learned that a trip to Wal-Mart had the potential to be deadly. She wouldn’t have known what it felt like to be completely terrified just because someone else was an impatient DICK. She also wouldn’t have known what it was like to have someone swerve around her while blaring the horn before cutting her off in the turn lane.
So thank you, you worthless fuck, for deciding it was time to Teach a Lesson to the girl in the minivan who obviously deserved to be run off the road and into the curb so that you could get that one last piece of credit card debt from the Wal-Mart toy section. If not for that lesson, she may have done something so idiotic as to ever get behind the wheel of a car again. She may have even FINALLY *GASP* taken her drivers test after a year and a half of parent supervised practice.
I would also like to thank you for providing all of these lessons to my child while my husband was in the passenger seat and not me. It’s the only thing that saved your life and kept me out of prison. I hope that crumpled SUV on the news last night was you.
Truly,
Bitchy Momma
Don’t you just love how even the fast food places have tip jars on the counter now? Why the fuck would I tip you for putting bread and cheese on a bun and wrapping it up? Isn’t that why your boss pays you to be there? And yes, I know working fast food sucks. It also sucks that your boss only scheduled YOU alone during the 5:00 PM dinner rush. But guess what… also something you’re paid to do! It’s Subway, not Top Chef. You suck it the hell up and get through it.
Do you want to know WHY I’m not tipping you? Let me just tell you:
- You glared at me during my order (even though I’ve worked in food service for years and was nothing but polite to you) and were a cunt to the woman in front of me when she didn’t speak loudly enough to suit you.
- You gave me attitude when I actually expected you to *GASP* put some fucking vegetables on the sandwich. I mean, how the fuck dare I ask for LETTUCE!? Not even extra lettuce. Just some.
- I thought you were going to pop a vein in your forehead when I asked you for an extra sandwich wrapper so that I
Mine looked NOTHING like this!
didn’t have to be the asshole customer who holds up the line in order to separate half of one sandwich (so my child who stayed after school, in the land of Stripper Shoes Wearing Step Dancers, could have dinner before her show).
- Everything you said to me, and every other person waiting in line, was said with such venom and indignation that it was a blessing for you that the sneeze guard was between my fingers and your throat.
So.. HELL NO I’m not tipping you for doing your job badly. Want to make more money? Try being nicer. Try treating your customers with some fucking dignity. Or get an IT degree so you can be a dickhead and people just chalk it up to being in IT. But do NOT treat me and everyone else like we’re dirt on your shoes, and then look meaningfully at the tip jar when you swipe my debit card to pay for the sandwiches (with 4 olives and a half a slice of tomato).
As much as I would love for it to be different, I’m a working mom. I’d love to bake and clean and do all of my errands while there aren’t dozens of (or 3) kids under my feet all the damned time. But, that’s not my life. I leave the house at 7:15 AM and I get home at about 4:55 PM.
Conveniently enough, this means that the kids are all home when I leave for work in the morning. They are also home 10 minutes before I arrive home after work. You do the math. That means I get exactly NO down time unless you count my hour round trip minute commute.. during which I usually get at least one phone call coming and one phone call going.
In the afternoons, they’ve got exactly 10 minutes of time to get completely ramped up on whatever sugar laden snack they grabbed as soon as they get in the door, make all of their “ZOMG… guess what happened to me today at school, on the bus, at lunch, here’s a million fucking papers for you to sign… they were due yesterday” declarations to their dad, who works from home. He, of course, is trying to finish up his work day and says “tell/show/give this to your mom when she gets home”. LUCKY ME! I seriously don’t even make it inside the house… most times they meet me on the porch yelling “Mommy, guess what?????!!!!”
Inside my head, I’m screaming “Please, for the love of Pete, let your mom have just 5 fucking minutes to get in the house before you unload. That’d be GREAT. You know what? 10 minutes would be better. I could take my shoes off. I could set my purse down. I might even be able to get to the medicine cabinet and pop a Xanax before I have to start dinner. Then you can tell me anything you want.”
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