SnarkyMoms

My daughter was in the store today looking for a halloween costume.  Her brother wanted to be the Grim Reaper, and she decided she wanted to be that as well.  Unfortunately, she called it the “Grim Reefer”.

The other night, we were coming home from the store, and the kids decided to quiz me on what it was like when they were a baby.  We go through various questions about how much they slept and what they ate before we get to one that brings the game to a screeching halt.

My lactose intolerant son asked me, “What did I eat when I was first born?”

“Milk.  The only thing babies eat is milk.”

“Was it regular or soy?”

My son was breastfed.  I told him he drank regular, since that was the only thing I had on tap.

Now, you’re probably reading the headline and thinking, “Hmmm, why pass it up?  Why not go for it?!”  Well, that’s not exactly what I mean.

Throughout history, it’s been fairly typical for a child to follow in their parent’s footsteps when it comes to a career.  Typically, they choose their father’s career, since men have historically been working longer than women.  But it’s not often that a parent follows their kid into a career.  And that’s what I mean by the title.  Instead of passing a career down to your children, in this case, my daughter has passed one up to me.

Ever since she was little, she’s been very artistic.  She’s got creativity for days.  :D  Sure, her head is sometimes in the clouds, and her socks are often mismatched when she does it herself.  But that’s only because she’s decided that she wants to paint the clouds, and pink goes well with yellow (which is does… usually).

But now I’m starting to get involved in it.  Earlier this summer, I got a job as an artist’s assistant.  And through that artist, I had the opportunity to go professional with my own art as well.  I had been putting it off.  It would take too much time and effort to drive to all the craft fairs, and I might not sell anything.  The farmer’s market was too expensive, and people usually carried cash, but not enough to buy one of my pieces.  Yada yada.  Any excuse I could think of to put off doing it for real.

But when the opportunity came open, I grabbed at it.  Why?  I don’t know.  I just know that my daughter would.  She’s bold like that.  And maybe I finally decided that I don’t have much to lose.  I might be out a few bucks.  Okay, well that’s a bummer, but I already earned the money, so it’s time to spend it.  I might embarrass myself.   I do that on a daily basis for free.  I might be carving something and get my hair caught in the drill, causing much pain and potential death.  …Okay, well there’s that. 

Or I might meet some really cool people.  I might make a couple of bucks.   I might surprise people and make them open their minds to new possibilities, which is sort of the point of art.  I might learn more about the art world, so I can make myself a better assistant.  And I might wear my freakin’ hair in a ponytail, thereby justifying my sixth grade shop teacher’s whole job.

Hmph.  And it all sprang from a kid using crayons.   What do you think would happen if I bought her an easel?!

I just saw a commercial for Yo Gabba Gabba.  And I’m frightened.  I can’t identify a single thing in there.  I mean, even Oscar the Grouch looks like he makes sense.  But these creatures were just weird, blobby things that look like they climbed out of Oscar the Grouch’s worst nightmare.

And it gets worse.  I believe they were singing a song about a party in their tummy.  One with green striped arms was waving them around, and it came across as if he went all Silence of the Lambs on Steve from Blue’s Clues.   And to top it off, they show a picture of a stomach with little stuff swimming in there.  Don’t ask what it was.  You don’t want to know.

Now, I ask you… Is this truly the message we want to send to our kids?  ‘Cause the show looks like a kids bad acid version of “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas”.

We have some pretty old vehicles, so whenever we take a trip, we always get a rental car.  And because we don’t want to pay out of pocket for anything, we usually take the damage waiver.  Thank god!

Let me paint the picture for you.  We’re on a 8+ hour trip, coming back from grandma’s house.  Grandma has given each of the kids a bag of popcorn, which they promptly finished.  She probably put more than that in there, but who knows.  We stop about two hours in to get drinks, go pee (because it is assured that you will have to stop 20 times when you’re on a long car ride with kids), and get some snacks.  My kids each pick out 3 Laffy Taffys in blue and green.   We get back in the car, and not five minutes had passed before the candy was gone.  And from the backseat we hear,

“I feel like I’m going to throw up.”

My daughter has always had a pretty fine trigger on her stomach contents reset button, so my husband pulls over quickly.  Not quickly enough.  Blue and green taffy, mixed with popcorn, is now filling the seat.  We get out and try to clean up, but considering both my kids are well out of diapers, we don’t carry wipes anymore.  We ended up using pond water.  I told my husband that we need to find the nearest store that has trash cans or bins for sale, in case she gets sick again.  Which isn’t easy on a highway in Kansas.   Finally, he sees an outlet mall, and he runs inside a kitchen goods store, hoping to find a trash can for sale.  He didn’t find one.  Instead, he found a great big, family size popcorn tub.  Ohhh, the irony.  We told him that popcorn tub was going to be his Father’s day present.

We found a Walmart and my husband and son went inside to get wipes and other implements to clean up with.  My daughter got sick again.  When they came out of the store, we wiped her down the best we could, told her to strip (it isn’t the first naked kid in a Walmart parking lot), and changed her clothes.  And then we did the only thing we could think of.  We wiped the seat down the best we could, folded it into the floor, and switched her to a different seat in the minivan.

When we returned it, we were on the phone with a bank, trying to conduct some business.  We issued a quick, “My kid got sick” and hurried out.  I don’t think they needed the details on just how bad it was, and they were going to find out for themselves that it looked like we tried to tie-dye the seats.  Surprisingly, they rented to us again after that.  But what did not happen again was Laffy Taffy.  EVER.

I just want to apologize to the people we saw fishing the other day.  I mean, my kids wanted to feed the ducks, and in hindsight, we should have carried the bread on our walk, and fed it to them when we came back home.  ‘Cause nothing screws up good fishin’ like having someone throw bread into the water, and then laugh about how the ducks are swimming as fast as they can all the way across the lake, and fighting the crows for a piece.  So, I’m sorry we ruined it for you.

(It was pretty funny.)

We were in Blockbuster tonight, and while in the drama section, my daughter pointed to a movie and asked me if it had “horrors” in it.  Only, it didn’t sound like “horrors”.  See, I’ve got a hick, Southern accent, and because she’s spent most of her life listening to me, she’s picked up a lot of my accent.  So, instead of “horrors”, it sounded like “whores”.  In other words:

Daughter: “Does this movie have any whores in it?”

Dad: “What?!”

Me” “She means horror.”

We’re trying the squid ink spaghetti tonight.

My daughter will try absolutely anything.  I would have loved for her to be with us the first time we went to London, when we were served an itty bitty octopus, complete with eyes, head, tentacles, and suckers.  She wouldn’t have used a knife and fork, but she would have put it right into her mouth.  My son, on the other hand, is so unadventurous that he turns up his nose at everything.  I would tell you that I could count the number of foods he’ll eat on one hand, but that would only be true if I lost a couple of fingers.  He enjoys macaroni and cheese, chicken fingers, and pizza.  He’s even fairly picky about the pizza.

So, guess which one of my kids picked the squid ink spaghetti.  If you guess my daughter, you’d be WRONG.  I asked them, “Who wants to try this” and pointed to the spaghetti in question.  He looked thoughtful for a moment, picked it up, and put it in the cart.

I think he’s hoping that trying this will get him out of experimenting with aubergines this summer. 

On Monday, I woke up and took the kids to school.  The only problem is, they didn’t have school on Monday.  Fortunately, I didn’t open the car door, kick them in the backside, and drive off.  When I told a friend of mine who happens to be a teacher, she told me that they try to prepare for this.  She said that inevitably, it’s the same parents over and over, and they actually drop them off and drive away.  She told me that I probably lost some serious reliability points with the teachers.

Today, my daughter wanted to wear a skirt.  Considering we were having snow as late as a week or so ago, I let her.  Despite feeling crappy, I got ready and left to pick them up at 2:40, just like I always do.   I wondered why they weren’t standing outside waiting on me, so I got out of the car and went to look for them.  I made it as far as the playground before I saw the group of kids and realized that they had running club.  And there was my daughter, sitting criss-cross-applesauce in her skirt, showing off her underwear to all the passing cars.  Great.  Not only did I come pick them up too early, but I dressed her in a skirt for running club.  Feeling like an idiot, I walked up to her and asked her if she wanted to stay.  She did, although she didn’t run.  I wonder how many credibility point hits I took on that.

As we were leaving, my son pointed out the Friday was popcorn day at school.  He asked if they could buy some popcorn, and I told him that I didn’t know.  What I really meant is that I’m not sure if my head will be popped out of my ass by then.

I’ve been on a health kick recently, and I’m trying to lose those last 50 few pounds.  So, I told my husband to get some whole grain lasagna noodles, and I was going to make some portobello lasagna.  Then I saw that they wanted $4.50 for the whole grain noodles, and I decided that whole grains being good for you are a myth rich people tell poor people in order to see how gullible they are.

As I was looking for a decent enough replacement, I saw some black spaghetti.  Now, do me a favor.  If you have a Super Target (one with the grocery store inside), go to the aisle with the pasta, and look for this black spaghetti.  It’s pitch black, and I wondered how they could possibly get it such a dark color.  I mean, pumpernickel is dark, but this was BLACK.  And it was out of this curiosity that I looked on the back of the package.

Squid ink.  I could not make this up if I wanted.