Boys and Bugs and Spit and Blood

Being the only female in a house overrun by testosterone is rather exhausting. Males are noisy, smelly, and messy. A male’s idea of clean and hygienic is rather different than a female’s. For example, males are staunch believers in the ten-second rule; when something edible falls to the ground, they have ten seconds to pick it up and eat it. That’s just ridiculous. Any self-respecting female, or at least any rational person (I’m being redundant, sorry), knows that you only have three seconds to pick food off the ground before it becomes inedible. Then there’s the whole thing about manners. Boys and girls have different ideas of what constitutes polite, social behavior, especially at the dinner table.

According to Emily Post, etiquette expert, there is a correct way to behave at the dinner table, and she has a list of the Top TenTable Manners that are very basic and should be easy to remember. They include chewing with your mouth closed; not making any gross noises at the table, such as, blowing your nose or slurping; not sticking your hand in your mouth (or other orifices, gross!); using your napkin, keeping your elbows off the table; you get the idea. These are just a few of the ten, very basic and easy-to-remember rules, or at least I used to think they were easy to remember. I can’t keep track of how many times I have found myself teaching these rules, or reminding my table-mates of these rules, or how many times the rules get broken around here.

But with all the etiquette rules and whatnot that are out there, I have to say that I’m sure that no other family in the entire world has "The Two Basic Rules of Dinnertime Conversation" that we have at our home. These two rules are always followed around here, and it’s a rare day when both of them are forgotten at dinnertime. We could be talking about politics, religion, current events, or any controversial, non-controversial, or just plain lame topic. These two rules are always followed:

1)    Always bring up a bug of some type in conversation.

2)    Always mention a bodily fluid of some type at the dinner table.

Let me give you a few examples. You would think that the Bible would be a safe topic at the dinner table, but at this house the conversation would somehow turn to Moses, and someone (one of the male youngsters in this house) would most definitely bring up every bug in the ten plagues, as well as how the water was turned into blood. Or how about talking about the beautiful, flowering pear trees, or the sweet-smelling blooms on our linden trees; you would think that was safe, right? But then we would end up talking about bees, flower nectar, and the process that bees go through to make honey (FYI, it involves bodily fluids). Okay, you say, the weather is a safe topic, right? Wrong! We would end up talking about flies in the spring, and how they regurgitate what they eat every time they land on something. Or we would end up talking about mosquitoes in the summer, and how they suck your blood. Babies are cute and safe, you say. Umm, let’s not go there. You get the picture, I hope.

So, if you live in a male-dominated household and are looking for a way to spice up things at your dinner table, or if you want to lose a few pounds, why not consider adopting "The Two Basic Rules of Dinnertime Conversation." You too could be blessed by boys and bugs and spit and blood.

Mama in Pajamas

http://www.mycutegraphics.com

Sitting around the kitchen table, doing school work together as a family, beginning the day at whatever hour works best, wearing pajamas and fuzzy slippers, a typical homeschooling family starts its day. I remember back when I was researching homeschooling this was one of the scenes that was repeatedly painted by homeschooling experts.

I never quite understood the appeal of sitting around past breakfast time still in pajamas. Pajamas are for sleeping and nothing else, that is, unless you're sick or you have a newborn. The thought of going past breakfast still wearing my pajamas is depressing. I can't walk to the mailbox in my pajamas. I'm not sure why, but all I know is that if I have to open the front door for any reason, I will at least put on some real pants.

Apparently, I'm strange (surprised?). It seems that wearing pajamas in public is the thing for the PTO crowd to do, particularly while dropping children off at school. It's like a scene straight out of People of Walmart. I almost feel overdressed in the morning dropping my children off while wearing jeans, a Target crewneck, and gym shoes. That's right, I didn't get the memo. I can almost hear the other moms thinking, "Who does she think she is? Wearing real clothes here like that."

So, in tribute to these moms, and dedicated to their traumatized children, I present to you, my highly-regarded, award-winning, five-star poem entitled "Mama in Pajamas."

Mama in Pajamas
by http://mamarantingnow.blogspot.com/

she drives the kids to school

with rollers in her hair

she looks like such a fool

you wish she wasn't there

she walks out of the car

with slippers on her feet

why does she walk so far

why can't she be discreet

you hope your friends can't see

maybe they're all asleep

oh, Lord please have mercy

or else you just might weep

mama in pajamas

morning, noon and bedtime

tell your shrink your traumas

of mama drama school time

The Reverse Miracle

It's really strange how sometimes a child can feel perfectly fine until it's time to go to school. We've been having some problems with getting Googie off to school in the mornings. He has a behavior contract at his school stating that if he finishes his homework before 8:30 in the evening, I sign his homework notebook and he gets extra time in the gym when he gets to school. You'd think it would be that simple?  Ha!

The main problem we seem to be having is that he comes home completely exhausted from his school day. I pick him up from school (which is about ten minutes away) and as soon as we get home, he falls asleep and stays asleep until the morning. You can imagine how hard it would be for someone to complete their homework while sleeping. You can also imagine how hard it would be to wake up a sleeping child that is either a very heavy sleeper or a gifted actor, one so talented that he won't even wake up for pizza and ice cream.

And so, here we are, it's morning and the dreaded homework wasn't completed the night before. Everyone wakes up, eats breakfast, and starts their day. Googie is happily sitting on the sofa reading a book about family games (that child doesn't read fiction, but I digress) when he calls out, "Mom, do I have to go to school today?" Which actually means, "I didn't complete my homework so I don't want to go to school."

I continue what I'm doing and casually answer, "Yes, it's Thursday. You go to school on Thursday, you know that." He doesn't say anything for quite a while and I continue to pack his lunch and get ready to leave.

Suddenly, and unexpectedly, I start to hear strange, wild animal sounds coming from the family room. It either sounds like a raccoon is dying or a coyote is giving birth. As I ponder how a raccoon or a coyote got into the house--maybe the kids left the back door open again last night, or there is something trapped in the chimney; stranger things have happened at this house--I walk over to the family room and find Googie doubled over in apparent pain, groaning, and clutching at his stomach. "My stomach hurts," he moans.

"It's a reverse miracle!" I exclaim as I usher him to the car and take him to school.

The Circular Package Beckons Me

I used to be a soccer mom, you know, the type of mother that lives in her minivan while driving her children around town from soccer game to soccer game.  After years of being a soccer mom, I gave it all up to be, instead, a taekwondo mom.  Now, instead of driving around from soccer game to soccer game, I get to spend my days at the taekwondo training hall. 

Most of the time I like to wait inside the building talking with the other parents, reading a book, and watching the children train.  It sure is boring waiting in the parking lot alone in a minivan during a thunderstorm, wondering if I should wait it out in the van or run for refuge inside the air-conditioned training hall and get soaked.   But that’s just where I found myself the other day.

Stuck in the minivan during a violent thunderstorm, waiting for my son’s taekwondo class to end, unable to open the doors or roll down the windows of the van for fear of ruining the interior by allowing a burst of torrential rain into the van, fearing the gas tank nearly empty and the battery dead, suffocating in the stale heavy air in the van, the allure of a circular pack of mints with the name Ice Breakers® was too strong.

Ice sure would be amazing. Wonder how it would feel in this stifling air to have just one of the tiny mints inside the package actually be made of ice: a tiny ice chip to cool me, to settle the unsettled, to quench the thirst, to help me forget the lack of a breeze in this self-inflicted prison cell inside my van. 

Popping the lid of the package open, I find a dozen tiny ice chips.  I violently and quickly throw one into my mouth.  The coolness was immediate.  The thirst is gone. The rain slows down long enough for me to open the door and feel a strong cool blast of a thunderstorm breeze blow on my face, or so it seemed.

Yes, I’ve gone certifiably insane, I decide.  It’s time for me to either make a dash for the building, go to the gas station to fill the tank, drive around town for awhile to make sure that the battery is charged, or continue to suffer in the van, being taunted by a package of mints.

Guess which one I chose.

 
 

Eyes on the Prize

With spring finally here, the rains finally behind us (I think), and the beginning of summer not too far off, it’s been very hard to get the children focused on their homeschool.  Googie has been making great progress in his schoolwork all year long and only has about three or four weeks of lessons to complete.   Bubba has finally started to make some progress in his homeschool too.  But, all of a sudden, like Newton’s First Law of Motion, my children’s homeschooling motion is being acted upon by the external force of spring weather.

 

Just when they can actually see the prize: a summer filled with no school work, no cares, and endless fun; they start to dawdle, complain and waste time.  What would've taken one day to complete before the change in weather, is now taking almost a week to complete.  So, like Violet Beauregarde’s mother in the movie Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, I find myself saying, “Eyes on the Prize, Violet.  Eyes on the Prize.” And when they start to complain that the work toward the end of the school year is always the hardest, I just smile and, like Willie Wonka told Violet in the movie, I  say, “Confidence is key.”

What I need is another force to act upon my inert children.  A force greater than the wonderful spring weather that we’ve been having.  I’ve tried threatening them with summer homeschool, but to them it just sounds like an empty threat.  I either need to find a way to make the threat more convincing, or I need to find something else: a different force.  The question is: what could that possibly be?

It’s 1:00 p.m., Time to Start School

When someone asks me what a normal homeschool day is like for us, I answer, “I wish I knew.” Today, for instance, I wake up early before anyone else in the house is stirring.  I make my way into the kitchen and put the tea kettle on the stove. Waiting for the tea water to heat up, I revel in the quiet that surrounds me while the dog, curled in bed, is giving me a look that says, “You have to be kidding, I’m not moving.”

I have great hopes for this day, a day with no appointments, no long lists of things-to-do, a normal day. I sit down at the kitchen table not realizing that it would be the last time I would be sitting down for quite some time, pick up my copy of My Daily Catholic Bible, read today’s reading, check e-mail, and log into Facebook as the eight-year old pads into the kitchen and demands breakfast.  Not liking what I have to offer him for breakfast, wanting something else to eat, the eight-year old is crying, stomping, and thrashing about.  I send him back to his room, as the dog deciding to take part in the action, gets up from bed and starts to bark, demanding attention.  I coax the dog outside, the eight-year old to his room, and the whole while the teenager is still in bed blissfully unaware that morning has come.  A minute hasn’t passed before the dog is scratching at the patio door.  I let the dog back into the house just so he can follow me to the teenager’s room to help me do the impossible; wake up a teenage boy.  “Wake up, Bubba. It’s morning,” I calmly say.  

“Yes, I’m up,” he says while still in bed, under the covers, with his eyes closed.  The dog, knowing that this will not work, jumps up on the side of the bed, short, front legs up on the edge of the bed, long body stretched, hind legs still on the floor as if on tiptoe, his face reaching to lick the boy’s face.  The boy laughs and gets out of bed to pet the dog.  With his mission accomplished, the dog, tired and hungry, herds the teenager to the kitchen.  I feed the dog.  The teenager feeds himself.  The eight-year old, deciding that he’s hungry enough to eat the sugar-coated bits of sugar-bits that we actually have and not the peanut-butter-flavored bits of sugar-bits that we don’t have, sneaks back into the kitchen and politely asks for breakfast.  I help him with his breakfast.

The phone rings.  It’s the college-age son whining that he’s starving, has nothing to eat, can’t finish his homework, and has a class later in the day, in other words, I have to drive him to the grocery store.  I quickly shower, throw some clothes on, clean out the back of the minivan to make room for the groceries, and drive to his apartment. “Hi, Junior, ready to go?” I ask.

“Huh? Uh?” he answers as he follows me out to the minivan.  Groggy, slow-moving, shuffling his feet while dragging a shopping cart behind him, he slowly makes his way through the store.  Trying to be patient, I calmly follow him through the store offering useful tid-bits like, “No, you don’t have to buy 10 of those items to get the 10 for $10 price,” and “yes, half of $5.00 is $2.50.”  

Having been in the store for over one hour, my patience wearing thin, I proclaim, “Son, are we done yet?”  Did I actually just say that?  And I wonder where the kids get these witty remarks.  He gives me this look that says You talkin’ to me?  and slowly continues to pull his cart through the aisles.  Finally, after what seems like two hours, he stops with a lost look on his face and proclaims (ta da!) that he’s done.

Not having gone on a run this morning and full of energy, I make a beeline to checkout lane 21 where there is no waiting, unless you count waiting for Junior to slowly drag his grocery cart over to the lane.  He gets to the lane and watches me, uninterested, as I start to unload his groceries.  The cashier is bagging the groceries, the cart is empty, and he just stands there.  “Push the cart over here to the front so we can load the bags into the cart,” I say.

“Huh?” is his reply.  I grab the cart, pull it over to the front, and load his bagged groceries back into the cart.  I pay.  We leave the store with the newly purchased groceries and go back to his apartment, where we grab the grocery bags (thanks goodness for bags with handles), open the door to the apartment building with our feet since our hands are loaded with bags of groceries, and in one trip up the stairs we get all those groceries in the apartment.  Mission accomplished.

Back at home I realize that it’s lunch time.  We eat lunch. We pray our morning rosary and afterwards I announce, "Kids, it's 1:00 p.m., time to start school today!"

It's now 4:15 p.m. and we're diligently working on our homeschool. The phone rings.  It's Junior.  "Now what?" I think hoping for the best, but expecting the worst. Apparently, he's finally awake.  He just wanted to thank me for having taken him to the store today.

Don't Worry About It

This statement, coming from my 8 year old, is definitely cause to worry. Yep, he could be running around acting crazy, making all kinds of noise, harassing his brother, but when he's really quiet and he says, "Don't worry, Mom."  That's when I worry.

"Goggie, did you finish your math?"

"Don't worry, Mom"

"Did you put your shoes away?"

"Don't worry."

"Did you brush your teeth?"

"Don't worry."

And of course, here's my favorite one.  You know, when it's completely quiet...you can hear a pin drop...

"Goggie, what are you doing?"

"Mom! Don't worry about it."

A r r g h ! ! !

My Sweet Hemma Died August 14, 2008

I miss my dog so much. She was such a good dog and had so many little quirks. For example, she would start barking every time Hubby would open a bottle of wine. She would also bark anytime I yelled at the kids or if anyone said "spanking hind" or started to count. She would also bark if you said, "Is it Timmy? Did he fall into the well?" She also liked it when we said, "Chosen one...I'm coming." Very silly dog.

She would always follow me around the house and when my hand was dangling, she would get under it and start to get under my hand to get petted. She was so sweet and would let the kids play with her. Remember the picture of her with the New Year's hat? She would put up with all kinds of things like that. She also loved to play tricks and enjoyed amusing us.

She was such a sweet dog. I still look for her and miss her so much. She was only about 12 years old...

Happy New Year and Other Belated Greetings

Here is Hemma wishing everyone a happy new year. She's such a party dog.

Anyways, I haven't posted since Thanksgiving because, as everyone knows, the holiday season is a crazy time of year.

Junior's Eagle Scout Court of Honor turned out really nice. We had around 50 persons there including Junior's great-grandfather, uncles, aunts, cousins, grandmother, grandfather and countless friends and fellow scouts. It was a wonderful day. After the ceremony we had a nice reception and spent some time with everyone that had attended the ceremony. In addition, I was able to put together a really nice scrapbook with pictures of him as a tiger, wolf, bear, webelos and scout; pictures of his Eagle Scout project; and all the commendation letters he received from various politicians and community leaders. He even received letters from the president, vice president, and the archbishop.

Next,we had a Festivus party for Bubba's birthday. We had a nice group of people over and we ate a non-holiday comfort food for the meal. We also had the traditional Festivus fruitcake that we all admired but did not eat, as tradition dictates. And we cannot forget the Festivus pole. Everyone had a chance to hold the Festivus pole while airing their grievances. Everyone's grievance was some form of "I don't like people who whine." Finally, the Festivus celebration ended with the feats of strengths and the pinning of the host (Bubba) to the ground.

Of course, the day after Festivus was Christmas Eve which we spent at grandma's house and we had our annual gift exchange. As part of the gift exchange we had a "white elephant" gift exchange with a prize awarded to the funniest gift. The winner was Junior with a bag of Five (Arby's) Roast Beef Sandwiches.

On Christmas Day we began the day with Mass and later came back to open our Christmas presents. It really was a nice day. We then had a Christmas dinner with grandma coming to spend the afternoon and evening with us.

Not too long after that, my sister came to visit with my niece and we had a really nice time just hanging out and relaxing. For New Year's Eve, we drank champagne, set off fireworks and watched the ball drop in times square.

Today we finished putting away our Christmas decorations.

My Life is Totally Boring

Yes, my life is so boring I really don't think I have much to write here. It's like that old McDonald's commercial, "I get up, go to work, go home, go to bed, I get up, go to work, go home, go to bed..." In a way, one could say that's a good thing. No excitement means that things are going along smoothly and I suppose that's pretty much right. So why the rant? I really don't know. I look around and see so many people with such strong opinions about this or that; living totally exciting lives with accolades to prove it. And I'm just glad that the day went along without anything of note.

Okay, so I had to chase the 5 year old in the soccer field WOO HOO! How's that for excitement? That's right, Goggie thought it would be great fun to wrestle Bubba in the field while I was trying to watch Junior play soccer. That on its own merit doesn't sound too bad, right? Nice wholesome, little boy activity not involving video, TV, computers or who knows what. But then we are in this huge field, with plenty of room all around, miles and miles of space as far as the eye can see (I like to exaggerate but you get the picture right?). Okay, well do you think they go wrestle out in the open spaces available to them? No, of course not. They find the only other person around and decide to wrestle right next to her, almost on her lap. Then Goggie thinks it would be great fun to run. Not out in the open spaces, no, but around and around that same poor woman. Yuppers.

Then, the possessed child runs off, crosses the streets and runs across the soccer complex so I have to chase the little rascal (yes, my life is PG rated so the language has to censored). And then when I manage to catch him 1 mile later, I spank his little hind end. Talk about a screaming banshee. I've never heard one before so I really don't know what a banshee sounds like, but I'm sure it can't be as loud as a 5 year old that was caught by his exasperated Mama. Obviously, I missed Junior's soccer game. Yup, that's excitement!

How about coming home and realizing that it's 8:00, no one has eaten dinner, I need to defrost the meat, put a meal together from scratch and on the table no later than 9:00, so that my OCD 12 year old son can be in bed before 9:30 per his therapist's instructions, all while talking to my sister on the phone (I thought it would be fun to call her since I hadn't talked to her in a while)? That was a rat race but I got it done. TA DA!

Now tomorrow promises to be another boring day. Non-stop boringness from morning till night. Wonder what we'll have for dinner????

Like I was saying, my life is totally boring...