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Kidlet and I made a gingerbread house today. Ended up working on it way longer than we’d realized, and had a blast. She was even able to overcome some of her genetic tendencies towards OCD-type behavior (NOT from me, by the way) and put some of the candy on the house without making sure there was a consistent color pattern rotation in some cases. Har!

 At first, we thought it might look like a 3-year-old barfed the day after Halloween, but we ended up deciding it looked like the work of a pyscho clown on acid. Either way, we had a delightful time building it.

Promised a pic of my son’s painting. cool, huh? i haven’t gotten a frame for it yet. but i love it, i love that he brought us one of his paintings to begin with, and i LOVE having my kids’ original artwork around the house. i think it gives us more creative energy in the house.

Well, the holidays are officially here. We can declare it offical now, because I’ve begun taunting Stinker for Christmas. This is a greatly beloved sport and tradition at our house. Even though she’s all grown up in many ways, she still has that kid’s spirit of Christmas, and it’s fun as Hell. It also makes taunting her fun as Hell.

It goes something like this:

“Oh Baiiiiilllllleeeeyyyyyyy….guess what? I got the first Christmas present I ordered today. One for you! I got a Christmas present here, in the house. For you. In this very house! It is soooooooooo coooooolll! You’re going to love it. You won’t believe how cool it is. It’s the coolest gift ever given in all time and space. I can’t wait to give it to you! Don’t you wonder what it is? Wait a minute…I forgot….hmmmm. Oh wait. It’s a…ooops! Almost said it. That wouldn’t have been good! Almost forgot, but now I remember. How could I forget such a cool gift?” I could go on and on like this, of and on, for days at a time. Just ask her.

She flips me off. I’m laughing my ass off. She’s trying not to laugh, a little, to keep up with her righteously indignant routine but she can’t pull it off very well. She doesn’t do a convincing grumpy most of the time. Fortunately, she doesn’t seem to want to.

“Forget it,” she declares. “I can wait. I don’t care. Christmas will come soon enough. I am not doing that this year. I don’t care.”" Neither of us believe her, any more than we believe she’ll want to sleep in until 10am on Christmas day. I didn’t think to offer that whole “time starts moving faster as you get older” phenomena could work in her favor in this situation.  ”

I laugh and laugh and laugh. Of course she cares. That’s the fun of it: both the teasing and the presents. What she’d never admit is that she enjoys the teasing almost as much as the Christmas part. She’d swear it drives her nuts. And maybe it does a little, but it doesn’t, too.

Of course, I’d never say she likes the teasing as much as the actual presents. She’d faint or something.

I had a text conversation the other day and it was testy. With my kid. I’ve noticed almost all of these conversations we have end up that way, provided they last more than five minutes and go beyond the 3 W’s: “Work, weather and Well-gotta-go.” Without fail, I end up offending her. I won’t say it’s without cause, because it’s not, although I don’t see it the same way. But I’ll cope to being hard to take in certain circumstances, and readily identify this as one of ‘em.

And while I wasn’t thrilled about how it worked out, I don’t know of a better way to handle it, either. And honestly, I’m not sure I should try to find one.

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It’s a cold day outside, and I’m enjoying it by having the window open and wearing my friendly sock monkey pjs.  Life is good.

 I start to turn, and the Stinker pulls my arm to turn me back where I started. Huh?

“I’m looking at the sock monkey on your pajamas,” she explains. “There’s sock monkey on a date.”

“Well that’s good. That’s good to know,” It is, I think. “Even sock monkeys should get lucky sometimes.”

“Mooooommm! I can’t believe you just said that. That is so wrong!”

“What? What’s so wrong about it? Why shouldn’t sock monkeys have their fun? ”

“That’s just WRONG! That’s disturbing.”

“Not to other sock monkeys. I say, Let Sock Monkey get a little action. He deserves it. He’s a versitile guy. He cooks and cleans and everything. Why shouldn’t sock monky have a little noogie? I think he deserves it.”

Somewhere around then, she said I was nuts or something. I dunno. I was kind of in my own vision of sock monkey world, where our hero lives, working and playing and getting his occassional action. Good for him!

Go, Sock Monkey. Go!

I crossed my husband’s path in the hallway going towards the stairs. He gives me a great, big hug! I consider him an exceptionally good hugger.

Man, it feels good! “You know something, honey?” I ask. “I don’t know how it works, but when you touch me, it feels like it heals something inside of me and brings me all kinds of good stuff. I don’t know how you do that. How do you do that?” 

He just smiles at me. After a second, he quietly tells me he loves me.

“Oh! That’s it!” I exclaim as I start down the stairs. “That’s how you do it…That’s exactly how you do it.”

Wishing a GREAT BIG Happy Goddess Day to one of my oldest (as in “for a long time,” that is) and dearest pals, Julie. We’ve been friends an enternity, and I love her dearly.

Hope your day is terrific, Julie Bluebird!

“Someone in Indiana won my money,” declares my husband.

“What?” I am appropriately disturbed.

“Yep. Somebody in Indiana won the $300,000,000.”

“How rude! That was for us.”

“I know,” he replies. “But whaddya gonna do?”

“I guess we’ll get the next one, then. It’s certainly our turn!”

He agrees. So it’s the next big jackpot, then. It’s agreed.

We go outside, on the way to the store. Bailey, who claims to be allergic to the sun, naturally decides to complain–more for my benefit than the drive to voice any actual complaint, mind you. Giving each other shit is one of our favorite mother-daughter activities, after all. (There’s a reason why my friends laugh if I complain about her giving me shit, and respond with something like, “Geeeeeeee, I wonder where she got that, Dixie….”)

But I digress. We’ve just stepped outside.

“It’s so hot and bright out here!” she complains, basically to be a shit. “I have sensitve skin.” Her sensitive skin is also a running joke. She says no one can hit her, or look at her too hard, or expose her to direct sunlight, you know, since it harms her sensitive skin. I think her skin has even reacted to verbal stimulation, on occassion. It turns red. Just ask her. It’s very sensitive, you know.

“What? You say that like it’s a bad thing. Hot and bright is great–that’s just like me! Hot and bright! Hot and bright! Just like me: hot and bright.” I’m incredibly pleased with myself to have thought this up. Bailey winces, and I know by that I have a winner here.

“What? That is so not cool, Mom. You shouldn’t say that to me. That’s disgusting. Not cool at all.”

“Not cool. Hot and bright! Hot and bright! I like that. How can the day be bad, if it’s hot and bright, just like me?”

She groans. I laugh manically. “Hoooot and briiiiight. Hoooot and briiiight! Oh what a happy, happy day it is, so nice and hoooot and briiiight!” I enjoy making up nonsense songs just to make her groan and flinch. I’m not disappointed. “Your dad would agree with me. He’d say I’m hot and bright.”

“That doesn’t count,” she claims. “He has to say that. He’s married to you.”

“So what? That doesn’t make any difference. He doesn’t have to say that! Some married people would not say their spouse is hot and bright. It counts! And you say he’s so smart. You kids think your Dad is damn near a genuis. So if he thinks I’m hot and bright, it must be right then, huh? Hot and bright! Hot and bright.”

“That’s not the same thing. He has to say that. He wants to have sex with you.” I think she realized her mistake as soon as she’d said that.

“Well yeah! Of course he does. I’m hot and bright. Why wouldn’t he? But that has nothing to do with it. We do that because we like to.”

“I don’t want to hear about that! Aghhh!”

I laugh. Life’s pretty good, for those of us who are both hot and bright.

Parenthood has been on my mind lately. Go figure. One of my kids just turned 18, and I’m sort of getting to know another one, and sometimes hearing from the other, troubled one. And me? I’m still trying to figure out what the hell I think of it all…I’m far from figuring it out. I’ll tell you that, for sure. But I am getting some ideas. They come and go. They don’t burn my brain too much.

I think maybe most parents want something pretty simple from their kids, in the big picture. You want them to take care of their own shit. Do you know what I mean?

I think almost everything I’d hope for out of my kids could be summed up in those few words: Take. Care. Of. Your. Own. Shit. That’s it. (more…)