Hypothetically
So, um, if your kids were grounded through Monday, and there was, say, a big Television Event happening tonight that you wanted to watch (that started before their bedtime) would it be poor parenting to suggest that everyone could watch some television together but then the grounding would be extended by one more day, afterwards?
Does your answer change in light of the fact that the commercials were a major disappointment?
How about if at one point your daughter claims to be JUST LIKE one of the players, and you enthusiastically agree, “Yes, you are EXACTLY like that gigantic man with biceps the size of my thighs, what with your enormous muscles, love of football, and of course you both have a penis,” and then for the rest of the interval until bedtime you have to listen to both children periodically screeching PENIS!!! and laughing hysterically?
Ground your way to a cleaner house
The children—have I mentioned?—have had a run of bad luck lately. And bad luck is what it is, because none of it is their fault. Just ask them! They will tell you! It’s just that the universe, well, it is cruel.
So cruel, in fact, that they are both currently grounded. Now, grounding a 7-year-old and an 8-year-old is tricky, because what can I do? Make them miss the prom? No dates? Turn over the bong? Mostly it means that there is no television and no computer. Now we all know that I would shrivel up and die under such an edict, but the kids are actually doing just fine. Which is rather not the point of them being grounded.
So today we all did some housecleaning. There are tasks that I typically allow them to handle and feel confident they can manage without making an even larger mess for me to clean up later, but they finished them and wanted more assignments. In fact, they begged to scrub the floor.
Eventually I silenced my inner control freak and let them have at it. Monkey managed to leave giant puddles everywhere without actually removing any dirt, but Chickadee was extremely conscientious. Though I began to question my judgment when I heard her call out, “You can call me Annie. Maybe later we’ll sing.”
Stretch bootcut moron
Yesterday was a VERY EXCITING DAY, because something unprecedented happened.
I went to Marshall’s and found TWO pairs of jeans that FIT!
And I would’ve happily paid any amount of money for those jeans, because my quest for ass coverage has become so dire that my normal penny-pinching ways have been downtrodden in favor of my new philosophy, which is: SPEND IT ALL if it means having pants to wear. But the heavens shone forth and the angels sang and my generous bounty cost me under $15. Total.
It was a difficult decision, yesterday, whether to write the Love Thursday post I went with or one about my new jeans. read more…
Love remembers
Because I was raised Jewish and then fell into a rather extreme Christian religion in college, when I regained my senses I was (understandly, I think) a bit wary of committing myself to another church. It wasn’t that I didn’t still consider myself a person of faith; it was that I was beginning to realize that first I needed to know what I believed, apart from what a group of people might tell me to believe.
My (ex) husband (is) was Methodist. I went to church with him. Sometimes. The Methodists seemed nice enough. read more…
Remind me not to get my hair cut. . .
… any time I have to, say, do anything else. At all. Ever.
Listen, I hadn’t had my hair cut since NOVEMBER. I waited as long as I could, because after the relative freedom of cutting all of my hair off a while ago I immediately turned into Goldilocks and was all “I want it SHORTER. No! Wait! That’s TOO short! Now a bit longer. That’s good. A little more. No! SHORTER!” After a while of this, I settled on A Plan to grow it out to something still short, but longer than it had been, and as this involves growing out umpteen layers, I have been TRYING to stretch out the time inbetween appointments.
Because it sort of sucks to pay real money just to have a quarter inch of hair trimmed off back there on my neck. read more…
Better parenting through duct tape
I’m in something of a holding pattern with my children, at the moment. One of the supreme joys of the complicated child (because there are just so many) is figuring out how to balance patience and appropriate consequences.
In other words: Misdeeds require correction, yes, but you don’t want to be punishing behavior a child cannot help. On the other hand, you don’t want to be issuing a free pass to be irresponsible and bratty to a kid just because they have some issues, either.
It’s such a delightful conundrum, constantly trying to discern when an infraction requires creative problem-solving and when it requires a sound beating. read more…
The kindness of strangers
I had about a million things to get done this weekend, and almost none of them did. How unusual.
I did manage, however, to get to the supermarket this afternoon. I spent most of my time there shaking my fist at the $9 gallon jugs of orange juice and crying heavenward “IT IS NOT ALLOWED TO SNOW IN CALIFORNIA EVER AGAIN.” I love orange juice as much as the next person (though perhaps not as much as Otto, because his relationship to orange juice frankly concerns me a little), but I can buy wine for that kind of money. And then I don’t have to share it with the kids.
The groceries are now half put away (the other half sitting around the kitchen floor, spilling out of bags) and I swear I will get to the rest of them after dinner tomorrow. read more…
“Promiscuous” is a synonym for “random”
At least, it is according to thesaurus.com. And now that I know that, I can claim to be promiscuous for the first time in my life.
(Welcome to Woulda Coulda Shoulda! Now with more slutty!)
If I had a cohesive tale to tell you I would, because I’m an excellent sharer that way (perhaps it comes along with the promiscuity?), but the best I’m going to be able to muster right now is a few bits and pieces. This is my brain. This is stress. This is my brain on stress. Any questions? Not that there’s a damn thing I’ll do about it if you DO have questions, because today this is all I’ve got. read more…
I’m renaming them Crunchy and Chewy
My day was going along, you know, and it wasn’t anything out of the ordinary at all, and that was fine.
Then I got a call from school about one child, and then later as I girded myself to deal with that child and that particular issue (and was coaching myself to try to refrain from starting with “WHAT WERE YOU THINKING?”), the kids arrived home and the OTHER child had a note detailing an EVEN BETTER transgression, one that caused said child to hand me the note and then RUN AWAY CRYING because there was no question at all that sticking around would mean bearing witness to my brain actually igniting and causing my face to melt off. read more…
Love is an adventure
Perhaps I have mentioned that I’ve lived in New England for the last, oh, 10 years or so. It is cold here.
These are my wicked good slippers (they really call them that in the catalog) from L.L. Bean. I wear them whenever I’m in the house and not in bed, whenever it’s winter. Which means that I wear them about 18 hours a day, 300 days a year. What?
And they don’t even smell bad. This is because they are made by wood elves in Maine who sprinkle the shearling with fairy dust.
You can see that the right slipper is completely falling apart. I cannot imagine why. read more…