Special Guest Post: It’s Mir’s Dad!
You asked (over on Facebook) for the famous Mir’s Dad to come and write so, while my lovely bride (oh, hey – this is Otto tapping at you now) is off getting lovelier, he was ordered to hunt and peck his way through writer’s block (hard, when you’re an architect by trade and nature, to problem solve in your kid’s realm) and create the following missive.
So, some rules:
- We love Mir’s dad. He’s awesome. You must agree to this before clicking through to his post.
- No nasty comments or he’ll leave mean ones on your blog.
- The chances of him registering “mirsdad.com” are pretty slim, but you can ask.
- He has kids already and, while he’s sure you’re a perfectly nice person, probably won’t adopt you. Sorry.
That’s it, click on through to read …
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Guaranteed redemption
I think one of the things I love so much about having a dog is that I always know where I stand with her. Human relationships are complicated, messy things. Good intentions can get lost, overshadowed, and misinterpreted. Apologies can be hard to come by and sometimes even harder to really hear. And a bad day can sabotage years of carefully laid groundwork if you’re not lucky. Humans are HARD.
Dogs, on the other hand, are easy. Dogs have long but extremely forgiving memories. Dogs are all about your intentions RIGHT THIS SECOND and not so much about that unpleasant thing that happened before.
Plus, they’re easily bribed with food. (I guess this is also true of some humans. But not so much in my experience.) Y’all know I love Licorice to furry little bits, but she’s really not all that smart in the grand scheme of things. Smart for a dog? Absolutely. Smart compared to a human? Well, no. I mean, possibly smart compared to a human that likes to roll around in entrails in the woods, sure. But on average… no.
Licorice always forgives me. read more…
Rated PG-13…
… which stands for, “Please, God, help us both survive 13….”
My post today over at Off Our Chests is one that contains frank discussion of body parts and some strong language. Please skip it if that’s going to be disturbing for you, or if you’re my father (ahem).
Sometimes I embarrass my kid by accident, and then I don’t blog about it, because I figure that’s just adding insult to injury. And then sometimes later on she turns to me out of the blue and says, “Hey, did you ever blog about that thing? Because it was kind of funny.” And then I can write about it, some, but I still have to be sure to honor those lines around her experience; share my story without encroaching on hers, even though she’s part of mine. It gets more complicated every day. But then, doesn’t everything?
I hope you’ll come read about our vagina adventure (oh the spam I’m going to attract with that phase!), which is actually a lot more about what I hope my daughter thinks than it is about anatomy.
Spend it, spend it good (or not)
I am a stress shopper.
I feel like I should apologize for that; like I should be embarrassed that my preferred outlet for pesky unpleasant feelings is to obsessively hunt down the perfect bargain or just spend a couple of hours walking up and down the aisles at TJ Maxx, certain that today they’ll have that perfect outfit that will make me happy.
It’s not that I’m unaware that it’s a rather predictable and boring transference, and not really the healthiest coping mechanism, it’s just that I’m as good at justifying it as I am at doing it. I’m not binge eating. I’m not drinking or doing drugs. And I’m not spending money I don’t have or buying useless things (it’s not all Hoarders-ish up in here, I swear). So in the grand scheme of things, I guess I consider it one of the lesser possible evils on my personal scale of vices. (Plus it beats just sitting around crying, which I am also embarrassingly prone to, and that NEVER results in a cute piece of clothing or something shiny for my office.)
It probably goes without saying that I’ve been shopping quite a bit, lately, but that never stopped me from saying it before, so: I’ve been shopping quite a bit. read more…
Lucky 13
We had baseball today, and Lemur wasn’t there so I was braced for a meltdown. But it turns out that 1) Monkey is actually, with a bit of coaching, a pretty decent batter and 2) today was the day we got shirts and hats.
13 is Monkey’s lucky number, so finding out he’d gotten it for his shirt was kind of like Christmas and his birthday all wrapped up together and topped off with a particularly chocolate-laden Easter. So that was awesome. (Coincidentally, 13 is also MY lucky number.)
(Pssst! Are you a fan of Woulda Coulda Shoulda on Facebook? There may be a bonus picture from this morning over there, just sayin’.)
Five good things on Friday
1) This morning I went to yoga and then spent several hours making granola with a friend. Call me a hippie but that is a DAMN fine way to spend a Friday, on all fronts.
2) Monkey had a good day at school, and happily informed me that his team did NOT win the Battle of the Books, but they were runners-up and the team who won really deserved it. Yay for good sportsmanship!
3) Chickadee and a friend were picked up from school and deposited at the State Science Fair by Otto, who then texted me: “Nerdlings delivered and safely locked in the nerd pod.” I am never deleting that off of my phone; you cannot read that and not feel cheerful. Well, I can’t, anyway.
4) The rain stopped. Finally.
5) Hey, guess what! It turns out that after all that angst that if you VERY STERNLY tell Licorice to “go to bed,” she’ll go sleep with Chickadee and not come stand on our heads until our alarms go off in the morning. Hooray!!
Unintended repercussions
I would say that first and foremost, I am the queen of unintentionally sticking my foot into my giant mouth. I am forever saying things I should not, and I really don’t even have the excuse of being stupid. I’m not stupid. My mouth just happens to work faster than my brain. And in a somewhat related vein, despite being something of a planner—some might even say a neurotic, perfectionist one, at that—I am often queen of choosing a course of action without fully understanding ALL of the ramifications.
The saddest part is that it’s invariably something where I feel so PLEASED with whatever I’ve done right up until I realize I’ve completely screwed myself. Accidentally.
Example the first: Granted, I was sort of having a hissy fit when I wrote it, but this post? Appears to have cost me a dear friend. Which sucks.
Example the second: While deep down I thought I was being kind of brilliant, taking away my daughter’s bedroom door, once again I only proved that my capacity for the long view is somewhat myopic. read more…
We’ll look back and laugh, right?
I turned into That Parent when I wasn’t looking. I don’t know if it was inevitable, or if it was brought on by these recent feelings of simply ping-ponging between the kids’ needs, but somewhere inbetween finding-a-therapist-for-Monkey, now back to setting-limits-for-Chickadee, now back over here to deal-with-this-school-meeting-for-Monkey, then back again to find-a-new-specialist-for-Chickie, I became That Parent. The one who delivers a single, terrible indictment, then turns and walks away.
“Please take the door off the hinges. Your bedroom door is gone until further notice.” Later, I said to Otto, “I am so angry about this, you have no idea.”
“Actually I do,” he answered. “I know you’re beyond furious because you didn’t even yell. Chickadee’s terrified.” He had a point. I always yell. I wish I didn’t, but it’s true. She was right to be terrified.
I can’t tell the story of what led up to it, but today at Off Our Chests I’m talking about what followed after. I don’t know if hindsight will be kind to us on this one, but I can hope, I guess.
Outfitting my eyeballs
With everything else that’s been going on, I forgot to tell you the MOST EXCITING NEWS EVER about my new eye doctor. I know, you thought today was going to be a boring old Monday and here I am with this SCINTILLATING story. Because everyone knows that eye doctor visits are the stuff legends are made of! Yes!!
Okay, maybe not. But I did go to a new eye doctor.
I hadn’t been in over three years, if you don’t count my last few sorry attempts to wear contact lenses. I figured I’d learned my lesson that score, anyway; I just wanted to get an updated prescription and some new glasses.
I picked a nearby optical place I’d heard good things about, and went in for my appointment. It didn’t start off well; someone called my name and brought me back into a room and started adjusting things and telling me to look here and look there and give her my glasses, and she never introduced herself. I am definitely becoming southern because I was kind of offended by that. Bless her heart. read more…
Lullaby in the key of grapefruit
I was actually going to write about this yesterday, before I read Chris’ excellent post about sharing the good stuff, but yesterday I ended up in bed most of the day with a stomach thing, and that’s all I’m going to say about that. (You’re welcome.)
So now you get it today and I totally look like a follower. Thanks a lot, Chris. Sheesh. (I kid! I am also still a little woozy, so, you know, cut me some slack.)
A couple of nights ago it was just me and the kids for dinner; Otto was stuck at a work thing. We’d gotten home late from our various activities, and I threw together a quick dinner for the kids and we sat down and I kept trying to hurry Monkey along because it was getting late and he still needed to shower before bed and I didn’t want him up too late. He obediently sucked down his food and headed upstairs, leaving Chickadee and me at the table.
I decided I wanted to eat a grapefruit, because last week I bought a giant bag of them and I’ve been working my way through them one giant mess at a time. And here we have to pause to discuss the proper method of grapefruit consumption. read more…