A$$hole Parents

I was volunteering in Bean’s classroom today. I do this a few times a week. It’s great to get to know the other kids in her class and see what they do and the different ways they learn. While working with the groups of kids, I couldn’t help but notice that one little boy was almost falling asleep at the table. He seemed despondent and lethargic. I’m no doctor, and I do my best not to pass judgement on other parents….but after the child projectile vomited it’s kind of hard not to pass judgement. This is where asshole parents come in to play.

Bean was sneezing a lot a couple of weeks ago. It led to chest congestion and a rough night. The next morning she begged not to go to school. She had already used a sick day when she wasn’t really sick so she knew what staying home would entail: not playing outside, not rough housing, soup, and movies. I felt myself channeling my mother “If you’re too sick to go to school, you’re too sick to do anything fun”. So when she begged not to go, I switched gears into Suspicious Mommy. I felt the forehead(warm), I told her the terms(she understood) and I offered medicine(she willingly took it). Did I want to spend the day waiting hand and foot on my kid? Not really. But seeing as it was a Friday and the weekend was mere hours away, I figured she might actually be sick. As it turns out, she was. Poor thing had Bronchitis and missed out on 2 days of school and the entire weekend. While I know our home situation allows for sick days, I realize that every home is different. I also know that whether we admit it or not, we have all been the asshole parent at least once.

Bean might have been slightly congested and I may have doped her up with Children’s Claritin and sent her to preschool. At one time or another your thought process may have been or will be “they are all little petri dishes anyway, a little sniffle isn’t the end of the world” and I might be inclined to agree with you. HOWEVER……I can’t stand the parents that dose their seriously ill child and send them school, hightailing it out of sight before the meds wear off. This poor child could have easily thrown up on a fellow student….ON YOUR KID!!! It’s not his fault, he was clearly sick.  His mom may have had to work. His dad probably couldn’t take the day off. I get it. But if my kid projectile vomits on me tomorrow because of this…..well that’s just not cool.

As parents, working or stay at home, we have a routine. Certain things that we have to get done while our little cherubs are in school. But once a sneeze threatens to throw a wad of tissues into your well-oiled machine of a day and you decide to send your sniffling sweetheart to school, you have essentially created a ground zero. Kids are gross. They wipe their snot on their sleeves, they don’t cover their mouths. They not only share toys, they share germs. When the teacher gets sick because she is exposed to this kind of biochemical warfare daily, the kids suffer because they have a substitute teacher. It’s a vicious cycle that can easily be avoided.

Asshole parents, I’m talking to you. Yeah it sucks to take off work and lose money because your kid is sick. I’ve been there. I’ve stayed up with her all night and wistfully yearned for the time she goes to school so I can sleep, but she’s not going to school because that is just wrong. It’s wrong to inflict a sick child on dozens of unsuspecting people. It’s wrong to make your child endure school if they are legitimately sick. It’s wrong to pass off your parental responsibilities because you’re “so tired”. I don’t really give a shit if you are tired. I’ve been tired since the minute my kid was born. I will be tired until the day I die. That’s what happens when you decide to have kids, you sign up for a lifetime of yawning and dreaming of being able to dream. Suck it up, take some Airborne and keep that sick kiddo home. It’s not just for the classroom’s sake. It’s for all involved. Because guess what? School policy states that he has to go home now, so either way he’s ending up where he should have been to begin with….comfy in his bed, puking in a bucket.

I have friends who are teachers and they will attest to this. Sending a sick child to school, medicated or not, is just cruel. So stop being an asshole. Enjoy the time off, watch a soap opera or something. cuddle with your kid. Because it’s autumn, cold & flu season, not to mention that nasty virus every person in the world in freaking out about right now. I don’t’ even want to say the word. It feels like a dirty word 🙂

Please for the love of Dimetapp, keep your sick sweetie home. You’re not helping anyone by sending them to school.

Ebola…..there I said it. I have to go wash my hands

Goodnight Moon….yeah right

Things every mother thinks at bedtime

Maybe not every night, maybe even just once in a great while. But at one time or another, every mom has had these thoughts, probably verbatim during the bedtime process. If you haven’t, you either have the world’s easiest child or someone else puts your kid to bed, and that’s cheating!

First let me define the parameters of “Bedtime”. Bedtime entails the time after bath (around 7:30/7:45) to the time your drowsy darling closes their eyes for the final time on any given evening. So I’m just going to take a wild guess as to the thoughts that cross your mind:

Bath Time:

“How in the ever living hell did you get taco sauce/spaghetti sauce/sloppy joe/etc on your back?”

“Yes yes I see your bath swimming around like a shark for the 5,782 time. Does that ever get old?”

“I wonder if I can sneak away and take a shower. My kid gets to bathe often, why shouldn’t I?”

“Oh thank god, bath time is over; I was hoping to get a soaking wet hug so I would finally have an excuse to change my clothes.”

Bed Time:

“For f*$%s sake child pick some pajamas. It’s not fashion week.”

“Oh shocker, you suddenly remember all the things you did today and now you have to tell me 1 minute before bed.”

“How many times does a child need to be told that she can’t put her pajamas on the dog?”

“I really hope she falls asleep soon, I have to catch up on Rizzoli & Isles”

“I really hope she doesn’t fall asleep soon, Hubby had that look in his eyes, but I really want to watch Rizzoli & Isles.”

“When do kids start falling asleep by themselves? I’m not going to college with her. Well that might actually not be so awful.”

“You better be this difficult to get into bed when you’re older.”

“I think she’s finally asleep, I can probably sneak out of here….oh look at that, she “accidentally” fell asleep on my arm. Asshole”

At this point, if you’re anything like me, you employ stealth tactics to extract yourself from her comatose clutches. Once you’re out of her goodnight grip, you attempt to get off of her bed. It is at this exact moment you realize that what you thought was a quiet mattress now sounds like a machine gun being fired. Once you’ve managed to get out bed during the bedspring rapid fire, you trip over the dog, somersault, knock over something priceless and breakable, shatter it along with your hopes and dreams of Rizzoli & Isles and realize that your sleeping beauty is wide awake and you get to start the process all over again. Now I’m going to spare you the thought process of the second round, as it’s not exactly…..pleasant J

Til next time, keep those toes in the sand…..quietly 😉

The Walking Half Dead

In honor of the newest season of the Walking Dead I got to thinking about zombies…..

What, if any, are the fundamental differences between a mindless zombie and a parent, especially the parent(s) of a small child or infant?

Parents:

Clothes: Stained with bodily fluids, most of which are probably not yours

Diet: You mindlessly eat whatever crosses your path, not for fun, but for sustenance.

Odor:  You’re not exactly sure what the smell is, but you are absolutely positive it is coming from either  you or your clothing.

Hair:  Your poor matted, tangled, something rabid nested in it hair. I’m sorry

Speech: The unintelligible jargon you think passes for actual human communication. This comes from being both tired and spending majority of your time with an entity that is incapable of coherent speech

Facial Expression: The lost, vacant expression on your face. I wish I could tell you otherwise, but that expression is here to stay.

Movement: The “Shuffle”. It’s a technique mastered by parents to avoid the late night Lego land mines. Shuffling allows the foot to roll over the Lego instead of stepping on it, which would result in a level of pain not yet describable to the medical world.

Brain: The ability of your brain to function off of little to no sleep, therefore relying on your primal instincts to keep going.

Zombies:

Clothes: Stained with bodily fluids, some yours, some from your victims, but mostly yours

Diet: You mindlessly eat whatever crosses your path, not for fun, but for sustenance.

Odor:  You are the smell.

Hair:  Just as with a parent your hair is a poor matted, tangled, something rabid nested in it mess. Actually something probably is nesting in it.

Speech: The unintelligible jargon you think passes for actual human communication. This is the result of the speech part of your brain no longer working as you are a zombie. Or a parent. The 2 are easily interchangeable as you can see.

Facial Expression: Lost, vacant expression on your face.

Movement: The “Shuffle”. This has nothing to do with late night legos. Apparently this is just the way zombies walk. I mean really, you’re dead, why should you hurry anyway?

Brain: The ability of your brain to function off of little to no oxygen, therefore relying on your primal instincts to keep going.

As you can see, the 2 entities of parent and zombie seem to have become interchangeable. Although, zombies do seem to have a couple things going for them

Daryl Dixon & Thriller!!!

Winner? Zombies in my opinion!

Why I want my kid to eat dirt

I’ll admit it, I probably ate dirt. I played with bugs and lizards and frogs. I climbed trees, played on metal playground equipment and landed on the ground instead of shock absorbent padding. I stayed out until the street lights came on and honestly, I probably did NOT wash my hands every night before dinner. I used to get so filthy that my mom would insist on hosing me down in the front yard before she let me in the house. My brothers and I had all manner of pets. Birds, bunnies, dogs, a little snake, hamsters, ducks, even a cat I hid for 2 days in my room before my mom found it. I ate junk food; I watched questionable things on television. I rode my bike without a helmet, and I lived in the early stages of the cell phone, my first phone had 1 game and it sucked. My brothers and I fought, a lot. We watched Saturday morning cartoons (the good kind like X-men and She-Ra and the Bugs Bunny and Tweety show) and we got hurt. Often. Well mostly me, I got hurt. Often. My point is this….I have vivid memories, some of the best times of my life, of engaging in activities that by today’s standards would be considered cruel and border on child abuse. That is complete and utter bullshit.

When Bean was just over 1 I started taking her to the same playground my brothers and I went to as children. Well, geographically it is the same playground. But physically, it’s a playground designed by helicopter moms. God forbid your child fall down and get a boo-boo. I got to see firsthand the degradation of a childhood icon due to “safety concerns”. No one was concerned about our safety when we were playing on a metal (rusty) contraption akin to that of a medieval prison. No one seemed to be overly worried about us playing in a hollowed out plane from the early 70s that they filled with concrete and then let children climb all over it. My parents never said a word about “tetanus”. In fact I recall my own mother telling me that if I got my head stuck in the bars, then I had to pull myself out. I mean honestly, a swing set in my own backyard was the cause of my very first broken bone. A swing set and an asshole younger brother.

My grandparents were a whole different level of awesome. They gave us weapons! Croquet mallets, a bow & arrow. My Poppy gave us coffee! So not only were we armed, but we were caffeinated! They let us try to prop a pool raft on the side of the pool to construct a makeshift pool slide. Can you guess what happened? Scraped up the top of both thighs. No one tried to stop us. And oddly enough, no one thought I was abused at home. No one thought they needed to involve CPS.

As strange as it might sound, I want Bean to experience that. She needs to. Childhood isn’t what it used to be. Childhood used to be adventurous. It used to be a deathtrap. And kids learned several key skills that they aren’t learning now. We learned to be resourceful. If you didn’t have enough Nerf guns for everyone to play, you all played with sticks. We would get home from school and my mom wouldn’t see us until dinner, and sometimes later than that. Homework was something that got done after dinner because kids belonged outside in the sunshine. Now it’s like pulling teeth to get kids to play outside an entire afternoon, let alone a whole Saturday. I feel like the best mom in the world if a whole day goes by without Bean asking to watch cartoons.

We learned to be tough. We didn’t run home crying with every bump or bruise. We learned to think on our feet. If you didn’t think of something fun to do, your friends would go home or go to a different friend’s house. We had to be in shape. Manhunts, tag, hide and seek, climbing trees. The need for agility was vital. Now kids just need good thumbs.

Have you bought a box of Legos lately? They don’t require any imagination. None. Zip. Zilch. They come with a plot. It’s kind of pathetic really. When we were kids, we had buckets of Legos. Yes some came with the intention to be made into planes, but the rest was left to our imagination. Now kids days are jam packed with play dates, violin lessons, soccer, organic chemistry, etc. And those children will have no time to foster their imagination. They will grow up lacking creative thinking skills, lacking the ability to solve problems. Those kids don’t even know who MacGyver is.

So do yourself, and the rest of the world, a favor, although at first it may not seem like it is a favor. Turn off the TV. Take the batteries out of the video game remotes. Hide the iPads. Make those little monsters go outside, because when I’m old, I don’t want my fate resting in the hands of someone who can’t make a coffee pot out of a paper clip, a rubber band and a magnifying glass.

Snap, Crackle BOOM!

I wish I could tell you the exact moment. Like Pearl Harbor, “A Day that Will Live in Infamy”. But I can’t because it hasn’t just been 1 day.  I should be able to tell you the exact minute that I snapped and completely lost my shit. Unfortunately I can’t. Not because it didn’t happen, but because it has happened several times so they have kind of blurred together. At first I beat myself up about it. Really made myself feel even worse, like I wasn’t up to the task of motherhood. And then I realized that even the most organized and capable person has a breaking point. And I’ve found mine, several times over. And it usually consists of a whimpering dog or 2, an inquisitive offspring who insists on 5 wardrobe changes a day and me foolishly attempting to have a 2 minute conversation with D. Now all of these variables might now seem like much, but let’s also factor in it’s towards the end of the day, and I’ve probably been picking up the same mess over and over again, and probably had to move my roommates laundry to the dryer because apparently taking care of my own grown man-child isn’t enough. Now when I worked full-time the temporary break in mommy sanity could be set off a tad easier just due to exhaustion. Now it’s a culmination of things, all gathering force throughout the day like a hurricane building up its strength. And the snap is spectacular, something akin the Mount St Helen’s erupting in ’81. My child looks at me as though I am the monster hiding in the closet. My husband meekly offers me time to myself, or a pedicure. The sad thing is I usually don’t take advantage of those offers because I feel so guilty temporarily going bat shit crazy. I just need for someone else to answer Bean’s calls and questions. I need someone else to go upstairs to find the shirt she absolutely must wear, but can’t find because it’s hiding underneath 1 other shirt and god forbid she move something. I need someone else to load the dishwasher, because I have been doing it all day. I need someone else to walk the dogs because, even though I adore them, some days they have the timing of a 3 year old, when it comes to walks. They let me sit down and get comfortable and then they whimper the unmistakable whine that can only be translated into “walk me now, or I’m peeing on your freshly shampooed carpet.” So I get up, for the 57^th time that particular day and walk them, around the block, twice because they are assholes. They are mine and I love them but they are assholes. And then I get in the pickup line at school, wait patiently with all the other moms, for the next wave of attack. The questions. The never ending questions. “Why this?” “What’s that?” “How are babies made?” etc. Questions to which you know the answers. Questions to which you don’t have answers. Questions that make you wonder what exactly they are teaching in kindergarten these days.  So its days like these that I can feel the snap brewing. It starts small, and before I realize it, I am a raving lunatic feared my family. Every response is short and concise. Every action is deliberate and spiteful. On most days, I exercise exquisite control over my sarcasm, but on these fateful days it pours from my mouth like hot lava, scorching whoever is close enough. And really good days I even end up in tears while I’m folding someone else’s laundry, cursing every pair of polka dot leggings. I sob silently, in the privacy of a room that D won’t come in. Because just like I tell Bean, sometimes you just have to cry it out. It’s those days that I call my capabilities into question. I sit and dwell on my annoyance, where it came from, what caused it, what exacerbated it. And usually the answer is always the same. Something went wrong in the script I had planned for the day. D offered to drive Bean to school and they left 10 minutes late because D was being D. I walked the dogs for 30 minutes and then as soon they came in the little one shit on the floor. I browned the ground turkey for dinner and THEN found out I didn’t have taco seasoning of any kind. I wanted to ask D how his day was and Bean kept interrupting. Every mom has a script for how she expects the day to progress. And once a wrench is thrown into the works, her coping skills come in to play. And if I’m close to snapping, chances are my coping skills have been exhausted and I can’t even handle a mosquito buzzing around my ear, let alone 2 humans and 2 dogs pulling at me, needing me to do things for them, when what I really want is to have a selfish moment and have those entities do things for me. I want one of the dogs to make me a cocktail. I want Bean to tell ME why Pluto isn’t a planet anymore. I want people & canines alike to leave me alone in solitude for longer than it takes me to use the bathroom. Sometimes I pretend I’m pooping just so I can have a few extra minutes to myself, but the thin barrier of a door between myself and reality is already crumbling in the form Bean knocking on the door asking me why flamingos have such long necks.

Sick Days

Earlier this week I injured myself. Nothing serious, the only thing actually broken is my pride. Just slipped in a ½ inch puddle and sprained my foot. Very gracefully I might add. But the nature of my injury isn’t my point. My point is, that no matter how doting D tried to be, and how considerate Bean thought she was being, I still wasn’t able to give my foot the rest it so badly needed to properly heal. And it occurred to me that short of D & Bean being out of town while I had pneumonia, as a mom I have never gotten to properly be sick or injured. And this is where some of our Mom-Superpowers come into play. Not the lift a Pinto off of your child superpowers, but the dead-on-your-feet, brain leaking out of your nose, elephant sitting on your chest with the cough of 85 year old 2 pack a day habit and still upright and coherently making a grocery list while efficiently feeding a toddler superpower.

And that’s what Moms do. Moms everywhere. We stuff some tissues up our nose, overdose on DayQuil and keep going until the very last child is asleep. And then after we have swept through the house to assess the damage of the day, we finally slip into a blissful, medically induced coma, only to be awoken by little fingers prying open your eyes, urgently whispering about the monster in her closet because in your Vick’s haze, you forgot to do Monster Spray. So you wake your sorry ass up, blindly spray, hoping not to temporarily blind your child in the process. Then you shuffle back to the couch. Do you know why you’re on the couch? Because your husband has to work tomorrow and the lung you’re currently hacking up is keeping him awake. On the bright side at least you don’t have to listen to his snoring AND you get the T.V. to yourself 🙂

But the fun doesn’t end there. Your walking plague isn’t limited to just one day. That would be too easy. Day 2 is even more fun. Now you’re sweating like a sinner in church because your temperature has risen to a degree hot enough to cook an egg on your forehead. Along with a sizzling temperature comes a delirium the likes of which Hunter S. Thompson writes about. While you are enduring your own personal sauna, you still have children and a husband who need breakfasts, lunches packed, clothes picked out, shoes tied and normal things of that nature. After several attempts to accomplish these tasks, you manage to find socks, though not necessarily matching, but who’s going to see them anyway. You also manage to pack lunches, although the nutritional content is somewhat questionable. Let’s not even talk about the tied shoes…..that’s why Velcro was invented. Sick moms. Velcro is your lifeblood.

Sometime between the start of school and the end of school, along with your own personal inferno, your stomach decides to perform such a stunning display of intestinal pyrotechnics it would make the Imagineers in charge of the fireworks at Disney envious. And I wish it were simply one orifice that had to deal with guttural exorcism going on inside you. While this is going on, Moms somehow manage to get something resembling dinner on the table and help with the homework. At the end of yet another day of being an incubus for the Bubonic Plague, your symptoms seem to finally be subsiding. And your famliy’s universe continued, maybe with a hiccup here or there. And you did it all standing up. Any other human being would’ve succumbed to whatever bug you contracted. Which by the way, you probably got attending one preschool/kindergarten, play date, etc. Because just like you teach your kids…Sharing Is Caring. But I digress. A lesser human would’ve crawled into bed and then moved their misery to the bathroom once the volcano began erupting. My point is; Moms don’t get sick days. When you have a job, you get sick days. Even if you work in a position that you have to call out and lose money. You still get to be sick. Moms don’t. We don’t get sick days. We don’t get breaks. Sometimes the stars align and the husband can take over or a relative can help out. While recovering from my C-section I was lucky enough to have my mom come help me. She cooked. She cleaned. Hell, she even folded a mountain of laundry that I couldn’t even fathom completing. I was so happy to be able to take a nap, eat a hot meal, and not have to put away weeks’ worth of clothes. When D gets sick, I nurse him back to health. I get him medicine, make him soup, set him up with his favorite blanket and movies and pretty much pump him so full of drugs he passes out. When Bean is sick, same deal. Except when she is sick, it’s time to go to the doctor because she doesn’t get sick. So I sit in the waiting room for hours while she endures x-rays and yucky antibiotics. But when I’m sick, there’s no one to do those things for me. D has to work and as much she would love to help, Bean just isn’t able to run to Walgreens and get ramen and medicine. So I buckle down and deal with it. As does every other mom out there. So if you’re reading this and you’re not a mom, the next time you know one is sick, help her out. Watch her kid(s) for a bit. Make her some soup. Christ, let her sleep at your house. If you’re reading this as a husband, stop and appreciate what your wife does on a daily basis, especially when she is sick. I wish I could say I’m being a martyr, but sadly I’m not. If you are reading this and were not raised by a pack of wolves, thank your mother. Now. Call her and ask how she is feeling. And if she says “a little under the weather”, you get that woman some goddamn chicken noodle soup!! It’s not just good for the soul!

*On a side note: As a I finished this piece, Bean came down with a helluva cold, even causing her to miss school. She’s walking around with the Tissue-Box contraption I found on Pinterest, looking pathetic. And you know who is doing 90% of the immediate care-taking while completely minor tasks like grocery shopping and disinfecting every single thing she touches….ME! Because you can’t spell AWESOME without ME!!!

Til next time….keep those toes in the sand, even if it’s just in your imagination.

Nature vs Nincompoop

I’m just going to tell you guys up front, this is a rant. A gossip magazine fueled rant on the dumbing down of role models for kids

Every nature show or book will tell you that the more ornate, flashy or decorative a species is, the more dangerous it is. Lion fish, Cheetahs, Frogs in the Amazon, Black Widows, Puffer fish; the list goes on and on. These animals are either brightly colored, fabulously accessorized, or just plain unusual enough to draw your eyes right to them. These animals also look the way they do to warn predators that they are poisonous to the point of death or to camouflage the fact that they are harbingers of death, like the cheetah. For survival, other species stay away from these flashy animals, because they have a healthy sense of self preservation. They want to go on living their happy lives, just existing in their world without fear of being eaten alive or poisoned. And then there are humans.

The Kardashians, Justin Bieber, Kanye West, Miley Cyrus, Lindsay Lohan. These creatures are flashy, ornate and repulsively decorative. And yet other humans flock to them, even admire them, and some extremely stupid humans aim to emulate them. We go against everything that millions of years of evolution have taught us and move in droves to get our hands on the latest magazines, concert tickets, movie tickets and whatever else this “celebrities” do to make money to feed their ridiculous lifestyles. Bean loves music. And I’m not an idiot. I know that musicians tend to be flashy. It helps with the “rockstar” image. But I’m failing to see anything remotely redeeming about Iggy Azalea. I’m not necessarily excited about the fact that Bean prefers Black Widow to Colbie Callait(I’m still not even sure where she first heard that…..song). And don’t even get me started on Miley Cyrus twerking. Hopefully her makeup tastes good, because she keeps licking it off. She needs to keep her tongue in her mouth and her clothes on. The Disney Channel must be so proud to claim that little child prodigy.

Children and men for some reason are attracted to these shiny deathtraps. Guys plaster their walls with posters of scantily clad women, ooohing and aaahing over celebrities who flaunt what their plastic surgeon gave them. Sadly plastic surgeons don’t have talent implants. But thank god Nicki Minaj was able to get ass implants, it so helps the nails on chalkboard sounds she calls songs. Does anyone else wonder if these people even OWN real clothes?  Now please don’t mistake this for some rant about feminism and all that jazz. I’m all for looking pretty, and even being scantily clad for D now and then. But there’s a line that needs to drawn, and for the love of shorts longer than your vagina, it needs to be drawn soon. I’m still trying to figure out why the Kardashians are famous. What exactly do they do? What is it they contribute to society, except little Kardashians and the uncanny ability to marry losers and sell magazines for Hearst publishing?

My point is, these are the human equivalent of an Amazonian poison dart frog or a lion fish. Pretty to look at (sometimes) but oh so deadly. Maybe not immediately life threatening. But dangerous enough to make your 8 year old daughter twerk in the living room at Thanksgiving, or your 12 year old son say he’s going to “make it rain” at the next family gift giving event when he opens Nana’s card filled with money. I for one want my daughter to have better role models. Smart role models. These people are fine for entertainment value, but once kids are aspiring to be like Rihanna because she wears next to nothing onstage instead of aspiring to be driven like she was to get to where she is. There are things to be learned from the determination of some of these celebrities. I mean Kanye West was shot and still force-fed his persona to the world.

I’m not saying we shouldn’t admire celebrities. There are plenty of celebrities that use their fame for good. But those celebrities aren’t making headlines with their charitable acts. They only make headlines when they have a movie coming out.  But there are also plenty of other people worth admiring. Everyday people. The people that really make the world go round. We as moms are the first line of defense against these deadly creatures. It’s our job to teach our kids that even though NFL players worked extremely hard to get to where they are, their poor behavior and bad decisions off the field are inexcusable. We are the ones who have to tell our daughters that twerking and looking like an A-squad stripper on Friday night may get her a guy, it probably won’t get her the right kind of guy. We are parents. We man the gate that decides what enters our homes and therefore our childrens’ world.We are Gandalf, in the mines of Moria, yelling “You shall not pass!” at the repulsive behavior of the people society and media say our children should admire. Our kids may fight us, but really….do you want your daughter acting like a spoiled Kardashian dating a guy that acts like Justin Bieber? I didn’t think so.

Til next time, keep those toes in the sand…..a password on the family computer

The Ailments of Family Life

Hi All! Sorry for the hiatus, but we have been busy moving and not killing each other. I spent the last few days telling my family members that this move was exceeding the limits of my medication, because apparently you shouldn’t drink and move things or else you get told “this is why we can’t have nice things!” 🙂  . In the process of moving certain things were brought to light, 1 of which is the illnesses and ailments that affect your family on a daily basis. I bet you didn’t know that your own home is an episode of  Monsters Inside Me, but instead of humans, there’s a monster living in your house at this very moment, and I don’t mean you before your morning caffeine fix.

You may think this won’t happen in your house. You probably think this is some sort of skin ailment. Sadly, you’re wrong on both counts. Latch Disease is more commonly known as “Dishwasher-phobia” Dishes will pile up in the sink, but never seem to make it into the actual dishwasher. Now the strange thing about this “disease” is when you live alone, it never seems to show any signs, so the likelihood of you being a carrier are unknown to you. When you move in with your significant other, there may be warning signs, but you will brush them off as simple absentmindedness.  Then you have kids. And the disease begins to flare up with increasing frequency. It starts with coffee cups in the morning. A cereal bowl, some utensils. Nothing serious. Lunch comes around and perhaps a pan makes it into the sink. By the time dinner is done, there is a full on mountain of meal time remnants in the sink.  Now there is something that must be understood about this. The carriers of this ailment are not exclusive to husbands and children.  I have even been guilty of it (my mom & husband can attest to that), but it doesn’t enter your house by itself. It comes in on the heels on the “Not Me Monster”. This crafty little devil commits all kinds of dastardly deeds in your home. He/She feels it’s necessary to throw perfectly good clean clothes on the floor in your child’s room. The Not Me Monster sneaks into the living room and leaves shoes all willy-nilly, like a carefully thought out booby trap to whoever may be trying to traverse the terrain with a full laundry basket blocking their vision. The Not Me Monster and Latch Disease go hand in hand. One cannot exist without the other.  One of the Not Me Monster’s favorite things to do is to leave the lights on.

Now these antics, in conjunction with Latch disease, are enough to make any normal person slightly insane. And to make matters worse, there’s no known cure. There are products on the market to help alleviate the demoralizing effects of the disease. There is an Agave supplement, it comes in liquid form and tastes wonderful when paired with salt and a lime. There is also a wonderful herbal supplement made from barley & hops that is quite refreshing and best consumed ice cold. Do ya see where I’m going with this? You can shout, you can glare, you can beg. Sure, for sometime conditions might improve, the symptoms might temporarily abate. But you might as well be talking directly to the dishwasher. And even though at this day in age we can have phones that can be programmed to scream when we drop them, we still don’t have a self-loading dishwasher. Your only hope to avoid this ailment is either live in a separate dwelling than your family (that has a certain appeal to it) or just be hopelessly lost when it comes to the game of dishwasher Tetris. That’s my modus operandi. I even got so lucky that it was written in both my husband’s and my marriage vows that I am not allowed to even TOUCH the dishwasher.  And strangely I’m totally ok with that.

Until next time, just keep thinking of your toes in the sand 🙂