Monthly Archives: January 2016

Jumping Monkeys

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In a parenting group, a very funny mother posted this commentary about the ridiculous nature of parenting groups (yes, IRONY. But we’re totally different, super cool and laid back):

Ten little monkeys jumping on the bed,
One fell off and bumped his head.
Mama asked the mom group and the mom group said:
Have you tried essential oils? I hear hyperactivity is a vaccine injury. I’m calling CPS.

RIGHT?

After I had my laugh, I rubbed some Vitamin-E on that scar Carlos has on his cheek from the time he slid in his own pee dribbles while getting off the toilet and cut his face on the rim of the trashcan. I felt like the World’s Horriblest Mother after that accident. Yet somehow, the cut gave him a dimple. Who else could turn a pee slip into a beauty mark? That boy is MAGIC.

Trauma induced dimple. (Yes, I know that is not the proper way to secure a helmet. It was corrected before he started juggling machetes.)

Trauma induced dimple. (Yes, I know that is not the proper way to secure a helmet. It was corrected before he started juggling machetes.)

Anywho, now that you’ve been blessed with a photo of The Cutest Little Boy In the ENTIRE WORLD, let me get back to nutjobs who think their kids are the specialist snowflakes of all the special snowflakes.

When I was still pregnant with Vivi, my stepdaughter Victoria sorted through her books and picked a few to pass along to the baby. One of the books was a bright yellow copy of “Ten Little Monkeys” with fingerpuppets for the monkey heads. “I loved that song!” I cried. She and I started reading it together.

Ten little monkeys jumping on the bed, one fell off and bumped his head.

Called up the doctor and the doctor said,

“No more monkeys jumping on the bed!”

 

I blurted, “That’s not how it goes.” Victoria showed me the page. I even flipped a few pages ahead–they were all like that. I figured it was some knock-off Montessori book or something G had picked up in an airport in a foreign land, because every kid born in my generation knows how that rhyme REALLY goes:

Ten little monkeys jumping on the bed, one fell over and broke his head.

Mama called the doctor and the doctor said,

“THAT’S WHAT YOU GET FOR JUMPING ON THE BED.”

Walk it off, monkey. Gravity always wins. Here, bite this stick while we flush it out with Bactine then you can get back to carousing.

Trampoline with no safety cage, no padding. And the ground is littered with dirt.

Trampoline with no safety cage, no padding. And the ground is littered with dirt.

Now that I’ve been parenting actual children for almost a decade, I think the shift in the nursery rhyme reflects the shift in how we parent our kids. The current trend is to shield them from harm–by order of the Department of Health, no more monkeys will be allowed to jump on the bed.

Back in MY day, we were raised with less bubble wrap and more natural consequences–that’s what you get for…fill in the blank. Even the doctor knew it was your own damn fault if you broke your head falling off the bed after your mama had told you 100 times not to be doing that in the first place.

I had every intention of being the kind of mother who can lord it over the others in on-line mothering groups. While I was still percolating my first baby I was already reading hand-me-down copies of Mothering magazine about the proper way to grow, preserve, pulverize and compost my own organic food for my child. I tied myself up in a ring sling and smeared medical grade lanolin on my nipples and it wasn’t even Valentines Day. My kids would be raised with every bit of Mother Henning I could muster. They would suffer no trauma, not even a mild inconvenience.

Then some actual parenting hit and I find myself letting my kids teach themselves more and more of those lessons that only make it into our brains the hard way.

So what about you? Were you taught no more monkeys jumping on the bed or that’s what you get for jumping on the bed? Or did your mom rub some essential oils on your head and file a lawsuit against the mattress manufacturer?

Hang on tight buddy. That ground is hard.

Hang on tight buddy. That ground is hard.

Ten Bucks on Maybe

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In the entire history of the lottery in Georgia, I’ve spent about $15 on tickets. And I’m OK with that. The first $10, I spent just to annoy my dad. When the lottery was under discussion, he’d scoff and say, “The lottery is a voluntary tax on people who are REALLY bad at math!”

After getting the kids to school this morning, I drove past a lottery billboard and noticed that it was stuck at $999 million. I’m pretty good at math, but I’m also pretty good at….maybe.

money-994845_1280

Yes, the chances of getting struck by lightning are 243 times higher than winning the jackpot. But it’s just a couple of bucks for a few minutes of…maybe.

Yesterday morning, I spent $14 on artisanal bread because I wanted to taste a flaky buttery chocolate croissant and remember that I used to go on international adventures. The day before that, I spent $17 on lunch with a friend. Last week, a handful of Ray Lamontagne CDs. A Charles Lenox mystery on the Kindle.

So I pulled my car into a gas station and went inside. I asked the woman behind the glass, “Do y’all sell lottery tickets?” She nodded.

Um…she seemed to think the Powerball was in my court at that point. I laughed. “You’re going to have to tell me how to buy one.” There were slips and tiny pencils involved but I did the quick pick anyway. I made an A in Mrs. Barnes’ probability class.

I handed the woman a $10 bill and she handed me a little fistful of maybe.

The statements for all three of my retirement accounts arrived simultaneously today, along with the statements for the kids’ college funds. I’m good enough at math to understand the power of compound interest, the importance of early investing, and the ups and downs of the equities market. On the other hand, I spent $24 ordering Chinese food for dinner, and my fortune said, “You will inherit an unexpected sum of money within the year.”

Here’s to maybe.

When the Pieces Fit Together

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G and I spent this weekend as one being, locked in a torrid frenzy of…cleaning house. I ripped off his pants and threw them in the washer with the other seven loads of laundry. Not to be outdone, he shredded my old shirt then used it to wipe streaks off the windows. I screamed his name over and over and over again because he kept taking the whole roll of paper towels. He made me all dizzy and tingly when he used all that bleach in the bathroom and forgot to turn on the exhaust fan. In the dark of the fading afternoon, we squeezed and poked and fumbled until all the bathroom towels fit neatly on one shelf in the closet. With Disney Junior keeping the kids distracted, we crept off to the bedroom to rotate the mattress. And I do mean “rotate the mattress.”

By Sunday night, I was spent. He was out on the deck smoking and staring off across the treetops, like men with organized Tupperware cabinets do. It was magical.

Seriously, is there anything sexier than a man who smells like bleach? I think not.

As awesome as our newly organized bathroom closet is (and y’all…THREE BAGS of trash came out of there) it wasn’t the high point of the Big Clean for me. These two puzzles were:

puzzles

So, can I talk to the people who have small folks in the house? Can you empathize with me when I tell you the delicious joy of finding ALL THE PIECES of these puzzles? For years, I’ve been considering throwing every puzzle piece out in one big sweep, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. It seemed so wasteful. I kept hanging on to a piece here and a piece there and one under the bed in Vivi’s room and one in the vase beside the dining room table and GAHHHHHHHH. My kids have played with this farm cube puzzle for eight years. I remember the first time Vivi put the horse together by herself. But it’s been scattered all over the house for a while now.

Even though the clutter was driving me crazy, I held on to the pieces whenever I found one and this weekend, after an unanticipated discovery in the bottom of the old toy box…all the pieces came together. I can’t describe the satisfaction and the joy.

It’s like storytelling–you hang on to random scraps and pieces and think about giving up then one day, it all falls together and makes a picture.  So I guess what I’m telling you is–hold on to the pieces. It will make sense one day. Maybe.

I wiped the smudges off the puzzle cubes and put them neatly in their tray, then slipped the whole thing in a gallon-sized Ziploc bag. Because we are homo sapiens and we learn to use tools. And not two minutes later, Vivi spotted it in the Donate box and cried, “I LOVE THAT PUZZLE!” I reminded her that she hadn’t played with it in years and she said, “That’s because it was missing most of the pieces.”

Dammit. She has a point. So the puzzle has gone back to her room–in the plastic bag–and I will watch for a week to see if it gets touched. If not, it goes along to some other child with a more organized mother.

Carlos got a fantastic puzzle for Christmas–a magnetic array of the 50 U.S. States. He loves it and we’ve been putting it together, together. But on the day after Christmas, we misplaced Wisconsin and I spent THREE DAYS haunted by that damn state.

Finally found it when G and I were thrashing around on the living room rug, all sweaty and sticky from picking up Christmas tree needles. I scared the bejeezus out of him when I yelled, “YesYesYes! Right there! Right there by your thumb! Wisconsin! WISCONSIN!”