I Plead the Fifth

No more pencils, no more books.
No more teachers' dirty looks.
No more math and history.
Summer time has set us free....

After weeks of counting down the days (and a ridiculous number of seemingly pointless half-days) and jamming in countless end of school parties, field days, and early celebrations of summer birthdays, we finally made it through the school year.  Whew.

The end of the year is so hectic that I relish the lazy summer days--  a fact that would be nice for me to remember when I am signing the kids up for camp.  Here I've been every morning the past few weeks mentally ticking off the remaining healthy/appealing/peanut-free lunches I have left to pack and-- DUH!!!-- I still have to pack lunch.  For camp.   

So, off to the deli counter I trudged.  Begrudgingly, I took a number.  (The deli is like a casino floor in Vegas-- it doesn't matter if it's 8AM or 4PM, there's always lots of action.) 

I should point out that the deli clientele of our A&P is very high maintenance.  No meat can ever be sliced thin enough for this "let me have a pound of the Oven Gold" crowd (never a please or a thank you, natch).  No roast beef can ever be lean enough.  It's brutal.

But today was the topper.

The woman in front of me ordered one-fifth of a pound of turkey.  Like, seriously?  I actually let out a sort of snort/guffaw by mistake.  Maybe she heard me because she clarified.  "I'd like less than a quarter. You know, like a fifth."  What?!  Honestly that has to be a difference of about one slice of turkey (or maybe three paper thin ones) and approximately $.35.  Either way, decidedly NOT worth the confusion it caused behind the counter.

Gosh, I sure hope with all those half days of school my kids still had time to learn fractions....

Soccer Coach, Stoned

Sorry to bore you with another soccer story but such is my life right now. So, for my oldest daughter's team we carpool with 2 other families. Without going into too many details, the girls' coach is mercurial and often cruel. She trains them at the intensity of a professional team, including having them carry each other on their backs for sprints and jumping side-to-side over a cowering fellow teammate wearing cleats (yes, ouch). Every time I drive (and presumably with other parents, too), our three little girls concoct ways to kill their coach without getting caught. Sometimes, after a particularly vicious drubbing, they don't even care about serving time and just want immediate results. While cast as a big joke, their ideas are quite elaborate and absolutely cold-blooded.

What made me laugh/cringe this week was that three OTHER girls from the team arrived in THEIR carpool with their soccer shorts full of pebbles to throw at the coach if she was too mean to them! I pictured a scene from biblical times (or modern day Afghanistan?) peppered with a dash of Monty Python. She's a witch!! Stone her!!!!!

Time to shop around for a new team??? I think so.

Must Be My Liberal Arts Background

Yesterday I took my daughter to a birthday party for one of her classmates. It was a rock climbing party so I hung out for a while to watch. My only mistake was not tuning out the conversation going on next to me.

Mom #1: We took the kids to see The Lion King in the city yesterday.

Mom #2: Did they love it? 

Mom #1: Omigod no! It's so scary! The dad lion falls off this cliff and dies and then his son thinks it's all his fault!! I couldn't believe it.

Mom #2: (shocked) Oh, that's awful!

 Me: (in my head) Seriously, have you not seen the movie? Did you think the Broadway show could somehow gloss over a major plot point that drives the whole story?

Mom #2: Well, we saw The Lorax. 

Mom #1: How was that?

Mom #2: The kids liked it. But I just can't stand these movies that try to jam a message down your throat. I mean, I know that the liberals in Hollywood get to decide what we see but, really...

 I could take no more. I interjected myself into the conversation.

Me: Did you know that Dr. Seuss wrote The Lorax in the '70's? Pretty prescient, really. More of a "paved paradise and put up a parking lot" thing than a straight global warming message.

 [Crickets.]

Me: You must have hated Wall-E.

 Hey Weaselsnark, why aren't you popular with the Chicago Police Department?

The Oscars: Going to the Dogs

The Oscars were so boring that, without a doubt, the highlight of the evening was Esparanza Spalding's:

a) ginormous afro,
b) missing tooth,
c) moving rendition of "What a Wonderful World,"
d) all of the above.

Wrong! That was a trick question. There was no highlight. It was a show so devoid of entertainment value that I actually felt a little depressed afterwards for having wasted three hours of my life watching it.

I traded emails with a friend during the broadcast just to get through it.

Me: Do you hear like a bell clanging noise?
Her: For real?
Me: Yes. Like weird feedback that sounds like clanging or a bad cell phone ring.
Her: No, Coach, I don't hear that.
Me: You don't? Listen carefully. It's almost constant.
Her: You're insane. Bradley Cooper looks terrible with that mustache. Sad.
Me: I'm not! Search "feedback noise at the Oscars."
Her: I swear we don't have it. That's crazy!

[much back and forth re: JLo's nipple, Billy Crystal looking like an old woman, Barbra Streisand's dead-on Jennifer Aniston impression, etc.]

Her: The noise go away?
Me: No. But I just read something about it online that says they think only 25% of people can hear it. So I'm special. Or "special."
Her: Special like a dog?
Me: Yup. Or an alien abductee.

Bazinga!

Weaselsnob's Minx approached me at my daughter's birthday party yesterday:

"Ask me how old I am."

Okay, how old are you?

"I'm 40-something. That's what people say when they don't want you to know how old they really are."

Why I Overtip the School Bus Driver: Reason #437

I'm trying to break my son of a bad habit: he's starting to preface things with "No offense, but..." I first took note of this little verbal crutch while driving him and a couple of his friends to practice the other night.

"At recess I scored the winning touchdown because [the quarterback] saw that I was being covered by [another one of his classmates]. No offense, but he stinks and so I was basically wide open."

and then,

"No offense, but he's a total liar. He was definitely tagged."

On the spectrum of bad habits, this new one is not as disfiguring as nail biting (which he dabbles in) or as disgusting as nose picking (which, thankfully, to my knowledge, he does not) but it is way up there in terms of being-- for lack of a better word-- offensive.

I explained to my son and the other boys that saying "no offense" doesn't get you off the hook for whatever follows. In searching for an example that would illustrate the lesson without singling any one of them out, the best I could come up with was "What if I said to Lady Gaga 'No offense, but I don't think you are very pretty.'?"

Missing my point completely, one of the boys piped up "But she isn't pretty." He then started singing along to the radio, loudly changing the words of the Maroon 5 hit to "Boobs like Jagger." Hilarity ensued.

Third grade boys are so painfully lowbrow. No offense. (Ha! None taken. As if! They revel in it. Little buggers.)

Hair No Evil

This afternoon's carpool was all kinds of hairy.

HAIRY adj \ˈher-ē\
1a : covered with hair or hairlike material
b : having a downy fuzz on the stems and leaves
2: made of or resembling hair
3a : tending to cause nervous tension (as from danger)
b : difficult to deal with or comprehend

Driving three very giggly, screechy six year old girls and one very loud, button-pushing eight year old boy in the dark through pouring rain to a remote location is hairy enough.

When you factor in the conversation taking place in the back of the car,* which somehow degenerated from all three girls making fun of their older brothers to two of them (not my own thankfully) talking about the relative size of their fathers' privates (as compared to their brothers' privates), you've entered into a new realm of hairy.

Taking definition 3a to its "hairy adventure" limits, one of the little girls realized she could elicit riotous laughs from the other three kids by referring to her father's evidently-not-so-private parts as hairy. And so that's what she did. Loudly and often.

Except she hasn't quite gotten her r's in line yet so it sounded more like hairwee.

Hairwee. Heh Heh. Shut up, Beavis.

I'm off to scrub my ear holes with soap and bleach.

* When, oh when, will some automotive engineer or enterprising wannabe Shark Tank contestant run with my brilliant idea to put limo-type partitions between the front seat and crazy town?!

O'Donnell Did Say She Was a Witch...

I'm not really one for bumper stickers, especially not ones that attempt humor.

Like vanity plates, even the best "funny" bumper stickers can seem kind of cute or clever at first... but, in the time it takes for the light to turn green, the bloom is off the rose.

But then today I saw a bumper sticker that was so right-on I actually want to tell people about it (which is not to say that I would actually stick it to my car).

In stark white letters, against the generic stars and stripes/red, white and blue backdrop of every political bumper sticker, it read:

REPUBLICANS FOR VOLDEMORT.

Tee-hee!

The Darndest Things

The final weeks of school are always a little crazy-- field trips, school-wide theme days, summer birthdays celebrated early, dress rehearsals, recitals, tournaments, try-outs, conferences, committee meetings, teachers' gifts, library books to be tracked down, and on and on.

I think I look forward to and appreciate the lazy, carefree days of summer because they come on the heels of so many concurrent-- and sometimes conflicting-- obligations.

Yesterday I had to force my son to come inside and fill out a questionnaire about second grade. His answers, along with those of his classmates, will be assembled into a "memory book" for his teacher, Mrs. F. And those answers had to be in today (along with a check and a recent photo of my son, which, because I didn't have one handy, I actually had to take and print before the bus came).

Mrs. F. is a wonderful teacher. My son had a great year. Unfortunately, his monosyllabic or near-monosyllabic responses to questions like "What was the best part of second grade?" (gym) and "What did you enjoy most about class?" (tadpoles) don't quite convey the warm feelings and appreciation I had hoped for. But he's eight. And a boy. And being 100% genuine. I assume a second grade teacher can appreciate those things.

The worst/best part was how he finished the prompt "I like Mrs. F because...."

His response: I like Mrs. F because she doesn't yell too much.

High praise in his mind but it reads like it belongs here .

Cup of Woe

Saturday was Opening Day for baseball in our town. Yawn....oops, I mean, yay!

My son had his first practice Saturday afternoon. Because spring weekends in suburbia are literally jam-packed with sports, the plan was that my son and I would rush from his practice to catch the end of my daughter's soccer game.

Watching my son struggle to keep up with me as we headed for the parking lot and then duck-waddle/run back to the batting cage because he had forgotten his water bottle, I couldn't help but think that maybe having eight different sports commitments a week was beginning to take its toll.

When we finally got to the car, he kind of laughed, shook his head, and said: "Note to self: next time the cup goes over the underpants." Ouch.

Rough Ruff

When we go out for a walk in the park, our dog-- much like her owners-- is not all that into hanging out and socializing with the other dogs/dog walkers we run into. Good dog.

The other day, as we deftly navigated past a group chit-chatting and fetching balls, we noticed the preschool-aged son of an acquaintance grabbing their black lab by the tail. And tugging.

The boy's mother rescued the dog, wearily admonished her son, and then turned and said "I swear, he's going to be like the next Jeffrey Dahmer or something."

N.B. Dr. Pediatrician Man: I've never named or even alluded to a cannibalistic serial killer when discussing my kids' behavior. So, I've got that going for me, which is nice.

Untainted

I arrived a little early to pick up my son from a birthday party today. The kids were still eating cake. Ever the opportunist (esp. where cake is involved), I happily accepted a slice and sat down at an empty table within earshot of the following:

Third Grader (a neighbor of the second grade birthday boy): Have you guys started studying heroes yet? [The second grade play is about famous Americans] My favorite is Harriet Tubman. She is so cool. If she were alive-- and, you know, my age-- I'd totally marry her. She is just so cool.

How long before this awesome child is brought down by the Kardashians? Sigh.

Steak, Chicken, or Ear Plugs?

After much debate over what would constitute a fun, festive Christmas Eve dinner (last year's at-home cheese fondue having been more mess than success), we decided to go out to dinner at a Japanese hibachi place.

It was a perfect solution, really: no cooking, no cleaning, and a volcano made out of an onion. Merry, merry.

What we hadn't focused on is that we usually go to the hibachi place with another family, which means that our party usually fills a whole table.

On Christmas Eve, the four of us were joined by another family of four-- Mom, Dad, and two boys in their early 20's.

Guess what? It's actually pretty awkward to share a dinner table with strangers on Christmas Eve. The Club Med-bred side of me felt like we were supposed to engage them in conversation.

Fortunately, they were already talking amongst themselves. About one son's grades. Oy.

Now, depending on your point of view, I am either blessed or cursed with a highly developed talent for eavesdropping. I can't help it. I can't even control it. And, believe me, as dinner went on I was DYING to tune these people out.

As they discussed the son's two B minuses, two C minuses and one D plus, I tried very hard not to register my reaction. Adding to the awkwardness/hilarity of the whole thing is that in the midst of all this high drama the chef is juggling knives and tossing broccoli bits at our mouths.

Saving me from them (and myself), my daughter had to go to the bathroom (big surprise).

By the time we got back to the table, the stranger family had started debating politics. Dad assumed the loud, blustery, interrupting Bill O'Reilly/conspiracy theorist/what-are-those-liberal-college-professors-teaching-you role and the kids tried to point out the trouble brewing between North and South Korea and defend Obama. It was ugly.

Maybe I wouldn't blame the Dad for questioning anything that ever came out of his academically underachieving son's mouth (political or otherwise), but every time Dad was confronted with facts that he didn't like he would shout that he doesn't "have time to watch the news or read about all this stuff because he WORKS six days a week" (which later became "SEVEN days a week") and then he would blame Obama and the democrats for something. It was hideous.

Peace on Earth and goodwill toward.... Check please!

Positive Sign

This sign has suddenly appeared all over our town.



As far as I'm concerned that cat has got nothing on the sign itself.

Teach Your Children Well

THE SCENE: The showers at our pool club. Two little girls were in the showers being helped by their older sister, while the girls' mother stood just beyond the spray shouting in helpful things like "Put on your flip flops!" and "Get the shampoo out!" A short while later, as my daughter and I exited the showers, we could hear the mother talking to one of her girls in the dressing room.

MOTHER: "Did you pee in the shower?..... Good."

I can only hope that the girl's response-- which I couldn't hear-- was no.

But the flip flop thing has me a little concerned.

Want to Come Up and See My Etchings?

THE SCENE:

My five year old daughter and one of her closest friends working on some kind of craft project.

GIRL: (looking at mood ring) My mood ring is blue, which means I'm happy.

BOY: (looking at his own mood ring) Mine is yellow, which means I have to kiss you. On the lips.

Putting the Ewwww in the Honey Do List

The Scene: T-Ball Practice.

[Man helps Boy with his catching, throwing, etc. Then it is time to practice hitting. Man is fielding balls in the outfield and throwing them in to Coach, who is at home plate with Boy.]

COACH: Okay, so just try to hit it out to where your dad is.

BOY: That's not my dad. That's just my mom's handyman. My parents are divorced. That's just my mom's handyman.


Made me wonder if Schneider ever helped Julie and Barbara with their team sports.

Entitled Much?!

Today while weaselsnark and I were waiting for our drinks at Starbucks, a woman walked in with her medium-sized dog on a leash. Our snitch senses tingled in anticipation. What happened next exceeded even our expectations:

"It's ok that he's in here, right?' said the woman to the manager.
Manager: "No, dogs aren't allowed. I'm sorry."
Woman: "I'll just pick him up then, ok?"
Manager: "I'm really sorry. It's not my rule, it's company policy."
Woman: "What about if I carry him on my back?"
Manager shakes his head.
Woman storms out.

Oh, you'll put your dog on your back? Oh, sure, in that case, let me take your order!
Can you stand it?

Boy Humor

My son: Mom! Call a doctor quick! There's a crack in my butt!!

Me: (eye roll)

My husband: (hearty chuckles)


Happy Mother's Day!

May the Fourth Be With You (Get it? May the 4th?)

I was out buying my husband a birthday present on Tuesday - a gift certificate to a go-cart racing track, thank you very much - and just as I was paying, the Darth Vader theme tune suddenly belted out. You know the one: DUH DUH DUH dum dee DUH dum dee DUH!

The man who was helping me grabbed his cell phone off his belt, grinned slyly, and whispered, "It's the wife."

Fantastic.