A shot in the dark

I got my flu shot today.

I think I tensed up or something because the nurse lady stabbed me and then pushed the plunger and sweet baby jesus on a bicycle it burned.

And then she said, "Oh, look at your muscle twitching!"

And I was all, 1) That's gross, 2) I didn't even know I HAD a muscle, 3) Never say that again.

It hurt in an aching, tender to the touch kind of way for the rest of the day.

That night, Chris and I were lounging around and I was whining about how much my arm hurt.  Lilly wanders up and points to my band-aid.

"What's that?"

"It's where I got my flu shot today."

"Does it hurt?"

Still deep in my whining to Chris, the word, "Yes!" accidentally fell out of my mouth.  As it was falling I was realizing what I had done.

"Yes I DO love you very much!  Oh, the flu shot?  No, it doesn't hurt."

And then she hauled off and punched me in the arm.  

Flip side

So I was just thinking about the time that lady accused my children of being well behaved and we got into a fight because I wouldn't disclose my parenting secrets.

Possibly I was thinking about it because, this time, while perfectly well behaved, Lilly did poop in her pants.  Which, at a certain point past potty training, I don't even understand.  I get peeing your pants, but pooping?  How did that catch you unawares?

This time, nobody was like, "Oh, your kids are so great!"

And then I thought about the time Owen threw a raging fit in Target because they didn't have the Buzz Lightyear snowboots in his size.  And the time the boys literally ran into a lady at the grocery store.  And the time my children were hellions at the restaurant.  Okay, the many times.

And it struck me how stupid people are.

Like, people in general.

This lady looked at once instance when my children were behaving well, and assumed that my children were well-behaved and I had something to do with that.  I'm sure all the people in all those other places looked at my children and assumed we were shitty parents.

When the truth, obviously, is neither.  Sometimes they are horrible children, sometimes they are fantastic.  Sometimes we are decent parents, sometimes we are crappy.

All those, "Let's ban kids from airplanes" stories kind of get to me, too.  Not because childless people are clueless (though they are), but because of the people who HAVE children and say things like, "My child would NEVER!"

Seriously?  Are you kidding me with that?  Your child has never had a melt-down?  Are you sure they are real children?  Because if they are, I call Bullshit.

I'm not saying you can't have your child-free flights or restaurants or whatever.  Just,I mean, do you have to be such an asshole about it?  No need to throw around words like, "brat," and "spawn" and lament about wanting to give these kids a good spanking.  Just say, "I'm kind of an asshole but also I like quiet."  I respect that.  I get it.

I just don't see why we have to be so mean.  And assume that these vignettes that you see are representative of the kind of children and parents these people are in general.

Here's the other thing I think is pretty true - you're kids pretty much are who they are.  You can take all the credit for a well-behaved child, but, honestly, that's probably just how they were born - good job not screwing them up yet.  And you can take all the blame for your child when he's raising a ruckus, but, honestly, he probably just needs a nap or something and we should all have a little fucking patience because nobody is perfect.

Honestly, when I see other children misbehaving, it gives me a warm fuzzy feeling.  Because I know that it is not my problem.  If Chris is around, we high five.  Not us this time!

Mood rings

I follow two blogs.  Only two.  Used to be three but then she decided to make it private and you had to ask for the password and 1) I just felt really weird asking a person I'd never met for the password to her private blog and 2) what the hell is the point of a private online blog?  Like, a diary for you and your 10 best friends?  Dude, that's just a mass email.  That you make people enter a password to get.  

Lucky for you all, I have no hoops to jump through.  Except finding it in the first place.  SERIOUSLY could someone send me a link to my own blog?  Because I don't know the address here.  Currently, every time I post I have to go to facebook and scroll back on my timeline until I found the one time I posted the link there.  

But whatever works.

So, anyway, I follow two blogs.  I was checking one of them today and apparently she had just done a sponsored post and apparently there was a big blogger brouhaha because the sponsor was in a patent fight with a mom blogger over her domain name.  

I don't know.  Something like that.  Point is that people got RILED something fierce and she wrote an apology post.  

And for, like, 3 hours since then I've been walking around with this vague feeling of Something Is Horribly Wrong.  And then I have to identify the source of the feeling and then I'm all, "Oh, yeah, the weird bloggy fight.  That's not actually horrible!  Sweet!"  

Which is super because most of the time when I have that feeling and I try to remember the source it's like, "oh, yeah, that's right, our furnace blew up and we need $10,000 to replace it" or, "Shit I think Kristi is mad at me and now I have to go grovel."  

I think the blog controversy hit the same spot in my brain because I really just don't like fighting and confrontation.  But realizing that nothing horrible is actually happening is great!  Like when you wake up from dreams where your kid died or you forgot to wear clothes to work and get to think, "Oh thank God.  I still get to hug my kids and remember to wear clothes to work."

The flip side of that is when you have a warm fuzzy, Something Is Wonderful! feeling that turns out to be pretty irrelevant.  Like that day when a co-work came by and asked whether I'd walk out on my job for a million dollars (with only 5 minutes to decide and all the real life ramifications) and I spent the rest of the day figuring out what I was going to do with my million dollars.  

Or maybe that's just me.

A few random things together make a blog post

The boys are very much enjoying being back together in the mornings.  Now that Owen and Sam are going to school together, they have ample time to talk about their penises.

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The other day, Owen said, "Mom? I want to tell you something, but please don't tell Hoppa and Homma."

"What's up, Owen?"

"After Kim and Kristi's we went out to ICE CREAM!"

I'm not really understanding why I can't tell Hoppa and Homma that."

"It's just that they would be really jealous."

Here's the thing, Owen.  Hoppa and Homma are in Europe right now.  So I think they're going to be okay.

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This morning, Sam and I were downstairs.  Owen was upstairs, making some funny noises.

Sam, poster-child of tolerance, understanding and respectfulness, shouts, "OWEN.  Are you seriously CRYING right now?!"

And Owen, with complete confidence in his place in this world and a touch of sass, says, "I'm BATTLE-crying."

Paying dividends

Have you ever been in the middle of a conversation with somebody and they are droning on and on about something and you just realize, "Jesus, I really don't give a shit about this."?

Because that's what it's like to talk to my kids.

Today, Sam asked me what would happen if hospitals gave all the money they made to the city.

The fuck?

That question just makes me want to lie on the ground, guys.

It's like sense and nonsense and boring all rolled into one.

Like, I don't know?  The hospital would lose money?  Are we talking hospitals giving profit away?  Do I have to explain profit now?

I mean, seriously.  Local politics and finances?

And this was AFTER a loooooooooooooong conversation about what insurance is and what percentage it pays of the hospital bills and do different kinds of people get different rates and SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP.

I didn't actually say shut up because I love that kid to death and I want him to feel respected and appreciated and to learn things. (Seriously.  I'm not kidding about that.)

But it was like getting stuck with the worst dinner party guest ever.

Also, I would be a terrible teacher.  I think we should pay teachers a lot more money.  I'll even let you record these conversations and use them as Exhibit A for Why Teachers Should Get Paid A Lot: Questions about insurance.

Exhibit B: people that have no idea how to use colons in sentences.  

Ups and Downs

So things are going better around here.

We got a babysitter willing to pick the kids up for us after school.  I feel a little on the fence about her, but then I remember that my kids can talk and I'm pretty sure they will tell us if she smokes (they are very judgey about smokers) or brings her skeevy boyfriends around (gotta love public facebook profiles).  Point being, for the moment, she seems nice enough and my kids are awesome tattle-tales so we're just going to go with it for now.  Also she was the only one willing to take the job.

In other good news Sam seems to be feeling moderately better about life.  He's still an asshole, just not an UNRELENTING asshole.  I don't particularly know what has changed.  Maybe he was having some beginning of school anxiety?  And who doesn't act like an ass-hat when they are nervous?

Owen has been extra touchy-feely since changing schools.  It's kind of hard sussing out Owen's wee little signs of distress when we are so used to ducking-and-covering from Sam's life of extremely loud desperation.  But I still try to take it seriously and pay extra attention to Owen.  Also because, seriously, stop touching me.  So if anyone wants to come over, Owen's giving out free hugs and rambling stories about nonsense!

I heard some friends of ours tell their 3-year-old to "stop making that horrible noise" and I was really, really, relieved because I say that ALL THE TIME to Lilly and I thought maybe she was broken.  But apparently 3-year-olds just make horrible noises.

To be fair, it must be really sucky to be a 3 year old.  The other day, I told her we could take a walk somewhere, but then it started raining so I cancelled the walk.  This is all totally reasonable to me, but to her it must have felt mean and arbitrary.  Did she give a fuck that it was raining?  She did not.  But since she is 3, and thus, not in charge, her only recourse was to make a horrible noise.

Lilly has been having a hard go of it since Owen left her.  She got into trouble at school last week.  I arrived to pick her up and the teacher came over to me, holding a "work" that she had broken.  This was a brand new work.  She was the first child to "work" with it.  There was a magnifying glass and a round shell with a hole in it.  The point was to use the magnifying glass to look at the texture of the shell but instead she put the round handle of the magnifying glass into the round hole of the shell and twisted.

I'm going to be real honest here and say any one of us would have done the same thing.

But you can't say that, right?  You have be all, "OH!  WOE IS THE WANTON DESTRUCTION OF MY CHILD!  SHAME!  SHAME!"

And also she stabbed a little boy with a push-pin.

Let's not talk about that.

Looks can be deceiving

I took the children to the grocery store today.

And by that I mean I took the children to the grocery store and dropped them the hell off at the in-store daycare because they are horrible people and nobody wants to be around them unless they are being paid to and not always even then.

I tried to shop real slow-like because I knew I was having an irritable day and a break seemed like a good idea.  But then I got hungry and started throwing unhealthy stuff in left and right and I knew it was time to go.
So I checked out and went to pick up the kids.  As we were walking away, a lady stopped me and said, "Hey, I was watching my son in there and noticed your children.  I just have to say, they are such well-behaved, polite children."

And I said, "Oh, haha.  That's not how they act around me."

And she said, "But how do you make them act like that?"

"Oh, I don't.  Really, they just do this for other people."

"No, seriously.  I'm not joking.  What do you do to make them behave so well?"

"Lady, I'M not joking.  They're monsters.  Complete crackheads.  I appreciate that they act nicely around other people, but clearly I'm the weak link so don't ask me for advice."

She walked away, suspicious and hurt that I wouldn't share my parenting techniques with her.  And I'm honestly not sure who the weird one was in that conversation.

So I think that went well.