A week getting dressed with Lilly

Monday:

Lilly walks in wearing leggings and a short shirt.  We've discussed multiple times that this isn't appropriate.  Her leggings are too old and thin and she forgets underpants too often.  At a certain age, you just can't wear a short shirt with your leggings.  Tunic tops, for sure, but not one that hits above the waistband.  It may be an arbitrary rule that nobody else agrees with, but it is my rule and it is not a brand new one.  I long ago gave up on trying to make sure she matched or anything ridiculous like that.  She can wear almost anything she wants, except leggings or tights with just a short shirt.

"Lilly, you can't wear that.  You can't wear leggings and a short shirt.  You can wear a short shirt and pants, or leggings and a long shirt, or leggings and a short shirt with a skirt, but not just leggings and a short shirt. You know that."

Lilly flounces away in irritation. Why am I always cramping her style?


Tuesday:

Lilly walks in wearing leggings and short shirt.

"Lilly, you need to go change.  You can't wear leggings with a short shirt.  Remember how we set out an outfit last night?  You could put that one on? No?  Fine, if you want, you could just throw a skirt on top of the leggings.  That might be easier."

Lilly falls to the ground in despair and rolls out of the room.  What is my problem?


Wednesday:

Lilly walks in wearing leggings and a short shirt.

"Lilly, I bought you a bunch of pants and long shirts yesterday.  For a long time I didn't buy you pants because you would only wear dresses but you seem to have lost interest in dresses and I understand you may not have had pants to wear with your short shirts but you definitely do now.  They are clean and folded in your drawer.  Please go put on either a long shirt of a pair of pants."

Lilly vibrates across the floor with annoyance.  I am impossible to satisfy.


Thursday:

Lilly walks in wearing leggings and a short shirt.

"Oh, look at this.  You are wearing leggings and a short shirt.  What a surprise.  I know this is going to come out of nowhere for you, but you CAN'T WEAR THAT.  You need to cover your tush.  I don't care how.  Long shirt, real pants, skirt, dress, whatever the hell you want."

Lilly storms out in a rage. Nothing is ever good enough for me.


Friday: 

Lilly walks in wearing leggings and short shirt.

"Really?  Because last night I resorted your dresser so that all the long shirts were in one drawer, all the short shirts were in another, and the leggings were stored separately from the pants.  We went over it.  I described the contents of each drawer, and we had a trial run where you clearly understood that the shirts from the short shirt drawer could not be paired with items from the legging drawer.  GO CHANGE."

Lilly literally climbs the wall in frustration.  Seriously, what do I even WANT from her?


Saturday:

Lilly walks in wearing leggings and no shirt at all.

Well, that's refreshing.

Box Tops for education and guilt

Box Tops, for those of you who don't know, are little printed codes that can be found on various food packages. And I think maybe underwear and socks?

Why?  I don't know.

You are supposed to clip them and save them to turn into your school and each one is worth like 10 cents or something.  You'd think there would be an easier way.  Like just donate the money it took you to print the little squares and we'll all take some time off. I know it doesn't take 10 cents to print them, but when you factor in the huge percentage that must get ignored and tossed, I feel confident that we'd come about about even.

I blissfully threw these away for years, but once your kids start going to school, you are expected to actually pay attention.  Thus, for the past five years or so, I've been plagued with guilt about these damn things.  They have contests, you know.  For which kid or which class can bring in the most.  It matters a little.  There's a modicum of judgment.  I'd wager that that even moms who don't collect them have made a deliberate decision to not participate and feel the tiniest of twinges every time.

But one time when Chris was looking for something in the junk drawer he pulled out a handful of box tops and said, "why are there a bunch of scraps of cardboard in here?"

He didn't even know what a box top WAS.

I don't like to generalize or stereotype, but I'm going to say that, conservative estimate, the percentage of people cutting those out is 1000% female. No man has ever, in the history of ever, cut one of those things out.

It's just another one of the things that I waste my life worrying about and dealing with that will never matter, even a little bit, to anybody with a penis.

Other things on this list are "making children brush their teeth," "duvet covers," and "holiday decorations."

Man Looking: Part 1052

Sam is feeling a little under the weather today.  He wanted some tea, but one of the great things about having bigger kids is that they can get their own dang tea.

Except . . .

"Mom?  Where is the tea?"

"It's in the little cupboard right next to the fridge."

*five minutes later*

"Mom?  It's not there."

I am 5000 percent sure that the tea is in the little cupboard right next the fridge.  I know it is there because I put it there because of course I put it there because it has never occurred to anybody else in this house to put anything away ever.  I am so sure that it is in the tiny cupboard next to the fridge that if someone offered me a bet wherein if I am right, and it is in the tiny cupboard next to the fridge I get a dollar, and if I am wrong the whole world just explodes, I would take that bet.

"Sam, go look again.  Look at the fridge.   Look in every smallish cupboard that is in any proximity to the fridge.  I promise you, the tea is in there."

*five minutes later*

"Mom?  It's really not there."

SURPRISE TWIST ENDING!

It was in the tiny cupboard next to the fridge.

"Oh, THAT little cupboard!" he says.

Yes, the one right next to the fridge.

What I need you to understand about this cupboard, though, is that it is both small, and COMPLETELY (other than tea) EMPTY.  There is LITERALLY nothing else in the entire tiny cupboard.  It is a stupid tiny cupboard, nothing fits.  That's why I was happy about the tea.  Now it's a classy tea cupboard.  It has a purpose.  But the point is that it's truly not as if I found the tea pushed behind an old box of crackers or something.  All I did was open the door.

Garbage

Last week the grocery store had a sale on reduced sugar granola bars and yogurt tubes.  So I bought them.  I took the time to go to the grocery store, search for coupons, compare prices, bring the groceries into the house and put them away and you know what?  I don't even like granola bars or yogurt tubes, personally.

Which is super weird because I keep seeing granola bar wrappers and empty yogurt tubes lying around.  Seeing as how I live exclusively with people who are capable of throwing things away, the only logical explanation is that I am eating them, passing out, hitting my head, getting amnesia and then seeing the wrappers.  Right?  I mean, it makes no sense that people who have the skills and fortitude to go find these snacks in the cupboard or fridge, scale the counter tops to reach them, unwrap and then eat the snacks would then conclude that mission by throwing their goddamn wrappers on the goddamn ground.  NO SENSE  AT ALL.

A few polite reminders were met with blank stares.  More emphatic statements to PICK UP YOUR GARBAGE I AM NOT YOUR MAID were greeted with choruses that, golly gee, that wrapper surely did belong to Not Me.  Directives to pick up the wrappers, irrespective of who placed them there, were outrageous miscarriages of justice.  It is not FAIR, not fair at all, to have to pick up a wrapper that was dropped by someone else.  Funnily, I AGREE.

I was just sitting next to Owen, and noticed that he was eating a granola bar.  "Do NOT drop that wrapper on the floor Owen."

"Okay, Mom, that was all I needed to remind me!"

"Your cheerful attitude notwithstanding, Owen, you should not need a reminder.  There is no excuse for ever just dropping your garbage on the floor."

"Not even in a fire?  If there is a fire, should I make sure I put this garbage in the trash before I escape?"

I will note that his tone is playful rather than obnoxious, but I still want to wallop him.  I am less amused with the garbage struggle around here than he is.

But I'm not a mean mom, so I banter.

"Have we been having a lot of fires around here?  Is that why there is always garbage on the ground?  An out of control number of fires that are causing you all to run for your lives?"

"Hahahaha, yeah, mom, that's it! Hahahah."

But seriously.  Pick up your garbage.

Living with Chris Logic

"Guess what?"

"Eleven dollars and 50 cents."

" . . . shut up."

I'll give Chris credit.  He's an annoyingly good guesser.  Without question, he is better as guessing than anyone else I know.

It's part and parcel of his neurosis, of course.  The one where he mouths all my words as I'm saying them.  The one where he doesn't listen or pay attention in the moment because he is too busy trying to figure out what will happen next. Where he doesn't actually read your emails as much as guesses what they are going to say based on the first four words.

Chris's brain must be an absolutely exhausting place.  I personally have enough trouble just listening and formulating a response, let alone trying to figure out what you're going to say before you say it.  I imagine I'll figure out what you are saying in another second and a half when you actually say it.  

But not Chris!  

Chris is proud of how often he accurately guesses the time in the middle of the night.  But, jesus, just think about that.  He woke up, started computing all available incoming matrices of information, made a guess, then read the clock to see how far off he was.

OR YOU COULD HAVE JUST READ THE CLOCK AND GONE BACK TO SLEEP YOU WEIRDO NO OFFENSE.

So when I say he's an Olympic guesser, I mean he's also trained like an Olympian - every waking (and sleeping) moment.  

But, and I may have mentioned this, it is still annoying. 

It's genuinely deflating, when you're all, "guess how much?" and he gets it exactly.  There's just nowhere to go from there.  It's a conversation-ender.  

And it totally derails the story flow when you say, "guess who I saw today" and he knows on the first try.  

Pro-tip: when I ask you to guess who called, just say, "who" and let me move on with my story.  

Here's a classic Living with Chris Logic conversation:

We've been tracking Sam weight for a few weeks (on the sly!  He still just thinks we are letting him play with the scale.  And then we do discuss how to eat healthy food, etc, etc, etc.  I just want to stipulate that we are doing this only because childhood obesity is a real problem and we don't want his weight to get out of control because we weren't paying attention).

After a week at basketball camp, I said "guess what Sam's weight was this week."

"Um. Up two pounds."

"No, he was down .3 lbs."

"Really?  I would have guessed it would be lower."

"You literally wouldn't."

"What?"

"You just guessed he was up two pounds."

"Oh, that was just my guess, not what I actually thought."

"Seriously, that makes no sense." 

"See, when someone else asks me to guess, I have to take into account their motivation for asking me to guess, and what they probably guessed, before I make my guess."

"Chris, you do know that the goal here is just conversation.  There is no actual prize for getting it right."

"You just say that because you always lose at guessing."

I create my own problems

Mornings are so hard.

Mornings are literally the worst except for the evenings.

We've been struggling with our keys recently, so when I couldn't find them as we were walking out the door the the other morning, it was like, "of course I can't find my keys. Why would I have learned to keep track of something silly like my keys?"

Where are my keys?

In my purse!

Now all I have to do is find my purse.  I'm zipping frantically around the house, clutching Lilly's lunch and jacket and breakfast and an umbrella and we HAVE TO LEAVE we are VERY LATE and my fingers are tired but if I put anything down I will lose that, too.

"Ok, Lilly, I have to find my purse, so try not to be annoying for a second." (I didn't really say that part, because I love her, but I thought it)

"You need to find your purse with the tree on it?"

She's referring to the purse I was using until a few days ago when the strap broke and I went back to using my trusty old brown purse.

"No, not the tree purse, I don't use that one any more."  Also, I'm finding it super annoying that she's being all specific about this.  The hell does she care what my purse looks like?

"You need to find your other purse because it has your keys in it?"

"Yes, exactly.  Gotta find my purse, because I gotta have my keys to go anywhere."

"So we're looking for your other purse?"

I swear to god if that girl can't stop talking about my goddamn other purse and let me find my goddamn keys in peace . . .

Wait. Why *is* she talking about my "other" purse?

So I stop for a second, and look down and . . .

Yup.  There's my purse, hanging from my arm.

Lilly has been justifiably confused about what, exactly, it is that I'm running around looking for, because surely there is some other purse at play if this one is just swinging in the air.

Nobody wants to be an apple

We were sitting by a pond, Lilly and I, and she says to me, "Mom?  Isn't this so peaceful? Don't you want to stay here for hours?"

And I absolutely did.  Except my hips are too old to be sitting around on the ground like that.

"Mom?  What would you want to be: a hippo, a duck, or an apple?"

Do you know how many years of my life I have spent answering questions like these at this point?  Sooooo many.

"I would say definitely a duck."

"DAD.  DAD! WHAT DO YOU WANT TO BE A HIPPO A DUCK OR AN APPLE?"

Lilly.  Remember the peaceful?

"Oh, a hippo. That's a no-brainer."

"Chris, that's absurd.  Who wants to be a hippo?  What is even remotely appealing about being a hippo?"

"Dude, if I was a hippo I would crush you like a bug!"

"Hippos just look like giant stomachs or some other internal organs lying around in mud.  A duck can fly, swim and walk.  Again, the duck is obviously the better choice."

"Hey, if you had to be a girl duck, you would have LAY EGGS."

"Um, yeah, but if I had to be girl hippo, I'd have to give birth to a HIPPO."

"Fair enough.  I still think ducks get shot at a lot, and nobody wants to mess with a hippo."


And that's how we spent a beautiful Sunday by the pond.