Worth A Ba-Jillion Words

So I've been meaning to write a blog, but instead I found some pictures of my kids to entice you with.  I will be writing a blog soon, mainly because Elsa has been throwing the most hilarious temper tantrums lately and I can't wait to document each and every one of them.  But in the meantime, here are some shots of the monsters I've taken over the last month or so....

Sometimes they actually behave like decent, self-respecting spider monkeys

Just in case you needed more photographic evidence that Rollie a.) never wears his clothes, and b.) is anal-retentive.

Oh wait, here's another one.

Who says self-sufficiencey is a good thing?  

Maybe Rollie IS ready to babysit Elsa

It was a Big-Girl bed for officially five hours and thirty-seven minutes.  Back in your cage, troll!

If it looks like he was strangling her, he probably was.

What-choo Gonna Do?

Last night, after the kids were bundled in their beds and all the shades were drawn, Jeff and I indulged in some luxuriously mindless yet effective couple-strengthening activities.

We watched COPS.

As we sat beside each other in bed, huddled beneath the covers, eyes affixed to the flickering flatscreen before us as people in uniforms attempted to manhandle unruly, shirtless, spitting people into the back of their squad cars, I had a revelation:

When people are drunk and/or under arrest, they behave A LOT like 3-year-olds.

It was actually quite hilarious.  One officer had received a call about a man who was publicly intoxicated.  As he approached the man, the officer began his line of questioning.

Officer: Stay where you are, please.
Drunk Guy: Hey...it's the police....
Officer: Sir, have you been drinking this evening?
Drunk Guy: Uh...Maybe....
Officer: How much have you had to drink tonight, sir?
Drunk Guy: Uh...two or three beers...four, tops.
Officer (pulling his cuffs from his belt): Sir, I'm gonna have to arrest you for public intoxication and open container.
Drunk Guy (holding out his beer and stumbling a little): Okay.  Okay.  Just...lemme just put this down first.
Officer: Sir, please turn around.
Drunk Guy (bending down to place his beer on the grass and seemingly pleased that he got it to stand up): Okay, just wait a second, here....hang on....uh...
Officer: Sir, turn around please.
Drunk Guy: Okay, okay, I will.  Just hang on a minute....
Officer (obviously unamused with this guy's antics): Sir, I'm not gonna ask you again. Turn around.
Drunk Guy: Hey now, I'm gonna....I just need a minute...
Officer: Sir...

Through his drunken haze, the guy seems to realize that the cop is this close to brandishing his billy club, and he reluctantly offers one arm to the cop.  One arm.  I love it.  I felt like I was watching a reenactment of me trying to get Rollie into the car to take him to school this morning.

Drunk Guy: Okay, okay.  See?  I'm co-op-er-ate-in'.  See?  Here, here's my arm...go ahead....
Officer (now behind the drunk guy): Give me your other arm, please.
Drunk Guy (holding up a cigarette in his non-cuffed hand):  Look at this....Look at this....
Officer: Sir, give me your other arm.
Drunk Guy (waves the cigarette around in front of him like he's about to perform a magic trick): Look.  Look at this....
Officer: ...Sir...
Drunk Guy: Hey now, just...just wait a minute--

Before Drunk Guy can attempt to stretch out this fiasco any further, the cop takes him by his one arm and flips him face-first onto the grass.  Not a difficult move considering the cop was pretty much holding Drunk Guy up at this point.  And I'll be golly-darned if Drunk Guy didn't start giggling while the cop kneeled on his back and finally got that elusive Other Arm into the handcuffs.

As the cop was dragging Drunk Guy into the squad car, Drunk Guy kept saying, "Why'd you have to go and do that? I gave you my arm.  Why'd you have to throw me like that?"

"You didn't give me your other arm."

"Yeah I did."

"No you didn't."

"...I did."

"No."

I'm pretty sure that's when Drunk Guy started spitting.  As the cop was sitting him down in the backseat, Drunk Guy leaned over and spit.

"Don't spit inside the car, sir."

"I'm trying to spit outside," Drunk Guy said.  Pretty indignantly, I might add.  As if he were being wrongly accused of perjury and was an upstanding citizen, possibly even with a decent job.

It was the first time I'd really watched COPS post-children.  It was like watching a train-wreck, a car accident, a kid having a temper tantrum in the middle of Target.  I couldn't look away because it was so familiar.  I thought back to all the times I've chased Rollie or Elsa across a park or down the driveway as I shouted at them to Stop! Halt! Freeze!  All the times I've stuffed their squirming bodies into the car, all the times I've stopped myself from breaking out the pepper spray as they argued with me about everything from washing their hands to taking a nap to whether or not it's too hot outside to go to a park.  I realize this is all about power, and how desperately children want to cling to whatever scrap of it they think they have like it's some magical and delicious piece of candy that will not only grant their every wish but will also eventually turn into a unicorn.  And they'll be golly-darned if I win the Hot Outside argument, even if they look out the window to see lizards spontaneously combusting in our driveway.

I now feel like I have a slight glimpse into the world of being a beat cop.  I know how it feels to try to contain the rage building inside you as your repeated orders go unheeded, or worse, when someone tries to argue with you all the reasons why he can't follow simple directions.  Okay, so it's not like my child may or may not be carrying a concealed weapon (although ping pong paddles can be pretty effective at delivering some blunt force trauma to baby sisters).  It's not like I have to worry about my kid car-jacking someone and leading me in a high-speed chase (although lately I have to actually put in some effort to chase him down on foot--and it's now impossible to do so in flip-flops).  It's not like I fear for my life every time I have to confront Elsa engaging in disorderly conduct or public urination.

But I do feel like I understand on a small scale how difficult it is to maintain your own self-control when you are constantly dealing with people who think spitting is an acceptable form of communication.  Or that they can outrun you even though they aren't wearing any pants and trip over their own feet.  Or that they can talk their way out of a jam if they argue loudly enough.  It's one of the more challenging aspects of motherhood:  Keeping your cool in the midst of chaos.  Sometimes I can do it, but sometimes, like when I tell Elsa to stop chewing on the coffee table and instead of complying with this simple request, she lunges at me with her teeth bared, I really really wish I had a taser.  

Alright....Time for a Dunkin run.  Peace out.

The Evil Lady With The Enormous Ass

The other day I experienced an emotion so foreign to me that for a while I wasn't sure how to classify it.  Which is why I'm so late in getting up a blog about it (well, that plus I was out of town last week and have spent the last three days navigating my suitcase-strewn house and scraping refrigerated Mystery Leftovers from various tupperware containers and down the garbage disposal).  I simply wasn't sure how to explain what recently went down at my friendly neighborhood Burger King.

I seriously have not felt this way since the seventh grade, when I, crouched atop a toilet tank in the middle school girls' lavoratory, overheard Heather Everts and Deanna Giordano discussing my inability to fit into my cheerleader uniform.  I burst forth from that putty-colored stall, threw the uniform on the floor and stormed out, my chubby little hands shaking uncontrollably.

Rage.  That is the emotion.  Rage directed at another human being.  A complete stranger.  And a mother.  With a giant ass.

(Side Note: The size of her ass is actually irrelevant, but I am still so pissed that I plan to literarily bitch-slap this woman as much as I can.  Yes, it's juvenile, catty, and may take away whatever credence I have as a mature, sensible adult, but f*ck it.  This lady's ass was bigger than a keg of beer.)

I had asked a friend of mine to meet me at Burger King so our kids could play together.  Her kids are about the same age difference as Rollie and Elsa, only nine months older, so I consider her my parenting guru. The Mr. Miyagi to my Daniel LaRusso of motherhood.  Whenever I think I'm about to lose my mind with my kids' latest phases (smothering each other, public nudity, hiding urine-soaked pull-ups beneath various pieces of furniture), my friend will just smile and calmly say, "I remember that one," or, "You are exactly where I was a year ago." And since her kids are adorable, pleasant and well-adjusted, it's nice to have visible evidence that mine won't turn out to be complete a-holes in a few months.

It was hot out, niether of my children were napping, and the only way I could keep myself from speaking in Scream was to bustle them off to Burger King's plastic, primary-colored petri dish of a play place.  And since my friend is usually down for a little BK, I called her and asked her to meet me there, STAT.

We sat together and chatted while our children crawled, climbed and hollered to each other through the giant tubes and winding slides.  Another pair of moms sat near us, their children older and thus more adapt at navigating the equipment, circumventing Elsa when she was a roadblock and leaping over Rollie and his friends if they got in the way.  All seemed calm and happy as the kids played in relative, albeit deafening, harmony.

A few times one of the older boys emerged from the tunnels and said something to his mother (the one with the huge ass).  I caught snippets of 'boy in the white shirt' and 'hitting me' but wasn't sure exactly what the problem was.  The huge-assed lady shot a dirty look in our direction, said something in response to her son and he ran back to the playground, yelling for his friend to wait-up.

My friend sighed, then called up a warning to her son, who was crawling through a mesh tunnel about twenty feet over our heads.  "If you hit, no one is going to want to be your friend," she told him.

He peered down at us through the netting like a cherubic little fish, then yelled, "Here I come, Rollie!"  The equipment shook and shuddered as two-hundred-plus pounds worth of kids wormed around within the tubing.  And as I mentally calculated how many different strains of ebola Elsa was likely to have on her hands, the older kid leaped from the slide and went over to his mom again.

"Uh-oh," I said to my friend.

She just shrugged.  "If he's hitting other kids, they're probably doing something to him.  And then he'll figure out that he won't have any friends if he does that."

That seemed reasonable.  Her son wouldn't just come at some bigger, older kid like a rabid spider monkey, fists clenched and arms flailing.  It's not like he's a heavy-weight boxer or some 'roided-up professional athlete.  These kids were literally twice his age, twice his size, and perfectly capable of avoiding the accused hitter if they really wanted to. Besides, this was a good learning opportunity for the kids.  Mommy's not gonna fight all your battles for you.  Unless Mommy has a giant ass.  In which case Mommy is going to start yelling at the younger, smaller, weaker kid's mom and cause a huge scene in the middle of a peaceful fast food establishment.

Finally the other moms corralled their children and collected their things to go.  As the gaggle walked by our table, the big-assed lady muttered something about 'no respect.'  As soon as she passed through the glass door into the restaurant side of Burger King, she whirled around and started gesticulating wildly at my friend.

What the hell?

I guess because my friend and I were just sitting there staring at her as she went on her tirade, the woman came back and pushed open the door.

"I have absolutely no respect for you as a mother," the lady shouted.

Um...what...?

"Your son was hitting my kids, he was shaking the equipment, he was kicking that little girl while she lay on the ground!  There's obviously something wrong with him!"

Wait a second.  Obviously something wrong with him?  So now apparently this woman can diagnose a psychological disorder in a complete stranger's child based on him shaking the Burger King playground equipment and taking a few swipes at a bigger kid, possibly in self-defense?  Good Lord, if that qualifies a kid as having 'something wrong with him,' then Rollie belongs in a strait-jacket until he turns 30.  Which, come to think of it, wouldn't be such a bad idea....

My friend and I both started talking at the same time, but the woman just shook her head and flounced out, her ass jiggling behind her, the seams of her pants straining with effort to keep it contained.  (I know, I know...I am an immature jerk...it's not like I have the World's Tightest Ass, either.  But at least I don't publicly question the parenting techniques of complete strangers.)

My friend seemed pretty calm about the whole thing, but I was stunned.  I couldn't believe the nerve of this woman, telling my friend something was wrong with her son.  Wrong with him.  What the f*ck is that supposed to even mean?  Was the lady pissed that my friend didn't immediately rush into the play place, haul her son out by the ear and start screaming at him?  Has this lady never in her life seen little boys play together?  How dare she tell another mother there's something wrong with her child?  I think there's something wrong with her, eating Whoppers when she can barely fit into her black dress slacks.  Let me tell you something, stupid, mean lady.  You have terrible hair, and angry heart, and your black pants aren't slimming even by the furthest stretch of the imagination.

For the next week I went through all the ways I would have handled the situation if it had been reversed.  If I felt that Rollie was being wrongfully attacked by a younger child.  I realize this would mean a one-year-old would be the attacker, but I guess that's kind of the point.  Even if Rollie was sitting there, minding his business, and a littler kid came up, unprovoked, and hit Rollie on the head, I would simply have Rollie go play somewhere else. I would still teach Rollie to remove himself from the situation.  Teach Rollie that he always has control.  Teach him that the day I condone yelling at another parent and psychoanalyzing her child will be the day I feather my hair and have an ass so large it provides enough shade for a picnicking family of four.

So there you have it.  My immature rant.  I hope the next time this lady feels compelled to ream out a fellow mom, she makes sure that mom isn't sitting next to someone who's a loyal friend, imperfect parent and dedicated blogger.

Most Likely To Lobotomize You In Your Sleep

Sometimes I feel like I am the Thought Police.

Most moms I know want their children grow up with a sense of empathy, of understanding and compassion for other people.  I know I am constantly badgering Rollie to be nice to his friends, to cheer them up when they're sad, and try to be considerate of everyone's feelings.  Maybe I'm getting touchy-feely in my old age, or maybe I'm just gunning for Rollie to be voted Most Popular by his senior class (unlike me, who for some reason was voted Most Likely to Succeed...I think it was because our class was so small and all the good superlatives were taken...I would've killed for Best All Around, Most Talented, Class Clown.  I would have even taken some of the lesser known ones: Shortest. Best Freckles. Most Likely To Marry A Guy Who Makes Beer For A Living....But Most Likely To Succeed?  Seriously? If you say so, NFCS class of '95....).  Either way, I would like it if he weren't a complete sociopath by the time he's in kindergarten.

He seems to have the whole empathy thing down.  Except when it comes to Baby Els.  Because lately he has been telling me that he doesn't like her.

I guess I need to look at Elsa from the perspective of a 3-year-old boy. Elsa can be annoying.  She ruins puzzles.  She breaks toys.  She steps on the remote and changes Nick Jr. to ESPN with a mere flick of her big toe.  Maddening, I tell you.  She shrieks unintelligible phrases and demands gum and when she cries I instantly assume Rollie is the cause (which, 99.99999999% of the time, he is).  She doesn't understand the basic rules of games like Duck, Duck, Goose and Memory.  To her the world is one big bounce house filled with things that should be inserted into an orifice.  

Rollie's time-outs are interminably longer, the expectations of his behavior are unreachably higher, and the decibel level I reach when yelling at him is significantly greater.  Yet they have the same bedtime, eat the same foods, watch the same shows, and I think even have the same dad.  It's no wonder Rollie was walking around telling me to keep Baby Els away from him because he didn't like her anymore.

I get it because I used to be the annoying little sister.  The one who took things without asking, who tagged along, always underfoot and constantly looking for approval.  My sister and I shared a room, a bed time, bathtime, clothes, cousins, our affinity for Little House On The Prairie and dislike of squash. I hung around my older sister like a sweat-scented fog, not because I wanted to be just like her, but because she fascinated me (and scared me a little...okay, a lot: She was one of those people who may or may not cut off all your hair in your sleep, so you try to sleep with one eye open to keep a lookout for a shadowy figure armed with a pair of scissors creeping across the room in the middle of the night).   

So I do get the whole, you know...wishing your little sister would be kidnapped by a band of Grateful Dead followers.  I'm sure that wish crossed Carrie's mind at least once when we were kids.  I know this because of the book she wrote when we were little, entitled Stupid Bekah. I was the main character. The antagonist, if you will.  I'm pretty sure I died at the end.

Still, every time Rollie says something to the effect that he wants Elsa to be destroyed, I feel compelled to brainwash him into thinking that not only is Elsa the coolest cat he's ever meet, but that he better love her more than he loves playing Wii while simultaneously eating peanut butter and having the bottoms of his feet scratched, or he will spend the next seven years in Time Out (and I'm talking Hard Time Out...not this cushy, lounge on the couch where he can still hear the television and see out the window into the backyard.  This Time Out will be in the laundry room, lights out, the only sound the ominous gurgling of the water softener in his terrified little ears).

He has figured out how to express his dislike for Elsa eloquently enough so that I don't immediately banish him to darkened corners of the house.  The best he can do is, "I don't want to be around her anymore."

Even though this sentence doesn't use any naughty words or even come close to crossing any verbal borders, and even though I know he doesn't mean it literally, I still bristle when he says it.  I still leap in front of it like it's a speeding bullet aimed right for Baby Elsa's heart.

Me: Rollie, I don't like it when you say that.

Rollie: Well I don't.

Me: Why? Why don't you want to be around her anymore?

Rollie: I just don't like her.

Me: Rollie, that is a terrible thing to say. I don't understand why you're saying that.

Elsa wanders into the room just then, kicks a few of Rollie's matchbox cars out of her path, stoops to grab one and starts sucking on its front tires. Rollie just looks at her, not masking his disgust.  It's an odd facial expression to see on a three-year-old, but it's definitely disgust I see emanating from those gray eyes.  I've been on the receiving end of that look plenty of times.

Rollie: I don't want to sit next to her at dinner.

Me: You don't even sit next to her, you sit perpendicular to her.

Rollie: Well I don't want to sit purple-lick-you-la to her.

Me: She loves you very much, you know. She cries whenever you drop you off at school.

Rollie: Good. I like it when she cries.

Me: That's it. Go in time out.  

As he flaps and flails his way over the to couch in the living room, I feel like I'm doing something horribly wrong.  I feel like there is a much better way to handle it, but I'm too lazy to figure it out.  Am I teaching Rollie that he can't tell me how he feels?  Am I trying too hard to control how he thinks?  Am I proving to him that he needs to start keeping things to himself, lest he wind up in time out?  Will he resent Elsa even more?  Will he chop off her hair in her sleep with a pair of safety scissors, or attempt to lobotomize her with his Handy Manny drill?

I guess I shouldn't worry too much quite yet.  He is at that stage where he says a lot of things he doesn't really mean.  Like right now he's also trying to tell me his favorite food in the whole world is a spaghetti sandwich. And I guarantee you that if I whipped up a mound of spaghetti between two pieces of bread and set it before him, he would look at me like I was f-ing out of my mind.  

Besides, when he's in time out, Elsa likes to go to the couch where he's been banished and make him laugh.  And even though she's usually the reason he's there, he can't seem to help himself when she starts her belly-chuckles.  

And when I hear them both start cracking up, I feel like I've done something right.  

White Trash Irritable

In my book is a chapter that addresses the White Trash phenomenon plaguing almost every mom of young children.

This phenomenon is what causes even the most sane of us to bring our barefoot children into a grocery store not because we don't make our kids wear shoes, but because the only pair of shoes we grabbed on the way out of the house looked very similar in the dim garage, but were in fact slightly different colored crocs, both for the left foot.  It makes us scurry into WalMart without wearing a bra because we are completely OUT of diapers and our infant had a blowout on the way to the preschool carpool lane and this is an absolute diaper emergency.

Or directs us to bring our children into a gas station conveinece store, one of them missing her pants, so we can purchase a six pack of beer.  Like I did the other day.

When I left the house that afternoon, I did not intend to engage in any White Trash activity. It was 3:30, neither of my kids was submitting to any semblance of naptime, but were instead pinching, pushing and screaming at each other, and it was taking every ounce of power in every nook and cranny of my being not to tie them to their respective beds and go for a twenty-mile bike ride.

Instead, I managed to convince my children that taking a trip to our closest Starbucks was the absolute greatest thing we could be doing in the entire galaxy, and they needed to get their overtired little butts in the car pronto or I'd enjoy a lowfat mocha frappacino with light whip without them.

(Side Note: Rollie has gotten wise to my threats to leave the house without him.  About a month ago, after exhausted every effort to get him out of the house with bribery, I finally told him I was leaving without him.

"Are you going far, far away?" he asked.
"Well, not really.  I'm going to the grocery store."
"...Will you be gone a long, long time?"
"I don't know, Rollie.  Maybe like, an hour."
"Like as long as a Little Bear show?"
"As long as two Little Bear shows."
"Will you bring me home a special treat?"
"Um, noooo.  You need to come with me right now."
"But you can leave without me if you'll be right back."
"Don't tempt me like that, kid."

So yes, there is a definite shelf-life to this threat. Once your kid is around 3-ish, it can seriously backfire. Unless you fully intend to leave without him. Which I can completely understand. Oftentimes I am very tempted to buy an automatic cat feeder, fill it with Kix, and go to my nearest Barnes and Noble for some peace and quiet.)

Anyway, I had no intention of making it to Starbucks with my darling children.  I was convinced that before we were even halfway there, their drool would already be crustifying on their unconscious, cherubic faces.  So sure was I of this, that I didn't bother putting any pants on Elsa (although she was sporting a pair of Big Girl Undies since Jeff and I are still living under the delusion that she will be potty-trained before college). I myself was clad in ratty short-shorts and a tank top, since I wasn't going to be exiting my car under any circumstances. I'm pretty sure Rollie was fully dressed, although it was likely in something he'd selected himself, like a too-small t-shirt and a pair of sweat shorts that make him run "super fast."

We made it all the way to Starbucks, me checking in the review mirror every two seconds to see if they were about to drift off. But they were, in fact, dancing in their seats to the radio, excited at the prospect of getting a Starbucks Milk. (Yes, my children are spoiled. Yes, they get over-priced boxes of glorified vanilla ice cream whenever I go to Starbucks, which is why I try to avoid going unless it's a Code Red Desperate Attempt To Get Them To Nap.  Which, I realize after typing this out, makes my children seem so f-ing obnoxious.  Sorry.)

So now I had two kids who weren't sleeping but instead happily slurping on milk, I was not thrilled at the prospect of going back home and hearing them bitch at each other again, but I was really at a loss for something else to do with them short of the whole tying them to their beds idea. And then I received a text from my sister that she wanted me to send out a copy of my book to a friend. Yay! A chore! A task I could complete with the kids in tow! Horray for life's little distractions!

And so it came to pass that I pulled into my neighborhood BP gas station to patronize the tiny post office branch that also sells lotto tickets and nudie mags.  I freed Elsa and Rollie, shoved their grubby feet into their grubby crocs, and escorted them into the convenience store, actutely aware that to a passerby, I looked very much like a frazzled mom making a beer run so she could make it through the rest of the day with her two unruly brats. Okay, so I guess that passerby would be pretty much correct.

As my children systematically destroyed the fake crocodile head display by the Slurpie machine, I packaged my book and dropped it on the counter, then whipped out my debit card to pay.  The man behind the counter shook his head and pointed at the printed sign taped to the wall.  Minimum Credit Card Purchase $10.00.


"All right," I sighed.  "Let me go find seven dollars worth of stuff. Be right back."

I summoned the children.  "Come on, you monkeys," I said. "Let's pick out some candy."

My suddenly compliant children marched up and down the aisles with me, fingering cellephane bags of gummy vermin, candy corn, red hots and sweet tarts.  I attempted to steer them toward maybe something less vile, like Combos, but then Elsa began grabbing rolls of Mentos off the shelf and shoving them into her mouth, while Rollie became obsessed with finding his elusive Gummy Whale (see Just Call Me Captain Ahab). And suddenly I saw this situation getting out of hand.

"Forget it," I snatched a soggy roll of Spree from Elsa, stuffed a wrinkled bag of M&M's back in its display box and dragged my now whining children over to the beer cooler.  The six-pack of Bud Light beckoned, its bottles clinking delightfully as I pulled it from the shelf and brought it up to the front, along with Elsa's slobbery Mentos and Rollie's pack of gummy sharks.

"Here," I said, swiping my card.  My total was $10.93.

"Would you like a bag?" the man asked.

"Um...sure." I suppose I could at least pretend I hadn't just bought beer and sugar at a gas station with my pantless, rowdy children.  A six-pack shaped plastic bag was the perfect disguise.

"Pee-pee, Momma!" Elsa screeched, tugging at my frayed jean-shorts.

"Okay, just a second," I grabbed my wallet and bag, and hustled the children into the gas station bathroom before Elsa peed all over the gritty floor.  And with that, I crossed over onto a higher plane of White Trash. A plane I have never entered before.  A plane I was pretty sure was only theoretical until now.

I burst into the bathroom, barking at my children to not touch, look at or breath on anything within a ten-foot radius. I parked my bag of beer on the floor beside the less disgusting of the two stalls and yanked off Elsa's undies. As I held her, limp and heavy as a garbage bag full of diapers, and dangled her over the toilet.  Behind me I heard Rollie turning the faucet on and off and giggling.

"Rollie, I told you not to touch anything."

"I need to wash my hands."

"I'm sure you do, but wait until I can help you."

He didn't respond, but a few seconds later, the room went completely dark.

"ROLLIE!" I gripped Elsa, who had peed maybe two milliliters and was now starting to squirm. "Turn. The. Light. Back. On. RIGHT. NOW."

"...I can't find it."

"Oh for the love...." I held Elsa to me and shuffled over to the wall, praying I wouldn't drop her or run into the wall or, God forbid, kick over my beer and shatter the bottles all over the place.

I ran my hand across the slimy tiles until I found the switch. I looked around the bathroom, at my son, whose shirt was soaked through, at my six pack with Elsa's undies and my wallet balanced precariously on top, and finally in the mirror, where I saw Elsa's dimply bottom resting on my arm, her hair hanging in her eyes as she laughed and pointed at our reflection. Yes, it was indeed a funny picture. Classic. And I'm sure anyone who barged into the bathroom and discovered us like this would instantly think, White Trash convention in Stall Two.

Hey, he wears jean shorts, too!

Which is why I try not to be too judgmental when I encounter a situation like this at my local convenience store, WalMart lot or McDonald's drive thru.  I understand that under extreme duress, we can sometimes transform into less polished, more frazzled versions of ourselves.  Like Gregor Samsa in Kafka's The Metamorphosis. Or Bruce Banner in The Incredible Hulk, only with smaller boobs.

So that is my White Trash Phenomenon theory.  I'm gonna go drink my ten-dollar-and-ninety-three-cent beer now.

Back In The Habit

Yesterday I attended a Sunday morning church service for the first time in my adult life.  

I grew up on church the way other kids grew up on Ovaltine.  My family and I went there so often I used to think we actually lived at the church, and just occasionally went to this other building where we slept and bathed and argued over who suffered a worse death--Quint from Jaws (bitten in half by a shark) or those Nazis at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark (faces melted/exploding heads). 

Sunday morning, Sunday evening, Wednesday night, youth group, retreats, bible studies, family devotions...you name it, I did it.  Episcopal, Presbyterian, Southern Baptist, Evangelical Free (still trying to figure out what that one was, exactly....I used to think it was like, Free church to all Evangelicals...or maybe it was more like Pepsi Free...the No Calorie church...).  I've attended all sorts of religious functions; my best friends in school were Baha'i, Jewish, Half-Jewish, Catholic, Mormon.  I've been to Bar Mitzvah's, confirmation parties, Baha'i parades.  I've sampled everything from communion wine to Manischewitz to little shot-glasses full of grape juice, matzo to challah bread to wafers.  I've been confirmed, saved, baptized twice (once the full-on, slammed dunked in a baptism tank).  I've confessed a myriad of sins, memorized an untold number of Bible verses, I've played shepherds, angels, Mary, and once a sheep in Nativity plays, attended sunrise services and midnight masses.  I've even been to St. Peter's square and caught a glimpse of Pope Benedict XVI on a Jumbo-tron.    

Getting a shout-out from The Pope

So for the past ten years or so, I'd taken a break from church.  Not deliberately, really.  I just kind of fell out of the habit (no pun intended).  I still prayed, reflected, thanked God every day for all that I have, and cracked open the Bible every once in a while.  But I stayed away from official, structured, hour-long services with singing and shouts of Amen, for no particular reason other than I never bothered finding a church once I moved out of my parents' house.  I wasn't even sure what kind of church I would attend when I became an official church-goer again.  Being the denominational mutt that I am, I kinda just wanted to go, do my thing and leave.  I used to get the sweats during the part of the church service where we had to turn and shake the hand of the people around us, thinking, what if no one shakes my hand? I'll feel like such an idiot just standing here, waiting for someone to come to me.  Maybe I should make the first move.  But what if I get rejected?  It was almost as brutal as the start up of a slow song at a middle school dance--the panic factor was the same, but in church I didn't have a dark corner of the cafeteria to retreat to.

I never really paid attention during the actual sermon, either.  I tell ya, you want to stop time for a nine-year-old, make her sit through a sermon. During the minutes between 11:30 and 12:00 on a Sunday morning, time stood still.  On the occasion that my older sister deigned to sit beside me in the pew, we played hangman, MASH and tick-tac-toe on every blank space of the church bulletin.  The pew shook with our stifled laughter as she drew caricatures of the pastor, the choir, and some of the more cartoonish members of the congregation, until our mother pinched us in disapproval or our father frowned down his nose, his mouth threatening but his eyes full of suppressed amusement.  

On Sunday evenings our father would come up with quizzes about the sermon and print them out. My siblings and I sat at the kitchen table trying desperately to remember scraps of the pastor's monologue and answer as many questions as possible, out of fear that we would either have to sit next to our parents in church for the next twenty years, or be damned to hell for all eternity (at the time we weren't sure which was worse).  Luckily this ritual only lasted a few months. I guess our father grew tired of watching us bomb quiz after quiz, and instead retreated to his computer den, probably praying for our souls as he used his dial-up modem to converse with band directors, Trekkies, and other nerds who were online back in the late 80's.

As I got older, sermons were less of a chance for me to admire my sister's artistic talents and more of a chance for me to hold hands with my boyfriend beneath the Bible we were pretending to study.  I attended a colossal church at that time, and my boyfriend and I would perch high up in the balcony, overlooking the hundreds below, my parents probably unable to make out my face from the fifty stories beneath me where they sat with the choir. Sermons were definitely more bearable when I had someone's sweaty hand to hold.

So anyway, now that we've got kids, Jeff and I decided we were overdue to start taking them to church.  I put Elsa in one of the two dresses she has that fits, got Rollie looking all dapper (until he started wiping his nose with his shirt), blow-dried my hair for the first time in three years, and we were off.

We dropped Rollie off at his Sunday school class, and he strode right in like he owned the place, not even batting an eye when I told him I'd get him in an hour.  I guess preschool has really built up his confidence...like, a lot...normally I wouldn't use the word 'cocky' to describe my son, but he has definitely developed a swagger in the last few weeks.

Poor Elsa was a slightly different story.  The church had this pager system, so after I signed her in, I was issued a pager in case of an emergency.  "Don't worry," the lady working in the nursery told me. "We hardly ever have to page a mom."

Jeff and I almost made it through the opening hymn when our pager buzzed and flashed like a table at Friday's had just opened up.  I grabbed it and hurried down the aisle, convinced Elsa was having a panic attack in my absence.  

And she was.

"She's been crying since you left," the lady told me apologetically. "I tried to distract her but she's just so upset."

I held Elsa to me, her body twitching, her breath hitching, her cheeks red and streaked and wet. Man, for a little shit who runs away from me when we're at the grocery store, she sure is attached to me now.  I sat with her and watched her warm up enough to methodically remove and insert a pacifier into another little girl's mouth, and then I sneaked away, pausing outside Rollie's classroom long enough to see him busily assembling something out of tape and Q-tips.

The pager didn't go off again until about three-quarters of the way through the sermon. A sermon I was actually paying attention to. A sermon I was actually enjoying. Sure it took me an embarrassingly long time to leaf through my Bible for the book of Daniel, sure Jeff and I searched frantically through our wallets for a few crumpled dollar bills as the offering plate passed by, sure we had to lip-sync our way through the songs because we'd never heard of any of them, but still...it was just nice to be back at church, learning about God as I sat beside my husband and held his hand beneath a dusty Bible.

Fruit Of Daubloon

My mother has this thing about treasure hunts.

We were up in Atlanta for five days last week.  During those five days, we were all invited to my parents' house for dinner.  And for some good old-fashion treasure hunting.  With a metal detector.  And plastic sandbox shovels.  And alcohol.  It truly doesn't get much better than that.

My parents live at the end of an uphill street, their house nestled against a 45-degree gradient.  You almost expect to see a leiderhosen-clad lonely goatherd yodeling in their backyard.  Why they decided to retire to a house with more steps than a standing-room-only AA meeting is beyond me.  But it was apparently always my mother's dream to own a mountain cottage with a big front porch swing, just like it was always my father's dream to live in a house where he could keep his assortment of computer equipment on an entire second floor of a house, so he could hole up and plot some serious world domination in between Hulu-ed episodes of CSI.

Anyway, during the days leading up to our visit to my parents' for dinner, my mother has been planning a sort of scavenger hunt for all the grandchildren.  She got the idea during our trip to the Fountain of Youth gift shop, where she purchased several fake gold coins.  Her plan was to bury them in her back yard beforehand, then let the kids hunt for them with her metal detector, thus perpetuating the idea that when people retire they go absolutely bat-shit.

This is not the first time my mother has concocted a synthetic scavenger hunt.  When my sister Carrie was 9 or 10, she invited over this friend who for some reason was reeeaaally into all things Native American.  When my mom got wind of our impending houseguest, she gathered up some indian arrowheads she had laying around and scattered them in the woods behind our house.  Then she told my sister and her friend that our house was just a tomahawk's throw away from an Indian excavation site, and that they should go looking for relics.  I can still hear her squealing with feigned delight when my sister and her friend returned with a handful of polished, gleaming arrowheads.

So this past week, my mother kept trying to hint to my nieces and nephews that her yard was once part of a pirate trading route.  I think she almost convinced herself this was true.  Perhaps someone should have told her that the main method of pirate transportation is BOAT. I could almost tell she was imagining Jack Sparrow, replete with eye-liner and Keith Richards swagger, swishing around the yard in a rum-induced stupor, dropping his coins hither and thither, slurring about Davey Jones and the lesser-known Monkee Peter Tork.  She even tried to pass this myth off on me.

My Mom: I've heard tell of pirates making their way through these parts.
Me (looking around to see if any kids are in earshot and seeing none): ...Mom?  You do realize you're speaking to me, right?
My Mom: They used to carry old Spanish daubloons with them on their journeys.
Me: What the hell is a daubloon?
My Mom: You don't know what a daubloon is? I thought surely you would know, living in Saint Augustine and all.
Me: No, please tell me.
My Mom: You're really never heard of a daubloon?
Me: Say "daubloon" one more time.  I dare you.
My Mom: Daubloon daubloon daubloon.
Me: ...Do you have any more wine?

In the end the kids LOVED the treasure hunt.  And my siblings and I came up with a new drinking game: take a shot every time my mother said the word Daubloon.  If we'd really been taking shots I would have been hammered in two minutes.

PS--In case you need further evidence of my mother's obsession with a.) metal detectors and b.) repeating a Word Of The Day, please see my lil' brother's Possum Crossing blog.  Then you'll understand....As much as anyone can understand my mother's endearing idiosyncrasies.