TheMommyBlog

Monday, June 08, 2009 Bad Mood Dude

MAN.

One thing I cannot stand is a broken promise. Especially the small, easy to keep ones. Like, I’ll pick up our child’s medicine and take it to school so he can stay there for the day. I think this one is my fav. Because then? Just when you’re getting ready to film a video segment on a sensitive topic, you get a call from the school nurse saying that the medicine never showed up and the kid can’t stay at school and his dad is not answering any of his phones, and then when you race over to the pharmacy, you hear that it was picked up hours ago. And then when you are at the school signing him out neither the nurse nor the school secretary will make eye contact. And then you drive over to see that Daddy has been home all this time, just not picking up the phone. And then you resist the urge to key his car all the way around. Because that was the car that used to be yours until you gave it to him in the divorce.

Thanks be to pink bubblegum that I have understanding friends who are willing to cover for me. I will now spend the afternoon not wanting to knock holes in the walls, because this is my house. And the negative nine hundred bucks in my account says I don’t have the luxury.

Friday, May 29, 2009 Bad Mood Dude, Family

I just came back from my son’s baseball game, where my two youngest, who often call me from their Dad’s house in the throes of agony from missing me so much, ran off to play and only said hello so they could ask for a dollar.

Just as I was picking my way down and through the bleachers, I wobbled on the last bench and did a full Gaynor into the packed dirt and landed up against the fence, right next to my kid’s dugout. They were having a huddle on the pitcher’s mound and didn’t notice, thanks be to bacon. Anyway, my glasses went one way, my keys another and everything spilled out of my purse: my pashmina (why did I bring it? Why? Who cares if the kids need to huddle when it gets cold?), Heather’s book, and a bottle of Motrin that rolled out and away in a lazy arc, coming to a rest in front of the team mom.

I don’t know how I landed the way I did. My glasses were half off my face. I have NEVER worn my glasses to a game before today, but I wanted to see my boy pitch. Also? I’ve spent WEEKS trying to get them adjusted just right so that they didn’t dig into my nose or fall onto my chin. I was really smarting, totally embarrassed, and needed to get up off the ground and out of there ASAP. Gil jumped down and started brushing the dirt off my shoulders, back, jeans…

“Hey!”

“Oops, sorry. Are you sure you’re all right?”

“Yep, I’m good, just going home now.” Everyone was chiming in.

“That last step’s a lulu!”

“Have that glass of wine.”

“You mean you haven’t already?”

Ha, ha, walking away, fumbling for my keys. Oh, no. No. “Anyone seen my keys?”

“Should we give them to you?”

“They’re probably in center field.”

“Well, I’m not going far without them, hang on…” And then I saw them. They’d sailed under the fence and skidded to a halt just this side of the warm-up deck. Christ in a sidecar.

“Gil, see them over there? Look, by the fence—no, under the fence—can you reach them?”

“Yeah…got ‘em!”

“Thanks. I’m going home now and will be getting drunk.”

Look at that. I had to drop my shoes and dusty jeans in the hall and then have a shower to scrub all the rocks and dirt out of my elbow. Now I’m just waiting for it to finish swelling up and oozing so I know where to put the band-aids. I actually picked up a box of those extra-large patches with Neosporin in them yesterday at the store, but put them back because they weren’t on sale.

Fuck a duck.

Friday, May 29, 2009 Bad Mood Dude, Family

I’ve been circling my computer for days now, unable to think of anything to say that would pass for entertaining. If you’re into that sort of thing, that is. What we do have is train wreck with a side of schadenfreude. (I can hear some of you. “Schadenfreude! It’s my favorite!”)

In the last couple of months, not entirely independent of this stupid, interminable, non-contagious yet excruciating childhood disease, I’ve been seriously re-evaluating my path and sorting out what aspects of my life need work, need help from others, and which should just be left alone for a goddamn minute. Put. The. Shovel. Down.

I made a list of the significant life events (not all-inclusive; omissions include anything including high school, my second stint at college, or anything that could jeopardize my running for office):

• 4 Engagements
• 2 Marriages
• 3 Children
• 2 Divorces
• If there is a Marriage #3, I need to get it right.
• 1 Very successful career, heavy on income and ability to provide
• 4 Spectacularly wretched exits from first career plus three new ventures in rapid succession, with cocomittant aftermath of profound disbelief and horror at how very different the employment experience was after 12 years of being very well respected and an expert in a specific field. True, two employers went under and one was a psycho, but… wow.
• 1 (very) Recent breakup, yep, the wedding is off. Not at all sure what I’m doing. Don’t much want to talk about it.
• An interminable number of months and years ahead of me in which I need to raise and support my family, as a single, half-employed mom with lots of talents and an avocation which is ideal for starving.

I can barely sit here with the flare-ups. I actually thought I had it licked when last week I had three entire days of feeling fantastic—well enough to ride my bike, do tons of laundry, and not curl into the fetal position, once.

Aaaand then it flared up again yesterday. Man down!

The good news is that I am paying the mortgage and some bills today, which is a massive relief.

The bad news is that when I took one of the children for additional testing and evaluation to separate the “able to” from the “want to”, the recommended course of study ran the price of a double wide. My child is brilliant in many areas, unmeasurable in others (read: did not even provide answers), and apparently in need of some intervention. I’m plugging that into the curriculum for Camp Roberts this summer.

Seriously, how can these places charge so much? When I heard the number, I thought, that’s one small car, that’s half a year of mortgages, that’s more than I make in seven months. Suddenly, I was excruciatingly aware of the opportunities that will be missed, and how we are truly hanging by a muffler. I’m going to drive that car until it dies. How am I ever going to provide for my kids? Where’s Mr. Darcy? I’ll settle for Colin Firth.

Okay, hands and wrists on fire, legs feel filled with hot sauce, head in a vice, and neck in a choke collar. Need Advil and rest. Maybe a movie. Then I can go to my son’s last playoff game this afternoon without keeling over.

Thursday, May 21, 2009 Bad Mood Dude, Family

In my case, plenty with a chance of you bet.

I haven’t been able to even verbalize this yet, and I’m still flopping, but get this: I had two ideas for books that I’ve been working on. Keeping notes, fleshing out structure, even, in one case, illustrations. In the last two weeks, I’ve been pitched two books that are identical in premise AND DESIGN to my works-in-progress. One is in my hands, and one I haven’t received yet.

I’m flabbergasted. I said “SHIT!” when I opened the email.

“What?” from Phil, across the room.

“Someone has just asked if I would like a review copy of a book about [blah blah blah]. Even the title nails the general idea of what I’m working on. What are the odds?”

“Really?”

“Yep. And get a load of this—I haven’t even shown you this one because my heart’s still broken over it, but…” I handed him an illustrated book that, down to the style, font, and some of the colors, matched the illustrations I had been working on.

“Whoa.”

Yeah, fuck me, all right. What am I supposed to do with that? I obviously can’t review the books, and I don’t even want to read them lest I risk somehow absorbing and then regurgitating some point, or observation, or punch line from one of them in my own work.

And what really chaps my hide is that an agent contacted me recently and while she did not think she could sell my original book in its original format to a big publishing house (it was all the rage in 2006, I said, before anyone knew what a blog was.), she wanted first crack at anything else I chose to write, including a complete rewrite of my prior work.

I think I’ll decline the offer to review the one, and give the other away.

And then go back to staring at the twelve dollars in my checking account.

Monday, May 11, 2009 Bad Mood Dude, Family

Hey, still here! Kinda.

It’s 1:59 p.m. and I just brushed my hair and put on clean clothes for the school pickup. My left eye is twitching, my jaw hurts from eating a SANDWICH, and I’m trying to get my shoulders down from around my ears. I figure I have about two paragraphs left in my poor, achin’ wrists. Daphne and I work up tired, spent the day tired, watched two movies, and slept the rest of the time. I’m waking up just in time for afternoon snacks and homework.

Oh, great, even Cody gets a cell phone on The Suite Life. You know, I’ve about had it with the cell phone discussion. My eldest has been asking for one for a long time. We say not quite yet. Maybe middle school. If they need to reach me or anyone else, they can call from school, their dad’s house, either of our cell phones, or their friends’ houses. Cell phones are not inexpensive, and don’t start talking to me about family plans. I’ve just replaced my own phone and reallllly don’t want to talk contracts or costs anytime soon. Again. What’s the policy at your kids’ schools? Not about being allowed to have one, but what the protocol is when they don’t have one? The school secretary actually told my fifth grader that he needed to get a phone when he asked to call home. Excusez-moi? Are you going to pay for it? Are you paying the school’s phone bill? Do you have any idea the mess you created when you planted that idea in my kids’ heads and suddenly scared them out of asking to call home sick or to ask if we’ve forgotten to pick them up? It’s a privilege, not a necessity. Don’t make my kids feel as though there’s no responsible adult at school to go to for help. They are in your custody during the day, so STEP UP and don’t make my kids feel bad because their parents aren’t wealthy. Or employed. I’m still deciding whether to say this to your face. I’m leaning toward YOU’D BETTER BELIEVE IT.

Ok, I maybe had one long paragraph and one short one left. And it’s time to get the boys, so they don’t have to agonize about asking permission to call home fewer than ten minutes after dismissal.

Sunday, May 03, 2009 Bad Mood Dude, Family, Travel

My friend (from the Madsen bike video below) wrote this morning, and just staring at her questions made me think of enough to fill a book.

Hi Mindy,
How are you ? how was your trip to Chicago ? Give me some news ... it feels like I haven’t seen you in ages ...
~m

So I filled a novella.

Hee - yes, I’m home, loooong stories that make the week seem like a month. While i was gone - in the first 12 hours, my ex’s uncle died and I might have needed to come home early so he could go to the funeral in another state. So, I went to the first half of the day’s activities (http://loveyourveggies.com/veggies_champs.php) and then took a cab back to the hotel room to wait for news. Here’s the email I sent to mom:

I am in my hotel room, waiting to hear when ex will be going to CO for the funeral for his uncle who died this morning. Having the hardest time getting information as he keeps handing the phone off to the kids and reception is poor. So frustrating. I missed all of this afternoon waiting for news, and now I’m going to dinner. At least I got to rest, it was badly needed.

So I went to dinner that night, and everyone kept sending the waiting circulating with margaritas over to me.

The next day was going to be all day on the far south side of Chicago, not close enough to take a cab back if I needed to, so I stayed behind. All day long my ex debated whether to try to catch a flight for the Friday service in CO, or skip that and go for the weekend, or what. Just as I was meeting everyone in the lobby at 7:45 Wed night, he emailed that he wasn’t going at all. o_o

Fast forward to Thursday, getting on a plane that would land at 8:30 pm, and he emails that his cousin, who works for an airline and is the daughter of the uncle who died, said she’d get him a buddy fare for eighty bucks. But I didn’t need to do anything.

By the time I landed, he’d changed his mind and wasn’t going at all, so I just said, please meet me at the house with the kids so they can stay with me and you can do whatever you need to do. He said he was too busy, would I mind picking them up?

About two minutes after we hung up I called back and said, yes, I did mind, I just came two thousand miles, could you just come the last mile and drop them at my house? It would take twenty minutes to get out of his house with all the stories everyone would need to tell me.

Oh, and it was almost nine, Logan still had homework to do, and needed to get up on the morning to write a summary of a story he hadn’t read. And Dylan was supposed to do his historical figure project, and was going to be Benjamin Franklin, and his teacher gave him a black blazer to wear. UGH. I told Dylan he had his own clothes, here they are, I’ll lay them out, and why don’t you tell me your speech? This is while I’m tucking him in. He said, “I’m Ben Franklin and I liked playing outdoor sports as a kid and swimming in lakes, and later they elected me President and I’m on the ten dollar bill.”

WTF??

I said, no, honey, no you weren’t. Maybe you swam in lakes, but no to the rest. We’ll talk in the morning.

So Friday morning, Logan is writing his essay, Daphne is asking me to pick out an outfit, and I’m furiously typing bullet points for Dylan. Like, “I was President of Pennsylvania, and am on the one hundred dollar bill. Oh, and I invented bifocals, the lightning rod, and the glass harmonica. My family was poor, I was #15 of 17 children, I only went to two years of school and ran away when I was 17.”

So I got them all dressed and then Logan said, “I don’t have any shoes.” 

“What?” 

“I came here barefoot. All my shoes are at Dad’s.”

So could dad meet us at school? No, too busy. So I said we’re coming, and I’d better not see you or I might kill you. It’s 8:05. Just as we’re rounding the corner on his street, he’s DRIVING AWAY to meet us as school. I stopped, he stopped, traffic backed up behind him, and he passed Logan his shoes through the window. And then we nearly collided when we both did three point turns to go the other direction.

As I’m dropping them off, Dylan said, “Come to my presentation. 9:30-10:30.” So I went to Safeway, got food - fridge totally empty from being away all week, got home, was literally standing naked stepping into the shower when Dylan called at 9. “Mom! Where are you? It started at 8:30!” So I got dressed and made it for the last 25 minutes. Dylan was so happy to have me sitting nearby when he gave his speech over and over to parents who asked him who he was.

And then I went back to bed.

You?

Sunday, April 26, 2009 Bad Mood Dude, Family

Click for all the gory details.

Saturday, April 25, 2009 Bad Mood Dude, Family

You see, I was trying to simplify my life.

Instead of investing in a newer computer with a bigger screen for my design work and a faster processor for same, I got an extra hard drive for the computer I’ve been using since 2003. Instead of just staying with the crappy old cell phone I’ve had since 2005, I upgraded it to one that does email and GPS. If I’m going to be traveling (which I am) and getting lost (which I do), I broke down and did it.

So. Configuration. The phone is a mess so I don’t even want to go there. Suffice to say that I will spend most of the plane ride to Chicago putting all my contacts in by hand. Those I have memorized, of course. If you want to be in my contact list and want to hear from me again, please make it easy and just call my cell phone. Then I can save your number. I’m begging you.

The computer? Jesus, Mary, and the guy she dated before Joseph, what a friggin disaster. I can’t just MOVE the huge files that are taking up all the room and slowing everything down to the new hard drive, I have to COPY them. And then DELETE them from the other hard drive, which makes me nervous as all get-out. Not to mention the time it takes to transfer them. If I move the iPhoto library, will I need to move the application as well? Because that library is the single biggest hog on the box. But every time I start the process and see “Remaining time: 6 hours” I want to cry and stop the transfer.

Yes, I know I’m a baby.

And then, and THEN, trying to slim down the mail boxes and fix a glitch in Mac mail wherein it always shows one new message even though I’ve read or marked as read every single one of the thousands of messages, it shows as unread. There’s that little number 1, in its red circle, perched on top of the mail icon, saying, WHAT are you doing, woman? Do you have any idea how long I’ve been sitting here? WAITING? Only I know it’s lying.

So I did something extremely, bogglingly stupid. As I have two mailboxes, one for local and one for online, I cleaned out the online one, thinking the local was all I needed for past messages and could avoid the glitch going forward, right? AM I RIGHT?

NO! I AM WRONG!

I erased every single message in my inbox dated before April 9. Which is plenty weird, because there are messages from the ninth through the eleventh, and then nothing until yesterday and today. I KNOW there were messages there. I know it. I know they were important, since I flagged them. Including my travel itinerary. So why some and not others? Probably because for five minutes one day I changed my alias and it’s accepting one but not the other except for that five minute window. Or five week. Whatever.

At any rate, I have hosed my inbox, want to kick my hard drive, and am still sick, on top of sore from giving Daphne rides on our new bike. Don’t you hate when you realize after about two minutes exactly which muscles you haven’t used in a while?

I’m going to wait until I have a drink in my hand on the plane to even try to sync anything up with the Crackberry. I’m beginning to think it was an amazing discount for a reason.

Tuesday, April 21, 2009 Bad Mood Dude, Family

Gah. The ONLY reason I’m here is because my mom called and made me get out of bed. And I did it. I’m forty. Yes, thank you.

Anyway, I have been letting my correspondence slip something awful since the CBS/Oprah/CNN/CNNagain/ABC/WebMD parade, and offer sincere apologies to those who think I’m blowing them off. It’s not you, it’s me.

having said that, there are two things I’ve committed to: Mentioning Fresh Air Fund. Go. I’m too weak to type a permalink but it will be in the Site of the Day soon. Also, tomato seeds. I hate tomatoes but love Campbell’s so will have some information on how to get some of their seeds to grow your very own tomatoes which I, of course, will not eat. And two and a half, this from Michele Lamar, for whom I would actually get up and do a jumping jack while on my death bed:

Okay—-Mikwright cards (the very funny and dysfunctional card line)  is doing some “bid’ness” with WT Mom and I am doing a promotion for Mother’s Day with them. 

I wanted to see if you would do a guest post (you can recycle, naturally) about one of your favorite mom moments——the funny moments that the perfect moms won’t fess up to.  For the honor of being one of my mother’s day moms——-and being featured on my fine blog, you will receive:

Some kind of free funny stuff from Mikwright Cards.
A random and worthless tacky trinket from me
My undying gratitude, etc, etc
I’ll introduce you to Tim, the founder of Mikwright Cards, who is my new favorite gay man.

Are you up to the task?  Are you dysfunctional enough? I know you are. Let me know.

She knows me, she do. I replied:

Do you even have to ask? Ok tell me the requirements (if you haven’t already - I’m too weak to re-read) and I’m in. Damn fucking Parvovirus is kicking my ass. And I am getting so many MD requests that I’m starting to delete without reading but for you, baby, I’m in.

Keep ringing the doorbell if I don’t answer. The only reason I’m here now is because my mom called and made me get out of bed.

m

Oh, and this is the first thing I would have listed had it stayed in my short-term memory long enough for the Publish page to load: We’ll call it number 2.2. From Mommy Track’d, The Ultimate F-It Moment. I haven’t read it yet, but I highly recommend you check it out. I know I’ll love it, when the page loads.

And now I have to change out of my pjs to pick up the kids from school. You’d think they could just walk the mile home.

Oh, and then I get to shower, do my hair, and slather on makeup for a momversation.com video on getting through divorce sanely. I’m too weak to give that the chuckle it deserves.

Sunday, April 19, 2009 Bad Mood Dude, Family

Together, my ex and I just broke every parenting rule in the book. He asked a favor, so I kept the kids overnight on his weekend. He showed up late and wanted to have his one-on-one time with our eldest, something we’d discussed and agreed to in theory a while ago. Yes, they left a message asking if it could be today, but I was in a lecture all day yesterday and did not receive it. I planned to work and rest since I’m flaring up again.

It’s now past eleven o’clock in the morning. They are all back at Daddy’s, and I am going to spend the rest of the day alone, and I mean alone. I’m going to the movies alone, and I am napping alone. I hope to even do some of the work I was beginning when everything blew up.

it began when my ex asked another favor, if he could spend half the day playing on the Wii with our eldest while I took care of the little ones. I refused, saying I needed more time to plan and absorb and set something up on the calendar. He asked again. I refused again. And so on, it got ugly. Our eldest left the house. Or, as I called it, ran away, since he didn’t tell us he was leaving, where he was going, when he was coming back, or even that he wanted to be alone and walk around the neighborhood alone for a while. I would have said, “Awesome, you do that, and come back when you are ready.” But he didn’t do that. Dad was ready to leave with his brother and sister, and he was gone.

I said I’d comb the neighborhood while the others went home. Three passes though, and I finally saw him on our street. As I pulled alongside him, he first stood behind a tree and then continued walking past me toward our house.

I leaned out the window and said very quietly, “I can’t even tell you how important it is for you to get in the car with me right now.”

“What? Why? I just wanted to be alone.”

“Get in. We’re going for a ride.”

He got in. We were both still wearing our pajamas, and barefoot.

“If you run away again like that, there will be severe consequences. You will be grounded for a month. I am tempted to keep you home from science camp this week. I know that that wouldn’t be right, because the entire class is going, and I’ve already paid for it, but I want you to know that I am upset enough to think about it. We will have to talk about it when you get back.”

“But I didn’t run away.”

“I am going to call it running away when you disappear on foot and neither of your parents can find you because you don’t want to be found. Don’t even argue with me about it. Just so we are clear, that is running away in my book. It scares me, it makes me panic, it makes me want to call the police when I can’t find you. If you want to be left alone, I will be happy to do that, but I will not tolerate this breech of family trust.

“I am sorry that your dad and I didn’t handle ourselves well this morning; I am sorry we argued. But even if we were madly in love and still married, we would still have arguments and get upset with each other. You can’t avoid that. I know you’ve heard your friends’ parents argue, so you can’t go on blaming every little upset on the divorce. You know better.”

“I know.”

“You can’t change your father. You can’t control him. You can only control how you react and behave. You can’t control me, or change me, and I am sorry that I am not the best mom I can be sometimes, but all you can do when it’s bad is control your reaction and behavior. Our behavior was unacceptable and yours was unacceptable, so we are all coming to an agreement. There will be no one-on-one time today. There will be no video games. The Wii will not leave my house; I will not agree to send it to Dad’s. If we have a ban on it here, taking it to Dad’s undermines my decisions and any progress we are making as a family to work together. I’m sorry, but I am not going to change my mind. And I am sorry that you thought that you would have Dad to yourself today, but that was not cleared with me, and I have to work. I promise that if I make plans, I will keep them, but this is not my fault. I did the favor and kept my word. It is now nearly noon, we’re all upset, and your father is no longer welcome to come hang out here without a plan. Period.

“I love you and your siblings endlessly, but I am not here to make you happy. Happiness is a state, not a goal, and not a right. You are lucky when you are happy. I want you instead to be strong, to be able to handle disappointment, to argue constructively, and to look at things from all angles instead of blaming everyone else or blaming only yourself. It’s rarely even possible for that to be true. I want you to know you are your own person, that you can handle yourself, and that you have to allow us to handle ourselves. Dad and I will argue. Period. All healthy relationships have that, the only difference is in how well they argue. Today was not a fair fight, and it made us all unhappy, but I will try to be better. I promise to keep my word. And I will never intentionally hurt you, but I will serve up consequences even if you’re running off because you think everything is your fault. You can’t control anything other than your own actions, but we’ll learn together how to do that with grace. Okay?”

We were at Dad’s, parked at the curb. He got out and said he loved me. I said that I’m here, but that he needed to work things out with the rest of the family, or ask to be left alone and give them the same latitude.

It sounds so wise in the end, but so hard to commit to when all you can hear is the sound of the other grownup calling you insane.

Sunday, March 15, 2009 Bad Mood Dude

I just sent this note to a friend who’s just given birth to her first baby in the last week:

I know you may either be totally in love with your baby right now or perhaps wishing you could ask for a refund, but REMEMBER these months before they can scream YOU DON’T CARE ABOUT ME and throw tantrums and wail so loudly that there is nowhere to go in the house so you can’t hear it. I mean it. Fourteen hundred square feet here. My head is plastered to the ceiling and I swear there are moments when it’s possible to hate not your child, but the behavior, to the point where you think YOU’VE taken some horrible turn as a parent for her to be even capable of that kind of behavior. You swear to yourself that you’re not going to give in, you’re not going to help dress a seven year old for a birthday party, you don’t care if she goes or not, but you know she will cry for two hours if she doesn’t, so you finally get up and dress her, fuming silently because you don’t trust anything that might come out of your mouth, but you dress her like a doll and brush her hair into a ponytail BECAUSE YOU DON’T THINK YOU CAN STAND TO LISTEN FOR ONE MORE MINUTE.

And once you drop her off she’s hugging her friends and skipping around and giggling. And instead of throttling her you sign the release, hug her goodbye, and wonder if ninety minutes is enough time to go home to stare at the wall and get stress levels down enough to go back and get her.

Tuesday, March 10, 2009 Bad Mood Dude

The best part of my morning has got to be clearing out my inbox and seeing gems like, “Your bank account is dangerously low. Its balance is $25.17.” Nice.

Wednesday, March 04, 2009 Bad Mood Dude, Family, Momversation

Man. I did NOT know how much I’d offended momversation.com readers with my comment about being a girl before you have a baby and a woman after. I was explaining bodily changes to six, seven, and nine year old children, not making a political/gender statement. I had no idea how that sounded when I filmed, but I totally winced at the edited video—it sounded so offensive. And, indeed, readers got out the pitchforks and torches. I tried to leave a comment on this outraged post, but comments are closed. I AM SORRY. And mortified.

I suffered five years of fertility struggles and would not have children without treatment. I’ve had more biopsies and lumpectomies than any woman my age should have, and that started before thirty. Once while eight months pregnant with my third. I felt like a toddler that day.

As you can see in my response to the comment below, I retracted. Big time. And I’ve asked momversation to change my “favorite quote” in the sidebar because it sounds so awful and not at all what I was trying to get across.

My kids see a very definite line between being a girl, and growing up and getting married and having children. It’s like climbing over a fence. One day you’re a kid and the next you’re a full-fledged grownup doing all the things they know grownups do, but have no idea of the timing and variety.

So, hi, I’m an idiot. And I’m glad I got this far without sounding like one with just my tray table, flip camera, and me shooting these damn things. I send probably ten to fifteen minutes of monologue, and it’s trimmed down to what you see. I won’t say it was taken out of context because it clearly wasn’t. But I wasn’t speaking to other grownups. I was speaking to my kids, who need things nice and simple. I hope of all things that they don’t remember that tidbit; they forget so much else of what I say.

Friday, February 27, 2009 Bad Mood Dude

I just hooked the sleeve of my robe over the kitchen faucet as I flipped on the water.

Sunday, February 22, 2009 Bad Mood Dude

I TOTALLY understand now why my kids go for each others’ throats when they’ve walked away from a crushing defeat on the Wii and someone starts asking all sorts of questions. Hell, if someone even LOOKS at them longer than a millisecond.

I’ve just spent the last hour trying to get through “Vaseline” on RockBand without getting thrown off stage. On Medium. Not Difficult. Medium. Just as I stood and was looking for something to kick, Phil came into the garage and asked, “Could you fall off ANY MORE TIMES? Crunggg-ung-waaaahrnt!” (That’s the sound of someone yanking your amp cord as you trip over the mic.)

“Don’t even say it. I can’t fucking believe what I’ve been doing.”

“What song was it?”

“The fucking Stone Temple Fucking Pilots. Fucking “Vaseline.” I HATE THAT SONG.”

“You’re done?”

“Oh, I’m done. I’m DONE.”

“Sure you don’t want to try it one more time?”

“No, why don’t you play it and get through it in front of me? On Difficult.”

“You know, this guitar wasn’t even working last night. It wouldn’t turn on.”

“I KNEW IT. I knew I was hitting more chords than it was giving me credit for!”

“When was the last time you changed the batteries?”

“What?”

“You have changed the batteries, haven’t you?”

“What? I don’t know. How am I supposed to know that?”

“I’m guessing the kids don’t do it, so if it’s been done, it’s been done by you.”

I pictured clawing his goatee off and stuffing it in his ear. “How am I supposed to remember that kind of detail? Could you run this house, with all these kids, and all these stupid things needing stupid batteries, and people sending me things to test, and all THOSE fucking batteries? Honestly. What kind of fucking question is that?”

“I just asked if you changed the batteries.”

“HOW DO I KNOW? You keep asking as if I know!”

“I wasn’t sure if I was asking clearly enough.”

“I’m going to get the boys’ laundry.”

Coming back with the laundry basket, stuffing five hundred socks and three pair of shorts (how does that work out? How in the name of God and all His backup singers does that work out to a week’s worth of clothing for two boys?), I said, “I completely understand when the kids get so mad at each other when switching places. They TALK. They LOOK. They ask QUESTIONS. I completely get it now. Fucking ‘Vaseline.’ My arms are going to fall off.”

I’m thinking of going to Dylan’s bed to cry under the covers. He’s got it figured out.