TheMommyBlog

Tuesday, October 14, 2003

My mom volunteered though the university where she works to help out at a site for Habitat for Humanity yesterday. She has a torn ligament and lots of other icky stuff happening in one shoulder, so I was relieved to hear that she was to be in charge of coffee and donuts. Of aaaaaalllllll the people who could have volunteered, only a handful did. Of those, only 3 had any kind of skill that would allow them to help do the roof. Of those, one had only one arm. Outwardly, I commisserated on the shame. Inwardly, I wished I had been there with a bucket of popcorn and a lawn chair.

I forgot what the other sad story was. My daughter is tugging my nightgown and shouting “ALL DONE” at me so persistently that all else has escaped me.

Tuesday, October 14, 2003

She’d better not get pregnant.

Tuesday, October 14, 2003

...is still ticking me off. I bet she’s thinking she’s ready for bigger things, and doesn’t plan to finish inner high school. She’ll get that inner GED, then file for inner emancipation. Then move in with the inner version of my scary high school boyfriend, Callahan.

Monday, October 13, 2003

So I was surfing around, flitting from blog to blog, and I found something cute and fun. An Inner Child quiz. OK, I’ll bite. It could happen, right? So I was born “old” (as my “friends” used to point out). There could still be a scrap of minor down in there somewhere, some remnant of innocence or shaft of pediatric sunshine.

So I take the quiz, click Submit, and wait. What the hell? My inner child is 16?? That’s not a child, folks. A child bride, maybe, but not a child. Any person who can procreate and drive a truck to a job where they could potentially be trusted to handle money (not necessarily in that order) is most definitely not a child.

Go ahead, give it a shot. But if you get a bouncy 4-year-old or even a precocious 8-year-old, I don’t want to hear about it.

My inner child is sixteen years old!

Life’s not fair! It’s never been fair, but while
adults might just accept that, I know
something’s gotta change. And it’s gonna
change, just as soon as I become an adult and
get some power of my own.


How Old is Your Inner Child?
brought to you by Quizilla

Sunday, October 12, 2003

Just have to post this for the record, or I might wake up thinking it was part of a wine-induced fantasy: dh and I took the tired, napless children to eat at a pasta place (child-friendy, crayons and coloring-placemats and bread waiting at the table), and they behaved beautifully. No one got up (except to go potty--good call, Dylan), no one cried, no one wandered away, not one irritated glance or forced smile from another table, timely delivery of much-appreciated food (lest that one slip by you, let’s repeat it: Timely. Delivery. Of. Much-appreciated. Food.), and a smooth transition from famished shoveling down of nutritious spaghetti and tomato sauce with bread to an elated clamoring for a scoop of ice cream at Cold Stone.

I stayed to settle the bill as the three of them slid out of their chairs and followed Daddy in an orderly and very adorably polite fashion, and I didn’t hear another peep until I arrived at the ice cream store just in time to witness Logan using Daddy’s car keys to open up the locked and occupied bathroom whose startled resident promptly smashed Dylan’s fingers in the door in his haste to restore privacy.

Fast forward through the screaming, shreiking, comforting, apologizing, kissing, and scolding, and try to concentrate on the blissful, sticky consumption of strawberry and mint desserts, followed quickly by a hasty retreat, baths, and a split-second descent into slumber.

On balance, as perfect a night as we’ve ever had.