Outnumbered Two to One

Last Friday my sister and I decided to meet up once again for another one of our  oh-so-rare girls’ night out. It had been a couple of months since we’d last ventured an evening without our respective broods and we both felt we needed some grown up time…you know, after dark, in our good jeans, with our hair brushed and sporting a little lipstick. Fancy, right?

Well, after abandoning my children to their father’s capable hands, I hopped in to my styling minivan, and shuttled off to meet my sister at the restaurant, which is about 20 minutes of highway driving from my house. About halfway there, cruising along at a steady 80 mph, I noticed some movement in the left corner of my windshield. What I saw lurking there was this…

Now, I normally don’t harbor any ill will toward the arachnids. Live and let live is my general approach, not like roaches which I strive to either annihilate or flee from. The problem was that as my vehicle was hurtling forward at an alarming rate of speed, I suddenly became terrified that this slightly repulsive critter was going to fling itself toward my face and I was going to drive my car in to a ditch where it would quite theatrically burst in to flames.

Spiders are fine, sure. Spiders on your face are somewhat less fine.

Rather than pull over to the side of the road and risk getting splattered by whizzing traffic, I opted to get off at the next exit, drive to the nearest gas station, and run screaming from my car, while simulataneously checking my hair for spiders. After a brief moment’s panic I walked back to the driver’s side and checked things out. The tiny spider was still perched at the edge of the windshield, possibly wondering what the heck was making me so twitchy.

After trying unsuccesfully for several minutes to flush the guy out with a balled up paper towel, I was approached by one of the car wash attendants who must have thought I was completely schizo dancing around in my flats and making little squeaking sounds on the asphalt.

Luckily he ignored his better instincts, and helped a girl out. He very gallantly grabbed the little guy by the legs, pulled him out, and set him free in the nearby bushes, hopefully to live out the remainder of his spider life in peace and happiness. He also was quick to point out that spiders are good luck and I should consider his little visit to be a good omen.

I suppose he was partially right, I was lucky enough to find parking that night at the restaurant , we only had to wait half an hour to be seated, and the movie we caught didn’t suck.

All in all it was a successful evening.

Now had a spider landed on my face, I probably wouldn’t have been so fortunate.

Ever had one of those days…when the inspiration just gets sucked out of you?

Okay, so maybe I’ve had two. I don’t know. It’s hard to tell when all the days get lumped. It’s like when you mix all the Playdoh colors together - red stops being red, blue stops being blue, you just get a fistful of clay the color of overcooked broccoli. It’s just not appetizing.

How do you beat the blahs anyway?

So far I’ve tried cleaning, which left the house smelling nicer but did nothing for my mood. Particularly when my floor was promptly soiled by pudding and corn then my sofa slathered in puke…again? Yes again, the culprit this time…a hunk of Laffy Taffy lodged in my two-year-old’s throat. Banana flavored if you must know.

I also tried reacquainting myself with my inner child, but alas, my five-year-old doesn’t like getting the pants beat off of him on the Wii. Apparently it stops being fun for him when Mom dominates the scoreboard. Sure I have days when I let him win, sure there are days when he is legitimately the better player. But today, wasn’t one of those days. So I beat him. Again. And again. And again.

In your face, sonny boy.

It still didn’t help.

I had pizza for dinner. My husband brought home Girl Scout cookies. It’s Friday night.

And still. I feel. So. Blah.

I’m the sad clown. And if that isn’t bad enough, my head also hurts. And someone smells like poop. I’m not saying who. But that kid, in the smelly diaper, needs to limit his stinkier bodily functions to a one a day maximum. Seriously.

I don’t know about the rest of you, but I have a picture of myself in my head. Now, this self portrait is a blend of several different images - how I wish I looked, how I looked ten years ago, and how I might appear in a mirror if I glance for just a nanosecond or squint really tight.

So today, as I was out and about tending to various duties and chores, I crossed paths with a woman and had the following exchange.

She: “He’s so cute.” Gesturing at my two year old who is in fact adorable.

Me: “Thank you.” She was stating the obvious, but I wasn’t raised in a barn, you know?

She: “How old is he?”

Me: “Two.”

She: “Do you know what you’re having?”

Me: Looking perplexed, wondering if she’s talking about my lunch options even though we’re not in a restaurant, when suddenly it dawns on me…”Excuse me?”

She: “Aren’t you pregnant?” Maybe my gaping jaw was a hint that possibly I was not withchild.

Uncomfortable silence.

Me: “Uhm, no.”

End of conversation.

So here I was walking around, feeling confident when this smirking pencil pusher in smart looking career shoes, sucker punches me in my decidedly un-pregnant gut. It’s just not nice. As a rule, I never assume anyone is pregnant unless I see their round bellies stretching and protruding like there’s actually something alive in there, and even then it could be an alien inhabiting their abdomen and not likely to be something said person would want to talk about.

For future reference, folks, this is what a pregnant belly looks like:

And generally speaking, a belly like that doesn’t EVER go back to being completely flat without some reconstructive surgery.

Yeah, reality can be so inconvenient.

Most of the time I try to keep the profanity to a minimum. I know how quickly children can take a parent’s colorful vocabulary and run with it, usually during the most inopportune times, like a trip the pediatrician’s let’s say, or during story time in Kindergarten.

Unfortunately, on occasion, the expletives slip out.

See back when I was a rebellious teen, filled to the brim with anger and angst, my word choices were determined strictly based on their power to shock and offend. I was a smart enough girl who used the F word in a very broad capacity, attaching it to nearly every phrase in my efforts to emphasize whatever point I was making.  Do teenagers ever have points?

As a parent, I’ve matured (somewhat) and come to the conclusion that my children dropping the F bomb in grade school could be somewhat detrimental to their reputations. Not to mention mine. So I generally refrain from using “bad” language in front of the children, most of the time. My husband will be the first to admit that I could use a generous lathering of the mouth with a bar of the nastiest soap available. Sometimes these words eke out without my conscious knowledge.

Last Friday though, I was on the telephone with an old friend (hi, Julie) whom I’ve known since thereabout the third grade, engrossed in conversation for the better part of an hour as I wandered through the house prepping dinner and doing minor chores. After I hung up, my teenager sidled up next to me, put a hand on my shoulder and whispered confidentially “You sure do curse a lot on the phone, Mom.”

“Er, what do you mean?”

“You were cursing a lot. I heard you.” She looked taken aback. She’d witnessed a side of me she rarely sees, unapologetically offensive and somewhat angry, nothing like the patient mom that does her laundry and puts up with her own crummy attitude.

“Aw, honey,” I began, “Stop eavesdropping on my @#%&ing conversations.”

Jeez. A little privacy would be nice occasionally.

For the record, I didn’t curse at my lovely teen, although sometimes she takes me to that dangerous edge. I was however honest with her and explained that while using these “adult” words for either emphasis or comedic effect has its merits, using them too often will give people the impression that her vocabulary is limited and her manners lacking.

Today, after much internal debate, she confided that she was going to stop using colorful language for the reasons I described. This daughter of mine, who while sassy and surly, has never uttered an expletive in our house, apparently has the mouth of a sailor when she’s at middle school.

I blame the parents.

Occasionally I get out of my shackles, order a pizza for the family, and slip out the door while they’re watching reruns of iCarly.

Friday night was that night, the rare and coveted occasion when I’m able to shirk my motherly responsibilities and leave behind my brood for an evening of reckless abandon. Interpret reckless abandon to mean dinner and a movie. Not as exciting as say bungee jumping off the Brooklyn bridge, but definitely enjoyable in its own right.

My sister and I had a lovely dinner at PF Chang’s, consisting of appetizers, an entree, and dessert, during the course of which, I didn’t have to take anyone to the ladies’ room mid meal, I didn’t have to scold anyone through gritted teeth, and I didn’t have to walk out of the restaurant to field a loud, screeching tantrum. The only food I spilled on my person came from my own plate and I promptly licked it off, cause I’m classy like that. I even managed not to give myself indigestion …I wore my big pants.

We watched a 10ish showing of Four Christmases, in the hopes that it would put us in a festive mood. Alas, twas not the case. While it had it’s amusing moments, the sappy, heavy handed and too neat ending, had us both rolling our eyes. Alot.

The highlight of our evening, apart from a banana spring roll with coconut ice-cream (oh yeah, it was that good…HASAY who?), was this stylin mannequin with the porn-star rack.  I mean she’s no Kim Cattrall but obviously, she’s had some work done.

I suppose it wasn’t enough that we were staring, pointing, and giggling, we had to photograph her with my sister’s camera phone for bloggy posterity too.

Don’t we just reek of dignity and maturity.