Outnumbered Two to One

When we signed up to go to Islands of Adventure for my tween’s 5th grade class trip, the big prize at the end of the interminable predawn bus ride was the prospect of riding the Incredible Hulk Coaster. Walking in to the park, the snaking green tracks dominated the skyline. The roar of the coaster unmistakable as it twisted and dove at nausea inducing angles.

My daughter’s friends were not keen on riding. They balked immediately at the idea, but she and I were itching to get strapped in to the seats and scream ourselves hoarse.

As we approached the line that boasted a brief 20 minute wait, my eager, bouncing daughter was instructed to sidle up next to the measuring post. The minimum height for riders was 54″, marked by a horizontal black and white ruler. My daughter fit comfortably under it, with barely half an inch to spare. She was turned away at the entrance.

Talk about disappointment. Talk about crushing blows.

Sure there were other rides, sure there was an abundance of fun to be had, but the Hulk and Dueling Dragons were off limits.

To add insult to injury, it seemed almost every other kid on the bus ride home was bragging about having ridden the Hulk coaster at least twice.  So our return trip wasn’t lightened by excited chatter about how great the park was, instead it was tainted by my daughter’s soured expression and brooding silence.

Bummer.

Don’t worry, it wasn’t all gloom. We did manage to get on Dr. Doom’s Fearfall ride, among others. My biggest gripe…lunch. Seriously, it was like prison food. You’d think with the exorbitant amounts they charge for admission they’d at least be able to serve something decent at the in-park eateries. The “grilled” chicken sandwich I had was more like a dehydrated chicken nugget with sear marks on a stale bun. Thank God for condiments, without the help of the eight mayo packets I had to lubricate that chicken with I don’t think I would’ve been able to choke it down. Yikes.

At least she was able to muster the occasional smile…

The following is a little photo story my ten-year-old daughter recorded last week with my digital camera (while she was being punished for calling her sister an a–hole.) She was banned from the computer, television, DVD player and three different video game systems. After much crying and groaning, this is what occurred when her bored mind ignited with its own twisted creativity. The doll was a birthday gift from a good friend and the narration comes from my own warped mind…

This is my friend Zack. He came to visit for my birthday.Hi, Zack.

He doesn’t say much but he’s very friendly.

Why are you following me into the bathroom, Zack? A girl needs a little privacy.

I like you too, Zack. But why are your eyes glowing that way? Is it because you’re happy to see me?

Alright, dude. I can see we need to establish some boundaries here. I’m sure it’s very different wherever you’re from, but you need to respect my personal space.

Hey, man. Back the flock up. You’re making me uncomfortable and ew, your gums smell weird.

Not cool, Zack. Why are you getting all grabby? No means no. Stop trying to put your mouth on me. I’m married, argh, you’re the worst house guest ever. Are you trying to eat my face? What the?

No zombies (or mothers) were harmed during the making of this film.

After braving morning rush-hour traffic yesterday (I’m so grateful I don’t commute anymore), my tweeny-bopper and I (along with a surprisingly accommodating toddler) made it to the county wide spelling bee she qualified for late last month.

It was a pretty big event, roughly about 200 kids competed in a written competition for about 25 spots in the oral bee. They allowed parents and teachers to sit, while 50 words were pronounced for the participants who had to scribble them down on a sheet. My charge in the mean time was keeping a two year old from shrieking his way through all 50 words.

Luckily I had pennies and a baggie of cereal at my disposal, not to mention threats that the authorities were going to whisk him away if he got too loud. I got the occasional glares from various corners of the aisle I was sitting in, but what kind of mom would I be if I hadn’t learned to ignore those by now.

The spelling words started off harmless enough - “ballerina, hyphen, caboose“. Then gradually built up to “kahuna and hygiene“. The sentence they used for “quell” made me chuckle just a bit since it involved storm troopers and rebels, I’m not kidding. Later there was “gulag and boysenberry“, “ubiquitous and commensurate“, not to mention a couple I still can’t identify, something that sounded like “car” but wasn’t and a word I can only identify as “bat-ter-soy“. They wrapped it up with “mukhtar, pfeffernuss, and hoomalimali” just for fun, I think.

In the end my little girl was not in the top 25 selected for round 2. But she wasn’t terribly disappointed, she got out of school for the day, got BK’s for lunch, and didn’t have to deal with any homework all afternoon.

She also spent the rest of the day proclaiming, “I’m still a winner!” to anyone who’d listen.  Me and her dad both agreed. Her teenage sister…not so much.

And the winner is…

Sometime this morning my ten-year-old daughter won her school spelling bee. I was sitting in the front row of her school cafetorium on pins and needles as she and the other remaining student duked it out for five rounds. My daughter won out in the end with the word “percolate”.

Late last night was when we finally got around to reviewing her word list. As we went about tidying up, I quizzed her verbally. For the most part she did alright, although she did get hung up on certain words. “Innate” with one “n” instead of 2. “Exhilarate” without the “h”. At some point today, I knew her success would not only rest on her powers of recall but on the luck of the draw as well. For example, getting the word “lucid” over “colloquial”. You should have seen the poor kid who had to spell “colloquial”, the most he could muster was a series of squeaks and a final letter of “o” before finally creeping back to his seat.

“Percolate” in the grand scheme of things, was not a bad option. It’s spelled like it sounds, right?

Except when the teacher reading out the spelling words pronounces it “per-coo-late”. Percoolate? Really? This is an educator we’re talking about, with a better than average grasp of the English language. I assume. I might be mistaken.

Perhaps it was the slight shake in my head that tipped my daughter off. The look that said, “That’s not right.” Or maybe she remembered reading it or spelling it before. Either way, she called out the correct letters in the correct sequence and was proclaimed the winner.

Woo to the hoo. I really had to restrain myself from doing a victory dance, and not just because of my long dissolved dreams of being a spelling bee champion myself.

Now we’ve been instructed to study the Scripps booklet because she’ll be moving on in a month or so to the countywide bee, which includes words like “mukhtar”, “nachtmusik”, and “voortrekker”.

Makes “colloquial” kind of seem like a walk in the park, doesn’t it?

At some point this evening I hear this from across the house:

“Ow you bit me you little jerk! You broke the skin!”

I’m in the kitchen making dinner and shaking my head, waiting for the next installment. The voice in question is my tween’s, it rises steadily as her indignation increases tenfold. Eventually the skirmish will travel from my bedroom where they’re watching television to the kitchen where I, judge and jury, stand with wet hands and a jar of salsa.

“What?!” I inquire as my five-year-old son and ten-year-old daughter bustle in through the entryway, both talking at the same time.

“He bit me on the leg and he broke the skin and it really really hurts.”

“She bit me too but I don’t remember where and she’s being really mean to me.”

“Nuh-uh I only bit you after you bit me…”

“Because you grabbed me…”

“But I was playing…”

In unison now… “Mooooooooooooom.”

Ugh. Down comes the gavel.

“You’re both punished, keep your hands and mouths off each other, and go cry somewhere else. No video games till Thursday.”

Obviously neither of my children was paying close enough attention to the Yo Gabba Gabba episode where Muno bites Foofa for craps and giggles, then gets chided in song until he learns this valuable lesson.

“Don’t bite your friends.”

Or your siblings for that matter, it’s just not sanitary.

I don’t know how they did it, I just know that it happened.

This morning I sent off three well behaved, bright eyed, neatly groomed offspring to their respective schools. I kissed their ruddy cheeks, wished them a beautiful day, and watched them skip off toward the steel reinforced double doors of their public school education.

At some point during the day, something must have gone terribly, horribly wrong, because what was returned to me after dismissal were not the cherubic darlings I’d dispatched that morning, but some angry, gritty, whiny, mouthy replacements that looked and smelled like my kids but were possibly hardened ex-convicts or perhaps mental ward patients.

Seriously.

We had such an uneventful weekend. It was quiet, it was easy, it was unexpected. Maybe it was our approach - no responsibilities, no obligations, no expectations. We lazed, we ate, we joked, we watched TV. Now suddenly it’s Monday again and everyone is supposed to snap back in to submission, acquiesce to the strict constraints of time and authority. I guess it’s enough to make anyone hostile. They had their brief taste of freedom and of course they’re thirsty for more.

Who bears the brunt of their rebellion?

Why that’s Mom of course.

Because Dad is conveniently at work, and I am left with the chore of beating everyone in to submission. I’m sure he did it on purpose.

Should it take until almost 11 o’clock for a certain brood to finish the day’s homework assignments?

No, it shouldn’t.

I blame the school. For all their guidelines and curriculum and discipline…all that boring stuff that makes school such a drag.

Like my darling teen says, “I’d love school if it weren’t for all the learning.”

Yep, it’s gotta be the public schools.

Our elementary school’s PTA was hosting a Harvest Festival fundraiser today, complete with “rides” and a petting zoo. I think they’ve sent home fliers every day for the last two weeks trying to work up some hype. Needless to say my five year old and ten year old (aka the tween) were working themselves in to a froth at the prospect of attending the big event.

The big event in question was a series of eight different inflatable “rides”, a rock climbing wall and a bungee trampoline type contraption. For this they sold $12 bracelets that gave you unlimited admission to all the “rides” except of course the rock climbing wall and the bungee, for which you were only allowed a single shot, extras would cost you a buck a pop. Oh and they had a hand cranked hamster wheel thing that was pretty popular as well.

I wasn’t too happy about shelling out the $24 for bounce house entries, but it went toward a worthy cause, so I bought each kid a wrist band and set out on my way to guard shoes while they frolicked.

I’m not a big fan of crowds personally, and hordes of restless children make me antsy. Especially since nobody knows how to wait their turn and I’m always compelled to run interference for my offspring just so I can muscle any stray line cutters back a place or two. Being mother hen gets a little exhausting actually. Pecking other people’s kids in the shins and such because my own kids are either too distracted or too shy to mark their territory.

They had a good time for the most part. Although that good time mainly consisted of spending an hour manhandling farm animals, and running the same inflatable obstacle course at least 17 times. It’s all relative I guess. Hopefully the PTA will earn the money back they had to spend renting all those air powered amusements.

The battle lines have been drawn. War is being waged and my daughters are once again sworn enemies. The tension is palpable, or maybe that’s the lingering scent of fried plantains in the house (we’ve got crappy ventilation). Either way, my teen and my tween are holding us hostage with their bickering.

At the heart of it is my tween’s new found strategy of completely ignoring her older sister’s existence. Indefinitely. Something that cuts my teen to her core as she considers herself, by rite of oldest child, to be the boss of everybody. And I mean everybody. To not be heard his her worst nightmare, it compounds her frustration exponentially.

More often than not I find myself siding with my tween because I’ve seen first hand how harsh her sister can be with her. Every question the tween poses, every request, every comment is met with hostility, sarcasm, and contempt. My tween is forever complaining about her sister’s mean streak, to the point where I gave her the following advice…

“Just ignore her. Ignore her when she’s being mean to you, ignore her when she’s nice, ignore her all the time.”

Oops. Er…

I didn’t actually remember uttering that little nugget of guidance. Then today after my teen’s rant about being invisible and how unfair it is for her younger sister to disregard her so plainly, I approached my tween and tried to convince her she couldn’t ignore her sister for the rest of their lives. They share a room, they share a house, they share the common bond of sisterhood.

To which my tween replied, “But you told me to do it.” Then promptly threw my words right back in my face. Oosh.

Needless to say, my teen who was sitting nearby was adequately appalled, while I attempted to back pedal in true stupid-mommy form.

I never actually expect them to listen to me, much less heed my advice. Jeez. If they were only so obedient in other arenas.