They Don't Love Me For My Fashion

I have a fashion conscious four year old.  When its time to get him some new clothes NOT just anything will do.  In fact sometimes Target does not have on single shirt that he finds acceptable. And that can be  challenging for a mother who pretty much buys all of her children's clothes from Target.  Where else could we go...maybe Wal-Mart?  He stares at me with his big brown eyes and tells me that he would rather just wear what he already has than get any of the choices he has seen in those stores.  I know what he likes.  He likes nice stuff.  I like the stuff that he likes too...only I don't see it at any of the cheap stores I go to very often.  But, when I find it I scoop it up.

My daughter would be happy to wear anything sparkly or twirly from any store on the planet.  And she thinks I look lovely in anything girly or remotely new.  My son, on the other hand, likes to give me a reality check about my style now and then.  Case in point:

I finally, after almost ten years of marriage, got a new swimming suit.  The old one was black and saggy and faded and desperately out of style.  I was thrilled to put on this new suit.  So, I hid in the bathroom and tried it on.  And, seeing as I had only kids to show it to, I emerged from the bathroom and asked my four year old "what do you think?"

I was really hoping for "you look so pretty mommy" or "wow!" or "I love it!".  But, what I got was "Well, the bottom is pretty UGLY....but the top is kind of cute."  Which was followed by "At least you don't look like a witch.  That old black swimming suit made you look like a witch."

Was that a compliment?  I'll take the part about the top being kind of cute.

Then, a few days later my friend gave me a pile of her old clothes.  Happy to be wearing anything different I again went home, hid in the bathroom, and tried some stuff on.  I emerged from the bathroom this time somehow hoping that I would impress my four year old fashion critic with this shirt:

"What do you think?" I asked.  "Hmmmm, well, you don't look very......NORMAL.......in that shirt." He said with a squinty look on his face.  So, I tried the next hand me down outfit:

"How about this one?".  "Well, that one's OK" he said "But you just don't look very COOL."

UGLY, ABNORMAL, and UNCOOL.  I'm pretty much striking out.  When HE gets a job I think I need him to take me shopping and show me how to look cool.  I thought "wow, he must think I'm pretty unimpressive." 

But, today, he walked up to me and said "Mom, what's that word that means more than any number could ever be?" "Infinity" I replied.
  "Yeah, I love you INFINITY!" 
He smiled and looked at me adoringly.

Thanks little man. At least I know he loves me....even if he does make me drop him off a block before the movie theatre when he's fifteen.

I Keep Worms in My Fridge

On Saturday my husband got the sudden and uncontrollable urge to go fishing. So, he drove himself right to the store and stocked up on some hooks and nightcrawlers.  Now, you may not know this but nightcrawlers (AKA, worms) come in little take-out food like containers. Looks OK on the outside, but nothing like take out on the inside.  (Unless, of course, you're a fish, and then it might look pretty good). Anyway, the weather looked ominous and the day passed quickly and we never quite got to go fishing. 

So, there we were with this little take out container full of worms and nothing to do with them. "No, problem" my husband said," we'll just put them in the fridge and use them later." (PAUSE HERE TO CONSIDER....DO YOU LIKE TO HAVE WORMS IN YOUR FRIDGE?  THEY ARE STILL ALIVE AND NEED HOLES IN THE LID SO THEY CAN BREATHE.)

He said it so nonchalantly.  As though we often keep containers full of worms on the shelf right between the yogurts and the ketchup.  My protests were quickly dismissed and the worms went into the fridge.  Somehow I knew this wasn't a good thing.

On Monday we still had not go fishing.  I went grocery shopping and while I was unloading the groceries I heard the sound that I had been dreading for the past few days.  The worm scream of death.  It's a panic-like scream that is performed in hyperventilating fashion while doing a strange hopping flapping dance.  My son was doing it.  I came running from the pantry and when I arrived at our open fridge I joined him in the worm scream and dance.  I couldn't help it.  There they were.  Twenty Canadian night crawlers, slithering and slinking on the bottom shelf of my fridge.

My son had just wanted to take a look and then...well, it's all a blur to him after that.  But, somehow the worm take out container was overturned and panic insued. 

After I breathed deeply and tried to take myself to a happy place I saw a worm sliding off the shelf into the produce drawer.  Perhaps interested in having some lettuce?

It was starting to get really out of hand so I grabbed a spatula and started scooping the little guys into a large plastic bag.  And as I did so they flopped around and fell all over the place...it was twenty of them against one of me. 

 

Finally I had scraped them all into a bag. Dirt was everywhere...worm dirt.  I had to disinfect the fridge and the produce drawer and the floor in front of the fridge.  My son suggested that we go fishing or at least go throw them in the water right then and there.  "Dad really wants these worms to be for fishing!" he said.  But, I convinced him that throwing them in the garden might be a more practical solution. 

So, I put them in the garden and told my little guy how they would love the soil and how they would be good for our garden. He loved them in the garden soil.  Then he looked at me and said "mom, that kind of grossed me out when they were in the fridge"....yeah.

And as a perfect ending to the story one hour later my preschooler ran out the back door to check on his worms and found them all dead.  Apparently Canadian night crawlers don't like warm weather and sun.

And so ends the saga of the worms in my fridge.  I would like to conclude this post by reassuring one and all that I will never keep worms in my fridge again.  However, somehow I have a feeling that my boys will convince me that it is normal and no big deal to keep nightcrawlers next to the ketchup again.  So, instead of making any empty promises, I think I'll just invest in some good duct tape to keep the lid on.

Luckily They Know Insanity When They See It

It was a regular Tuesday.  Except for the fact that there had been a lot of whining and I was feeling particularly tired.  While I tried to get some work done on the computer my son had made a mud hole in the backyard, slathered his body in his new mud, and then ran through the house...and sat on the couch.  How someone can come up with such things in a matter of a few short minutes is beyond me but the kid has skills in that area.
Anyway, my youngest took an exceptionally short nap and my oldest came home a little whiny.  And while I was trying to figure out what to make for dinner and thinking about how long it would take to scrub the floor and the couch clean, the phone rang.  It was my husband.  His car battery was dead and he needed me to come get him from work.  I looked at my muddy floor, my muddy child, my whiny children.  I looked at my pathetic start to a dinner.  I thought about how much I just wanted to lay down and take a nap.  Then I looked for the jumper cables...and I couldn't find them.  So, we drove to pick him up without them...in the car that recently had an airconditioning failure. So we drove with the windows down.

And when I picked him up I didn't really feel like talking.  And as we sat in traffic that's when the insanity started to set it. Suddenly I burst into tears.  No one had been willing to clean their room and there was mud all over the floor and the backyard looked like a toy graveyard and and and....

MY WHOLE FAMILY SAT SILENTLY

When we got home the kids didn't talk....to me at least.  But I heard them whispering to each other.  They knew mom had really cracked.  I started to make dinner and then suddenly I realized what was happening around me. The kids were cleaning!

In the backyard they were raking leaves and putting away toys. 

Then they came in and picked up the toys inside and wiped off the sticky table.

They took out the garbage! And then, the best of all....I saw my four year old on his tip toes trying to fill the mop bucket.

And then he let his baby sister help.

And by the time they were done "mopping" the floor looked muddier than ever because they had muddy feet while they mopped.

But it didn't matter.  They were beaming.  My eyes filled up with tears again when my eight year old came in and put her arms around my waist and said "Love you mom". 

And I told them what great kids they were and how much they had helped me and then after they went to bed I mopped the floor again.

Sure, they waited until I was a borderline nutcase until they decided to be charitable.  Sure, they were probably cleaning in a frantic attempt to prevent their mother from having to be commited to an institution that day.  But, they were doing it of their own free will because they wanted to help me.  They love me.  And I love them...muddy feet and all.

Confessions of an Untrained Beautician

One sunny afternoon when I was in highschool my boyfriend decided to let me cut his hair. He apparently either had a very distorted trust in my abilities, or he has just completely lost his senses. We sat out on the patio behind my grandma's house and I was feeling confident as I heard the buzz of the clippers when I turned them on. A few short moments later my victim, I mean boyfriend, heard me say the words "UH OH...UM, UH OH". "What?" he asked."What happened?" I don't know how it had happened but somehow I had shaved a large bald spot on the side of his head. He tried to act gracious and like it wasn't a big deal...but there was really no way to hide that large bald spot I had just shaved into his scalp. And he wore a hat frequently after that.

Fast forward a few years and I am married to a guy who is also willing to let me cut his hair in order to save a few bucks...these poor guys are just asking for it aren't they? And soon we had a little boy who is now also subjected to letting me cut his hair. I try, really I do. But to be quite honest I don't really know how to cut hair. Sometimes it turns out looking impressive. And sometimes it looks like, well, like you let your teenage girlfriend do her first haircut on you.

Last night was one of those nights. I don't want to take all the credit for my work. I mean, the tools that you use are half of the battle right?, Right. That's why I use these clippers:

Uh huh. They fell apart a while ago so we had to duct tape them together. Only thing is that with that duct tape on them the attachments don't stay on as well.

So, I cut my husband's hair. It turned out fine. But then again he likes his hair pretty much buzzed. Then it was my son's turn. I asked him if he wanted really short hair like daddy. He said no. He likes to be able to comb his hair and we make a cut little spiky wave in the front. So I told him I wouldn't cut it that short and I started buzzing away. And suddenly...UH OH. It was a flash back to that patio haircut in highschool. The attachment had fallen off the clippers in mid-swipe and left a lovely Nike swoosh shaped bald spot on the side on my little guys head. He, like the boyfriend, had no idea what had just happened. So, I told him I was having a little trouble with the clippers and I was going to have to keep working at it for a minute to make it look right. I cut the sides shorter and shorter in an attempt to hide the bald spot. And when I could go no shorter the Nike swoosh still shone like an advertisement on his head.  I just don't think this picture does it justice.

So I told him I was done and he ran to the bathroom to look. Here he is:

And he said one word when he looked in the mirror. A dead pan "WHAT?"

But, he got over it quickly and I'm sure that he will forget about it and let me cut his hair again next time. The men in my life never seem to learn.

A Box of Lucky

For St. Patrick's Day I thought I would be clever and buy a box of Lucky Charms for the kids to eat for breakfast. They of course were thrilled because their hard core mother NEVER lets them have sugar cereals for breakfast.  I, of course, did not eat that cereal for breakfast.  I had a piece of toast and a smoothy or some other healthy thing. I resisted the urge to eat a box of cereal mixed with colored marshmallows first thing in the morning.
That's because it's better to eat them in the afternoon when no one is looking. It was after school.  The kids were playing in the other room.  I saw the box of Lucky charms sitting on the counter and I thought "I bet those little colored marshmallows are so yummy" I stuck my hand in the box and pulled one out.  I was right, they were good.  The next thing I knew the plastic bag was out of the box so that I could locate the marshmallows more quickly.  I ate them ravenously one at a time as I picked them out of the sea of cereal.  I felt kind of like cookie monster. You know, when he is shoving the cookies in so fast that the crumb are flying all over the room, you watch Sesame Street right?!

 Well, anyways soon all the Charms from the Lucky Charms were gone and I stood there feeling only a little guilty.  I put the bag back into the box and it wasn't but a few hours before I heard my eight year old yelling up the stairs "MOM!"  She then proceeded to tell me that her little brother must have snuck into the cereal and eaten all the Charms!  I confessed.  She looked at me and then gave a long drawn out "MAAAAAAOOOOOOOM!"
That poor lonely box of just Lucky.  No one really wants much to do with that cereal without it's Charms.  Next time I buy that cereal....oh, who I am I kidding.  Next time I buy that cereal I plan on doing that again.  It was good.