Category Archives: Are you freaking kidding me?

Step off. Now.

Posted on by

At the deli counter of an outrageously overpriced foodie market, a snooty, overprocessed, and meticulously coiffed senior citizen looked at me in horror. Butter was strapped into his Moby Wrap, facing forward, and wiggling as though the beet salad in front of him were the best thing he’d ever seen.

[As always, I have no financial interest in mentioning a product I like. They have no idea who I am, I didn’t get a free product, I owned it before I began blogging, and I gain nothing from telling you Butter practically lives strapped to me in this wrap.]

She, the woman of the excessive care about her appearance, says, “Oh! He’s drooling” in the tone one might use to exclaim, “Oh! He’s seizing!” or “Oh! He’s choking and turning blue!”

Drooling.
Drooling. Small baby whose mouth never closes, whose teeth might or might not be razoring through his gums, and who genuinely thinks that at any moment he will be allowed to take the WHOLE world and stick it in his mouth, just to see if he can find any hidden nipples anywhere.

“Oh! He’s drooling,” she stammers. I believe she expects me to do something, like protect the market’s concrete floor from his sulfuric acid baby saliva.

“Yeah, he does that. He’s a baby,” I say with a blank look. I refuse the energy it takes to be polite, smile, or educate this idiot of leisure about how normal, unavoidable, and uneventful drooling is for a freaking four-month-old baby.

Today is not a screw-with-me kind of day. I know how to be polite. I just don’t want to. Because I’m tired of stupid people. Really, really, really I am. Of course he’s drooling, you dolt. And you just wasted one of the potentially delightful moments of my day. The choosing of brightly colored and tasty foodstuffs makes me happy. So shut your goat cheese hole and let me do my day.

On a brief walk, earlier the same day, a talkative nurse and her wheelchair-bound charge said hi to me, cooing at the delightful bundle sleeping on my chest. We talked a bit, and when I figured out that Jean, the seated neighbor, is blind, I took off Butter’s socks so she could feel his feet. And before that, talking with a Dad who’d had a rough morning with his children, I offered a sympathetic ear and some mildly amusing faux advice.

I’m not a nasty person by nature. I’m a big old softy. But I’m sick of stupid people.

“Oh,” she says the droolophobe. “How old?”
“Almost a year,” I answer, rounding up to a “shut the f— up” answer.
She looks shocked. I don’t care.

Screw her. She was probably ordering something with black truffle oil. And since she’s not sad or blind or cooing over my baby, she can suck it.

Next time, instead of organic hand santizer in a spray bottle, I’m carrying a vial of baby spit to atomize onto the world’s most daft.

Artisan pizza attacked, film at eleven

Posted on by

Handmade Gator Pizza Wheel Lies in Wait

Then Devours Local Five-Cheese Pizza

Authorities Say Cheese-Thirsty Gator Will Strike Again...

(I had to stage the last photo because the pizza wheel is so finely machined that nothing sticks to it.)

Here’s to having a knife-making artist in the family. Glad you’re putting your education to good use, dude.

Garage sale life

Posted on by

You know those yard sales where someone’s trying to convince you to buy a table with three legs, a jacket with no lining, and a great cassette collection though you have no cassette player?

Well, I’m the neighbor who keeps all that stuff in the house because it’s just embarrassing to drag it out to the lawn.

You might remember almost two years ago an adorable and indignant Peanut ruined my car stereo. It’s been hit or miss each time we’re in the car—sometimes we hear CDs or NPR and sometimes the speakers just won’t work thanks to the quarter still lodged somewhere in the CD player’s nether regions.

I’m getting fed up, though, There were weeks we heard 90% of what we wanted to. It’s now down to 25%, even with the trick Spouse devised where we Fonzie the passenger side of the dash to jiggle the quarter out of whatever contact points are blocked.

And you know what? “Wait, Wait Don’t Tell Me” is nothing if you hear only 25%. “This American Life” is useless if you hear one sentence out of four. And, most important, “Science Friday” might as well be “Science Monthly” since we hear almost none of it.

Bah humbug.

(btw, spell check allows Fonzie but not CDs. Proof the coders are over 40. Or knows more pop culture than punctuation rules.)

Put That in Your Not a Pipe And Don’t Smoke It

Posted on by

I only have five minutes, world, so you’re gonna take this without a candy coating…

If you em-effers don’t finish the em-effing 880/92 interchange by tomorrow, so help me Goddess I’m gonna freaking take a steam shovel to all that equipment and drop it into the Bay. It’s been more than 10 years, you effing dolts, and we have NOTHING to show for a thirty minute merge every freaking hour of every freaking day except more effing heavy equipment NOT DOING ANYTHING! Even my four year old today said it would be faster if you used shovels and a bucket to build whatever the effing hell you’ve been building for decades that had better em-effing be so awesome it rips a hole in the space-time continuum and restores the ozone layer, the regular temperature of the world, all the polar ice sheets, every species that has died out during our lifetimes AND Party of Five all in one blink of an eye. Because if this new freeway interchange bee-ess does not ROCK MY EM-EFFING WORLD when you finish it tomorrow (I was pretty clear, wasn’t I, that if it still shows no signs of progress for another decade you’re all gonna be forced to participate in a World’s Worst Tax-Wasting and Time-Wasting Construction Pride Parade before a crowd of World’s Most Angry Disestablishmentarians), then heads are gonna freaking roll.

Also? Lady who glared at me today? You really wanna go there, punk? Do I LOOK like I need to be messed with today? I just had a long talk with my kid about Fourth of July and how it was the end of bickering between two groups, the “Pay taxes and be quiet” group and the “we’re not paying until we get to vote” group because the latter group knew where to hide from the shooting long enough to shoot the former group. Do you think, after a conversation like that, the nuances of which lasted the whole 55 minute car ride and involved explanations of why tribal groups also got involved and what smallpox is, that I need you glaring at me? I will shoot YOU , lady, with the straw shooter or toilet paper shooter or construction paper shooters in the back if you freaking EVER look at me that way again.

Crappy food companies, quit pretending your crap is food. Crappy magazines, quit selling your crap by telling people that they are crap and you have the secret to being less crappy. Crappy people everywhere, quit your crap and get your crappy cars and crappy kids and crappy selves out of my freaking way. And crappy stores, if you sell your crappiest crap near the checkout counters I’m going to let me kid take it all off the shelf and FLING it all over your crappy store because it is some bull puckey that you put it there so my kid will whine at me to buy it. No way, no how; now I’m saving all the parents of the world by throwing this crap to my kid so he can shoot it at you with his pipe-cleaner bazooka.

Because I’ve been sitting at the 880/92 b.s. for nigh on ten years and any minute now I’m gonna go ragingly insane.

California is still the Old West

Posted on by

Peanut: Can we have beets for dinner?
Me: Sure.
P: Raw, please. Or cooked.
M: Which one?
P: Raw. Shredded.
M: Okay.
P: With goat cheese, please. And balsamic. Or I’ll shoot you.

I’m quite over the shooting phase. It has been 10 days, and the boy can make anything into “a shooter.”

He doesn’t know a thing about guns. He only recently learned about bows and arrows. We’ve not shown him any movies with any projectile-firing weapons, and we don’t have any toys that fire projectiles. I was raised with guns, know my way around a gun, and have a terrified-respect relationship with guns. I want to live in a world with no guns. [Shut up with your “it’s too late for that, you commie liberal.” I know that, you jackass. And I wasn’t talking to you. I was talking to the parents who read this blog because their kids drive them nuts, too. Go pay the NRA to lobby for your Constitution-misreading right and leave my blog alone.]

And yet he’s up every morning at 6, demanding tape so he can attach something to something else and pretend it shoots. Mostly his contraptions shoot me, because I’m the one lucky enough to be locked in a house with him far too many hours a day.

I asked the teachers, who said the same thing all the books do…pretend violence is not real violence. It’s natural and acceptable play. As long as you don’t give him something that fires projectiles, and as long as you don’t make a big deal about it, all will be fine.

So when he points at me, I say, casually, “please don’t point at me because I don’t like it.” And then I move on to something else, distracting either him or myself so we can not focus on the damned shooter.

Nope. 20 hours a day that kid is pointing something at me and bellowing, “soot soot soot!” [We have issues with the /sh/ sound.]

I’d be fine with a finger as a shooter. I’ll play pretend whip cream fight or pretend water hose like any other goofy mom. Heck, I’ll play pretend poop squirter if the mood strikes. But please don’t point construction paper-taped-pencils at me and say you’re going to make me dead. I know you don’t know what dead is. I know you don’t understand why pointing at anything you don’t want to kill is absolutely not okay. I know you need a fantasy life.

Can you please get it somewhere else?

Because you’re the one who wants shredded raw beets with goat cheese and balsamic. And if the other shooters heard you, they’d shoot you just for saying that.

They come in threes?

Posted on by

News within about a week:

family friend’s son died (second brain tumor)
family friend’s son died (suicide)
friend’s son died (accident)

friend’s husband being horrible, in crisis about marriage
friend’s husband chronically horrible, in crisis about marriage

friend treated horribly by colleagues

friend disappointed by partner
friend disappointed by boss
friend disappointed by parent

friend diagnosed with cancer
friend diagnosed with different cancer
friend waiting for diagnosis of type of cancer

so, clearly, one more marriage crisis or two more psychotic colleagues and I have a royal flush.

then what do I win?

Lead alert: juice and fruit

Posted on by

NPR featured a story today on high levels of lead found in fruit and juice for children…

Story is available http://www.kqed.org/epArchive/R201006101730and an FAQ page here.

The long list of products (including some from Whole Foods, Safeway, Kroeger and big, national brands you know and might buy, like Dole, Del Monte, and Earth’s Best) is available here or beginning on page nine of the legal notice to companies that they’re in violation.

Isn’t it good to know that we can’t trust one stinking company with our food, nor our government to protect us? Good, good times, Corporate America.

Just wondering

Posted on by

How is the child abuse rate in this country not higher?

(Seriously, no depressing replies from my social worker friends and family or law enforcement readers on how desperately high even a 0.00000001% rate is. I know that. But the question does not value a higher rate. It marvels at the <100% rate.)

Why can I not watch a film, show, or commercial without composing a critical theory response that involves footnotes and dreams of a research grant? What the hell is wrong with me? Am I missing enjoyment centers in my brain or something?

Where is that box of books I labeled to be first on the shelf after the three moves of a year-plus ago? I need two of those books, man. Where are they?

How does, "you may cut paper and only paper" translate into "try to cut your shirt, the rug, your chin, a bracelet, and the baby toys while I’m right here watching“? Seriously. Taking the whole ‘looking for negative attention’ thing to a whole new level.

No wonder I’m pissed I have absolutely no time to write…the voices in my head are better companions than small children. Why does nobody say how completely not ideal the companionship of young children is?

1950s rap

Posted on by

Toyota has a viral youtube campaign for their minivan that they think is ever so clever.

I think it’s painfully backward.

In the lengthy ads, a very white middle class heterosexual family expounds on how cool they are in their minivan, which Dad has dubbed the Swagger Wagon. In the most recent ad, the family sings a rap about said vehicle.

How delightful, no?

No.

In the song, Dad boasts how he participates and subverts gender stereotypes by having tea parties with his daughter and her dolls. Mom sings about how facile she is with jello and cupcakes, how she tends the kids’ wounds. While Dad mugs and poses in the van, Mom handles the lunch, the school play, and the song’s bridge—a potty break for their eldest.

Is this rap written for a 1950s audience? (The black and white images are a clue.) Why is Dad helping only with the tea party and nothing else? Why is Mom defined by her baking skills, her cheerleading costume, and her self definition as a former “college chick”?

One of the most difficult transitions for progressive couples who become parents is the reality of how even 50/50 marriages become 90/10 marriages when kids are thrown into the mix. The sheer volume of work mothers do, and the fact that it tends to be time sensitive, repetitive work (meals, tidying, errands, school) contrasts with the paucity of work inside the home most fathers do (and the fact that it tends to be ‘get to it when you can’ weekend, one-time, big project work). And the new division of labor causes marital strife.

Is that what you celebrate in your silly minivan ads? That families can fight in the front seat while the wee ones sit with headphones and DVD players in the back, oblivious to the real work of being a family…the day to day bickering over details, like the fact that I’ll be damned if I’m ever defined by how my baked goods perform at the school bake sale or refer to any of the years I busted my ass in higher ed as the days when I was a college chick.

Thanks for the stereotypes, Toyota. Sure makes me think less about your cars driving unintentionally into oncoming traffic.

Shiny new ‘pooter gets overheated…

Posted on by

Oh, shiny new replacement computer, what a LOT of ranting you are going to process today.

Let’s begin with the fact that you need to exist. And that the bargain model I bought last freaking year, 13 months ago (which means one month past the freaking warranty expiration) was supposed to be a great deal. But two netbooks, stripped down to fit my pathetic budget bought within 14 months, means there will be no Christmas, no Hannukah, no new shoes—not even to replace all our white shoes after Labor Day—probably ever again. So screw your predecessor, screw you for existing, and screw you for being so much freaking better than last year’s model. And $10 cheaper. Bastard ‘pooter. I already don’t like you.

And you, Mother’s Day expectations…you suck. Because I hate Hallmark holidays and refuse to purchase Hallmarkiness in response to fabricated sentiment, I feel dirty for looking forward to Mother’s Day. I feel dirty for telling Spouse exactly what I wanted him and Peanut to make me. I feel cheap and hypocritical for smiling every time some says Happy Mother’s Day. And I feel really cheated that I didn’t get to sleep in, didn’t get a second to myself, didn’t get a shower, made my own breakfast (which the Spouse and Peanut refused to eat, thank you very much, to pour insult unctiously over injury). Sure, I have two beautiful, healthy, interesting, adorable, intriguing children to share the day with. And I’m finally, finally, finally home so I could spend the day with my mom and her mom. Everyone’s healthy and happy and really freaking lucky all ’round. But the Hallmarkiness of the holiday is centered around well rested and clean moms, yo. And I felt like a dolt for buying into that shite. I don’t sleep or shower or get any chef appreciation any other day of the year, so how dare I expect it on Mother’s Day?

You know what, I’m gonna leave it at that, ‘pooter. Cuz I don’t think you could handle a rant about all the other stuff making me a sourpuss today. And I can’t afford to lose another of your kind, you little technological bastard.

Babka in the computer

Posted on by

I told you I couldn’t type with friendmade babka in the house. Computer took offense and took a header off the curb of my insanity-lined writing path. Having no ‘pooter is tough on the blogging.

‘Tis amusing reading your comments re: the babka-fest, though, via phone. What a string of privileged, upper-middle, first-world bullshit probs, eh? “Hard to type one-handed on my ‘pooter-surrogate phone while bouncing sling baby on yoga ball and wolfing down chocolate babka.”

Boo hoo to me.

We now rejoin our regularly scheduled rant…

Posted on by

already in progress:

…and you’d better call the insurance bastards to see if it’s covered.

As for you, Peanut, you are a very interesting introduction to the fine, fine phase that is Four Years Old. Nothing could be worse than Three, it is true. But if Three was all Mr. Hyde and no Jekyl, Four is the maddening experience of discerning what dropped hat sends you from Jekyl to Hyde and back. No, I will not pick up the toy you kicked across the room. You threw one, I took it away. You threw another, I took it away. Most of your collection is on top of the bookcase today, waiting to see which version of you comes out of your room tomorrow morning. So when you kick a toy out of anger, you get to pick it up yourself. No, you do it. Cry all you want; I no longer flip out when you’re in distress. A newborn has made me immune to your terrorist tactics. Butter is the antidote to my occasional Peanut allergy.

Butter, you’d better stop it. Seriously. Knock it off. I followed all your nonverbal cues, I did everything you wanted, and I got you to sleep. Just because I moved the slightest bit does not mean you can flutter your eyes open and start flirting with me. Yes, you’re cute. Yes, you’re still tiny enough that everything you do is precious. Your loud sleeping is delightful, your recent partial baldness is adorable, and your waste products are coo-inspiring. But go to freaking sleep, you little monkey!

And quit suggesting that you want to nurse just so you can gather huge mouthfuls of milk and the spit them on me. That’s not funny, despite what your brother says.

Hey, agents who have my novel and haven’t replied in well past the 6 weeks you promised: screw you! What is wrong with you? All the other rejections came within the appropriate timeframe. It’s rude to set a deadline and miss it without notifying involved parties that you need longer to complete the task. I don’t want your representation, anyway. This thing is gonna be huge, and so will the next dozen or so I write, and you’ll rue the day. You’ll weep, you’ll rend your garments and pull out your hair. You’ll want a time machine to take you back to when you first heard my name just so you can jump at the chance to take on all my current and future brilliance. You will self-flagellate, and you will be correct in so torturing yourselves.
Asshats.

Sure, Peanut, we can go to the playground. Sure you can climb that big ol’ thing you’re always scared of. Sure I can help you down. Just turn around and…no, I can’t climb up there with you. I can’t help you from up there. I can help you from down here. No, I can’t take baby home and come back without the sling. Even if I did, I’d still be short and unable to lift 35 pounds down from well above my head. I will stand here and talk to you gently for 30 freaking minutes, convincing you that I will help and you won’t fall and you can do it. And after that interminable period of patience and goodness and model mothering, during which I have to take two time outs to keep from beating you and one to nurse your brother, I will grab you by the ankles and pull you off the play structure. Yes, you technically fell. I mostly, kind of caught you, though. It was a slow fall. Are you hurt? No? Good. Come on. Time to go make you the dinner you request and then refuse to eat.

Hey! You! Damn you.

Posted on by

Okay, broken tortilla chips at the bottom of the bag. I’m calling you out. YOU are what’s wrong with civilization. You sit there, all disingenuous, pretending to be cute little juvenile chips. “Oh, baby chips, how adorable and undoubtedly tasty,” we’re supposed to proclaim.

I don’t buy it, broken chips. You’re impostors. You’re not cute or tiny or in other ways deserving of the affection we give tiny mammal creatures, with their floppy heads and ridiculous mewling “et la” fencing cries, “hilp hilp hilp” guliping swallows, big eyes and delicious ears and milk-smelling breath.

No, chips. You are not cute and you are not babies. You are detritus. You are the trash that ought be thrown into a witheringly hot tortilla soup, or reserved for some lame casserole dish that demands crushed chips, not for grownup tasks like scooping salsa or taking the edge off my gnawing disillusionment and anger.

I try not to just throw you in the compost, though that is the fate you deserve. No, I make an effort, you chip-goodwill welfare recipients. I try to select you individually, little crumbled useless shard of corn and salt, to get just a hint of salsa on my palate. Tiny flake after tiny flake, I waste precious time and compulsive eating impulses just to make it seem as though I am responsible with the chip dust that I, in all likelihood, caused to break away from the bigger pieces. I have chip breaker’s guilt, and so I try to eat those lame shards.

But then my rage controls me. I might run out of binge energy at this rate, long before I’m overfull and long before the shards are gone. I don’t want to go through this again next season when I have random chip urges again. Get out of my way, chip gravel!

So I shovel pinches full of the little bastards into my gaping maw. No way to dip them, so now it’s just dry, salty tortilla shrapnel. Unsatisfying.

Finally, I look into the bag. The broken bits of chip, like my life, used to hold promise and endless possibilities. And now they are the uncomfortably dessicated flotsam and jetsam of poor choices (like bagging the chips next to the gallon of milk) lying on the shores of a vast ocean of now impossible possibilities.

So I throw the nigh on empty bag of crumbs back into the cupboard, so they can taunt me and torment me and mock me and drive me into an existential spiral in a few months. Oh, they’ll be there. Because it’s not as though anyone else will eat those little bastards in the meantime.

Nap libs

Posted on by

I believe that there are many appropriate uses for my blog: entertainment, musings, politics, professional endeavors.  One use I find unacceptable, in part for the permanence of ravings on these interwebs and in part based in a basic sense of decorum, is to air the dirty laundry or the unabated joy of my marriage. (There isn’t much of the dirty, since Spouse is in charge of laundry, which is washed and dried relatively quickly. Left to wrinkle in the dryer or crammed haphazardly in cupboards, but who am I to judge, since I haven’t done laundry in ten years?)

Anyway, I figured that the things I need to say, whether cloyingly sweet or ragingly angry, are more useful to you if you can play along and find either relevance to your own relationships or find amusement in my refusal to commit to strong language…nay, any language whatsoever.

So here you go. My version of Mad Libs, a special edition just for this week in my marriage.

Oh, my  [ noun ]. My significant other is being a(n) [ adjective ] [ noun ] this week.  In fact, this [ adjective ] [ noun ] is off-the-charts impressive. Not only do my [ plural noun ] not seem to [ verb ] to my partner, but [ pronoun, possessive ] [ noun ] is about as [ adjective ] as I’ve ever seen.  It’s terrific timing, of course. We have a(n) [ adjective ] [ noun ] and a(n) [ adjective ] [ noun ] to deal with, I’m recovering slowly from a rough birth, and this is when my life partner feels it [ adjective ] to have a(n) [ adjective ] [ noun ].  After many long discussions, [ pronoun ] [ verb, past tense]  my opinion and our family’s needs and [ verb, past tense ] a(n) [ adjective ] [ noun ] of [ noun ] on a [ expletive ] [ noun ].  But even that hasn’t [ verb, past tense ]. [ Pronoun ] is being a(n) [ adjective ] [ noun ], really, [ verb, active participle ] my needs and our children’s needs to [ verb ] on the [ noun ],  [ verb, active participle ] about some [ adjective ] [ noun ] that, granted, my dear one is responsible for, but now [ pronoun] is [ verb, active participle ] time verb, active participle ] the real jobs around the house and in our lives.

What a [ noun ].

and so it goes…

Posted on by

TKW posted a delightful cookie recipe on her bloggety blog. And I read it, during the newborn’s reliable morning nap while the bigger kid was at school and thought, you know what seems like some massive self loving right now? Homemade cookies.

So I looked over the recipe. “No problem. I even have eggs. I boiled some yesterday, but…oh crap. I boiled some yesterday and they’re still on the stove. Gross. Wasteful and gross and now fuck the cookies I’m taking a shower.”

And with that, delicious newborn work up and tried to eat his Moses basket and I relented to the reality that is my world for a while. But I’m making those cookies this afternoon, with bigger kid the baking partner from my dreams, while grandma cuddles the little “if it ain’t made of warm, human flesh, I won’t sleep on it” smartest dude in the house.

Know what? I didn’t even cry. Not at losing the “baking in peace” moment or the hardboiled protein or the shower. Didn’t even think of crying.

Look at me, all bright-side of things and silver lining-ish and perspective-y. Must be the hormones.