Category Archives: Don’t get me started (uh-oh, you just did)

The news today…

Posted on by

…is depressing. I avoid newspapers and television news because the world is a scary, depressing, soulless place of nasty, angry, people who seem full of nothing but hate. Today is one of the reasons why I beg people to keep their horror stories to themselves.

And today I’d like to declare to the people on my official “done me wrong” list, those half a dozen people who have really been horrible to me or my family, who have done things that simply can’t be forgiven: you’re totally safe. I am still angry with you. I hold grudges and make no apologies about that. But I guarantee you I won’t spiral out of control into a shooting rampage. I will not hurt you or anyone you know. I don’t forgive well; that’s my problem. You are a terrible human being; that’s your problem. I am content to coexist with you on this planet without causing you harm.

You hear that, girl from fourth grade who bullied me and humiliated me? Reprehensible animal who selfishly fled the police at over 106 mph and slammed into us? Terrible woman who, though you may not have known how condescending you were, in reality robbed me of what little safety I had at a vulnerable time? Disgusting colleague who lied and blocked the clearest path to success just because you’re scared about your own failings? Couple who lied and continue to lie and took with them our life savings? All of you? You’re safe. I will not do any of the things that are in the news today.

Because of all the terrible things that have happened to me (and in comparison to 99% of the people on this earth I have led a charmed life) most of the worst have come from forces nobody can control. Earthquake, fire, personal loss, and cancer are all something on which I can blame nobody. So the small potatoes in my life can go on rotting unmolested.

I’m sorry for all the families who lost someone today. For all the people who lost hope today. For all the damage the human race does, daily, to the universe and its grand, cosmic potential. Sorry the allegedly advanced apes are screwing everything up, universe. We’ll keep trying.

En garde.

Posted on by

Okay. I’m here to pick my battles. I’m done, little tyrant. Things are gonna be different because I’m here to declare, on national blogovision, where I draw the line.

This is pretty simple. Listen to me. Listen to my words. Listen to me, you f—ing little freeloading ball of attempts to become an individual. You can have all the opinions you want, you can make most of the decisions. But f—ing listen to me! Not the third time, not the eighth time, not just when I give up on my parenting willpower and patience reserves and yell. Listen to me the motherfucking first time, you parental hostage taker.

Trash stays in the trash can. Why is that so hard? Don’t touch trash. Don’t grab it, feel it, shake it upside down. It’s trash, you little eating-whining-pooping robot. It’s the same trash I’ve gently steered you away from since you could move under your own power. Please touch something else. Please step over here. Please go around. Please put down the f—ing trash. Because I’m picking this battle.

We pee in the toilet. Not on the floor just because it’s funny. Not in the cat box. The litter box is for cats. Yes, I know you can meow, but you’re not a cat. No you’re not. No you’re not. Fine, you are, but your kind of cat uses the toilet. Yes it does. Yes it does. Oh, I see. This is not your house and in your house the rules are different. Okay. Then go there. Because in this house we pee in the toilet and only in the toilet. You’ve been out of diapers for more than a year. You know full well what your body can and cannot do. And choosing to piss me off by pissing on my floor is a big ball of not okay.  I’ve chosen this battle, as well.

We use gentle touches with the cats. Would you like it if someone hit you? Kicked you? Pulled your tail? Well, they don’t like it either. And I’ve been telling you this for months. Redirection isn’t working. Positive reinforcement isn’t working. Clear explanations aren’t working. Empathy lessons aren’t working. If you can’t be gentle you don’t get stories or toys or breakfast or lunch or dinner and I may just lock you in your room until college, you little AP expermient gone horribly, horribly wrong. Don’t hurt the cats. Be friendly with the cats. Or I will teach you the word rue. For I have chosen this battle, as well.

We use gentle touches with daddy. Would you like it if he hit you? Kicked you? Well he doesn’t like it either. And I’ve been telling you this for months. Don’t make my retype the whole cat admonition, just replacing your father’s name for the cats’ names. I don’t want to say it again. I didn’t want to say it the first two hundred times, calmly, gently, in short declarative sentences at eye level with explanations when necessary. Don’t. Hit. Or nobody will like you, including me. Unconditional love is a myth they tell kids who watch TV and you don’t get more than half an hour a week, so don’t come crying to me about how I’m supposed to love you no matter what. I picked this battle, too.

That’s it. I picked my battles. Know what they come down to?  Listen to me. When I have to say things twice I sweat. When I have to say things three times I twitch. When I have to say things four times I yell. And when I have to say things five times I lose my shit and contemplate horrible things including your sale to the gypsies, my escape to the tropics, and choosing a soulless career in any one of the three hundred jobs I had before you sucked the life and brain out of me just to get away from you.

Go to the trash, would you,  please, and fetch mommy’s sanity. Sweetie? Would you please help Mommy and get her self esteem out of the trash? Peanut—please go take my selfhood out of the trash and bring it to me.

Jayzus. Do you hear me? I need you to listen to my words…go get my life out of the crapper.

Stress fracture whine

Posted on by

It’s time for my stress fracture whine. This isn’t going to be pretty, so turn away if you’re squeamish around self-absorbed melodrama. If you find a petty lack of perspective nauseous*, then do not read any further.

[*that’s right. something that makes you feel like puking is nauseous. if you feel like puking you are nauseated. people who say or write that they’re nauseous are actually saying that they nauseate others. and that is funny to me.]

So here begins the whine. I’ve been on crutches and unable to carry Peanut for three months. And it’ll probably be another two months because I made the mistake, seemingly harmless, of sitting cross-legged on the floor to do a puzzle with my son. Without thinking I put the bad foot under my right leg while we were sitting, and the pain returned. The rest of the week has increased the pain and I now feel it all the time again.

That means at least six more weeks, if not more.

We’re a sling family–we cuddle and carry everywhere. We don’t own a stroller. He likes to be in our arms a lot. And we like that, too. I like to carry him, to cuddle him, and to tell him things on our walks, during our errands, and around the house. Because of my fracture I can’t carry my kid, and I’m sad. He’s sad. He doesn’t want to go for walks because he knows when he gets tired in the middle, I can’t help him. He doesn’t want to go to the playground because I can’t climb with him. Peanut is a timid guy in new places and around crowds, but he’s had to run through an airport pretty much by himself twice, and will again this month, because I can’t carry him. (He won’t use the mei tai. I could use crutches and the mei tai, but he refuses to try.)

I’m tired of crutches. I’m tired of being non-weight-bearing but extra-weight-bearing, if you know what I mean. I’m tired of the  inability to run, the inability to hold my kid while he brushes his teeth or carry him to his room after a bath, the need to hop on one foot with our lunch plates, the pain of accidentally putting my foot down while washing dishes. I’m tired of holdng hands while I crutch down the street, four fingers held tightly by a little boy who feels sad and alone that he’s so far from me.

I’m tired of stress fractures that won’t heal. I’m tired of expecting to be fully functioning because the reality of my human body is that I probably will be less and less wel functioning for the rest of my days. So I’m tired.

And whiny.

[And this section is for all the people who seem to Google “stress fractures that won’t heal”. Today, and for at least the next six weeks, they’re my peeps.

During our move from the icky part of the state to the better part of the state, I somehow cracked a bone in my foot. I have a history of stress fractures from running, and this time I was just barely increasing mileage and frequency from a paltry ten miles a week to about fifteen miles a week (always following the 10% rule because I’ve been here before and don’t like rehab or PT or water running or crutches). And I got the familiar sense of needing to crack my foot for three weeks straight. Sure enough, my old sports med guy said third or fourth metatarsal stress fracture. Bone scan points to fourth met. (First fracture was ischial tuberosity, second was femoral neck, third was femur on other side, fourth was calcaneal. Now I’m the proud owner of a cracked fourth met.)

So I got an air cast and crutches. Doc tells me I can walk in the air cast. I do. For 6 weeks. Fracture gets worse. So I go non-weight-bearing for 3 more weeks. The cast makes it worse (it’s too heavy, and makes me rest my foot often, which hurts it).  So I ditch the cast and go completely non-weight-bearing for 3 more weeks, and after two weeks of painfree hypercarefulness, the pain is back. Know why? I sat cross legged on the floor to do a puzzle with my son. Sitting on the floor with the bad foot tucked under me set me back another six weeks. After 12 weeks of care and 15 weeks from the first pain. Even with an ultrasound bone-stimulator contraption that cost us two weeks’ rent. (Insurance paid half. Gee, thanks. Otherwise it would have been a full month’s rent. When do Americans get to have health care instead of health insurance?) That means I’m at square one, and need at least six weeks, completely non-weightbearing to heal this thing. That’ll be at least 18 weeks. If all goes well.]

What I want in the stimulus package

Posted on by

So Congress is debating, as are pundits, as are my friends and neighbors, about how best to rescue the economy. (The best option, a way-back machine that returns us to pre-Reagan and puts deregulation into context, has been shelved for some bogus lack-of-technology reason.)

Obama says spend money on the things we’re gonna need anyway—roads, wind farms, education—and in so doing, put people to work. Republicans say cut taxes (since that worked so well to this point…do they somehow think that tax cuts when the government is already bringing in, like, zero dollars, is going to help anyone but gazillionaires?)

You know what I say? I say spend the money, sure. Cut taxes on the lower class. And move the tax bracket *up* for anyone who works for a failing financial institution and got a bonus. If they took bailout money and got bonuses, make them pay 100% taxes. That’s right. If you get a bonus, you give back your entire salary including bonus. Because you know what? You’re lucky to still have a job, you economy-ruining f—ers. That Merrill Lynch yahoo who said he had to give bonuses to his best performers is a jackass. If you had any best performers my entire retirement would be worth what it was in May. And yet, he’s offering us the best way out of the crisis. Sure, pay extra to those who screwed up the economy, the international banking industry, and the world in general. Give them a bonus. Then we the taxpayers get to keep it all. Every bloody penny.

Ditto executive bonuses for anyone involved in mortgage-backed securities, subprime mortgages, or other banking shenanigans. They can all make the check out the the Internal Revenue Service so we can pay for those roads.

Bailout nonsense

Posted on by

A Senator from Missouri wants to cap executive salaries for companies accepting federal bailout money. Ya think?!! It’s only now occurring to Congress that their blank check should have had some strings attached? Democrats tried for about twelve minutes last fall to get that as part of the no-strings-attached bailout. Remember when Paulson and Bernanke said that any limits to executive compensation would make it less likely for banks to participate in the mortgage bailout? Yeah. Did anybody else, at that time think, “Fine. Have it your way. Pay your CEO millions, and go bankrupt for all I care?”

I can’t believe the belated moral outrage. And I really can’t believe Guiliani telling the press that executives *need* big bonuses, because in his world, trickle down economics is more than just a disproven Reagan-era philosophy. Because CEOs who *only* get a few million base salary won’t eat out and New York will fall apart, Guiliani claims, but if they get their share of the $18 billion in bonuses paid in 2008, they will gladly hire underpaid workers to clean their houses, serve their food, and tutor their ignored kids. Folks, trickle down is a lie. Giving the exorbitantly rich *more* in the hopes they buy more crap and hire more workers just doesn’t work. Companies hire when people are buying their goods and services. Not when their CEOs are obscenely rich.

Of course we should cap salaries at any firm getting federal bailout money. Geezus, we should also roll back Bush’s gratuitous tax breaks for the wealthy because  people who make more should pay more.  Because it’s the right thing to do. Shut up with your “they need to eat out so people can work.” They need to invest in infrastructure, and they do that by paying their freaking taxes (which they don’t actually do since they have dozens of laws written so they can out of their taxes, while I pay mine.)

Take the bailout money back. Take it back. They used it poorly, they didn’t do what makes sense for the country. Take it back. Give them a timeout and move on to fixing science and education and roads, because that’s the shit that’s gonna produce jobs and a future economy.

I’d rather you bailout cops and teachers and people trying to get by than bailout corporations who made eggregious errors in basic business principles. Let ’em rot. But since you offered them money with no strings attached, you Congresspeople should have to pay those executive bonuses out of your own Congressional salaries. Talk about CEOS and CFOs working for a dollar this year…Congress should do that, too.

You know what, World?

Posted on by

You really suck today, World. Sure, it’s a gorgeous 70plus degree day. Sure, there have been some very nice people in my way today. But overall, you are a rotten and no good inhabited planet today, World.

So since you suck so much today, and you owe me some *major* kharma points for royally fucking with me when I really didn’t have it coming, please send some of your worst asspain to the following peeps:

Do me a favor and throw a pebble in the shoe of the a–holes who lied to us when they sold us the last house, the realtor who let them, and the realtor who didn’t catch the lie. Also, please, give a huge festering stye to the people ruining the planet, a labial sebacious cyst to chemical companies who get away with the slow murder of the human race because they have strong lobbyists, and a painful nasal laceration to the jerks abusing workers for a profit.

It’s the least you can do, you sucky, sucky world.

John Hughes, we need you!

Posted on by

Mr. Hughes, could you make a few movies for the dorks and dweebs and losers amongst us, who, at mid-life, still haven’t figured it out, and who were holding out hope that the popular and not-nice people in high school would turn out painfully unattractive (pockmarked with the reality of their blotchy souls or at least saggy and droopy from the ill-advised production and subsequent ignoring of their spawn) and unemployed (or at least pursuing some morally turgid career like RNC strategist) and perversely alone, but who facebook now shows us are all toned and tanned and really rich and by no means socially ostracized as we had so hoped they would be? One, ideally, that shows us how we might still have a chance at making a difference and being loved by the people who are beautiful on the inside and who really will, soon, shun the same shallow and vapid people they were *supposed* to have shunned by graduation, at the latest?!

Kind of like a Thirty-Eight Candles or The ‘Why Bother with Breakfast When My Life is in the Toilet’ Club or something?

A darned good trip home

Posted on by

Our US Airways flight didn’t go anywhere near the Hudson, so A+ flight.

Our return flight attendants were about 3000 percent nicer than the outbound flights.

When *someone* forgot to leave us the car keys and *someone else* later left the car seat in the rental car and then thanked *their* lucky stars that the flight was late and *someone* noted to another passenger that a connection in Phoenix is always easy because it’s a relatively small airport and then, later, that same *someone* had exactly 19 minutes from wheelsdown to haul ass from the absolute farthest gate in one terminal to the absolute farthest gate in another terminal (on crutches and cheering on a three-year-old functioning on vapors a full three hours past bedtime and with no food in him to run at full tilt with his frog backpack [I know it’s heavy baby, and I know you don’t like running encumbered, but you’re doing a heckuva job!] and trying not to laugh at the hilarity of a three-year-old let loose in an aiport and told to run as fast as he can, wobbling a bit when the crutches hit the moving walkway and when the three-year-old stopped dead in front of her to ask if this was an escalator or something different, and just a little after she smacked the kiosk toadie upside the head with her crutch when he asked her, as she all but ran a three-legged race with the aforementioned toddler and packmule Spouse who carried everyone’s carry-on and personal item and carseat while running at helf-tilt, whether she could spare 30 seconds to hear about a special deal with MasterFuckingCard) made it with, no joke, two minutes to spare only to find that that *someone* had lost our boarding passes but that a certain airlines that can land on water or tamac can also replace a lost boarding pass with, like, no problemo, well then *all* those someones relaxed into their seats with a sigh and forgot even to bemoan the fact that you don’t even get pretzels anymore, let alone beverages on these flights home. Or that airport freaking restaurants close at freaking 9:00 pm when your flight is scheduled to land at 8:55pm and your three-year-old and your crutches conspire to keep you away from a different burrito—not the burrito they refused to serve you at 8:55am, noting that they didn’t serve bean and cheese burritos until after 9:00 am, and yes they’re sorry that your flight leaves at 9:06, but that they can’t make a burrito so early unless it’s a breakfast burrito, yes, ma’am, even if you’re willing to eat it cold andyes, ma’aam, even if you’re willing to order a breakfast burrito without the filling and substitute rice and beans, sorry ma’am; or the burrito that the wonderful airline who replaced your boarding passes refused to let your husband dash and purchase because even though their plane was late and even though they don’t have food on the plane and even though your three-year-old will probably lose it if he has to subsist on clementines and raw almond slices for *another* flight after being promised a burrito, they have a firm four minutes before takeoff door policy, and you’ll just have to eat at your destination. That’s three burritos denied, just this trip. If I weren’t still achy from the hilarity of  watching the three-year-old drop to his hands and knees in the airport, pretending to eat the floor, I might write a strongly worded letter.

It’s good to be home.

CNN thinks it’s groovy to leave a job for another job, but not to parent.

Posted on by

So this article beatifies those who leave a lucrative career to follow their gut. The people profiled left jobs with great benefits for…other jobs.

There is no mention of the hundreds of thousands of women leaving really good jobs to make a difference in their children’s lives. Those, for instance, who leave simulating and lucrative careers in advertising to be more useful to society as the parent of a decent human being. Or the child-free idealists who leave corporate america to teach or be a voice for the voiceless.

Apparently, leaving because your gut tells you to raise your own kid or save the world doesn’t count as news. Way to show your priorities, Turner Corporate.

F—ing Sony copy protection

Posted on by

So sony wants so desperately for me not to copy their DVDs (as if…I can barely get them into the drive slot in my computer and I barely have time to watch them let alone copy them) that they’ve made newer discs unplayable in my computer.

Somene who knows more than I do, and who has a better system (like a television and a DVD player made by…you guessed it…sony) explains their dick move here. And here.

I was all happy that I got my draft novel to KDT and Netflix delivered Stranger than Fiction the same day. So Spouse and I got Peanut to bed and loaded then crashed then loaded then crashed then loaded then crashed the f—ing copy protected DVD.

But for people who know better, this was news in 2007. It’s 2009 and Netflix is still sending me this. Today.

With whom shall I be more angry? (hint: the answer is not me, for having a seven year old computer and DVD player therein.)

Now I have to go back to my tape flags, damnit!

Okay, that’s it.

Posted on by

Attention ants: Stop it. I know it’s warm in here, I know it’s dry in here. I don’t want you in here. Stop it before I run out of Biokleen spray, because its replacement is decidedly less pleasant for all of us.

Attention interest rates: Stop it. Fucking settle around the low 5s and stop. For fuck’s sake. We’re trying to fix an economy here, and you’re not helping. Greedy fucking bank jerks who stole our 401ks. Stop, stop, stop. Just lend everyone nice some money and quit trying to turn 2005 profits. Stop it stop it stop it.

Attention toddler: Keep up what you’re doing, boy. We’re having a great month. You’re doing very well. Nice effort on the friendliness, the compromising, and the listening. You’re a fine and decent human. Keep up the good work.

Attention early morning freight trains: Stop it. You don’t need the horn. Nobody on the planet could miss the blinking lights and dinging bells and dropped crossing arm. Stop honking your horn at 4am already.

Attention everyone on the planet: Step off! Just get out of my way for a few days. I have a novel to send to KGT, about which I’m terrified, even though she’s the sweetest and most gentle creative soul I’ve met, including MPG, who is the sweetest and most gentle creative soul anyone has ever met. While dealing with that fear (and unfinished novel that has two days to be finished), I also have to stop interest rates, decide whether to buy a house, decide how to finish this conference paper, decide whether to think about another kid, decide whether I can pull off above the knee striped socks with a skirt and an aircast. It’s an artificial-crisis-filled stressful month, and I’d like to ask that you all stay home, stop calling, and take a step away from the car keys. Just have some eggnog, chill, and resume your duties after the new year. (NDM, you may resume whenever, since the whole international date line gives you an extra day, anyway, and you wouldn’t get in my way, anyway, since you’re busy not drowning on the other side of the world, fighting to keep the world a better place than the rabid monkey blogs ever could without you.)

Attention babysitters: please select the best amongst yourselves and call me. I have no idea how to find one of you, but I need to see Spouse once before Peanut turns three. It would make three dates in three years, and I’m begging you…please call your own references, because I don’t have time. That’s why I haven’t found you yet. I haven’t looked. It’s a daunting task, one that should be important enough to stop parenting for the three months or so I assume it takes to find a good sitter, but that would sort of make the whole thing a bigger deal than I’m willing for it to be, seeing as I just want one stinking date with my husband in 2009. At least, I mean, but still. Ah, fuck it. I’ll just have Netflix send something not subtitled, and we’ll have our stinking Hot Tamales and popcorn on the cat-litter dusted couch. Sigh.

Attention world governments: please, please hear me now. I’ve figured out the secret to world peace. It came to me in the car (you know, that thing that very few people in the world have, and I’m way too spoiled to even have that, considering what most of the people in the world go through daily). The world would stop its fighting if every man woman and child had working indoor plumbing. Clean water, yes. That’s just necessary, though millions don’t have it. But beyond that, a flush toilet in some sort of structure where you can go all by yourself and close your eyes and have one minute of peace and quiet. And I’m going to go out on a limb here, and GUARANTEE world peace if somehow Bill and Melinda can get everyone a heated toilet seat. I know. We need to fix malaria and AIDS and birth traumas and birth defects and maternal health and cancer and everything else that afflicts the world populations. But once we’re all healthy, we might still be angry. Not with a heated toilet seat. There would be no wars if everyone had a heated toilet seat (which, if you were paying attention above, requires clean water and indoor plumbing, and about three thousand steps of poverty and disease eradication before the heated seats, but still).

Just consider it. Because once I go against my personal beliefs and kill all the ants in the house and strangle bank interest rate people and put a huge boulder on the railroad tracks and kiss my toddler and get a sitter and finish my novel and cure all those diseases, I would really like, for once in the winter, to not freeze my ass just trying to keep the house cleaner than our cat is willing to. And I can’t enjoy a heated toilet seat unless the rest of the world is also fed and healthy and happy and not abused and not endangered and also evacuating on a lovely, clean, heated toilet seat.

So there.

I’m really peeved at Melissa and Doug

Posted on by

I usually like the toy makers over at Melissa and Doug. They’re all wooden and edutainment-y, and I like that.

But today I’m heart-poundingly, strongly-worded-letter-y pissed.

Grandma brought Peanut a cool magnetic dress-up Joey doll. Peanut loves the doll. I love the doll. So I figured I’d get him the female version, too.

Uh-oh. Not just gender-assigned, not just gender-stereotyped, but gender-disgusting.

The Joey doll gets to be a firefighter, police officer, knight, superhero, construction worker, and a pirate. Stereotyped, sure, but not totally offensive, provided there is a female doll with the same choices, too.

Well, the Maggie doll lets you choose between “cute” outfit and “attractive” outfit. Period. Revolutionary choice of skirts or pants. No career garb. No uniforms. Nothing she could wear to a world where they value her for her mind. But she sure is purdy.

The Nina doll is all different ballerina costumes. The Princess doll is too disgusting to discuss here. Use your imagination. Now add more ruffles and glitter.

I’m genuinely pissed. My son happened to catch a glimpse of baseball on tv a few months ago, and asked where the ladies were. I told him I wasn’t sure, but we’d turn the channel until we saw some. So we watched billiards for a while. Then poker. ‘Cuz in those worlds, women and men seem a little more equal.

Are you freaking kidding me with dolls like this? Why can’t the Joey doll come in a female version? There are firefighter and police officer and construction worker women. Why not add a garbage truck driver and an executive, because women do that, too. Sure she can be a princess. Can’t each set have real career choices, including princess? (Oh, what? Like pirate is a viable career choice outside Somalia? And knight is a monster.com pull-down option? Each set could have some realistic and some unrealistic jobs. I want a set with a professor, a lawyer, a doctor, and a comedia delle arte harlequino. I guess we’ll have to learn to carve our own.)

I’m going to go write to Melissa and Doug. If you care what your daughters and sons know about life, I urge you to do the same. Tell me when you find a girl doll who dresses up as something other than a princess or a beauty object. ‘Cuz I’ll buy her doll. And more for gifts. I mean, hell, even Barbie got a job every once in a token while.

Melissa and Doug, shame on you. This is not 1909. The only choices are not mom or princess; policeman or fireman. I’m not teaching my son that, because it’s not reality. And I’m not teaching girls that, because it’s not reality. There was a motherf–king woman running for President this year, y’all, and all we get is princess and dresses? F— you. I’m buying Plan Toys this year.

Btw, where is the black Joey doll? And the Latino/a and the Asian? I know that shouldn’t be a “by the way” question, but I’m too pissed to rank my equality priorities right now. I want it all.

Little Lord Fauntleroy

Posted on by

Someone found my blog by googling “how to change toddler clothes for nap.”

Several things. First: boy, did you find the wrong blog. I’m lucky if my kid wears clothes. When he does, they’re usually stained clothes because we don’t care, at all, and do laundry thusly: take clothes, throw in washing machine, add soap, wash, and leave for two days until you remember to dry them. Seriously. We don’t separate for color or size or fabric or any of the nonsense that other people seem to separate for. We don’t pretreat or chemically treat or trick or treat. We just freaking wash.

(Little secret: you know why we’re totally cavalier about laundry? ‘Cuz I don’t do it. Spouse does. And he could rub them in acid and douse them with lye and I would wear them with a smile on my face because it’s the one freaking thing around here I don’t have to do. Other than compost. So it’s the first of two things I don’t have to do. Yay me, yay Spouse, yay stains.)

But asking how to change toddler’s clothes for nap begs two rather obvious, if facetious, questions: what the hell is your kid wearing that it needs to be changed for nap; and how did you manage to get the one toddler in the world who tolerates costume changes? I have a kid who would rather sit in his jammies at home, running in small circles than actually don outside clothes to do his running in the sunlight. (Never stops moving, this one, so it’s a shock when he offers to stay in just to wear jammies.)

It’s not like our kid’s outside clothes are binding or rough or chosen by anyone but him. He just doesn’t like changing clothes. And he likes control. And I’ve just described 99% of toddlers, so who the hell is this googler parenting? How does his or her kid dress willingly in whatever breeches and bowtie Little Lord Fauntleroy costume they’re making him wear, AND willingly change again? (Notice how I pretended there was even one iota of a chance that the google dude is a guy? Please. What guy would even think to change clothes for nap? There are some awesome dads out there, but they attend to emotional, physical, and mental needs. Not weirdass bullshit. This is one of those moms who scrapbooks and crafts and bakes and sews curtains and makes furniture and color coordinates. All before dawn.) Does this jammies-then-clothes-then-jammies kid get to wear his jammies, then, for the rest of the day? Or do they (see, I did it again) change him a third time, and again for nighttime?

I’m all confused. I mean, it takes everything I have to be allegedly responsible and change my kid into clothes in the morning. I sleep in whatever I wear, and I often wear it again the next day (much to my mother’s try-to-keep-it-under-control-but-really-abject-and-borderline-screaming horror). So I’m pretty proud that I’m trying to be all socially acceptable and force my child from one comfy outfit into whatever creative combo he chooses in the morning (or afternoon or ten minutes before dinner when “Mommy, I HAVE to go outside”).

Now that I think about it, and just to make the world a bit more balanced after crazy google lady revealed her tidy little secret to the world via my 60-hit-a-day blog, maybe I’ll start letting my kid wear jammies all the time.

Wait, something just occured to me…are you one of those people who has a toddler in party dresses most days? Combed hair? Barrettes that match her shoes? You know what? It’s the holiday season, so I won’t judge. But I totally just lost 97% of my respect for you, oh random person who googled about changing a toddler’s clothes for nap, and forgot the possessive apostrophe and ess. So needless to say, there wasn’t a whole lot of respect left to lose. But you just wiped it all out, in one frilly crinoline and satin flourish.

Now I’m totally making tomorrow jammies day.

It’s too easy to screw up contemporary English, so now you’re butchering Shakespearean English, too?

Posted on by

Sign painted on outdoor shopping mall of upscale shops: Feel not shame for thou (sic) love of shoes.

Thou love? No, you dunderheaded idiots. (I know, I know. I taught critical thinking. If you insult the party to whom you’re talking, you generally have no point. But this is a collection of stores who would sell me (if I had that kind of money or cared what I looked like) a $150 sweater and $200 pair of shoes while befouling my sensibilities and dainty editor’s eyes. Shit like that makes our retinas BLEED, y’all.)

Who is hiring these writers, and who is hiring these advertisers?

Thou is a pronoun. It’s Elizabethan “you.”  Thy is a possessive pronoun. Sixteenth century “your.”

So your big marketing push this holiday season reads: “Do not be ashamed of you (sic)  love of shoes.” Take it from me: you meant “thy” love of shoes.

And you painted it on the wall. Like your nudge-nudge-wink-wink lame attempt at a joke is supposed to get me to swerve off the road and into your dank, dimly lit parking garage in the unholiest of all consumerist greed-fests: December. You think classing up being elbow-deep in polyester and perfume-reeking humanity makes shopping somehow more appealing? Well, you’re entitled to your opinion. But you’re not entitled to your own version of Elizabethan English. Use a dictionary when you’re writing. Or an editor. Or stop letting the boneheads in the strategy department write your advertising.

***

On an upbeat note, I’m pleased as always to congratulate Trader Joe’s for being one of the few stores in the nation to have a sign reading, “12 items or fewer.” Kudos. Your “unique grocery store” image remains credible to the educated but underpaid masses who traipse into your store for an affordable selection of organic, sugary, and obscure. Thank you for having hatch green chili bread, organic egg nog, and Jack Daniel’s all ready for me, btw, so that my trip down the twelve-or-fewer aisle is particularly sparkly this holiday season.

That’s not ironic, Alanis. But it’s kind of funny, in a gallows humor kind of way.

Posted on by

When the English professor who torpedoed my doctoral-program applications seven years ago walked into my gym this morning, I had two simultaneous thoughts, and neither was based in vengeful hatred, as they well should have been.

One: any other time I would launch off this erg and choke you for costing me a chance at an academic career when I was still considered of viable PhD program age, but your gross incompetence and callous disregard for your promises allowed me to find a couple of great professors at a college I never would have considered and gave me the window during which to have my son. So fuck you, but I can’t even spare a “fuck you” for you.

Two: I’ve always pictured you, in my pathetic, depressive, post-academic-door-slammed-shut slump, as a bilious monster. You’re actually quite pathetic in your fisherman’s sweater and nylon track pants, there on the treadmill in broad daylight when you could be out walking the world and observing how real humans live.

And for the record, I am right now reading something that, in addition to being far superior to anything you published back in your productive days, has inspired me to return to academia, allowing me to forget for a moment how traitorously you abandoned me one day before your letter of recommendation was due. Did I mention fuck you? And I’m better than you? And you’re pathetic? And I’m not a big enough person to forgive you, but I am big enough to keep working out right next to you, complete lack of recognition on your face, knowing that I’ve lost almost seven years of my dream because of you. I don’t really care about you anymore. I don’t have time.

But the funniest part of seeing you? When the ladies from the early morning dance class tittered that you should join them and you said, “I would love to, but I just don’t play well with others,” I actually bit my tongue to keep from agreeing aloud. At least you’re self aware. Remind me again why that assuages my wounded pride and remedies my incomplete education?

Oh, yeah. ‘Cuz I have a cute kid. Okay. Hope that gets me through the day. And the next day. And every day for about six years until I take your job and laugh at your shriveled hull.

See ya then, treadmill boy.