Cranky Mommy

…And Mom, also known as the Easter Bunny, is too cheap thinks it is ridiculous to spend $1.50 on a tiny bag of pastel colored shredded paper Easter basket grass so she is cutting up construction paper to make grass with.
After all, he is just 4!
I bought my Easter basket stuff at Target today, and my God they have a lot of useless stuff that they, and every other store in America, are try to pawn off on parents at Easter time. Among the things I saw were plastic “candy holders” in the shape of the Superman emblem. Somehow that just doesn’t seem very Easter-y.
Or how about a dart gun for our 7-year old? That really just reminds me of Jesus rising up from the dead to forgive us of our sins Easter.
And then of course, their are those Peeps.

I suppose they are kinda okay, if you have the taste buds of the under-6 set. I’ve been known, on rare occasion, to eat them before (if I am needing a sugar fix and there is nothing else nearby). But everywhere I have been lately, every store seems to be a… Peep pusher. They have huge displays with rows and rows of florescent sugar coated marshmallow junk. They even have stuffed animal Peeps, I saw some today at Target.

The bunnies are kind of scary… kind of like, Thalidomide bunnies. Really, do these look like much fun to play with? Maybe they make good pillows.
So, if you are doing the whole Easter basket thing, what is in your basket?

Ah, I’m back. Back to the mess that I call — home.
I am surrounded by way too many xmas toys of my sons, that don’t seem to have homes yet. It’s amazing how many toys he has. Sickening, actually. To think of all the petrol that went to making all the plastic toys that inhabit our house, it’s enough to think that an oil shortage was caused by it. As much as friends and family know that we live in teeny-tiny house with no room for anything, they seem to have has a lapse in rememberign that. Oh well, Goodwill and other charities will get another huge donation of older toys.
It’s amazing too, how many gifts that my son got for his birthday and xmas that just had me scratching my head wondering, why?
Of course, not from other moms of small children, of course. These moms tend to know better and don’t buy stuff:
- that is extremely loud and has a lot of buttons to press to make noise
- that is totally age-inappropriate and is too complex for my son to use, or too babyish
- that breaks easily
- that has a zillion and one pieces to get lost
- that is ANOTHER stuffed animal
Undoubtedly the 100 piece puzzle and the like will come from a single person. Without fail though, every gift-giving occasion, I get a toy that is irritating in one way or another, even if my son loves it. If it doesn’t have all the above forementioned problems, it is something else.
- it takes a half an hour to get out of the packaging, another half an hour to assemble, and comes without the C batteries it needs
- it has a zillion small parts that are surprising fun for a 4 year old to throw like confetti
- it requires constant adjusting and refixing, to avoid incessant whining from your child that it is broken
Sometimes, though, you have no one to blame but myself. This year’s big toy was a purchase somewhat based on the nag factor — Moon Sand.

My son, who rarely watches non-PBS television, saw the Saturday morning commercial for Moon Sand and so all I heard for about a month is “Moon Sand! I want Moon Sand for Christmas”! A few viewings and he had that commercial memorized.
So, Mom, Dad, and Santa obliged. He really does like the Moon Sand. It is pretty neat, neater than playdough. But messier. It gets everywhere, despite my best efforts to control it. In the carpet, in the treads of my shoes, on the quilt, everywhere. Moon Sand is fine for one kid, but forget about 3 kids playing with it together. That is asking for trouble. And keep the vacuum handy.

It seems not long ago, there was an unwritten rule that Christmas stuff was not shown on T.V. or displayed in stores until after Thanksgiving. That seemed reasonable. These days, Father Christmas is even more about the Cha-Cha-Ching of the cash register than a babe in a manger, so that bit of logic is out — I started seeing the Xmas commercials and stuff in stores right after Halloween ended. My fantasy is that the brilliant marketing executives who came up with that idea have a herd of children that nag them them the whole two months before Christmas with questions of “how soon until Christmas is here”. Since I’m getting nagged too.
I would love to write about how horribly material the season is like the good liberal I am, but I would just be a big hypocrit. The fact is, that I am going to be out shopping and buying too much stuff for everyone like everyone else, to my own dismay. I write it up to a seasonal mass hysteria. The rest of the year I will return to my frugal, practical self.
This year I think my kid has everything he could really want. Actually, I am really going to keep my gift giving to him to a minimum. There’s a thing or two I think he would like, but I am a little dry on ideas this year. And we are definitely going to have to move stuff out to replace the stuff coming in because there is really no room in our teeny rowhouse.
And, there is no guaranteeing that he is going to like the stuff we give him. I’m pretty good at picking out what he likes, but he really gets bored with most stuff eventually. Surprisingly, too, the latest big hit is this little plastic superman who showed up in his halloween candy. His face came off in the wash but he doesn’t seem to care.

The little plastic superman is preferred over a lot of the stuff he got for his birthday. Superman likes “watch” my son do a lot of activities and tends to “follow” him around. Superman gets a time-out, thought, when he trys to “fly” as I really don’t like projectiles going near my eyes. Also well loved, are a pile of, get this, plastic rocks. Plastic rocks that came with his Playmobil truck set. His 3 year old girlfriend likes them too. And occasionally they fight over piles of plastic rocks. They’re a bitch to pick up, though.
Another thing that is very popular - the blue clear plastic shoebox that my son likes to wear on his head to pretend he’s a spaceman. So maybe I should just go to the tupperware section of Target this year. And, perhaps put a few coins in those candy and toy machines at the grocery store. Who knows, I might find a hit.

This past weekend I went thrift storing. It’s something I love to do and have been doing for 20 years — before it was trendy; before Antiques Roadshow; and before a zillion skinny little hipsters decided wearing 70’s print retro tees were cool.
I get no better thrill than getting a big bag full of clothes for my son, including some major labels, for under $10 bucks. It’s cheaper than consignment and considering how much kids get stains on their clothes, I don’t see how buying new clothes for kids is practical (especially when that preschool “washable” tempera paint really isn’t washable).
There are a couple of bad things to thrift storing, though. 1)That old person smell in some of the clothes doesn’t always wash out completely. 2) The dressing rooms, if they have one, are sometimes makeship rooms with no doors, so that odd, older man can at any moment start a conversation with you while you are changing your clothes. Nothing like some old coot cracking jokes at you while you are standing there in your bra. 3)Some of the best thrift stores are not in the safest neighborhoods. 4)It’s highly likely you will see the very cheap, new with tags Gymboree sweater you wanted in someone else’s cart.
These days I do less shopping for myself, and more for my son. When I was 17, the pickings were excellent for vintage clothes, and I wore nothing but. The brighter and goofier the better… I still have a few 60’s psychedelic mini dresses stuck back in my closet, but I doubt they still fit.
I even used to dumpster dive for clothes (What is dumpster diving, you ask? It’s pretty self explanatory… there’s a dumpster, you dive into it and get stuff). Most of the time it wasn’t clothes. However, I did manage to completely furnish my apartment in the early 90’s from dumpsters, alleys, and thrift stores. I was lucky — my freshman year in college I lived in a high rise (well, living in an ugly high rise wasn’t the lucky part, the lucky part was that we lived on the 8th floor, right below a dumpster). My roomie and I would get up each morning, open the window, and look down to check out what the dumpster gods had brought us that day, like Christmas morning. It was a pretty fruitful dumpster.
Part of the thrill of this kind of thing is definitely the hunt. Or perhaps I should say, the gather. Lacking many nuts and berries in Baltimore city, I suppose it’s the contemporary version of hunter-gathering. Of course now, my funny polyester dress days are long gone. I am much less comfortable in polyester gaberdine (or at least the itch didn’t bother me as much). Besides the vintage pickings being poorer, I have given into jeans and boring looking, comfy loungewear. But it’s sometimes thrift-store, comfy loungewear.

Mr. Guy Laroche,
This…

… is not high French fashion. This is Auschwitz.
You must not be paying your models enough because, damn, she sure looks like she is starving. Take her off the runway and take her to a restaurant. Pronto. Or a good mental health professional. Because, we wouldn’t want our kids to think the Aushwitz look is fashionable, would we?
Oh wait, you died in 1989. Now isn’t this falling on deaf ears.

Sincerely,
Cranky Mommy

Once a month our community association has a meeting in a neighborhood church. Most of what is discussed at the meeting is pretty cut and dry, and sometimes boring — school and park issues, parking complaints, fundraisers, and the like.
This meeting was the usual, quite uneventful — until the end. A new business owner stepped up to make a presentation about the new business she is opening in the neighborhood. An adult business. An adult toy business, geared for women, if you get my meaning.
I really don’t have concerns about the business. Her presentation was professional. There is no storefront, it will be upscale and discreet.
I figure, whatever floats your boat. I’m a very vanilla person with enough imagination that I’ve never had need of an adult female toy shop or attend one of these ladies “passion parties” (adult toys instead of tupperware) that I’ve heard about (although to be honest, I’ve never been invited to one… maybe I don’t know the right people?).
I guess we all have hobbies. Some people collect books, and some people collect ashtrays, and some people collect… vibrators with little bunnies on them. To each their own.
I will say, though, I did love one thing… I could almost hear the grey-haired ladies, old Hampdenites and churchfolk, sitting in their pews staring at the floor and blushing under their glasses as the young woman gave her description, in mostly PG rated terms, of the female-oriented adult toy business and and what she plans to offer.
Surprisingly, there were few questions for the usually noisy group. She sure knew how to quiet a room.

Or, perhaps I should say “Hey Y’all”, instead. We are having a lovely vacation as usual, but ironically the peach state seems to be free of decent tasting peaches and they are all pulpy. Strawberries aren’t bad, though.

The good:
My son didn’t poop in his underwear on the plane there.
We had a nice trip to the national aquarium.
Central Air!
Cable, Cable, and more dumb cable shows. The dumber the better. Heck, we watched a show Anna Nicole Smith, Cleavage, and old Brady Brunch reruns.
My husband and I have gone on 2 dates, thanks to Nana and Pop-Pop.
I haven’t had to cook all week.
I have 2 new bras and a pair of shorts, all on sale.
My son did poop in the potty (at a JCC pool, not in it) for the first time in several months.
I’m reading. An actual book, for a change. A good book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma. I’m learning how much petrol it takes to make a cow and how much corn is in every American (a lot).
I am so relaxed I am turning into a jellyfish.

The bad:
My son pooped in his swim diaper at the pool before he got to the toilet (thankfully not in the pool. That totally freaks out the pool people.)
It’s as stinking hot here as it was at home.
The national aquarium was so crowded you could hardly see the fish.
My parents, who have most of the luxuries in life, still have dial-up.
I am so relaxed I am turning into a jellyfish.

The odd:
Strangest thing I’ve noticed here is the people in the Atlanta area don’t put bumper stickers on their cars. In Baltimore, you know exactly what political affiliation someone has, what school their kids go to, and what their hobbies they have just by driving behind them.

The nasty:
Never, I repeat NEVER, order “sweet tea” when someone in the south asks you if you want “Sweet or Unsweet”. Georgia sweet tea is about 1 pound of sugar with just a hint of tea in a glass, and it is absolutely undrinkable. It’s funny how I could forget that.

The ugly:
I definitely cannot pretend that my dryer is shrinking my clothes and that the scale at our customer’s house is wrong. I got on a scale at the JCC Pool and OMG, have I put on weight! But there’s more to that story on my theory of why… (in which I have a new and interesting theory) and that’s another blog post. Stay tuned.

What idiotic business would have their presses break down in NOVEMBER, not let you know when you place your order Dec 4 that it could be delayed, not let you know that your order wouldn’t arrive by Christmas - until the 22nd, not have a customer service line to bitch to, and not answer the email you sent to them?
ipads, that’s who.
(recommendation - don’t shop there!)