Cranky Mommy

I did it.
I am now officially a cell-phone owner, and the (second-to-) last American mom to have one. It’s so strange, I feel so — gadget-y. Before you know it, I will be out buying an ipod….
Nah. Not yet.
Anyhow, I’m in the 21st century just barely. It’s a cheap phone with a cheap pay-as-you-go, 18-cents-a-minute plan from Virgin Mobile. All I have to do is top it off with $20 bucks every 3 months (and I can get a few $20 top-offs for $15 on sale). For a cell phone that I intend to use only for emergencies for T’s preschool to contact me, if I am working with my husband. And, for the occasional Honey, I’ll be home late, do we need a loaf of bread and the like.
Of course, everyone tells me that’s how it starts, and in no time, I will be up to a $70-a-month plan. It’s like friggin’ CRACK.
It’s really strange how if you don’t ever have these things, you really don’t care, or know what you are missing. A year or so ago, we didn’t have caller ID and I could have cared less. Now, I have to have it. And, I can remember how many years I lived in Baltimore in the 1990s without air conditioning, and didn’t think twice about that. Now, I can’t think of a summer without it! It’s amazing how we left-wing types strive to do without, and in the end we are sometimes as materialistic as anybody.
Yep, it’s inevitable, that $70-a-month plan.
*sigh*

Spending time with little ones all day and all their mind-numbing books and television can makes you waste your brain activity in a major way.
For example — I this evening I was reading a Curious George book to my son, Curious George Takes A Train, and thinking about the Man In The Yellow Hat — how he really gets on my nerves.
In every book, he is not keeping his eye on the damn monkey, and the monkey gets into mischief. In this book, Curious George climbs up on the schedule board and rearranges it. In another book, he ruins everyone’s newspaper delivery. As I am reading it, all I can think is shame on Mr. Yellow Hat, once again, he is a negligent pet owner! Someone should take that monkey away from him!
I guess we wouldn’t have much to read about, if the Man in The Yellow Hat was on top of things, but it still bugs me.
Or, how Cookie Monster is a horrible role model. But truly — he is. I can’t tell you how many kids I know have imitated his messy cookie-eating habit, spewing cookie crumbs all over the floor saying “Yum yum uhm uhm uhm”.
Another bad kids role model - Dora. Okay, she’s not really that bad, but she has the most annoying voice. And every little toddler girl in America, when they succeed at something, goes through a phase where they say triumphantly in their little squeaky voices, “I did it!” just like Dora. And I’m sorry to you Elmo fans, but Elmo has a really annoying voice too. Who wants their kid to talk like that?
Does my brain really need to ponder this stuff? Should I be debating with another mom whether “Maria” on Sesame Street is really the mother of “Gabby” on Sesame Street (she isn’t)? Whether “Joe” replaced “Steve” on Blue’s Clues was because “Steve” died of a heroin overdose ( false rumor)?
Or — should I be picking up that Descartes and Plato book in an effort to keep my brain cells from committting suicide?

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.

I am not a morning person. Never have been, never will be. I’m the kind of person who you want to avoid for the first hour or so that I am awake. My husband has found a way to handle me in the morning — like a lion tamer, with a combination of gentle coaxing and a chair and a whip.
Thankfully, my son is catching on. Now, when he wakes up before me as he usually does, he bypasses my bedroom entirely and heads straight downstairs for dad to make his cereal in the morning.
I’d say, he’s a pretty smart kid.

Recently on my trips to the grocery store around Hampden, and a while driving T to school, I’ve seen this “new” homeless guy. By new, I mean perhaps the last month or so. In most ways he looked to me like a “stereotypical” homeless guy. He has his lit ciggarette in hand, a cardboard (homeless, please help) sign to beg with, an overbaked-in-the-sun look, a suspiciously skinny physique and long, unkempt shaggy hair. Except, the shaggy hair has a bit dyed on the tips and had grown out.
Something about this homeless guy looked just a bit familiar, but I wasn’t sure exactly.
He was kind of a small guy, 40-something, and looked a little like an acquaintance I used to talk to — an old rock-and-roll guy and who worked several places on “the avenue” in Hampden and used to bake for some local eateries. He was, to my knowledge, a recovered heroin addict who had been perfectly fine for a number of years.
Driving on Northern Parkway the other day, I once again saw the homeless man, standing in the small median of the busy intersection, holding up his cardboard sign. I don’t think he saw me staring at him while I waited at the light. I found it hard to believe that this could possibly, maybe, be the guy I’d seen and talked to many times.
The guy I knew had distinctively Keith Richards-looking hair and a certain sense of style. This guy, had none of that. I wasn’t sure it was him, but I thought I would ask around to see if anyone knew whatever happened to the rock-and-roll guy.
As it turns out, they are one and the same. The transformation is pretty shocking. Perhaps not so shocking if I had known him better, but I really don’t know what happened, why he (most likely) fell off the wagon. He looks pretty rough. I have to wonder if people like this are long for this world.
It makes me think of my stepson who I have not seen in nearly two years. I’m not sure what I will see, next time I see him. Seeing the transformation gradually with people as ill as this, sometimes dulls a little of the shock. I wonder if the next time I will see my stepson I will be equally as shocked. And, I hope as I drive on Northern Parkway I never see another vaguely familiar face.

I got this email today, although I am totally not up for this. But, perhaps some moms out there who blog, need a little New York vacation?

SEEKING: Moms Who Blog for new show on Fox

Are you a mom under age 45 and at your wits end? Do you blog about it?
Be a guest on Fox TV’s The Dr. Keith Ablow Show?

The Dr. Keith Ablow Show launched Sept. 11th. It is hosted by the amazing Psychiatrist
and New York Times Best Selling Author, Keith Ablow. He has appeared on Oprah, Larry
King, Good Morning America and The Tyra Banks Show.

If you are chosen for a show, we pay all expenses (transportation to & from NYC , hotel stay, food, etc.) for you & your family.

If interested contact me ASAP. When sending an e-mailinclude a photo of you and your family, a blog entry where you are venting about paticular issues, concerns dealing with motherhood or your marriage (or lack of), your age, age of kids, city, state and contact phone #(s).

Best of luck!

–
Felicia Scarangello
The Dr. Keith Ablow Show
1325 Ave of the Americas, 30th fl.
New York, NY 10019
212-506-4298 (direct)
1-888-372-2569 x4298
212-506-4370 (fax)
felicia.scarangello@drkeithtv.com
Show website: http://www.drkeithtv.com

Just a little bit of advice to you moms on what NOT to do… For those of you who are potty training their kids, from a mom who failing miserably with potty training her child.
If you say to your child:

Don’t poop in your underpants!!!

What your child will hear is:

Don’t poop. At all. Ever.

And, after 5 days you will be off to the drug store to buy an enema.
*sigh*

Yesterday was our anniversary. 8 years. 8 frickin’ years! How did that happen? I feel so old.
Our wedding was a memorable date, even besides the getting married part:

So, yes, memorable.

8 isn’t a particularly important year, aside from one thing — I am now my husband’s “record holder” for duration of marriage, as his 3rd wife. Yeah, he’s stuck with me.
We made some nice plans for our anniversary, but won’t be celebrating until Friday (see here for why). We are going to the restaurant that catered our wedding, and for desert I ordered the world’s most evil cake that was our wedding cake.

I can’t believe it, it’s the first day of the school year! The house is so quiet, it’s eerie!
There’s no one home to hang on my back like a cape, climb all over me, twirl my hair, sit on my head, and generally drive me nuts.
I’m annoyed with myself… I miss him. All summer I couldn’t wait to shove him send him off to school, and now I miss him. It’s a sickness, I tell ya.

This past weekend when it was raining buckets we went to the American Visionary Art Museum, located just south of the inner harbor in Federal Hill. Not all of it is great art, but it’s a great place to take a kid on a rainy day (as long as they are old enough to know not to touch the art).
Since we hadn’t been there in a while, I was suprised to see the absolutely massive amount of construction that had been started, right on the water at the harbor. I could see that the construction will eventually block most of the view of the harbor from the art museum and ruin it’s view.
I asked the guy working at the entrance desk of the museum what all the construction was, and he told me it would be townhomes and condos — and looking out the window I noticed the sign advertising the barely-started condos saying: from 1.2 million.
1.2 million I said? That’s ridiculous. Just to live at the inner harbor. You could get a large mansion somewhere else for that!
Yeah, rich people spending lots of money to live on the smelly water, he said.
And he was absolutely right. The harbor can look pretty, but on a summer day it sure does reek — from the Inner Harbor to Fells Point to trendy Canton. It’s really stinky.
Sometimes I wish we were bazillionaires. That we could afford to live some place much larger and grander. But what I do have, besides a sense of taste and a sense of aesthetics, is a sense of smell (perhaps the wealthy suffer from anosmia)? And, I’m happy to say that my house will smell better than those 1.2 million+ condos.
Perhaps though, over time, that inner harbor smell will be associated with something fabulous! We will all forget that it actually stinks and just associate the smell with high living. People will seek out that scent to make themselves feel rich. The’ll be spraying it all over the house like Fabreeze to impress the relatives, and selling air fresheners with that “special inner harbor smell”. It is, after all, the new smell of wealth.