Cranky Mommy

Santa doesn’t just leave presents around here.

I learned that from my father. My father would handpaint a beautiful card on watercolor paper from Santa thanking me for the cookies, with wonderful caligraphy. He’d eat most of the cookies, leaving just a few crumbs. I wish I still had one of those cards.
Of course, when I was a kid I always found it suspicious that Santa’s handwriting resembled my father’s a whole lot (and his style of painting, too) but I suspended my belief out of sheer will of wanting to believe. And, when a little friend of mine blabbed to me that Santa wasn’t real, I was left with the thought of what an elaborate little game my parents played with me … quite an act of love.
This generation is not quite up to totally hand-making a card this year… too busy. I did do it on my computer, with Word, and decorated it with glitter glue. But there’s a good side to that… my son will never recognise the handwriting inside — Santa uses the handwriting font Zapfino.

(Note - Santa came a day early this year, since we have to travel. He sent me an email to tell me he could come early. Isn’t Santa technologically gifted?)

Hello all of you out there, you. I haven’t really been up to reading too many blogs lately. I’m busy. I’m overwhelmed. I’m kind of out of it.
Celebrating is damn hard work!
It seems my holiday season resembles more the many days of Hanukah than Christmas, it stretches on so long. Last night was our first of 3 holiday dinners, at the house of my husband’s ex from his second marriage, and 2 of my husband’s kids from his first marriage. It’s always a bit stressful. Not because she’s my husband’s ex, but for other reasons.
My husband’s second wife, bless her heart, is the sweetest person but damn! She has got to be the latest and most disorganised person I have ever met. This year was pretty good — dinner was only two hours late. I helped her out in the kitchen, where every single flat surface is covered with a dish or chachke or something! We had to put some of the pots on the floor, their simply was no room. I even got in trouble for attempting to clean up, and accidently dumping in the sink her bowl of egg whites for the lemon meringue pie. Oops! Boy did she give me a look… but I swear it just looked like one more dirty dish.
She was so behind she hadn’t even wrapped the presents, so she covered them with a tablecloth and pulled them out of the tablecloth, sometimes forgetting which present was for whom. And, she couldn’t find ours and kept searching upstairs for them. I’m sure they are somewhere in her many piles of stuff.
Also marring the evening is that my son has changed his mind on the potty training and has decided to go back to holding it for days and days… that is, until he has a “little accident” right when I am starving and finally get to my plate of food. And then another. So much for my son being potty trained… I think I jumped the gun .
The pièce de résistance was when one of my husband’s kids — the drug addict, who’s eyes were already at half-mast most of the meal, went into the bathroom for a really long time and came out high as a kite, eyes rolling back in his head, and was all falling down and touchy feely with us, yelling he loved us across the yard as we left.
I will say it was a big shocker and highlight of the evening is that the Drug Addict, for the first time ever at the age of 24, bought presents for us. My jaw nearly hit the floor since year after year he’s never given his father anything, for any occasion.
I think I will eventually have time to laugh at our annual family event. But for now, I am needing a Valium for the rest of the holidays. Pronto.

In the few weeks before Christmas you can see a remarkable change in people. They either turn into incredible a-holes, or they become sweet as can be. I do the best I can to be not one of those incredible a-holes, driving like a maniac, yelling at sales clerks (I may be cranky but I like to spread it around all the year instead of saving it for a few weeks before Christmas. Or maybe it’s a monthly thing, I dunno).
Today, for example, I was rear ended after dropping my son off at school. The woman who rear ended me and I both got out of our cars to take a look at the damage. It wasn’t that bad, I had two scratches on my bumper right where the license plate hit it.

She was in a-hole mode with out a leg to stand on, and all she had to say was “Didn’t you put your car in reverse?” Yeah right whatever lady, I was stopped at a light in drive with my foot on the break.
I took a look at the damage (her car looked fine) and assessed it quickly. I was kind of miffed because of her car-in-reverse-it’s-never-my-fault comment, but I also considered other parts of my car that were already scratched and didn’t look so hot:

Those two little scratches really didn’t depreciate my car at all. And being vendictive for her blaming me for the accident, although tempting, wasn’t worth it either. So I let her go on her way. Anyhow there’s nothing that can get improve this:

It’s the world’s most hideous car graphic. I suppose it’s supposed to make it look ’sporty’ or something, but I just think it looks bad.
So I guess that puts me on Santa’s “nice” list. Don’tcha think?

While eating breakfast cereal this morning:

Mommy, did God make the bowls?

(long pause from me)

Um, honey, well some people believe that God made everything, but I suppose they believe the bowls weren’t made by God, but that God made Man, and Man made the bowls.

Oh.

Chews a bite of cereal.

What about plates?

*Sigh*

Funny how things happen all of the sudden. I spent so much time thinking about when the heck my son was going to finish potty training, and suddenly, out of the blue it seems, it is all done. The little lightbulb floating above his head went on, and he decided that he was going to do it, and that was that. At 4 years and 1.5 months. Finally!
Sometimes little things in life give you a little joy. Like no more pull-ups. Yay! The little plastic potty which he almost never used, is sitting on my front steps in the rain, because two Freecyclers consecutively were supposed to pick it up, and didn’t… oh well it will find a home eventually. Oh, and those useless potty books get to go to someone who needs them. More stuff out of my house. Yay!
And in more good news, I sold all 3 pieces in The Last Big Thing art auction… apparently there was a bidding war. I still don’t know how much I made yet.
I would have gone to The Last Big Thing, but I had another virus… I have been miserable for 3 weeks now with one, than another, coughing hacking virus, then secondary infection and pink eye. Woo hoo.
I guess the moral of this story is… well… there is no moral. Except that selling art and potty training are - good. And, coughing - bad. (Sorry that I can’t come up with anything better right now, I’m not feeling particularly brilliant. Maybe something better will come up when I am not hacking and coughing all night).

This was written in my son’s class’ December newsletter last week. (names blurred for privacy)

Of course the ironic thing about it is that when the class wrote that, my son hadn’t hadn’t pooped on the potty in a couple months. But maybe he was working up to it … tonight, depite the obvious psychological potty training damage I have inflicted on him, he did do it, of his own accord.
Please let this be a trend! Before I get any gray hairs.

For at least the last several years, perhaps monthly (or maybe more often),there has been a group of people stand on 40th Street in my neighborhood waving signs. The signs say “Honk For Peace” and “Bring The Troops Back” and the like (of course, anyone who knows me, knows that I always honk).
They’re pretty darn dedicated: they are out there in all kinds of weather, like today, with the bitter wind chill making it feel like the 20’s. The most interesting thing about them, is their age. Aside from one youthful looking person, I don’t think there is a brown hair in the bunch of them. They all look to be around 70 years old. Maybe older. I’ve seen a few of them in a wheelchair.
I don’t know who organizes this bunch. I imagine they are a group of elderly Quakers who live at the nearby retirement community and want to protest the war. I’ve got to wonder, though, where are all the young people out protesting with them in the icy cold?
Far be it from me to judge, since my standing-out-in-the-cold,-protesting-with-signs days are pretty much over. Still I gotta wonder where are the really young people? Are they too wrapped up in their ipods and cell phones? Too cool to wear their coats, too apathetically hip to care?
For what it is worth, I’ve got to hand it to this group of seniors for standing out in the cold for what they believe. I can only hope I am full of half as much piss and vinegar, when I am their age.

Need Art for Christmas? Sure you do! In fact, buy my art (I have 3 pieces up for auction):

Tickets are on sale now !

Ticket Price:
$25.00 in advance
$35.00 at the door

Buy your tickets @ these Hampden Businesses:

Atomic Books
The Wine Source
Kiss N’ Make-Up

Or, get your tickets
online @ missiontix
http://www.missiontix.com/index.cfm?venue=-hd

for more info go to the Last Big Thing Myspace Page
( http://www.myspace.com/hcclastbigthing)

I don’t think I can get out of this one this time. I’m #36. If my number was 800 I might have a chance, but 36? No way.
Last time I had a jury duty notice, I wrote in a request for an exemption because I had no childcare and I was a nursing mother. I got a notice back stating that I had failed to show. *sigh*
I’m not against doing jury duty but I am not exactly looking forward to it. My husband gets called EVERY year. He did get on one semi-interesting trial several years ago. However it was “interesting” in the wrong way….
A released prisoner was accused of assaulting a prison guard on the street. He was convicted by the jury, but despite his long criminal record he was not returned to jail. Instead, as my husband was leaving the courthouse, the convicted fellow approached my husband on the courthouse steps in a threatening manner. The convicted guy was held back from attacking my husband by his relatives who were attempting to calm him down.
There is a plus side — apparently they do give you a little cash for your day(s) of service… something like 20 bucks. I think it is up from 15 — almost enough for the cab ride home.

There are rare occasions when my neighborhood has a, how should I put it… “special” surreal feeling.
Every now and then I think that feeling is all gone, because so many yuppies have moved in. Then there are days when I don’t — like today, when some odd neighbor put a nasty looking skinned deer, antlers and all, out with the trash. Those are the days I feel like I’m in some wierd movie with Dueling Banjos playing in the background. Or maybe Texas Chainsaw Massacre? I dunno.
The trashmen refused to pick it up (I don’t blame them). Animal control said they would take 48 hours to pick it up (at least it isn’t the middle of stinking hot summer). Gotta love city services!

Update: Thankfully the neighbor who put it there, finally removed it. He thought the trashmen would take it! (maybe they would, but only if you bribed them $20 bucks). I guessed it was one of two neighbors.. and instead of being the rat-shooting one, it was the kids-who-jump-on-a-trampoline-at-midnight one.