“Oh, no, NO MA’AM, you’re not being punished.  In no way.  It’s just the judge’s policy that people with young children wait outside here in the hall ’til the courtroom clears out a little.”

“Oh.  Ok.  But what about how I was here, on time, an hour before people that are going in and coming back out, and I’m still at the back of the line?”

(Rubbing his chin with his hand.  Looking everywhere but at me.) “Uh, well ma’am, that’s just the judge’s policy.  That’s how he tells us to handle it.”

Sooo, trouble-making, rabble-rousing mommy that I am,

I meekly sat back down on the bench.

ONE HOUR LATER

After much chin rubbing and pacing in and out of the courtroom, Mr. Man tells me I can take my kids and go sit on the front row in the courtroom.  But I’m still in the back of the line, somehow. After about 15 minutes of watching my oh-so-well-behaved children sit next to me and play tic-tac-toe, the Mr. Inside-the-Courtroom Security Man says I can cut in front of everybody else and go next.  Thank you Jesus.

Well my whole reason for going to court was to try to reduce the fine, or the speed overage so the insurance wouldn’t have a hissy fit.  He reduced the speed for insurance reporting purposes but had no pity on the fine.  Shoulda let my little one wear his sandals and ripped baseball pants.  And I definitely could have appeared a little more destitute.  Ah, pride.

But what I really wanted to tell him was “Shame on you.  For discriminating against a stay at home Mom.  For saying my time is less valuable than that of everybody else here.  Shame.”

And I haven’t even got to the the really shameful part yet.

While I was sitting on the bench, I saw lots of people pass through that security gate.  People with hats on their heads, people who wanted to argue about leaving their cell phone outside, people with they underwear showing (male and female, top and bottom.)  They all passed right on through to their place in line.  Only I, and one other, were pulled from the line to wait in bench purgatory.

The other person was a lady, maybe 15 years older than me.  She also had brought someone along with her - but it wasn’t her children.  She brought a friend that had agreed to come with her, to help her, because she couldn’t hear very well.  She was not deaf, I confirmed that in my hour and a half sitting next to her.  She just wasn’t positive that she would be able to hear everything the judge said to her.

And guess where her respect for the judge’s time landed her?

Next to me.  Sitting on a bench for two hours while various and sundry complained and shuffled and cussed and moped their way into the courtroom, ahead of us.  Because I have children and her ears aren’t what they used to be.

I think it’s pretty disgraceful.

Since it’s hard to keep a good girl down, I also called my local Board of Education and asked the Pre-K coordinator if my 4 year old could come to 4 Year Old Pre-Kindergarten for half a day instead of the full 8 hours they have scheduled for these tiny impressionable souls.  “Sorry, no.  That would deprive some other tot from the full benefit of the program.”  Translation: ILLEGAL because the lottery in which poor people throw away their money hand-over-fist was always intended to provide day care for those same folks.  For EIGHT hours.   Not four, not three - a full working day or nothing.

This brought to mind a recent run-in with the law I had.  Back in November, as I tried to get a cup of hot coffee to my Mom, I was driving 14 miles over the 45 MPH speed limit.  Now there are several reasons I chose to break this particular law, but since I do actually believe that most laws are good and right, I won’t justify my decision here.  I was ready to present myself in court and throw myself on the mercy of said court.

A month later I trotted myself and two of my adorable, well-behaved (this day, anyway) children up to the State Court and was there early for a 7:30 a.m. court date.  I waited in the line to go through the metal detector, I left my cell phone in my minivan as instructed, and hoped for a quick and merciful resolution.  HA!

Mr. Security Man, on seeing my boys, said “Do you have someone here with you to watch the children?”  “Um, no.”  “Well, tell you what.  You go have a seat over there on the bench (outside the courtroom that everyone else before and after me was filing in to) and we’ll wait for the court to clear out a little.  Then you can go in.”

ONE HOUR LATER

As I watched all the delinquents and late-comers go directly into the courtroom and emerge 30 minutes later to pay their fines, I started to feel a little punished for actually having children NOT enrolled in the Public Daycare System.  So I approached Mr. Security Man and said “Am I being punished here?  For having my children with me?  Because everyone else gets to go in and see the judge, and I’m still sitting on this bench.”

to be continued…

Hey don’t complain at me.  Today.com says I get $1 per 100 word post each day.  So if I can get $2 out of this unhappy occurrence, I’m gonna.  It’s their rules, I’m just trying to play by them.  I hope “to be continued” isn’t ILLEGAL.  That would just be the last straw, you know?

So, I drink a lot.  Mostly water but other stuff too.

To start with, I drink this concoction dubbed (by me) the “cardboard milkshake.”  Konsyl is just psyllium husks mixed with water.  It’s purely for the utilitarian purpose of insuring an adequate amount of fiber in my diet.

And I drink a little decaffeinated coffee.  Every once in a while a splenda sweetened caffeine-free cola.  Caffeine is not the best choice for me.  Maybe later I’ll go into that.

But today I’m thinking about alcohol, as I have so many times over the last 18 years.   This morning as I was thinking about it, and being wishy-washy as usual, I thought maybe if I made a pros and cons list, it would help to see the subject a little more clearly.

First for clarification purposes, let me posit that neither beer nor liquor are good choices for me.  Beer tends to give me cravings for lots and lots of sugar and white flour and doughy-goodness - and since I have forsaken all of those things for the sake of both my health and weight loss, beer is out.

Liquor doesn’t give me any cravings, per se, but it does clash with my tendency to guzzle my beverages.  When I put a drink to my mouth, I mean business.  The water and cardboard milkshake consumption have assured that I just go ahead and drink it, whatever it is.  Sipping is not in my drinking vocabulary.  So liquor is out, for obvious reasons.

That brings us to wine.  I just can’t figure it out.  Can I drink wine?  Should I drink wine?  Will I drink wine?  I tend to be heavily influenced by the latest thought that springs into my head, which means sometimes I think wine is fine, and sometimes it’s the devil.  See my (ongoing) problem?

Thus, a list.  Maybe it will help make sense of this old, tired question.

Pros of drinking a few glasses of wine:

relaxation of tension, stress

relaxation of inhibitions (sexual, judgemental)

fun

social acceptance

Uh, that was a short list.

Cons of drinking a few glasses of wine:  

sometimes “a few” turns into “a few too many”

diminishing returns of relaxation (this is recent and not because of increased consumption)

inability to clearly handle any situation that may arise with our children, especially emergencies

costs money

implying to children that everyone does it, and that it’s perfectly ok

loss of motivation, sometimes for days afterwards

loss of healing, restoring rest

possible headache

making people around me with alcoholic issues believe that they can have just a few and be fine, or making them wish they could

Well that’s a start.  I know there are more on both sides of the list - they pop into my head all the time.  But for now I’ll let this list marinate.  Maybe you have some more ideas?  Or any feedback?  If you have any relevant additions I will update this post as necessary.

And I don’t really have anything to complain about, considering.

But my day just didn’t go like I wanted it to.  There’s so much to do before Christmas and it’s a little overwhelming.

It started with the Christmas cards I was going to get done.  I found 8-packs of photo holder cards at Michaels for a buck.  Very exciting, don’t you know, considering the same cards at Target cost $5 and up.

But then when I sat down this morning to start signing and stuffing and addressing I realized a serious problem.  The opening in the cards did not allow all 5 of our smiling faces to be displayed at one time.  I could either have 4 smiling faces and 1 hidden behind the card, or 3 smiling faces with half of the other 2 peeking out.  NOT satisfactory.  So I painstakingly cut out extra space in all the photo openings.

I mentioned as I cut that this was a difficult task.  E kindly pointed out that “everything is difficult.”  Thanks, E, for that little tidbit of wisdom.

Nothing else like that happened today, but somehow it all felt just as difficult.  B is in his tornado phase apparently.

There were two high points to the day.  One was stumbling across this clip from the Charlie Brown Christmas Special:

It hit a chord with me (pun intended) because it feels like I try to do so much for the boys, but they really don’t care unless it’s exactly the crummy old way they want it.  For instance they would entirely prefer a stupid “Lunchable ” (Lord how I hate those boxes) to a home-cooked meal.  It boggles the mind.  And I get no respect either, Mr. Dangerfield.

The second thing was that when I got home after taking the youngest two to get their hair cut, I discovered my sweet energy-conscious husband had plugged in all the Christmas lights on the house just for me.   Just so it would be nice and pretty when I pulled up.

It was a very sweet, much appreciated gesture.  When I came in here and sat down at the computer I realized why he might have been in such a generous mood.  Go Jackets!

So it turned out pretty ok.  Although it’s not entirely over yet.  There’s still the bedtime ordeal to be got through.  Maybe with a little help from my friend - the box of Pinot Noir I picked up.  (So much for “it’s just not necessary” huh?  More on that another day.)

The best part?  Feeding Pepperidge Farm Goldfish crackers (tm, i’m sure) to a bunch of pushy, trespassing seagulls outside the Starbucks inside Universal Studios.

What?

Let me explain.  As I’ve grown to be a parent (still getting there), I’ve realized that going to amusement parks is not about ME riding all the rides - it’s about watching my children have a triple-decker serving of fun.   It’s about how they jump up and down when they hear they will meet cartoon characters in real life, and then how they freeze in horror when the moment actually arrives and the lion from Madagascar is looming 9 feet over them.  It’s about how they can hardly contain their excitement when they hear “it’s snowing in the street” and then slap each other in the face with what turns out to be soap suds.

Hardly anything lives up to what they expect.  And I think that’s why random encounters with the unexpected turn out to be so memorable.

But even beyond that, the best part of my trip wasn’t about watching the faces of my children.  It was about watching my Mom’s face , when she saw her grandchildren’s fun, when they were feeding seagulls after a full, sit-down coffee at Starbucks.  She was happy because they were happy.  She does so much for them, it’s only fair that she get to enjoy their excited happy little faces every once in a while, without disappointment or fear or exhaustion clouding it all up.

So thanks to the flying pests, for making hundreds of dollars of tickets worth it.

But then I found one, and it wasn’t as funny as I thought it would be, because the animal is dead after all, so maybe I shouldn’t laugh at it.

But I bet it tasted pretty good!

Which brings me full circle, believe it or not, back to the subject of my post.

We came back from Universal Studios in Orlando last Wednesday.  And I’ve just now got the gumption up to resume blobbing.  That’s because, as for me and my house, we ran around like the aforementioned chicken sans head.

Every morning we woke up, lost our heads, and toured the parks like we were brainless pea-fowl.  And every night, we crashed, hard, in our lovely time-share condo, where I was the one deemed most likely to sleep on the living room sofa without complaining about it - at the mercy of anyone who stayed up late (Dad) and anyone who woke up before dawn to throw toys at me (DB, a nephew.)

We had a great time.  I’m sure we looked painful and ridiculous, as the poor chicken did, running around that park all day from ride to ride, but boy, we had a tas-tee time!  Finger lickin’ good.

On every occasion, by the time I finish packing clothes and shoes and pajamas and stuffed animals and toothbrushes and induction-friendly foods and books and dvds and low-sugary snacks and deodorant and my glasses and night-time underwear (euphemism for “diapers for bed-wetters”), I dissolve into a hot, gooey, frantic mess at about 11 o’clock that night.

IF I’m lucky it’s 11.  If I’m not, then it’s after midnight.  And I fall asleep to the sound of the dryer trying to finish that last load of clothes, in which there is at least one article of clothing one of us cannot do without.

And still, even then, there will be something I missed.  Sometimes it’s, oh, let’s say, socks for the middle child.  Then whenever we get where we’re going, and I discover my oversight,  someone is sure to exclaim “You forgot to pack socks for your child?!?  How could you not realize the poor little urchin would need socks?”

And at this point in my life, that’s about the closest I get to cussing.  Especially if the exclaimer has never attempted the feats of minutiae remembrance and stowing as I have.

Because I just dare you to try to remember everything.  Which I do, I remember everything, but in the scattered gypsy world that is our home, it doesn’t all make it into the luggage.  Or it all makes it into the luggage, but then one of the little gypsies pulls it back out for immediate use and fails to mention it.  So one way or another something is forgotten.  Guaranteed.  It’s sure as death and taxes.

So, yippee!  (So called) vacation, here we come!

Postscript:

I actually am excited about seeing their little faces turned up in wonder at the glory of the Disney spectacle.  But there is no time for that now.   I’ll think about that tomorrow.  After all, tomorrow is another day.

Reid: We won’t smell the tourists anymore

By Jeff Dufour and Patrick Gavin
POSTED December 2, 2008 | 11:00 AM

The Capitol Visitors Center, which opened this morning, may have tripled its original budget and fallen years behind schedule, but Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid found a silver lining:

“My staff tells me not to say this, but I’m going to say it anyway,” said Reid in his remarks. “In the summer because of the heat and high humidity, you could literally smell the tourists coming into the Capitol. It may be descriptive but it’s true.”

But it’s no longer going to be true, noted Reid, thanks to the air conditioned, indoor space.

And that’s not all. “We have many bathrooms here, as you can see,” Reid continued. “Souvenirs are available.”

$621 million well spent.

Whatever, guy.  Just whatever.  Sorry your constituency offends your refined sense of smell.  They can’t help it - they’re just the people that elected you to your cushy office AND pay your excessive, unnecessary (after Red Chinese lobbyists buy everything for you anyway) salary.  And can you guess how most of these “tourists” pay that salary through their taxes and still find some leftover to come and stink up your sanitary office?  They sweat, you pale, dumb jerque. (pardon my French)  They sweat at their real jobs.

I’m pretty hot about this - can you tell?  I never liked Harry “we lost the war” Reid before, but this is just the last straw.  He and Nancy Pelosi are the ones that offend my nose, and they manage to do it from hundreds of miles away.

The game is fun, but more fun is remembering my pal from high school, Georgette, and how she was always so gung-ho about the NFL.  In particular she was a Bears fan.  I’m not sure if that was because she always liked the Bears, or if it was just Jim McMahon’s presence on the team. (Here he is selling a scooter. Nice.)  And I’m pretty sure she introduced me to the phenomenon of the Super Bowl Shuffle.

“Shuffle” was the right word, at least.  That may be lamer video than the pick-up trucks and barking at the opening ceremonies of the 1996 Olympics.  A tie, perhaps.  And where did they get that super whitey white guy in the middle?  (I’m white, so I can say that.  For future reference, I spent the first 5 years of my life in a trailer park, so I am also allowed to talk about people that live in trailer parks.  Check the rule book - it’s all there.)

But Jim McMahon is old and busted.  What I’m here to call your attention to is Mr. Mike Carey :

Georgette was also fond of Mr. Carey at the time.  But wait, you say, that was like eons ago.  The 80’s.  Surely this nice-looking young man wasn’t officiating football games at that time.   Oh, but he was.  He has been making calls and waving his hands around for the NFL for 19 years.  And your next question: How old is he then? Go ahead and guess before you scroll down.

(filler so you don’t just look at the answer.  guess, dammit!) alksjdfljdlfhlsdjkflskajdflksdjflksdjflksjdflkjsdlfkjsldkjflskdjflsdkjflskjdflskdjflksajdflksjdf lkjsdflkjsdlkfjslkdjflskjfdlskjflksja;flkjdflskdjfalkjfdlakjsdfsldjkfklsjdflkjslfdkjsalkdjflsakjd flaslkjdflskjdflksajdlfkjasl;dkjflaskjdflskajdflksjdflksajfldksjadflkjsaldfkjaslkjdflkasjdlfkjf lasjdflajsdlfkjsaldkjflsakjdflskdjflaksjflsajdlfkjsaldkfjlsakjdflaskjdflkjasdlfkjalskjdflkajfalkj lajdlfjlakjfdlskajflaskjdflsjflkjsalfjlaskjdflkasjdflskjdflkjslkdfjlsakdjflaskjflaskjflajsfljalkjflak alskdjflaskjflkasjdflkasjdflaksjfdlaksjdflaksjdflaksjfdlaksjdflkjasdlfkjalskdjflaskjdflkasjdfl flaslkjdflskjdflksajdlfkjasl;dkjflaskjdflskajdflksjdflksajfldksjadflkjsaldfkjaslkjdflkasjdlfkjf lasjdflajsdlfkjsaldkjflsakjdflskdjflaksjflsajdlfkjsaldkfjlsakjdflaskjdflkjasdlfkjalskjdflkajfalkj lajdlfjlakjfdlskajflaskjdflsjflkjsalfjlaskjdflkasjdflskjdflkjslkdfjlsakdjflaskjflaskjflajsfljalkjflak

The man in that photo was born in 1949.  That’s 59 years old!  How do some black people do it?  I’ve never, ever seen a 59 year old white man to be that toned and have such a smooth, unwrinkled face.  Kudos, Mike Carey, your are one hot, old, bald NFL official.

It was traditionally a day of waking up way too freaking early.  At the the butt-crack of dawn my parents, my sisters, and whatever husbands didn’t have babysitting duty would pile up in a party van and desperately search for a pile of worthless consumer junk.  a.k.a. “Christmas presents”

We would drive up the road 45 minutes to the closest retail shopping mall - there are closer ones, but they are SO not worthy.  Then we would converge on a door with other hopeless idiots, trying to get inside to see what we could buy, buy, buy.  At least two pit stops to buy and suck down entirely overpriced espresso drinks named after Captain Ahab’s first mate would be necessary.

The whole thing is an exercise in futility.  There really was nothing out there I’ve ever needed.  The one time there was a gift we really wanted to get our son, but couldn’t afford unless we bought it Black Friday at our local mega-retailer, I sent DH to go get it.  And he was back by 6:30 a.m. to finish sleeping.  He’s a no-nonsense kind of shopper and does not countenance the kind of foolishness in shopping I just described. Which means he’s usually one of those on babysitting duty.  Well, just ’cause you’re smart don’t mean you got no easy life, I guess.

For me, it never was about the shopping and the buying.  It was about the tradition.  Sure, a stupid tradition.  Instituted by the retailers to convince me it’s just NECESSARY to buy something the day after Thanksgiving.  But me and my family are stupid like that.  So it was comforting.  And I missed it.  And I was sad.

Fortunately, my sweet husband recognized the sadness and was willing to move heaven and earth to cheer me up.  All it took yesterday was driving me to the inferior local-ish mall area.  He sat in the car with our boys while I ran in and cherry-picked a few little sumpin sumpins.   That, and a ginourmous overpriced caffeinated sugary beverage, was all it took.

So maybe next year the Black Friday shopping instigators in my family will be back in a stupid mood.  But if not, I reckon I’ll be okay too.