Camp Fuck Up

So my two eldest children, Hallie and Mills, are going to camp this summer with a church.  It is called Camp Akita, and they have varying programs for the children, depending on their grade level.

Hallie went for three days this year, and it is the first time she has been away to that camp for longer than a night.  I basically had her and her friend pack her, when she had a playdate over, and gave her the list, because I was running around with my head cut off, as usual, and I needed to delegate.  When I finally got around to looking in Hallie's duffle bag, she had about 50 stuffed animals, some CD's which she would not be allowed to play, nor would there be any device to play them on, and the bottoms of a bikini bathing suit.

Needless to say, I packed her all up, according to the list, and at 1 o'clock in the morning, she was ready for camp.  My best friend, Alissa, calls Hallie, "Garcia" because she looks like she has been following The Dead all summer and selling grilled cheese sandwiches.  I got Hallie up early in the morning, had her bathe, clipped her nails, put her hair in a pony, and fed her a good breakfast and lunch.  I then took all three children to Larson's toy store to get her something to do on the bus, and because I somehow signed up for the "package deal" somewhere when I became a parent of three, I had to buy them all something.  We raced out of Larson's and pulled into the Church with a minute to spare.

I was congratulating myself and pumping my fist in the air, when I noticed that there were only landscapers and their vehicles clustered in the parking lot.  No buses, no overly polite teens with Camp Counselor Shirts on...NADA.  Something was very wrong.  It is like a joke I love to tell where an Asian couple has a baby that is clearly African American.  The husband suggests to the wife that they name it "Some Din Wong" Well, some din was vewy wong, here, but I was trying to keep my cool because I have found in these situations where I fuck up royally that I should just act natural, as if I planned the whole thing, and then the kids won't freak out.

So, even though I had said things like, "Aren't you so excited for camp?" and "Do you think you'll go down the bubble slide as soon as you get there?"  I quietly got on my "stupid phone" which is an old Blackburry that is like 2G and discovered that camp drop off was the following day.  Niiiicccceeee.  I make a quick U Turn and asked Hallie where her "dream place" to eat lunch would be and she responded just as I knew she would, "Noodles and Company" and we laughed and shrugged it off and made an effort by saying things like, "Well, at least we're ready!" and other stupid stuff you might say when you arrive at the airport to find that your flight has been cancelled.

I tell myself that I am teaching my children to "just roll with it" but secretly I know that they KNOW that I am a huge fuck up.

Case in point, it is Mills' turn to go to camp.  I actually double check my stupid phone to make sure of the dates.  I didn't understand where there was a three day span for her camp, when it was just one night, but then I somehow deduced that there were two sessions.

In my defense, I had just come off a 7 day extravaganza where my best friend and I took our total of 6 girls, ages 4 - 11 to the lake and I was exhausted.  I had 24 hours to regroup and this is the sort of thing that happens when you are suffering from exhaustion.  That is my story and I am sticking to it.  

I digress. Mills is all packed up.  Hallie helped her pack and then I edited and repacked her when they went to bed, again.  I even packed two empty wine bottles when they only asked for one glass vase to make a craft with, because I wanted to give the impression that I am SuperMom and I imagined Mills handing one of her Two Buck Chuck wine bottles to a "less fortunate" camper when HER irresponsible Mom forgot hers.  I was ON IT, Man, and I told all of my children this, as we are pulling up to the church again.

The Moms are walking out without their kids and their camp t-shirts, and I instinctively knew that I had screwed something up again.  Luckily, I met my friend, Trish, outside, before I could humiliate my daughter in front of the staff, and she informed me that Mills and her son were enrolled in day camp for the next two days and on the third day they would spend all day at Camp Akita and then come home.

I want you to imagine the visual of us rolling her suitcase up to the curb and Hallie is holding Mills'
pillow, and Eva has Mills' backpack on, and I am saying, "I guess the buses aren't here yet." when my friend Trish stops me and establishes what a fool I am in front of my girls, AGAIN.

Now, don't get me wrong, Trish couldn't have been nicer.  She told me some story of how she screwed up something to make me feel better, Johnny on the Spot.  She is NOT one of those women who revel in other's misery.  She's a gurls' gurl.  She is totally cool and we are going to pool together tomorrow.  I offerred to take her son after day camp and she was all "No thanks."  Cause she KNOWS I will fuck something up and she imagines her son alone and crying and being comforted by the counselors that just wanna go home, and you know what?  She is absolutely 100% right in her assumption.

So we wheel Mills' suitcase back to the car, while I look around to make sure no one is looking (and so later this blog is FRESH, natch) and I take her in and find her group, and then I tell my other kids to hang back while I take her out into the hall and she starts to well up and I am dying and she says, "I don't want you to leave."

"See," I say, looking for an out.  "YOU ARE TOO YOUNG FOR OVERNIGHT CAMP!  It is a good thing that you are just going to day camp or you would be MISERABLE."

Mills wipes both her eyes and gets that look of indignation on her face that I have seen a million times before and says, "Now can I get that turtle that you keep saying 'we'll see' about?".

"Yes, Mills.  Yes you can."  I hug her tightly and want to die.  I would've bought her an endangered species from the Galapagos Islands on the Black Market at this point.  Anything to absolve me of the guilt and shame I was feeling.  Anything to make things right, again.

"So, when you say, 'We'll see,' you really mean that you are waiting to see if you screw something up and then you can make it all better?"

"Exactly."  And I thought I just knew my girls better than they know themselves.  I forgot that they also have MY number, and they are just waiting to pounce like three little tiny mama pumas when they smell vulnerability. "I have taught you well, my sweet,"  I say as I guide her back to her place in the group.

I get back in the car and I am all flustered and Hallie turns to me and says, "Wow, Mills looked really disappointed.  Are you gonna get her that turtle now? Can I get something?"

"Can I get something, Mama?"  Eva chimes in from her booster seat.

"Yes!  You can all get something!" I yell a little too loudly, "Now, let's go mail those boots I sold on Ebay last May!  I am feeling RESPONSIBLE today!"

Soooo, my advice to you today is that if you are EVER feeling like a Bad Mom, read this and any of my other blogs that represent what a j-hole I am, and you will immediately feel superior again.

I actually have friends that have bad Mom moments, and they call me up to draw upon my stories of forgetting birthday parties, yelling at their kids, or turning all of their clocks in the house forward in order to put their kids to bed early, or any of my other dysfunctional parenting skills (I like to refer to them as "tools"), and they always respond by saying, "Now I feel better.  Thanks."

I have decided that this has become my role in life - to make everyone feel better about themselves, because I am such a huge MESS. I just pray that my kids are able to laugh about all of this... later on.  At the very least, their therapists will be entertained.

Just take note that the friends that make you feel better about losing your cool (like Trish) are your REAL friends, and those that use it as an opportunity to pass judgement on you, are NOT.  We Bad Moms have to stick together, or we will be targeted by Social Services.  There is power in numbers, my friends.

An Inconvenient Truth

I recently went on a GIRL'S TRIP (which should ALWAYS be capitalized) to South Carolina, and my parents watched my three girls while I was gone, and I was going to write a post (and WILL) about my trip, but my adventures in the car, to go and see my parents, and then the dysfunction that went on inside my parents house, ended up warranting it's own post.

Speaking of doors, one of the funniest things, about my parents' house is not only their Sober Valley Ranch Pub (see other post), but the fact that one of their front doors is fake.  I do not mean this, like the door is made of Styrofoam, I mean this, in the way that the front of the house has double doors, but one of them is glued and nailed, I guess, to the living room. Only one of the doors opens, ya dig?   Here I'll just show you a picture to illustrate my point.

Anyway, I drove to Louisville the day before I went on vacation, because I have finally wised up to the fact that it is much easier (for my parents) for me to fly out from Louisville, if they are watching my kids, than for them to meet me in Cincinnati both ways.  I have mentioned that my Mom is on home dialysis, so I haven't talked to her about this, but I am assuming that it makes her life a little easier.

It is NO PICNIC, though, to travel ANYWHERE with my three children, so I definitely need to make a mental note to casually mention what a pain in my ass it is for me, at some later date, because that is just the sort of ungrateful BEEEAAACCHH they raised.

Apparently, I have succeeded in passing along this passive-aggressive trait to all of my children because they are constantly reminding me of how inconsistent I am as a Mother, and everything else I have done wrong in their lives, on a daily basis, this summer.

Finally, one day I asked Mills to keep a running list of everything that is inadequate about me on the our huge chalkboard in the kitchen, so that she can just point to a number, rather than having to strain her little brain to come up with new examples.  If anything, I am efficient when it comes to aiding them in realizing their own smartassnessness.

ANYWAY, among all of the awful, ungrateful things that I have done to my parents over the years, I decided to take along Mills' hermit crab, Tybee, that we got in Georgia that was clearly dead.  You see, while she was away at the lake with her cousins, Tybee's claws began falling off.  We would discover his body parts alongside his painted shell with googly eyes on it that was supposed to resemble a penguin, but I would always compliment Mills on her pet's duck shell, just to irritate her.

SO, Mills comes back from the lake and she is squirting this stuff on him, and is sure that he is still alive, even though he has not emerged from his shell in a week to partake of food or water and he no longer has arms and legs, and I just decided that I would continue with the charade because I was about to go on my Girls Only business trip, and I could not handle the drama that comes along with Mills losing a crustacean pet, again, because it is very painful and arduous for the entire family.

A week before our family vacation, we lost Lilo, the tadpole, who Mills brought back from Indian Princess camp out, which we nurtured for six weeks until he turned into a frog, and then the next day after we had paraded him around the neighborhood as a natural miracle, was floating belly up in his tank.

Therefore, I drove for three and a half hours as Mills sat in the back with Tybee's cage on her lap and listened to her talk to him, and about him. I couldn't help but to be reminded about this scene in Dumb and Dumber.

Now, before you go telling all of your friends that I have the parental coping skills of an umbrella, understand that I had tried to tell her TWICE that Tybee had gone to a better place and she would then break out into hysterics, which caused Hallie to furiously search the Internet for reasons why her hermit crab was still living and then she would acquire HOPE, and her hysteria would subside, so I could get some packing done and she would calm herself down enough to take her tennis lesson, or eat, or swim, or BREATHE, and so finally I just gave up and made the decision to keep the charade alive, so that I could clean the house and get the Hell outta town.

Soooo, we arrive at my parent's house, and I knock on the door that is glued to the living room wall, as I always do, because it gives me sick pleasure, and they open the functional door to greet us and Mills thrusts Tybee and his cage in their face and begins gushing about him effusively, as my parents begin to back away because Tybee's corpse is beginning to decompose while they simultaneously try to mirror her excitement.

"Oh, see," Mills' explains, "Tybee just pooped!  So that PROVES he is still alive and that is why he smells.  He's not dead, he just needed a good POOP!"

There is some glob next to Tybee's painted shell, which in retrospect must have been part of the decomposition process, but she immediately decides that my Dad must clean his cage, and all will be well again.

My Dad immediately gets the look on his face that he always gets when I am pulling some stunt and his eyes scrunch up and he is looking sideways at me and then I usher the kids into the kitchen to partake of the any of the 1,000 varieties of junk my parents stock up on before their visit, and I whisper.  "Look, her crab is dead.  I just can't deal.  This ball's in YOUR court now." and then I ask out loud, "Are we still gonna go to Goose Creek Diner tonight, because I am DYING for their fried green tomatoes and sweet tea."

"Well, sure.  Sure. That sounds good," my Dad says without skipping a beat, because we both LOVE food, and then my Mom comes in, whom we lovingly refer to as Dr. Doolittle, because she truly believes that she can converse with the animals, and then my Dad breaks the news to her I have brought with me a dead hermit crab, and then she gasps, like I knew she would, and says, "Ooooooohhhhh, you're bad." And then, I say, "Well, since you are the animal whisperer, maybe you can bring him back to life."  and then we all laugh and I tell them I am going to take a shower because it has been two days and that I am starving and I go upstairs.

I shower and come down and my Dad says, "I thought you were going to take a shower" because I did not wash my hair because I have discovered dry shampoo, and the kids laugh and we head off in the midst of a torrential downpour because I have a hankerin for fried green tomatoes.

At the restaurant, the kids finish their meals, and I keep feeding them quarters for this ridiculous dispenser that either gives you a tiny floating duck or stickers and the count is uneven amongst the kids, and I just want to eat my meal in peace so I keep digging around in my purse for quarters, as each try is 75 cents, and they each want a duck, but they keep getting stupid stickers, and I run out of quarters, and ask my Dad for a dollar so we can break it with the cashier, which keeps not only my children, but the staff occupied, and you would have thought that I asked him to break a hundred dollar bill.  These are the little nuances that I notice about my parents as an adult, that both miff me and endear me to them as I get older.  And make no mistake, if it were MY childhood, and not my childrens', my Dad would not have given a PENNY for such nonsense, but because he now possesses, as a grandparent, the BEST qualities he ever had as a parent, and then some, he is rooting around in between bites to find quarters to satisfy my girls' every whim.  Unless, he has to break a dollar, that is.

SO, fast forward, I wake up on vacation to see TWO missed calls from my parents' house at 7 am and I panic, and call home and Mills answers on the first ring and whispers in between hyperventilations that Tybee died and that they buried him that morning.

Apparently, Tybee was so stinky that my Dad could no longer keep him in the garage because the stench was beginning to permeate their house and the neighbor's teenage babysitter declared him dead, the night before, when Mills proudly tried to introduce him to her.

I regained my footing because I HATE to see (hear) my child so miserable, and I promptly announced that the day I got home, we would go and get an animal for her because she wanted "her OWN pet" because our 1 1/2 year old Labrador retriever who was delivered at Christmastime and who broke my knee and severed all of my tendons, was not as much fun because she had to share her.

"Okay, when I get home, you can EACH get what you want at the pet store as long as it is not a rodent or mouse-like (we already own these in our garage) and nothing that will die in the next two weeks - so we're talking a fish or a frog and that's it.  Talk amongst yourselves."

Mills perks right up and decides on the spot  that she is getting a goldfish and that she is going to name  it Coco.

I learned later, after I got home, that the morning after Tybee was pronounced "dead" by the babysitter next door, Mills was inconsolable and my Dad took her aside and told her, "Let's just you and me bury Tybee in the backyard and you can make the cross and it will make you feel better."  My Dad, then, fashioned a cross out of two pieces of wood for Mills, which he helped her paint and they buried Tybee together.  When he told me this, I almost cried because I had delivered a virtual shitstorm at the man's doorstep and he handled the situation with compassion, and grace, and love.

It immediately reminded me of all of the times he would hold me when I was a teenager if a boy I liked ignored me at a party, or when I was in middle school and my friends had turned on me and he would take me to get pop rocks and Coke to make me feel better, even though he had NO IDEA what I was going through, but he had the tenacity to empathize with his little girl because she was hurting.

I am so grateful for him and I realize that I have a lot to learn about parenting, but I refuse to let this be an exercise in guilt, as I am prone to do, and instead, I am just going to consider this yet another act of parenting on HIS behalf, concerning ME, because it is summertime, and I am with those kids all of the time, and I am strung out, and he was not only being an ideal grandfather, or "Poppy" as they call him, but also, giving me a break, as HIS child, as he has always done.

My advice to you today, is to value your parents because you just never know how long you will be graced with their presence, and that they always have something to teach you - at every stage of life.  Just as my Dad has taught me to be a parent, good and bad, he is also teaching me how to be a grandparent one day, in a sense.  I just hope I can rise to the challenge and make him proud on both fronts.

Also, don't buy a hermit crab who lives in a gigantic crate with five thousand other crabs and is from a Southern state that is riddled with humidity and then stick them in an air conditioned Mid-Western home by themselves in a crate 1/100th of the size they have grown accustomed to.  I don't care HOW cute the shell is painted. Apparently, even though Tybee was showered with love from his new Human adoptive mother, he died from the temperature change and from lack of interaction with his peers.

Casey Anthony - A Reflection

My manager, Jen and I, were "breathlessly" texting back and forth, when they were about to deliver the Casey Anthony verdict, and then literally right when the bailiff said, "All arise" my four-year-old, Eva, burst into my bedroom, where I like to watch tv, at all times of the day, (weird, I know, yes, I lay in bed) and starts screaming that someone is being mean to her, and that she needs a snack and then everything went black because I was so PISSED that she was yelling and I couldn't hear the tv, that I pounced on her like a spider monkey and told her to "Get out of my room, I said I needed ONE MINUTE to myself!  They are making a VERY IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT ON TV RIGHT NOW!"

She then responded in all of her four-year-old wisdom, "Oh, is the President coming on, Mama?" and I deflated and hugged her and apologized for being such a huge Douchebag.  No, I didn't use the word "Douchebag," Your Honor.

The point I am making, here, is that we all have bad parenting moments.  I don't know about you, but if a bevy of detectives started going through my shit with a fine toothed comb, and then it was broadcasted to the Universe, even though I am a decent wife and mother, anyone with very specific information, taken out of context, could make me out to be a DRUG ADDICTED, BOOZING, CRAZY MONSTER, with a good blog, I hope.  He he.

EWWWWW, think of how popular my blog would get!  Maybe I would finally get advertising!  Albeit bail bondsmen and ambulance chasers, but still!

I say "drug addicted", because the other night Brad texted me at the lake, "What are you doing?" and I responded, "Smoking oxycotin, natch."  Now, taken out of context, if someone were examining all of my texts and facebook posts, and blogs, and just extracting anything that could be construed as NEGATIVE, then I would be a goner.

"Hey, you in for Ladies Night tennis, Johnna?" a friend gave a shout out to me on Facebook the other day.  My response, "I am drinking a glass of wine to get ready right now!"  It was 3 in the afternoon.  Ladies Night starts at 6:30.  Nothing further, Your Honor.

Once when my neighbor sent me an email with a picture of my kids playing with her kids, on a playdate that day, I responded, "If I were to ever catch that perve, I will cut his penis off with a butter knife, and put it under glass and display in in the Upper Arlington Municipal Building."  My neighbor's husband had sent me the picture under his wife's email address, and he was all, "UM, OK."

Unbeknownst to him, Jen, his wife, and I had just been discussing the man that was going around our neighborhood exposing himself to children as they walked home from school.  This kind of thing, immediately arouses the "Mama Bear" instinct in me, to want to track down and kill anyone that would ever lay a hand on my child, or take one one hundreth of an ounce of their innocence from them beforw it is time.  However, taken out of context, this email response, makes me look CRAZED and PERVERTED.  The state rests, Your Honor.

Anyway, a friend on my tennis team, we'll call her Shelly, (because that is exactly who she is) who is also an attorney, and I, were discussing the Casey Anthony trial, and I was telling her how I assumed that when the jury only deliberated for 8 hours, that they were going to come back with a "Not Guilty" verdict, because if you are going to give someone the Death Penalty, a jury usually stays out for days, at the very least.

You see, I have devoted a significant amount of my life to watching Law and Order, and this makes me qualified to make such astute observations.

She then, agreed, which made me feel very pleased with myself, because she actually has an advanced degree in Law, from an accredited University, and actually practices law everyday, and all I had to do was watch TV.  She then made a very good point, and that is that even though, she believes, as I think we ALL do, that Casey Anthony is guilty of killing her child, that the State did not prove it's case, and that she would have a hard time "pulling the trigger," on a Death Penalty verdict, given all of the circumstantial evidence, even as powerful as it was.

She, then, went on to say that if, God forbid, anything ever happened to her husband, that all fingers would point to her if they ever got the text records to her phone, because in anger, she has sent messages such as , "if you don't mow the lawn, I am going to slice you up into tiny pieces and throw your desecrated body into the Scioto River. And the searches I have done on my computer would reflect even MORE incriminating evidence." she continued, "I have actually looked up 'How to kill your husband' when I was in an argument with him while I was on my computer!"  She's hilarious.

Coincidentally, I ended up looking up 'oxycotin' for this blog to see if you can really smoke it, which culminated into a full on investigation of Meth Labs (my favorite is the Lab in Texas that blew up on a boat in the middle of a lake), which I have an unhealthy fascination with.  Now, obviously,  I have no intention of doing either, but this just PROVES that having ADD, and a strong curiosity about the illegal drug industry, doesn't make me GUILTY of anything.  ANYWAY, all this got me to thinking, and that is precisely the origin of this blog.

So, now, in this twisted World we live in, Casey Anthony, not only gets to live freely amongst us, after murdering her daughter, but will also most likely receive a lucrative book deal, and the royalties from the crappy TV movie that will be made from it, and hopefully, we will get to see her naked body in Penthouse, as well.

I do not have any answers, People, I guess the point I am trying to make is that I think the System actually worked in this case, because the Jury did not allow things "taken out of context" like pictures of Casey dirty dancing and searches on the internet to cloud their judgment when it came to deciding whether or not she was guilty of the crime she was being charged with.  The System failed, because the prosecution did not wait until they had enough "hard evidence" before they tried her, and that is the tragedy, here.

My recommendation to you, today, is to not believe anything that is taken out of context, no matter HOW intriguing, or attractive, that information may be to you.  You will be surprised at how much bullshit comes your way, now that your senses are heightened to it.

Baseball makes me batty

Brad is just about the biggest sports fan I know, and I am probably the least interested person in sports that HE knows, and every time we are at a sporting event and I spy a couple with matching jerseys, I ask him what he would do if I were really into sports, and I wanted to go to hockey games with him, with my jersey on, and my face painted, and I was really into the game, rather than how I REALLY am, where I ask an occasional mundane question, or hold my breath, until the KISS CAM comes on, and he always replies, "At first I think I would really like it, and then I think it would get on my nerves." And then I say, "Why?" and then he stands up and yells because someone made a catch or a goal or something, and the conversation always ends there.


So, Brad and I went with my manager, Jen, and her husband, Jeff, to a Cincinnati Reds game last weekend. We sat in the "Diamond seats," which I later learned are the best seats you can sit in, in a stadium.

I learned this two ways, one, by sitting in them, and the other through , my fav, GQ magazine. They have a seating chart in the back of their July issue, that maps out the best seats in a stadium. It is color-coded, and under "our color". They described the season ticket holders as follows:

1. Karma-free titans of oil and banking industries.
2. Men who can only orgasm on yachts.
3. People who actually know several people taken hostage by Somali pirates.

Well, that describes Brad and I to a TEE! The Somali pirate thing, I mean.

So I have a few baseball stories. Not because they were especially exciting games, but because I acted like a huge ass at them. Let me tell you, people, I did not disappoint in the Diamond Seats, either. I may as well have been sitting in the "purple seats" featured in GQ. They are the outfield seats and bleachers which according to them are:

1. Kids and adults who know in their hearts they will catch a foul ball.
2. Men and women who look like Jim Belusi
3. Guys who would let their girlfriend sleep with Dane Cook, no questions asked
4. People who actually like baseball.

My parents used to take us to Reds doubleheaders growing up, and we always sat way up top at Riverfront Stadium. I remember falling asleep alot, and then waking up to swim at the Holidome.
It was one of our only vacations of the summer. Good times.

The next vivid memory I have of baseball, is going with Brad to Reds games in college. We would grill out in some parking structure and bring a cooler of beer and we had a blast. Again, shitty seats, but then who cares? I would just spill my beer on the people in front of me anyway.

Next up, opening day, Colorado Rockies. Brad and I called in sick to work and got hammered for opening day. What I remember most, as usual, is not the game itself, but doing mudslides at a beer garden afterword, and the guy we were with, also Brad, (but we started calling him, Eddie, when he would drink, because his personality would totally change - you know someone like that, I am sure.  Give their drinking alter-ego a nickname.  It's fun! And it humiliates the person you are giving the nickname to.  Unless, of course, they are drinking and they ARE their other personality, and then they think it's funny.)  inviting his girlfriend out with us after she had been in an day-long suicide prevention seminar for work (she was in social work, like me, but she took it much more seriously than I did) and she met us after work, and by that time, we were covered in mud and doing jello shots. She was PISSED OFF, to say the least, and they got in a big fight and she made the other Brad, or Eddie, go home.  I still remember Brad and I laughing at them as she took him by the arm, all covered in mud, and stumbling, through the crowd of people as they exited the beer garden.  We laughed HARD, and then did another jello shot.

What else I remember, is how hung over I was for MY substance abuse board meeting the next day, and how I was literally wanting to puke, as we discussed case after case of clients who were currently not as hung over as I was at that point.

Next memory, seeing the New York Yankees at Yankee stadium on a trip with my pharmaceutical sales class in the city. We took the train from Morristown, New Jersey, where we were training, and arrived three hours early for the game. We decided to stay and party in the Bronx, which was the ONE place my Dad told me not to go, when I went to new York. He watches a lot of Deniro movies, natch.

Of course, I promptly called him to tell him what I was doing from a dirty pay phone, and as he is telling me to "get outta there or you're gonna get killed, especially with that MOUTH of yours," a crackhead that was waiting for the pay phone banged on the door, and I told him I had to go "cause a crackhead is banging on the door, you know, like the ones in "New Jack City", only this one's real!"  I laughed as I hung up. Oh, and I spilled a full beer on the floor during the game, which saturated the Yankee fan's feet and legs in front of me. Don't know who they played to this day.

Which brings us up to date on my most memorable game - the Diamond Seats.


Sat right here. Jen said I was being arty with my beer and peanuts in the foreground. I concur.

Then it got hot, I mean dripping sweat hot, and Jen and I went here for a while.

Then the sun mercifully moved past our seats and we went back out here.

Then we got talking to some healthcare CEO and his adorable family, and she offered us some chocolate covered strawberries she had smuggled from the Diamond Buffet and I did this

Which is an old sorority house prank, Jen and I share, and in my defense, she was all "I know what you're gonna do!" As she clapped, "Do it!" she kept egging me on, "Do it!"

Needless to say, I'll never be invited back.  Anyway, today's advice is to go to a baseball game and do everything but watch the game.  It is my MO and today's stadiums are what they call "fan friendly" which is a term used to describe people like me, who are looking for other things to do during the baseball game while it is going on.  Genius marketing.

Babytalk at AJ's

So we are sitting at AJ's, this really cool beachy restaurant, out on the water, our landlord (I love that word, "landlord," it's sooo...feudal.) told us about, which would be IDEAL if you did not have children, and could take a cab home, but alas, on a family vacation, this is not in the cards. The topics of discussion are ranging from the dance they are working on, to how much they like Mills' new hermit crabs googly eyes that are glued on the top of his painted shell, she just got, when my very pregnant neighbor comes up in conversation.  (Sorry, Erin, you're in my blog, again, but in a good way, sort of.) We all love her two year old, Noah, and we are so excited about the new baby, which is less than two weeks away, and suddenly Mills, my 7-year-old, gets that look on her face when her wheels are turning and she says, "Now, wait, Mom, (the way every sentence now begins when Hallie or Mills are conversatin' with me) now HOW do babies get born, again?"

Up until this point, because I have had three C-Sections, I have always told my children that newborns  are CUT out of you, but in this very moment, I decide to tell the truth, because of an exchange I had a few months back with my pediatrician, about how to explain your period to your children.

You see, much to my dismay, Hallie, my 9, almost 10-year-old, has developed pimples and "boob buds" and my pediatrician was telling me to expect her period and other unnerving maturation signs, and  I was mortified.  It was as if I had been punched in the stomach.  I know that I, too, am a female, and that I, too, experienced puberty, at some point, although, you would not know it to look at me now, because I have the body of a twelve-year-old boy, but to actually imagine my eldest daughter, my baby, going through all of the hormone changes and body image bullshit I have experienced, was almost more than I could bear. I immediately feel guilt about all that hormone-filled cows milk, I fed her all those years, until someone told me to buy organic, so your girls will stay children forever, but it was too late.

You see, I just cut my teeth on EVERYTHING with Hallie.  She is just so INNOCENT.  She is not immature.  She is inexperienced.  And I just love that about her.  The changes in her body are such a paradox to her personality, and that is unnerving to me. She is my first, and every milestone is an event, because it is as new to me, as it is to her.  I do not want to think about what this is doing psychologically to her, and the other two, but I would be willing to bet that Eva (my four-year-old) will be hitting the "clubs" by the time she is thirteen.

"Haven't you ever talked to them about why you have tampons or ANYTHING related to your period?"  the doctor was judging me know, I just knew it.  Next was the scribbling in the file.  I was used to this. "Well, with MY girls, I always just let it happen naturally.  If I were needing to use, you know, something for my period, and they were in the room, I just explained it to them, then and there." she continued.

"Believe it or not, as much as they are in the bathroom with me, it has never come up." I countered.

"Well, maybe the next time a sensitive subject is broached, maybe just be frank with them, and tell them in a non-threatening, literal way."

Well, whatdayaknow, the opportunity presented itself at AJ's Seafood Restaurant, on Tybee Island as we are all eating dinner and looking out at the sunset.  What could be more perfect than that?  Who needs a cramped bathroom with four people in it, to give a tutorial on the childbirth, right?

So, anyway, Mills wipes the catsup off of her mouth, with the back of her hand, and says, "No, wait, Mom, you are not understanding me! HOW DOES THE BABY GET OUT?  I JUST DON'T UNDERSTAND!"

"Mills, they cut it out, remember?"  Hallie chimes in.  Eva is listening now.  GREAT.

"Not all the time."  I say, hoping a dolphin will jump from the water and land on our table.

"Well, then, WHERE?"  Mills demands, "WHERE does the baby get out?  Does it come out your MOUTH or something?"  She is completely animated now, all arm gestures and rolling eyes.

"It comes out your Schwina."  I try to remain nonchalant, as I crack open a crab leg.

Brad's mouth drops open, out of the corner of my eye, and Hallie and Mills look at each other with similar facial expressions and then Eva goes, "SCHWINA!  That's funny!" and throws her head back and laughs.

"Schwina" is the medical term I have always used for their lady parts.  I spell it with an "sch" because my maiden name is "Schell" and it is always capitalized because, you know, RESPECT.  I feel this word is also appropriate because everyone's genitalia should be German.  This is not racist, it is just my way of thinking.

Mills will not give up.  "So Mrs. W's baby is going to come out her Schwina!  How will it fit?"  The interesting part, here, is that there is no giggling.  The table is relatively quiet for the subject at hand, with the exception of Mills' exaggerated gestures and her voice has gone up an octave.  Brad is silent.  I am an island.

"Okay," I say, exasperated, because I just know that everytime they look at my sweet neighbor, they are going to think of her squeezing out a baby from her Schwina, instead of answering the detailed, and thoughful questions she is always asking them about their lives. "The body is made so that when you are having a baby, your Schwina opens up wide enough to allow the baby to come out.  End of story.  Now finish your chicken fingers."  I am literally holding my breath at this point.

The waitress interrupts us, by the Grace of God, and asks if "everything is okay,"  Brad and I order two more beers.  This is gonna be a long one.

"Wait.  Mom."  Hallie says.  "One more thing...Umm, which hurts worse, when they cut you, or when your Schwina pops open?"

"Good question," I recover, without missing a beat.  I am developing a rhythm, now. "Well, they BOTH hurt, but nowadays, they give you medicine so you don't FEEL A THING. I believe that when a baby comes out naturally, the hurt is over more quickly, but I'm not sure, because I have always had C-sections, but with C-sections is hurts longer because you have surgery."  God, is this EVER going to be over?

"Well, then I want to have a baby out my Schwina," Mills concludes, as she takes a bite of her corn on the cob.

"Good luck to you on that,"  Brad finally speaks and we all giggle as the waitress mercifully delivers our beers.

I have no advice today.  Obviously, I have no effing idea what I am doing.  Oh, eat at AJ's if you go to Tybee Isand.  The crab legs suck, but the sunset is amazing.  There.  Pics at AJ's.

The girl that walks by my window

I decided to write a short story about this girl who walks by my windows in the kitchen twice a day.  Here it is.  Totally putting myself out there.  So nervous.  Oh well, you only live once, right?

THE SAD GIRL WHO WALKS BY MY WINDOW

Adele is so irritated right now.  She is walking past all the perfect houses, with their perfect dogs, and their perfect lawns, and their couture children, and she hates herself for the way that she is feeling, but she just can't help herself.

She is on her way to Whole Foods, which is a sorry excuse for an "organic" grocery, and she has grown to loathe the immitation Midwest hippies at the cash registers, who try too hard to encourage her to use one of their recycled bags.  She always opts for "paper" when they point to their ridiculous displays of hempware, and even THAT seems to disappoint them.  She cannot win.

The housewives with their organic groceries and natural supplements, make her want to punch them in the face, when she allows herself to notice them.  And the food, itself, turns her stomach, as she imagines what tofu would taste like.  But she continues to go there, every night, so that she might become "healthy", whatever that means.

If it means that she will stop hating everyone and everything around her, then it will have done it's job.  But, every night she finds the most unhealthy thing that the deli has prepared, be it organic, or not, and feasts until she can no longer move.  The dish usually involves locally obtained cheese or organically grown mayonnaise or something, and it is her DRUG.  She eats until she thinks she feels better, and then eats some more, to chase the high, and then finishes with one of their impossibly rich desserts that are packaged for a family.

She is miserable and she still lives at her parent's house.  She has a shitty job, surrounded by shittier people, and this pilgrimage to Whole Foods, unfortunately, is the highlight of her day.

If she does not go directly home, she goes to Mel's place, in the apartment complex across the street from her parents' house.  Mel is a divorcee, who's wife left him three years ago because "she could not take his mood swings anymore."

That is all Adele knows, and that is all she cares to know.

Mel is an okay lover, and occasionally she gets off, but more often than not, she is left to contemplate his water-stained ceiling as he snores.

She then, gets up, gets dressed, and walks back to her parents' dark, clapboard, overgrown house, that the neighbors inevitably deem "run down".  There is a shitload of yard art that was popular in the eighties, and the teenage boy who is supposed to mow once a week, is probably smoking weed somewhere, while he fondles his skinny girlfriend in her parents' basement, instead.

All of this makes the "cage-free" Asian chicken salad rise up in her throat ,when she thinks about it, so she pushes it down to that deep, dark, bottomless pit that is her subconscious.

Adele is THROUGH with Melvin, she thinks, every time she has a recovered memory of the actuality of her life, but then she takes a left turn on Guilford, when she is feeling lonely and full, and the cycle repeats itself, over and over, again.

She likes her hair, Adele thinks to herself.  It is thick and wavy, and not an ugly brown, and she takes great care to insure that it is conditioned in the summer months.  "My face is not unattractive," she says out loud, as she stares into one of her parents' foggy mirrors in the morning.  It is not foggy from her shower, it is foggy from age, and this agitates her, and she forgets her affirmations.

"At least I am not a virgin anymore," she says to her reflection in the old mirror as she slams it shut, and downs the anti-depressants the smarmy family doctor gave her when she admitted that she had had thoughts of suicide.

"Adele!" her beloved mother calls to her from inside the bedroom.  "My bedpan is full, dear, would you mind?"  The nurse won't be there for a half an hour.  Adele obediently enters her bedridden Mother's bedroom, and delicately removes her waste.

"I love you, Mom," she coos, as she kisses her on the cheek.  "I'll be home before you know it."  Her mother then loses consciousness, again, as she reaches up for her daughter's kiss.

Adele takes her deceased father's cranberry-colored, Ford Taurus downtown to the Columbus Business First building, which they recently moved into, but the hip, savvy, facade of the "urban-like" structure cannot hide the evil that is within.

She is a copywriter for the Classified department and with each successive call, she wants to off herself, over and over again, in more elaborate and imaginative ways.

The people who call her, cannot TOUCH the people she is forced to interact with each day, and that is what depresses her the most.

There is the editorial department with their self-important swagger, as they pitch increasingly mundane headlines to the assistant editor.  Then, there is the advertising department, with their gay McDonald's headseats on, as they wear business suits that will never see the light of day, unless they go out for lunch.  Finally, the circulation department people seem relatively normal, but no one has ever given Adele so much as a glance, so Fuck it.

I guess to be fair, though, it is not as if Adele gives out a friendly vibe.  She does her work and eats alone everyday at the cafeteria, facing the corner with her back to the rest of the crowd.  No one has ever approached her, and asked her if she would like company, as she is simultaneously reading some Oprah Book Club selection to insure this.  This has gone on for four years.

Her supervisor, is one of those people that LIVES for their job.  She actually BELIEVES that she is going to shoot up the ranks of American Business Journal society, based on her stellar performance as a manager, she guesses, but refuses to acknowledge that she has held the same position for 14 years - because she is a douche bag, who delivers mediocre results in a mediocre market.

Adele needs help.  She knows.  She obsesses about people who neither matter to her, nor engage her, nor offend her directly, in any way.  But still, she cannot help herself.

Adele is contemplating this as she walks, home, yet again, from the wretched Whole Foods Grocery, that she is at odds with, when several police cruisers and ambulances, she recognizes from the Upper Arlington Parade, race by her, and bring her out of her trance.

She has finally given in to the self-important, prepubescent grocers, that humiliate her daily, and is carrying home her tray of organic brownies in one of their hemp-like carrying bags that are meant to look vintage.  She is almost knocked to the curb, by the speed and purposefulness of the emergency vehicles, as they whiz by.

She has a fleeting thought that her mother has perished, and that she used her last final burst of strength to call 911.  She dismisses this immediately, not only due to the physical improbability of this, but because the relief she is suddenly flooded with, is coupled with guilt, which is then relegated to the "dark place".

The cruisers make an abrupt stop, a few blocks ahead of her, and someone is already streaming the yellow tape around "the crime scene."  Adele hesitantly approaches the crowd that has gathered around the house that she has passed a thousand times.  She is shocked and mesmerized and curious and sad, all at the same time. 

After talking with the neighbors, Adele gathers that the woman who is always out in her front yard, who waves at her, if she is not distracted by her rambuctious children, has killed herself in a violent way.

Adele decides right then and there, that she will no longer live the life she is leading and will immediately move to Arizona, which has been her lifelong dream.

Life is too short.  She decides.  And she cannot go on living the way she has, for one second longer.

OH HEYAAAALLLL NO!

OKAY.  I heard from my cousin (well, Brad's cousin's wife, but I consider them my cousins, cause they're Cool.) that the Ghost Tours in Savannah are a blast, and that "it was their kids' favorite thing about their trip to Savannah."  Thems is powerful words in my eyes.  Then she went on to tell me that her husband is a huge Civil War history buff and I lost interest because I kept imagining their young girls on these boring Trolly tours (even a horse drawn carriage can't increase the value of that Boorfest) and measuring whether or not swimming at a fancy hotel should beat a Ghost Tour, and then I decided that her bullshit was credible.

So we get all gussied up and actually shower and wash our hair and comb it, and go to The Olde Pink House for dinner in Savannah, which is this amazing old home that has been renovated into this yummy and cool restaurant, lit only by candelight and chandeliers, and is also HAUNTED.

The staff is apparently trained to take you throughout the house and we ended up in the wine cellar next to the pub downstairs. The girls and I, I mean, because Brad was convinced that we were bothering other people who were dining, even though I made our reservation for 5:00 with the three other old people in the place, when it opened, to avoid the kind of scene the Underwood family can create in such a place.

ANYWAY, we are in the wine cellar, which at one time used to be a vault when it was a bank, and there is this table in the middle, set up with wine glasses and a few bottles of wine, and I ask our girl if she ever has wine tastings in here because I am fully going to do one while my kids look on, and she's all, "we used to until someone stole a bottle of wine and then we stopped."

She then started telling us the history of the house, and of course, I mentally went somewhere else, when she used the word "General" and "Civil War" and then she said, "We actually have a picture of Mrs. Habersham.  Do  you want to see it?" She says this, as she reaches under the table and pulls out this framed photograph of this ghost-like, transparent, smoky image of a woman floating in a long dress with the bartender in the background looking straight at the camera, polishing a glass.  She explains that it was taken a few months ago in the very room we are standing in, by a coworker of the bartender after closing, and the girls and I were mesmerized.

As the girls and I were discussing this later, we thought she was going to pull out a creepy portrait of Mrs. Habersham, as the house is dripping with them, and then here SHE is, suprising us with a ghost story when we were least expecting it.  Here is a pic of us in the cellar she took.  It is my favorite picture of the trip.  I guess because I am surrounded by the things that I love the most, my babies, candles and WINE.  Look at Eva.  Classic.

So after an amazing dinner in which I got to have cheese grits and collard greens with an entire fish with it's head cut off.  We killed some time by hanging out in one of the town squares where a sax player was entertaining, and then in true Underwood fashion, we went to a bar.  In my defense, we were supposed to meet the Tour Guide for the Ghost Tour in the parking lot across the street from McDonough's, the bar, and it was 100 degrees.  Nothin' like sitting belly up to a bar with your three kids.  The bartender was really nice and gave them Reece's bits and ice waters while Brad and I drank ice cold draft beer and mingled with the locals.  I reconciled it in my mind by telling myself that families in London go to Pubs all the time, so it was cool.  Here's a few picks from the Square and the bar.

 

I actually have a series of shots that Mills took of herself, but it would take up the entire blog.  Anyway, the tour STARTED at 9:00 pm and was supposed to last ninety minutes (it lasted two hours) and it was a WALKING TOUR, but it was rated the BEST OF on the internet so I chose THAT one, unwisely, I suppose, considering we were the only family with small children there (they usually do the 7pm one) but I wanted it to be dark, so THERE WE WERE.  In my defense, I could have done the "Midnight Pub Crawl" which I WANTED to do, but I relented.

So all us freaky freaks gather in the parking lot across from McDonough's and the guide is actually the Founder of Blue Orb Tours, so in my mind, we had hit the jackpot.  

Our first stop was the Colonial Park Cemetary and it had gotten dark and the guide is explaining how children and animals are most perceptive when it comes to ghosts, and coincidentally, almost every ghost story he told involved a 7-year-old girl, which is the EXACT age of Mills, my middle child.  PEEERRRRFFFECT.  

At one point, she was getting really scared and clutching my hand, when the stories got really scary, and I declared, "Alright, that does it, I am giving you all Benadryl tonight."  Hallie laughed at this, because as usual, she gets me and my twisted sense of humor.

So ANYWAY, at one point the guide is explaining how the very Square that we are standing in, is an actual graveyard that they just filled people with during one of their Yellow Fever epidemics (they had TWO) and that they literally just piled slaves and immigrants who came over from other lands ON TOP of each other all over the block and beyond, before the city was built, because they could not appropriately bury them, because they were dead or dying at such an alarming rate.  

That Square, and the homes on the periphery of  that Square, were then built on top of the gravesite, which they apparently discover from time to time when they are trying to put in a meter or dig for some reason, and they discover human remains.  

Thousands of these victims were buried ALIVE, as at least half of them were, because the last stages of Yellow Fever is a "coma-like" state in which the person is still alive, but appears dead.  The guide goes on to explain that this has been evident in other gravesites throughout Savannah where coffins have been exhumed, and there were scratch and bite marks on the insides of the coffins, where the person awoke from their "coma-like" state and tried to claw their way out, until they could no longer use their hands and then proceeded to bite their way out until they suffocated and died.

This is when I decided that I probably should have taken the kids to the 7pm Tour.  No, it gets EVEN better.  He goes on to explain that according to Gullah beliefs, that if a person is "improperly buried," like say for instance, ALIVE, then his spirit becomes an angry smoke-like presence (think LOST) that inhabits the souls of unhappy people and drives them crazy by eventually invading their dreams and haunting them until they are in a constant state of "nightmare," even in their waking hours, and if you try to pray or become religious to drive it out, it gets worse.  

He continues, "They call this phenomenon a HAG, and it is believed that they can actually inhabit your soul even as we stand here, and go home with you to HAUNT you for the rest of your life."  Both my older children are literally climbing me at this point, (Eva, of course, is in the stroller looking bored and frowning) that I am looking at Brad with desperation, as he wipes his brow and returns my look, with his "I told you so" look, when my favorite thing of the night happens.

Okay, let me set this up for you.  The group (of about 25 people) are all standing in the middle of the Square, surrounded by huge gorgeous homes, in the middle of the night, and we are facing the guide, who is dressed like either a clergyman or a funeral director, I can't decide, and it is DEAD quiet after he says that, and a woman steps out of the group swinging her arms wildly, and shaking her head and she proceeds to walk behind the guide, so as to face us all too,  and pace back and forth as she lights a cig, and she yells, "OH HEYYYEEELLL NOO!  I ain't DOIN' this NO MO!"

So the best part is that he continues with the Ghost Story as she paces back and forth, swinging her one arm, now, because the other is exaggeratedly puffing on her cig.  It is both distracting and polarizing, at the same time.  Finally, Hallie, my nine-year-old, looks up at me and says to me the one pervasive question that has been in my mind for the duration of her cigarrette, since she left the group to do her routine, and says, "Is she gonna LEAVE, or what?"

SOOOOO GREAT.  I know it is inappropriate, but "OH HEYYYAAAALLL NO!" became my mantra all vacation and the Brad, the girls, and I would just double over whenever I brought it up,.  Don't worry I explained that it was a bad word to Mills when she asked, but it was "okay" because I was not the originator and it is "within the context" of a funny story, and Eva just laughs because everyone else does, so I'm cool.

To make matters even more hilarious, the next day as we are all laughing about "OH HEYALLLLL NO!"  and I am lamenting that I did not get a picture of her, as we are downloading our photos, searching for orbs, and there she is.  Hallie had inadvertently snapped a photo of her.  So great.  Pic above.

Blue Orb Tours is supposedly the BEST Ghost Tour in Savannah.  I do not have anything to compare it to, but I concur.  Check it out, if you are ever there, do the Pub Crawl, if you don't have kids, and write to me about it.  Oh Heyall no, take your kids, who am I to judge, I just taught my kids a cuss word on vacation.