Your kid sucks

Harsh, right?

Normally I’d agree and be all:

BUT THE CHILDREN!!!!

But really?  You parents who haven’t taught your children to treat others with respect, who haven’t required it, who haven’t gone out of your way to ensure that it’s happening even when you’re not  around? You and your kids suck.

My children aren’t perfect.

I’m not delusional.  But they’re decent human beings. They’re polite, they don’t go out of their way to make y

our child miserable.  Not only would their father and I NOT let them, they wouldn’t let themselves. You know why?

Because

and my children aren’t mean.

This is my daughter.

Really? Fat and ugly? Has the definition changed?

She is sweet and kind and sensitive and smart. She’s good to her family and her friends. She has beautiful eyes, gorgeous hair, a pretty smile, and an infectious laugh. She comes home in tears because of the abuse hurled her way.  She is starting to believe the whispers and incorporate the cruel words of others into her internal script.  “I know I’m not pretty.”

I don’t know why these cruel children would care about someone else’s appearance so much. I don’t know why they’d make a sport out of hurting someone who has done nothing to hurt them.

For the first time in my parenting life I am powerless to protect her and it’s killing me.  I will not lie and say I’m not disappointed that she chooses to hide and avoid rather than face them head on. She says drawing even more attention to herself would make things 10 times worse.  I guess since she lives in this world of jr. high a*holes she would know. Still, I can’t help but think that if she didn’t accept their abuse, if she spoke up and made them look her in the eye and repeat their whispers and own them, that they might see that she’s not someone they need to be messing with. But what if she followed my advice and things did get worse? What then??

So parents of “populars,” check in with your kids.  Listen up as you drive them from party to party and practice to practice.  Take the time to remind them how they’re expected to treat others, remind them how quickly the tide turns and how one day they might find themselves on the receiving end of some pretty emotionally brutal treatment. Repeat after me, “Compassion is Cool.”

Let’s hope this tide turns for my girl, but until it does she and I will be here:

Packing up the seeds God planted…

I don’t even know what that means. Or it could be that I’ve got the lyrics wrong. I do that sometimes.  But whatever it is, I’m taking a blogging break. It’s time to take stock of my life and my goals with my writing. It’s too easy to put my creative energy towards this blog (and that other one) than it is to put it towards that actual manuscript I’m supposed to be working on. The one a Very Big Agent wanted to see 5 years ago and I said, “Absolutely! I’ll mail it as soon as I put the finishing touches on it.”  And then I have that other one that I started last year. It’s good. It’s been halfway finished for about six months. I haven’t looked at it in three of those six months. Funny how the words “You could go places in this industry” will send me the opposite direction in a haze of fear. 

It’s time to face the fear. It’s time to finish what I started. It’s time to look up those damn lyrics ’cause now it’s really bothering me.

It’s also time to give my family its privacy. The girls are getting older and their stories are no longer mine to share.

Not so great

This morning my oldest child managed to put soap in her eye and then run through two sets of daily contacts before I could convince her to let nature do its work and flush the burny stuff out of her ocular orbits. Then just as she was putting them on, her glasses broke. Then only a matter of minutes later, she cut her finger trying to fish a stashed pair of contacts out of her pocket. Then she missed her bus. Tough start to the day for anyone. Especially difficult if you’re newly 13.  “I’m going to wear my hair over my eye today,” she told me as I drove her to school in my pajamas. “I don’t want people to think I have pink eye.”  “Good God! Don’t do that,” I exclaimed. “With your luck you’ll walk into a door. Or a moving car.”  I wonder what she did to piss off Karma. Karma’s a bitch.

This morning I noticed my husband’s cat of 17 years had managed to get his arthritic body on the toilet and was attempting to drink the blue water.  I picked him up from the toilet and he peed on me. Like, for over a minute. Sooo much pee. Normally I would find the humor in this, but today I can’t.  Two months ago he weighed over 15 pounds. When he snoozed on the couch he looked like he’d been poured there like a giant pancake. Today you can see his hip bones and he drinks over 2 cups of water a day.  He is always hungry, but declines any food unless it’s cheese or tuna. He no longer grooms himself, and even though he gives it a valiant effort, he doesn’t make it to the litter box more often than not.  It doesn’t look good for him.  He’s been with us longer than we’ve been married, an intrinsic part of our story and it breaks our hearts that his chapters are ending.  

Karma’s a bitch and a whore.

Last night during a rainy and cold and so unevenly matched it was painful to watch select soccer game, I got to experience the dark side of what it means to be on a select team.  Even though the girls are a “team,” they are competing against each other for spots on the field. That means the parents are competing as well. I hadn’t realized this going in.  I know it’s part of the package, but I’ll admit that it’s confusing and hurtful to me to hear things said about my daughter by the very people who are supposed to be supporting her. “She should have gotten that!” “Oh, come ON!” And (and it’s not just me being a sensitive woman) it’s not so much the words as the tone.   I hear them yelling on the sidelines, and I’m confused because a lot of it is NOT supportive.  I hold my tongue, because it will help no one if I say what *I’m * thinking about their daughter (Is she running through water? Another hand ball?), but wow.  So much pressure on these girls. They’re 10 years old. TEN. I worry that I’ve made a mistake, but I worry that NOT allowing her to join select would have been a mistake as well. She loves soccer. She loves being able to say that she’s a level 3 select player. She loves the drills and the practices. She loves it and wants to take it as far as she can. Rec league wasn’t cutting it for her anymore. This is where she needs to be to do what she wants to do. But DAMN, Sam. Back off my kid. She can out run, out kick, and out manuever yours. That’s why she’s out there. Don’t make me say it.

To further punctuate the theme of this post:

She be kickin’ that thar ball

This day we turned a corner in terms ‘o comely wench Thang’s knife throwin’ ability. She actually played th’ game instead ‘o drawin’ in th’ dirt ‘n an’ catchin’ fuzzy thin’s that blow in th’ fall breeze. ‘o course, all ’tis came at th’ cost ‘o her bein’ separated from every lass on her team ‘n fightin’ only wit’ th’ boys. She made it a point a pair or three times to run off th’ field ‘n be tellin’ me how displeased she was wit’ th’ situation, ‘n yet she actually played th’ game instead ‘o holdin’ hands wit’ her best bucko ‘o th’ moment ‘n clotheslinin’ th’ other players.  Unfortunately none ‘o th’ grandparents were thar to witness th’ transformation, ‘n I fear they won’t believe it when we be tellin’ them.

Today is Talk Like a Pirate Day. It’s exhausting, and Jack is deriving far too much pleasure in calling me ‘wench’ at every turn. Scurvy bastard.

How the rest of the world thinks it really is in America

For those of you interested, my season 2 ending recap of The Secret Life of the American Teenager is up over at my other blog.  Christ! I love hating that show!

Oh boy

So… Japan. Good luck with this.

The cutting edge of a mixing spoon.

That’s how I’d describe where I am in relation to popular culture. I’m sure every last one of you has seen this, but I love it and I share that which I love. Except for my men. And my pie. Don’t touch my pie.

Dude, I don’t even know who Channing Tatum is, but now he’s my new pretend boyfriend. Especially after this.

You’re welcome.

Soccer Stats

This past weekend saw the first game in my young daughter’s soccer career. There is NOTHING cuter than a bunch of spazzy 4 year olds dressed for soccer. Unless they were holding kittens, or were actually kittens dressed in soccer gear.

I can haz a socker bal plz?

The game went pretty much as you’d expect.

There was some of this...

 

... and a little bit of this...

 

... and a lot of on-field chatter...

 

But mostly there was this:

this

 

and this:

 

And this:

Oh yeah. She needs me.

Interior: Chez Rosie – Kitchen. Afternoon.

ROSIE and ELDEST CHILD  are  at the kitchen table sharing an after school snack. ELDEST CHILD is nattering on about how cool 7th grade is so far. We join them mid-conversation.

ELDEST CHILD

…and it’s so awesome that I sit right in front of Camille in World Studies because we’re like best friends and I didn’t think I’d know anyone and OHMIGAWD! You have to drive me to school right now!!!

ROSIE

Why?

ELDEST CHILD

Because I totally forgot my homework and it’s due tomorrow and Mrs. S is like totally scary.

Close up of ROSIE banging her head repeatedly on kitchen table.

FADE OUT

 

The first day of school, people. The first day of school and SHE FORGOT HER HOMEWORK. This does not bode well.

 

Winter, spring, summer, or fall

Amy is pretty self-sufficient these days.  Gone are the mornings spent in the bathtub with shampoo mohawks and mom-wielded soapy wash clothes. Long gone are the days of me chasing her slippery body around the tub while doing my best Elvis impersonation (“A-scrubba-scrubba-scrubba in the tubba-tubba-tubba.”)  The screams of “MY HAIR!! YOU’RE KILLING ME WHEN YOU BRUSH MY HAIR!!!” have all but ceased.  I noticed just last week that there are actual dents in the tube of toothpaste – a sure signal that someone besides her mother has been squeezing it. (I’m vaguely OCD about a tidy tube of toothpaste.)  I don’t remember the last time I actually said, “Your teeth have fur on them. Go. Brush.”  These days Amy takes care of all that herself – down to and including the contacts we bought her for her upcoming 13th birthday. She has for a long time, of course, but it hit me especially hard this morning, the first day of junior high, when I realized that my baby, my first born, the child who opened my heart, needs me less than she did yesterday.