Because we work nights, we usually get home after the kids go to sleep. They leave us notes: tests that need to be signed, permission slips, requests for money, and random thoughts are all written out and laid on the dining room table.
Also, anything that arrives in our absence and is addressed “to the parents of…” is immediately opened, read, and taped shut again. Or hidden in their bedroom in a futile attempt to avoid the inevitable, since our schools always send an email alert saying what we should have received.
This is what we came home to last night:
Sometimes it’s better not to know, isn’t it? At least he didn’t hide the letter.
I usually don’t snoop because it always ends in regret. One year my sister found our Christmas presents and showed them to me. I felt so guilty about it. Christmas morning came and I felt like I had betrayed my parents as I kept saying “Just what I always wanted!” after I opened each non-surprise. Since I can’t remember if we ever actually told this story to our parents or not, this seems like a good place to end this post.
Did you ever find anything that made you regret snooping?
#4: You remember that day about a year and a half ago when I was riding on Julietta’s scooter and I wrecked and hurt my finger real bad and I haven’t wanted to go on a scooter or a skateboard ever since?
Me: You mean right before we bought you the skateboard for your birthday that you’d been asking for for three years and now have never ridden? No, I don’t remember that.
#4: Well, that day I had a Slurpee and I dropped it.
Me: While you were riding on the scooter you were drinking a Slurpee? Maybe this is connected to you wrecking.
#4: No, I was drinking it next to the scooter. I just dropped it you know?
Me: Mmm-hmmm.
#4: And when it landed it just landed exactly like this, I didn’t do anything to it, so I took a picture and put it on my phone for the background:
A Slurpee after my own heart
#4: It almost made up for not getting to drink my Slurpee.
Here are your links:
It’s Shamrock Shake time again, at a certain fast food establishment I don’t patronize and haven’t in years. Here’s a badasss homemade Shamrock Shake recipe (bonus: contains actual dairy ingredients, so you can legally refer to it as a milkshake, rather than just a shake. . .gads, I totally sound like a former McEmployee. Which I am.) Shamrock Shake on Homesteading Housewife
If you’ve ever been pregnant, or if you’ve ever made somebody pregnant, or if you’ve never wanted to be pregnant, you should check out this post by Lyz Lenz, who is freaking hilarious and whom I got to hear speak at BlogHer ’12 : I Am Not a Magical Birthing Unicorn
I have a confession to make: I’m real damn glad I missed out on toddler tantrums. If any of you are taking my name in vain right now, please know that I am exactly 30 days away from having four teenage girls living under my roof at one time. For a bit of insight to the science behind why your animal child (um, speaking only of toddlers here) just threw spaghetti in your face, check out this post: Why Does My Kid Freak Out? on Slate. If you have a teen who just threw spaghetti at you, I can’t help you.
One last bonus link for a bonus mom. Lisa Teal-Webb is a stepmom in Ohio who is one of my biggest sources of step-parenting help and inspiration through her group Buckeye Bonus Mom. This link is to an interview NBC4 in Ohio did with her.
Right after we opened my current show, over seven years ago, I took a creative writing class in the city. It was the first time in my adult life that I knew I would be in the same place for the next ten weeks and available every Monday night, so I took advantage of it.
There was a woman in the class who had one of the best short story opening lines ever:
“I hate the way you eat your sandwich.”
It did then and continues to now serve as the basis by which I measure good dialogue in fiction.
Good dialogue in fiction comes from real life- our instructor, author Matt de le Peña taught us that. A statement like the one above can only come from someone stuck in a situation with another person that feels so interminable that they’re either going to kill the other guy, escape in the dead of night, or sell their soul to Satan to make it stop. It immediately sets tension and speaks volumes, with very few words.
When you’re with someone your whole life- or what feels like your whole life- you can fixate on the way they take their socks off, the sound they make before they answer the office phone, how they always move your coffee mug. It can make you crazy.
I hate the way you lay on my tiger. Just to mock me. Not even playing with it.
What do you fixate on? I’m looking for some good lines.
Heart Disease is the number one killer of women. February is National Heart Month. This is a great post from Darla about her mother: What the Heart Knows on She’s a Maineiac. Please do also watch the really eye-opening and funny video at the end of the post from Go Red For Women.
JM Randolph, accidentalstepmom 