BAN THE CLAW December 30, 2008

THE CLAW

Do you see this thing? This evil tool from the game room of the pits of hell?

It’s the claw game.  Most of you have seen one.  It’s the gargantuan crack-like monster lurking in the corner of dusty and dirty game rooms in mid-rate family restaurants across the land.

And Bambi is addicted.

I mean it, I am not sugar-coating it.  Where did I go wrong?  Why can’t she be drawn to the mint bowl like Alpha or the lollypop stash like Cracker?  But Bambi aims higher.  Oh, and let me say also that Bambi is a doll.  A gorgeous, sweet, funny, lovable sweetheart and I love her more than anything.  But she turns…Every time we encounter the crappy animal stuffed beast, she spots  it, right at the moment when we walk in.  If she doesn’t find one right away, her eyes bulge with her mission, eyeballs ever searching, jutting, tearing apart the layout with tiger-like prowess.  She makes her mark and she starts to jiggle, jostle around and sweat.  And she spots her Shangri-La.  She is instantly transformed, she is Gollum.  THE CLAW THE CLAW, THE MIGHTY CLAW.  From the second we sit down, she starts the “claw whine” and I know how badly it will end.  It will end with her crying all the way home.  But let me fill in the middle.

She starting the please game.  “PPLLLEEEASSSEEEEEEEE. “

“Honey, you can’t play that game, we go through this every time.”

“But Mommy, just ONE TIME.”

“No, sweetie, no one ever wins.”

(This is when, conveniently, the little brat from the next door table returned with her gloating father, carrying a cheap ass, Korean-stuffed, lower-quality-than-carnival-crap teddy bear.)

DAYUM

“MOMMMMMMMMM-”

“Just- Honey, can we order first?”

Movie in my head:  I walk over the table, grab the satanic prize  from the little brat and then I smack the dad in the face repeatedly while yelling at him for not being a team player.

If parents across the world would just say NO, then the owners of these establishments would remove them for non-use.  But we get suckered in.  Because we are hungry and we want the cheeseburger and draft beer and we can’t have them until they stop begging and we give them a fucking quarter.

We try to avoid this.  Mike and I do a “claw check”  when looking for a place to eat, much like the old “kid friendly-non smoking” peek in from days of yore.  He double parks and I run in.  If there is a claw, we move onto the next Applebees-barnabys-Hackneys-TGIF’s-crap place that we are looking to dine at…

Santa even had the elves construct a real claw game for HOME.  She plays with it non-stop, while I crouch in the corner and whack my head repeatedly with a wooden spoon to the beat of the circus song that plays over and over and over and over and over an

This should sate her, we gave her the crack pipe.  We let her use it in the comfort of our home.  Surely, she need not go out to get a buzz.  But crack kills, kids, crack kills.

We had an incident the day after Christmas.  Damn, I let my guard down ONE MINUTE.  We were heading to meet family at Buffalo Wild Wings.  It was my cousin Coconut’s birthday and we were all coming together to celebrate.

THERE WAS THE CLAW.  Stop staring at me, you big red greedy whore. You thief, you stealer of little tykes’ hopes and dreams.  Starter of addictive personalities.  DON’T EVEN LOOK AT IT.

What could we do?  We couldn’t leave, this was not our gig.  I could have said, “a table please, very far away from the claw”,  and an older motherly hostess would, with a twinkle in her eye, lightly chuckle while winking and lean in to whisper, “I completely understand, let’s see what we can do”.  And she would put us in the farthest corner from the devil box.  Alas, we didn’t have Aunt Bea, but this young waitress at the prime of her life with her tight sports jersey and her perky, non-breastfed boobs and she would not get it.  She will know soon enough when she starts to breed, but this time,  the slutbag she seats us right smack dab in front of it.  Not directly near it, but riiiiggghhhttt where Bambi can stare at it.

Who am I kidding?  She would have found it.  All the kids were walking around, scoping out the video situation.  Planning and strategically toying with our money in their quick little minds.

I was at the women’s table with the mommies and the offspring.  “A round of chicken tenders, chocolate milk back, for everyone!  And three beers for us, please.”  Cracker was getting a cold and was not recovered from her 5 minute nap in the car.  She whipped off her shoes and hunkered down into doublefisting both her and Bambi’s chocolate milk.  Seven minutes after that, the caffeine kicked in, her legs started to pump and spin like the Road runner, and for the next hour, I chased her while she did laps and half tripped every nubile, perky breasted waitress in the joint.  My beer was neglected.  I needed one of those hats with the beer holders and the straws – Spongebob recently owned one of those.  So J.

And everytime she came back, she went to me first.  Ol Battleaxe Betty who tells it like it is.  “No one ever wins, sweetie.  They make them that way.  Yo-”  (And piping in from the party of 8 in the corner) “I got one Daddy!  I got one!”

Bambi claws at me, “SHHHEEEE GOOOOTTTT ONNNNEEEEEE, MOMMMMYYY PLLEEASSEEEEEE”

“Go talk to your father.”

And Mike who is sitting at the guy table, shoving habanera teriaki wings in his mouth with one hand, and alternating drinking his beer and playing computer poker with the other.  He licks his fingers clean and gives her money.  And the  nightmare continues.

Mike gave the lil nugget almost THIRTY dollars in the span of an hour and half.  Are you fucking kidding me?  AND, it was in 4 quarter increments.  Do you know how many times that means she went back to him to ask for more?  And he gave them to her?

Oh, but by no means was she alone in all this.  She had a partner in crime.  My cousin, Felt and his wife, Teeth, have two adorable little boys, Heisman and Wrestler Fan.  Heisman and my very sweet Alpha were happily content at the end of the table, wolfing down smily face fries and taking turns with the Nintendo DS.  Apricot’s little guy, Star Wars kid, who is like a 4th child to me, brought a little buddy along with him so all the boys were content in their mini-man-dom.  Cracker continued to run laps while gnawing on a chicken tender, which leaves us with the dynamic duo, Bambi and Wrestler Fan.

Those kids were nothing, if not diligent.  At one point, Wrestler Fan, I think was amazed at her determination and put all his efforts into grabbing one for Bambi.  And we all rejoiced!  Our champion!  Our knight!  Victorious!  Slaying the dragon and bringing Guenevere the riches of the world!  Now she can shut it, sit down and eat her mac and cheese.  But it wasn’t the one she wanted.  She wanted the MONKEY. And there were tears.  She flung the unwanted stuffed alligator at Cracker, who screeched with glee and whipped it at the couple behind us.  Bambi was finally cut off.  “You are CUT OFF.”  She remained pouting at her seat, in claw rehab.  There she moped, moaned, keened and wailed until I finally chugged my Blue Moon and declared to Mike, “Wipe your wing-stained mouth, help me grab Cracker and let’s hit it.  I can’t stand it anymore.”  And we dragged Bambi to the car, and she cried the whole way home.

The next morning, my cousin and Coconut’s wife Apricot called me, trying to entice me with bloody mary’s and HBO mockumentary marathons.  As tempting as it was, I was in my own different little rehab, so I had to decline.  But before we ended our chat, she added, “So, wow, Bambi really is addicted to the Claw.  You weren’t kidding.”

Thus,we move on..we start anew, we remain vigilant in our quest for non-claw dining and we strive to encourage home use.

And the bright side is that, although she is tiny enough to do it, she has not been one of the Chuck E Cheese idiots that have tried to climb inside.  Dumb, Bambi ain’t. 

Goodwill baby and regrets November 17, 2008

I saw something the other day and I can’t shake it.

I was at Goodwill and I was sick as hell, shouldn’t have even been out but Alpha had a school project and had to dress up like a park ranger so I needed to find some tan vest shirt khaki crap outfit.  Everyone was with us, Cracker was sleeping in her car seat while Alpha and Bambi were fighting over the DVD remote.  I was like five minutes from dying from pneumonia in the front seat while Mike ran in first to see if they had something he was looking for…more feckin CRAP that we don’t need but we always seem to find at the Goodwill.  While I was waiting for my turn to run in, I saw this couple come out of the front doors and they had what looked like a 24 month old sitting in a shopping cart and they were both screaming at her.  They had their faces up really close to her beautiful BABY face and were shushing her and yelling really loudly.

Ok:  We all get mad at our kids.  They act up when we drag them shopping.  This happens.

But there was something really off about this time.  They looked normal enough, had a little bit of the Wicker Park-grunge thing going on, but they looked a little older, maybe in their early 30’s: tats on the neck, knit-striped fingerless rock star glove thing going on, but pretty average-looking.  They went over to their very nice mini-van and started to put stuff in their trunk.  They bought a real cool looking shelf thing for books.  I thought, how cute is that thing for a little girls room.  But when they got to the car, the mother RIPPED her out of the cart and shoved her face into the baby’s face really closely.  Her jaw was clenched and she was doing this low growl thing at her and she was shaking her really hard and I wanted to run and grab the baby from her.  After she did that, she turned and looked around to see if anyone saw.  I DID.  BITCH. I SAW YOU.  But she didn’t see me.  My gut almost had me jumping out of the car and yelling, “Hey!” but I quickly thought that they would probably get more mad at her.  What should I have done?  I feel like I failed that little baby.  I didn’t do anything. I didn’t do anything.

They threw her in her car seat and slammed the door and I was crying because I can picture this little helpless baby at home with these horrible evil people.  And I wanted to grab her and put her in our car and I would hold her and love her and I don’t even know what she looked like…I didn’t know what to do.   I was so sick and out of it but I should have done something and that was 9 days ago.  Every day since then I think of the Goodwill baby and where she is and if I would have done something, called the police or written down the license plate, something, anything but not just fucking SIT there.  I am ashamed and I can’t stop picturing her parents screaming and hitting her in her kitchen, her bedroom, everywhere she is supposed to feel safe and loved.  Tell me, what would you do?  And…what have I done by not doing anything?

All I can do right now is pray for her and hug my babies an extra 100 times every day.

I am feeling the shame that they should be feeling and I pray that she is okay.

Swiper NOOOOOOO Swiping! (If you are going to take something, go swipe me a glass of wine.) June 25, 2008

I am declaring this as an official statement.

Here Ye, Here Ye, pilgrims of Motherhood! I am officially sick as hell of children’s television.

Even as a college student, I had dreams of being a mom. As I lied in the arms of my college bofriend, I planned out what it would be like. No TV allowed, just blocks of clay in the corners of rooms and paint in buckets so they could paint the walls. I would make all my own organic foods picked out of our garden. I would hand stitch all of their clothing with hemp and frolic in wild open fields with my babies, wearing weaved daisy crowns on our heads and some shit like that. What an asshat.

Then I had Alpha. Oh, I was a proud first mother with all the best intentions. I would not even DARE to let him watch anything when he was a baby. I logged his bowel movements in an excel spreadsheet. With multiple tabs. I made homemade apple sauce, peas and he only drank soymilk. When Bambi came along at a whopping two pounds, we were freaked out for a year so: TV became a little more familiar. Thomas the train and Bob the Builder became familiar friends. By the time Cracker came around, it was hot dogs, pudding, goldfish and after-dinner drinks for Mommy and Daddy. I started to get an itchy rash when hearing Elmo’s voice and my butt would clench listening to the teletubbies theme. But believe you me, bucko, that shit was ON.

Cracker recently became completely obsessed with Dora the Explorer. Ahhh Dora, our little bowl-cut bilingual friend. I love her and I love that she teaches my children to say “por favor” instead of the ol’ stanby “please”. Cracker was previously addicted to Dora’s madcap animal rescuer cousin, Diego, but she has since moved on…

I have taped every episode on our DVR and she would scream “Dddoooorrraaahhh!” at the top of her voice. It’s on quite a bit. There are, of course, regulated breaks. We go out side, we play, we eat, we do puzzles, we read, we play with all of her Dora and Diego toys, but somehow it slowly creeps back on…

I find myself cleaning one room and as I am doing that, the kids are utterly destroying the family room that they are in. When I return to the room*, it’s feckin TRASHED

(*This is not my home, merely a prototype. You get the idea and most probably relate.)

I moan and I cry a little bit and I send them to their rooms. (“DON’T MESS ANYTHING UP! I JUST CLEANED IN THERE!”) I cry because I KNOW that they are trashing the rooms that I just cleaned. I pick up the shit that I have tried to throw away numerous times and has been stealthy picked out of the garbage can by little hands. I find an eleven month old banana stuck in the bottom of the Lincoln log holder and I think I crawl over a little urine on the rug and my blood pressure rises with every bend of the waist and Dora is turned up to volume eleven and our little Amiga is bitching and moaning about Swiper stealing something, (Diego’s Bobo’s are not much better) and I have to yell,

SWIPER, YOU LITTLE FUCKIN’ DELINQUENT, STOP TOUCHING HER DAYUM SHIT AND PISS OFF!!!!!!!!!!!!!

And then I cry because I have cramps and look at the clock and see how many hours it is going to be until I can have a glass of wine. Usually it is around 9:30am and that is always a very unfortunate thing.

Next fantasy…no more TV.

Where’s my glass?

I threw up a little in my mouth. April 17, 2008

ARE YOU KIDDING ME?

I mean, really, are you fricking KIDDING me?

This bride above is THREE. THREE.

I Cry.

I read on CNN.com today

http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/meast/04/17/yemen.child.ap/index.html

that there is an 8 year old that has been granted a divorce. And I start to feel my McDonald’s Southwest salad with grilled chicken coming back up my esophagus because to be granted a divorce, you need to be married and who is the Mother FUCK who marries an 8 year old, but the biggest Yemen perv in the world. I can’t even begin to imagine that the girl in the above picture is THRRREEEEEEE.

My littest daughter, Cracker, just turned two. So if we lived in Yemen, how excited would we be right now because we could be planning a wedding! In between trips to the park in her stroller and nappy time, we can get her eensy weensy little extremities Henna-ed for the wedding. In between diaper changes and teaching her how to eat with a fork, we can go register for china at Macy’s and linens at Bed, Bath and Beyond. Or more appropriately, we can just copy her fucking BABY registry and change the title to BRIDAL registry. Jesus, Joseph, Mary and all of the Saints, this is wrong, wrong, wrong.

Please don’t tell me that these marriages are consummated. At the very least, toss a shila on their heads, dress them up like brunette Henna-handed Jen Benet’s if you must, have your little cultural ceremony that you need, but then for the love of Allah, send her back to her parent’s straw hut afterwards and lock her away in a straw closet so the big bad husband can’t touch her until she is 18.

I picture Cracker getting married when she is comfortably, 28. Same thing for her sister, Bambi. Well, actually, Bambi I worry about. We may need to get she to a nunnery and fast. She is gorgeous and a whole lotta trouble. And she’s only six. Perhaps we can send Bambi to live with the crocodile girl in the jungle with the dead crocodile dad. I don’t think they sell their young in Australia. But Bambi does have a tendancy to harm small animals completely without her knowledge so she might not be welcome.

Me and the girls were at my cousin,s last summer, let’s call them Felt and Teeth. It was like 104 and all the kids were on the slip-n-slide, my son, Alpha and the other boys are rotating between playing baseball and jumping in the kiddy pool: you get the picture. The adults are dying, sweating and drinking Corona. My cousins have frogs that sometimes live in their window gutters and Bambi found four of them. She put them in this little plastic habitat house. If you have ever gone bug hunting with a child, you know what I mean. And she kept poking them, and flinging the thing around and every 4 minutes I was like, BAMBI leave the FROGS ALONE, so she was slick about it, really really slick and I caught her sneaking the habitat under her arm and she ran like a bat out of hell to the other side of the house. As she is running, I see these poor four little frogs, being catapulted, whipped, brain damaged and flung all over the walls of this hot death machine and I was Like, “Baaammmmmbbbiiippputtthefrogdsddoownnnnnnn”, so she dropped them. Kerplunk.
Before I could go over and assess the reptilian damage, I start running after baby Cracker and forget about the poor little buggers and a FEW HOURS later, we have to leave. And she goes to get her frogs so she can bring them home.

“They are not ours honey and we cant take them home, they belong to nature. Get in the car.”

“But I will put them in a baggie, mommy, you will see.”

(Deadlyphoto.com LMFAO, who is THAT webmaster? Talk about fucked up…)

…”HONEY”…and then she is screaming and screaming…and the frogs, the poor little flung fucking frogs, who were tossed., left in the scorching sun and now are laying askew in the upside down frog habitat from hell are murdered. And I am an accessory to a very violent death. She sees this and she cannot even live another minute.

“I KIIILLLLLEEDD TTHHHEMMMM IIIII KKIIILLLLEEDDD TTTHHHEEMMM”
“nononono honey, they are just hot from the sun and they are sleeping” so Teeth and I put them in their waterfall in the back and they are floating lifeless and banging against the little decorative rocks and we tell them to take a long cool drink…”drink froggies, drink”…
Cracker is keening and wailing harder than the Ma of a Dublin IRA prisoner and I carry my weeping frog murderer to the car.

I told Teeth, whispering, “Call me in 20 minutes and tell us that they are fine and that they hopped away. “

The phone call worked and Bambi recovered with only a few tiny permanent scars. But I digress…I was talking about infant brides.

OK, I have done a little research.

They do make them have sex.

“She charged that her husband constantly beat her and forced her to have sex.

‘I used to run from room to room to escape from him. But he would catch up with me,’ the girl said, her tiny frame swallowed in an oversized robe and head scarf, standing with her lawyer.”

…

…

…

There is no excuse in any culture for this. Please some try to explain this to me and make the hurt go away.

Oh, and let’s see here, let me just check Yemen off the Places We Want To Take Our Family For Vacation List. DESLECT. There we go.

Oh, oh Good! Here, look what I found. PHEW! Oh, this makes me feel so much better. Here, look at this,

“Although it has no legal minimum age for marriage, the wife is only allowed to live with her husband once she has reached puberty.”

Excellent, so when they get their period at THIRTEEN, it’s all good. The perv husbands can have them then. Fantastic, I feel so much better and I hope you do, too. I am off to go hug Cracker and Bambi now, throw away the keys to their chastisty belts, burn their passports and lock them in the basement.

The Shopping List. March 23, 2008

My fucking Easter Grocery list.

DAYUM, I had a day. I am not going to bore you all with the insanality of Mike and I trying to prepare for our family Easter Birthday party at our house tomorrow. Let’s just say, today involved a lot of snot, fevers, hangovers, cleaning, shopping and me army crawling under a car on the wet slushy ground to try to get my fucking Easter grocery list.

To protect the innocent i.e. my children, I will refer to them as (Kid A: male. 8 in two weeks) ohhhhh, let’s call him….Apple. No, that’s gay. But if he is we will love him anyway. Let’s call him…Alpha. That’s masculine.

The middle one (Kid B: Girl. 6 years old. Insane like her mother) will be Bambi. The little one, kid C, the runt of the litter shall be herein entitled Cracker. (Cause she’s crazy like her mother)

Alpha and Cracker (this is already a disaster) are having birthdays in two weeks. Cracker was born on the date of the month the day before Alpha, insuring him a life time filled with resentment, misunderstanding and jealousy. And speaking of Jealously, Bambi, literally the Most Jealous Person In The World, is very lucky that the other birthdays fall near Easter, so for a lifetime, she will be showered with Cadbury bunnies, useless stuffed animals and all the peeps Bambi can shove into her little mouth, all under the guise that “she is special and deserves presents, too.”

But back to the fucking Easter shopping list.

I leave the kids with…Mike. Oh well, I already outted him and he is not so innocent anyway. Oh, and one thing, I always forget my lists. I will spend hours on a grocery list, categorizing them by aisle sometimes, for ultimate efficiency. I have been known to actually type them up in an endearing little word document, complete with bullet points. I start these lists sometimes moments after I return from a previous grocery run, when I need to add all the things that I forgot to get on that trip. Needless to say, I work hard on these lists and I quite literally always forget them. I leave them on the counter or shove them in my coat pocket and leave my coat in kitchen. Often, it makes it to the car but it gets lost in the Mcdonalds bags, outdated Mapquest directions and ye ol’ forgotten grocery lists of times gone by…

The point is, I rarely have a list when I get into a store. Then I get in the store and I roam the aisles aimlessly and in a very unorganized fashion, as I drool and mope and give dirty looks to the people who are crossing off things on their little fucking lists with their little fucking pens and I hate them and I always forget at least three things.

Well, I threw this list together today. I think I even wrote it on the back of a Chase deposit envelope on the way to our 5 million dollar Costco run this morning. It wasn’t neat, it wasn’t alphabetized or categorized by aisle or expiration date, but God DAMN it, I was gonna remember to bring that fucker IN with me. Super T (Target with food, The Ultimate Tarjjjayyy) was ridiculous. I got the last possible spot in the last possible corner of the very impossible end of the mall. But I grabbed my fucking Easter grocery list and I went a-walkin. I was chatting with my cousin….Apricot….and I was bitching about how much money we have spent already and WHHHHHHOOOOOOOSHHHHHH

a gust goes by and I’ll be damned if that fucking list didn’t blow right out of my hand. And now watch me as I chase after it because It.Will.Not.Defeat.Me.It.Will.Not.Define.Me.It.Will.Not.Bring.Me.Down.

And it lands literally in the exact middle of the undercarriage of a car parked in a handicapped spot. If I got out a ruler or measuring tape or some sort of Numb3rs Charlie Eppes math graph and figured out the exact middle point of the exact piece of inch that is directly in the middle of under the car, I could not have gotten closer. I CANNOT REACH IT. My cashmere sweater and my jeans are all wet and I am starting to laugh a little like a loon.

I KICK THE CAR! I SPIT ON THE LIST! I TRIP THE OWNER OF THE VEHICLE!

I do not of these things but I want to because I am PISSED.

I didn’t even see the owner of the car, but come ON, it snowed yesterday but now it was sunny and all the snow was slushy and melting and awww man, do I have to get DOWN there on my hand and knees? I am still talking to Apricot who I hang up on by mistake when I have to fucking LAY DOWN on the ground to try to reach the fucking Easter grocery list.

There is a lady staring at me. I feel compelled to explain my situation and I am happy to have an audience.

“I am having a day. (Crazy person laugh) I dropped my shopping list and it went under this car and I can’t reach it and blah blah blah blah blah (interspersed with crazy lady laughing)”

She stares at me for what is a really kind of an uncomfortable amount of time. She says nothing but goes into her trunk and pulls out this thing. This glorious, beautiful, long, pointy thing. I think its an extendo-broom.

She’s says, “I use to clean house, yes?”

God love her.

She squats down and grabs that little fucker and I am jumping up and down in the parking lot like I need to be parking in my own handicapped space for mental reasons. I actually think I may have hugged her, I am too embarrassed in front of myself to try to remember exactly what I did but I think I said things like,” you are an Easter gift” and something about Jesus. I don’t know. Don’t make me look back, but the point is…

I got the fucking Easter shopping list.

It made it into Super T and for the first time like…ever…I FORGOT NOTHING.

Happy Easter.

Feck. March 7, 2008

FeckFeckFeckFeckFeckFeckFeckFeckFeckFeckFeckFeckFeckFeck

I love the word, fuck. Love it. But since it’s St’ Patty’s time, I like to say FECK. Feck Feck feck.

I am going to write a book.

I have decided this. My life is and always was, excessively goofy. It is pretty much a daily occurrence for something ridiculous to happen to me. And I think I owe it to my children to write this shit down. I am working on the outline now and I have already run unto a problem. I am getting to the high school years and now I don’t know what to do. I need to make a call here because there is some FECKED up shit and do they really have to know everything about their mother? I mean, I don’t know half of what my parents did and frankly, I. Don’t. Wanna.

Do they need to know about how I lost my maidenhood or how I scaled my wall drunk at their grandfather’s 40th birthday party? Do they want to read about how I chugged a bottle of Jack Daniels and peed on Sean Gorley’s living room carpet, only to wake up in his soccer uniform (shin guards included)? Must they hear about me trying to make out with a hot BBQ and do they really need to know about my crazy Boulder band daze?

I think not. So I will have to be really selective. But that crazy stuff. That’s the shit that I want to remember, too. It’s good for me. It puts hair on the chest. Reminds me that my kids are never going to be allowed to leave the fecking house. If I had my druthers, they would all be put in a convent until college. But then they might come out weird.

And so what do I call this blockbuster? Oprah’s next book club selection and the reason for my future Pulitzer?

Mama was a Slut but now she makes a mean PB and J? Mommy is bad with money and let me tell you why? How to fuck up a perfectly privileged childhood and education by Mommy? Hmm…Not so much.

I think I will focus on the fun stuff and remember that my children, even if full grown will be reading this and while I want to give them a true account of the many faces and places of Mommy, I want them to respect me. And so I guess I have to respect myself and leave out the scary crap. Maybe I should do and unabridged adult version. Entitled Mom does Porn.

Oh, this will be fun. One more thing for me to fit in my already insanely busy day.

Feck.