"I'm Doing it Because I Want to and NOT Because You Told Me To"

So we just got back from a fantastic trip to my sister's house. And by fantastic I mean that no one got hurt on the trampoline, everyone bonded and slept well, and I wasn't too much of a brat. Feel free to substitute another b word of your choice if brat is not to your liking.

As has been my lifetime practice of being nicer to complete strangers than my own flesh and blood, especially when I feel "safe" with them, I continue to be a bit of a nightmare when unleashed upon my family. For those of you who have pitied me for the way my daughter Molly unloads on me, I must emphasize here that it is payback to the nth degree.

Anyway, my sister and I had a great time, greatly aided by the fact that she is a yoga instructor, and attending her Holy Yoga (Christian yoga) class kept me calm and grounded for the most part. I got snipe-y a few times about the kids but kept my stuff together pretty well until right before we left.

After Easter services we went to Shoney's buffet. I was seriously put out when my brother-in-law announced to the waitress-- with great flourish-- "We'll all have the buffet," and the waitress disappeared, taking any chance I had of perusing a menu with her.

I realize you, like my relations, may enjoy buffets. I, however, had something else in mind. A crispy asian chicken salad, perhaps? A chicken caesar wrap? I don't even know what Shoney's offers, but I just wanted the chance to choose for myself. When I go to a restaurant buffet I tend to overeat stuff I don't really like in the first place.

So I guess you can lead Anna to the buffet, but you can't make her eat. I got screechy and weird in front of my bro-in-law as I picked dramatically at my salad and biscuit. Sure I went back later for grits and french toast sticks, but that's beside the point.

I think my tantrum was my way of saying I was ready to be back on my turf, with my own schedule, making my own choices. Old lady much?

So, L, if you are reading this, thanks for having us. The kids and I are still talking about how much fun we had. Thanks for your hospitality and for loving me DESPITE me. I miss you already.

And as far as getting the chance to practice being nicer to those I love? Tom's sister, brother-in-law, and 5 kids will roll into town on Wednesday. You read that correctly.

Pray for us all.



We are over $1300 for the Well Project, but we only have 2 months left to reach $5,000. Here's the donation page.

Keeping Psycho Anna at Bay

Well, my dear sweet in-laws left a few minutes ago after a nice Easter weekend. The weather was good, the kids had a wonderful time with their grandparents, we ate great meals, and my in-laws were their kind and helpful selves. My FIL even made a serious dent in the To-Do list on the fridge, and my mother in law sewed on buttons for me!

I am pleased to tell you that Psycho Daughter-in-law Anna stayed away for the most part.

There were several examples of this such as my blood not starting to boil and my not wanting to poke out my frontal lobe with an ice pick during any number of conversations about coffee, wine, health food, golf, tennis, and how to pronounce the word "Pulaski."

This morning presented the most striking evidence that Psycho Daughter-in-law Anna was not in the building.

MORNING CONVERSATION DURING OUR LAST VISIT:

In-laws Said: "Well, Good-morning, Anna!"

Anna Heard: "Thanks for finally dragging your lazy butt out of bed and gracing us with your presence, Princess! Do you really think it's fair to sleep all day while our beloved son cooks, cleans, tends to the children AND earns a living supporting you and all of your profligate habits? All of our lives we hoped our baby would find someone with our New England Work Ethic and he has to go and find a southerner, and a protestant, who doesn't exercise, can't tell the difference between a flavanoid and a free radical and has about as much gumption and self-control as that disgusting Bill Clinton!"

MORNING CONVERSATION TODAY:

In-laws Said: "Well, Good-morning, Anna!"

Anna Heard: "Well, Good-morning, Anna!"

Whew. Now can I please take my lazy butt and go back to bed?

"Fun Mom"

My mom had a dose of zany in her. Whenever we got a new jar of peanut butter, she dared us to be the first to scoop out a big hunk—with our fingers. She was right in there, trying to be first, too. Sometimes on car trips we had just Dairy Queen cones and gumdrops for lunch.

She let us play a game in the house that involved chucking tennis balls, hard, at each other, as long as we blocked the windows with furniture. When she had to take us to sports practices or rehearsals, she would lean her seat back in the car and instantly fall asleep, no matter who could see her. She sat cross-legged on the kitchen counter as she talked to us. She said “shit.”

Instead of yelling at us for being irresponsible and taking good spoons out into the sandbox, she offered us and our friends 25 cents for each one we found and returned, $1.00 for sterling silver.

One time when the three of us kids were fighting like banshees, she kicked us out of the house, each with a ceramic bowl—telling us that if we were so mad, we could not come inside until our bowls were broken. Fighting turned to bewilderment. Had she finally lost her mind? I was reluctant to do something so utterly wrong, but I eventually broke my bowl against a tree and was soon laughing my head off with my brother and sister.

I thought Mom was cool. This is at the same time I thought she was the weirdest, most old-fashioned, strictest, most embarrassing clog-wearing mom on the planet.

I hope to strike this same balance with my kids. I instituted “Ice cream for Breakfast Day” for the first snow day of every year. There’s never much risk, with the way I eat, that we won’t have ice-cream in the freezer. And, since school most likely is cancelled anyway, there’s no fall-out from all that sugar.

I also make up songs in the kitchen, dance like Pee Wee Herman, engage in lots of potty humor, and talk like a Valley Girl. I wear dorky get-ups around the house, and drive the kids to school with last night’s mascara half-way down my cheeks.

I want to be zany, but in a safe, “I’m still the mom” sort of way. I’m sure we all had friends with the “other” kind of cool mom. You know, the one who hung out playing quarters with the teenagers at parties because she’d “rather have them drinking safely at home” than somewhere else. The mom doing the beer bong. The one who gossiped about who should be cheerleader, and why her daughter had been “robbed!” of the honor.

That other kind of mom always freaked me out. My mom was not that mom. Our drama was not her drama, and she didn’t drag us into any drama she was dealing with in her own life. She lent a sympathetic ear, and dished out hugs, but she let us deal with our own stuff.

If our friends betrayed us, she didn’t call their parents and chew them out, or tell us why we were so much better than they were. She didn’t get involved in who was dating whom. I remember thinking, although I couldn’t put it into words then, that she showed remarkable restraint.

She didn’t label, and she didn’t name call. This made me feel safe because I knew that even if I was the bitchiest bitch ever, or the biggest baby, she’d still be there for me. Instead of screaming at me when I freaked on her, she would give me a sort of wide-eyed, bemused look that said seemed to say, “Uh, yeah, you are acting like a huge ass right now. I’m going to keep my mouth shut. I’m sure you’ll realize the error of your ways before too long.” And I did. No berating, no negotiating, no pleading. She was the mom and I was the kid, and I felt safe knowing that my childish behavior might not make her happy, but it would never rip her world apart.

My mom attracted teens to her, around the kitchen table. Not with beer bongs, but with plates of nachos and a listening ear. If they were boys, she cut their hair using her barber clippers in the middle of the kitchen. She took the exchange student to get birth control after telling her that although she didn’t believe in premarital sex, she would do what the girl’s own mother would do for her if she could be there. She figured out how to make international long distance calls, just to be sure. Did she mention any of this to me, her curious, gossip-loving daughter? Nope. Restraint again.

Kids crave structure, and when we have rules and structure and standards, they feel safe. It’s when they feel safe within these constraints, that we are able to get a little zany. Not "unstable, no dinner, different men in the house, out-all-night" zany, but just a little bit more fun than you would expect from mom on a given day.

I may be more yell-y and psycho than my mom was (maybe I should just start saying “shit” to blow off some steam), but I hope some of her fun rubbed off on me.

So if it’s letting the kids take the cushions off the couch to jump on every night, having ice cream for breakfast, teaching them the diarrhea song , or grooving out to Dance Dance Revolution, I hope my kids see me as FUN MOM. Just not in that order.

Friday Confession: Psycho-Mom

I was going to write about my annual shrinkage, in which I tend to lose 5 stubborn pounds every winter, through no virtue or effort on my part, only to see it land back soundly on my thighs each May just in time for pool season. I was going to regale you with tales of this squandered thinness from Nov-April a chilly time in which even I don’t see myself in a state of undress.

I was going to lament the 5 lb’s presence in mid-July when even the longest skirted swimsuit can’t disguise it. I was going to deliberate whether I should try to keep it off this time, by cutting back on ice cream and starting to exercise again. I was going to leave you with a wise, borderline profound and mostly sincere statement about how losing those 5 lbs does not bring me happiness, for happiness cannot be found in things. But I won’t.

Instead, I have the pressing need to write about something else. Psycho-Mom. I tried to leave her home from Molly’s class Christmas party today, but she snuck into the car with me. Two cups of Constant Comment tea and a Diet Dr. Pepper beforehand, almost as sure an antidote as garlic to a vampire, didn’t ward her off either.

This has been the unfortunate situation over the past few years on field trips and lunch duty, too. I try to shake her off, and sometimes I make it through the craft and snack portion of the party without her rearing her ugly head, sometimes I don’t.

Molly has expressed embarrassment at Psycho-Mom’s unpleasant outbursts. Other moms tend to turn away, much as you would from a train wreck, while sneaking the occasional peek.

Why am I the only bitchy mom in these here parts? The others have wonderful soothing voices and don’t seem driven to psychosis when 16 second graders are all yelling, “My turn! Pick me! She cheated! Me! Me!” at them. The other moms are pictures of serenity, genuine kindness, and Christian restraint. I think of Michelle Duggar, who gave birth to her 18th child yesterday and has never raised her voice to her kids.

I’d almost made it through the whole party when I decided to take the last 10 minutes to play “Christmas Pictionary” on the board. Bad move. There was not enough time for everyone to go, and they all crowded around shouting out answers. The crush of bodies at the board threatened to turn into a WHO concert, or another Black Friday tragedy at Wal-mart. Psycho-Mom was starting to sweat. The clues were too easy, everyone was right and everyone deserved to go next. Four children held dry-erase markers, poised to go. Kids’ eyes started to well with tears. Pure chaos.

By this time the other moms were checking out, cleaning up and vacating. I wish they’d left a few minutes earlier, before Psycho-Mom really spread her wings.

I don’t really know how to paint this picture for you, other than to say it stunk. Kids, knowing that not only was I a horribly unfair mom who had let her own daughter go first, started bemoaning the injustice of it all. The enforcers, key 2nd grade girls, tried to regain some semblance of control by bossing the other kids around, and complaining to me, not knowing how short Psycho-mom’s fuse could be.

When I finally lost it, I insisted they all sit down and I may, just may, have uttered in an extra-loud voice something as self-righteous and pouty as, “ Sit down! Mouths closed! I am hurt, even wounded, that you would be screaming and shouting at me during this Christmas party. Especially while one of your poor fellow students is trying, in vain, to draw our blessed Baby Jesus on the board for you to guess! What, I ask you, would Baby Jesus think?” Crazy mom on Aisle 3, perhaps?

I know when I don’t volunteer for Girl Scout outings, sleepovers and class parties I may look like an uncaring person, who leaves others to pick up her slack, but I’m starting to think that the best gift I can give this year is to avoid these events altogether. To the children, the teachers, and my fellow mommies, I am so sorry this took me so long to figure out.