…because her mama trained her properly, that’s why.

no, she’s not waiting in that way. or at least, not what you folks might think. this is a pet peeve of mine, and on this last day of NaBloPoMo, i thought i would end on a cranky note. (cos that is what folks expect of me.)

i am a carpool queen. i shuttle kids here, i shuttle them there, mama wreke shuttles kids everywhere. as a stay-at-home mom, i tend to take on rides in the early afternoon, when a lot of my kids’ friends’ parents are still working or quite possibly sitting in traffic somewhere, cooling their heels.

i don’t mind it, really. i get some of my best material listening to the kids talk.  i’ve learned more about which boys are awful, which girls are snooty, which kids are kind, and which people should just be avoided at all costs. i’ve listened to silly-ass knock-knock jokes, i’ve listened to retellings of some pretty nasty pop music lyrics. sure, i make the kids listen to whatever is on my mp3 player, though anything with NSFW lyrics gets the fast-forward treatment. i don’t care whether my kids hear these things, but i suspect the rest of the world would be upset if johnny or janie listened to some of the finer verbage from panic at the disco. like, say, this:

anyway, my kids are trained from the get-go: when someone is picking you up, you wait at the appointed time by the window and watch for your ride. when they come, you shout out and let me know, and then you proceed directly to the car. people are kind enough to give you a ride, and you need to be kind and not make everyone else late by dallying.

apparently, though, this concept is not common knowledge. i can’t tell you how many times my kids and i have to come to people’s doors and knock and collect them. worse than that, though, are the times when the person isn’t ready, and when i mean not ready, i don’t mean that someone had to suddenly hit the loo before leaving. i get that, and i’m actually okay with that. but i have had situations where the person had to finish homework, finish texting someone, or finish talking to someone on the phone. and, in all of these cases, the people weren’t immediately trying to wrap things up, either; they were taking all the time in the world.

GRRRRRR!

i get that stuff happens, and so when it does, i don’t get annoyed or upset. but i have noticed as of late that there are recurrences of these sorts of events with the same folks. it really burns me up. am i supposed to be teaching the kids that they need to stop what they’re doing and get in the car if they have any intention of getting to point B? then, of course, i will get the rep as the mean-ass mom who scares all her kids’ friends.

then again, maybe that’s not such a bad thing…

yes, i am cheating by posting a link to last year’s thanksgiving day post.

but i am thankful to those of you who don’t mind.

here you go.

happy thanksgiving!

you heard the man.

tomorrow is thanksgiving, a day in which millions of families across the US experience something pretty similar: women cooking and cleaning while men eat and then leave to watch TV (usually football.) when i was young, it didn’t occur to me that my mom spent hours cooking ahead of time and then cleaning afterwards, with little help from any of us save for my aunt barbara. i just thought it was a wonderful day where i was able to eat one of my favorite meals and then go off and do what i wanted.  (in fact, one of my favorite memories is a post-thanksgiving bike ride i once took with my aunt.)

now that i’m older, it all falls into perspective. i am the grown woman around here. a week or so before the blessed date, supermarkets start getting insane. in fact, i hit trader joe’s yesterday to get milk and such because i know better than to go into a supermarket today. a day or two in advance, i usually start getting some of the sides ready. some sides lend themselves to earlier prep, like cranberry sauce. others, however, are better left for game day.

and then, my bête noire — the turkey.

i hate cooking meat in general. and turkey? i can tell you about the year it was crispy on the outside and raw on the inside. or the year i was pregnant and making turkey was a struggle between cooking and barfing. i hit the point where it was a far, far better thing to buy the turkey pre-cooked than force my family to wonder whether they were going to experience salmonella up close and personal.

but then, after all this work, and after a beautiful meal, everyone leaves me to it.

women — it is time to tell the men that they need to do dishes. it’s about freaking time someone stood up for all that is fair. if people expect you to go through planning and cooking hell, the least they can do is help wash things and put them away. post-dinner football watching is not a Dog-given right. sheesh, even some of the most feministically-minded women i know still let the men off scot-free. not fair, i say. hand them a sponge and tell them to get cracking.

and for you guys who actually help out on thanksgiving day, bless you, one and all. the rest of you lazy shits — it’s time to get over yourselves. your spouses and significant female others do not work for you, this day or any other. give them something to really be thankful for — a guy with manners who actually appreciates all that has been done for him.

this year, i wasn’t feeling the love for cooking. and  BS agreed that this year, we could spend thanksgiving at a restaurant. i am looking forward to no cooking, no dishes. yeah, i won’t have any leftovers, either.

i think i can live with that.

wow. inboxes can get pretty full.

i don’t often open my gmail account. everything gets forwarded to various places and all is well. but tonight, morbid curiosity had me fire up the old gmail to see what was happening… and what was happening was over 40,000 emails, sitting in a tree, k-i-s-s-i-n-g. well, not really kissing but merely clogging up my li’l corner of cyberspace.

::insert guilt here::

so i started thinking of the major offenders, to which i have subscribed and never cleared out… places like groupon, for example.  search, delete, search, delete, etc. it gets pretty boringly addictive. can i make it below 39,ooo? can i make it below 38,000?

after about 30 minutes, i am only just about 35,000. how the hell did i get this many emails?

i live in fear for when i finally confront my facebook emails. that may require an intervention.

so see you when i come up for air. maybe when i hit 30,000.

and it’s all right, we never met a person we didn’t like in the museum.  we never see ‘em…

today, we had a delightful visit from my BIL, our two nieces, and my MIL. we went downtown for lunch and then hit the spy museum which, for those of you out-of-towners, is a lot of fun. i loved the aston-martin that was kitted out like a bond car, with guns in the front, a wheel cutter thingy, and the works. (wish i had one some days when i am driving the beltway.) there were all kinds of exhibits. i liked the 1960s camera that copied documents when you rolled it over them.  and i was fascinated reading about  the east german woman who bravely spoke against the repressive government, only to get jailed, with a husband who stood by her until the wall came down. then, she ran for parliament, passed a law so that all former east germans could read the files gathered on them by the stasi, read her own file only to discover that the informant who squealed on her was… her husband. (they ended up divorced. i’m sure you’re surprised.)

somehow, though, in this world of buildings dedicated to the knowledge of particular subject areas, we have gone down a road where it’s not simply enough to look at the items and possibly read a bit about them on the walls. now, museums have to be entertaining. they have exhibits where you do things on a computers, or you make things, or you are actively participating in a show. i find it a little disheartening that kids now seem to have little attention span for actually looking at the actual items in the museum but rather race toward the stuff they can do. it’s like they start out with these please touch museums in young childhood and expect all museums from here on out to be places where it’s about their fun and activity.

sigh.

i think i’ll keep trying with my kids anyway. i’ll just have to make sure to go alone to the things i really want to see in the meantime.

what’s in a name?

today, i was having a lovely time on the phone with someone from my credit card company, a company that shall remain nameless, but a company with which i have been doing business certainly for over a decade. the customer service agent had all my information in front of her, and in her pleasant, not-quite-robotic voice, she chatted me up to personally upsell me some service or another. and then, she did it.

she called me shirley.

i kept the name i was born with; but if you think calling me by my husband’s last name irks me, you should just imagine how irritated i am to have my first name mangled.

and it isn’t like i’m really particular about my nicknames, either. Middlebro still calls me boo, which my friend jen-jen is almost too happy to tell people is short for sherry-berry-boo (and yes, she did that once in the middle of the most crowded corridor in high school, much to my total embarrassment.) my family calls me sher; some friends call me by my last name; and of course, my husband has a variety of nicknames for me, all of which i will spare you.  (you’re welcome.)

does your name ever get mangled? i’d love to hear variations on the theme in the comments section. i need a giggle.

…and apparently raised by one, too.

there was an absurd story in the Post the other day about a woman who was arrested at a Safeway for shoplifting. to be more precise, she is a pregnant woman with a toddler who bought two sandwiches and started eating one while she shopped. she allegedly saved the wrapper, but she ended up walking out without paying for the sandwich. not only did she end up arrested, but they took her toddler overnight.  Safeway ultimately apologized to the woman and decided not to prosecute.

i’m sure the whole taking the toddler overnight part of this story is beyond overkill. and of course, arresting a pregnant woman gets a lot of people feeling sympathetic — oh, you get so hungry sometimes when you’re pregnant. oh, sometimes, you just get a little fuzzy when you’re pregnant.

really? i’ve had two kids, and while there were plenty of times i was starving or even slightly hormonal (okay, i was more than slightly hormonally delusional when i suggested to BS that we name BC this), i always had the presence of mind to behave like a mannered, decent human being. (at least, as decent and as mannerly as i am capable of being.) i didn’t start eating in stores prior to paying for my food because i was so ravenous, which is what the Post parenting blogger gave as an excuse. i didn’t blame things on my condition other than the physicalities that were obviously due to being huge — and even then, that’s part of the bargain you make when you decide to have a baby.  i walked around with feet that ultimately stretched a half size larger; a belly that probably has never been the same, and some little person kicking the crap out of my innards. it isn’t comfortable, and at times, i was a surly madame because of it; but it doesn’t give me license to do stuff i know i ought not to. should we lock up the preggers ladies until they are 6 weeks post-partum and come back to their senses?

which brings me to my next point/pet peeve: people who eat and/or give their kids food prior to paying for it in stores.

so boohoo: poor hungry pregnant woman ate her sandwich in the store. if she was that bloody hungry, she should have bought the food, taken it outside (it’s freaking Honolulu, not Maine) where there’s always a bench, and eaten it. then, tackle shopping with your blood sugar feeling much happier, lady. i’m tired of people teaching their kids that it’s okay to take something off a store’s shelf and eat it while you haven’t yet paid for it. here’s the thing you need to remind yourself: it doesn’t belong to you until you’ve paid for it. i’m sure there are plenty of times where the people forget to pay for their food. and whether it is done intentionally or not, it costs the store money, a cost which is passed on to the rest of us.

and i’m not paying so that your toddler can chomp on a granola bar because you don’t know how to deal with a toddler (or however many you have) in a supermarket.  there are some parenting challenges you really need to work on. if it’s too difficult to take them, then use grocery delivery. otherwise, you need to put on your big girl and big boy panties and take some responsibility for teaching your kids the proper way to behave in public.

here’s an idea: if you’re taking young kids to the supermarket, make sure they’ve had a snack before you go. or, if you really think they need to eat in the shopping cart seat, bring a snack in a container that makes it obvious that it came from home. and for the love of Dog, please make it something that won’t slime up the grocery cart. i’m tired of grabbing a cart only to get a handful of mashed bananas and kid snot and who knows what else.

and if you, the adult, can’t delay your gratification and feel the strong urge to eat while you shop, then you need to grow the fuck up. now.

oh, and one more thing: if that’s the latter happens to be the case, please don’t breed anymore. you’re making the wolves lo0k like really excellent parents.

yes. it floweth out your child’s backside. yours, too.

as parents, we all think the world of our children. why wouldn’t we? they are all amazing creatures, each one a special flower annointing the earth with a special glow.

of course, your child is more special than the rest.

your child is a kind and gentle person, ever-so-talented academically, ever-so-agile in sports, ever so social and perfect.

and that is why you cannot believe that your child said anything threatening to my child. you cannot fathom that your child called my child stupid, he called him dumb, he told him he ought to kill himself.

and that is also why it isn’t surprising that you invited a few boys over for a playdate while they all stood in a group with my son… only too bad for mine — he was the only one not invited by you, all in front of the others. i was standing there; i heard it all.  or how about the time you cancelled my son’s long-awaited playdate at your house so that another friend of his could come over instead? of course, my son wanted to know why you did this. you can’t imagine how fun it can be to have to come up with a more palatable reason why an adult would be mean to a kid.

this, of course, isn’t one particular person; this is just a composite of some of the bullshit my child has had to experience in the past 6 months.

now see i am the biggest fan of each of my children. that much is true. but i also don’t believe that the sun shines out of their backsides. i’m well aware that my son, for example, occasionally engages in behavior that isn’t stellar. and when i know about it, i call him on it. it’s simply not acceptable behavior.

but not every parent participates in his child’s upbringing as i do, apparently. because there are plenty of parents who are not willing to believe that some pretty harsh things come out of their kids’ mouths.  they cannot conceive of their child engaging in hurtful behavior. shoot, so many of them cannot see how they participate in this behavior, so how can you expect them to see it in their child’s?

i’m tired of lazy parents who live in denial about their kids.

it’s all cher’s fault.

back in 1998, a new technology, called auto-tune, was employed on cher’s hit single believe to ensure that her vocals were perfect.  (if you’re brave, you can give it a listen. i’ll wait.)

did you hear those notes where it almost sounds like her voice has become like a synthesizer? where she sounds more like a machine than a human? welcome to the magic of auto-tune.  and over the past 10 years, it has become a huge tool in the world of pop and R&B. people in country have admitted to using it, too, like shania twain, tim mcgraw, and faith hill. it appears that everybody want to rule their pitch.

music, to those of you who know me or who have paid any attention whatsoever to my blog over the past 9 years, takes up a lot of space in my brain. to me, it is an art that clutches at all that is human inside me and which expresses frailties and strengths about our experiences in life and love and spirit and everything in between. auto-tune removes all that is human and imperfect from music. it distances the artist from the craft. and it creates a gap between the artist and me. there is this computer that sanitizes and perfects the experience.

if you are really all about the music, and  if you are really all about creating a real experience, a real moment between yourself and others, then you need not use auto-tune. i cannot imagine bob dylan auto-tuned, or bruce springsteen, or aimee mann, or anyone whose work i respect. i don’t expect them to have perfect performances, and i don’t want their voices synthesized into electronic nirvana. i want to hear them raw and real and regular. i don’t expect vocal pyrotechnics; i expect emotional truth and warmth.

can you imagine john lennon auto-tuned? nope. me, neither.

sometimes, especially in pop and R&B, there is this need to embellish vocal embellishments. it’s like artists are not so much interested in the emotion of the song but rather in proving they can glide around 16 notes in a second. their vocal chords are superior, apparently. but doing so is fraught with easy failure. auto-tune to the rescue! just because whitney houston could do it without doesn’t mean you need to, and you, too, can sound like a diva! the tv show glee is rife with it. i wonder whether broadway is now, too.

nope. not for me. maybe it’s the aural equivalent of telling those damn kids to get off my lawn, but i don’t want any auto-tune in my music.  and if they want to keep it real, then artists ought to demand that their imperfections remain for us fans to love or not love. i know music is a business, but if the product actually becomes 100% manufactured for our listening pleasure, then there’s no art left.

i like the illusion that there’s something honest going on there, but auto-tune completely pulls back the curtain and let’s you see that the wizard is truly bankrupt, false, and neurotic.

quite possibly, talentless as well.

Dear Overzealous Mom,

After several years of attending chorus and band concerts, talent shows, award ceremonies, and other school assemblies, I have become, in short, familiar with your work. You are the woman who leaps up before each and every song start or critical moment, flips on your video cam, and starts to preserve those wonderful childhood memories we all wish to remember as we move along that strangely short continuum known as life. I’m very glad that you are careful to gather each and every note your child has warbled. I envision a home library filled with videos, each carefully categorized for future generations’ use.

You may not realize this, but thanks to your fastidious attention to capturing those moments, you have also become a part of our family’s memories. At first, I would attempt a paltry photograph here or there, only to capture your back, shoulders, or butt (the latter of which has gotten larger over the years, which I can glean from my photographic evidence.) I would try to sit elsewhere in the auditorium, and yet, like two toddlers hellbent on getting the one toy in the room, our worlds would collide again and again. Over time, I gave up hope at actually watching my child in any performance; I would simply hope that my being there was enough for her. She’ll never know that I spent my time, teeth gritted, trying to see around your standing, ample frame, hearing less her voice and more of the whirr of your taping.

I should learn to live with the fact that your child must be more important than mine or anyone else’s here at school. However, now that the final year at elementary school is coming to a close, I have been asked to share any photographs I have of my child at school activities for one final montage at the graduation program. Instead, as I gather together my collection of pictures, I notice a preponderance of shots of you. While your family may never show much interest in watching your thousands of hours of video, my kids will have to content themselves with multiple shots of your posterior.

I’m picking out the finest samples for the entire 5th grade to enjoy.

Yours,

Wreke

Originally published at Smartly.Com