Category - Family Life

Philip:  Oh man!  Where’s my pager?
Me:  Did you lose it?
Philip:  I think so.  I’ve been all over the place today, too.  The metro, the commissary…
Me: Do you want me to send it an email and we’ll follow the buzz?

He doesn’t answer, so I sent an email anyway.

Me to pager:  Hello?  Little lost pager?  Where are you?

Philip continues to search, grumbling all the way.  He shoots off an “arrow” prayer, “Please Lord, help me find my pager.”

Ten minutes later…

Pager replies: at the commissary

Life is good.

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Well, it’s official.  Boo and Pumpkin Girl are audition for “America’s Got Talent” on Saturday.  Apparently, the producers of the show contacted their Mexican folkdance teacher, looking for “cultural talent” to audition. Both the adults and the children of the company are auditioning.

I have mixed feelings.  On the one hand, how fun and educational it will be to go through the audition process, not just in front of judges, but in front of cameras and crew as well.  I have no illusions of grandeur in thinking my children are the next Big Thing, but getting used to performing or speaking in public is a good thing.  It’ll be interesting to watch the whole proceedings from behind the scenes and to see the other people who perform.  I’m pretty sure that I’ll walk away from the whole thing never wanting anything to do with the entertainment industry again.

Normally I am very protective of my children.  I want to keep them away from any negative influences until I feel they are mature enough to reasonably handle them.  It’s not about creating hot house flowers that only bloom when carefully attended.  It’s about equipping them with the skills they need to deal with people and situations on their own.  Thrusting them into the limelight of a nationally televised TV show and subjecting them to that level of criticism is not usually the kind of thing I do as a parent.

However, there is safety in numbers.  They have been dancing with the other children for two years now and they all get along really well.  They will perform as a group and fail or succeed as a group.  Odds are, they won’t make it past the DC auditions, but it will be a unique experience for them.  Something they’ll remember forever.  I’ll be there the whole time, as long as the producers let me.  I bet they’ll probably allow the parents to see the actual audition, seeing as how they are all minors.  Who knows, though.

One cool thing is that the auditions are taking place at the very next exit down the highway from where I live.  No fighting traffic downtown and getting lost.  Unfortunately, there are no dressing rooms provided, so everyone has to show up in costume and make up and not mess themselves up for however long it takes them to be called.

The other thing is this…their teacher picked their weakest dance to perform.  It’s a polka, the very one that fell completely apart on the first night of their last show.  I think it’s one of their least favorites, too.  And a polka – really, does that say “Mexican Folkdance” to you?  I didn’t even know that Mexicans even danced the polka until my children learned it.  Oh, and I need to make Pumpkin a hair peice before Saturday.

I was hoping they’d do the children’s favorite, easiest and most impressive looking dance, “Los Machetes.”  This is the quintessencial Mexican dance.  Boys in sombreros, with flashing and clashing machetes, girls in huge, swirling, colorful skirts with matching ribbons in their braided hair.  It’s a simple dance in terms of footwork, but with the girls weaving in and out all over the stage and the boys in the center with their machetes, it’s an exciting dance.

Oh well.  As Philip always says, “it is what it is.”  The children will have fun and that’s what matters most.

According to the contract I have to sign, I can’t tell you what happens on Saturday.  I guess at some point if I mention that I’m flying to LA, you’ll know the company was selected to move on.  Or maybe I’ll just let you know which night the Washington auditions are set to air and what to look for and you can see for yourself.

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During Pumpkin Girl’s piano lesson I realized that it was a good time to mop the kitchen and bathroom floors. So I did.

All clean and shiny and smelling like lemon verbena.

As I said goodbye to the piano teacher, I caught a whiff of something, shall we say…not so pleasant.

I walked through the kitchen towards the living room and realized I hadn’t seen Bip in several minutes.

“Bip?”

He replied from the newly cleaned bathroom, “I have sumting to tell you.”

Oh no.

Let’s just say that his stomach is clearly upset and he had made a mess of epic proportions all over his clothes, himself, the toilet and my clean floor.  Clothes were immediately thrown in the washing machine, and I carried Bip at arms length upstairs for a bath.  Boo was put to work supervising the bath while I tackled the bathroom.

I wiped up and mopped again, remembering to throw the mop head into the washer with the clothes and now my bathroom is clean again.  This time it smells like Chlorox wipes and Lysol spray.

I bathed the boy and washed my hands 52 times because of course I didn’t wear gloves while cleaning. Gloves are for rookies anyways.

Oh, and the computer is acting up again.

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We finally got some snow today!  We’ve been freezing our patooties off, but not any snow.

This is the snowman the boys made.  It wore Philip’s beret briefly before he headed back to work.

Pumpkin Girl and I made this one.

We barely got enough snow to make those two snowmen and just doing that uncovered the grass.  I bet that’s all the snow we get this season.  Do you think we’ll get much more in Colorado?

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What I wanted to tell you on Tuesday, before my day went all higgeldy-piggledy, was about how nice my birthday was.

Philip got me an iTouch which I am enjoying immensely.  I don’t use my cell phone often enough to justify any more than a prepaid plan, so an iPhone would have been an extravagance I was unwilling to pay money for.  We hit a minor snag during the day when we couldn’t remember the stinkin’ password to our router, so my iTouch wasn’t able to do much of anything.  We finally got that squared away and I got busy downloading fun applications.  I got Aurora Feint, Mancala, Topple and Suduko.  If you’ve got an iTouch/Phone, what free or cheap applications do you enjoy?

I also got a Wii Music game.  Way. Too.  Fun!  Easy enough for the kids to enjoy, but still somewhat challenging.  Pumpkin Girl and I totally rock the handbells, playing “Do Re Mi” together.

Speaking of Pumpkin Girl, she and Boo made me a book, complete with recycled cardboard box covers.  The funny thing is, they faced the boxes so the graphics are facing out, and they used a Hostess Cupcake box and a Nilla Wafer box.  Yummy!  Pumpkin wrote the story about a princess and her family.  Boo did the stapling. They were all secretive and busy the day before, the way kids are when they are planning a surprise.  I pretended not to know something was up and made sure to stand on the landing of the stairs and call down loudly to Philip that I was going upstairs now, just in case he needed me.  The scurrying, squeals and slamming of the door that followed cracked me up. I think their book is my favorite gift ever.

We had already gone out to eat on Sunday since we anticipated a lot of pre-inauguration traffic on Monday night.  Bip loves Chili’s, so we stopped there on the way home from the craft store.  It was lunch time, but we ordered dessert.  I’m not sure why, but they asked if we were celebrating a birthday.  We told them we were celebrating mine and they gave us the dessert on the house.  It was their white chocolate molten cake.  Delicious!

So see – I can have good days, too! Granted, they aren’t nearly as funny in retrospect, but they do happen!

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My husband had today off as did many people who work in the District.  So we took the day off school too, even though we got a great civics lesson watching the inauguration.  We looked for a church friend on TV, he was part of the honor guard and carrying a flag.  They never zoomed in close enough to any of the military people for us to identify him, though.

Did anyone notice that we traded one big eared president for another?  I wonder what that means.

My friend Shanti, who is younger than me and therefore far less curmudgeonly, got out with the crowds today.  Check out her Inauguration Meanderings.

Our day did not actually center around politics, though.  We spent most of the time seriously purging and packing up the childrens’ rooms.  It is so hard to get them to give up any of their valuable possessions, no matter how infrequently they play with them.  However, they were very willing to allow us to pack up lots and lots of toys and stuffed animals until we arrive in Colorado – in 6 months!  We agreed that if there is anything that got packed up that they want to play with before we move, they can ask and we’ll get it for them.  Everything else that stays packed up until after we move – well, we got them to agree that we’ll evaluate it at that time.  I’m betting a lot of it can be given away.  Ideally, of course, we’d get rid of it before we move, but this is a good compromise.

Going through every square inch of the bedroom and playroom was exhausting and frustrating.  Yet satisfying.  Pumpkin Girl especially, who is very sentimental, saw the benefit of moving out lesser used toys to make room for her ever growing collection of craft supplies (resemble mom much?).

Then I spent a good half hour sobbing my eyes out on Philip’s shoulder about a misunderstanding I had with someone else.  Turns out I completely didn’t understand what I read and by the time I had a solution worked out, a new email had arrived explaining what the situation really was.

But right under that email was a notification from PayPal regarding the shipping information for a $1,600 order I didn’t place!  Holy Fraud, Batman, we’ve been hacked!  The next 45 minutes or so was spent with Philip on one phone and me on another, filing a claim with Paypal, contacting the bank, etc, etc, etc.  Someone paid for a Macbook they bought on eBay with my Paypal account.  I have now changed every single password on every online account that I can think of, including the one to my blog.

It’s no wonder I have a headache, is it?

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It’s still several days away, but the Inauguration is already annoying me.  It’s messing with my plans all over the place.  Last week, the President came to our base to say goodbye to some of the folks here and shut down the main street and a couple of the gates.  Something was Up today too, as I tried to leave base to take my parents to the Metro station.  An MP was stopping cars and having them turn around.  Right before I got to him, 2 of the President’s helicopters left from the helopad where they’re stationed.  Hmmm. The MP instructed me on how to get around the road closure and then I asked him what was up.  “Sorry, ma’am, I can’t discuss it,” was the answer.  OK, but hey look – aren’t those both the helicopters? (Whenever the Prez travels in Marine One, both helicopters are used at the same time.  Don’t worry, I learned this from the Military Channel, not any of the Army’s Top Men.)

So my plans for the upcoming national holiday are thwarted, too.  We usually hit some of the Smithsonians, but seeing as how they line the National Mall, I don’t think it’s going to be worth the hassle, being less than 24 hours away from the Big Event.  We considered leaving town for the weekend, but we’d have to return on Monday, coming into DC at precisely the same time as every.single. other. person. who thinks seeing the Inauguration will be fun.

Oh, and they are closing all bridges from VA into DC and a good number of offramps from MD to DC, too.  So at some point or another, it is going to be near impossible to get into the District.

Just call me Gripey McGripester.

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On Christmas Eve, Boo put on his dress pants and we discovered that he was outgrowing them, as ten year old boys tend to do.  They were still ok to wear to church, but it was time for new pants.  Later in the week when he was folding his laundry, he left the pants in the living room

I told him to put them away and he told me that he wanted to give them away now that they were too short.  I asked him to please put them away anyway, since he could still wear them if he needed to, until we could get him some new ones.

As ten year old boys tend to do, he brought the pants to his room, but left them on the floor, where I discovered them several days later, crumpled in a heap, now needing to be ironed.  I gave him a stern lecture and instructed him to put them away. Which is what I told him the first time.  No, I didn’t iron or rewash the pants.

Now here we are, a few weeks later.  My parents are visiting and wanted to take us all out to the brunch at the Officer’s Club after the children’s religious education class.  About 20 minutes before we need to leave to drop them off, Boo comes to me and asks if he should change into a collared shirt and his dress pants before class or after. Of course, I reminded him that his dress pants were a wrinkled mess from lying on his floor.

What ensued next was mind boggling.

He threw such a hissy fit over not having anything nice to wear for brunch.  We recommended that he wear jeans with his collared shirt, tie and dress shoes, but he wouldn’t have it.  We suggested just wearing what he was wearing, since brunch here is not all that dressy.  Nope, wouldn’t hear of it.   He was stomping around and carrying on so much that we needed to point out that if he’d hung the pants up in the first place, he would have them to wear.  Oh, and remember -he felt they were too short to wear anyway.

He stormed off, declaring that he was old enough to stay home alone, so he wasn’t going to brunch.  He said something else about not feeling right about wearing every day jeans with a nice shirt.

When he had left, Philip and I looked at each other and said, “Is he throwing a fit over…clothes?  When did he become so fashion conscious?”  It was pretty darn funny.  I guess we really should have been more sympathetic but honestly, who knew he cared so much about clothes?  This does not bode well for the teen years when he realizes that the ladies care about the fashion.

The lesson here is of course, when mom tells you to do something, you really should do it.  Or risk being known as Fashion Boy from here on out.

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OK, you all so didn’t warn me.  I thought we were friends.  Why didn’t you tell me how awful the movie “Ratatouille” is?  Yes, I knew what it was about – some disease infested rodent becoming a chef.  But it’s Disney, fer cryin’ out loud!  Surely they could turn that into something worthwhile?  And it takes place in Paris, so how can you go wrong?

I’ll tell you.

Hordes of pestilent rodents falling out of a poor old lady’s ceiling.

Swarms of disease laden rats tying up the health inspector and throwing him in the pantry, probably to later kill him and eat his liver.

A main character love child (“Mama, how come Gusteau didn’t know he had a son?”) who is bitten all over his chest by said rodents from hell.  Don’t the French have socialized medicine?  Yeah, good luck getting a rabies shot, monsieur.

Rats cooking. Thousands of them. Crawling all over the kitchen, the food, the pots, pans and utensils.  Oh sure, they washed their hands but they are RATS.  I don’t care if they were stuck in an autoclave, they are not going to be clean enough to prepare food.  They weren’t even wearing hairnets.

I could go on, but let’s just say that Pumpkin Girl and I will not be eating out for a very long time.

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