Silly Snippets, More Dumb Ads

1) Just saw an unintentionally funny quick clip news ad on our local NBC tv. The marketers' INTENTION was to get viewers to capture news on video and send it in to them as front-liners so that then the station can chase the story.

But the graphics text and voice-over on the ad was, "See it! Shoot it! Send it!" They have NO idea what they just said . . . too funny.

Well, maybe they should be careful what they ask for!

You ought to do that with the next snake or rabid coon you kill. I had more deer on my property eating lilies and groundcover today. Had I had time and the deer not been so quick, I'd have dragged my archery kit out of the attic and taken aim at what I saw, then sent it to them all wrapped up in a big box with a nice ribbon. As for the news station, won't they be surprised what people send to them? They'll have a whole new set of stories to tell!

2) Elder kid, who will return to school Monday after having barely finished his summer AP homework by the skin of his teeth (and not very deeply), has spent much of the week with girlfriend at her beach cottage. He's been in the sun and in boats, in water and sand. He is, effectively, braindead. We had a complicated family weekend and Dad and Tyke were going to a separate beach gathering in the next town over from where elder kid was staying. But girlfriend's family were not scheduled to come back this week because girlfriend goes to a different school and doesn't start as early as Monday. So we had to set up logistics for Dad and Tyke to swing by and pick up elder on their way back.

That was a long preamble to what I'm planning to say: I had to have several phone conversations with elder. But he was so touched by the sun and salt or perhaps chemicals in Long Island Sound that he could not speak a single coherent sentence. Every time we talked, he hung up without saying goodbye, and just left me hanging on a logical cliff. Each time I was stranded, thinking, "Did we communicate anything there?" It was exactly like the Saturday Night Live "revolutionary" character on the Weekend Update segment who wears a jacket from the Army/Navy surplus and tries to argue against newspaper headlines, but never has anything to say. Elder's typical side of the "conversation" was:

Elder kid: They. Like. You know. So they're not. I mean. (five minute pause, during which I'm waiting for more information, or should I say any information at all)(sentence starts up again after I've forgotten what he already DIDN'T say in the first half . . . ) So, coming back, no, uh. Like. I think. So. Can you. I mean. [people are talking animatedly in the background, and he's listening to them, not me] I start to say something, and he immediately starts talking right over me.

Me: Elder, will you stop talking over me and listen to what I have to say, please???!!

Elder: Uh, oh. Yeah. But.

Me: Go away and think. Call me back when you can express what you think you need in a complete sentence! [click]

3) Tyke, having just finished a grueling week of USAA swim clinics, seems to have been affected by the chlorine (this is not the first time). He's lounging around on the comfy chair. We were watching some show on tv whereon the actress Calista Flockhart was a guest. I said, "Tyke. Do you know who that woman in the turquoise dress is?" He said, "No." Then I went on to explain that she is a long-time partner of Harrison Ford.

Tyke looked at me, and then his expression turned to pain and consternation. He said, "Wait! That's impossible! He's like, way DEAD, isn't he?"

At first, I thought to myself, "Oh, because he's so young, he just thinks Harrison Ford is dead because relatively speaking, he's an old guy."

Then Tyke said, "But, Mom, the guy invented the automobile assembly line a bazillion years ago! How could he still be alive?"

Of course I cracked up. I said, "Tyke! I didn't say HENRY Ford! Don't you know who Harrison Ford is?"

He said, "Uhhhh . . . no."

"The guy in Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Presumed Innocent, and Witness."

Then he started laughing and said, "Oh, yeah! But, he is kinda old, though."

4) There's a new dumb ad. Not sure how new it is, actually; I generally tune these things out. I don't buy or use many "beauty" products except my same old shampoo, conditioner, MAC foundation, eyeliner, the fabulous Revlon Colorstay Overtime, and a single coat of Orly nail lacquer (I've used the same stuff for years, though I do toss out and refresh it from time to time).

ANYHOO, this ad is for some company (couldn't determine what it is, and wouldn't hawk it anyway) for an "EYE ROLLER." Its purpose is to tighten up the wrinkly skin around your eyes. PREPOSTEROUS! I am perfectly capable of rolling my eyes without an implement, thank you!

5) Then, finally, this, which has nothing to do with anything else I said, but which fills me with absolute wonder and admiration and happiness nevertheless--SWING it, Temptations! I haven't learned how to embed a video, haven't had time or inclination to learn it until now. Sorry.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4GniJYzGa8

Random Mother's Day Musings

I've kind of run out of stupid things the Tyke says (which is quite unusual). So I have nothing to report there, although I'm sure he'll replenish the supply soon. Actually, that's not true; I do have one! Baseball season has gone into "full swing" as it were, and he is quite an accomplished and obsessed player. He's in a major league that has three ages and he is one of the "elders" this year so the coaches depend on him as a mentor. I'm not proud of the Tyke's smugness about his "elder" status. One of the newest, littlest kids on his team said this weekend, "I played center bench for four innings!" And the snarky Tyke shot back, "Oh, did you play LEFT OUT, too?" That was mean, and certainly does not belong in "a gentlemen's game."

In other news, I had one of my worst Mother's Days ever. Boo-hoo, I am having a little pity party! I myself do not have a mother anymore, so I could not fob off my disappointment on another generation. First off, the boys forgot until at least half way through the day (Tyke) and the big one demonstrated complete oblivion. In fact, the big one decided (without consulting anyone else in the household) that he was going to invite a bunch of boys over to have a band practice. This is a jazz kid. He majors in jazz piano and vocal at his arts academy. He decided to have a ROCK band practice. On my Mother's Day, which I had cleverly envisioned and deeply wished to be a day of specifically designated peace and quiet during which I would blissfully READ while receiving occasional hugs and whisperings of adoration from my offspring. Hah. Dream on.

On the other hand, my DH made me a lovely breakfast. Which is not his job because I am not his mother, but he did it anyway. That was the bright spot . . . it then went downhill . . . First of all, whoever decided that Mother's Day should be Summer Travel Baseball Tryout Day? DUH. Even the madrigal choir director figured out practice should be canceled.

So in troop the boys, who I must admit are a clean, courteous and personable (not to mention genuinely talented) lot. But LOUD. And since they were my guests I was obligated to provide snacks and beverages, which flies directly in the face of my Mother's Day credo: Do Not Lift A Finger for Anyone Else Today. This also one reason I hate previously unannounced invitees. I have no way of being prepared to be a courteous hostess. On a Sunday, I am likely to have few things left in Mother Hubbard's Cupboard, and they are certain not to go together. Such as, say, canned mushrooms and evaporated milk, or niblets corn, chicken broth and popsicles. You would think the popsicles would be okay, but not when one kid is madly drumming, another is pounding piano, and two others are banging away at guitar. The hands are heavily engaged.

Luckily I found a can of frozen lemonade and loads of popcorn.

This is one of my perennial gripes about 1) Mother's Day and 2) my birthday. They will not do anything to help. They will pile up dishes and mess and dirty laundry, etc. but not wash or clean up, because their theory (while misguided and disrespectful, not completely illogical) is that the "special" day only lasts ONE DAY and eventually, if they wait it out, it will not be Mother's Day or my birthday anymore, and then they will be off the hook and I will have to go back to doing it myself just as on regular days. BOO!!!

So the kitchen looks pretty much as though a bomb hit. The empty popcorn bowls and dutch oven full of little burnt kernels and water jug and lemonade pitcher are waiting for me right now, along with the breakfast, lunch and dinner dishes. I am disenchanted and unmotivated and mad and not a little vengeful.

Then what happened? The Tyke and dad escaped all the noise of the band (baseball tryouts), and got back after 5:00. The elder kid SAID his band would only go two hours, but they stayed until 6:00. Then the elder kid suddenly (and I thought suspiciously) asked if he could go to the reservoir. We live in a wooded area where there's a series of reservoirs that are treated as parks and recreation areas. I couldn't really understand this so I told him not to go inside the reservoir, just take the walk up and back. I associate the reservoir with places where people get into trouble or go for walks with friends to scheme or tell secrets. On the other hand, families go there for running, picnics, dog walking. You don't hear about crimes there--but I just don't like it.

This was the Insane Clown Mom Posse coming out of me. I am completely traumatized by the reservoir unless we all go there as a family and are roped or chained together. It has been many years, but in 6th grade big kid "left for school," but actually ran away to the reservoir on a rainy day (scheduled to snow) without adequate outerwear. He stole stuff out of his father's mountaineering pack, including a large knife. He took a book about Daniel Boone, thinking it would tell him everything he needed to know about living in the rough. He took a large amount of cash he had saved from pet-sitting. (Idiot.) He had bought into a local urban legend that a "hermit" lived on the island in the reservoir and he was going to go live a while with the hermit and kill deer to survive. This was, not coincidentally perhaps, the year he was in the musical "Tom Sawyer."

Since then I have refused to let him go to the reservoir alone. He wasn't the frantic mom who had to call school and 911 announcing a missing child, invite a policeman into the house and give a photo and other descriptions, and sit and worry sick. Three hours later the policeman drove him back to the house, with little to say to him other than, "Did you know I'm a certified diver with [local water district]? Why do you think our town needs certified divers at the reservoir?" And kid thought for a split second and said, "Uh . . . because people might get killed or drown at the reservoir?"

And that was that. To his surprise, when he came to the door I was not weeping with gratitude. I was MAD. I wasted no time, gave him a sandwich and took him straight back to school. I said, "You might not have started out your day at school, but there's no reason you can't finish it there." His teaching team thought my "tough love" strategy was brilliant. He didn't try it again.

But that spectre of horror has never left me. So last night I got very upset after he was gone about half an hour, then went hysterical. The Insane Clown came out and begged DH to please, please, drive up and search. The very very minute the car was in front of the house, kid came home. Everyone thought I was absolutely crazy, kid came in, and all was well. Almost.

Finally people started noticing that I had not set foot near the kitchen, so DH asked what I wanted for dinner. (This never changes year to year--it is always Asian or Indian takeout.) I said I was not in the mood for Indian. I had conveniently set out a menu from our new Japanese place, but it went unnoticed. UNFORTUNATELY our favorite Chinese restaurant, which was right around the corner, got very bad over the past couple of years--so bad we could not tolerate it anymore and quit ordering. Recently it opened up with a new name and new management. We had never bothered to venture in, for obvious reasons. UNFORTUNATELY it was a fast, easy choice, so DH went there (without asking).

Worst "Chinese food" I have EVER eaten. One dish was a seafood thing. I always like shrimp, but this had scallops in it (which I cannot eat, an DH knows this!) and purported to have lobster. I tried the [one tiny piece of] lobster and it was like shoe leather. I found only two shrimp, but this is a family of four. All the rest was icky sauce and scallops. I think there was one pea pod. So I tried the "chicken." One "chicken" dish was upposed to be sesame. It was not. I looked on the receipt and there was an "orange chicken." DH said he did not order orange chicken--that he had ordered General Tso's and sesame. Anyway, whatever it was, it was all nasty. All the chicken sauces tasted like ketchup thinned down with water and rethickened with cornstarch. I could not find any chicken in the chicken. It was all deep-fried batter that was tough and actually unchewable. Hardly any vegetables to be found anywhere, except a few pieces of broccoli. Then there was the eggroll--like dry brown kraft paper. Looked old and perhaps pre-frozen. I had a couple of bites of rice (hard to screw up), and left the table, throwing away what was on my plate.

I really hate to waste food and I know that even though it was bad, it was not cheap. I'm sure I set a bad example for the boys by leaving the table after voicing my disgust, but, honestly, YUCK.

Now it's not Mother's Day anymore. Hark, the dishes await.

Thought Salad

This post won't taste good, even if you put your favorite dressing on it. I just have a bunch of completely disparate things to toss together. And, just now, EEEK! There's a big ant walking across my keyboard, but that's irrelevant.

Spring is here, or rather, the seasons seem to have skipped straight from winter to summer with barely a visible warning from trees and flowers. Right now it's 84, and reportedly it's planning to be 90 tomorrow. Help me. While the trees still look positively lacy, the weekend was hot enough to make us switch from storm doors and windows to screens, open the windows, run the attic fan, and even break out a small turbo space fan. It was the hottest weekend in recorded history for this region. I hate it. I have no problem with cold. I can always go around the house wearing sweaters and blankets to get warm when the house is 52, but I can't get cool without wearing garments that I consider inappropriate and/or embarrassing, and I sweat like a pig. It is completely out of character for the weather to be hot in April. In fact, it is not unheard of for a surprise little flurry to occur.

Where did this stupid ant come from? Go away, ant. I'm going to have to capture him and put him out. He is putting footprints between the pages of a document I was given by its author, archivist and historian at Old Sturbridge Village, "Mail in 1830s New England." But I digress.

The main evidence of "spring" is that the road termites are out prowling around, weaving madly, cutting everyone else off, and making outrageous left turns starting half a mile from the intersection, thus requiring them to ride up the wrong side of the road into oncoming traffic. This includes mentally unstable college girls and huge landscaping trucks with their trailers. Normally, any other time of year, this would simply be an obvious indicator that the license plates read Mass., but now it's just that people are buckwild crazya$ coming out of hibernation.

New word/title coinage: Tyke asks for eggs for breakfast on weekend. Dad is a master at eggs. Dad makes magnificent omelet containing all of Tyke's favorite flavors. Tyke howls for a full 30 minutes, "I don't want an omelet, I want scrambled." He sits at the table and picks. About then, Dad asks if I want some eggs. I say, "Sure, I'd like scrambled!" Dad goes berserk. "You're not helping me out here!" Hint, hint. "Actually, I'd like an OMELET." Then the big kid, G., says, "Who do you think you are, Dad, The Omelettier?"

Insomnia: I finally got two nights of sorta-sleep after four nights of wide-open eyelids. The primary reason was probably my anxiety over G's "final" surgery to remove his cardiac catheter, which took place Wednesday. The insomnia started Tuesday night. Then, Wednesday night, in case he needed help, water, food or meds I slept on the sofa and, for the comfort of the affected part, he stayed in one position on the huge comfy chair/ottoman.

I did get a few short-lived naps. But the cruelest thing is the meta-dreams. What the heck do I mean by "meta-dreams"? This is just evil, and my own head made it up to foist upon me. Here's an example. Wednesday night, as G snored lightly, I finally fell asleep and stayed asleep long enough to start dreaming. In the dream, G has come home from an evening at his girlfriend's house. Her dad has brought them back to our home in the van. As is often the case, I am talking to the congenial dad, and I tell him, "Gosh the last few nights have been murder; I can hardly sleep at all. All I get is a nap and then it's all over." He says, "Really?" Upon which admission I am rendered bolt-upright awake. Now Porky Pig stutters, not actually but metaphorically, "That's all, folks!" I hear every house and tree creak, mouse skitter, bird twitter and vehicle move in a ten-mile radius, see every lightwave and shadow, feel every little pain, my sinuses go berserk and I get a raging case of gas and heartburn that must be properly addressed. I am completely up until I'm supposed to be up, at which point I can hardly get up because I'm so tired.

Here's another one. In Thursday's dream I am in a whole other state of the union (who knows which one it's supposed to be) with a bunch of total strangers and none of my family. It's all adults and no kids. I start out in a gas station but the venue morphs into a very casual tiny Greek diner-type restaurant that has all outdoor tables on a flat lawn in back. People in the restaurant are raving and recommending a particular dish. It is described by them as huge wide noodles wrappped up with something like herbed rice inside (reminiscent of dolmades) with a thick, olive-laden sauce on top. I order it, and it is delivered to the white linen-covered picnic table where I wait. But---aaaaarrgggghh! It doesn't look anything like the item described. It looks like a pile of tiny dry burritos with a drizzle of what should have been green salsa, but which looks more like thick, golden motor oil. There aren't even any utensils or napkins. The sight of it in the dream made me need to throw up. It just shocked me in the dream because it was so unlike the dish described. Too unexpected. Once again, BING! Wide awake with the whole night/morning ahead of me.

We have conifers and Rotarians in our water supply: For the past almost week, our town has been one of ten locally that were identified as receiving "copepods and rotifers" in the water. No live critters have been found, according to the metropolitan water district. Furthermore, these particular strains of organisms are not known to cause illness and are present in almost all fresh water. YET we have been admonished to boil our drinking water "for at least one minute." Why? To beat a dead rotifer? Every day I look for a lift of the "boil order," and every day it's not there. The affected towns are now down to six, but ours is among them. I don't care if I DO boil my water; I don't want to ingest cooked rotifers and copepods, either. Fortunately, before this event I didn't think about the microorganisms in our water. Now I'll never be able to forget them, even if they're dead and known not to be pathogenic.

Friends were cleaning out their attic and found a lot of old books. Since I am a logophile, they gave me one called More Press Boners. It's a book-length list of funny grammar, typographical, spelling and punctuation mistakes made in the publishing media, primarily newspapers. For instance, "Read our new booklet, 'How To Increase Your Word Power, Think Better, Spell Perrectly,'" and "Mother can disassemble the boys at the end of play time and pack the little containers away neatly." (Don't I wish.) What's funniest to me, even more than the gaffes themselves, is the archaic nature of many of the topics and concepts in the book. If my boys were to read it (which they won't because they're lazy), they would find much of it baffling, because they wouldn't understand the context or some of the vocabulary. For example, there's a listing from a television guide: "9:00 p.m. Geo. Gobel show. 9:15 p.m. Geo. Gobel shot." They would never in a million years know who George Gobel was.

This is the other part of the book: The title cracks the boys up. They have another idea about the definition of the word "boner."

And now a note about customer service: I can't remember if I wrote about this months ago (or moths ago as might have been reported in Boners). We rarely dry clean our clothes. We try to buy exclusively washable garments, but there are the seasonal coats and heavy down comforter, and some of my summer linen items. Anyway, I went online to arrange an at-home dry cleaning pickup from the cleaners we usually use, only to discover that the company I had been using had been bought out and replaced by another company. I blithely signed up on their website. Within a few days, the van showed up and the guy collected my bag of cleaning.

Well, darn it, that's when the trouble started.

A couple of days later I got a call from a distressed woman who works for the dry cleaning company (which I will not name because I refuse to give them press). At first I thought something had gone wrong or gotten lost or the order was screwed up or something and this was a courtesy call to straighten it out. But no! This woman explained that she was the representative for a territory and my address was in her territory and that I should not have let blah-blah guy pick up my cleaning. In fact, I should call every time I need cleaning and ask for HER exclusively. Though she did not say as much, I'm guessing they work on commission and the guy who picked up after being alerted via web is her direct competition in this area. She had a whiskey voice and a mafioso manner. She practically made me sign on the dotted line that I would ALWAYS only use her as my pickup and delivery person. I felt summarily harassed. I hung up the phone feeling as if I'd been beaten up by a bully in elementary school.

Then I went to the internet and considered signing up for another company, called Edricks. When I was ready with a new bag I saw the Edricks van coming up the street and waited by the mailbox and waved. The Edricks guy stopped in the middle of the street, took my info and cleaning, was friendly as could be, got my info into their system and had the clothes (much more nicely presented than the other company) back at my door in a couple of days. Even before the items were returned, I got two courtesy calls from the company surveying about the service and confirming my order.

Okay. So, customer-service tip: don't bully customers if you want to keep them. Gees.

Boys will be boys: This is how it is when you have more than one boy-child. Big kid G is returning to school after being out almost all year for cancer treatment. So he's getting up Thursday to have me drive him to his big half-day start-off. He appears on the stairs in boxers, hospital sox (he loves them), and a face covered with shaving cream. He says, quietly, "Mom. Mom." My face is a question mark. He says, "Tyke took my disposable razor and used it to clean the gum off his favorite basketball shorts. So I went in your bathroom looking for the razors and couldn't find one. Would you give me one?" Said shorts are a pet peeve of mine. I've been trying to get rid of them for a year, but Tyke keeps retrieving them. I didn't know about the Heloise "put item in freezer and pick off the gum" trick. It wasn't a big wad of gum at all, but still, gross! I got the new razor for G. Then when Tyke came home I inquired. He admitted shaving the pants. I said, "But did you make a hole in them?" And he said, "Yeah, but they're reversible so they have a liner so it doesn't matter."

Swim Brain

One of my favorite, but relatively dull lines is in Twelfth Night, I iii, "I am a great eater of beef, and I believe that does harm to my wit." In graduate school, a colleague, knowing I was then entirely vegetarian, gave me a button bearing those words. Well, I am not a great eater of beef. I made the mistake of eating a single tiny bite of corned beef one year ago today and it literally nearly killed me.

My younger son, to whom I still refer as Tyke (his older brother, a jazz musician, calls him T-Bone), is a swimmer part of the year and plays baseball the rest of the year. Swim season just ended and he came home so laden with clanky medals, trophies, pins and ribbons that we will have to start a Wall of Fame right next to the multiple Michael Phelps posters (oh, and the now "commemorative" Kellogg's Corn Flakes cereal boxes which we could sell on eBay) in his room. A few days ago he was looking online and happened to discover that not only had he garnered a bunch of team records this year, but he was also second in the state in one event and third in another. Surprisingly, he has not developed a swelled head about this.

However, I believe he HAS developed some sort of encephalitis or mental problem from spending too much time in the pool. This calls for a new button, which should say, "I am a great inhaler of chlorine, and I believe that does harm to my wit." For here is an exchange between us from the other day:

Me: Why is it still so cold? It's actually somewhat spring-like outside, and I'm never cold, but today I'm really cold.

Tyke: Mom, think about what the badger said.

Me: ??????

Tyke: The gopher.

Me: ???? [staring at him] You mean, the GROUNDHOG?

Tyke: Mom. Whatever. Stop making fun of me.

Another Stupid Mishearing

For years I've had a special drawer in my mind that records what I would call fractured mishearings of song lyrics.

Just today, G and I were in the kitchen and he barely started to hum "The Immigrant Song" by Page and Plant of Led Zeppelin. Then he went into a deliberately funny and obnoxious mime dance of a flailing rock star, shaking his long hair and throwing his guitar around. I was washing dishes, but I sang the lyrics. He said [get this] "Mom, how do you know every lyric to every song?" As if I were so old I could never have owned a radio as a child. Gawd.

While we were singing this song together, I confessed to G that I never had been able to understand a particular line of the lyrics to "The Immigrant Song," even though I had listened carefully to all the lyrics for about a thousand years. It was a function of the recording, not a problem with the artists or their lyrics. I've written articles on this subject (misheard lyrics) before, but today I confessed a crowner that I hadn't mentioned before because I'd completely forgotten about it.

Even as a young child, I had always understood that "The Immigrant Song" was about the Viking invasions. And so it is. But there was a single line which threw me, making me think the song was not only about the Vikings, but also perhaps about Ellis Island immigrants. What I didn't understand was the line that begins,

Oh we sweep with thrashing oar

And since childhood, I've thought the next line was

I want to go and see the Western show!

My childhood reasoning was that yes, the Scandinavians were "immigrants" [read invaders] very early, and then much later, in the 19th century, many immigrants came by boat to America for what they hoped would be a more prosperous life, not as invaders. So as a kid I reasoned that perhaps along the way the immigrants might have heard about cowboys in America, and Buffalo Bill and Annie Oakley. But I could not understand why, out of the entire song, there was just one line that seemed to allude to more recent times and goof up the unity--the established chronology of the whole song. It was just too anachronistic in the middle of a song that otherwise made exclusively ancient references. It was plausible, but really bothered me.

G quickly researched the exact lyrics. He found out that the real line was

Our only goal will be the western shore.

G said, "That's excellent, Mom! I really like it! I think that's your stupidest mishearing yet!"

Ooooooh, ooooooh, ooooooh. Ooooooh, ooooooh, ooooooh.

Good Fences Make Good Neighbors; or No Good Deed

. . . goes unpunished.

I have just received considerable punishment intention-wise, but it's absolutely not over yet. The votes are not in yet. I am sitting in the family room, looking out the window, waiting for the neighbors--whose "Samaritan" my widely celebrated son supposedly is--to come home and see what a terrible thing I've done on his behalf.

Now, to make a short story unconscionably long . . . and it is long, so set aside some time to get through it, as I did the actual event in real-life time.

We live at the end of a small private street inhabited, except for us, by retired people and industrious professional couples who work hard and do not have kids and are hardly ever home. About three houses down the hill is a very elderly couple--I'll call them Horace and Harriet H [henceforth the Hs]. Horace is 96 and cannot see except for some shadow vision, but he is somewhat ambulatory with a cane, has excellent hearing, is very socially engaging and loves to talk any audience's ears off. Horace fairly lives for an audience. This is one reason many neighbors avoid him. His wife Harriet is a spring chicken in her late 80s who cannot hear and uses a walker, but whose vision is fine. Still plays bridge weekly and even invited me once when one of her ladies was having a medical problem. She loves to wander out of the house and dig in the flower beds to plant impatiens, bending over in a shocking gardening way many spring chickens of 35 no longer consider possible.

Neither of the Hs can do anything without the sensorially complementary mate.

Last year, Mr. and Mrs. H asked my younger kid, Tyke, if he would be their official Garbage Boy. So now when he gets home from school on Thursdays, it's his job to run down the hill to the Hs' house, use the key to open the garage, put the garbage barrels and recycling bin on a cart, and tote it down the hilly driveway to the street. Then he rolls the cart back up and locks the garage again. On Friday when he gets home from school, he takes the barrels back in.

This being Thursday, it was Tyke's work day. But because he got into a special inter-school advanced band, this time of year he has to stay for practice late on Thursday. He didn't get home till 5:30; then he had to eat, change his clothes, and head directly off to baseball practice as well as play a game in treacherous weather. Big brother couldn't do the job, either, because he had already left to attend a concert.

We expected another storm this afternoon, and just after Tyke left for his game, the rain began. I realized that Mr. and Mrs. H might go to bed early and would probably be shocked to hear the garage door going up after 9:00 p.m. So I decided I would go down and do the garbage myself. (Let me say that it is never our habit to call first. We would either scare them or get trapped on the phone. It's just understood that regardless of which one of our family members does it, the barrel job simply gets done.) I grabbed the key and rushed down the hill as the rain pummeled harder and harder.

When I got to the correct, "garbage side" of the double garage door, I tried to insert the key, but it did not fit. At all. Hmm. Without thinking to look further, I turned the twist-handle and popped the latch. Just as I began to twist, I realized that these ancient doors are like our ancient doors (only we never use the handle): if you twist the handle, it's only an emergency measure for when automatic door opener isn't working and requires a manual override. Oh, by the way, somewhere in the part of the back of my mind that wasn't operating at the time, I know you only turn that handle from INSIDE the door if and when you have to pull the emergency "rip cord" inside the garage. In addition, I noticed in my mistaken action that the key seemed much too new to work with this ancient lock, and that the REAL, current lock was installed on the door frame on the pillar between the two doors. Too late. Cr@p!

When I then tried the correct lock, the key was hunky-dory and the door started to open automatically. Momentary hope. So Mr. and Mrs. H actually had a lock that worked like an external keypad. You turned that key and the door went up automatically. I'd never seen such a thing. Way more modern than the near-zero access options on my own garage. Too high tech. No wonder I didn't know how to use it.

So immediately I knew I'd bungled big-time. Because I'd turned the manual handle, the automatic unlock activated with the correct key couldn't raise the door; it turned on the motor and the light, but didn't open the door because I'd effectively disabled the chain drive or relocked the inside of the door. Double, unopenable whammy.

Here I was in the rain, trying to do something good for some old people and compensating for my son, the completely reliable little helper whom they lavish love upon. It wasn't his fault I'd blown their garage door. They had probably wondered why Tyke hadn't taken out the trash earlier, and they were, maybe and probably, in the house wondering why the garage door was making kooky noises. They couldn't run out to figure out what was happening. Was it a burglar? If I were 96, that's what I'd think.

I ran to the front door and rang the bell, but no one answered. If I were in my late 80s, I might not hear the doorbell. If I were 96 and blind, I'd be worried if someone rang the bell unexpectedly, too, and going to a window would be no good. I didn't want to scare them. I waited a long time. I figured Mrs. H couldn't hear it. I figured Mr. H couldn't see to get downstairs, and, in any case, neither one could get to the door quickly. I rang and waited. And waited some more.

Nothing.

It could have been that they weren't there, but I know they don't drive anymore, even though they still have a Mercedes that the family rolls out every once in a while to keep it functional. I tried to look in the side garage window to see if there was a car, but the light had timed out. So I ran with wet hair, looking like a bag person, straight across the driveway to the home of Bill, the neighborhood's megamoney IBM early retiree. Bill is the Hs' brief former Garbage Guy. Bill can't do the job anymore because he spends most of his time at a second home on Martha's Vineyard. I figured he'd know if there were any tricks with the doors, or might at least have phone numbers of the Hs' family members.

First, I had to sheepishly endure the inevitable, "You did WHAT? Say that again?" and a further, "You did WHAT??" followed by the wordless but unmistakable "you idiot" facial expression. Very painful.

Bill phoned the H house and got the answering machine. He concluded that Harriet and Horace had been taken out to dinner by their elegant, compassionate and thoughtful local-dwelling daughter, P, who's close to 60. Heck, goin' out past 7:30 p.m., the lot of them party hardier than I ever have at any stage of my life. But I digress.

Bill followed me to the garage door to assess my damage. It was official: the twist-blunder I suspected I'd wreaked had indeed occurred, and there was no way to fix it except to look from inside the garage. We went to the front door again, but as before there was no response.

Bill said, "Well, I do have a key for emergencies, but in this situation I'm not sure that's wise."

I replied, "Right. That's going too far. This doesn't require drastic measures, as it might in a health situation. As when Harriet calls the Fire Department when she has a nose bleed. You know, roughly twice a month."

"Yep. Okay. You run back up to your house, and I'll leave a note about what's going on and stick it on the garage door so that when P rolls up the driveway either she'll see it and know what to do, or Horace will amble out and find it. I'll tell 'em to call you at your number. I'll be in the front room of my house, and I'll notice when a car drives up or the lights go on over there, and after that I'll call you."

Agreed.

As I ran up the hill, I started shivering in my boots. Because two possible things are certain anytime you get talking to either of the Hs on the phone: either he will detain you for two hours talking your ear off about what it was like in our little town in 1950 (and you will never be able to get your point across although you are genuinely enjoying the history and would love to set aside another time to hear about it), or she will ask entirely pertinent, direct questions that you can barely understand but upon understanding earnestly want to answer, but you will never be able to get her to hear the answers. She'll just keep asking and saying, "What? I need you to come to bridge. What? Did you say you can play bridge? What? Did you say you can't play?"

It's devastating, really; any communication encounter with either of them that does not directly involve the written word, the Pony Express, a guiding hand, signing or Braille is an event to be avoided at all cost. Imagine how it was without telephones or incandescent light. We have such high expectations.

but then, as I was writing this--

Oh, excuse me. My phone rang. "Mrs. --? Horace H here. How are you this evening? We have just come up our driveway. We found a note that said to call you."

Oh, God! Now I was going to have to explain what happened, and he would either 1) talk right through me, or 2) not understand my explanation, or 3) start off on a never-ending tangent , or 4) pass the phone to Harriet.

"Yes, Mr. H! I'm so sorry, but Tyke couldn't take out your garbage today. I decided I'd do it myself while it was still light before the big storm, and I believe I accidentally did something bad to your garage door."

As predicted, he is thinking something else while I'm talking and replying to his own idea, and he doesn't comprehend me. I try to explain precisely what I did, but he doesn't buy it. He's a jack of all concepts, master of none.

"It's just the door. Sometimes it does that."

"Mr. H, I'm pretty sure I turned the handle and that disabled it. I locked it up somehow. It's my fault. But I know there's some latch on the inside of the door that will fix it."

In the background, I heard P say, "Daddy, the door's not going up." (Shudder on my end of phone. My fault.)

See. I had done it.

I gave up trying to tell Mr. H what happened. He was beyond hearing about it. Instead, I shifted my focus to the action item.

"Mr. H, someone has to go into the garage from inside the house to fix the door. There's a latch in there. I'm very sorry I screwed it up."

"That's all right, Mrs. --. " I looked out the window and saw that someone had turned on the lights to go through the house. "I think we've got it now. P took the barrels out. It's okay." (Humiliation mine.)

Five minutes later, Bill called.

"Hey, they're home. They put the car in the other side." Not helpful information. I wanted the other shoe to drop. This minimal Bill info did not tell me that the Hs or their resourceful daughter had figured out what happened to the door and fixed it. It just let me know that they'd been able to open the other side, which they always could have done with their remote control anyway. No more than a 50% chance of progress made on the blunder front.

See? No matter what moms do with best intentions, they're wrong.

Now I get to wait and see how my family will ridicule and verbally abuse me when they all get home. No one will thank me for taking out our own family's garbage and recycling (the kids' job which they weren't frigging here to do and haven't done properly despite direct specific instructions for the past five years), or for also trying valiantly to take out the Hs' garbage in the rain in order to save the reputation of the stunning baseball kid who the whole neighborhood thinks is a hero. They will just be universally mean and think it was funny that they got away without doing it and I got soaked and my hair looks idiotic and wild. Ha, ha, ha.

I hate boys. When I'm 80 something and finally decide to get a tattoo, that's what it will be. I hate boys, with a heart turned upside down and protected with a chain-link fence. And you'd better believe I'll carry a big, heavy cane and wear kick-ass boots. To thrash boys with.

On a nearly different subject--and this one's enjoyable--there's nothing quite like the satisfaction of being in cahoots with other neighbors who don't even like you and have never opened their door to you, and whom you don't particularly like, but who are entirely willing to engage in a phone-and-key-and-spying cabal on the brink of breaking in, in order to benefit someone special on your street whom you all commonly respect and care about.

Stupid Mom Redux

As I've said here before--and recently, at that--one of the things I've learned as a parent is that no matter what they do, moms are always wrong.

Oh, yeah . . . subtitle of this post: Tell Me About It

A few weeks ago, I got exasperated with number-one son G because I needed to know how to get in touch with his dance teacher to warn her of some upcoming performance/lesson conflicts.

I'm in a constant state of irritation over this wonderfully creative child because he's notoriously irresponsible when it comes to his own activities and events, of which he has many. He never knows anything ahead of time about what he's doing where he's supposed to be, and if he hears anything he never tells the rest of us or gives us the flyers. He only remembers five minutes before he needs to be somewhere and expects the entire family to drop all their [already conflicting] activities to accommodate his immediate transportation needs. He pulled this on me yesterday morning before 6:30 a.m. "Mooommmm! Dad already left for work and I have to go to rehearsal for the show and be there by 6:45 or I'll get my head cut off and you can be back before Tyke gets up!")

Let this be known: I am as nocturnal as a kangaroo rat. I'm not good in the morning. In the morning, I'm territorial, snap, bite, snarl, and plot assassination of anyone who expects me to be cheerful and active before I'm good and ready. Do not cross the threshold of the inner sanctum!

On dance nights I typically just drop G off and wait for him to get well inside the door instead of going all the way into the studio myself, and, anyway, his lessons are not the first ones on the teacher's docket so I don't want to interrupt the flow of classes by taking up her time in between sessions. Apparently she doesn't use e-mail or doesn't want her address out or I was absent when the brains were passed out or something (for proof of this, see below). I don't actually remember what the deal is. I do know, however, that I am a nerdy e-mail-preference person rather than a phone person. I rarely pick up a phone to call out, and get positively angry at phones when they ring in. Except for their stunning usefulness in emergencies, I wouldn't mind their not existing.

Some days later, after my initial exasperation episode, two telephone numbers showed up scrawled illegibly on the "family notice" white board in our dinette area. By then I had forgotten all about the dance school and my question.

The rule is that once messages are obsolete or action items have been taken care of, I erase them from the white board. Out of courtesy for G, I left the cryptic numbers for a couple of weeks, but finally got tired of them and wanted them gone in order to make space for potential incoming messages. So I asked, "Are you finished with these?" And he said, "Yeah, I have been ever since they were up there."

Assuming that this was just a typical snotty teen response, I sighed and erased the numbers. (And, to give G his absolute due, he's actually shaping up into a pretty courteous young man, and isn't always so PMS-y anymore. I truly appreciate that his nasty attitude is gradually fading.)

A few more days passed. And suddenly something occurred to me.

"G, what were those phone numbers you had up there that I erased?"

"Mooooommmmm, DUH! You asked me to get the numbers for the dance school, and I got them for you! You're the one who erased them. What did you erase them for? Gees!"

Ow, Those Spines Hurt (or, wait, do I mean humps?)

High School Kid (my son, cleaning a corner of the family room and bringing to me a book entitled Cacti & Succulents that has a big picture of a succulent on it): Mom, what's a succulent? Are camels succulents? Because--yeah--they contain water?

No, son. Okay, now it's back to the library for you.

Stupid Mom

No matter what they do, moms are always wrong. They're wrong when they know they're wrong, and they're wrong even if they are completely, blissfully unaware that they have done something heinous. I speak from several years' experience as the mom of a teenager and a young Virgo boy. It's a tough audience.

This morning I was toasting happily under the covers in our sub-zero house when Tyke, readying himself for departure on the school bus, yelled across the hall. "Moooooommmmm! Moooooommmm, I can't find my book!" He is reading competitively for a Battle of the Books quiz contest, and has just segued from his first to his second book. (Frankly, I think the books they have assigned fifth-graders are well below his level--he could have read them in second grade--but all the easier for him in the contest.) "Mom, I put my book on my bedroom floor with my clothes for today, and now it's gone!"

This is precisely the sort of thing that makes Virgos cry, and I could hear the beginning of a whimper in his voice. In typical wrong-mom fashion, I said, "Well, why was it on the floor where it doesn't belong instead of on one of your bookcases?" [Not helpful. I am crabby in the morning.]

"I put it with my clothes so I couldn't possibly forget to take it to school." [Solid logic.]

"Which book? Just in case Isaw it somewhere."

"Sammy Keyes and the Skeleton Man," he sniffed.

"Look under the bed. Maybe it got kicked there accidentally."

"No, my sleeping bag is hanging all the way to the floor and nothing could have gotten under there."

"Well, I don't know where it is. Nobody went into your room after you got in bed." Of course at this time I was searching my groggy mind for what precisely had happened between his going to bed and mine. Just as I heard him tromp, defeated, downstairs toward the door, I remembered yesterday.

When Tyke had arrived home from school, he triumphantly presented me with a wadded up brown paper towel and a wall-to-wall smile. "What's this?" I asked.

"Remember my tooth that was driving me crazy? It finally came out today!"

One of the ways I have typically been wrong as a mom in the past has been in the Tooth Fairy department. I'm routinely amiss in the Pay-for-Tooth Program. Yesterday, therefore, I resolved to absolutely, positively remember to compensate Tyke immediately this time. So---I was wrong again! I had said I hadn't been in the room when I most assuredly had. I remembered sneaking up a few minutes after he went to bed to slip a dollar under his pillow. And, even worse, I specifically remember thinking as I tiptoed into the pitch-dark room, "Who knows what a person might step on in here?" Well, a book, for instance?

After completing my morning ablutions I went into his room to see if I had, indeed, kicked a floor-dwelling book into an obscure corner, but none was to be found.

On my way downstairs I pondered the irony of this event. I had ordered Tyke's books from Amazon, and they had inexplicably sent TWO copies of Sammy Keyes. For one thing I am lazy, and did not feel like going through the return process. For another thing, I knew that other kids would be participating in the Battle of the Books, so I decided somebody else might well benefit from this copy. I had sent it in with a note to the librarian who is emceeing (is that a word?) the Battle. Just yesterday she had sent me a thank-you. Thus, where we once had two copies of this book, apparently we now had none. The Fates are giggling . . .

I got down to the bottom of the stairs and there, in the middle of the family room floor next to a pile of newly folded laundered Tyke clothes was the book. Staring me right in the face. And to think the Tyke had spent much of his morning in that very room . . .

See? Moms are always wrong.

New Year's Overhearings

Sorry to report that the great tradition of English linguistic foolishness didn't end with the ball drop at Times Square.

This time, I'm finally tattling on myself first, instead of on other people. I know! Lil' ol' me? I never make these faux pas.

Honey was in the family room sitting at the computer Saturday morning, presumably looking at flight availability. I was in the kitchen listening to my favorite radio programs on NPR. He hollered to me,

How do you spell 'Phoenix'?

I had no idea that was what he was asking me. I was listening intently to Carl Kasell and Paula Poundstone and Roy Blount exchanging snippets of hilarious anti-political, andti-mainstream- media banter in the "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me!" quiz.

I thought he said, instead,

How do you spell 'Kleenex ® '?

Not a bit taken aback that Honey would have a reason for spelling such a thing (a grocery list, perhaps?), I proceeded to spell it for him. K-L-E-E-N-E-X. The Tyke cracked up.

And one more. This recently in from a frequent contributor, a mom friend:

We were making tea with hot water from our new tea pot this afternoon. Mine had been steeping for a while and I noticed Daughter's was still on the counter. I called her into the kitchen to get it and said, "It'll be pretty strong." She said, "It's good when it's steeper." I asked, "Don't you mean stronger?" She said, "No, you don't strong your tea, you steep it." Hard to argue with that logic even if it really doesn't make any sense.....

And, finally, I'm going to tattle on myself again. A while ago I wrote a Pedantic Rant about a pseudo-construction that drives me mad. Well, the other day I caught myself saying to myself in my mind the following as I was picking a morsel of detritus up off the floor:

I picked something up off the floor that I didn't know what it was.

That's exactly the construction the Rant was about! Help me!

Slob Outing

It's not an outing for slobs. I'm "outing" the slobs. I realize there may be some irony in this--I'm exposing the mess of my tragic private family room in a public venue, so it must somehow reflect me, too. But, honestly. It seemed the appropriate thing to do in relation to the preceding post. And in that post I proved that I should be absolved of complicity in the MESS. I assure you that I am not a white-trash mama. But my kids might fit in fine in the trailer park, or a pig sty.

After writing that post it occurred to me I should just go look around the room again to make sure I hadn't been exaggerating about how my barbaric children routinely violate their home environment (must exercise journalistic fairness). We won't even bother going into their bedrooms. Tyke's is typically better than G's, but to tell the truth Tyke is certainly no saint. G.'s room is just truly scary. The floor is his closet and the cabinets, drawers, etc. are his trash cans. If I called the Fire Department or County Health Department to do an inspection, we would surely be cited. (Ohh, there's an idea; maybe that's what I should do? But who would pay the penalty? Oh, yeah. Me.)

In my tour of the family room I realized that the same old areas have been legendary problems from Day One since we moved here. Since I'm going to "out,: I of course have to post pics.

Site #1: The "Put Away Box"

See? It really does say, "PUT AWAY" on it. But despite the fact that both of the boys are many years ahead of their grades in reading skill and comprehension, when it comes to the box they feign illiteracy. Box was partially cleaned out last night. Remaining contents of box:

• two nice dress shirts (choir performances and dates at swank events, you know)
  
• 1 completely broken microphone for computer karaoke
• 1 stuffed bear
• pair red Old Navy flip flops (might be mine--can't tell difference between mine and G's)
• three broken guitar strings
• 1 book on cool tricks you can do with magnets (the magnets have been separated from it and lost; probably they're now in the vacuum cleaner)
  
• 1 half-used tin of Bed Head Shine Wax
• 30 or 40 miscellaneous ancient homework papers (G.'s) and a printed copy of a script I wrote that keeps getting threatened to be produced on stage by the theater kids, but they keep losing the script so that will never happen
  
• 1 notebook of dark, brooding, ballad-like adolescent poems that G. refuses to submit to the Sunken Garden Poetry Festival
  

Next, Site #2: The Dying Chair


After many weeks of shopping and deliberation, we bought this sturdy farm-style dinette set about 11 or 12 years ago. The table came with six chairs. At this time, three chairs remain intact and one is well on its way out. This is a problem for us, for we are a family of FOUR. We need FOUR chairs. The chairs have been systematically destroyed by an ADHD boy who initially could not sit still. Then, once he achieved an age when he could sorta sit still (like a year ago), he started destroying the chair via sheer powerful manlike weight and chronic twisting in the seat. As shown, the dying chair (missing one rung so far; another is halfway out and the bentwood back has broken out of its hole and can't be fixed) is being used as a clothes horse for three different fall/winter coats that of course have not been properly hung up in the closet. This actually demonstrates some advancement. Usually the coats are on the floor, not on a chair. "What, you mean it's a floor? I thought it was a closet."

Site #3: The "Computer Desk/Composer's Music Station"


You can see three or four speakers. Though they don't all show in the photo, there are, all told, six speakers. Four were brazenly stolen from parents' stereos, and two rightly belong to the computer. The damper-covers on the stereo speakers have been ripped off "so it sounds better." Behind the computer screen and to the left of it (not very visible), you see a brown thing with white masking tape stuck on it. This, friends, is my antique mahogany piano chair. Yes! That's right! A chair on top of the table! G. broke the seat (have we identified a trend here?) when he kept twisting in it and his butt broke right through the leather upholstery. The chair is really now more of a frame. So he thought, why not? Why not use the chair as a shelf instead? So he did. And on top of the chair he placed my rather expensive Sony stereo receiver, which he brazenly stole from his parents' library. And on top of that he put a CD rack and the jar that holds student pens/pencils. It gets worse. What else did I find at this station?

• bunch of random short snippets of electronic wire
• two pairs sunglasses; one is red and has flashing lights inside the frame, but of course they don't work anymore
  
• drawer full of unlabeled floppy disks, cds, and CRUMBS from stashed SNACKS (I did not open the drawer; they just leave it that way)
  
• two packets of lens tissues and one bottle of spray for cleaning glasses
• seven seasons' worth of borrowed "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" DVDs
• headphones (legitimate; it is a music station, after all, and the rest of us don't want to hear the noise)
• brother's Winnie-the-Pooh ballpoint pen, gift from Disney World, under the chair
• one inconsitent and mostly non-functional iPod whose enormous, expensive and painstakingly assembled library was accidentally erased
  
• 3 video game CDs
• guitar slide
• dismantled fiber-optic pen parts
• unidentifiable broken metal parts of something else
  
• papers and bits of papers; printout of a Carnegie Mellon college website about the Computer Music department
  
• liner notes to electric guitar strings
• roll of masking tape that belongs in the family tool drawer

Site #4: On the Fireplace, or, I Give Up

• Hubby's bass guitar amp; that's the one thing that actually belongs there
• four big plastic boxes full of building blocks, Lego, army men, and assorted "precious--can't live without it" but completely unused detritus
• box of Lego Constructionary, with most parts missing from box
• a bike helmet that belongs in the garage
• a bag of army men that belong to a kid not in this family
• box for tragically cheap electric guitar recently purchased by G. (you have to keep the box, you know, but some people are too lazy to just take it to the attic)
  
• the guitar itself (in its case for the first time; that's an improvement!)
• box for the computer piano console (you have to keep the box, you know, but people are too lazy to just take it to the attic)
  
• computer piano console (note: on the floor)
• four loose, out-of-order printed piano pages for Bach's 'Toccatta and Fugue' that should be on the regular piano
  
• various parts of borrowed Nintendo Gamecube and two controllers
• USB cord that probably goes to console
• plastic Zorro sword (bent out of shape) used for last year's Halloween

After compiling this, and seeing it all at once in concentrated horror, I really do give up.

Hall O' Shame

Just in case I was getting a little tooooo complacent about my behavior as a swell mom who always tries to do right by her kids, destiny kindly stepped in this morning to kick me in the everlovin' broadening butt.

I was still lying in my toasty bed, slightly awake and savoring the marvelous softness of the sateen sheets and comforting weight of the gigantic hand-made afghan, when the Tyke came into the room and hovered over me in the semi darkness.

"Mom, did you see a thing of skeletons on the table?"

A 'thing of skeletons'? What is a 'thing of skeletons'? I groggily called to mind a picture of a cellophane package full of, perhaps, plastic glow-in-the-dark Halloween party favors or something. It didn't sound familiar at all.

"What do you mean by 'a thing of skeletons'?"

"You know, it was some papers I had on the table with skeleton drawings on it. It was my homework, and I need it to turn in today, and now it's missing."

Ohhhhh, THAT thing of skeletons. Now I knew what he was talking about: he had a two-page, double-sided worksheet for Spanish. The assignment theme was the Mexican holiday the Day of the Dead. It had vocabulary, a word search puzzle, and a multiple-choice word-matching exercise on it. It had made the rounds all over the family room, dinette, kitchen counters, you name it.

Yes, I had seen it various times over the three-day weekend. It kept getting moved. He put it in the wrong places time after time, and I kept putting it where I hoped he would see it and put it properly away in his notebook, but he never did put it away, even when I asked specifically. This is a constant occurrence and makes me nuts. I did remember grabbing a bunch of stuff and throwing it in The Box.

In our house, I have tried (with barely marginal success) a "Put Away Box" method for relocating kid stuff. It is perhaps the stupidest and most pointless thing I have come up with to date. The idea is that as I move through the house throughout the day, I pick up the kids' crap (they consider any horizontal surface fair game) and throw it in the Put Away Box. Before bed, they have to take their junk out of there and put it where it belongs. [*snicker*guffaw*]

The usual verbal litany of putitawayputitawayputitawayputitaway does not work with them, because like most kids, they are blessed with selective hearing. They also generally don't care at all about punitive consequences. They will just take the consequence, no matter how negative, and keep doing the undesirable behavior.

My kids are phenomenal when it comes to mess. In fact, they almost without fail put things where they absoluely, positively DO NOT BELONG. I absolutely, positively cannot keep up with the mess, no matter how valiantly I try, and I do try very hard. If I spend the six hours when they are at school cleaning up, then within a half-hour of their coming home, it will be worse than before. They are the Tazmanian Devils of slobbery.

Case in point: I was talking to my mom-in-law, whom I adore, on the phone Saturday. She mentioned how she doesn't understand the way kids are these days (in reference to two other grandkids). And I went on a rant about the vagaries of her other grandkids, and, while walking around with the phone, went to the boys' "computer desk," which is also a music/composition center. It's also a place where one of them loves to chain-snack. I narrated my finds to mom-in-law. Under the desk I found the usual tangled snakepile of electrical cords, broken guitar strings, autumn leaves from shoe bottoms, and bits of paper. But--surprise! A new discovery like no other: I found a black sock, covered in CRUMBS, stuffed into a plastic cup holding dregs of curdled milk.

A crumb-covered sock. In a cheesy cup. On the floor. Under the desk.

She howled.

I've had it.

I'm leaving.

Now I'm going to say the usual parent thing: If I had EVER done ANYTHING that disrespectful to MY parents' house, they would have kicked my stupid teenage a$s inside out until it was hanging out my mouth. You just don't make mess like that. You just don't to stuff like that.

Well, in my mindless routine, mixed with motherly wrath and righteous indignation, I apparently picked up a sheaf of Tyke's homework, and I saw that some of it was out of date and already corrected. I thought perhaps I had tossed it into the Put Away Box. Tyke reported that he had already looked there. I asked if maybe he had already put it in his notebook inside the backpack.

"No, Mom, I left it out on the table so that I would find it this morning. Did you throw it out, Mom? Did you throw it out?"

This is not the sort of thing to tell me first thing in the morning. I am not a morning person. I lit into the Tyke like white on rice.

"This is why we have the Put Away Box. Because you and your brother put things in the wrong place. WHEN YOU HAVE SOMETHING IMPORTANT THAT YOU DON'T WANT TO LOSE, PUT IT AWAY IN THE RIGHT PLACE!"

I was also maybe extremely pissed off that I was being blamed for throwing away something that had been chronically, carelessly left lying around. How dare I do what I ought by all rights to do?

I did remember picking up some papers, and thought I might have tossed out an old spelling practice sheet.

Oddly enough, when I looked, there was no trash in the kitchen bin. I was perplexed. No one else ever takes out the trash but me, or the boys who are forced to take it out once a week, the night before garbage collection. There was no bag in the bin, not even an empty bag.

When DH came down to head to work, he said that he had made G take the trash out last night. Leaving Tyke weeping on the dinette floor, we went into the garage and DH rifled through the bag. I stood by and spotted a wad. It was the Spanish homework.

So I was the culprit. Without giving it a second thought or even remembering I had done it, I had thrown out the homework, thinking the whole sheaf was corrected, acknowledged and past being needed.

BAD MOM!

I'm still mad about all the stuff being disorganized, and for being blamed. Of COURSE I should get rid of stuff if people are not going to take responsibility for it. (Shouldn't I?) But I do feel sorry for the poor Spanish teacher, Senorita Rebecca, who is going to have to look at that slightly damp, crumpled and stinky paper decorated with a couple of smears of tomato paste.