Tag Archives: parenting

No Wire Hangers

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::Last week to Gail::
Me: I hope she’s nice to me. I’m really looking forward to it.

::text::
Me: I’m crying in my mother’s SUV now. I am perpetually 14 years old in her presence.
Me: The night got a whole lot worse. Worst birthday celebration EVER.
Gail: Where are you? Do you need a ride home? Are you okay? What happened? 

Dad: “Just quit crying and tell me what happened.”
…
Me: “… and then she told me I never had to speak to her again for the rest of my life.”
Dad: “I can’t believe she fucking said that. She has no business being anyone’s fucking mother.
Me: “… and… and… she bought me a present I actually liked, instead of like last year, when she yelled at me for not wearing the lipstick… and… and it was normal before that and then she… she… ruined everything!” 
Dad: “Did you call your grandma?”
Me: “I talked to her earlier, before this all happened.”
Dad: “Well, call your grandma and see if you she can help you calm down.” 

Me: “… and then she started telling me that she had a bad example as a mom and that you stole us from her. When I told her that I forgot you were an evil baby stealer, she said she’d never said that. She had literally just said that!  I hate when she starts in on you!!!! It’s like a haze of rage!!!!!”
Gramma: “Belle, don’t worry about it. She can’t upset me. I know what she thinks about me. It doesn’t even phase me anymore.”

Me: “… and then she told me my Gramma convinced me she was crazy, so I told her that the time she mooned us on the front lawn while screaming like a banshee and flipping us off did that for me and that my Gramma defends her. She insisted that I told her my Gramma said she was crazy and I explained that she must have just been distracted, because she was foaming at the mouth and with the taste of all that crazy, it must’ve been hard to concentrate.”
Gail: ::snort:: “At least it was still funny.”
Me: “Ugh. I lost it. I said all those things I joke about when I call you pissed, so I don’t say them to her. When I said that she said ‘… and what were you doing? Cutting yourself?’ My mom threw my self-mutilation in my face during my birthday celebration.“
Gail: ::silence:: “I’m so sorry.”
Me: “I wish she would get help, but if I tell her that, she gets pissed and insists my Gramma told me to say it.”

::text::
Me: … and then she hurled the cookies at my front door and drove off.
Jane: Wow. All I can say is wow.

::text::
I’m so sorry I ruined your birthday. I was trying very hard to make it special. I love you always no matter what. I’m always here if you need me. I will give you space. You know my phone number & address. I hope your real birthday is very happy.

It’s adorable how much my dad does not know how to deal with his crying daughter, when the solution isn’t money. I have such good people in my life, but I miss the mom that put birthday candles in pancakes. She’s gone though, and I don’t know why.

 

Looking at T*ts with My Dad

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For the last few years, my dad and I have been having semi-weekly daddy/daughter lunches at a local restaurant of his choosing, since he pays. The man has this great cackling laugh that you can hear a mile away. If you are in the building, you know he’s present by this laugh and I get to hear it at these lunches a lot. My dad is surprisingly supportive of my marital status for a Southern father of a single 25-year-old girl. I think part of it is that he got married and had children young himself and he’s glad I’m enjoying my youth and building a career. Mostly, I think it was hard enough for him to watch his baby girl struggle through a hellish marriage once and he’d prefer she choose more carefully the next time, so he doesn’t end up in prison.

dad with gun

Still, my brother Bo has made it clear that my uterus is going to start to smell if I don’t use it soon, so I feel the need to reassure my dad of my dating efforts. I love my daddy, but I’ll admit we have a peculiar relationship, a fact to which the waitresses who’ve served us will attest.

Dad: “Baby, you don’t need to worry about that right now. You’ve got plenty of time.”
Me: “Well, I know, but I do date. I just date douche bags.”
Dad: ::cackling::
I realize the waitress is standing next to us, with a surprised and amused expression as she refills our drinks.
Me: “One guy asked me to come over and watch Arrow with him. He didn’t own a TV. The day I find a guy who’s not a bag of dicks, I’ll call you up and tell you there’s someone I want you to meet.”
Dad: “Well that’s the way to do it. Don’t listen to your brother. He’s been married since he was fuckin’ twelve years old. You enjoy it while it lasts.”

So, yesterday, when I woke up, I sent my dad the following text:

Lunch?

When I didn’t get a response, I sent:

Lunch!

He told me he wasn’t sure and he’d call in a bit. Soon, the song Cowgirls Don’t Cry filled the room…

Dad: “Watcha doin?”
Me: “Commenting on my blog.”
Dad: “What do you say we do something different today?”
Me: “Okay. Where do you wanna go?”
Dad: “How ’bout you meet me over at Twin Peaks at 11:00?”
Me: “Sure. Works for me.”

Now, I had never actually been to Twin Peaks before yesterday. I’d heard mixed reviews, some comparing it to Hooters, but others comparing it to Buffalo Wild Wings. I just pictured conveniently tight t-shirts. I had told my dad 11:10, thinking it would take me longer to get there, but arrived at 10:50. I knew he hadn’t yet, as his work truck wasn’t in the parking lot. I immediately realized that I was not, in fact, at what was basically Buffalo Wild Wings. I also realized that, as the apparent only female customer in the place, I was both over dressed and under dressed in my ruffled pink flip flops, jean shorts, and pink “I ❤ Springfield XDM” t-shirt. You see, at Twin Peaks, the female dress code is apparently…

twin peaks

The counter was crowded with girls wearing plaid bras, khaki panties, and mountain boots as I entered… alone… thinking:

Seriously, Dad? Seriously?!?!

I don’t think less of people who work for their money. Food service is one of the few jobs I skipped while I worked my way through college, because it’s hard. I may have been surprised and felt out of place, but I had no intention of being disrespectful to girls who had friendly smiles on their faces, so I just gave them one in return as I stumbled through asking for a table.

Me: “Hi. I’m waiting for my dad…” Motherfucker, how creepy does that sound? “He should be here soon and he’ll probably be wearing an electric company shirt…” Look at their faces. Look at their faces. “… so if I could just get a booth, that would be great.”

I was soooo glad they had booths, because I was concentrating so hard on looking at their faces, I hadn’t even noticed the layout. Honestly, this wouldn’t have been so bad during the dinner hour, as there would’ve been at least a few other female customers. This was lunch, though, and the only people who eat lunch at Twin Peaks on a Tuesday are these guys.

Image converted using ifftoany

I quickly realized that I was literally the only woman in the place not wearing a push-up bra and flannel and it was beginning to get crowded. I looked over the menu, briefly, and realized one of the choices was a sandwich called The Mile High Club.

Seriously, Dad? Seriously?!?!

As I sat alone, each man who passed my table seemed to give me a subtle (or not so subtle) second glance.


“No, no. I’m just waiting for my da–. Wait. I mean…”

I think my server realized I felt a little awkward, so she sat down across from me and asked…

Server: “So, Belle. Do you think it’s gonna rain all day?”
Look at her face, look at her face.
Me: “I’m not sure. I didn’t even realize it was raining until I checked Facebook this morning. Fortunately I take the Turnpike to work, so I won’t have to deal with any flooded streets or anything. Honestly, I’m loving the rain. I’m so sick of all this sunshine and so over summer and ready for fall. I saw a spider the size of a baby squirrel the other day and I. Am. Done. It wasn’t really the size of a baby squirrel. I did kill it, though. It didn’t like just go missing, which would’ve been terrible. I don’t even know how it got in, since I live upstairs.”
Fuck, Belle. You have been talking since THE BEGINNING OF TIME. Shut up!
Server: “Yeah, I know what you mean. I’m ready for some colder weather, too”

She didn’t stay much longer, since she had tables. It was super sweet of her to sit and chat with me, though. While I had been babbling like a lunatic eating her own hair, I saw my dad’s truck pull in and gave an internal sigh of relief, figuring he’d be in any minute. I’m pretty sure he rescued a baby badger and raised it to adulthood in the parking lot, though, because it was at least another two and half years before he walked through that door.*

I was so relieved to end this awkwardness, that I immediately hugged him and said

“Hey, daddy!”
Oh… weird. Don’t say ‘daddy’ in a Twin Peaks.

He sat down and we started chatting. He seemed to think nothing of sitting across from his daughter while a very sweet girl in flannel pasties took our order, so I brought up the sexy plaid elephant in the room on my own.

sexy elephant costuem
Oh em jingles. Guess who just found her Halloween costume!!!

Me: “Just so you know, it is super awkward to be having lunch with my dad in a strip club.”
Dad: ::cackles:: “Hey, I come here for the food.”
Me: “Clearly. Let me guess, The Mile High Club?”
Dad: “Hey, that’s a great sandwich and it’s huge. You could eat off of that thing for days. Lena’s always askin’ ‘Where’d you go for lunch today?’ and when I tell her Twin Peaks, she never believes me when I say it’s for the food. Hooters may have good scenery, but their food sucks. At least when I come here, they’ve got the scenery and they have great food.”
Me: “Classy, dad.”
Dad: “Classy! That’s it! It’s a classy restaurant.”

I did not bother to clarify my sarcasm that it was his comment I was calling classy, not…

class twin peaksMe: “Yeah, yeah. I get it. They’re bringing you food, not lap dances.”
Dad: “Hey, I’ve known women who’ve put themselves through school doing this kinda thing.”
Me: “Well, duh. Hell, if I didn’t like gummy worms so much, I’d be working here.”
Dad: ::cackles::

Honestly, the food was just meh, but the company was still great. My daddy gave me life advice and we caught up on family gossip. I bragged to him about my blog being Freshly Pressed and doubling my followers in a day, since he’s the one who always tells me I need to be a writer. He’s super supportive of my writing efforts and makes it clear the pride he has in me for both these and my Master’s degree. Despite that, we sort of have this unspoken agreement that he’s not going to actually follow my blog, because no matter how nontraditional our relationship, he doesn’t need to read all of those jokes about my vibrators. It’s a very unspoken agreement. Since he doesn’t know how the whole blogging process works, I’m pretty sure he just nods along at this topic like when I start rambling about how awesome it is to be a librarian. In fact, I’m almost certain that every time I start talking about these things, in his head I’m telling him all about the unicorn story I wrote at school today and I look like this…

fairy princess

Regardless, he’s as supportive of these updates as one might expect from a member of the Duck Dynasty family.

Me: “I love you daddy. Thanks for lunch.”
Dad: “Love you too, baby. Sorry it was at a strip club.”
Me: “Oh, that’s okay. I’ll just write a blog about it called ‘Looking at Tits with My Dad.”
Dad: ::cackles::

*Fun fact: I actually looked up the age of maturity for a badger. You can’t say I’m not thorough.
http://www.blueplanetbiomes.org/badger.htm

I’m sorry I’ve misdirected my sorry: Watching my dad watch his dad die.

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I stand by my dad’s work truck while he ends his phone call before our weekly lunch.
Me: “That didn’t sound fun.”
Dad: “No, it isn’t. Dad’s dyin’ and he’s just pitiful.”
I hug him and he grips just a little tighter than normal.
Me: “Love you, dad.”
Dad: “Love you too, baby.”
Me: “So it’s bad, huh?”
Dad: “Yeah. Like I said, he’s just pitiful, but he’s been pitiful his whole damn life so it’s just pissin’ me off even more now.”
Me: “Well, I’m sure I’ll be there with mom one day.”

When I was little, my dad had two dads. One was his step-father, my Grandpa Murphy, who died of cancer when I was five. The other, we saw so little that I once introduced him to my cousin (also his granddaughter) when I was six. I can list what I know about my Grandpa Geff in bullets…

  • He went to Mass every single day of his life.
  • The few times we saw him, he made us go to Mass, but always bought us breakfast.
  • For someone so devoted to God, he completely dropped the ball on his earthly obligations, such as children.
  • He’s been a far more influential presence in my dad’s half-sister, Sarah’s, life than my dad’s or his sisters’. She’s a self-indulgent fuck-up, though, so maybe that’s a good thing.
  • For Christmas, my dad’s and his sisters’ kids got tube socks or a stuffed animal. Sarah’s son got remote control cars.

My Grandma Kay once told me that Grandpa Geff would regularly promise to take my dad out after the divorce; my dad would sit on the steps waiting for him all evening and he’d never show. After she married my Grandpa Murphy, he stopped offering to help at all and my dad quickly came to think of Grandpa Murphy as his father. Grandma Kay once explained the divorce to me, how Grandpa Geff wouldn’t let her use birth control, but wouldn’t help with the kids and wanted her to take care of him as if he were a child as well. She declared….

“I told mamma and daddy, ‘I’ve been a good girl my whole life and I’ve always done exactly what you wanted, but I will not stay married to that man. I hate him.'”

For the last few years, my dad and I have been celebrating semi-weekly Daddy/Daughter Lunches. They’re one of the best parts of my generally packed schedule.

lunch with dad
I’m almost certain it’s more of a texting issue than a spelling issue.

For the last several weeks, though, he’s talked to me a lot about his and his sisters’ frustrations with Grandpa Geff’s cancer.

Me: “I’m kind of surprised you’re all doing so much. I mean, I know you don’t have the best relationship.”
Dad: “Well, you know, what can you do? You can’t just leave him to die.”

Me: “I feel bad, because I don’t really feel that bad, you know? I’m sorry.”
Dad: “Don’t apologize, baby. He was never around when you were growin’ up. You hardly know the man.”

Dad: “He keeps callin’ me over in the middle of the night swearin’ he’s gonna die. He’s just eatin’ up the attention.”

Dad: “He keeps tellin’ me he’s ready to go, that this is it. It’s never it. It’s not it until his body says it is.”

Dad: “Sarah keeps tellin’ the nurses not to give him pain medicine and tryin’ to bring her stupid ass preacher in to ‘pray for him.’ Fuckin’ crazy ass bitch. I’m gonna lose it on her. Dad was a devout Catholic his whole life. He is not gonna want some fuckin’ preacher prayin’ over him.”

Dad: “He won’t use the damn oxygen. He just sits there and wheezes, complainin’ about how he can’t breathe, but then he won’t use the oxygen.”

Dad: “I wouldn’t let my dog live like this. If she couldn’t walk, I’d put her down.”

I don’t want Grandpa Geff to die, but I feel worse for my dad than I do for him. Grandpa Geff’s a religious man who never pursued much in his life. He’s comfortable with death and as long as he’s medicated, his remaining days will be good. I feel so much for my dad right now, though. This is the end. He’s having to face the fact that Grandpa Geff will never come through for him…. while helping him bathe. Grandpa Geff milks the attention and drama, by refusing oxygen and calling every few hours to cry wolf that this is really the end. My dad rushes over, because it may be and then finds it’s just his usual drama. He’s relieved and regretful, feeling guilty about the latter. He doesn’t want to abandon the man, but at the same time, resents him for his own abandonment. On his death bed, he sees him coddle my dad’s forty-something half-sister like he never cared for him or his sisters, even when they were children. He’s hurt and stressed out and resentful, but still battling to carry out his dad’s wishes of using what’s left of his money to pay Sarah’s mortgage. He even fights her off when she demands to bring in her Evangelist preacher and take a sick man off his medicine. They’ve had multiple arguments about the house Grandpa Geff lives in, because ownership goes to Grandma Kay when he dies. She wants her kids to sell it and split the money, because their dad never did anything for them and Sarah is pissed. My dad’s still angry on my Grandpa Geff’s behalf, because Sarah’s taking advantage of him and has been doing so for half of her life. My dad’s a lot of things… vulgar, loud, funny, offensive, loving, generous on his terms, but he’s not sensitive and watching him hurt… well, that fucking hurts. When he hugs me tighter than usual, says “I love you, baby” and clearly eats up being around his young and lively 25-year-old daughter, if only to discuss his pitiful and selfish dying father… I want to tear up. It’s like watching Chuck Norris weep.

chuck norris
Yeah… that picture doesn’t exist. Point made.

Maybe I feel so much for him, because I will be there with my mom one day. Right now, she’s got a good 30 years to stop being who she is and apologize for what she’s torn away from me. Well, she eats a lot of mayonnaise, so maybe 20 years. When that day comes, though, and I never got another glimpse of the woman who used to put candles in my birthday pancakes? When I know it can never get better? That’s gonna hurt. When she somehow manages to dramatize death… that’s gonna piss me off. I’ll feel relieved that she’s never again going to play head games with me… and I’ll feel like shit because of it. So, I can imagine how my dad feels right now.

Then again, maybe watching my dad watch his dad die just strikes a cord with me, because I couldn’t bear to lose my dad. Maybe that’s intensified by watching him be so good to a man who did him so wrong, despite his defensive harsh words in regards to the situation. I mean, if there’s a single person on this PLANET who can see past the offensive jokes to the goodness and the pain, it’s the girl to whom he passed the gene, amiright?

I know for certain, though, that watching a man’s family have such conflicted feelings on his death… well, that makes me want to live a good life where I care for people and keep up my end of the bargain so no one’s ever not sure if they’re sad that I’m dying.

“Rape her with a billy club!”: How unaffected I am by violence in media.

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So, I am not a huge television watcher. In fact, this is my background on my computer screen at the moment…

read instead
Yes. It was intended to be ironic.

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with watching television… when you want to watch television. I just think there’s something broken about Americans that has them plopping down in front of a screen as a default, rather than finding something they enjoy more. It’s the home where I grew up. It’s the home where my dad still lives. It’s the home my brother has built. It’s my entire technological experiment of a generation that just plugs in, because real fun is harder. That’s fucked up. That being said, television can be truly enjoyable. Well, Netflix can. My hatred of all advertising is a topic for its own entry, with an honorable mention of the ridiculous price my cable company charges for pretty much anything. Netflix, however, caters to the 11-year-old that is still inside of me re-watching last Monday’s recorded episode of Roswell before she goes to school. I am an obsessive person and the selection of television series feeds that.

Bo: “Do you watch Sons of Anarchy?”
Me: “I don’t have cable. I also hate reality T.V.”
Bo: “That’s not reality T.V. It’s about a motorcylce club.”

Oh em jingles, I was just masturbating to a motorcycle club romance novel! See, Gaily. There’s a lot of shit I don’t say. My filter isn’t broken. It’s selective, fuck you very much. In actuality, I downloaded the motorcycle club romance novel after that conversation and it wasn’t porn… not exactly. Wednesday night, however, I had just finished a couple of those books and figured I’d give this Sons of Anarchy thing a try. My first thought being, I don’t get it. My second thought being…

jax
Oooooh. Noooow I get it.

I’m kidding. There were no coherent thoughts. When I Googled that photo, I saw ones with his hair cut off and I think I need to change my panties now. Eventually, I totally understood the appeal of the show, beyond the fully naked backside shots, though those are worth rewinding. Being the obsessive gal I mentioned above, I started the show Wednesday evening and made it to season four by Saturday night.

Now, anyone who reads this blog regularly is fully aware of my affection for alpha male romance novels. The hot, pushy, protective, special ops guy is super appealing in fiction-only-fiction-ever. As I’ve mentioned, I can compartmentalize and acknowledge that, because I’m 25 and my brain development is leveling off. Being threatened and bullied and pushed around only works in those books, because the women secretly want it. For example, if Anastasia Steele were to legitimately say…

“Fuck off, Christian. I’m an adult and I’m capable of making my own decisions. Bee tea double ewe, I want a divorce.”

… he would bar the door to physically prevent her from leaving, then tie her up and punish her sexually just like it was still a normal Tuesday… only this time she would mean it and there would be no way to express that. In a fantasy, the alpha does nothing I don’t secretly find sexy, so I don’t need a way to state genuine disapproval. In reality, I’m calling my daddy and he’s loading his gun.

jed
I’m kidding of course. I’m loading my gun.

guns
Pink or not, they’ll still fucking kill you.

My point is, though, that I get that it’s fantasy and a different set of rules apply. Women have rape fantasies because the responsibility for the degrading things they’re imagining is put on someone else. It does not mean they want to be raped. I have fantasies about some big strong man coming in and taking over the responsibility in my life, because I have deep-seated abandonment issues and if I weren’t so fond of gummy worms, I’d be stripping. It does not mean I’m going to go out and start that relationship.

All that being said though, during my Sons of Anarchy marathon, I found myself thinking thoughts that girls with a fondness for pink aren’t typically supposed to think. There’s a scene in season one where the woman is knocked over the head by another woman and then gang-raped. I don’t believe in that feminine power crap about how we’re all sisters because we all slough our uterine lining once a month, but the idea that a woman would betray another woman in that way was just abhorrent, as I’m sure the writers intended. So, as I watched and waited for this gal to finally get hers, she ended up alone with a cop and I found myself shouting at the screen:

“Rape her with a billy club!”

Later, the bad guys were getting away and I was yelling:

“Shoot out their fucking knee caps!”

The doctor’s boss had been a bitch all season and the doctor finally punched her and threatened her and I was thinking…

Yeah… maybe it’s a little weird that I just rewound and watched that again.

After two seasons, I was texting Gail…

Me: I want to buy a motorcycle.
Gail: No you don’t.
Me: … and sell guns illegally.
Gail: Again, you’re mistaken.

Back to that compartmentalization skill of which I was so proud… I understand that if that character were raped with a billy club, the actress would just go home and call her dad and explain that he probably wouldn’t want to watch next week’s episode. No one’s knee caps are actually being shot. Punching anyone would make me feel horrible, because I apologize to the dog when I have to move him off my blanket. I get that the depicted life of crime is only appealing because there are hot guys and they gloss over all that prison. I’m not stupid or sadistic. I’m only enjoying this vicariously through fiction… because I’m an adult and capable of doing so.

After last year’s theater and Sandy Hook shootings, a lot of debates about violence in media sprung up and people brushed them off to focus on the creation of more gun laws that we won’t enforce and criminals still won’t follow. If a few hours of watching Sons of Anarchy can have a future librarian screaming “rape her with a billy club!” though, maybe we should give this violence in media topic a little consideration. I’m not a violent person, but I still can’t wait for Grand Theft Auto Five and gleefully told Gail:

“I hope they bring the chainsaws back!”
leatherface My mind is more or less fully developed. These books, shows, and games are not shaping my brain. I understand that this isn’t reality and I would no more want to physically assault someone, let alone chop them up, than I would want a man to lock me in his sensory deprivation chamber and condition me to enjoy rape.

comfort food
Don’t perform an image search for this book at work. You’re welcome.

If I’d read the above book at 15, though? I don’t know how that would have shaped my views of sex and relationships, particularly when paired with the trashy alpha male motorcycle club books I just read. If I’d been playing GTA and having Sons of Anarchy marathons when I was still learning anger management and people skills? I don’t know. I can guess, though and I genuinely think that I would’ve developed a more warped view of sex than I presently have and my favorite thing about masturbation is that I’m the most normal person in the room despite the tears. Life broke me enough on its own and I absorbed an abnormal amount of electronic media as a kid and teen. Thankfully, it was mostly Roswell, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Charmed, and maybe a couple of Sims characters locked in a room with a rocket launcher. Then again, maybe that explains the violent werewolf porn on my Kindle.

I don’t necessarily have a solution beyond parents actually, you know, parenting and not letting their kids have access to violent shows and video games. My primary declaration, though, is that this shit does matter. Maybe it’s not a video game that shot a bunch of scared babies in Sandy Hook, but Manhunt probably didn’t help the anger issues. Even as an adult, during my Sons of Anarchy marathon, I’m pretty convinced that I want a motorcycle and have for years. Because I’m a huge Superman fan and watched Man of Steel during said marathon, I’m danged certain I want it to look like this….

superman motorcycle

… but I’m an adult who couldn’t possibly be affected by media since not even children are, right? Isn’t that what keeps advertising from being a billion dollar industry? I started using Maybelline cosmetics at 12 (and still do), because Sarah Michelle Gellar was in the commercial. Don’t tell me Teen Mom doesn’t have anything to do with the rising teen pregnancy rate in my hometown. Even so, you can get on your high horse and tell people to read instead of watching T.V. or playing video games, but there’s still violence and fucked up sex in books, too. Maybe the time people spend arguing about this crap should be time spent discussing the abusive relationship implications of the Twilight novels with their 13-year-old daughters. Maybe we should be finding out where our teenage boys heads are at and reviewing their Internet history to discover what kind of porn they’re watching and how much that’s fucking them up. Maybe we should stop blaming external sources and blame ourselves for allowing impressionable children full and unlimited access to said sources.

watch responsibly

“Has she given NOT BEING CRAZY a try?!?!”

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“And my mother began to go crazy. Not crazy in a let’s paint the kitchen bright red! sort of way. But crazy in a gas oven, toothpaste sandwich, I am God sort of way. Gone were the days when she would stand on the deck lighting lemon-scented candles without then having to eat the wax.” – Running with Scissors

When I was little, my mom chaperoned every field trip, even though she worked. She used to make a really big deal out of birthdays. She cooked pancakes with candles before school and made sure we had a gift to go with them. Small holidays were even special. She made heart-shaped pancakes on Valentine’s Day and put green food dye in the milk on St. Patrick’s Day. She even painted little green footprints all over the bathtub, where the leprechauns had been. She then made my brother, Bo, and I clean them up while the ten-year-old in the bathroom bawled his eyes out like a little bitch with a skinned knee, screaming “I HATE LEPRECHAUNS!”

screaming dean

Seriously, Bo believed in this shit waaaay too long. We had to sit him down the night before his wedding and explain why Santa wouldn’t come that year.*

* I’m lying.

“Why does she have to be so fucking crazy?!?!?! Has she… oh, I don’t know… given not being crazy a try?!?! It’s not that fucking hard! I’m doing it right the fuck now!!!”

That’s generally how the conversation starts with Gail, these days…

“… and you know that in her twisted labyrinth of a brain, that’s exactly how it happened, the fucking lunatic! Hoggle is running around with a bracelet and a peach. David Bowie is somewhere in my mother’s brain wearing a completely inappropriate outfit for a children’s movie!”

… that’s where it leads…

::tearfully:: “Why does she have to be like this? Why does she do this to people? I don’t understand.”

… and that’s where it ends up.

God bless Gail for having been around for the past ten years and understanding, without explanation, that my mother is just abusive and crazy. We joke about being each other’s moms and raising each other from age fifteen. Gail wasn’t just the one to hear about every single high school crush, listen to me rant about my Sims characters and the latest Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode…

awesome
I interrupt this serious blog entry to say that I was a fucking awesome teenager.

… and get kicked out of a Wal-Mart with me for sword fighting in the craft section with dalrods. She was also the one to sleep in my car with me when I was too drunk to get up the stairs after I kicked my ex-husband out, taught me to put on eyeliner when I found myself 23 and single, and comfort me each and every time my mother went off the deep end.

When I was 13, I was going through a tough time, acting out because the only authority figure in the house had left. My mother wanted me to see a therapist and I refused. Through a series of events, the argument escalated and would’ve ended in a 911 call if she hadn’t grabbed me by the hair and thrown me away from the phone. It was a bad day. It was the day I started sucking my thumb again, though I hadn’t since I was 10. It was the day I threw out that dog leash and was relieved to find my toes weren’t broken.

When I was 14, my brother and I got into an argument and he stormed out, while I was painting the dining room. My mother screamed that it was my fault he left. The argument escalated and when she swung her purse at my head, she missed and hit the wet wall. She was furious, because I’d destroyed her purse and swung the step ladder next. I told everyone who asked about the scratch, that ran the length of my face, that I had a cat. It wasn’t technically a lie.

At 19, I told my mother to stop inviting people I didn’t know to my wedding. The argument escalated and she raised her hand to hit me across the face when I snapped “If you hit me, I will hit you back and then I will press charges.” She hasn’t raised a hand to me since, but she still plays her games.

Summer of 2011, Gail and I decided that a trip to New Mexico with my mother and her husband wouldn’t be a terrible idea, since we’d have a different room and drive a different car and it was on my mom’s tab. In hindsight, I’m kind of glad we went, because Gail understands my mommy issues on an entirely new level after hearing the woman scream at me for taking a quick trip to return something at Wal-Mart across the street since she was 30 minutes late… and watching me hyperventilate at Carlsbad Caverns because my mother was going to yell at me for getting separated from her and no one on this planet can make me regress to a frightened 14-year-old like my mother.

upset teen “Belle, calm down, sweetie. You’re not fifteen anymore. If she yells at you, we’ll leave, okay? We’ll go back to the hotel, we’ll get our stuff, and we’ll go home. Your Gramma will help with the gas. It’s okay.”

Those eleven days of being a psych major were far from wasted. That girl would be great at that.

All of this wouldn’t be so bad if my mother were consistent, but that’s just not how mental illness works. She’ll act crazy and yell at me about the lipgloss I told her I wouldn’t use, but she bought anyway. She’ll get upset that my background picture on my phone is of me and my Gramma. She’ll text me to tell me she doesn’t love me anymore, because she thinks I’m lying about having to work. I understand you don’t just stop being mentally ill, but she won’t even admit she has a problem or get help. She’s just certain the world is against her. Then, for six months, she’s my mom. She’s the woman who ate cookie dough with me while we watched Smallville. She’s slightly grating and has abysmal table manners, but she’s not cruel or abusive… so I let my guard down… like I have during these last six months.

Me: “It’s really going to suck when she starts eating the candle wax again.”
Gail: “Ugh. Yes… and I’m going to have to pick up the pieces. I hate your mother.”

The only other person Gail hates is the man who told her he couldn’t wait until their daughter got sexy.

free candy
I can’t believe he got the van in the divorce.

I once called my Gramma crying and referred to the fact that my mom was adopted when I said…

“Why did you even pick her?!? You could’ve chosen the baby to the left! What, were you approached by a man in a cloak? Did you make some kind of deal?!?!”

cloaked man
“I’m from the adoption agency.” Yeah… seems legit.

So, a couple of weeks ago, when I called and cried “You could’ve chosen the baby to the left!”, she responded with “Uh oh. What the hell has she done now?” My Gramma does not swear. My mother is threatened by no one as much as she is my Gramma, the woman who took me to spend the night with her the night my mother screamed at us both to fuck off and mooned my Gramma on the front lawn, when I was 15. According to my mother, she stole Bo and I away from her. So, when I was out with my mother and called my Gramma to tell her I was busy and that’s why I’d missed her calls, my mother was threatened and asked why I had to make the call when she was sitting right next to me. Not being 15 anymore, I was visibly pissed, because she hadn’t cared one bit about my constantly texting Gail. So, my mother has been texting and calling non-stop for the past week. The last text was to state that we were having Smithie’s barbecue for my Gramma’s birthday, Sunday at 11:30. I told my mother that my Gramma said she wanted Sim’s, not Smithie’s and she assured me that she’d just asked her.

Me: “Did you want Smithie’s or did mom?”
Gramma: “Well, I mentioned Sim’s and she said she thought that Smithie’s would be a better sit-down place…”

This led to a tearful rant on my part that I soon realized was only upsetting my Gramma, so I called Gail.

“Why does she have to be so fucking crazy?!?!?! Has she… oh, I don’t know… given not being crazy a try?!?! It’s not that fucking hard! I’m doing it right the fuck now!!!”

There’s a cheap, sapphire necklace that came with a pancake and candle breakfast when I was eight. I put it away for safekeeping, because the woman who gave it to me is long gone… and I don’t know why.

pancakes with candles

An Epidemic of Lost Boys

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stepbrothers

When I was 4, my brother and I bounced up and down on my mom and dad’s bed holding hands and shouting about how he was turning 8. It’s an oddly precious memory from my childhood, because it sounds like something from Fullhouse, rather than the more accurate Roseanne, but we could not wait to grow up. Lately, though, I’ve been observing my generation – not just on online dating sites – and I’ve realized… a bunch of people don’t want to anymore.

Today, I’m 25 years old. I work two jobs. I’m in graduate school. I pay my own way, more or less. I’m on my mother’s cell phone plan and give her my share monthly. Every now and then my dad will buy me a new set of tires and my Gramma will give me money to get a new coffee maker… or a new coffee maker… or a new coffee maker. Seriously, that was the shittiest damned coffee maker.

coffee maker
This one. Do not buy this fucking coffee maker.

Overall, I don’t get a lot of outside support and I can’t wait until the day I can say I get no outside support. I know we’re in hard economic times, because I buy groceries and pay my bills. I understand the guy who can’t afford to live on a first-year teacher’s salary or the girl who can’t work enough to support herself while going to law school. I also know that sometimes the world falls out from under you. Gail spent two years living in her old high school bedroom (cough :: parents’ new storage closet :: cough) after her infant daughter died. She substituted with me and tried to figure out how to rebuild her life in the safety of the only home she knew, surrounded by unused picture frames and stuffed back rests. When I was going through my divorce, I used to go to my Gramma’s house just to sleep in her bed for a few hours, because it was the only place I felt safe and protected. I had no high school home I could retreat to to lick my wounds and if I had, I’d have moved back. I fully admit that.

There are exceptions… and there are the people with full-blown Peter Pan syndrome. The people to which I refer aren’t in college or trade school. They aren’t saving their money to buy a house or putting in the hours until they get promoted to full-time. They’re stagnant. They “live at home” and work part-time jobs… or they don’t. They pay a few bills… or they don’t. It’s senior year of high school eight years later… and it’s happening all the time. We have an epidemic of Lost Boys.

lost boys
A summary of your online dating search results.

Historically speaking, Failure to Launch is a trend in tough economic times.* Currently 56% of men and 43% of women ages 18 to 24 live with one or both parents.* If you weren’t paying attention, men top women in this trend by 13%, whereas women historically were more likely to stay home as adults. Compare that with my parents’ generation leaving home around age 20.* These are some interesting statistics, but that’s all they are: numbers. No one knows why this is happening, so allow me to speculate from my insider viewpoint.

Our parents saw an easier life for us than what they’d experienced. College was a dream for them and therefore the key to happiness; so they told us we could be anything we wanted. They remembered the harsh bullying and exclusion they experienced as kids; so they gave out “participation trophies.” They grew up with Depression Era parents who didn’t want to spend the extra dollar for entertainment; so they went into debt buying every new gadget. They left home at 20; so they let us stay indefinitely. They loved us; so they completely overcompensated.

Now, we are Millennials. We learned to type by chatting with friends over AOL Instant Messenger. We knew how to work the parental controls on the Internet better than our parents did. We went from Duck Hunt to Call of Duty without blinking an eye. We memorized the television prime time lineup. We invented cyberbullying. We were the first generation to Google the answer and do the research online the night before. Our authority figures stumbled over themselves to safeguard against the dangers involved in all of the above, but could never quite keep up, because they were still learning themselves. Essentially, we were a technological experiment… and look at the results.

man-plugged-in

Yes, many of us are moving forward with our tech skills, but because our parents were buried beneath a mountain of debt giving in to our (and their) every whim, we were constantly told how much being an adult sucked and to enjoy childhood as long as we could. Now, a number of us are doing just that. The aforementioned Lost Boys “live at home” to “save money.” I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. They don’t live at home. I live at home. That’s what home is. They live at their parents’ home. Also, how much money have they saved? Ohhhhh, they can afford a nicer car and more nights out living at home? That’s not saving money, that’s spending money. Those are opposites. It is not expensive to live here. I survive on about $1,400 a month. Comfortably. That’s why people move to the Midwest. I have personally met many people my age who just have no reason not to live on their own. Some even have college degrees and decent jobs. They just don’t want to grow up, because it comes with more responsibility. Yeah. It does. It’s also not optional. No one’s going to freeze at 19 until they decide to get on board with this aging thing. They’re going to stay home and play video games while pulling the occasional evening shift at the movie theater and then what? They’re going to wake up at 28 and turn on the game system instead of going to their high school reunion, because they haven’t moved forward in ten years.

The thing is, this stagnation takes funding. The electricity running through that laptop to create that sad Plenty of Fish profile isn’t free. I am not blaming our parents. We are adults now. It is no one’s fault but our own if we choose not to move on with our lives. Just maybe, though, the parents with the 28-year-olds in the back room should stop enabling them. They aren’t scared teenagers searching for direction. They’re lazy, unaccountable, users and they’re eventually going to have to join society in their own right. It’s never too late for someone to turn their life around. It’s also never too late to sit them down and say “I love you, but I’m not funding this lifestyle anymore. You have three months.” No matter the coddling that took place growing up, it is up to us to be an active part of this world and not to take advantage of the parents who loved us so much that they destructively committed to giving us everything we ever wanted in life.

I was told over and over that I could be anything I wanted when I grew up.

victorias secret angel
A Victoria’s Secret Angel
Princess Eugenie
An actual princess
beyonce
Beyonce Knowles

Now I’m 25 and it’s time to realize that I will never look that good naked. I don’t have royal blood. My singing could offend Helen Keller. I hope my generation will find a balance between the “walk it off” and the “participation trophies” when we’re raising our own kids. I hope that all of these people who think being an adult sucks will realize… they’re doing it wrong. The Lost Boys are missing out on so many things, from cooking naked, to having late night television marathons, to masturbating without worrying anyone will hear, to singing loudly off key, to only ever having to clean up their own messes, to playing their video games on their own time and dime, to feeling a sense of autonomy and accomplishment when they’ve mastered their budget. Most importantly though, their parents are missing out on some of their best years to do the same things. We’re taking advantage out of selfishness and misplaced fear.

“You know that point in your life when you realize the house you grew up in isn’t really your home anymore? All of a sudden even though you have some place where you put your shit, that idea of home is gone. You’ll see one day when you move out it just sort of happens one day and it’s gone. You feel like you can never get it back. It’s like you feel homesick for a place that doesn’t even exist. Maybe it’s like this rite of passage, you know. You won’t ever have this feeling again until you create a new idea of home for yourself, you know, for your kids, for the family you start, it’s like a cycle or something. I don’t know, but I miss the idea of it, you know. Maybe that’s all family really is. A group of people that miss the same imaginary place.” – Andrew Largeman Garden State

I love Garden State, but my ass. There’s no reason you can’t live alone and be single and make yourself a home. You’ve just got to actually try.

Citations

http://www.forbes.com/sites/moneywisewomen/2012/06/06/failure-to-launch-adult-children-moving-back-home/

http://www.lohud.com/article/20070426/CUSTOM02/70423004/Failure-Launch

http://www.utexas.edu/cola/centers/prc/_files/pdf/workingpapers/00-01-01.pdf

Seven Reasons Why I Avoid Working With Children

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I have a confession to make, y’all. I’m Catholic. It’s kind of our thing.

Here goes…

I don’t like children.

Yes, yes, a substitute teacher who doesn’t like children. Could I be more of a Hey Arnold character (or more of a child of the 90’s)? Let me clarify. I don’t like young children. Teenagers, the ones everyone else hates, I adore. They’re funny and sarcastic and I don’t have to worry that I’ll crush their little souls when I snap at them, which I rarely do, because I actually enjoy being around them. I know how to deal with them. I have an undergraduate degree in them. Children, though? Children make me wonder how the species has survived this long when they are so fucking annoying.

public edPublic education looks a little something like this.

While I look forward to teaching middle school and high school, I do everything I can to avoid substituting elementary school, short of not paying my rent or starving. I have literally and purposefully waited until the last minute a job was posted to accept it so I could get paid the same money for less time with young children. I am not cruel to them, by any means. I’m actually quite sweet to them and would never wish them harm. A bystander might even dare to think I’m good with them and maybe I am. I wouldn’t know, because as they’re hugging me and I’m hugging them back, I can only think “Ew. Stop touching me. It’s cold and flu season.” I, of course, love  the children that I’m required to love by blood, but I still avoid them between ages seven and eleven and here’s why:

1. They all like me.
Not only do they all like me, they actually care whether or not I like them. This means I have to be super conscious of my temper when they are driving me fucking insane. If I slip and snap at them, because I’m in a room with 22 attention starved human puppies, I could absolutely crush their little egos. I swear there are people who go into early childhood education, just so someone will love them, because these kids do. They want you to compliment their coloring (it’s just fucking coloring), they want you to listen to their stories, they want to draw you a picture, they want to hug you.

2. They have boundary issues.
Yeah, that’s right. They want to hug you. People are dropping dead of whooping cough (somewhere, I’m sure) and this little seven-year-old wants to sit on my lap and wrap his arms around me. Sweetie, I’m calling you Sweetie, because I don’t even know your damned name. Get off me… and why are you sticky?

3. They’re disgusting.
Seriously, kid. Why are you sticky? No, I do not want to see where your stitches were. Please stop wiggling your bloody tooth in front of my face and wash the hands that you just had in your mouth. Now wash them again, because you just wiped snot all over them.

I would rather have teenagers inquire about my vagina again than be faced with a hoard of young children who desperately want to show me their wounds.

4. They’re hypochondriacs.
If they don’t have wounds to show me, that’s quite all right. They’ll make some up.

“My head hurts. I can’t breathe. My neck hurts.”
“Mine does, too. Yes you can. That’s because you’re squeezing it.”

This went on for the whole damned day. The eight-year-old hypochondriac actually exists and it’s even more obnoxious than the twenty-eight-year-old one, because of the added whine and the fact that they’ve said it 93 times. Maybe this just works really well at home and they get coddled and kissed for it, because they’re all spoiled.

5. They’re all spoiled.
I live in the same white suburban middle class town I grew up in and it’s only gotten wealthier. Just recently, four eight-year-olds told me they own a Northface. Why the hell do you own a Northface?!? That’s a $150 coat and we may get snow this year! I own a Northface, because I work two jobs and I’m not going to outgrow it in the next year. You, however, are growing up in an obesity epidemic and about to hit a growth spurt. It makes about as much sense for you to own that coat as it does for you to own that pair of Uggs. Those are $200 boots, worn by someone who doesn’t even know what $200 is.

6. They’re repetitive and redundant and they just say the same thing over and over again.
Yes, I know you have a Northface, because you told me 14 friggin’ times! Your little friend there has told me five times that you went to P.E. yesterday. The girl to his left has told me seven times that you saw your teacher at lunch. The child with her hand in her mouth has mentioned her loose tooth forty-six times. Please go sit back down before my frustration inadvertantly showers you all with my brain matter.

7. They are little jackhammers of inquiry.
“Where’s our teacher? Why’s she gone? Is that your phone? What time do we go to lunch? Are we having indoor recess or outdoor recess? When do we go to the library? Can I leave my paper on my desk? When is lunch? Is that a Nook? Are we going to music today? Are you going to be here tomorrow? Is our teacher coming back tomorrow? Why is she gone? When is lunch? Why does it say we have P.E. today when we had it yesterday? Are we taking AR tests today? Can I read my book? When do we go to music? When do we go home? Why do you keep rubbing your head?”

Don’t worry. If you just stop answering, they’ll make sure to repeat it at least thirty-nine times.

Maybe one day I’ll get over my whopping committment and baby issues and I’ll have my own kids, because I’m stupid and think babies are cute. They’ll be absolutely fucking adorable until age seven and then I won’t love them anymore until they’re eleven. My Gramma has actually suggested I “farm them out” once they hit this point and take them back a few years later. I always knew she was brilliant.

In the meantime, note to self: Do not substitute elementary school on the first day of your period.