If my husband knew I was posting this he would K-I-L-L me....but it's history that must be written down and if I don't it will be forgotten, though it may take our lifetimes to forget it.
First...a little update on my other children. Ty is my free spirit who looks up on Google "How to be a hippie"...rainbows, long hair, Birks...hurray. I tell him it's also a view on life and that he may need to wait to understand life a little more before he rushes into a lifestyle. He takes art classes on Fridays and rolls his eyes that he has to be "the oldest one there--I mean, the others are what, seven, eight? and I'm nine! Just great." Oh the trials in life. His interest in Spongebob has resurfaced and his interest in school has shlumped, which means bye bye computer, video games, and tv! I recently asked him to describe someone he had teach a class and he said "she's blond." I said, can I have more detail (he didn't know her name)...is she skinny, a little heavy?...what's heavy? he asks. Well, I say, it means a little bigger than skinny, maybe rounder than others. "Mom...all you adults are heavy-look how big you are!" note to self-stop eating.
Garon takes fencing two nights a week. Get that kid's energy OUT, I mean--jumping on my lap at 3 wks, running at 10 mos...wide-eyed at birth? Hep me hep me! (praying to the heavens) So out of the 3 types of swords he can choose from he chooses to learn Saber (as opposed to Epee and Foil)...but on Friday nights they bout all night versus receive instruction. Greg and I are standing by the door Friday night waiting for him to finish up and he's fighting some 15-yr-old and getting his butt-kicked (it's not leveled by experience)...afterward, in his frustration, he approaches the crowd of awaiting parents and explains, "We're using foil tonight and I'm a Saberist, so that's why I'm not that great." Oh brother...I'm slinking out the door as the parents look around for the parent of the child who is a "Saberist" and must explain his weakness at fighting that night to save face. He's also playing basketball which is great--come home tired, child! Just walk in the door and fall into bed---love it I tell you.
Bek is doing great as a missus. She "missus" me, she "missus" her brothers, she "missus" her dad, her home, her state of CA that has more than po-dunkiness to offer. No seriously, she's a lovely lovely young woman and a good friend now. I told her--no kids till your dog dies. Let's see how long that gives me.
Back to The Kinz...as we call her. I told the kids I was spending X dollars on each of them for Christmas. As they blow it with me, I subtract their dollars. The boys are scrambling to keep track of their hoodies, backpacks, etc., that would cost them out of their $, but The Kinz couldn't care less. Let's see....so she's learned how to make grilled cheese. Here's how:
Put one stick of butter in a bowl and nuke for a minute, allowing butter to splatter inside microwave for parent to clean later, slather bread and put on electric skillet that will sit out until parents put away. Use all the bread because making grilled cheese is so much fun and sit sandwiches out for the duration of the day to get old and nasty only to be tossed by parents later. Leave my sandwich on my bed for dog to get and run away with so I can chase her and throw her (literally) out the back door, only to feel bad and bring her back in a make MORE grilled cheese to feed the thieving dog.
OK--so I never have bread and butter, essentials, wouldn't you say? (and I buy REAL butter...NOT ANY MORE).
Hmmmm there's some muffin mixes in the cupboard. Mom wouldn't mind if I made those. To make muffins: put all ingredients of each box in separate bowls. Fill 2 muffin tins to the top with no liner and no spray, stick both in the oven and let bake until something is burning. Then open the oven to release smell even stronger and let brothers run through the house screaming that the house is on fire while parents nap on a Sunday afternoon. Leave cinnamon bread muffuns in cupboard so Mom can find it later and trash the whole thing, tin and all, and leave poppyseed in oven so it can continue to burn while Mom gets up and walks into kitchen with make-up smeared nap face and the look of death.
Enjoy!
Oh but we're not done. Chef Kinz continues....get up at 3 AM and empty can of Spaghettios into bowl. Nuke uncovered for 2 minutes and let tomato sauce splatter all over microwave so Mom can find it four hours later so it's good and caked on. Leave empty can on counter, spilled tomato sauce on grout, and put contents of bowl into tupperware and put in fridge. Go back to bed.
Voila!
Now for the surprise.
A note left on bathroom counter for my niece who lives with us to find:
Britney--I love you! Look in the bathtub! It's a surprise! You will laugh LOL LOL (heart heart)....this is written over and over on back and front of two pages with a "beautiful mind" motif, folded like a Hallmark card, and left on the counter at 5 AM. Brit, she doesn't watch enough horror movies to know that when something is awaiting you behind a curtain, you don't go alone. She moves to the commode/bath area and pulls back the curtain. The MONSTER TURD attacks!!! The size of a bear's log, she jumps back in a shriek, ewwwwwwwww....scoops it out with a toilet paper roll and it's so big she has to plunge it until it goes down. Since no one was awake yet and she had to get ready for work, she felt she had no choice...but for me? Oh no--that kid would've been yanked out of her Justin Beiber filled dreams with the fury of a spurned demon and ear-dragged into the bathtub. LOVE? what? Surprise? huh?? OK--she FINALLY gets a sense of humor and it involves her squatting in the tub and taking dump to leave as a surprise??
Greg was so disturbed by the whole incident, he made me take an oath of silence because to him it was a clear sign of her leaving to the dark side of insanity and embarking on a new kind of disabling condition. Let us not forget that Greg still says Number One and Number Two when talking about the bathroom, so yeah, for him this is like entering a Jewish woman in a spare rib eating contest.
No, I didn't think it was funny...it was twisted and freaky and weird, but honestly, I wasn't Surprise!'d.
Sunday, November 20, 2011
Sunday, November 6, 2011
Madonna Brewster
I recently had an IEP with Kindsay's teachers. Oh, what an angel! Sweet sweet girl! They go on and on about how wonderful she is. Good--I tell them--better that she is an angel for you than have her treat you the way she treats me. Bup Bup! I DO get to see a wonderful Kindsay. Don't get me wrong! I have moments that are tender and lovely with her, but they are few and far between...trans-Atlantic if you will, trans-Pacific more likely, but because of my unconditional love for her and her overly comfortable feel in her own home, she allows all demons without inhibitions to cater to her every whim, and this tends to cross me...well, WRONG. I've asked her why she is so mean to me and not people outside the home and she never has an answer. I know how many parents are nodding their heads in condescending-type comprehension....all children do that. No, friends....I've already raised a child--and while she has already apologized for how she behaved towards her father and me, the fond memories of raising her outweigh, by galactic tons, the bitter ones. Kindsay makes every day of mine a challenge to rise in the morning and a fifty-meter dash to get to bed to finish the day every night.
However, she is funny. She has actually started, in her fifteenth year now, to develop a sense of humor. She laughs mostly at herself, and much of her laughter in the past was created by mania treated by medication she currently takes. (We can always tell when the meds wear off because the mania/hysteria grows exponentially.)
She is funny because she loves fashion and clothes and jewelry, and make-up, but not within any American convention...actually not within any Gentile convention that I know of. I stopped trying to intervene in her dressing rituals when I pulled a skirt out of the closet to suggest as something to wear one day and she told me off for trying to interfere--yelling at me that she was A N A D U L T. I had to remind her that she was indeed NOT an adult, but that was fruitless and I walked out having been defeated once and for all. So here she comes with a blue skirt polka dotted in white, purple chunky beads, "It's a girl!" red bow in the front of her untouched bed-head, blue sparkly make-up that places her on a roller rink somewhere in the midwest, a multi-design pink shirt decorated in pastels, shin-high fur boots, pink lipstick that draws Susan Lucci's character "Erica" to mind as the producers attempted to create far more lip than nature provided, and every bracelet she could find for under a buck from all dollar stores within a five-mile radius. Madonna, mixed with Punky Brewster, shaken and stirred by Erica Kane, rocked by a 1980s thrift shop and you have my dear girl dolled up for school. She then grabs her lunch bag which is covered in old food because she tells me "I needed to wipe my face after lunch", and her backpack that contains a hoarder's dream of absolutely nothing of everything and will...yes WILL knock you down if she turns around while wearing it and you are within two feet of her and off to the bus she goes! I know that no matter how much time has passed that the bus driver still does a double-take every morning. Don't tell me otherwise because I teach this population of child and have several teen girls in my class and NONE of them have any resemblance of Kindsay in any way possible. Yes, some are fashionable and some are not...but NONE of them remind me of Kindsay even in the tiniest way. Nevertheless, I used to want her to wear a little sign on her shirt that read "I am special" so when she threw her tantrums in stores and other public places people would look away realizing she was not a typical child, but now I don't need one.
Her clinical anxiety which causes her to retreat into herself in public adds to her mystique. She chews her nails, picks at her skin and her nose and her ears, shakes her knees up and down in anticipation of nothing, and will stare you into next year without a batting lash. Get her texting you on the cell phone and you are calling me pleading for her to stop, but face-to-face there's little if any response to your inquiries as to how she is. We will then walk into the house and every question, comment, tirade that was hiding behind those intense brown eyes unyields to itself and explodes in my face...literally within inches. She then strips to a tiny sporty bra and underwear that no matter how large I buy them or how they are really supposed to sit on her hips they are pulled clear up her back and into rear, thus causing me to reminisce of the Madonna/Punky Brewster times only moments before. Yes--she's a sweet sweet girl.
So she is funny in her style, in that she wants to use her creativity all at once and every moment, and most parents would smile and say, That's okay, but isn't it always "OK" when it's NOT your kid? I'm happy to let other children express themselves without judging the parents' sanity, but when it's my own...I'm judging my OWN sanity...what have I done?
But then Kindsay will have a moment of endearment, when she reveals her true maturity and age of understanding of life with her doll that pees in a diaper after she pours water in its mouth, her multiple posters hung on her wall with screws she hammered in (sigh), the writing of notes to a boyfriend she has never met and their eight kids that don't exist...I can go on and on...but when she asked me very insistently and matter-of-factly, "Mom--is this the only world we can live in? Is there another world where we can live?" I stumbled on answering that one..does she mean while we're on this earth...after we die...? She laughs upon sensing my confusion and to herself remarks--"Oh, what a funny question. Why did I ask that? I shouldn't have asked that." Then I laugh at her self-realization that she didn't even know what she meant and we both moved on without further ado.
However, she is funny. She has actually started, in her fifteenth year now, to develop a sense of humor. She laughs mostly at herself, and much of her laughter in the past was created by mania treated by medication she currently takes. (We can always tell when the meds wear off because the mania/hysteria grows exponentially.)
She is funny because she loves fashion and clothes and jewelry, and make-up, but not within any American convention...actually not within any Gentile convention that I know of. I stopped trying to intervene in her dressing rituals when I pulled a skirt out of the closet to suggest as something to wear one day and she told me off for trying to interfere--yelling at me that she was A N A D U L T. I had to remind her that she was indeed NOT an adult, but that was fruitless and I walked out having been defeated once and for all. So here she comes with a blue skirt polka dotted in white, purple chunky beads, "It's a girl!" red bow in the front of her untouched bed-head, blue sparkly make-up that places her on a roller rink somewhere in the midwest, a multi-design pink shirt decorated in pastels, shin-high fur boots, pink lipstick that draws Susan Lucci's character "Erica" to mind as the producers attempted to create far more lip than nature provided, and every bracelet she could find for under a buck from all dollar stores within a five-mile radius. Madonna, mixed with Punky Brewster, shaken and stirred by Erica Kane, rocked by a 1980s thrift shop and you have my dear girl dolled up for school. She then grabs her lunch bag which is covered in old food because she tells me "I needed to wipe my face after lunch", and her backpack that contains a hoarder's dream of absolutely nothing of everything and will...yes WILL knock you down if she turns around while wearing it and you are within two feet of her and off to the bus she goes! I know that no matter how much time has passed that the bus driver still does a double-take every morning. Don't tell me otherwise because I teach this population of child and have several teen girls in my class and NONE of them have any resemblance of Kindsay in any way possible. Yes, some are fashionable and some are not...but NONE of them remind me of Kindsay even in the tiniest way. Nevertheless, I used to want her to wear a little sign on her shirt that read "I am special" so when she threw her tantrums in stores and other public places people would look away realizing she was not a typical child, but now I don't need one.
Her clinical anxiety which causes her to retreat into herself in public adds to her mystique. She chews her nails, picks at her skin and her nose and her ears, shakes her knees up and down in anticipation of nothing, and will stare you into next year without a batting lash. Get her texting you on the cell phone and you are calling me pleading for her to stop, but face-to-face there's little if any response to your inquiries as to how she is. We will then walk into the house and every question, comment, tirade that was hiding behind those intense brown eyes unyields to itself and explodes in my face...literally within inches. She then strips to a tiny sporty bra and underwear that no matter how large I buy them or how they are really supposed to sit on her hips they are pulled clear up her back and into rear, thus causing me to reminisce of the Madonna/Punky Brewster times only moments before. Yes--she's a sweet sweet girl.
So she is funny in her style, in that she wants to use her creativity all at once and every moment, and most parents would smile and say, That's okay, but isn't it always "OK" when it's NOT your kid? I'm happy to let other children express themselves without judging the parents' sanity, but when it's my own...I'm judging my OWN sanity...what have I done?
But then Kindsay will have a moment of endearment, when she reveals her true maturity and age of understanding of life with her doll that pees in a diaper after she pours water in its mouth, her multiple posters hung on her wall with screws she hammered in (sigh), the writing of notes to a boyfriend she has never met and their eight kids that don't exist...I can go on and on...but when she asked me very insistently and matter-of-factly, "Mom--is this the only world we can live in? Is there another world where we can live?" I stumbled on answering that one..does she mean while we're on this earth...after we die...? She laughs upon sensing my confusion and to herself remarks--"Oh, what a funny question. Why did I ask that? I shouldn't have asked that." Then I laugh at her self-realization that she didn't even know what she meant and we both moved on without further ado.
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