Fatherless

I lost it at the park today, on purpose. Five boys were playing with one girl on the play structure. They quickly moved along from normal kid banter to name calling to cursing to bragging about their boy parts and wagging them in her face and telling her to suck them to calling her fat and ugly and slutty and offering to ‘bang’ her and “Hey, let’s push her off!” and ganging up behind her and pushing her onto the ledge–the same ledge where a nine-year-old was hanged by high schoolers last winter–as she clung hard to the poles scared but still not protesting until I finally quit ignoring it and screamed like a total psycho at them to get their hands off of her.  And when I asked them what the hell they thought they were doing, one of them squeaked, “Playing.”

Somebody tell me. Where are the men in this town?

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Haiku

 

Mother’s Day

Air Bake cookie sheet:

warped and scalded on the stove.

He fried tortillas.

 

 

Boy vs. Spring

If I cajole him

he will wear the khaki shorts

over his snow boots.

 

 

Inspired by this week’s theme at Mama Says Om. (And no, even though I am now a purporter of yoga, I have not and shall not utter a single Om in my lifetime. That’s a little too Shirley McClaine for my taste.)

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Little Miss Sass

Last night we buzzed off most of Jason’s hair while the kids slept.

This morning, he rescued Naiah from her crib as usual. She gave him a very stern look.

Jason: What? Is my hair all gone?

Naiah: Well, there’s your head.

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Happy Bill Day!

So I was paying bills today. Our electric bill is always out of control up here, so I was a little scared to look at the amount due. It took me a minute to find the total, because instead of a number they had typed in “None.” Then I looked up at the itemized charges and found that I had a $260 credit carrying over from last month. Fearing it was all a happy mistake, I called the company. The receptionist informed me that Energy Crisis Prevention had thousands left over in their budget from last year, which they had to dump in order to receive full funding for next year, so they applied some of it to my account. “Is that okay?” she asked me. Um, yeah. I think I can handle that.

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[snicker]

I don’t know if you’ve been following the Paris Hilton saga. I hope not. I don’t even have cable, and somehow it ends up in my Yahoo news every day, whether I like it or not. Earlier today I learned that she’s petitioning the governator from her MySpace page to be spared her 45 day jail sentence. Her fans pleaded for her, saying that Paris “brings beauty and excitement to (most of) our otherwise mundane lives.” Seriously? I don’t know whether to laugh or throw up. My brother decided to write a little song.

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Familiarity Breeds Stupidity

The other day, I tried to reach into boiling water to test the pasta.

Yesterday I grabbed a cookie sheet with my bare hand, two minutes out of the oven.

I flip tortillas on the skillet with my fingers, and later I wonder why they’re sore.

I think the longer I cook, the dumber I get.

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Serendipity

It started snowing at tee ball practice yesterday. So the kids and I walked home early. I decided to take a different street than usual, because I wanted to walk past a house that I had seen for sale online. Two houses down from that house, I found one of our neighbors, helping a man clean up his lawn. So we stopped to chat with our neighbor. While we were talking, the man who lived there suddenly said, “Hey, you have two girls. Do you need two bikes?” And he brought out two kid-sized, pink bicycles. “They’re free to a good home,” he said.

Now, the girls have been asking for bikes since their fourth birthday, but it was always either too close to winter or too expensive. Two free bikes in just the right size and just the right color– to say the least, it was unexpected. So I asked if I could come back with the van after dinner, and he said, “Sure.”

When I arrived to pick them up, he had thrown in two brand new tires and told me where I could find inner tubes for next to nothing. My neighbor loaded them in the van for me. I thanked them both profusely; they welcomed me profusely, and I left. It makes me want to cry just thinking about it.

So there are two pink bicycles in my back yard. One of them needs paint and a new seat and a chain. The other is fine as-is. The girls still can’t believe it. I think we’re going to work on them together.

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Better Than the Birthday Song

My brother is 25 today. Since I can’t hang out with him or the rest of the clan today, I tuned into the music on his one-man-band page. “Summer Nites” is full of Mississippi/California crossovers, fading back and forth between the duplex off the 101 freeway and the red brick house by the pond. I’m not sure where I’d rather be right now.

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