The other day I was walking near my work and this girl, maybe about 19, came up and asked if I could spare a $1 for the bus. I gave her a buck, then she said “thanks ma’am.” I almost tore the money out of her stupid young hand. I get that she was trying to be polite, but honestly the transition from Miss to Ma’am came out of nowhere and really hurts my heart. Like angina.
The very next day I was at the liquor store and this happened:
16-Year-Old: Ma’am, do you have a quarter I can have?
Me: Yes, and I’ll give you two if you never call me or anyone else Ma’am again.
Sometimes you just got to teach the kids, otherwise they’ll never learn.
For those of you with arty aspirations, check out my friend Brooke’s website at fireandflowers.com. Not only does she have lots of good project ideas, but she is now teaching classes so you don’t have to figure out how to do these things on your own. She has classes for both kids and adults covering a variety of projects. I’m totally blown away by her creativity and talent, it’s very inspiring!
At my neighborhood grocery, they know about easing the pains of recessionary economy. They also, apparently, have distribution contacts in Israel.
Buyer for Denny’s: Ahmed, the people of Flint are very hard hit by the turndown, how can you help us out?
Ahmed, Israeli Monday cereal distributor: Monday Cookies?
Hub brought this most excellent box of cereal home the other night, absolutely beaming with pride. This is something we occasionally have done in the past; buying groceries and cereal in particular, for the sheer entertainment value of the packaging. Once we drove up to Canada during the Winter Olympics to collect cereal boxes adorned with the faces of NHL players who were representing Canada in the games. Shanahan Crunch, Yzerman O’s, Messier Munchies- oh, and did you know that in Canada, milk comes in a bag? Yeah, so we bought some of that too, obviously. We also have a two box set of Gordie Howe cereal, with a full color rendering of the old Olympia, where the Red Wings played back before there were helmets, or instant cereals, for that matter.
Denny’s brings us a lot of joy, actually. I never shop there, but occasionally go in just to see what they are up to. They take lowering overheard to amazingly pride-less extremes. You can buy black bananas there, 8 cents a lb, if you are willing to cut a swath through the fruit flies to get to them. Denny is the master of selling the outdated gems of world, things that are so old that by law they cannot be sold to the public in their original packaging, and so have been stripped of their labels to avoid litigation. There will be a pyramid of brownish yellow saucy something in bottles, accompanied by a scrap of the original shipping carton and a sign that trumpets “Sweet and Spicy Mustard!!!- Outdated, But still GOOD!” Every sign in Denny’s has been amended with the “outdated, but still GOOD!” mantra, and the phrase itself has wormed its way into the daily language of my family.
Me: “Sammy, why didn’t you FLUSH?”
5 year old son: “Outdated, but still GOOD!”
Want some outdated, but still good milk? Check the freezer! It’s next to outdated, but still good frozen sandwich ham.
Oh. Snap.I just let Sammy eat a fist full of Monday Cookie, assuming (for some reason) that the Hebrew (and Kosher!) cereal was quirky only in its twisted blend of chocolate chip ethnic-ness. But is it still GOOD?
Oh, crap!
My friend Kristin asked me to make a custom bib out of the pink sugar skull fabric to give to her friend’s baby. Here is the beautiful Zoe, making the bib look super awesome with the power of her tremendous cuteness.
Today was Brewster Bear day….If you don’t have kids you don’t know about this little ritual, employed by many kindergarten and first grade teachers. What happens is this: The teacher sends home a stuffed animal and a notebook in a backpack. Every kid brings home the stuffed animal one night and writes about al the wonderful things that the toy encounters on his night with your kid. It’s manipulation and trickery on a grand scale.
As soon as I see Sam barreling up the driveway, cradling that damn backpack, the first thing I think is …”Well, fuck.”
Gone are my plans for ramen noodles for lunch, replaced by tomato soup and grilled gruyere, peaches and cream, crème brulee. Gone are my dreams of working on bags while Sam contentedly plays with Legos. Now we have to go to the Lego museum; super.
After that, the soup kitchen to feed the homeless, back home to craft an heirloom quilt and bake macadamia nut brownies. After taking pictures of Brewster writing a letter to the soldiers in Iraq, we must begin making prime rib and homemade horseradish, and watch a made for children documentary on Desmond Tutu.
This is our second go around with Brewster this school year, after being one of his first stops in September. I was really hoping that someone in this damn class was not an only child being raised by Claire and Heathcliff Huxtable. I set the bar pretty high the last time, thinking I would be one of the best moms in class. I filled the page with glorified drivel, and did the photo shoot, kind of hoping old Brewster would not be back, and if he was, the other pages, done by the other moms, would include at least one tale of Brewster falling out of a rusty hole in the floorboard of someone’s Venture during a bank heist, or a picture of Brewster sitting in the lap with some drunk dad who is getting a neck tat. But oh no. We got the good teacher, the one all the other teachers at Sam’s school choose to send their kids to.
I’m good, dammit, but the pressure is starting to get to me. Instead of being an adorable little bonding fuzz ball, Brewster is a little bug planted on my son…a computer chip, collecting all my misdeeds and laziness for the whole class, and school, to see.
Now, I have to go. No one has seen Brewster for a while, and the cat tends to pee on things that are left lying around. These are not the kind of moms who are going to see the humor in a situation that results in a stuffed bear going with us to get the cat put down for revealing me as more of a Roseanne Connor than a Maggie Seaver.
The other night the hub, my 17-year-old and I went out to dinner without all the rug rats. I could tell Ryan was hopped up with enthusiasm about something, and sure enough, when we sat down, he began “The Talk”. You know the one I mean, I’m sure it has happened to almost everyone. It’s the “So what do you want to do with your life?” talk. Ryan was absolutely on fire with the possibilities ahead of this kid, and Jordan was immediately tense and gripping the edge of the table with white fingers….
I passed on to Jordan my fear of almost everything, my ability to overanalyze every decision until we are wrapped up in the dementia of everything that could go wrong like flies in a web. We are immediately dubious about everyone who sees potential in us, and paralyzed by the possibility of making a horrible mistake. Ryan, on the other hand, was born with confidence that can move mountains, and he does, although they sometimes look nothing like mountains when he is done with them.
I thought about my life as I pitied Jordan, squirming in his skin. It has been a series of mistakes and happenstance, and yet, I am one of the happiest people I know. I have 4 great kids, only one of whom was planned. I have had a string of jobs that I liked, sometimes hated, and loved, none of which did I ever fill out an application for. I am married these 11 years to a great guy who may not always understand me, but tries like hell to love me in spite of that.
Then I think about my friends, people I have gotten back in touch with post high school, some that I never lost touch with…most of them have lost the things about themselves that made them great. They are tired, they have lost their spark, and they act old before their time, and I have to wonder, why?
I think you just have to live. You have to keep your heart open. You have to be willing to love things with abandon. I have never been afraid to love, really, really hard. Sure, I am cynical and sarcastic, but that is just a thin crust covering a person who believes in everything and everyone but herself. I never have felt like life really owed me anything, but the same time, I have always trusted it not to totally screw me, and so far, so good. Maybe I have just been lucky; in fact, I probably have been. I do know that I have had some pretty bad things happen, but that they all went away and don’t hurt anymore. That’s what bad things seem to do when you are willing to let them go.
So I guess what I’m saying is, it’s okay not to know, Jordan. It’s okay not to have a successful career, as long as you have a successful life. You can have one without the other, as long as you are able to love what you end up with. At the end, if you don’t hate what has hurt you, are not bitter about what you thought you deserved that you didn’t get, and have the spark you were born with still alive in you, you win. You just have to be happy. You just have to love it. It’s easier than you think.
A few months ago at Patchwork Craft Fair, a lovely woman named Mariko bought one of Amy Kate’s sushi bibs from me. She emailed me a few months later telling me how much she loves it and she sent pictures of her son Reo wearing it. I am totally in love with this baby! He is so cute and looks like the happiest kid ever. Check him out:
Thank you, Mariko, for sharing these photos with us. We are so proud that Reo loves his bib and we hope he makes many happy messes on it!
Want to make your baby to be as happy as Reo? Then click here to buy your own sushi bib!
Dude…things are getting weird over here in Michigan. It’s the end of January, people aren’t getting around so great due to the feet and feet of snow and the wind-chill that kills brain cells, and I think it’s making some folks “All-work-and-no-play–makes-Jack-a- dull-boy -Cra-zay”…
For starters, my mom, who is the sweetest, most gullible little old lady ever, has been getting prank called. Last week, someone called from a “private number” and left a cryptic message that said “Beware the Ball Whizler…be afraid, be very afraid!” She immediately took this advice to heart and locked her front door. Of course she has no idea who the Ball Whizler is, but if this ominous sounding person was nice enough to warn her about him, she’s taking that shit seriously. The next day, someone else called, stating they were from the neighborhood watch. She tried to interrupt them to let them know that they had the wrong number, but this person said “WAIT! Listen! Be on the lookout for a man in blue jeans, and red jacket, driving a burgundy Camaro! No, this is wrong!” and abruptly, they hung up. The remainder of her week has been spent trying to figure out if the burgundy Camaro could conceivably leave the area encompassed by that neighborhood watch, team up with the Ball Whizler, and murder her in her nightie. I believe she is even closing her bedroom window at night, the Ball Whizler and the Camaro man convincing her to do what the 25 below zero wind chills has not.
Then, here this morning, Lily went out to meet the bus and found a neatly dismembered and sorted rabbit in the driveway. A big one. His head was the size of a grapefruit and was sporting a clouded white eye. Two feet away, a greasy pile of innards and rabbit poop, three feet farther, both its back legs, separated from each other but stacked one on top of the other in a way that made them look connected until I tried to shovel them up. Grisly. Just grisly. I would have gone in the house and made Hub scoop all that into a bag when he got home, me giggling my head off from the window while he gagged the whole time, but unfortunately, Lily refused to walk past a ritual sacrifice to get on the bus. I did it, but you know without me telling you of course, that the head kept rolling back out of the bag, hoping to trick me into just snatching it up by the ears and slinging it in there. No way people, I remained as girly as possible the whole time. Dealing with rabbit guts is gross and is always- ALWAYS- done at least the length of a shovel handle, at least that’s what I’ve been taught.
What could tomorrow bring? Was the dismembered bunny just the Whizler’s calling card? If he left me something fuzzy, what could he have in store for my mother? I shudder to think. In the meantime, my mom isn’t answering her phone and I’m not letting my dogs outside for more than the required 2 minutes. Cabin fever is some crazy shit in the Great White North- the Shining can happen at any moment.
Recently my friend Jorli asked me to make a special order bib for a friend with a new baby. The baby’s name is Sam, and Jorli wanted a bib that said Sam I Am. Sam is a girl, and Jorli told me to go as feminine as I want with the details. Oh femmy! A world of pink and twee ribbons and bows swimmed through by head, but in the end I used pink fabric on the front, and the back is green with pink lady bugs. I was very excited because I finally got to use some of the awesome functions on my sewing machine to create the words in a flower patten and also sew a cool vine pattern. Fun!
Sam’s mom Teddi was kind enough to share these photos of Sam in her bib. I thought the bib was cute, but boy does it not hold a candle to the cuteness that is Sam herself! What a sweet-looking baby!
I have been volunteering in Ava’s first grade class room for the last few weeks. When I get home, Ryan always asks me if anything funny happened today. The answer is always yes. Like last week, when one little boy randomly came over, gave me hug and said,”You are very pretty and you always smell great”. Since his face hits me at about crotch level, I thought, “Good to know”.
Or this week:
Children are practicing Christmas carols to some taped background music. Teacher abruptly turns off music.
Teacher: (sternly) Okay, we talked about this last week. Cole does not like it when you all point at him during this song. It makes him feel embarrassed when you do that. He doesn’t like it, and I don’t like it. If you do that during the program on Thursday, you are going to make Cole feel bad, and all of your parents are going to wonder why you are pointing at one boy when you say “eyes made out of coal” We talked about what Frosty’s eyes are really made out of, didn’t we? And it’s NOT C-O-L-E, is it? Thank you, try again.
