Tell Me Again Why I Don't Like Mondays

You know it's gonna be a funky day when you wake up late, it's raining, and the car needs to go in the shop. In other words.... it's a Monday.

The infamous Honda Odyssey has to go in for a timing belt replacement before I'm left with a blown engine and thousands of dollars of more repairs on this hunk of junk. This means 6 family members have the use of a BMW meant for a midget. It only seats four so picking up and dropping off kids at school and Pre-K has to be cleverly maneuvered; i.e., USE THE FREAKING BUS - which they totally loath because they say it "smells funny".

So the hubs sets off at 6:30 to drop the van off so that it can be the first one worked on, only to find out when he gets there that he is already sixth in line and the car won't be ready until today.

Great! Two days of stuffing whining, sweaty bodies into the BMW. The week is off to a great start already.

I get the first three kids off to school without much conflict, but then Nia decides she wants to wear her bathing suit with her new skirt and her hot pink boots that are meant for weather. Now normally I just go with her gut, but not today, and NOT this outfit.

I spend the better part of 45 minutes begging, pleading, whining, being firm, back to begging, bribing occasionally, and then finally deciding not to talk to her at all until she resolves to give up the bathing suit, put on a shirt, and wear socks with the boots if she's gonna wear them.

She shows up in my room 10 minutes later dressed, but with tennis shoes on this time. I should have just figured out with all my motherly wisdom, to just leave her alone in the first place and she'd come to her own senses.

But NoooOOOooo! I gotta do it the hard way. I need a Dr. Phil intervention here cause we are not 1/2 hour late for school and the hubs is calling nonstop wanting to know WHEN I'm leaving the house and picking him up because he has waited SO long for me so far that he started walking and now he's walking in the pouring rain.

And I'm at fault for this decision??????

I drop Nia off feeling sorry for her cause her little face is still red from crying about the whole swimsuit couture for class thing. As soon as I get back into the BMW, it won't start. I crank, and crank, and crank, and crank, and all the while I do, it's saying "screw you - I ain't starting!".

I do the usual looking around to see if anyone is noticing that my car is being as stubborn as Nia was this morning. I expect tantrums from my kids, but not our car - or should I say the hubs car, which it is, and which it takes on the same personality as he does at times.

So I start talking to it and soothing it and telling it I promise I'll make the hubs take better care of it. I am actually stroking the dashboard and again looking around to see if anyone is watching. It's pouring the rain - who is going to be standing outside at this moment watching me stroke the dashboard of an archaic BMW? But I still gotta look!

Finally she starts, and finally I'm on my way to pick up the hubs who is now walking to the animal shelter to see about getting Remi neutured now that he has agreed to having the cats nuts severed so that he will stop the horrid howling he does in the house at night.

I'm driving over the 3-mile bridge into Pensacola and I have forgotten that the car needs new front shocks until the front starts rocking up and down and I nearly lose my breakfast in the floorboard from it. Now I don't get seasick, and this just might be the first time I've actually gotten car sick cause the front of the car is resembling "the wave" in a baseball stadium as it goes UP and down, UP and down, and my stomach goes, UGH and burb, UGH and burb! I have never been so happy to get off a bridge in all my life.

I finally get to my destination only to see that the hubs is walking again to the end of the road where I'm suppose to pick him up at the animal shelter. As he enters the car, he smells like he has just walked the Sahara from end to end. The interior of the BMW is very small, and his intense sweaty body odor permeates what little space I have to breathe in in this car so fast that I exit as quick as I can in order not to die from the noxious fumes he is emitting.

"What's wrong?", he asks with a slightly annoyed look (who can blame him - he's been walking in the rain for an hour).

"Oh my God you need to go home and take a shower!", I say between gasps of fresh air and rain pouring on my head. My God! A carload of elephant farts would have smelled better than that man did!

We both laugh as I get back in the car, roll the window down enough not to let the monsoon rains in, but just enough so that I can breathe - not just from his odor, but from the eventual trip back over the 3-mile bridge.

The rest of the day (the next 1 1/2 hours), goes pretty much okay. I leave to pick up Nia from school at 1 and as I'm walking her to the car I ask her, "How was lunch today?".

"I didn't have any.", she replies looking at the ground.

I pause for a few seconds and then realize I sent my daughter to Pre-K without her lunch. You may not think this is a big deal, but she goes to a Pre-K that doesn't serve her lunch there. So my daughter sat there while everyone else ate and she didn't.

I am a very, very, very bad mommie on this Monday.

So I took her home and made her whatever she wanted. She had a Nutella sandwich first, a quesadilla second, a bowl of peaches third, a bowl of broccoli last; and then she topped it all off with a bowl Peanut Butter Cup ice cream from Ben and Jerry's.

It was not what I'd normally serve her, or in that order, but rather it was a guilt lunch so that my daughter wouldn't see me as the sorry excuse for a mom she would later come to recognize when she hit her teen years!

Then..... No, my day isn't over my any means at this point.

I have a meeting with Toni's teacher today, but before I go, I want to get the shelves up in Julian and Nia's room before we go. Everything is fine and dandy until we are on the last damn screw in Nia's room. The hubs ask me to pick up the drill from the floor while he holds the screw in place. I pick it up and then Nia flies into the room and yells "Whatcha Dooooin!"

I drop the drill on my foot. It doesn't just "drop" on my foot - it falls straight down so that the phillip's shaped drill bit lands right between my 2nd and middle toe on my right foot and lodges itself there somewhere between muscle and bone, and cutting a slit in my shoe in the process. YES I was wearing shoes and STILL managed to do this! I am left with a "X" marks the spot on my foot and toes swellling all over the place and blood spurting through this little mark on my foot now.

As I lay on Nia's bed screaming into a pillow, the hubs eloquently remarks that I gave birth to four children naturally, this pain should be nothing compared to that. If I had had a shoe, or anything to fling at him, it would be landing up the side of his head at that moment. I just let out another agonizing moan into the pillow instead as Nia is stroking my head telling me I'll be okay.

I eventually clean it up, slap a few bandaids on it, and get myself composed for the meeting with the teacher. But not before thinking, "Hmmmm.... maybe I should visit my friends in the ER since I haven't paid them a visit THIS month like have the past TWO months? I think I am due for a tetanus shot since I haven't had one since, like 1980 after 28 stitches from a car accident!"

But then I snap out of it and go on with this Monday that I have been given and want to give back to whoever will take it.

Now I have to juggle taking the hubs to work and meeting Toni's 3rd grade teacher for a meeting about her not handing in her homework of late. My God! A little over three weeks into school and I'm already being dragged in for a parent/teacher conference. I get Nia ready to go again, and she would rather take a nap, so it takes some more prodding and bribing to get her back into the car again. We drop the hubs off, but not before noticing that the oil light in the BMW is coming on and he has to drive to three different places to find a quart of oil to put in the car because he "forgot" to do so the other day.

We get to the school and wind our way around the sea of cars already lining up to pick up their bundle(s) of joy amongst the torrential rains unleash itself on Nia and I through the half busted umbrella the hubs offered us because I was still in "bad mommie mode", and walked off without one when we left the house.

I arrive to Toni's teachers room wet and cold. I instructed Nia and Toni to sit outside the door and gave them the iPhone in which to busy themselves with a few appropriate games like "Pocket God". The teacher and I sit ourselves at these chairs meant only for 3rd graders and which we look completely ridiculous sitting on ourselves.

She begins to explain to me about how Toni isn't finishing her work, handing it in, zoning out, being unorganized, and I'm responding that this is the first time I've heard of her doing this. She responds that she has call ALL of her past teachers and they all have noticed the same thing (Huh?), and bottom line.... Toni has ADD.

"Excuse Me!"

She explains that Toni needs to be tested for ADD as soon as possible and put on the appropriate "medication(s)", because she is in jeopardy of falling behind because she may have to repeat 3rd grade like she did 1st.....

"Wait! She NEVER repeated 1st grade!", I tell her teacher.

"She didn't?", her teacher replies with a very puzzled look on her face that let's me know that someone informed her that she had.

"But...... we think Toni is gifted because her reading level is so far ahead of the rest of the students.", she continues.

Well! At least some good news came out of this meeting so that I don't have to go home and cry in my pillow because the whole stinking school system NOW thinks my child is... is..... de - fect - tive!

Then I realized after the meeting that my child IS NOT defective. She is hardwired differently and thus does not learn the way the public school system thinks/says she should learn because that's the only way they know how to teach her - only if she learns her academics within the frame they are use to "dealing" with.

I am very clear about my feelings toward the treatment(s) of ADD and ADHD. I will not be "medicating" Toni with psychotropic drugs so that she can fit into a square box when she in fact, is not "square". She is a round peg that needs to have the tools at her disposal in order to work within square peg school system. I respond to this "diagnosis" of ADD like I did when I was told the twins would "very likely" have asthma by the time they were three because of the medication I was given for their lungs while in the hospital with pre-term labor. They are almost 12 and have never been "medicated" for asthma because they never got asthma, and they was because we were proactive in the way we fed them and what we exposed them to at an early age. Toni is no different in our approach and she will not be a Ridelin or Strattera child.

And that was my soap-box moment in all this.

When I get home, I go into research mode. So much so that I forget to take Nadia to volleyball practice and she has to remind me three minutes before she has to be there. I take her, come back, then resume researching ADD again. Then I forget to start dinner and don't realize it until I'm aware that I have to pick Nadia up, then pick the hubs up, then come home and make dinner at a time when everyone is expecting TO BE ON THE TABLE ALREADY!

So I toss the chicken into the microwave and punch "defrost" as I'm headed out the door with Nia in tow to pick up the rest of the family. Nadia is 15 minutes late getting out of volleyball which makes me 15 minutes late picking the hubs up, which makes dinner 15 minutes later still.

After hobbling around the kitchen on 1 1/2 feet, we eventually eat at, 7:30 and that's 1 hour before Toni and Nia go to bed. I resolve to let them stay up a little later so that they won't have nightmares from eating so close to bedtime, and while I am cleaning up the dishes, I get a little, itty-bitty sliver of glass stuck in the bottom of my foot from Chowder knocking my pie plate into the floor the other day and whoever swept and vacuumed, missed, that one little piece that HAS to end up in my foot after a day like this!

I announce to the family that I officially give up for that day. I'm taking a bath in order to dig and prod the glass out of my foot, soak the already injured one, and try to gain some sort of sanity before I have to wrestle kids into bed. I leave the kitchen cleaning to whomever volunteers for it.

Did I mention that the kids are still doing homework by the time I get out of the tub at 8:15? After assisting them with their homework, allowing a little extra stay-up time, everyone is finally in bed and partially conked out by 10 pm. I was in a coma by 10:45.

The hubs let me sleep in this morning and opted to get up at 5:30 to get the kids ready for school.

THANK YOU!!!

I finally awoke this morning to a very cranky four year old who was insistent that she was NOT going to school today. Yep - she went to bed too late last night. After a few minutes of begging, prodding, bribing, and having a general deja-vu moment this morning, I felt it just wasn't worth it and let her stay at home instead.

She fell asleep on my bed soon after that decision and she has been asleep the whole time it has taken me to write this post.

Regardless of my to-do list today, I think I'll follow her que and sit back and chill today. It's been pretty chaotic since school started, but sometimes you just can't fight a bodies natural primal scream to sit down, shut up, relax, and stay away from drills!

That is until all the kids come home from school in about.... three hours!

Gum, Germs, and the Rising Costs of Tag Registration

So, it's been a madhouse around here since school started. The twins are in 6th grade and getting organized with their band practice, volleyball practice, robotics meetings, along with getting Toni started on math *ugh*, again and signing her up for soccer (hopefully), and then my research into my book, writing blog posts has been kinda put on the back burner.

Then to add insult to injury, not even a week and a half into school starting, the kids start getting sick.

Doesn't the schools disinfect the classroom from last years germs? I think not cause one by one, the kids have been coming home with sniffles. Nadia is a perpetual running faucet in the nose department. If it flies among the air we breathe, she sneezes at it. She has already missed a day of school with a non-stopping cough and feeling like she'd rather dump her head in the gutter than wear it on her shoulder.

This is not before Toni came home with a fever. She had no other symptoms other than a stuffy nose that last about 2 hours, but her fever ran for three days - then she was fine. Then Nia came home after her 1st day of Pre-K with a 103 degree fever. She's okay now, but had no other symptoms other than a stuffy nose that lasted for about.... 2 hours, and a short episode with the dreaded diarrhea. And thank you God that she didn't have another episode of THAT like she did HERE! That is one day I do not want to revisit again.

So I've been flurrying around now for over a week taking care of this sick child or that sick child, AND keeping them organized with their studies and extracurricular activities AND monitoring the fever that my husband also got for two days (did I neglect to mention that?). Now it's just time to sit back and wait for the next kid to go down and repeat this process over and over for the next few weeks.

I hate it when school starts!

I'm doing this now while function with only one car cause the hubs decided it was a good idea to WAIT until the LAST freaking day/minute to get our other car registered for new tags, but then he wanted ME to fix it because HE thought it okay to wait till my physic ability kicked in for which it would go "DING" as to remind me that my husbands car needed new tags- which it didn't. So I get stuck with the 900 ba-zillion phone calls regarding re-titling the car in Florida so that I would have to deal with it, and not he.

Sound confusing - oh it is baby!

It's that freaking male chromosome gone awry again. Hey geneticists! - STOP figuring out how women can choose between having a boy or girl and start fixing that fucking male chromosome that makes men do stupid shit the way they do! We women have an excuse - it's called PMS! But men need a chromosomal fix that only you can provide. World peace and sanity depend on it - so let's get hopping up there in your fancy-smancy genetics lab. Okay? Okay, then!

Just a suggestion.

And do I dare mention that I've been trying to write this post for three days now while trying to assist my husband in fixing his "little over a year old" Dell computer whose hard drive has completely crashed beyond recognition and we had to buy a new hard drive and spend gobs of money updating all the drivers only to find out now that he needs a new sound card BUT cannot figure out where it is in his computer.

THEN he thinks it's a good idea to update the drivers on the laptop that doesn't NEED any driver updates, and now it won't even get on the internet, work, run, do one damn thing, period! Did I mention that this is the computer my kids use to play silly computer games on so I can get a moments peace while paying bills, cleaning, doing laundry, etc., so if it does get a virus we don't lose anything important? Thanks Dad! This is why I bought a Mac; so I wouldn't have to deal with stupid issues one always faces when using a Windows-based computer just over a year after they've bought it!

Sound insane - oh hell yes it is!!

**sound of me flipping through the yellow pages looking for a divorce lawyer**

So... So..... So...... you notice that most of these post begin with So? It's my way of verbally showing my pathetic *sighs* through this whole pitiful ordeal I'm having.

So......

I called the tag office and she informs me that I have that Friday and the following Monday to take advantage of lowered prices to register, do a title app, and get a new sticker for our car before the prices go up on Tuesday. When I ask her what the new prices will be, she breaks it down for me and I drop the iPhone, fall over, then hang my tongue on the floor as I discover that there is more than double difference in what I can pay on Monday, and what I'll most likely be paying since the hubs has given me last minute warning on this issue!

**sound of me now flipping through the yellow pages for a loan shark**

I finally get the hubs to get all his paperwork together and rearrange his schedule so that we can go down in the morning to get the tags because I gotta have a car when he goes out of town on Thursday. Granted, he is doing this while under the influence of a fever so I have to give him a lot of kudos for doing so. We have missed the "Blue Light Special" on Florida's tag prices, so I'm bracing myself for the high cost of driving a car now.

**it's a 1980's - insert finger and gag moment**

We set off on Tuesday morning after dropping Nia off at her first day of school after tears, pictures, and fanfair. There we sit in the DMV office after ripping off a wait-your-turn number like 946 or something. An hour later they call us and we present all the paperwork to get a new tag and sticker.

"I'm sorry, but we don't do that at this office.", the desk clerk informs us.

"But your sign on the door says 'Vehicle Registration'.", I reply with a tad bit of frustration in my voice after sitting in a smelly waiting room full of hot, sweaty people awaiting their own decade-long turns.

"That's just for online services. For people who have already pre-registered online and already have Florida tags.", she responds.

Well what the hell would I be doing in the office in the first place if I could do this online? Oh yeah, we're registering an out-of-state car, that's why.

After getting directions to the tag registration office, we realize that it's out of our way do to the amount of errands we have to do cause we idiotic parents decided to do them all on the same day that we have ALL the kids nestled in their classrooms. We then proceed to the Social Security department cause I need documents for my book.

MY GOD! I didn't know that everyone in Pensacola decided to visit the SS department all on one day! There were actually people sitting on the floor waiting for their 1578th number to be called. We look, then turn around and walk out hoping that the next time we schedule this errand it can be on like, CHRISTMAS so that NO ONE will be there.

On the way home, the hubs comes up with the brilliant idea of buying Nia some gum at the health food store since we are all paranoid and shit about the chemicals in candy these days and we reeeally try to stick to as much organic food as possible; even if it means foregoing the light bill. So we stand in Everman's Grocery Store debating which one we should get her. The hubs is opting for cinnamon, but I know that she prefers bubble gum. I cannot believe I am having an argument over what freaking gum to buy a four year old child. The hubs is acting like a four year old child - then I remember that he still has that fever. So we "compromise"; two of the cinnamon and two of the bubble gum. At least she'll have a choice, but probably will devour all four packages before the sun sets on the salt water horizon at our house. Because that's what four year olds do.. right?

Now, getting the tags to the BMW has been set back to the next day, but not before picking up Nia with that 103 degree temperature! On Tuesday, Nia stays home, but we still have to get the tags. After all the other kids have left for school, we pack up Nia in the car and drive to the real tag office cause both us have to go since both of our names are on the title which makes it so incredibly inconvenient I can't even describe in words.

**sound of my kicking foot into trash can as I walk to the car**

Luckily, no one is there - YEAH!! The hubs goes in first as I carry the poor sick baby in my arms. As soon as I walk in, the hubs announces that we can't get the tags... AGAIN! Now let me be clear about this; before we started this whole tag business, I made sure to call the tag office person and ask her exactly what I needed to bring in, and was there a kitchen sink on the list of items we needed. There was the usual title, insurance, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah; but there was absolutely NO mentioning of us having to bring the CAR in as well. But that is exactly what the desk clerk informs us that we need - the freaking car that's causing all these problems in the first place.

I made a point of telling this to the desk clerk in the most sarcastic tone I had while carrying a sick child and making a remark like "this is what my tax dollars go to pay for... incompetence!" Okay, I was nasty, but my hubs has a fever, my daughter has a fever, and this should NOT be taking two days to accomplish.

Little did I know it would take longer.

So we make sure we ask about everything we are suppose to bring in, and like making sure we got an affidavit in case we got pulled over for something like.... EXPIRED TAGS! The hubs has decided that he is gonna go home and get the car and get this done today regardless of how he feels cause he's just like that, okay. Finally, a fire has been put under his butt, and in his whole physical being, and procrastination has left the building even though it's like, a few weeks late!

The kids have early release on Wednesday, so the hubs is gonna take Julian with him. Translation: play time for the boys. Okay, WHAT-ever; just get the tags in the process please. He and Julian leave and I expect them back in about an hour. Oh no, it is still not that easy. I get a phone call instead in about an hour with my husband cussing words I haven't heard since the whole lost car keys and migraine episode. He tells me that everything was a done deal until it came time to pay; they didn't take credit cards, only cash and checks, and since the hubs and I have lost/misplaced/thrown away the PIN to the debit side of our bank card, it has to be a check.

This means the hubs has to come ALL the way back home, get the checkbook, then go ALL the way back with the car before they'll fork over this shit and let us get back on with our lives with our car. I compromise with the suffering soul and tell I'll meet him halfway at Wal-Mart's. So I pack up my still sick Nia, along with the other girls, and head on down the road. But not before I get two blocks down the road and realize.....

I FORGOT THE FREAKING CHECKBOOK!!!

Turn around, go back to the house, go in, get the checkbook, get in the car; then Nadia looks IN the checkbook and says "Mom, there are no checks in here.". I look and she is right; there are no checks since I wrote the last one for band uniforms. So (there's that word again), I head back in and grab a new book of checks, get back in the car and fling those suckers in the floorboard, mumble a few obscene words under my breath while driving off to meet my husband.

I arrive only to find that neither the hubs or my son are anywhere near his car. I call and find that they are on a shopping expedition in Wal-Marts. "Why?", I ask. "Because Julian's backpack ripped and he needs a new one.", the hubs tells me.

Now this is the brand new backpack that I just bought him two weeks prior for him to use for school. I swear if Wal-Mart's doesn't stop importing this cheap Chinese junk, I'll..... I'll..... I'll....., oh hell, can't I just concentrate on the tags already.

I ask the hubs how much to write the check for. I should have braced myself with an anvil or something because I nearly fell out of the car - with door closed - when he told me that it was $407.25! "Why is it so much!", I half yell on the phone. "Cause I paid for two years.", he replies proudly. I'm thinking as he's yacking that just a few weeks ago, this would have only costed about $190, but NoooOOOOoooo! We gotta pay top dollar just like the folks in California now cause the hubs likes to procrastinate. It's his favorite hobby these days: "Why do today what you can put off till next month, or year, or decade - or why do it at all!"

He finally exits the store, takes the check, and I drive home with Nia and Toni now conked out in the back seats. Nadia is like fingernails down a chalkboard all the way home as she constantly whines how this whole episode has completely ruined her afternoon. When I asked her what she had planned for the afternoon, she promptly replies "Nothing!".

**sound of me chewing on the steering wheel**

I put both of my girls to bed for a nap when we get home and wait for the hubs and Julian to arrive soon thereafter. But no, as I said, it was a chance to steal some boy time and they arrive some 4 hours later after driving around looking for a plate holder for the new tag (WTF???), and then taking a "little" dip in the ocean on the way home.

So after two days, four separate trips to the tag office, two stinky and smelly government offices, two sick children and one sick husband, a fight over gum choices for a four year old, and a busted backpack later, we got our new tags. The hubs felt the need to "fit in" conservatively (politically that is), so (there's that word again), he decided to get one of those license plate frames where you put your own saying in it. He now proudly displays, "FREEDOM - IT ISN'T FREE", as he passes someone on the freeway while doing 80 in his archaic BMW.

Welllll...... isn't THAT special! I could have told him that already and saved him that $12.95 plus tax on the crappy license plate holder thingy.

And then to add insult to injury, I just found out that ALL my favorite organic food companies were bought out by major corps like Colgate, Kraft, Dean Foods, Coca-Cola, Heinz, Kellogg's, Smuckers, and Dannon. Even the freaking organic, nutrasweet-free, chemical-free, preservative and additive free gum that I look all over for for Nia while she was sick, just so she could be happy about something is now own by some profit-hog, could-care-less-about-the-environment-or-your-health corporation!

Is nothing sacred anymore?

But what I really want to know beyond all of this is, is HOW Ellen Degeneres became a judge on American Idol?! Can someone explain this to me please?

A Chuck-EEEE-Cheese's Party This Was Not

Let's talk over the top birthday parties shall we????

When the twins were 10 years old, I threw their first "party". You know the one where you have to invite half the school - well, not actually, but it sure as hell felt like it! I did this party to recognize the milestone of the twins being alive for a decade. I'm corny like that sometimes - I can't help it.

You stress out over party favors and what the hell to do for entertainment for all those kids without the party being dubbed "the bummer of the year", and my being labeled the lamest mom in the community and having your name headlined in the school newspaper the next week:

"NADIA AND JULIAN'S MOM HAS BEEN VOTED

THE STUPIDEST PARTY

ENTERTAINMENT COORDINATOR

FOR ALL TIME!!!!!

A TAR AND FEATHERING

HAS BEEN SCHEDULED"

Well, luckily that didn't happen. After a hilarious blindfolded makeover session, a few pinatas, food, a few eggs tossed, and a serious airsoft war where my poor brother had to chase 15 crazy boys all over a hilltop as plastic pellets whizzed by his ear, it became a party that the twins friends raved about the rest of the year.

Did I mention that I slept for three days straight after that weekend and lost my favorite hot pink coffee-to-go cup at Chili's in the process?

So..... back to the point of me writing this post.

Toni was invited to a birthday party last weekend where the invitation announced that there would be a water slide, cotton candy maker, snow cone maker, and a swimming pool. WHOO HOO! Sounded like a heck of a party for an eight year old to be at! Hell, I even wanted to go! I thought about dressing up like a little girl sporting one of those giant sized multi-colored swirly lollypops, slapping a bow in my hair, and calling myself Willamenia.

Nah! Didn't have a Hannah Montana swimsuit handy in my drawers that day.

So I drive up to the house in a neighborhood full of those mini McMansions. Notice I didn't say actual McMansions cause these were one story suburban sprawls instead of those two story suburban monstrosities.

It was easy to see that these people were in that exact tax bracket that Obama is thinking about socking the new taxes to. *Scary music plays*

This is where all the McMansion owners start emailing me about how I'm discriminating against their house choices and calling them bad homeowners and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

WHAT..e...VER - This is about a stinking birthday party people!

I arrive more than fashionably early - like a half hour TOO early, so I drive around the neighborhood and noticing that every freaking house is EXACTLY the same accept some decided to trim a bush or two in the shape of their favorite sea creature of the month.

It wasn't just a fluke that I started yawning as I drove cause they must have the most uncreative, most archaic home owners association in this town, cause this neighborhood was downright boring - just big brick houses everywhere and no style as Gallagher would say, right before he'd slammed one of those houses with his Sledge-O-Matic just to prove his point!

After checking my iPhone for messages, emails, and post a tweet or two, I finally drove Toni back to the house to drop her off. Got out and noticed another monstrosity: The WaterSlide.

This was no ordinary waterslide - it was the T-Rex's of all portable waterslides. This thing could easily consume almost the entire width of my backyard, and it came with double slides! Double the kids could go up and down, and up and down, and up and down, and bump and drown all over each at the the pee-pool waiting for them at the end of their long. wet. journ-eeeey.

Toni's friend quickly took notice of our arrival and came up squealing that squeal only little eight year old girls can do. She was quite the hostess as she showed us where to put Toni's towel, change of clothes and, of course, the present.

Cause that's the only reason why we give them birthday parties, so that we won't have to foot the whole bazillion-dollar cost on the odd array of presents our kids will want.

Then I began to examine this little kiddie soirée. Let's see: 9 banquet tables under a tent, 4 end-to-end banquet tables jammed packed with snacks, BBQ, hot dogs, hamburgers, etc., etc., six separate male/female click-ish groups happening-complete with beer and cleverly disguisted vodka/tonics, and... and... and....

25+ God blessed, stinking, assorted dead forest animals lined around the walls of that garage!

I literally mean "God Bless Them", but I'm not quite sure about the stinking part cause I didn't get that close to find out.

It's not that I'm against hunting - for FOOD that is! This does not look like the kind of family that needs to be hunting for food - and mounting THAT many dead animals on a wall kinda creeps me out! It's a kinda bad karma thing happening there.

Little did I know.

"But where is the MOM of this place?", I'm wondering to myself as my daughter skips off with her friend to join the other set of animals going up and down the water slide.

So I stand around and look - walk this way and that - look some more - then finally walk over to Toni's friend and ask where her mom is so that I can introduce myself as THE parent of Toni. I mean, isn't that what we responsible parents are suppose to do when we take our kids to a house we haven't been to before? Let them know who is actually SUPPOSE to be picking the kids up when it's time to kick them all out and send them home to momma and daddy?

She points me to her grandfather instead. Well, at least it's a blood relative, so I introduce myself and stick my hand out to shake his and then confirm that I am Toni's mom and that I will be the one picking her up at the end of the party. Then I kiss Toni good-bye, confirm with here when I'll be back, and all that yada, yada, yada, and then I go home.

*Jeopardy tune plays*

So then it comes time to pick her back up at 5 in the evening. This was a three hour party so I'm thinking that the parents of this little girl might have all the kids lined up at the curb like it's the end of a school day while rushing them to the appropriate parents car/van/suv/hummer-at-large in order to have a peaceful homestead again.

Nada! - Not even close!

I find myself in the exact same predicament as I was when I dropped her off: standing and waiting, looking and searching - except for my daughter this time. There's still all these kids going up and down the water slide, various adult clicks still in this group or that, no one watching the kids, and everyone ignoring me for at least 10 minutes (yes, I waited THAT long before doing anything), as I stood there looking like a lost ninnie for my daughter.

As other women/mothers(?) walked by me constantly with varied shapes of glasses clinking with fresh ice and whatever they could put in that drink, I finally went over to two of them and asked where/who was in charge, where was the mother of the birthday girl, been standing there for 10 minutes and can't find my daughter - help!

One of the women "thinks" the girls mother is in the house - the big McMansion house that I'm just suppose to walk in and meander through it trying to find my daughter.

Yeah... Right-O!

I go anyway, but stop to ask another woman who I "think" is the little girls mother - but it's not, and she points me to the little girls grandmother. Well at least I'm meeting the grandparents. Again, I introduce myself, make eye contact, shake hands, then ask for help looking for my daughter because I can't find her and I don't feel comfortable searching someone else's house who may - or may not- think I'm there just for the jewelry - or one of the dead animals on the garage wall!

"She may be in the pool.", she quietly tells me as she motions for me to follow her in the house.

"Who the hell needs a pool with a water slide the size of a small Six Flags Water Park sitting in their yard!", I mumble under my breath as I follow her in.

The stinking house is FULL of partying adults, drinking and eating. And may I mention - NO ONE is watching ANY of the kids except for a stray mom taking a picture of someone wiping out as they come down one of the slides!

We wind around and I find myself being lead out to a cover courtyard (yep - they are definitely getting a tax hike from Obama), that has a huge kidney-shaped, rock waterfall adorned, tree lined pool. There plays Toni with four other raging children and NO ADULTS WATCHING again! Well, unless you count the two old bags drinking and yacking about 20 feet away in the sunken area of the patio/courtyard/gonna get a tax increase area of the pool.

Not wanting to make a scene by throwing one of the mission-styled wooden lawnchairs at the rock waterfall because my child was swimming with four other children who were hell-bent on slam dunking one another in the water until one of them eventually drowned - or came close to it, I bent down instead and quietly informed Toni that it was 5, and it was time to go.

After a few short whines (thank you God!), she was out and following me to get her things. I told her to find her friend and thank her for inviting her. I wanted to find the MOM, but still had NO luck hunting her or her husband down to tell them... eh hem... thank you.

Toni got her clothes, her towel, and her own present of a huge bag of candy to bring home. After getting in the car, we assessed her candy collection and after being at a mini McMansion that spent roughly no less than five to ten grand on this party; Toni got the absolutely cheapest assortment of candy I've ever seen. Not even on Halloween does one get this crappy assortment of candy.

She looked at it, "ugh'ed" a few times, then proceeded to throw it all out except for three Butterfingers. That's all that was salvageable. Well at least I won't have to worry cavity levels yet until Halloween then.

So we talked about the party and how she had just absolute fab of a time. Then she began to tell me the "extras" of the party.

"We had someone come in with one of those cotton candy machines like at the fair, and they made us all our own cone of cotton candy. But I didn't like it cause it was too sweet!", she raved in her best speech since she's lost both her two front teeth at the same time and understanding her when she consistently talks 90 miles an hour is a bit of a challenge these days.

"Then they had the ice cream truck man come and we all got to pick whatever ice cream we wanted AND WE DIDN'T HAVE TO PAY FOR IT! I got double dark chocolate!", she blurted out in that best eight year old squeal again.

"A real ice cream truck?", I quizzed her.

"A real one mom! Just like the one that comes down our street in the summer!", she squealed again.

"Holy. Freaking. Crap!", I'm thinking to myself.

Talk about your "Keeping Up With The Jones'-Style Birthday Party"! I can only imagine what their neighbors kids are gonna want for their next birthday party after being at THAT one.

Note to God: Thank you for not allowing the financial means to move into that neighborhood!

I have nothing against people with lot's of money, I just have issues with young children having birthday parties that are about a thousand dollars short of being featured/exploited on a MTV reality show.

So let's have a little recap of what was at that party:

• T-Rex size Water Slide with double slides, sans supervision.
• A full size swimming pool, sans adult supervision.
• Lot's of banquet tables with lot's of adult groups talking, sans children.
• A huge house full of those same adults, sans children.
• A large assortment of dead animals who seemed to be the only thing with eyes pointed AT the children.
• A private cotton candy machine complete with trained individual to run it.
• A private drive-by from the neighborhood ice cream truck-man complete with a free all-you-can-eat pig out.
• A bag of crappy candy from..... probably The Dollar Store (one does need to make a budget somewhere).
• Absolutely NO ONE checking to see if the person picking up the kid was ACTUALLY the person that the child belonged to. Just thought I'd make a note of that because with all the rash of abductions happening in Florida lately - it kinda freaked me out.

If you do not know the meaning of "sans"', then now is a good time to search out that dictionary that came included with your other computer software goodies.

I'm sad to report that the snow cone maker-guy was unable to make it to the party.

So the lesson to this whole sordid story is that no one, absolutely NO ONE should take their child to a party where the mother/father is NOT there to greet them - stare them in the eyes - and KNOW that that kids belongs to THAT parent.

If you have a party where there are more than ten kids and your brain cells have issues with keeping with who belongs to who, then you better get help that can help YOU remember who goes with who. If that is a stretch, then go to that same Dollar Store that you bought the crappy candy at and getcha self a Sharpee and some big fat labels and slap a name tag on that kid, complete with their mom and/or dad's name, address, phone number, social security number, and stinking blood type and MAKE SURE YOU KNOW WHO THAT KID BELONGS TO!

By the way, just remember - you plan a party for your kid like that at a young age - you will wind up in bankruptcy court sooner than later cause your kids will demand bigger and better from then on until they turn 35 freaking years old! That is unless you are "blessed" to be a Rockerfeller or something along those billionaire lines. And good God people - what are you doing to the neighbor's kids wants and desires in the process?!

Please remember to keep kids parties for the kids, and adult parties for the adults. The safety factor works out much better if you just remember not to combine the two elements into one decadent orgy of a party just so the "adults" don't have to "deal" with kids since they are all "playing" with each other anyway. Unless you like dead people/kids matching the dead animals on your walls.

Ok-AY - that's my rant for the day - and I'm sticking to it!