Don't Ever Take Your Kids to a Movie When They've Read The Book

Well, by now you all know that the whole "snowstorm" thing here in the deep south was a big fat fluffy bust for some of us. I would just like personally thank The Weather Channel for completely destroying my children's faith in "experts" of the meteorological kind. They now think that all of you are freaking out of your minds!

I tend to agree with them now.

The whole prospect of an impending winter storm brought my little community to a complete halt last night in anticipation that we were going to get 2-5 inches of that white snowshine that has befallen much of the nation (everywhere but here) for the past few weeks.

We're jealous and we wanted some. So we prepared by buying out the grocery stores and stoking our fires, and blowing up floaties to use cause none of us own sleds or discs for such activities down here. The streets were completely barren, and I know cause I lost the "draw sticks" game and had to venture out in the cold sleet already coming down, for a bag of cat food and a bottle of wine.

The cat food was obvious, but the wine was for me and the hubs cause the kids suddenly developed the worse cases of ADHD that one has ever seen, and were bouncing off of anything in hopes that Boreras (the god of winter), was hopefully gonna pay Florida a visit this year.

It was kinda of strange going up to the counter with a bottle of Pinot Nior and four cans of cat food as it looked to be an odd purchase for the evening. The clerk understood as he said "It wouldn't have been as strange as a bottle of wine and hot pink duct tape".

You and I both know right now that that man was my soul mate; except he was 20 years younger than me. I would have kissed him right there if I didn't fear getting arrested for pawing a minor! I don't care that cougars are all the rage these days for women my age so we can prove we still got it. I don't have anything to prove other than that I can still hold my bladder like that same 20-something hottie even though I've naturally given birth to 2 bocci balls, one bowling ball, and one super-size me watermelon!

Where was I here? Oh yeah the snow AND the point of this whole story.

So I wake up to the worse amount of grumbling, moaning, and groaning over the weather that four kids could produce in their whole 36 collective years together (that's the total of all their ages put together for those I just confused the shit out of there).

My whole morning, and part of my afternoon was consumed with the following whines every freaking 10 minutes!:

"MooooooOOOOOmmmmm! WHEN is it gonna start snowing!?"

"MOM! WHY is it NOT snowing yet!?"

"Mom - why CAN'T we use the floaties in the rain right now? Then we'll be ready for when the snow starts falling!"

"WHY can't we drive up north and see the snow up THERE!?"

"Mom! When is it gonna start snowing HERE!?"

"Mom! I'm bored - where's the snow!?"

"I want it to start snowing NOW!"

"Mom! I hate you AND the weather man because you both LIED and said it was gonna snow!"

"Mom? Where's the weather man's email cause I need to send hate mail!"

"Mom? Does God make the weather man go to the bad place cause he lied about the snow?" (Yes, this was Nia's question, of course)

"THAT'S NOT FAIR! Nana and Grandpa got snow in Ala-BAM-a! They don't even know what to do with snow! Why did THEY get snow and not us!?"

This is why the school systems here closed schools down today; so we parents would get ALL the obnoxious questions and attitudes and they could sit at home and laugh their asses off about it.

So I did the next best thing today: Escape Reality!

I took my 12 year old twins to see the movie, Percy Jackson and the Olympians - The Lightning Thief. I thought it would be a great idea to chill - no pun intended - in a movie theatre while the "big bad winter storm" passed us by.

First piece of advice to ALL parents: Do not, I repeat, DO NOT take your kids to a movie where they have read all the books to, with the exception of the Harry Potter's series because THAT studio apparently has the financial backing to include all the details that the movie needs to parallel itself with the book.

Did you get all that?

I didn't personally read the Percy Jackson series and thought the movie was pretty cool, but Nadia and Julian have - all five of them - twice. I had to sit through the entire film overhearing comments like this:

"THAT didn't happen that way in the book!"

"He didn't use THAT in the book!"

"They didn't do THAT in the book!"

"He didn't use those shoes; the OTHER guy did!"

"Medusa didn't do THAT!"

"THEY didn't go there!"

"THEY screwed this whole story up!"

The theatre was packed, and I was surprised that some other parent didn't dump their large, extra buttered popcorn on my kids heads, cause I sure wanted to! Since there was a lot of other whispering going on around me, I assumed that the twins weren't the only kids completely dissecting the movie into tiny digital bits on the stadium seating floor; therefore, their parents were just as paralyzed as I was with their own pre-pubescent, pimple-faced movie critics.

So much for the little escape from reality.

Oh Yippee for the sequel!

So I return home with two disappointed kids still fuming over the whole "no snow - no show" issue, while dragging disappointed twins behind me from a ripped apart screenplay of one of their favorite book series. Right now, I think that hanging myself by my feet from the ceiling fan and torturing myself with cheap household products would be far more fun than my household tonight.

Now which closet DID I put that happiness bubble in?

Ahhh... THERE it is! My little bag of joy cleverly hidden in my freezer and filed under "Feed During Emergencies".

Suddenly there are smiles all around as mommy fills each little hand with a pile of semi-sweet Gueridelli chocolate bits. All thoughts of snow and ruined books-turned-movies leave the thoughts of my four children as little hums of "Yum" fill my kitchen.

Don't EVER tell me that chocolate doesn't heal all!

WARNING: Bored Domesticated Female on the Loose!

Haven't been inspired to write this past week because frankly, I got a really, really bad case of Boreditis. Let me tell you something, there is NOTHING worse than a bored housewife, mom, 40-something woman who is on the verge of being pre-menopausal! You know when we moms get really bored, we do serious shopping. That can be a dangerous thing to the bank account. But since it's the first of the month and already, I am completely broke - that just isn't an option at the moment.

I know what some of you are thinking: "You have 4 kids and you are bored! WHAT is wrong with you!! Don't you find fulfilling their every whim and desire on a 24/7 basis simply the most wonderful thing that life has to offer?"

Well... uh... yes I have four children and.... uh.... no to the crazy person who suggested that last question.

All this started the other day when the kids were at school and I should have been doing my usual list of slavework "chores" before they got home. Instead, I've been "stuck" on rebellion mode and frankly, have no stinking interest whatsoever in doing this same hum drum BS another day.

Here is the whole exciting list that usually occupies my every waking moment of every waking day:

1. Wake up
2. Wake kids up
3. Make coffee
4. Turn computer on
5. Wake kids up again
6. Pull out all the breakfast stuff that they usually turn their noses up to, and prepare for another food battle
7. Wake kids up again
8. Have first cup of coffee while checking emails
9. Stomp in bedrooms and make one frantic attempt to wake the kids up before they miss the bus in 20 minutes
10. Have another cup of coffee
11. Feed kids - make small talk - get them on the bus successfully without having to chase the bus driver down in my tacky Old Navy polar fleece jammies, to come back and get them. Do ALL of this in three minutes flat!
12. More coffee
13. Get other two kids up and ready for school
14. Feed cats - pet cats
15. Get other two kids off to school
16. Check various *stuff* on computer; i.e., blog, Facebook, Twitter, any money left in bank account (of course not). Take this time as well to chat, play a little Farmville, etc., before the domesticated duties begins.
17. Insert IV from coffee pot directly into my arm
18. Gather laundry - do laundry
19. Sweep floors - Mop floors
20. Clean dishwasher - Fill dishwasher
21. Find something/anything to dust - clean windows if necessary, which means 5-6 times a day
22. Find carpet somewhere that needs to be vacuumed
23. Make a list of errands to do - do list of errands made yesterday (hopefully I'll get a Starbucks treat out of it)
24. Make a to-do list of what I did today, to do tomorrow

ZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzz! See, I even put YOU to sleep with this list! WAKE UP! I'm not done talking to you about this yet!

You get the picture here? How freaking boring is this lifestyle?

As the kids get picked up and come home from school, my life will be filled once again with various chores of figuring who wants what for a snack and how many times I have to tell them to get started on their homework.

Then there's dinner, a little more computer time or complaining about one another family time, read a few books, maybe some TV (24 is a MUST on Mondays!), then bedtime. About the most excitement I get out of the day is having to spend over an hour convincing/begging/pleading/bribing Nia to go bed. For some reason, she seems to think that she is the only one in the Universe that does not need sleep of any kind (she was born a Pod person from another planet, I'm sure, and that's why I sat on an ice pack for two weeks after she was born!). I/the entire family is usually left chasing this child all over the house until at some point, we find her in some obscure spot in the house where she has finally passed out from exhaustion. At least she's asleep!

How bloody monotonous can one woman's life be?!

Extremely!

This should all be okay and irritating quite fulfilling, but after doing over and over, with a some daily adjustments here and there, it becomes just downright irksome!

I don't need a makeover, makeover; I need a lifestyle makeover. Life is about to change drastically for me anyway since I'm about to be separated...... Oops! I let the bag out on that one didn't I? We will talk about this later so don't be bombarding me with like, fifty million phone calls and emails on the subject. Yeah, yeah, it's official cause we just spent this morning separating the cell phone account - that makes it a sealed deal! It's like, no big deal or anything; I'm just becoming another marriage statistic and life goes on with me soon to be a single parent of four incredibly maniacal charming children.

Except my life has landed smack dab in the middle of downtown Dullsville! I will be starting back to school in May, but am at a complete loss at how to deal with this rut I'm in, in the meantime.

So what's a 40-something mom to do for excitement? Please don't mention nightclubs as those are so 20-something and completely overrated. So I looked around and found some exciting things in my community that I thought I could get involved in for women my age and maybe I could get a general concensus from my fellow readers on what I should get my feet wet with. Here's a list:

• Needlepoint lessons (preparing for those days when I become a grandma)
• Jazzercise (do people still wear those thong thingies over their workout tights?)
• "Stitching and Bitching" (crochet with a bunch of other disgruntled soon-to-be ex-wives)
• Palates for the flexible-challenged
• Yoga for the focused-challenged and pretzel-position-challenged
• Go biking and inhale exhaust fumes for 2 hours *cough* *cough* *gag* *gag*
• Mall walking with the possibility of getting shot at like what happened soon after moving to this area (it would be exciting!)
• Tennis for those who live with a metal plate in their neck and a half busted ankle from walking through a park
• Ceramics (would be great for those frustrating days where I can actually throw a plate that looks like the ex, at a wall)
• Festive Shoelace Design classes
• Fake Flower Making classes
• Look for a job and subject myself to extreme humiliation as potential employers, one by one, look at my resume and say "You've only been raising children for 12 years and you want to apply for WHAT position.... Bawhahahahahahaha!!!". Thus leaving them with a laughter induced heart attack that sends them flying off the back of their executive leather chairs - Dead. On. The. Floor! Now that their position is open... I think I could do that job.
• Join a self-help group for bored domesticated moms/house(ex)wives
• Surfing for Adults (don't forget the case of BenGay and line up a future chiropractor)
• "Get Happy By Making Your Family Happy", self-help classes at the local Y

Again, this has been another week saved by Jack Bauer and the cast of 24.

I know I'll snap out of this soon as the next few weeks will be full of separating his and hers, what-nots, and whatever's in preparation for my new life as a single mom. I knew this was gonna be an exciting year for changes.

WHOO HOO - YIPPIE YI YO KI YAY!

What I really need though, is a whole mess of girlfriends who are willing to take me out and have a chocolate and coffee orgy, and make me forget about boredom and the long hard road ahead. Since my best girlfriend is waaaay out in Arizona, I might have to hire a few to take her place.

I think maybe I'm not so much bored as I am lonely and friend-challenged.

Like I said, I'll snap out of this and we'll all have a good laugh about it next week as I regain my sense of insanity for life.

But feel free to donate to my chocolate fund. In the meantime, I'm gonna go snort cocoa powder while I'm waiting.

*ching* *ching* ------ *ching* *ching*

Thank God For Little Girls

Well today worked out much better than yesterday.  Instead of a girl's night out, we had a girl's day in.  Julian opted to trek with his dad out of town for the day for work, and we girls were left behind to fend for ourselves.

HA - HA!  Fend for ourselves - that's so 1950's!

We decided to work ourselves - on each other that is.  It was makeovers for everybody!  So I took them down to CVS pharmacy to buy some goodies and supplies:  eye shadow, blush, chocolate, hair accessories, nail polish, more chocolate, bikini wax (for ME of course), facial cucumber mask, and more chocolate.  Then it was off to SubWay to pick up lunch to go.  Boy were we prepared.

Oh, I know what you're thinking at this point.  "What freaking disaster happened this time?"

None - absolutely none!  We turned on the music and started slathering cucumber peel-off mask on each other.  Nadia decided that we all needed cucumbers on our eyes as well, and for some reason, this made Toni's eyes start to burn.  Luckily she recovered rather quickly on we were soon on our way to making ourselves the hottest looking things...  in our house.  Thank goodness no one from the outside world could see or we would be stars in the next Clive Barker horror flick!

Next we were mixing various shades of green and pink to our eyelids.  Toni look gorgeous in these colors even though I'll never let her step foot out of the house until she's 16 with that stuff on.  But boy did it make her rich chocolate (there's that word again) eyes stand out!  Nia was decked out in the pinkest eyelids one has ever seen.  We won't even discuss what I was looking like at the moment.  Something cross between one you'd find in a whorehouse and a drunken teenager at a frat party.  

Who cared - we were having girlie time - and chocolate.

Soon we were stinking up the kitchen with four different shades of pink, coral, and red, and light red nail polish.  Nia kept jiggling around so Nadia managed to get more on Nia's skin than nails.  Luckily, we had an ample supply of polish remover, which we emptied the entire bottle over mishaps and spilt polish.

Who cared - we were having quality bonding time - and chocolate.

Soon we were plugging in the curling and flat irons and doing our doo's that would rival any salon.  Weeeeeell.... almost.  We needed a bit more training before that could happen.  But at least we didn't have to tip one another!  Nia's hair was full of the strangest  ringlets seen since this side of the French Renaissance Period.  Toni opted for larger curls which suited her better, and Nadia and I went straight; flat-chested straight (which my own chest has been sporting rather obvious nowadays).  Our hair was odd yet different.

Who cared - one couldn't count the many giggles going on in that room today - or chocolate.

By the way, I never did get to that bikini wax.  Not that I ran out of time - I just realized that I need my hair to grow FOR A WEEK before I can rip that shit off with enviromentally safe honey-laden cement!  Well, then Nadia decided is was tea time.  She dressed Toni and Nia in their finest play dresses, set the table, made them salads and crackers (and chocolate), and a spot of tea.  Then she set their beautified butts in front of the TV for a quiet showing of Shrek II.  Laughter of hysterics and flying makeup was soon quietened by the munchings of snacks and a semi chick flick. 

I managed to get in a little work during this time, like six loads of laundry, inputing my husbands clients in the computer, prepping dinner, vacuuming, and watering the garden.  It all paled in comparison to the hours I had just spent with my daughters.  It was all routine and mundane and just plain boring compared with the peeling of cucumber masks and over done pink eye shadow, and the endless sounds of laughter.

I had no time to take pictures as my hands were always full of little girls, makeup, and wrappers from opened chocolate squares.  It was all a small and simple little gesture for my girls, but in my heart and mind, it was larger than life and this memory too, shall last a lifetime as well.

Thank God for little girls!