The Harsh Truth of the Camera Eye

I think that Mike Huckabee is a whack-job. However, when they make a movie about his life, I think Kevin Spacey should play him.
Honestly, I don't have as much to say about politics as my darling husband does, but here is what I think about Huckabee.
1) He thinks God is swaying the voters to put him in office. That's just crazy. Everyone knows that God is too busy backing Obama.
2) He thinks homosexuality is an abomination. Okay...that just means that we're going to find him soliciting gay sex in an airport bathroom in a few years.
3) His last name makes me laugh. Huckabee. C'mon. President Huckabee?

Angel, Angel, Down We Go Together

When I was a little girl, at the beginning of the Christmas season I would always ask my mother, "Aren't you excited about Christmas?" and she would always answer, "Honey, Christmas is for children." I vowed right then and there not to become a boring old grown-up who couldn't enjoy Christmas. Well, that just went right out the window this Christmas, or as my dear friend N calls it, "Stress-mas".



This particular day was, without a doubt, the zenith of stressful days...(keep in mind that this happened about a week before Christmas)

First thing in the morning Tony and I were fighting because he can't manage to put the cork-screw away after he opens a bottle of wine. Seriously. I mean, I can (sort-of) tolerate it when he doesn't put his dirty clothes in the hamper, or when he leaves the garage door open or doesn't hang up his coat...but when he does all of those things AND leaves the stupid fucking cork-screw on the counter right above the drawer where it actually belongs...well, that just made me want to take out his eyeball with the thing. And this fight wasn't even just a snide little comment on my part which would have been completely ignored by my husband, it was full-on yelling and dredging up past slights (by both of us, I might add lest I sound like some sort-of cork-screw wielding bitchy shrew). Thankfully the kids were at school so they didn't witness the insanity.

Then I went to my stupid-ass job, where everything went okay until 15 minutes before I left and the one person I work with that I do not like was really, really rude to me. I made a useless but pointed remark to her about it, but then I had to leave. Needless to say I thought of all sorts of wonderful come-backs in the car on my way to pick up Brenna from school, which just made me re-live the moment and made me madder.

So, in the car pick-up line at school I pulled out the newspaper and started to read it thinking that would calm me down. But NO!! The line moved forward and I didn't notice because I was reading my paper, so the bitch in the white family-van behind me honked and waved her arms in the air and the ugly bitch in the even uglier family van behind her whipped out of line and went around me--and when she got next to my Durango she stared at me and mouthed some choice words while she pulled in front of me. What the fuck? Who gives a shit if we move up a car-length or not? Besides, the idiot in the van behind me could see I was reading the paper, what was she so pissed off for? She could have just tapped the horn to get my attention and smiled at me when I looked at her in my rear-view mirror and I would have gladly moved up. Stupid bitch. I saw which kid got in her van when school let out and believe me, the extra car-lengths worth of steps he took didn't hurt his fat-ass any. From the looks of him, he should've been walking home just to get the exercise. I just wanted to gun my SUV into the back of the ugly mom's van in front of me and then throw it in reverse and smash the idiot behind me too. I tried to console myself with the fact that I probably weigh 50 pounds less than either of them, but since they were both still giving me dirty looks it wasn't easy.

Okay...on with the mardi-gras that was my day. I called Tony to find out if he had called his mother to find out what she wanted for Christmas and he informed me that she had slipped on the ice the night before and her neighbor took her to the hospital and now she was laid up with staples in her head and a concussion. Yikes! (On the funny side, Tony did suggest that maybe we should get her a helmet for Christmas.) So I told Tony to go straight to her house after work and take her some dinner. I would take Brenna to dance, then Bronte and I would pick her up and we would go to The Fortune Kookie for pot-stickers (just us girls!) and then we would drive to church so Brenna could rehearse with the adult choir because she was singing in a trio for part of the Christmas Cantata that Sunday. Whew!

Jump forward to The Fortune Kookie. The girls and I had just ordered when my cell phone rang. I looked at the caller ID and it said it was my mother's house. Seeing as she lives with my Alzheimer's ridden father who doesn't hold conversations anymore (sadly) I figured she just called to chat. She calls me upwards of 5 times a day sometimes. Sometimes she calls to tell me what is on TV. For example...in the month of December right up until Christmas Eve I got a phone call every night from my 77 year old mother. The phone would ring at 6:55 p.m. every night and she would say, "Charlie Brown Christmas is on channel 2 in 5 minutes. I just thought the girls would like to watch. OK. Bye!" Granted, it wasn't a Charlie Brown Christmas every night. Sometimes it was Frosty the Snowman or Christmas With The Kranks, but I'll be darned if there wasn't a Christmas special on every single night From December 1st to the 23rd. When I was a kid all we got was Charlie Brown, Frosty and The Grinch (the good one, not the one with Jim Carrey...that one was just stupid) and the Santa driving away on the Norelco electric razor. Honestly, that was genius advertising. It made me, an 8 year old girl, put a Norelco electric razor on my Christmas list. My parents must have been worried...
Anyway...so my cell phone rang and I saw it was my mother so I answered, "Hi Mom! What's up?" There was a long-ish pause and then some accented male voice asks, "Do you know (insert my parents full names here)?" Immediately I think that they are being held captive by some crazy, high drug dealers. You may laugh, but you do not know what kind of trouble my stupid sister has been in....
On with the saga; I asked the drug dealer who he was and what he wanted. The voice said (and I shit you not...this was the exact wording) "I'm a policeman. Your mother choked and she was taken to the hospital in an ambulance. Your father is here alone; how soon can you get here?" Okay. Let's break this down...
1) My mother choked. She might be dead.
2) My father is alone. He doesn't know who anyone is anymore. The last time he was alone for a brief moment, he went out in 3 feet of snow in a robe and slippers looking for his mother.
3) Wait! My father is NOT alone. He is with some strange policeman in my parents house. The policeman has a gun.
4) I have no proof that the disembodied voice on the other end of the phone is an actual policeman so....
5) Yep. I'm back to the "my parents are being held hostage by a drug dealer" scenario again.

I responded by doing what anyone in this situation would do. I started to cry. Immediately my kids were under the table (we were in a booth..they were on one side and I was on the other) and on either side of me saying, "It's okay, mama. It's going to be okay." God in Heaven, I love those kids. In any case, it still didn't change the fact that I was in a restaurant miles away from my parents house and my husband was on his way to HIS mothers house because she had a concussion! What to do?
I asked the "policeman" to tell me what had happened and he haltingly told me that my mother was choking and the neighbor called 911. I asked him where that neighbor was and he told me that he was right there with my dad so I asked if I could talk to him. Well, he put my mom's neighbor on the phone and I recognized the voice so I felt somewhat better. Turned out my mom was alive but had a blockage in her throat so the paramedics took her to the hospital. Blah, blah blah...and then the cop was back on the phone asking me my full name, address, date of birth, etc. I started getting suspicious again because my stupid sister had stolen my identity once and...well, long story. I decided to just tell the cop my name and tell him I would call him right back when I figured out what to do. At that point our pot-stickers came and I told the kids to go ahead and eat while I made a couple of phone calls. They were crying too now, but I said everything was okay even though I was totally freaking out.
In a nutshell, this is what happened. I called Tony and he said he would drop the food off to his mom (who lives minutes away from my parents house) and get his mom's neighbor to come and sit with her. He would then go to my parents house and get rid of the stinking copper. (He didn't say it like that, but it would have been funny if he did. Not at the time, mind you...but later when re-telling the story.) Then we would figure out what was up with my mom and stuff. Whew! Thank God for Tony. He may be a total slob, but he is a wonderful caring man who would do anything for family. I chose wisely. (The next day my dear friend P told me he would have gone to be with my dad too and so would his sister. He said to call him anytime my parents needed anything. I chose my friends wisely, too.)
In the meantime, I called the cop back and told him my husband was on his way. During this conversation, the rest of our food came. I hadn't eaten even a bite of a pot sticker because I was so upset and now I was looking at almond chicken I couldn't eat either because I still didn't know where my mother was and what state she was in. While I was talking to the fuzz, my call waiting beeped. I clicked over and it was my mom! Yippee! she was fine, but she was at the hospital with no coat, no shoes and no way home. Plus she was at a hospital another 20 minutes past their house from where I was. Okay...what to do, what to do? I told her to call me back in 5 minutes because I needed to call Tony and see what to do. I knew Tony couldn't go get my mom because then he would have to take my dad and Tony drives a 2 seat Honda Del Sol, AKA, the Albatross. So, I called Tony and he said he was with my dad and the cop was still there and everything was fine. Hang on!! Call waiting!!! It was my mom who told me that her nurse said she would warm up some blankets and wrap my mom up and drive her home herself. So I clicked back to Tony and said that my mom would be home with the nurse within an hour. When I hung up, the food was all boxed up and I had spent no "girl time" with my kids. The waiter put the bill down with 3 fortune cookies on top of it. I gamely smiled and said, "Okay girls! Let's see what our fortunes are! If you don't mind, I am going to pick my cookie first because I haven't eaten anything yet." The girls smiled and nodded and asked if everything was okay with Gramma and Grampa. I told them that it was all worked out and not to worry...I just wanted to have them open their fortune cookies and try to salvage some fun out of this shitty night. So, we all opened our cookies and proceeded to pull out the paper fortunes. Except that my fucking cookie was empty!!! Seriously. I looked up and the girls looked at me like, "Is she going to cry again? What do we do?!!?!? We are children!"
Well, I just laughed. I laughed and laughed and the girls laughed and laughed. Bronte wanted to get me a different cookie but I really thought that one was perfect. Brenna started to make up fortunes for me, like..."Confucius say...you get no fortune!" and "Confucius say...empty cookie better than cookie with bug!"
It was a bad day...but it's over now!

What She Said

Sometimes the things my kids do just warms my heart and make me so proud. Sometimes, not so much...
On alternating Fridays my daughter Brenna has a group of friends that come over and hang out and eat dinner and then I take them all to a Bible Study I lead for 7th and 8th grade girls. Bronte usually has a friend come over too, but sometimes she doesn't. Last Friday was one of those evenings when she didn't. Brenna's friend, J, was the first one on the scene. J is always really sweet to Bronte and includes her in things when she is over. So, J and Brenna and Bronte are all sitting on the couch in the living room playing together. (When I say they were playing, what I really mean is that they were trying to figure out how to put together a Bratz doll. Have you ever seen those things? They are the sluttiest dolls I have ever seen, so of course Bronte loves them. The weirdest thing about them is, you don't change their shoes...you change their feet. The feet detach somewhere around the ankle and then you snap on new feet shod in some other stripper shoe style. And, unlike Barbie who actually has career aspirations, all a Bratz doll wants to be is a rock star, apparently. I mean, I have seen Veterinarian Barbie and Heart Surgeon Barbie and Teacher Barbie, but I have only seen one kind of Bratz doll...a rock star. That's just a nice way of saying "slut".)
Anyway, so the three of them are playing nicely when all of Brenna's other friends show up. Because they are all 12-13 years old there was lots of giggling and whispering and giddiness and they decided to go up to Brenna's room. So, Bronte thought she would go with them. Well, Brenna had other plans...now that her friends were over she didn't need Bronte any more so she told her friends, "Run! Come on! Let's shut the door before my sister gets up here!" And with that they piled into Brenna's room and slammed the door right in Bronte's face. Bronte tried to open the door, but Brenna was pushing against the door from the other side so Bronte couldn't get the door open. I watched all this from the bottom of the stairs while I was chatting with the mother of one of the girls. So, I knew Bronte's feelings were hurt, but I wanted to see how she would handle it. Bronte walked away from Brenna's door, in tears, and went into my room. I kept chatting with the mom while glancing upstairs every once in a while to see what was going to happen. Eventually Bronte came out of my room with a piece of paper which she slipped under Brenna's door. Then she turned around and went back in my room (still in tears). A couple of minutes later she came out and slipped another piece of paper under Brenna's door and then turned around and went in her room and shut the door. I said goodbye to the mom I was talking to and went in the kitchen to finish making dinner. Suddenly I heard Brenna's door fly open and I listened to my first born STOMP down the hall and down the stairs and into the kitchen. She looked at me, all indignant as only a 12 year old can be, and handed me the two pieces of paper Bronte had slipped under her door. Disgustedly she said, "You might want to talk to your daughter," and she stomped back upstairs.
I looked down at the first piece of paper and in Bronte's precious 6 year old handwriting I read, "Brenna, you hate me." That just makes me want to cry and give her a big fat hug. With tears in my eyes I looked at the second piece of paper. In the same sweet handwriting I read, "Kiss my Ass">

Okay. What does a mother do at this point? I died laughing, but I couldn't decide if I should be mad at her for writing this, or if I should high five her because her sister was being an incredible bitch and she should have kissed Bronte's ass. What to do? What to do? Luckily at that moment, Tony walked in the door, so I handed the notes to him, told him the story and let him handle it. Well, I should have known he was going to fuck it up! He called Bronte downstairs and looked into her adorable tear-streaked little face and told her she must NEVER say that Brenna hates her and that she was forbidden to tell anyone to kiss her ass, EVER! Well, of course Bronte started to cry again so I gave Tony a shitty look, hugged Bronte and told her that Brenna was being mean and that if she would just go wait in her room then I would send Brenna right up, lips puckered, all ready to kiss her ass because she deserved it. (I know Tony has a different version of this story, but this is MY BLOG and I will tell it however I want to. I'm telling you now...he made Bronte cry and that was bad! Bad daddy!)

In the meantime, I called Brenna down and told her that she was being a complete and utter brat. She maintained that she "didn't do anything" (imagine that being said in an annoying whine). I said, "Oh really? How about slamming the door in Bronte's face and telling all your friends to hurry up before your sister came in your room." She said, "I didn't say that." Okay. At this point I am getting really pissed off, but I am trying not to raise my voice so her friends won't hear me. I don't want to embarrass her, after all. I said, "Bronte said you did. Are you calling her a LIAR?" Brenna rolled her eyes (my favorite) and said, "I didn't say it to be mean." I said, "Really, Brenna. How did you mean it to sound? Wait! Let's go upstairs and ask your friends to clear this up. C'mon! I bet they will tell me what happened. Let's GO!" and my voice kept getting louder and louder. Brenna just repeated, "I didn't do anything."

That was all I needed to launch into my tirade. It went something like this:
You don't know how lucky you are to have a sister! You better be nice to her because someday she is going to be all you have and if you keep treating her like this she won't be there for you when you need her. So help me God, you better not sit there in Bible study tonight and tell us all how "Christ-like" you are because I will remind you about how you treated your sister tonight. Jesus never would have treated anyone the way you just treated your sister, so don't go all "Jesus-y" on me tonight. How can you even sit in Bible study knowing how crappy you just acted--turning your back on your sister like that! Maybe I'll just take your friends to Bible study tonight and you can stay home and think about what Jesus would have done. As far as I'm concerned, you ought to just get upstairs and BEG your sister to forgive you...and if that means you have to kiss her ASS then just pucker up! Now get upstairs and apologize.

So, maybe I went a little too far with the Jesus-y stuff...but it worked. Whatever. I'm not sorry.

In the meantime, Tony wanted to know where Bronte had heard the phrase "kiss my ass" and looked pointedly at me. Well, everyone knows that my favorite swear word is "mother-fucker" NOT "ass" so I get annoyed and told him it wasn't from ME so it must have been from HIM. Honestly, I could not figure out how she knew that phrase. Well...we can thank Zac Efron for this particular turn of phrase. Let me tell you why...

The day after the "Kiss my Ass" incident I was sitting down in my family room at the table where Bronte colors. Her papers and coloring books were all over and I was picking them up when I looked down and saw the words "Kiss My Ass" written (by Bronte) on one of the papers. I called Bronte over and said, "Bronte, why did you write this again after all the trouble it caused yesterday?" and she replied, "Mom I wrote that on Thursday." I shook my head and asked her, "Why?" Her answer is priceless. She said, "Well, my friend M was over, remember? I was telling her about the movie "Hairspray" and how hot Zac Efron was in it and I told her how he said a bad word in the movie. Well, M wanted to know what he said and I knew you would get mad at me if I said A-S-S so I wrote it down for her." (Incidentally, my 6 year old does, in fact, use the word 'hot' when she describes Zac Efron. I'm so proud.)

So, thank you, Zac Efron for this fine family memory.

Now My Heart Is Full

My daughter Brenna has a beautiful voice. She has a pitch-perfect alto voice. When she gets older, if she keeps singing, she will be the next kd lang....only not, you know....Canadian. Brenna sings a lot in church and every time she does, people cry because it's just so beautiful. When she gets complimented on her voice, Brenna just smiles and says thank you, but she really doesn't know what the big deal is because she's always been able to do it and it is totally effortless. When she was 5 she had her first big solo in church. The children's choir was putting on a big musical for Mother's Day and it was all about Noah's Ark. Brenna was the dove that Noah sent out to see if the flood was subsiding. She sang an entire song all by herself. It was the first time she was going to sing in public and she was using a microphone for the first time. Since she was so young (only 5, remember?) the microphone stand was set up right next to the piano. Well, the microphone was sound activated, so if your mouth was too far away from it, it would turn off. When Brenna got close enough to it to have her voice activate the thing she wasn't able to see it, so she would start to back up, and then it would stop working. So, during the performance, in front of 500 or so people, she would start to back away from the mic and the piano player (who was also the director) would quickly push her head back towards the mic. However, since the director was also playing the piano at the time, it was more like she would smack her on the back of the head so she could resume playing. Honest to God, we have it on video. Brenna is all dressed up in white with white wings singing sweetly about how she will "spread her wings and fly" and all of a sudden this hand comes out of nowhere and "SMACK"--Brenna's head goes jerking forward towards the mic. Yet, even at the tender age of 5, she never started laughing or stopped singing or even acknowledged that anything out of the ordinary had happened. At that point I figured she was one of two things:
1. a natural performer
2. autistic
Turns out she is number one, not number two. Honestly, it was a crap shoot. She has always been quirky, so autism wasn't totally out of the question. When she was little she used to keep a little ball of fuzz (like lint, or the cotton tip off a Q-Tip) with her at all times. Know where she kept it? Well, look at your right hand. See the first knuckle on your pinkie--the one towards the top? Okay, try to bend it without bending the other knuckle. Can't do it, can you? Well, Brenna could and she kept her little ball of fuzz in the bend of her pinkie, right behind that knuckle. She always had it with her. When she started pre-school, I bought her a silver necklace with a little silver basket (like a-tisket, a-tasket) on it and she kept her fuzz ball in there. Seriously. So...autism did cross my mind.

This is Brenna speaking in church a week ago. Isn't she gorgeous? See the blue streak in her hair? It is actually a hair extension that she had put in at a local salon. All the money the salon raises by putting blue extensions in hair goes to autism research. Brenna has a real soft spot for autistic kids because she gave up all her lunch hours in 6th grade to work with the autistic class. Turns out she has a real gift for communicating with those kids. Ironic, isn't it?

So, back to Brenna's singing...yesterday (and Friday night) her choir (one that she had to audition for and we pay for her to be in...they are really, really good) gave a Christmas concert. (In two weeks 25 of the kids from this choir will be singing in Chicago for the Joffrey Ballet's "Nutcracker". Not that I'm bragging but....ok. I'm bragging. But isn't that SO cool??) Tony and Bronte saw it Friday night (I was helping backstage) and my parents, Bronte and I saw it yesterday afternoon. It was risky taking my dad (who has Alzheimer's) because he is pretty well advanced in his disease and you just never know what he's going to do. For example, I had to tell him that, even if he knew the songs he really shouldn't sing along. (He does that a lot. In church if the choir is singing something he knows he will just chime right in...loudly) I also reminded him that he shouldn't talk out loud during the performance. The tickets were $22 and I didn't think the people around us would appreciate my addled father's commentary. Luckily most of the songs the choir sang were either really obscure or in Latin. No "Jingle Bells" for Brenna's snotty choir!

Ok...so here is my point. My dad was pretty good for the first half of the show, but he really lost it after the intermission. He kept talking...he had a coughing fit and then when my mother gave him a cough drop he sucked on it loudly and cleared his throat over and over...he kept tapping his feet. It was very difficult to keep him calm and my mom started to cry at one point because she was so frustrated. I couldn't leave the theater with him because it was too dark and we were in the middle of a row. He never would have understood the importance of a "quick and quiet getaway". So, I tried to keep him quiet so my mom could enjoy the show. At one point I was so frustrated and angry I started to cry. Then, suddenly it was like God flipped a switch in my heart. I stopped being angry and I just looked at my dad and said, "Please..." For whatever reason, that worked and he calmed down. I was still crying though, because the kids in the choir were coming down the aisles holding (fake) candles and singing "Silent Night" a cappella. It was so beautiful. Brenna just happened to stop and stand one aisle in front of us. My dad was quiet and calm...the choir was (I kid you not) angelic...and all was right in the world.