Chaos In A Bottle

I mean it. I totally rock as a mom. Listen to this:

So, my oldest daughter and I are giving the baby (that we babysit, not that I actually HAD, ’cause the last baby I had is now eight, and that would be weird) a bath, and she informs me that she needs a big brain bleach, because she couldn’t get to sleep last night because of MY BED CREAKING.

I got busted by my kid. Oops.

Ok, so I’m not gonna apologize, ’cause, really, why should I apologize for having a good, um, intimate relationship with my guy, and I’m caught between being embarrassed and being sorta smug, and yeah, smug wins out. Which, to my mind, makes me mom-of-the-year.

Look at how many people have screwed-up ideas on how marriages and intimate relations work, and I’m showing my daughter, showing, mind you, in an INDIRECT and totally UNKNOWING way, that after a long time that part of my life is still active and good. I think that is a pretty awesome thing for her to know, that monogamy doesn’t mean boring or monotonous and that as a couple her dad and I have a relationship that’s strong and vital and pretty darn good.

To continue the lesson, I will be attaching one of these to the bottom of my bed:

Cowbell – for all your noise-making needs

P.S. I just remembered that my parents read this, too. Oh, well – did they think their grandkids came from the cabbage patch??

Ok…so, we live in a historic district. We don’t live in a historic HOUSE, mind you, but we live in the historic DISTRICT. While this comes with some snob appeal, and marginally better property values, and no yards, and houses so close you can hear your neighbors pass gas, it also comes with a set of “regulations”, ’cause the city doesn’t want us messing up the historic value of our non-historic house.

We needed to replace some windows in the back sun room. You see, the folks who added that sun room figured that they didn’t need actual windows if they put storm windows in the bare holes and called it a day. We, however, got tired of air conditioning the entire neighborhood, because basically we don’t like a lot of our neighbors that much, and handy-dandy-carpenter man goes to put real windows in where the storm windows used to be.

Now – you need to understand something. To do ANYTHING in a historic district other than repair where the IT would be visible from a public place, you have to submit plans to the committee for architectural something or other, go before the city council, beg for the right to make your home livable, hopefully get approved, then go get a building permit. THEN, and only then, can you do what you wanted to do, or something maybe close to it.

So, here’s where it gets fun, y’all. The windows in question are in the BACK of the house, on the FIRST floor, behind a PRIVACY FENCE, facing an ALLEY.

Before P. gets the first window replaced, the city is here with a stop order. Yep. Stop order. Siding’s already been ripped off, window’s out, the whole nine yards and we gotta stop immediately and do the whole city – committee – council – permit thing.

Now, I thought that would be considered a REPAIR, since, ya know, the whole outside air conditioning thing. It was broken, as far as I was concerned, since I don’t consider my heating and air conditioning floating into the atmosphere to be the natural order of things…but apparently the city thinks otherwise. I think they should come pay my utility bill, and then it wouldn’t be so “oooh, you can’t do this, ’cause the alley way is a public street, and someone might SEEEE, and then the historic value of your non-historic house would be destroyed because of your eco-friendly windows, and we all know that historic value is more important than energy conservation”.

Freaks. I hope they like looking at the big old naked back of my house, ’cause, you know, we can’t put the siding back ’till it’s been aproooved…..

P.S. I totally first typed pubic street and not public street. Make of that what you will.

I’m generally a fairly easy-going person. Shut up, I am. A bit. Anyway, as I was going to pick up my neighbor’s little girl from school yesterday, I got a big ole’ dose of stupid shoved right down my throat, and I’m gonna share.

The bus from the high school had dropped it’s load of delinquents students off at the end of the block. They’re walking down the street, in the middle of the street, and a minivan is behind them. Do they move to the side, like, oh, I don’t know, people with a few brain cells to rub together? Nope; I watch them continue down the street, with the minivan behind them, until the driver realized that yes, they were obviously brain donors, and pulled out around them.

What the…

What a group of no manners, no account, no freakin’ BRAIN mouth-breathers! I mean – come on, dude. Move out of the bleedin’ street, because if you knew how much damage that minvan would suffer if the driver were someone like ME and ran your sorry behind down – i.e. NONE AT ALL – you might think about firing a synapse or two and GETTING OUT OF THE WAY!!

Before you tell me that they’re not stupid, they’re just ill-mannered, let me remind you that by the time you reach high school, if you haven’t figured out that walking down the middle of a busy street is BAD, you’re just plain dumb. The kind of dumb that wears two pairs of boxers and its jeans around its thighs and thinks that standing on a hill during a lightning storm while wearing plate armor would be a good idea.

Is there a reason for this??

Pull up your pants and get out of the street. You’re lowering the IQ of the rest of the neighborhood.

Yet another reason why I homeschool. I don’t want this sort of attitude rubbing off on my kids. The idiot’s attitude, not my attitude, because my attitude rocks.

IT DOES.

While I’m hoping that this blog might eventually help me become rich launch a productive writing career, I’ve discovered that it has an excellent bonus that I can cash in on here and now. I can use it to embarrass my teenage daughter. Awesomeness. I was asked if I was writing about zombies again, and I probably should, ’cause writing the about the undead rocks hard, but in reality I wasn’t, at least until she asked me that with that “my mom is a complete headcase” look in her eyes, so of course I had to. It’s in the rule book.

So, apparently it’s ok for her to do things like yell “loodle loodle loo” on roller coasters and pretend to be a kraken in public fountains – wait, that was a movie teenager, my bad, but she’d totally do it if she thought she could get away with it, so I’m leaving it in – and of course nothing I’ve done yet can measure up to her announcing at the top of her lungs outside of the Disney store “I HAVE A WEDGIE IN MY BUTT! CAN YOU GET THE WEDGIE OUT OF MY BUTT??” Yeah, she was 3, but she totally looked older, and now I’m known as the wedgie mom in that mall, so it’s a good thing I shop somewhere else now.

I’m not, however, allowed to blog a teensy bit about zombies. ‘Cause, that’s embarrassing, apparently.

It’s a good thing she’s cute, and is old enough to do things like laundry.

I wish I could say that I make a living off of this blog, because it’s made of awesome, but I don’t.  Not yet, anyway, even though I have fantasies where I become an instant writing success and can stop driving my 1999 Astro Van.

Anyway, I write for an outsourcing company; I write articles on all sorts of stuff for other folks to post on their blogs or sites.  I’m so made of awesome I’m a commodity, ya’ll!

Thing is, I end up writing on some fabulous topics.  I finished 60 articles on vaginal infections.  I know more about infected hoo-has than any GYN on the planet, which rocked hard except not at all, and I had to do a series on better toilets in the United Kingdom, which reminds me to stay out of toilets in the UK, ’cause now I know what they’re apparently like.  I’ll have to dig a latrine hole on the moors somewhere if I ever get to go to the UK, which won’t happen until my blogging makes me famous, and then they won’t let me in the country because I dissed their restrooms, and I’ll have to spend my entire vacation at Heathrow.

Don’t get me wrong; I’m grateful for the work, and hey, I’m getting paid to write, so even if it’s not about awesomeness like zombies, it’s still writing.  So until I’m famous, you can hit me up for article writing greatness.  Once I’m famous, I don’t know any of you. Except my family, ’cause they’re the only ones that put up with me.

P.S. – Why in the name of all that’s holy does Google put ads for plastic bottles up on this post??  Was it the comment about infected vajayjays??

Ok, so I was reading The Un Mom, because the post was about exercise being bad for you and I’m all about not exercising, and I decided that if I were going to exercise, I needed asbestos shorts, because when I do exercise, my thighs might rub together so hard my underwear catches on fire, and really, there’s nothing weirder than some chick running down the street with her behind in flames, and I have to live in this neighborhood, you know?

So, I decided that I need a pair of these, only made out of asbestos or Nomex or something.  Then no matter how hot my thighs got, there would be no flaming panties, and the entire neighborhood could rest easier without worrying that the lady down the street was going to catch their dogwoods on fire every time she took the dog for a walk.

Now, if I were being chased by zombies, I would totally want my butt on fire because not only would it make me run faster, it might actually take care of the zombies behind me, and then I could slow down and extinguish my hind parts.

Seriously.  I need to be rich.  I’m buying my girls’ books for this school year.  Yes, I’m buying them in September, yes, it’s late, quit yelling at me.  I’ve got one in third grade and one in tenth grade, and it’s like buying college textbooks.  ONE of B’s books costs more than the most expensive college text I ever purchased, and I was a snob and bought a lot of new books, and no, I’m not THAT old.

I already pay taxes for the public school system I don’t use, and before you ask, no, I don’t get any of it back.  There’s no tax credit for having the sense to avoid the local school system here.  You’d think I could get some sort of discount somewhere, you know?  “Hello, I’m homeschooling and poor, can I have a discount?”

Note:  Apple gives homeschoolers their educator’s discount.  That’s why I love them and why I’m writing this on a MacBook.  No, I don’t get paid to say that, but if they wanted to throw a new iPad my way, I’d take it.

Ok, I’m not actually poor, but since I’m homeschooling I don’t work outside of freelancing writing, and that’s not exactly putting me in contention with JK Rowling for earnings.  I should totally write a survival guide for zombies – not for the zombies but for surviving the zombies.  The zombies probably can’t read anymore, because their brains are turning to mush.