Phone Calls That Don't End in Fiery Deaths

How old do my children have to be for me to actually feel HAPPY to see an unexpected incoming call from them light up my phone? 

Because to date, when I see that it’s one of my spawn ringing in, I have to get my mind right before answering the call. First, I blink 5 times, slowly. I breathe in… I breathe out. I stretch my neck to the left. I stretch my neck to the right.

I consider all the possible reasons the spawn would choose to CALL rather than TEXT (which is the norm).  A phone call gives me no time to devise my reply to whatever ridiculous non-urgent problem she is currently having that can’t be resolved via text.

Then, I close my eyes and tilt my head up to the sky…hoping that powers greater than me will take mercy on my ragged soul and make the fucking phone stop ringing. By this time, it usually does stop. And I pray that they’ll just leave me a message. And, I start to believe that God really does give a shit about me.

Then, the follow-up-call ringing commences. No message. Just more goddamned ringing. 

In the span of 3 seconds, I start to fear the worst.

Maybe my child has been kidnapped by a murderous bandito and is calling from the trunk of a 1985 Ford Ltd with no way to kick the taillights out and wave her hand through the hole to flag down help from concerned passersby! And the 9 and 1 buttons on her phone don't work!

OR… My child was just in a car accident and is trapped inside the car which is only seconds from exploding into smithereens!

OR… There’s an active shooter at the school!

OR… My child has been car jacked and left stranded in the middle of nowhere with wolves (NOT of the Huge Jackman variety) salivating near her while her phone is about to die and this is the last call she will ever make before she’s torn to shreds!

Fire, blood, and gory death flash before my eyes and I start to hyperventilate.

So, frantically, I answer the phone, cursing myself for being such a fucking selfish, crappy excuse for a mother. My child is obviously in mortal danger! What the fuck is wrong with me!?

Me: Hello? Are you ok? 
Tallest Spawn: cry/screaming and blowing out my eardrum: Moooom! Why aren’t you answering your phone? I’m like freaking out over here! 
Me: Uhm! I just answered! What in the world is wrong?! 
Tallest Spawn: sobbing uncontrollably:  My car won’t start! I’m freaking out! Oh my god! What do I do?!  
Me: Really? You’re crying uncontrollably about your car not starting? 
Tallest Spawn: YES! Mom! You don’t understand! I’m like freaking out over here! 
Me: Obviously. Where are you? Are you safe? 
Tallest Spawn: Well, I had to like go to Walgreen’s. So, like I went in to buy stuff, and when I got back in my car, it was fine! So, I drove to the gas station to put gas in it for the week. I put the gas in, but then I like tried to start it, but it like won’t even start or anything! I’ve been trying like for 10 minutes or maybe longer! 
Me: So, you’re safe. Did you call your Dad?

Meanwhile, Hubber is standing in the doorway shaking his head and rolling his eyes and I am motioning for him to grab his fucking phone and deal with this shit! Ya’ll know I don’t deal well with car problems.

Tallest Spawn: hic-crying now: I don’t know if I’m safe, Mom! There’s a sketchy guy here that keeps staring at me! I’m so scared, Mom! Like, what do I do?! Dad won’t answer his phone, either! Why don’t ya’ll ever answer your phones?! 
Me: First of all, calm your tits. If there’s a sketchy guy there, then go into the store. 
Tallest Spawn: And just leave my car here?? 
Me: Yeah! It’s at the damn pump, right?! It ain’t going anywhere if it won’t start! I’ll send your dad over there to help.

So, naturally, Hubber starts asking 21 questions…  did she do this... did she do that… what kind of noise did it make… did she put the right key in the hole… etc. etc. 

Me:

This is the point at which I normally lose my shit. First of all, none of the disturbing near-death scenarios are playing out like my brain told me they would. Second of all, CAR DRAMA. Thirdly, WTF?!
I think Hubber could sense that I was about to grab a knife and stab a mofo if he didn’t quickly get his ass (and every other living being in my vicinity) the fuck out.

While he was gone, I had an adult beverage to calm my nerves. When he got back, I hesitantly listened to how shit went down at the gas station.
Hubber pulled up behind our helpless little spawn’s car at the gas station. She sprinted out from the store to meet him.
Hubber: Where’s the sketchy guy? 
Tallest Spawn: pointing: Over there, Daddy! See him? 
Hubber: The guy changing the bags out of the trash cans?! 
Tallest Spawn: Is that what he’s doing? 
Hubber: YES! He fucking works here! 
Tallest Spawn: Oh. My bad. But, Daddy! He kept like staring at me! 
Hubber: He’s probably wondering why you’re bawling your eyes out over here like a crazy person! 
Tallest Spawn: I’m sorry!!! But, I didn’t know what to do!! 
Hubber: Did you check that you used the right key? Did you check the battery like I showed you? If so, remember that Insurance app I told you to download onto your phone? It has roadside assistance! Why is your first reaction to always freak out and drive your mom to drink?! 
Tallest Spawn:

Hubber: Give me your keys.
Hubber got in the car, put the key in the ignition. And would you know it…the fucking car started right up!
Tallest Spawn: 

 Hubber:

Tallest Spawn: Daddy! I swear it wouldn’t start!!  Why don’t you believe me!? You never believe me! Why do you hate me?! I hate my life!  Why does this stuff always happen to ME?!

Etc. Etc.

My point here is that usually, when the phone RINGS and the call is coming from one of my children, it is usually NOT a fucking emergency. It’s usually some bullshit crap story that makes my right eye twitch, my fists clench, and my brain scream. 9 times out of 10, this is how shit goes down:

For instance, let’s consider this text:

How is THAT “kind of urgent”? C’mon, man! I’m AT WORK. Go talk to the gas station people! Or, call the bank! I don’t fucking know! But I do know that I ain’t gonna be able to solve this urgent issue for you! You are a grown ass woman! 

That being said, though… I do appreciate her decision to give me a heads-up text rather than repeated, frantic, and aneurysm-inducing phone calls where I have no clue what the fuck is happening. I hate going in blind, ya’ll! Momma needs prep time.

Another plus is that she "also just texted dad"! That pretty much means I'm off the hook entirely. 

Have fun, Hubber! 

Kids Are Pigs - Let's Make Bacon

because bacon makes everything better

Just because I work at home doesn't mean I'm everyone's personal maid. Contrary to popular beliefs, I actually try to WORK all day. I don't have time to go around picking up shit my kids leave strewn about. On the surface, my girls are cute... they're funny... they're smart (this is a matter of opinion) and they appear to be clean and well groomed. What people don't know is that they are actually filthy pigs shat from the bowels of hell. 

The oldest spawn will be 17 years old this year. Over the years, she has struggled with lifting a fucking finger to help make my life a little easier. She isn't interested in making my life easier. All she is interested in is living like a slob. When she was 13, she used to hoard dirty dishes in her room. I kept buying tumblers and bowls thinking some serial dish robber was sneaking in through my kitchen window to snatch my shit up. I even made a booby trap out of broken wine bottles on the windowsill to try to catch that motherfucker once and for all. But, when I found a bowl of moldy, stinky, milk swollen cheerios stashed away in her bathroom cabinet while searching desperately for a tampon, I knew who the real thief was. My fucking kid.

So, what did I do? I put Hubber on the case. He turned that room upside down and found crusty forks under mattresses, cups stacked behind books, petrified pizza crusts in file cabinet drawers, and bowls growing science experiments under the bed and in the closet. The craziest thing (because evidently, that shit isn't crazy enough), was that when we questioned her about it, she acted completely dumbfounded like she had no clue where all that shit came from.

Me: What the fuck were you thinking? How long has this been going on?

1st Spawn: I didn't do it. I swear! I don't know where any of that stuff came from.

Hubber: I'll tell you where it came from! It came from you dragging shit up to your room and hiding it because you were too damn lazy to bring it back down to the kitchen... or throw it in the trash.

1st Spawn: Daddy, I swear! I didn't do it!

Hubber: Well then WHO did?

1st Spawn: I don't know. Maybe it was a ghost. I told you there are ghosts in this house! (find more on the pesky ghost here)

Yeah, that's how the conversation went. And, Hubber kept arguing with her because that's what he does. And, do you think the dish stashing stopped after that argument? It didn't. It went on for the next few months (or years... as it turns out because we found fresh stashes of shit when we moved out of the house last year). Even the contraction of staph infections didn't change her lazy ways.

After we moved and the route between her bedroom and the kitchen became almost non-existent, the hording of dirty dishes seemed to get better but other slobbish habits took over.

1. She can't seem to close a drawer.  The clothes in the drawers aren't even overflowing.  It would take literally 2 seconds to shove them closed with a hip while walking by. 

   

   WTF? Just close the damn drawers!

2. She can't seem to toss empty toilet paper rolls in the trash can that sits right under the toilet paper roll holder.
3. She collects hair on her shower wall.  Hair. Long, gnarly strands of hair.  Her logic to collecting hair there is that it's better than clogging the drain.  Never mind the fact there is a trash can right next to the fucking tub.
4. She co-mingles clean clothes with dirty clothes and can't keep track of what is clean and what is dirty, so when she's getting dressed in the morning, she tosses a shirt and a pair of jeans into the dryer with a dryer sheet to "dewrinkle" it, she says.  More like "freshen it up" so she doesn't smell like sweaty cooch and gym socks.

But it's not just her pig pen lifestyle that drives me nuts, she's also a lazy heifer who will fall over dead if she has to help do anything remotely related to housework.  It takes her 2 hours to wash 4 plates, 4 forks and 4 cups because she suddenly has to take a shit, then she cuts herself on the tip of a fork and starts bleeding profusely, then she bumps her head on the razor sharp edge of an open cabinet door and blood starts pooling in her eye, then she slips on dog drool and strains a hamstring which prohibits the ability to bend and load the dishwasher.

Her sister has officially started following in her footsteps.  I've tried to instill in the littlest spawn the importance of proper hygiene and picking up after her damn self. Has she learned one fucking thing? No.  She wears Depends-for-Kids because she has bladder issues at night and I got tired of washing pee-soaked sheets every fucking day.  But, can she remove the pull-up and place it in the garbage?  No.  She removes it, then leaves it in the middle of the bedroom floor where it transfers pee stink into the carpet and into the air.  She will make games of jumping over the damn thing.  She will build barriers around it so that the dog doesn't snatch it up.  But, she will not pick it up without a fight.

Why?  Because "it's gross, Moooom!", and she doesn't want to get pee on her fingers.  This from the same kid who to this day will pluck boogers out of her nose and eat them for snacks throughout the day.  The same kid who will take a shit, NOT wipe properly a wear shit encrusted panties all day.  The same kid who will scratch her ass and sniff her fingers.  The same kid who chews on her own fucking toenails. 

Turns out the dog is grossed out, too.

The other day when the girls' toilet was clogged beyond Hubber's ability to remedy it, the plumber came in, stepped over two swollen pull-ups, around a pile of clothes lying on the floor next to an empty laundry basket, and past a drawer full of teenager thongs.  Behind the toilet, he spotted an empty popcorn bag and a glass half-full of green muck that was once a banana smoothie. 

And you people wonder why I drink.

Parenting: I think I'm doing it wrong. Again.

I don't know how the hell it happens...

...but every time I punish my kids "for their own good", I end up punishing my damn self, too!  When the little spawn gets in trouble, she is punished by not being allowed play dates, not being able to watch TV, and not being able to play with her toys or "do artwork".  That only leaves books.  And when the books get old, that heifer is all up in my shit....talking my ears off and driving me up the wall.  There isn't enough medication and booze in the world to get me through those days without going insane.  If I duct tape her mouth shut and tie her to a chair, it's considered child abuse.  What about parent abuse?!  Where are the laws for that shit?!

And, don't even get me started on the teenage punishment.  Along with telephone/internet curfews and no extra-curricular outings with friends, the oldest spawn has currently been punished by actually having to read.  That's right.  Books = Punishment.  The problem is: I have to read the damn books, too, because how else will I know what the fuck she's reading in order to quiz her on it?

Spawn:  Can I pick the book this time?

Me:  It has to be a chapter book and it cannot contain illustrations.

Spawn:  So, Calvin and Hobbes is out?

Me: .....

Spawn: Mooooom!  You know I haaaaaate to read!  Why do you torture me?!

Me:  How are we even related?  I'm ashamed to call you my daughter right now.  There are 693 books in this house, how many have you even attempted to read?

Spawn:  I read the first part of Twilight, remember?

Me: One chapter of the first book hardly counts.

Spawn: I saw all the movies... it's the same thing.  Besides, I read books at school all the time.  Smart books by famous, dead authors.

Me:  Name one.

Spawn: ......

Me: Exactly.

So, here's what she picked:

Who the fuck is being punished here?!

They don't make Clif's Notes for the Pretty Little Liars books, y'all (believe me, I've looked).  My eyes are bleeding just thinking about all the teen angst and drama that I'm about to endure with this round of punishment.  Kill me now.  Put the barrel of your gun right in my face and blow my head away to smithereens. Twice.  Just to be sure I'm good and dead.

I'd swear she was switched at birth if it weren't for the fact that she was the only white baby born at the county hospital the week of September 7, 1996. There was one Vietnamese baby and the rest were black.  I bet all those kids read!

To make matters worse, she has to bring her Geometry book home twice a week for studying.  GEOMETRY.  I don't know shit about Geometry except for pie-r-square.  Oh, wait... I can probably decipher all the basic shapes unless they have more than 5 sides.  And, even then, it's a crap shoot, what with all the parallellagrams and other similar bullshit that is absolutely useless in real life.

High school math makes me feel like a goddamned idiot.  Those teachers need to step it up and earn their keep so I don't have to do this shit at home!  I specifically chose NOT to be a school teacher because:

1. I hate kids
2. I hate math
3. I hate people in general
4. I refuse to wear panty hose; and
5. Cafeteria food sucks.

My point here is that parenting is a bitch.  When you do it "right", you suffer like a mofo.  When you do it "wrong", you end up in a prison for the criminally insane.  Either way, you're screwed.  Both literally and figuratively.  Neither of which would be considered a pleasant experience in my book.

Buses, Booze and Fruit Roll-Ups

The youngest spawn thinks that all the cool kids ride the bus.  But, to torture her, I forbade it.  I insisted that I drop her off every morning... waiting in the car line for 10-15 excrutiating minutes behind idiot parents that can't read/see/hear, just so that I can watch her walk into the building.  It gave me the assurance that she actually made it to school and that she didn't skip out to drink Boone's Farm Strawberry Hill and smoke Camel cigarettes behind the school with all the other derelicts. But it wasn't until a few days ago that I realized that the piece of mind I get from dropping her off myself isn't worth the time and aggravation it costs me to deal with the dreaded CAR LINE.  Also, I got banned from the car line for shooting the bird at the crossing guard.  Twice.  

Me: Hey, baby... wouldn't it be fun to ride the bus in the mornings?

Spawn:  Really?!  Yes!!  I can sneak in some fruit roll-up so me and Tyler can eat them together BEFORE the teacher takes them away from us!

Me: You can eat on the bus?

Spawn: No.  I mean, yes.

Me: Whatever... just don't get in trouble!

So, she's been catching the bus every morning this week and so far she hasn't gotten in trouble for sneaking contraband onto school property.  How much harm can fruit roll-ups cause, really?

Spring Break 2012: Days 2-4

We're now in Colorado.  All is well, but the roadtrip up was definitely a learning experience.  Here are a few things we learned along the way:

• Driving through Kansas (the state of Kans-assholes) is not fun when you're 10ft tall and winds are 65 mph.  The Winnie got a whopping 6 miles per gallon across the entire fucking state. Never again. We'll avoid Kansas at all costs on future roadtrips.
• Storm water grates located in rest stops in Kansas = Redneck dumpstations.  You don't want to know.
• Rocky Mountain gas isn't the stuff you put in your car.  It's what your body experiences due to the high altitude.  It's 10x worse for dogs.  It can smell like: death, skunk squirt or dairy farm (or a combination of these).
• Driving uphill in the Winnie will cause all those behind you to curse the day you were born. Twice.

I'm sure we learned other things; but I've already forgotten them.  I need to take notes next time.

Anyway...

The Hancocks are now officially boondocking (that's RVing-speak for freeloading) in my sister-in-law's driveway in Parker, CO. We're even hooked up to power and water.  We did, however, get rid of the kids in the evenings... they're sleeping IN the house while Hubber and I rough it in the front yard.  During the day, though, I sure wish I could drop their asses off at school.  Vacation ain't so fun when you spend the entire time trying to entertain two girls who are not easily satisfied unless you spend your life savings along with an arm and a leg everywhere you go.  When did these little heifers become such divas?!  I haven't consumed nearly enough adult beverages to stay sane.  I feel a bloody mary night coming on.

I suck royally at consistent parenting.

This face doesn't scare anyone!

This is a sad, SAD fact.  My kids have figured me out.  They know that "No." doesn't mean "NO."  It means, "if you bug the living shit out of me for long enough, I will eventually give in because I am weak and pathetic and I don't put up much of a fight."

Before I had kids, I was famous for talking trash about other people's parenting skills.  Parents who couldn't keep their kids quiet or still in public got on my nerves like nobody's business.  Now?  I'm one of "THOSE" parents.  What the hell happened to me?  I don't even LIKE children!  You'd think that a hateful bitch like me would be a strict mom whose kids are well behaved because they're filled with the fear of God.  But, sadly, no.  That isn't the case.  It's not that I'm really all that much of a push-over, though.  Mostly, I just live in a made-up world in my head where I am blissfully unaware of what my kids are doing around me.  It's full of happy pills and adult beverages and hulky man-booties.  It keeps me sane.  I'm probably not doing my kids any favors by giving into their whims, but MY sanity is at stake here, people!  And no one likes me when I'm insane. 

My point here is that it's Valentine's Day and you're probably wondering what this lushy, sex kitten has planned for the evening, right?  Well...

I am waiting for Hubber to get home.  When he does, we will pile up in the car, pick up the teen spawn's boyfriend and drop the two lovebirds off on THEIR fucking date.  Then, we will have Valentine's dinner at Chuck-e-Cheese's (where they do NOT serve "mommy drinks") with an extra hyper, chatter-mouthed kindergartener.

Why, you ask?  Because "NO." doesn't fucking mean "HELL NO."  Shoot me now.