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What you can’t see is the back window. It says, “Frogger.” Who knew a Ford Tempo could be so deliciciously wicked.
Archive for June, 2006
We went to a friend’s house this past weekend for a grill-out. It was our first date, so to speak. In lieu of the Whitman’s Sampler, we brought $20 worth of kebabs, lips and assholes for the kids (hot dogs), cut fruit, pasta salad and my famous crack dessert bars. Boo-ya, instant BBQ.
Both untitledhusband and I know the wife quite well through work and whatnot. We hadn’t spent much time with her husband, though. When we arrived, he was cutting his grass with his new lawn mower. I didn’t think much of it, for I assumed he would put it away once we got out of the car. But oh contraire. He did not stop until one hour later, when he had finished his yard.
In all, we were at their home for, oh, four hours. Except for the short time we spent together eating at the dinner table, he was constantly doing something else β mowing the grass, playing with the kids outside, masturbating to the table saw spread in the Lowe’s circular. It was clear that he preferred tinkering around in his garage to spending time with us. In addition, their kids wanted nothing to do with untitledson. This did not bother him. He just took the opportunity to raid their toy room and fart on the heads of all their stuffed animals. I was tempted to have him poop in the pink Barbie Hummer, but even I see how that might be crossing a line (especially with how common DNA testing has become).
All in all, the whole situation was quite awkward. Here we’d come with armfuls of carefully prepared food (hey, it was prepared by someone, somewhere). It was clear we’d gone to lengths, if not the deli section, for this one. Then the husband has to go and make us feel like over-anxious virgins at our first prom. It was as if we weren’t worth the effort.
By all other accounts, this guy seemed quite nice. When he did stop his chores long enough to talk, he was very cordial and engaged. He just didn’t seem to understand that abandoning your guests so you can play kick ball with the neighborhood kids was rude. In my mind, I kept making excuses for him β anything to deny the possibility that he just had better things to do that visit with the likes of us. I thought to myself, “Maybe he has ADD. Or maybe he has been working on home projects for so long, he just doesn’t know when to stop.” But there really is no good excuse, now is there.
I’d like to think that we’re not boring people. So maybe we play Scrabble on our Tivo and watch “Big Brother” when everyone else is outside, creating “Eight is Enough” family pyramids, waving flags and playing bocci ball. Does this make us boring? I mean, christ. We are certainly more entertaining than a gaggle of six year-olds that eat their own boogers. I mean, if it’s gross stuff that you’re into, I can tell you for a fact that I myself have an obsession for zit-popping. untitledhusband gets a sick joy out of playing with his own toenail clippings. untitledson will fart on demand, followed by what could only be termed the funky fart dance and a loud vocal declaration of “excuse mah BUTT!” If this isn’t excitement, hand me my nitro pills.
I signed untitledson (who is three) up for beginner swimming lessons this summer through daycare. The teachers corral the kids into a daycare bus, drive to the local pool and then bring them back to daycare. He enjoys the actual lessons. But the getting to and from the pool β that’s been not so fun.
I’m not surprised that untitledson has taken to the water like Aquaman, given that I spent the better part of my childhood at the pool, tanning myself more than anyone of Swedish descent has a right to, and whipping water-soaked Nerf balls at mean boys (I thinking of one in particular, a doughy 10-year old who told me that my perm made me look like Peter Frampton). I told him he looked like Bea Arthur, which was probably quite confusing given he was no where near menopause.
I find it amusing that untitledson refuses to get on the swimming lessons bus, but he freely lets his friends β even his girlfriend β hop right onto the cortΓ¨ge. They hop in, and he briskly walks in the other direction. I wonder what goes through his head as he sees them line up at the foot of the folding door, for what must be the equivalent of the Bataan Death March in his mind. “If and when this beast arrives at its destination, you’ll all be forced to eat raw tomatoes and take naps and watch ‘The View’ with your moms. That’s right β there will be no ‘Doodlebops,’ ‘Jack’s Big Music Show’ or ‘Pinky Dinky Doo.’ You’ll be up to your ears with Star Jones, her saggy tits and that little Republican bitch who ought to know better. You DO know this, right?”
After I discussed the situation with his teacher, I told her to not force him on the bus β just cancel his swimming lessons. I figured any trauma experienced from the bus ride would far outweigh the enjoyment of wading around in an overcrowded chlorinated cess pool. The saddest part was that he would not get a chance to sashay and shante, wearing his cute little Hawaiian/muscle car swim trunks. And isn’t that really why we Moms sign our kids up for swim lessons, so they can look fierce whilst poolside? Sure, the “Thomas” logo on his sunglasses doesn’t do much for his game. But still, the boy looks FINE.
In the end, his teacher ended up driving her car behind the white bus, with untitledson riding high in his own personal chariot β a late model Intrepid. I’m surprised he didn’t insist on a Hummer limo, though. Given his fascination with all things Tonka, it seemed more his style. I thought about asking little Nancy if he wanted to wear a tiara and throw candy along the parade route, but I thought that might be crossing some sort of line.
untitledmother-in-law has no faults, other than her unbridled lust for cheap vinyl shoes and her dogged desire to spoil her youngest son to the point where all life skills wither away and he’s forced to return to her bosom where he can quite literally spend the remainder of his days sucking the life out of her. Far be it from me to let a sweet, god-fearing woman escape my unforgiving death ray of judgment and criticism. So here goes.
Whenever the whole fam damnly gets together to go out to eat, shop, or watch “Gaither Homecoming” at the local titty bar, untitledmother-in-law’s mind starts a-working. No sooner do we burst out of the house and pour out into the front yard than she breaks out her abacus to see just how many adults can fit into the least amount of vehicles. “I’m sure we can get by with two cars if Uncle Charlie sticks his feet out the sunroof and if Aunt Tess sits on my head,” she cheerfully reports.
Good god. If I had a dime for every time she said the words “I’m sure we could get by with,” it just might equal the amount of money she has saved in her lifetime by buying Dr. Thunder and Toasty O’s and weaving rugs out of old plastic bread sacks. She finds special joy in shopping the clearance racks at Wal-Mart β all while lamenting about how sad it is that her husband’s factory is cutting back on raises and moving jobs overseas. This is a woman that not only pinches pennies, she puts them into an industrial compress, grinds them into dust and then peppers her ramen noodles with them. untitledhusband once asked her how it feels to steal milk money from the five year-old Cambodian child who made her $3 shirt. She pretended not to hear, even though she knew it was a valid point.
The fact that nothing gets her more wet than Crazy Days at the dollar store makes her habit of purchasing anything sold via a “party” perplexing. She recently dropped $235 on, of all things, stamping paraphernalia. To this day, it all sits unused in a box in her bedroom. For fuck’s sake. Imagine the amount of honest-to-goodness brand-name cereal you could’ve bought with that kind of money. You could’ve blown your colon to the moon and back with the amount of fiber contained in that much breakfast food.
Some may say that it’s selfish and wasteful to indulge in such frivolities as circulation and safety, but sweet Jesus, what’s the harm in taking three cars? I would gladly sell $5 hand jobs at my son’s lemonade stand if it meant the money earned would go towards taking a third car. She has this “make-do” mentality, where if we’re not all getting by with less than we need, we’re being wasteful. It’s the same line of thought that compels her to cut a 9 X 12 birthday cake into 60 pieces. And may I go on record as saying that as a fat chick, I find nothing fun about fun-sized food.
But alas, all these thoughts remain in my head. I have yet to say, “How about we live a little and take THREE cars!” Perhaps it’s because the propulsion expert in me knows that if we get into an accident, I would be safer with three people on each side of me. Since untitledmother-in-law was too cheap to spring for the side curtain airbags, each person would act as cushioning agent against the oncoming death blow. There now. I KNEW if I dug deep enough, I’d find some logic in taking two cars.
Well I’ll be damned. I honestly have nothing to say right now. I spent all day at work on Friday working on freelance projects. That’s damn near erotic, if you ask me. Doing freelance on The Man’s dime makes me hard.
Between my three gigs (full-time job, freelance, blog), I write all the goddamned time. I write at work. I write in the kitchen. I write on the sofa. I write in the home office. I’d write on the toilet, but to me, poop time is sacred. The only multi-tasking I do during poop time is tweezing, and even that is pushing it.
My muse is out to lunch, and to make things worse, the porn filter on my work computer has decided to flag Perez Hilton. Jesus, I can barely type his name without getting the urge to abandon this post and pay him a visit. Damn you, porn filter! I thought about visiting Juggs.com, so as to distract The Machine. A shell game, if you will. But I’d hate to set off that big alarm I assume is on my boss’s computer — the one that goes off whenever I hit a blocked site. What the fuck did people do at work before the Internet? Those must’ve been some dark times. My mind, it reels.
Well, starting today, I’m hunkering down. I’m going to abandon my sordid past and put in an honest eight hours of work. It may damn near kill me, but I’m going to do it. Not because I’m feeling guilty. Oh no no no. I have my quarterly review on Friday, and I find it hard to look boss woman in the eyes when my eyes are bloodshot from playing Shanghai at my desk.