Archive for October, 2010

I am making my world-famous lasagna today. This is a labor intensive project which involves many full-fat cheeses, two kinds of meat, hours of sauce-simmering, and a final product that is so good you will eat until you explode. If you don’t undo your pants after eating my lasagna, then I have not done a good job.

I may brag, but I can back that shit up. Those of you attending Weetacon this year will receive a copy of my recipe in this year’s recipe book, that is if I ever get around to typing it all out.

We are having my mother’s friends over for dinner tonight, hence the lasagna. These are women my mother has known and loved since grammar school. Watching them laugh together is a delight. It’s also a blessing, considering the fact that there are more health problems among them than your average intensive care ward.

Sigh.

I have worked out a reasonable Halloween costume, but I am sad to say that it’s my old standby, the punk rocker. Fortunately, I have some excellent punk rock/gothy gear (I find myself winding up as sort of an amalgam of both subcultures). Patent-leather waist cincher adorned with big silver buckles? Check. Top comprised out of a pair of torn fishnets? Check. Tank top to go over that for decency’s sake? Check. Shorts with attached braces? Check. Studded leather arm warmer-thingies that lace up? Check. Twenty-two hole burgundy patent leather Doc Martens? CHECK, bitches. I am also in possession of an abundance of studded and spiked jewelry, including a large safety pin that I am going to wear in the cartilage piercing in my right ear.

Add to that some smudgy black eye makeup and some punked-out hair, and I think I’m in business. It may not be terribly original, but it’ll work.

The J-Man is on Fall Break today. He is ecstatic, because we have in our house a new videogame.

Never before has a videogame been so hotly anticipated. When the J-Man received cash and gift cards for his birthday, he plunked the money down to reserve this videogame, Fable III. This was many months ago. Since then, he has been counting the damned days until it would arrive.

It arrived this Tuesday, and on Sunday and Monday, you never saw a more hyperactive child.

“MY GAAAAAAAME IS COMING!!!”

“I know.”

“IT’S FINALLY COMING!!!”

“Yeah. Woo.”

“Mom, you don’t even understand. I’ve been waiting for this game for like, ever.”

“I’m aware of that.”

“Then why aren’t you more excited?”

“Because once it comes, I will never see your face again.”

I was correct. I have had to beat him off of the XBox with a stick. I have had to unplug the thing. If I hear “Wait, let me save my game!” one more time, I am going to have an aneursym.

Fucking Fable III.

I’m going to sneak into his room at night and make myself a character in the game: Wizard Mom. Wizard Mom will give extra points for taking lengthy breaks to interact with the family, get dressed, eat, make the bed, do the laundry. Wizard Mom will encourage other characters to shun the J-Man’s character if he’s been on the thing for more than an hour.

I am so going to hack his shit and mess up his world.

In other news, I need to go make my sauce while simultaneously baking cookies for the party tomorrow night.

Don’t ever let anyone tell you that I’m not one Martha Stewart-esque motherfucker.

Happy Thursday.

I have had approximately six hours of sleep in the last three days, so forgive me if I’m a little less than completely coherent. I don’t know why the sandman is neglecting me, but I’d very much like to wring his skinny little neck.

So, Halloween. I have nothing planned the day of except sending my child off to beg from strangers and handing out candy to the strange children who beg from me, but Friday I’m attending a party; which begs the question, what shall I be?

Typically I dress as a punk rocker, also known as Jen of Fifteen Years Ago, but that’s kind of tired. There are only so many years one can get away with knee-high Docs, ripped fishnets, and a surly demeanor.

I was talking to my buddy Dave about my dilemma this morning, and we both agreed: All commercial women’s costumes are either completely slutty or completely dorky. You’re either a giant M&M or you’re a trashy nurse in a white vinyl miniskirt with thigh-highs and stripper heels. Actually, almost ALL commercial female costumes show thigh-highs and stripper heels on the packaging.

I’ll take neither option, thanks. I’d rather my ass not look any wider (M&M), and I firmly believe that thigh-high stockings are best left in the bedroom.

What’s left? I could make my own costume. I could be something scary, like Jen in the Morning With No Makeup and Unstraightened Hair. Or Post-Seizure Jen, With Slobbery Lips and Rolled-Back Eyeballs.

I could put my cats on leashes and be Crazy Cat Lady Jen. I could wear a ballgown and a tiara, not speak to anyone, and be Snobby Bitch Jen. I could stay on my cellphone all night, pull handfuls of hair out, curse a lot, and be Dealing With the Medicare Office Jen.

l would just cut a couple of holes in a sheet and be a ghost, but the party is in my old ‘hood and I don’t want to be mistaken for a Klan member.

It’s so hard to choose, but I’m going to have to come up with something.

TranceMom’s birthday is this weekend, too. I’m making lasagna and we’re having some of her friends over, and I bought her a coat and am having a really cool floral arrangement delivered. Should be good times.

In other news, I am still trying to decorate the basement to my liking. I purchased some nice poster-sized photographic prints to hang on the walls, artsy-fartsy stuff that will make my mother come downstairs and frown. “Why did you buy THAT? That’s WEIRD.”

This is what she says about the Rothko in my bathroom. “YOU could have painted that.”

Well, maybe. Only if I was very depressed.

Bad joke.

Anyway.

I checked the J-Man’s grades on the school’s kid-stalker program early this morning, and lo and behold, there were As. A big fat A on his two-chapter Social Studies test, and some other As as well.

I am ridiculously happy with the J-Man.

In still other news, I’m losing steam. Time to suck down another pot of coffee.

Jen out.

Happy Monday.

Since the basement looks so seventies and paneled and… brown, my mom and I have been on a quest to cool it up a bit. (And no, Stepdad STILL won’t let me paint the paneling, much to my chagrin. I am going to have to “accidentally” spill some paint.)

At the top of the list was finding chairs to go around our little round table, because I must admit we have been supremely ghetto and have been using white resin lawn chairs.

I may have gotten a little overzealous in my Craigslisting before the move and sort of forgot that we would need SOME chairs.

Anyway, buying new chairs was out of the question, because we are both relatively broke and ridiculously cheap; so we have been garage sale-ing and scouring Craigslist.

We wound up finding these, a mere three blocks away, for five bucks.

There were five of them, and we took all five.

The chairs themselves were in good shape, but the fabric, which we would be getting rid of anyway, looked heinous.

Close up of heinous fabric for your viewing pleasure:

Thankfully the foam underneath was still in really good shape, so the chairs could be reupholstered.

We removed the cushions and tore off all the old fabric, pulling out a hell of a lot of staples.

We then sanded and painted the chairs, using Krylon Indoor/Outdoor Satin Finish spraypaint in Black.

So far, so good. I probably should have taken photos of the steps as I went along, but I didn’t, so use your imaaaaaaginaaaaation.

We then headed off to Jo-Ann Fabrics and began the exhaustive process of picking out fabric for the chair cushions. Everything I liked was too expensive. Everything my mother liked was too ugly. Finally, after a good two hours, we came to rest upon a nice black and cream paisley-ish looking fabric that was on sale that we both liked. Done.

My mom is the master upholsterer in the family, having learned from my dad, who actually had an upholstery side business at one point in his life. She wielded the staple gun and tugged the fabric this way and that while I watched, so that I’ll be able to do it right the next time.

I then screwed the cushions down into the chairs, and we were in business.

I think they turned out very well.

Here is a closeup of our fabric, which I guess you would call a paisley? I have no idea.

The cats seem to enjoy them.

They look nice around our little table, which we are also going to paint black. Now wouldn’t this all look nice if that hideous brown paneling were a nice cream color?? I think so.

Next we are going to make curtains and cushions for the nasty wicker furniture.

All of this stuff keeps me busy, which is a Very Good Thing.

The J-Man is doing well, by the way. His grades are rising in time for report cards and I let him have a friend spend the night last weekend.

His mother is doing well, too.

Happy Thursday.

So, yeah. I’ve not been around. I’ve not been tweeting, Facebooking, updating, e-mailing, IMing, calling, using Morse code, or even utilizing smoke signals.

Where in the world have I been??

I’ve been here, dealing with some moderately heavy crap.

The J-Man, who seemed to start off the school year in such a promising manner, has taken a nosedive of astonishing depths; and really, this has consumed nearly all of my energy.

He made nearly all As at the difficult and demanding private school, so I must admit I expected him to sail through public school as if it were a cool breeze. At first, it seemed as if this would indeed happen.

Then his grades started to plummet. He is now sporting a handful of Cs and one D. This may not seem so dire, but in my house, it doesn’t fly. I have met with his teachers, and they all have said basically the same thing. He seems distracted. He farts around. He doesn’t pay attention.

Basically, he’s screwing around.

And no, he doesn’t have A-Fucking-D-D.

He gets roughly a half an hour’s worth of homework per night, compared to a good two hour’s worth at the private school. This should be a cakewalk. He is breezing through the homework, but flunking the tests. He’s turning in tests half-done, spacing out during tests, and forgetting to bring his books home to study.

I have been on his ass like white on rice.

Not only have his grades tanked, which is disturbing enough, but a few weeks ago, I received a disturbing e-mail from one of his teachers:

“I sincerely hope that you are feeling better. I was sorry to hear that you were in the hospital and could not make it to New York.”

Naturally, I wrote back, as I had not been hospitalized and had not planned any trip to New York.

Apparently my son had told the class that I had lost a sibling to the 9/11 attacks and that we were going to New York to commemorate the anniversary of the tragedy, but that I had been hospitalized, so our plans had been derailed.

What. The. Fuck.

Obviously I was floored, ashamed, and shocked.

I confronted the J-Man and he burst into tears. “I don’t know why I said it. It just came out.”

I’m sorry, but such a intricately fabricated story does not just “come out”.

I talked to him for about an hour regarding lying and how it is wrong, and how if you want to make up stories, you write them down on paper, et cetera, et cetera.

A week later, I met with his teachers, and we discussed the incident. The general consensus was that he was making up a story for attention. He has not yet made that many friends in school, just in the neighborhood with some younger kids, and perhaps he felt this was a way to garner attention or sympathy or something like that.

OK. I don’t quite get it, but OK.

Then his English teacher spoke up. “I wasn’t going to mention this, but there was a similar incident in my class.”

Oh, fuck.

“The J-Man told the class that you went camping Labor Day weekend.”

Lie.

“He said that the people in the cabin next to yours were murdered.”

Are you fucking kidding me?

I wanted to crawl beneath my chair and die.

Again, the teachers told me not to worry, that this was obviously some sort of ploy for attention, that other children had done similar things.

I wish it eased my fears.

I am taking him to a therapist. I’m not trying to jump the gun and automatically assume that Lord, The Child Is Crazy, but I do think he needs someone to talk to besides me. Obviously I’m not cutting the mustard.

Other than the lying and the grades, he seems fine. He is still a very loving child. He still acts reasonably well, and he still has a good sense of humor. I would never imagine that he was having these problems had the teachers not told me, and had his grades not been slipping.

I wish to God I knew what to do. I’ve been helping him study and checking his homework like a freak. I’ve been talking with him and trying to get to the root of his problems. Other than that, I am at a loss.

So, there’s that.

My stepdad’s mother passed away after slowly starting to slide downhill. She was 91 years old. She was a wonderful lady.

My stepdad is coping well. He wrote a beautiful poem that he read at the grave site.

The funeral was this weekend, and I was able to see all of my stepbrothers and my stepsister and their children together for the first time in ages. It was bittersweet.

We’re having a cookout next weekend, as we’ve decided it shouldn’t take a funeral for us all to get together.

I have lost an extraordinary amount of weight due to all of this stress and craziness. I suppose I can’t complain, but it is odd. I look in the mirror and am starting to see shades of what I looked like before I even was pregnant. It’s thoroughly bizarre. I’m trying not to let it fuel me to start adopting old, sick behaviors.

So that’s what’s happening. Please to not give assvice about the kid. I’m doing the best I can.

Happy Tuesday.

*Edited to say:

Believe me, I know that I normally write as if the sun shines out of my son’s ass, and I can honestly say that it usually does. I love my boy more than life itself – my happy, loving child – and he is a joy to me in every way. This is all a total shock to me and I don’t mean to paint him in a wholly negative light. He is having problems adjusting to life in the new house and the new school, and we will deal with it.