Archive for January, 2011

I know, I know, I’m becoming one of those “mommy bloggers” that blogs about their damned spawn all of the time.

Deal with it.

The J-Man is sadly and inexplicably bombing math. Badly. The semester just started, but so far his grade is a big, fat F.

This does not fly in the Trance household. The thought of summer school sends shivers down my overachieving spine, and even Ds are strictly verboten.

My mother is in a tizz. Having raised a child who had a large stick up her ass and the perfect grades to show for it from kindergarten to college, she doesn’t understand her grandson’s freewheeling, lackadaisical ways.

I have to confess that I don’t either, but I do understand that he is not me, which is something my mother tends to miss. I cannot tell you how many conversations I’ve had with her that begin with, “You need to DO something about him.” Do what, exactly? Re-mold his little brain?

The J-Man would rather not study, he would rather not exert any effort other than the bare minimum required to get by, and when it comes to math, he is not even exerting that much. I have tutored, threatened, cajoled, begged, grounded, screamed, and taken away every electronic device to no avail – he just isn’t motivated.

The kid is smart. He has no learning disabilities. He doesn’t have ADD. He’s just inordinately lazy.

I e-mailed his math teacher to schedule a meeting, and apparently in order to do that I must meet with his entire “core” group of teachers. This frightens the hell out of me.

I hate going to school. There, I said it. It intimidates me. The teachers intimidate me, the other moms with their fake tans and Coach bags and designer fucking tracksuits and expensive highlights intimidate me, and even some of the kids, the overachieving jock-ish ones, intimidate me. I am the weird mom – the unmarried one with the nose ring and the Frye boots. My kid refuses to get involved in any after-school activity and is also, let’s face it, a bit on the weird side.

I’m OK with both of us being weird, by the way. It just becomes rather glaring in a room full of suburbanite Trixies.

I hate school events, too. I hate meetings and presentations and science fairs and such. They make me intensely uncomfortable. I have no idea why this is. When I was in school myself, I felt the same way, even though I was relatively popular. Large groups of people make me want a Xanax really badly.

This particular meeting has me almost breaking out in hives, because I can almost hear the comments from his teachers:

“The J-Man doesn’t pay attention.”
“He stares out the window during class.”
“Yeah, and he sharpens his pencil every two minutes.”
“Yeah, and he forgets to write his name on his paper!”
“Yeah, yeah, and his handwriting is for shit!!”
“Yeah! And his math is abysmal!!”
“Let’s kick his ass!!”

Jesus.

My son is a lot of things. He’s sensitive and loving and kind. He’s creative and bright and has an outstanding vocabulary. His reading level is off the charts and he can quote an entire movie, verbatim. He shovels the snow without complaint and never fails to kiss me goodnight.

However, a studious student he is not.

It just doesn’t seem to be in the cards.

I arranged a math tutor for him at school during his free period, and he likes her (of course, it’s a cute girl), and it seems to be helping a bit. My father is a mathematical freaking genius, so we have some help there.

I went all the way up to Trig in college, yet I seem to have forgotten how to do everything other than very basic algebra, so I am sadly of little help. I need to bone up on my own skills before I can tutor my seventh-grader, which is just sad.

Hopefully we can get this situation under control very soon without my having to put a foot in his ass.

In other news, my month of free internet on my phone has come to an end. Oh noes! No more Facebooking from the phone. No more phone-Twittering. No more internetting from the bar.

I am bereft.

Happy Friday.

The J-Man is doing much better, healing quickly as children do, and is going to take the advice of his therapist (God, I hate actually voicing the fact that my twelve-year-old has a therapist) and write letters to the deceased cat. If I were to write a letter to said cat, it would go a little something like this:

Dear Lucky,

What’s up? If Saint Francis of Assisi has anything to do with it, I imagine you’re in heaven, even though I am most definitely not Catholic. Still, I feel I can adopt a saint or two if it suits my purposes. So, cat heaven.

You were a really good cat, definitely the best behaved out of all my cats, which one would imagine isn’t saying much; but seriously, you were calm and friendly and nice to hold and pet.

You puked a lot, which was a source of much consternation for me, the designated puke-cleaner, and I am sorry that I was sometimes rather psychotic in my efforts to chase you off of the carpet and onto the tile while during your barf-a-thons, but I meant you no harm.

The J-Man misses you and your near-silent meows. It was cute to watch you wait by the door when he arrived home from school, and it’s sort of sad that no one is there to greet him now but his boring mom.

Anyway, here’s hoping you get all the Temptations treats your little heart desires and that someone gives you a nice warm lap.

Sincerely,

The Lady Who Scratched Your Ears

We are having the cat cremated and her ashes returned to us, a process that takes an astonishing two months. I didn’t realize that there was such a backlog of deceased pets, but apparently there is. This makes me sad.

In other news, I have bypassed the crotch doctor for two whole years, which is just plain slovenly and irresponsible of me. I have neither had a Pap smear nor a breast exam, and I feel intense shame about this. I try to do self breast exams, but every time I wind up in a state of extreme panic. Is that a lump? What the fuck IS that? Why does that hurt?? Does that feel tender??? GAH!

I am no good at remaining calm. My mother has had cancer three times, including breast cancer, and it is one of my greatest fears. Plus I apparently have “fibrous breasts” (Breasts! Now with fiber!) and it’s hard to tell whether they’re lumpy or not, so I wind up having a mammogram almost every year.

I hate mammograms with a passion normally reserved for having heavy-duty seizures in which my head slams into a concrete floor. I don’t so much hate the test, which is really not so bad, but the wait afterward absolutely kills me. At the facility near my home, they stick you in a tiny room plastered with breast cancer statistics, alone, and make you wait for half an hour while the test results are deciphered. I find this terrifying.

This time I will more than likely bring my mother, since I have been having some random pain in my left boob that is both worrisome and weird.

I’m quite sure it’s nothing and is probably just the result of falling during a seizure or something, but still, I could use the moral support.

An online buddy of mine had breast cancer this year, and she attacked it head on with unbelievable courage and unfailing wit and smarts and she researched and did everything right. I don’t know whether I would have the chops, man.

I guess at some point in my life I expect to get cancer. I’m a filthy smoker, right? Even if I quit, I’ve been a filthy smoker for twenty years, and there are bound to be an assload of carcinogens in my system. I probably deserve it, spreading my cancer-causing carcinogens around like wildfire.

You non-smokers have thought this. Admit it.

The smart thing would be to quit and to adopt a macrobiotic lifestyle and to start doing yoga three times per day and to go totally organic and to ride a bike instead of riding in a car.

Sure. I’m going to do all of that. Get back to me next week.

I’ve cut down drastically on my smoking. I went from three packs (Gah) of hardcore Newports per day to a half-pack of ultralight Grandma cigarettes per day, if that. I’m very pleased with that progress.

I eat reasonably healthy. I exercise daily. I don’t know whether that’s enough, but it’s going to have to work for now.

I don’t know whether it’s going to keep me cancer-free, but here’s hoping.

I am going to a 40th birthday party tomorrow night that has a children’s theme, because said dude is still a kid at heart, ha ha ha. Seriously, it should be fun. It’s at a large Chuck E. Cheese-type place, and as long as they have skee-ball and beer I will be all good. Hell, as long as they have skee-ball I will be all good.

That’s all the news that’s fit to spit.

Happy Thursday, and may your boobs contain all the fiber of a stalk of broccoli.

I would like yesterday to be crumpled up in a ball and tossed in the trash, please.

The day before yesterday, we noticed that the J-Man’s cat, Lucky, a skinny little thing whom he rescued from outside when he was six years old, was walking funny and would not eat any treats. My mom and I were immediately on high alert, because this is how Orson and Ollie were acting shortly before they died. I was worried, but to be honest I didn’t expect the worst, as she was only about eleven years old, according to our vet.

Yesterday morning my mother woke me at about eight AM with tears in her eyes, telling me to get dressed and come quick, because Lucky was lying listless on the basement floor.

I went into the basement family room to find her glassy-eyed and immobile, twitching the way I do when I’m about to have a seizure, and I knew that it wasn’t good. We covered her up with a towel and watched her, crooning to her in low voices and stroking her softly.

The J-Man woke up about ten minutes later, and I had to tell him that Lucky was very sick. He immediately started to sob and flew downstairs, and started to stroke her head.

While all this was going on, my mother was completely losing it. She’s doesn’t cope well with death, even death of the feline variety. I think that this made J. even more panicky.

We watched her for a while, hoping to God that she would hang on until we could get her to the vet, but by ten o’clock, she passed.

My son was inconsolable. I have never seen him so grief-stricken, and I hope I never see him that way again. He was sitting on the floor moaning, “Lucky, wake up, wake up!!”

It was horrible.

We gently placed her inside a large shoe box and put her in the garage so that we could take her to the vet today to be cremated.

J. was a complete mess all day yesterday. I wound up holding him on the sofa, trying to tell him that everything was going to be OK, trying to get his mind off of things and failing miserably.

There are times when being a pet owner really, really sucks.

I just wish to God I would have brought her to the vet on Saturday, even though there was probably very little that he could have done.

I made J. a special breakfast today and fixed his awesome new haircut up for him with some product, which seemed to brighten him up a little, but he still went to school with a heavy heart.

Sometimes there’s so very little you can do as a parent to lighten the load, and you feel so ineffective that it’s pathetic.

I didn’t get to see much of the Bears/Packers game, but what I did see led me to believe that the Packers had a truly admirable defense that absolutely crushed us, and that losing Jay Cutler was a hell of a blow. That last interception freaking broke my heart, but what can you do? I’s just glad we got as far as we did, and as much as it pains me to say it, I think the Packers deserve to go to the Super Bowl. I actually got the J-Man watching the game for a bit, and his opinion was that Jay Cutler is a big fat tittybaby. I can’t say that I agree, but damn, Jay, I wish you would have picked another day to crap out.

Sigh.

I’d so like to have a rewind button on life right now.

Anyway, that’s what’s up. Send all your good thoughts to my little man. He’s hurting pretty badly right now.

Happy Monday.

It’s cold and it’s snowing and I’m crabby due to my dealings with a child who woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning and proceeded to breakdance all over it.

Apparently yesterday he brought the wrong book to math class, resulting in a zero; since the mean, cruel, evil teacher refused to give him a pass to go get the right book with the homework inside. Both books have the same cover.

“Well,” I said, “I wish she would have given you a pass, but you should have checked the books.”

This resulted in a huge blowup. “You never support me! You’re never on my siiiiiide!”

This is absolutely true. I am ALWAYS on the opposing side. I root against my child at all costs, and even have a flag with a little picture of him that features a circle around him and a line through his face.

Right.

When I told him he was full of The Crap, he stomped around a little more (junior high is full of stomping) and then left for the bus, sighing and “GOD!”ing all the way.

Every time I hear “GOD!” I want to send him directly to said deity. “GOD!” and “JEEZ!” are the junior high school fight songs. They drive me directly to drink.

So that was my morning. The J-Man was also pissed off at my mother, because apparently last night, she dared to laugh about something Dramatic and Important that he said.

Laughing is a serious offense in this house, because everything a junior high child says is Dramatic and Serious. We commit this crime often, which leads to lots of “GOD!”s and “JEEZ!”es and stomping and sometimes even tears, which of course makes me happy, because it means my team (the opposing team) is winning.

Junior high is fraught with peril, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. I would rather stick my fingers in a meat grinder than go through the sixth and seventh grade again. The hormones, they make the children batshit fucking crazy.

Sometimes he can be the sweetest thing, but sometimes I dearly long for the time in which he was still in diapers and sported a toothless grin.

So, there is that.

There is also the fact that my hands are like little blocks of ice. My body temperature is normally a lower-than-normal 96.3. I’m apparently a cold-blooded bitch, so the heat doesn’t bother me a whole lot, unless it’s over 90, but this icy cold KILLS me. It’s not even zero degrees yet, and already I am wearing layers and thick sweaters and complaining like my skinny mother, who is currently at work wrapped in long underwear and thigh-high socks under her office duds.

My stepdad, who has his own thermostat and sleeps in a 50-degree bedroom, thinks we’re wimps. He mocks me as I stand shivering and smoking in the cold garage. “You’re worse than your mother.”

I can’t help it. The only time I feel warm lately is when I’ve stepped off of the treadmill.

Let’s see. What else can I complain about?

I can bitch about the stunning lack of willpower that led me to consume not one, but two chili dogs last night, a “slip” that has caused much gastrointestinal distress as well as a two-pound gain on the scale this morning.

How in the hell can eating two measly dogs cause one to gain two pounds overnight? I wish I knew. Perhaps the sodium and nitrate loaded gut bombs caused me to retain water? I don’t know, but there will be some extra treadmilling in my future today.

Oh, and my date with the nerdy guy went exceptionally well. He is a dyed-in-the-wool nerd, though. He actually plays World of Warcraft.

I’m not kidding.

I really like him though. I’m something of a nerd myself, and we get along famously, enough so that we even went out again on Tuesday night and plan to see each other again. The missing teeth are killing me, but apparently the insurance company is going to pay to get them fixed, so hopefully it will be sooner rather than later.

He’s absolutely not my type, but perhaps that’s a good thing. He opens car doors and doors, he compliments me, he’s extremely nice, he doesn’t mind doing the driving, he’s witty, and he doesn’t kiss badly, either.

I guess we shall see.

I am gearing up for the Bears/Packers game, as is everyone else within a pretty hefty radius, unless you count those heathen Indiana Colts fans, and they can all go jump. I plan to go to a party down at my cousin’s in the sticks, drink much beer, and cheer the Bears on to victory. Go Bears!

Happy Thursday.

So. Here is a report from the battlefield, otherwise known as the world of internet dating, otherwise known as the world of beating your face blindly against a brick wall.

I met this dude, we shall call him Corky.

Corky seemed really cool and nice, and his photos were, for lack of a better word, hot. Great face, slamming body perfectly showcased on racing bike, very very nice.

I noticed that he spelled a lot of things incorrectly as we e-mailed and IMed, but I’m trying to be less of an anal-retentive English major, so I let it slide. People spell things wrong! People mix up “to” and “too” all the time! People have a hard time with “they’re”, “their”, and “there”! So what if it makes me gnaw my nails down to the quick!

No big. I was as cool as a cucumber. I was Letting It Go.

Finally we reached a point in which Corky was going to call me on the phone. I was slightly nervous, as I always am before a phone call, but I was sort of excited as well.

“I have to warn you,” he said. “I have a Southern accent.”

No problem, I thought. I can deal with that. Southerners are people, too.

Sometimes.

Then he called.

Now what I’m about to say is going to sound horribly, terribly politically incorrect, but please know that I am only telling you the God’s honest truth and am not making fun of said segment of the population in ANY way, shape, or form.

He sounded retarded.

Or slow, or special. Whatever you want to call it, whatever is the newfangled, politically correct way of saying it, he sounded it. And I’m not saying it in the colloquial, douchebaggy, way, like, “That’s so retarded.” I mean, he sounded like he had Down’s Fucking Syndrome.

I was rightfully kerfuffled, I think.

I had a very difficult time understanding him and asked him several times to repeat himself. He did, and I noticed that he made several jokes that seemed… well… slow.

I think I was being macked upon by a special person.

And there is no fucking way in HELL that he wrote that profile. No way on God’s green earth.

I didn’t know what to do. Sure, Corky was nice, he was very nice, but there was no way in hell I could go out with him. Still, I didn’t want to hurt his feelings.

Finally I had to do it. I texted him the next day that I met someone (which I actually did, and I will get to that) that I had a lot more in common with, and that I was very, very sorry, but I didn’t think it was going to work out.

He immediately went batshit insane.

“WHATEVER YOU LIVE WITH UR MOMMY AND DADDY AND UR A DRUNK* AND U DON DRIVE IM 2 GOOD 4 U ANYWAYS”

*(He doesn’t drink at all, ever, therefore I am a drunk because on my profile it says that I drink “socially”.)

I replied, stupidly, “Look, I’m really very sorry, but there’s no need to be rude!”

“WHATEVER YOUR LOSE (sic)”

My lose!

He sent me a couple more inflammatory texts, and then I blocked his number. Unreal.

I know people have a hard time with rejection, but damn. Corky done totally attacked my whole game!

So there was that, and what did I learn? I learned not to automatically trust a pretty face.

While all of this was going on I had been talking to this guy in a very benign manner, more as friends, who is very cool, is a plumber, and has just finished writing a horror novel.

I wasn’t sure whether it was going to go anywhere, and I wasn’t particularly attracted to him, but he is extremely witty and smart and nerdy in a way that’s very compatible with my own nerdiness, so, win.

Finally, we wound up talking for some disgusting amount of time like eight hours online yesterday (on and off, of course), and he asked me out.

What the hell, I thought. I was starting to seriously like him. So we’re going out tonight to see some eighties band at a club.

There is one problem: He’s missing a front tooth.

You read that right.

Apparently he was in a car accident a few weeks ago and had a front tooth knocked out, and hasn’t gotten it fixed yet.

I am relatively OK with this – I told him I’m going to call him Jim Bob from the trailer park and he told me to fuck off, so again, win; but he had better not smile that much.

Other dating site e-mails this week include Pretentious Theater Man Who Goes By Edward, Not Ed Or Eddie; Volunteer Firefighter With Funniest Profile Ever But Too Many Kids, Or, Old Man In A Shoe; Dude Who Wants A Blowjob, Or, You Sure Got A Purty Mouth; and Guy Who Just Wants Advice, Or, Hey, Ann Landers.

They’re pouring out of the woodwork this week, really. I don’t know what it is.

In other news, I am now a Sagittarius.

What crap.

Happy Saturday.

This morning I woke up with Ke$ha’s “Tik Tok” firmly implanted in my head, and I can’t get it out. Someone either needs to run a Clockwork Orange deprogramming session on me or just shoot me, I don’t care which.

I had a weird weekend. Saturday night found me at a strip club at five AM with a couple of guys from my local bar.

I can’t say I was very impressed with the quality of the strippers. If I’m going to go out and see some nekkid ladies, I expect top-notch hardbodies who can seriously work a pole, not slightly flabby gals crawling on the floor. I can view that in my own mirror after I’ve had a good seizure.

I didn’t get a lap dance or anything. We went there primarily because we wanted to drink more and spent all of our time at the bar doing MORE shots and making fun of said strippers, which actually made me feel slightly guilty, given the fact that most of these ladies were probably single moms/students/supporting heavy meth habits.

Did I learn anything? Let’s just say I’m not doing shots of Patron with my tame little Miller Lites aaaaaanymore. I am too old to act like I’m twenty-one. I had one hour of sleep and then had to get up and be MOM! and it was no easy task.

It was fun, though.

I’m a happy drunk, but Lord, am I ridiculous.

In less irresponsible and stupid news, I am currently nursing my fluish child back to health. Said child does not understand why he is not allowed to play the XBox while he’s out sick from school.

Sure, let’s make sick days Happy Fun Time! I don’t think so, Skippy.

As a result, he is crabby, whiny, AND feverish, and this combination is a real treat. What happened to quietly watching Brady Bunch reruns while sipping lukewarm tea and eating toast, taking the occasional nap and doing crossword puzzles? THAT’S what you do when you’re sick, in my book.

Kids. They have to be hooked up to electronica at all times.

In still other news, today is going to be one of those snow-shovelin’ days, and I need to start furiously double-fisting coffee in preparation.

Happy Tuesday.

Did I mention I’ve lost an AMAZING SEVEN POUNDS since New Year’s?? And that I’ve been working out every single freaking day?

Isn’t that annoying?

Don’t be too annoyed. It’s probably all water weight.

This is where I give you an exhaustive rundown of my fitness routines, diet, and poop schedule, and start talking about Feeling The Burn and The Energy and My Motivation and how wonderful it all is.

Bleh. Truth be told, I still loathe working out. The only thing that’s making it even slightly enjoyable is the new treadmill, which has some sort of piston system creating shocks that are easier on my poor old knees and shins, and a speaker system I can plug my iPod into.

I am spoiled.

I dropped a five-pound free weight on my toe yesterday in a moment of supreme klutziness, and now I have a purple, possibly broken, toe. I was obviously not meant to do this shit. Still, I plug on, hoping that it will get easier and more routine over time.

I called my cell phone provider yesterday to try to Christian them down a little on my bill, because truth be told, I rarely use the phone. I never really go anywhere, and no one ever freaking calls me. My mom and son use their phones even less. So, I asked for less minutes, and non-unlimited texting.

The guy I spoke to was cool, he knocked down my bill a bit, we wound up chatting about various bullshit for a while (I am so desperate for adult contact that I will engage anyone), and he told me that I was eligible for a free month of internet on my phone.

Right on, I thought. I’ll give it a go.

Oh my GOD. Once I got the hang of it I was off to the races, Facebooking away on my phone, checking my e-mail, IMing, you name it. I don’t have a super-fancy phone, but it does the trick, and God, I wish I had never been offered this newfangled phone interweb, because it is like CRACK. I can barely see it, I have to squint like a freak and literally put the phone right up to my eyeball, but it’s so much fun!

Hi. I haz a new toy.

I haven’t told the J-Man about this yet, because I will never get a response from him again. He will have a phone glued to his hand and will say nothing but M-Hm for the next thirty days.

The only reason I’m not blogging from my phone is that I haven’t figured out how to do it yet, and that my thumbs aren’t quite that fast.

I used to make fun of you people who were glued to your stupid cell phones, constantly checking your Facebook updates and monitoring your e-mail and stock tips, Googling everything that came up in polite conversation.

Now I see. Now I get it.

In other news, I had a mini heart attack this week when I went to my local Walgreens to pick up a prescription and the cashier smilingly charged me four hundred and fifty dollars.

Jesus tap-dancing Christ.

I inquired, and she said something about my prescription drug coverage and the new year and deductibles and paying full price, but all I heard was Asshole, You Have Upward Of Two Grand A Month In Prescription Costs, You Are So Fucked.

I called Medicare and found out that my “extra help” (program for the broke) had not gone through, and that I had a five hundred dollar deductible. Which I could pay out of savings, but I’d rather not.

Sixty-five phone calls later, and this was resolved and I only had to pay about a hundred and thirty bucks, but can you imagine? Two grand a month for prescriptions? This got me thinking about the thousands and thousands of people that have not been approved for Medicare. I was in that position myself for a long time, and it’s a seriously shitty position to be in. What do you do if you can’t afford your drugs? I think about what I would do if I couldn’t afford my seizure meds and shudder. I am thankfully one of the lucky ones, but there are plenty who are homeless and jobless who are waiting for disability claims to go through who have no recourse.

My mother now works for a local disability attorney and comes home with the saddest stories you have ever heard.

I guess what I’m saying is that as much as I bitch about my health, I’m thankful every day that at least I have good insurance and drug coverage and can keep things at least slightly under control. I don’t know what the hell I would do if I were in another type of situation.

I’m sitting here joking about my fancy new treadmill and my cellphone, and I know that I’m lucky, materially; but I guess I really have no idea how lucky I am.

I could be one of those forgotten.