Archive for August, 2011

I pride myself on the fact that I can be in and out of the shower, scrupulously clean, hair dried and flat-ironed, and have my makeup applied in less than one hour. I am not one of those languorous, high-maintenance bitches that takes four hours to get ready in the morning, nor am I a fifteen-minute wet-headed gal (coarse, wavy hair).

However, I seem to have raised one vain-assed, slow-motion mofo.

We are lucky enough to have three bathrooms in the house. However, one of those is in the master bedroom with my stepdad and is the Bathroom In Which We Dare Not Tread, and one of those is my bathroom downstairs, which the highland-dwellers are too lazy to use. Therefore the J-Man and my mother share a bathroom in the morning.

The child won’t take a shower at night, preferring to be So Fresh and So Clean in the morning, so he and my mother fight furiously over the bathroom for a solid hour and a half.

Yes, folks, he spends a good hour and a half showering, applying my hair products, getting dressed (which is apparently a carefully thought-out and lengthy process even though he lays his clothes out the night before) and wolfing down his food in three minutes.

I have never seen someone move so slowly (except for the breakfasting) in my whole damned life.

If I had a girl I would expect such machinations. But a teenaged boy? Aren’t they supposed to be dirty and smelly and absolutely not care?

He drives me up the wall, and my mother is fit to be tied. But will either of them use the downstairs bathroom? No. Stubborn asses!

However, I am glad to report that this year has started off stunningly with absolutely no teasing or bullying and some A plus math papers which warmed the cockles of my hard little heart. For that, I can stand a little vanity.

In other news, my skinny little slip of a size four mother is gaining weight, and she is not happy.

I would like to say that I am not a bitch and that I am not looking upon this particular situation with a large amount of sick satisfaction, but… ahem.

I would also like to say that I’m not teasing her relentlessly, making up for all the fat comments that have been tossed my way over the years, but again… ahem.

A big person I am not, unless you count the size of my ass.

Anyway, she is completely freaked out, but it’s driven her to actually want to exercise, which is a Very Good Thing. So starting this evening, we’re going to a local park for an hour to walk. I could use the extra hour too, and so could the J-Man, so I think it’s an excellent thing for the whole family.

My mother’s burgeoning booty has turned out to be both a source of constant amusement and a blessing. Who knew?

“Hey Ma, you got fries to go with that shake?”

“Hey Ma, pants a little snug there?” (this, because I’ve heard it myself approximately four thousand times)

“Hey Ma, are you sure you’re not up the pole?”

“Hey Ma, do you really need that doughnut?”

I am having so much fucking fun.

I am also an evil, ungrateful little shit.

In still other news, the J-Man’s eighth grade trip has been suddenly sprung upon me. Apparently there was a meeting last year, a meeting which was NOT announced on the school’s website, which I check religiously, or the school’s newsletter, which I read religiously; and pamphlets were handed out, and scholarships were given.

Scholarships were given because the damned trip costs ELEVEN HUNDRED DOLLARS.

They will be traveling to Washington DC, and to be fair, that fee covers every little thing: air fare, hotel room, accident insurance, chaperones, all admission fees to all attractions, and all meals. The only thing he’d need extra cash for would be souvenirs.

Still, it’s a lot of scratch.

I think it’d be a very enriching experience, though. They would be seeing pretty much everything there is to see in DC (sans crackheads), and I think it’s damned important for him to get the hell out of Indiana once in a while.

For that reason I’m taking the money out of savings, and also because (and probably only because) I’ve been promised child support this month by the Prosecutor’s Office, since they’ve put a lock on The Shit. Plus, my dad is going to help defray the cost, too.

It still pains me to pay this much, but I think the experience will be worth it.

Or maybe I’m just worried he’ll be stigmatized as being poor.

Or maybe a little of both.

Maybe I’m a little vain, too.

Happy Wednesday.

So I’ve been up since five thirty and have had eight cups of coffee, not counting the one I’m currently drinking, so I’m pretty amped. So before I get on the treadmill, let’s talk some shit.

I am sporting a rather sizeable, eggplant-colored lump on my forehead courtesy of last night’s seizure, a pants-pissing extravaganza which took place on the tile on the way to the bathroom.

There’s nothing like having to yell for your mother to bring you a towel and some dry clothes at the age of 37 so that you don’t drip pee on the carpet. Perhaps I should invest in some Depends.

The lump looks something like an alien ready to burst forth from my head; and you know, maybe it really is. Maybe this has been the problem all along, this strange purple entity living within my poor beleaguered brain, and maybe the thing has finally decided to jump ship and seek better living conditions.

Hey, you never know.

In other news, I bought some Advantage for the cats and dosed them (two just laid there, two fought me tooth and nail) and it seems to have worked, that is to say there seems to be no more furious scratching and biting either on their part or my part. Thank you, Advantage. My poor kid still looks like he has the smallpox, but hopefully he will heal soon.

I wonder what the teachers must think. His legs are covered in bruises from his strange sleeping machinations and outside play, and he is also rife with bites and scabs.

Between the two of us, we look like a couple of refugees.

In other news, I have been endlessly frustrated with elementary and junior high school math ever since, oh, the third grade. They do it differently now, not the old way they did when I was a young pup and dinosaurs roamed the earth, and I’ve been relentlessly confused by the shit for years.

Last night, I went to check the J-Man’s math as I always do, assuming that I wouldn’t get it as I always don’t, and lo and behold, it was plain old algebra, and I understood it!

People, I was so proud of myself that I could have held a parade in my honor.

I checked it swiftly, found that he had done almost all of the problems correctly, and smiled a great smug smile of satisfaction; for I, the mathematical dope who could not manage long division, had pulled some algebra out of my brain.

I’m still in shock.

What else? My stomach is fat. It is fat, fat, fatty fat. And no, I am not one of those skinny bitches that whines about the small pinch of fat on her tiny bones – I have a gut.

For quite some time I was religiously doing a hundred crunches per day plus other abdominal exercises, and my shit was getting flat. For the past month or so, though, lethargy has set in, and my ass has not even touched the floor. This has resulted in atrophied muscles and what looks like a four-months-pregnant belly.

I have a muffin top. It’s horrendous.

One would think that this would drive me to get my butt back on the floor and crunch my way back to flatness, but oh, the lethargy is sinuous and evil and strong in its grasp, and I just can’t bring myself to do it.

“Then stop complaining about your fat gut.”

I will. I’m sure it’s tedious to read about anyway. Sigh.

There’s a gaggle of teenaged skateboarders (who are very untalented, I’ve noticed, and can’t do tricks for shit) on the block, and they irritate me beyond measure for no good reason. They’re just teenagers being teenagers. They’re loud and obnoxious and they have pool parties a couple of doors down from me and play loud crappy rap music (today’s rap music is largely for shit). Sometimes they ride bikes in a large group up and down the street and talk way too loudly. They curse a lot (contrary to this blog, I don’t really curse that much).

All of this has led me to the conclusion that I pretty much just can’t stand teenagers. This is a frightening realization. Am I going to loathe my own kid at sixteen? He’s somewhat of a pain now with the attitude, but it’s nothing I can’t deal with. At sixteen, am I going to find him freaking unbearable or hopelessly annoying?

God, I hope not.

I’d better get my ass on the treadmill before the best of the caffeine buzz wears off.

Happy Monday.

Bring it on, 8th Grade.

Happy Wednesday.

Stuff I Am Digging:

- Navy blue nail polish
- Cookies off of the roll (This one is actually a shocker, as I am something of a homemade cookie purist who collects only the best cookie recipes and normally would not dream of tasting some lesser, crappy, processed cookie; but damn, my mom whipped up a batch of said crappy cookies and they are oddly crispy and delicious.)
- My well-worn Tegan and Sara t-shirt, which I have decided to wear for the rest of my life
- BB King and Muddy Waters on the iPod before I fall asleep
- Generic Dollar General coffee, which is much stronger and more flavorful than most crappy generic coffee (my tastes have become amazingly lowbrow in my state of brokeness)
- Wallowing in my mild state of depression rather than Trying To Analyze It All/Worrying That It Will Get Worse/Being A Big Bitch
- The J-Man’s brand spankin’ new school supplies. I love new school supplies. Untouched markers! Mechanical pencils! Composition books! These bring out the geek in me.

Stuff I’m Not Digging So Very Much:

- The fact that we have to put thousands of dollars that we don’t have into our old house before we can rent it out again due to a hole in the roof that has utterly hosed the entire bathroom.
- Lethargy
- Laundry (see Lethargy)
- The book I’m supposed to be writing that now contains exactly one chapter
- Fucking fleas
- The fact that this season of So You Think You Can Dance is over, therefore my life has no meaning
- The fact that I have not done one abdominal exercise in over three weeks (see Lethargy)

And with that, laundry beckons.

Happy Tuesday.

My stepdad sings that song just to irritate the J-Man. As you can imagine, it goes over really well.

There are two days until school starts, and my eager and happy morose and moody child is thrilled to the gills angry as hell to re-enter the hallowed annex of learning chamber of torture.

I have to admit I’m approaching this school year with a little trepidation myself. With last year’s bullying problems and poor grades, I can’t say I’m anxious about the eighth grade.

We did have a great math tutor over the summer and worked on building better study skills, but I wonder how much of it he really and truly absorbed.

I’ve also been giving near-daily lectures on how to better get along with the kids and better deal with the somewhat sizable population of ill-bred little asshats who torment him, but I do realize that his knee-jerk reaction is to either yell something sharp back or to wind up in the nurse’s office, vomiting.

Oh, the vomiting.

He’s lost 19 pounds since December, probably much of it due to the vomiting, and while his doctor is thrilled and I’ve been somewhat proud myself because he did certainly have extra weight to lose; part of me also worries that he lost most of it in an unhealthy fashion due to this nervous stomach problem.

Over the summer he’s been OK, for the most part. I think he’s thrown up twice or three times. Still, school approacheth, and I wonder whether this year is going to echo last year with its pitfalls and problems.

All I can do is advise and hope for the best.

Now that he’s a slimmer J-Man, he wants to wear skinny jeans. Have you seen these on the rocker boys? They look utterly ridiculous, like women’s jeans, or the popular yet stupidly named “jegging”. I broke down and bought him one pair, but I think they look crazy. Your thoughts on the male jegging, if you please. I think the tight-ass pants should best be left to Mick Jagger, Steven Tyler, and men of their ilk.

In other news, football season is almost upon us, and I could not be more thrilled. I am getting so sick of baseball and our sadly mediocre Sox that I could spit, and while I am attending one more game this year which I will wholeheartedly enjoy, I am enjoying the football preseason and watching our Bears knock the shit out of some folks. Soon, my beloved Notre Dame will be out there, getting the shit knocked out of them.

Why am I a Notre Dame fan? Because I enjoy the abuse. Bring it.

In still other news, We have a mysterious flea outbreak – mysterious because our cats do not ever, ever go outside. Ever. None of them have ever escaped, not even once. How then, have we contracted fleas? Are the little fuckers getting in through the screens? Is the J-Man bringing them in from someone else’s home? Am I a dirty person?

It mystifies me. So far they seem to be contained to the basement (lucky me), but I am covered in little red welts, and so is J. We are very snackable, apparently. I have dosed the cats with Frontline and am almost ready to treat the scruff of my own neck, so frustrated am I.

I have managed to hide all of this from my stepdad so far, because if he knew, Catmageddon would ensue, and the offending beasts would be tossed out into the cornfield.

(Yes, there is a cornfield behind my house. I am country now.)

In still other news, I called child support today for oh, the forty-fifth time this year and was told that they do have a lock on The Shit and that I should be receiving regular money soon.

And the people rejoiced.

He’ll probably quit his job again, but maybe I’ll get a couple of months out of him.

In the final news of the day, today’s nail polish is navy blue. I think it’s quite fetching.

The final news of the day was anti-climactic as hell, but what do you want? I’ve become boring and passe.

Happy Monday.

Attitude is the hallmark of the teenager. I get that, I really do. As someone who used to stomp around in Doc Martens in a surly manner, smoke cigarettes far before she was legally able to, and practically practice her scowl in the mirror, I get the attitude. It’s also not lost on me that I am being punished, punished for my previous life as a rotten teenager by having to deal with the crabbiest of them all – the J-Man.

I don’t know whether this kid is having hormone surges, whether he’s become schizophrenic, or whether he’s possessed by a creature named Zuul, but I’m pretty much ready to pick him up by the scruff of his neck and toss him into the driveway with nothing more than a couple pairs of shorts and a toothbrush (not that he would use it without complaint).

Apparently it’s cooler to let your teeth rot out of your face than to brush twice a day.

This grosses me out more than I can say.

So, attitude. There has been so much eye-rolling that I am quite sure his eyes are in no way attached to the sockets. He cannot possibly have any muscle or nerve fiber in there, so free-moving are his eyeballs. And while I have somewhat gleefully imagined that one eye would actually roll right out onto the floor during one of his dramatic displays, it hasn’t happened yet.

It will, though. Oh, it will. And I will be there to catch it and grin my mofo ass off.

There is also an inordinate amount of sighing, so much that I fear he has become either a wheezing asthmatic or a closet smoker. “J-Man, log off of the computer.” Heavy sigh. “Take a shower.” Sigh. “It’s time for dinner.” Sigh, exuding all the pain of the ages.

With all this sighing and moaning going on, you’d think I was running a nursing home.

All of this is annoying, to be sure, but it pales in comparison to the Gods and the Mahms (Here in the Midwest we don’t say “Mom”, it’s “Mahm”).

“GOD, MAHM, I’m logging OFF, OK?”

“GOD, I took a shower YESTERDAY.”

“MAHM, I was JOKING.”

“GOD, Gramma, I only spent ten dollars on XBox points. Just take it out of my bank account.”

“MAHM, stop talking about school!!!”

It’s the GODs and the MAHMs that are killing me slowly, one snarky little razor at a time.

I do see small windows of hope. Sometimes he comes and sits with his head on my shoulder and talks in a normal tone of voice, and sometimes over breakfast while we are reading the paper he asks intelligent questions and doesn’t act like I’m a complete moron. Sometimes he hugs me for no reason at all, and sometimes I catch a glimpse of truly stunning character.

Sometimes, though, he is a stinky little crabmaster.

I hired a math tutor over the summer. I did this both because I am mathematically retarded and because, well, he wouldn’t bitch and moan so much if it was someone else.

I lucked out and had a friend recommend a remarkably empathetic dude who is into both video games and Star Wars and pretty much won the J-Man over like *that*.

Still, when Dude is gone and it’s just the J-Man doing homework, you would think he was undergoing Chinese water torture with the moaning and the groaning and the sighing and the GODs and the bitching and the occasional “This is stupid!”s and the general raincloud flying over the basement table.

It makes me insane.

I know he’s thirteen, which is a miserable age, and it’s not like I expect him to be Mary Freakin’ Poppins, but a little bit of levity in this house would be BEAUTIFUL right about now.

Attitude, begone!

In other news, we had to evict the tenant from our old house for non-payment of rent – two months and some change non-payment. My mother, who did not do a background check and who did not let it bother her that this woman had neither a checking nor savings account, let her slide for a while because her union was on strike, and was entirely too nice.

As a result, she never paid us a dime, and also refused to sign a paper saying that she owed us money, and also didn’t leave her forwarding address. So there goes THAT money.

That wasn’t the worst of it, though. We walked into the place after she’d moved to find that the light beige carpets were covered in mud spots, and that she had tiled the bathroom and the back hallway with some cheap, crappy, chipped tile, forcing us to do the job over. She also put up some ugly wallpaper in the bathroom and painted (badly) some dark stripes on the walls that took about three coats of white paint to cover, so we are talking days and days of work to fix all of this bullshit. My mom and I spent the weekend there, and there’s still a long way to go.

I guess we definitely learned our lesson as far as doing a background check and a credit check and specifying in the lease that no shitty home “improvements” should be made, but my mother is stressed out beyond all reason and I just wish this wouldn’t have happened.

Remember the Kid From Down The Street? The bane of my previous existence? He still lives there, and was overjoyed to see the J-Man when we came out this weekend.

I won’t lie, that little fucker must have gained fifty pounds. I’ll bet he weighs a good one eighty, and he is SHORT. He’s only eleven, and it’s just a dirty shame.

I would also like to report that he still smells like dirty socks.

The unfortunate thing about this is that now the J-Man is RE-obsessed with hanging out with this kid (I wish to GOD I knew why), and cannot understand why he can’t spend the night at our house.

People, it just isn’t going to happen. My stepdad is fully aware that he once broke our WALL, for the love of Jesus, and he would no more have him in our house than invite the local biker gang over for high tea.

My stepdad’s memory is long, and it bears grudges.

I can’t say I’d be thrilled to have him either. I still can’t get the funk of forty thousand years out of my nose.

Anyway, to get back to the attitude, we’re all absolute fascists for failing to let his beloved friend (you know, the one that he’s made no effort to contact in over a year) come on over.

And I’m a particular bitch for letting this all happen, because as his mother I should rule the roost.

Yeah, that’s certainly the case.

In still other news, today I am going back to my roots, at least what I *think* are my roots, with a dark blond conditioning hair dye. Gotta take a break from the bleach. I’ll let you know how it works out, as I know you all must be terribly excited…

Happy Tuesday.

The heat is never, ever going to break.

I know it’s only in the nineties here, and everyone who lives in Godforsaken Texas or some other Southern state is going to immediately jump on my shit and say, “Well, it’s a hundred and ten here,” but y’all can kiss my Midwestern butt. The humidity here is like eighty-five percent, and I am from lily-white and delicate stock who was meant never to see the sun’s harsh rays.

So, there’s that. Poor Jen has to go outside to smoke cigarettes in the burning, nasty heat. Poor, poor Jen.

There is also this: I hate people whose personalities drastically change for the worse when they drink.

When drinking, I become more animated, definitely more talkative, and much less shy. I think that these are good things, although I probably can get a little “Fuck yeah!” annoying. Still, I’m a happy drinker. I don’t get morose or moody.

I have this friend, Julio. We frequently meet at the local watering hole for beers and bullshitting, and he’s an extremely nice guy. Likeable, fun. However, if he has a few too many Bacardi and Cokes, he becomes a crabby, aggro son of a bitch. If his girlfriend doesn’t show up by the end of the evening, he either gets morose and maudlin, or he hits on me.

This weekend, a few of us went to his place after visiting the bar, his girlfriend included, and he lit into me about the way I dress (apparently too “dark”), and at one point, told me to shut the fuck up.

I was livid.

I don’t buy the excuse “but I was drunk”.

I was an asshole, but I was drunk.

I grabbed your butt, but I was drunk.

I beat the shit out of someone at the bar, but I was drunk.

I got into my car and killed someone, but I was drunk.

It’s hooey, as far as I’m concerned, and I think it’s just part of one’s underlying personality that emerges when drunk, not some rogue character trait.

If you can’t handle your liquor, don’t drink.

I hate a mopey drunk as well. Good Lord, Sad Sack, suck it up.

I find that there are an alarming number of drunk drivers at the local watering hole, which disturbs me beyond reason. They’re mostly young kids who probably think they’re infallible, and I have to admit that I used to feel the same damned way; but Lord, it scares me as I watch them stumble away from their seats, keys in hand.

I haven’t been honestly drunk in a while. I drink two glasses of ice water per beer and only indulge in the occasional shot of Patron, so generally I’m good to go, and a large Gatorade before bed means I’m fine by the morning. I highly recommend this practice, even for heavy drinkers.

If you’re going to drink, drink smart, folks.

I’ve had a lot of people bitch and moan at me for drinking while on seizure meds, and to them, I say, Screw Off. A: I have never once had a seizure while drinking, leading me to believe that if I became a functional alcoholic I would probably never have them, B: I only drink once a week, and C: I’m a grown-ass woman.

So, there’s that.

Then there’s this. All four of the cats have taken to sleeping in my room. As you can imagine, this creates some friction. My stepdad’s crabby-assed cat growls when anyone comes anywhere near her on the bed, and hey, it’s only a queen-sized bed; and first there’s me and my favorite, the twenty-pounder. There’s not that much real estate.

I tried locking them all out one night, and they actually pounded on the door for a solid hour with their paws or possibly their hard little heads. I had to let them in.

Again, poor, poor Jen is so put upon, poor Jen who gets entirely too much love from the family pets.

Poor Jen.

If you’ll excuse me, I’ll be off hanging streamers for my pity party.

Have a wonderful day.