Dr. Strangemom (or, how I learned to stop worrying and love the blog)

Role Models of the Runway

I've been sick. Stomach flu. Or food poisoning. Or maybe I accidentally swallowed some dynamite and tap dancing snakes, because that's what my innards feel like. Even typing the word "stomach" makes me gag a little. And typing the word "gag" totally makes me gag.

I know what you are thinking - it's the first thing we all think of when someone gets the stomach flu - so I'll just tell you: three pounds. Yup, three pounds. Up and out and down the toilet. After the chills and light headedness set in the next day, I dragged my sick butt outta bed to try on the pants that had been a little tight. And then, in an altogether different kind of sickness, I jumped up and gave a feverish little fist pump into the air because they fit so nicely now.

No wonder the terrorists hate us. We are insufferable. Fist pumping at a good barf because now our jeans zip up easier. God, it's so fucking twisted. This is why the universe gave me boys - I would have been a terrible role model for daughters.

As it is, I'm not sure I've been such a great role model for my sons, either. Lately, I've noticed that pretty much everything that bugs me about them, they might have learned from me. Oops.

For one thing, they have this slightly negative, snarky outlook on the world. Where did that come from?

Hmmm... 

Well, perhaps I do have this small quirk of putting the word "stupid" in front of everything I say.

"I have to go to a stupid meeting," I'd tell my little kids as I kissed them goodbye.

There were stupid meetings, stupid empty gas tanks, stupid refrigerators that were out of stupid milk for the stupid cereal. Even seemingly good things were stupid, according to my continuous narrative.

"I have a stupid awards event," I once told my kids as I put on my fancy clothes, "I am getting some stupid award for something." Looking back, I really hope the award wasn't for my stellar role modeling.

And everything I did - waking up, measuring the coffee, answering the doorbell, going out to dinner, hosting a party -  was done with eye rolling and long suffering sighs. I don't think I once woke up and said to my sons, "what a perfectly glorious day!" In fact, they probably thought that, "fuck, my head hurts" is a normal morning salutation. I might lack a certain, I don't know, joie de vivre.

And instead of exposing my kids to unicorns and rainbows to balance my poisonous melancholia, we listened to Leonard Cohen and hung out with my friend Amy who once said, upon hearing that our band was going to make it BIG and embark on tours and appearances, "Success. This is the last thing I need!"  I totally get that. I hate shit that gets in the way of my hating shit, you know?  Thank God our band turned out to be an abysmal failure that imploded and left in its wake a raging river of detritus and suffering.

Yup, thank God nothing ever worked out with that. Or with much else.

Hunh, I guess I do see the sunny side of things.

Shit That Doesn't Necessarily Make You A Bad Person, part one

* Having casual sex at summer camp when you were a teenager. Because by the time you got home to your boyfriend, you were a virgin again. I think it has something to do with velocity and altitude times pi.

* Wishing you had a maid. But a white maid, because you aren't a racist. Okay, wishing you had a wealthy, white man maid.

* Writing shit about someone and mistakenly posting it on your FB wall because you were drunk.

* Eating food off of your kid's plate. The revulsion factor of eating their booger-laden leftovers cancels out the calories.

* Eating while standing over the garbage can.

* Having sex while standing over the garbage can.

* Faking an orgasm because "Project Runway" is going to be on in 10 minutes and you are nowhere close.

* Telling your husband that that "Project Runway" is going to be on in 10 minutes when, in fact, it's on tomorrow night.

* Telling your young child he has a fever and can't go on the school field trip when he is perfectly healthy, because you signed up to be a driver for the trip and now you don't want to go because it is finally sunny and your new Self magazine just arrived and you really want to lay out in the backyard sun and read it.  Because, honestly, what do kids really learn at museums?

* Continuing to blame all your recent space-out's and fuck-up's on the flu you had three weeks ago. Or on the 1994 earthquake in LA. Or on your dad's Alzehimer's. Or on the Holocaust.

* Hoping Valerie Bertinelli gains all the weight back.  She's just too fucking pleased with herself.

* Not going back to clean up the barf (yours) you left on a neighbor's lawn when you were cleaning diarrhea (Molly's) up from the same spot. But making that "I'll be right back" gesture at the neighbor who is watching through the window.

* Secretly switching Robin's morning coffee to decaf when you are pissed at him and want him to have a headache all day. And then, when you confess in a fit of honesty, promise to never do it again. And then you do it again.

* Using a shitload of butter in the rice and telling everyone that it only has half a teaspoon of olive oil.

* Sending your sick young child to school because it is finally sunny and your new Self magazine just arrived and you really want to be alone and lay out in the backyard sun and read it.  Because, honestly, what do kids really learn at school?

* sneaking in shameless, self-serving requests that you tell your friends about this blog because everyone thinks you write it out of love, but really, you totally want to make money off it one of these days before you die of old age and poisonous envy of others good fortune.

Let My People Go

Sorry I haven't written much lately. I've been kinda busy, what with the nonstop rain making me fucking nuts, getting through Passover week, watching "Project Runway", Mom being here, and spending a lot of time hiding out in the bathroom.

I don't know how it is with other religions, but when you are Jewish, "I'm in the bathroom"  is the all purpose, never fails, carte blanche, get-out-of-jail free card for anything.

Help me get this fish bone unstuck from my esophagus. Hurry! I'm losing consciousness.

Can't. I'm still on the toilet.

Oy! Still? Are you okay? Sorry I bothered you. Good luck.

Nothing is more important to my people than a successful bowel movement.

However, that's not why I've been in the bathroom. I just needed some alone time.

When the kids were little, a closed bathroom door was about as much a deterrent to them as a welcome sign and a bag of candy. One of my kids used to beg me to play the "which dinosaur does my poop look like?" game every time I was on the toilet. If I flushed before he could examine it, believe me, there was hell to pay.

"It looked just like a triceratops," I'd tell him, trying not to gag as he quizzed me on the details. Of my poop. Sometimes, he wanted a recap of my dinosaur poop shapes instead of a bedtime story. 

Are you listening, Eric Carle? I smell another blockbuster.

I knew he'd grow out of it, but I was still secretly relieved when he did finally stop asking to look at my poops. I imagine these days he'd rather pour hot tar up his nose than discuss my poops, much less examine them and assign them a dinosaur shape. He'd probably gouge out his eyes with an icepick just reading this post.

This is the cross my children bear - having a mom who blogs.

It could be worse. Trust me.

I love my Mom, but sometimes I just gotta run into the bathroom to hide when she's here. I close the bathroom door, stare directly into the mirror over the sink, open my eyes crazy wide, pull my hair straight up from the roots and let go of a big ass silent scream. Try it. It's very therapeutic. Like a bowel movement for the face.

Oh, by the way, my hair looks much better behind my ears. At least that's what Mom told me. At least seventeen times she told me. I spent the weekend ducking and dodging her as she tried to grab me and finger-comb my hair into submission.  She caught me and put my hair behind my ears while I was watching TV, or trying to read. She reached over and put my hair behind my ears while I was driving in a rainstorm. She did it yesterday while I was choking on a piece of matza, although in her defense, she might have mistaken my open-mouthed gasping and the international sign for "I am choking" as the international sign for, "Mom, I don't know, should I wear my hair in front of, or behind my ears?"

She asked me every twenty minutes if I was sure I didn't want to have the liver spots on my face removed because, did I know that they can be taken off now and the procedure is very easy. Not that she doesn't think I am beautiful or anything, but really, why don't I get them removed? And then, maybe, put my hair behind my ears?

My house was too cold for her. Also, it was too hot for her.

She took dirty dishes out of my dishwasher, washed them, and stacked them to dry on my kitchen counter so I could have a "nice, clean, empty dishwasher."

She makes a meal out of the food I throw away - scrapings off an old avocado pit, bits of apple hanging on the core, yogurt off the sides of the empty container. I swear to God, she and my sister have the intestines of a feral dog. Mom assured me this morning that the chicken can sit out on the kitchen counter all day because my house is so cold (and that way, the refrigerator is nice and clean and empty, I guess) and I saw Karen pull a half-rotten potato out of my garbage and put it back in the pile of potatoes ready to go into the oven for dinner tonight.

Oy. 

This is gonna be a big night for dinosaurs.