Oh It’s ON Like Donkey Kong!

March 31, 2009 It's On Like Donkey Kong

*cue Rocky music*

Daren has just finished up his last stint of school before he can write the test to become an official electrician.  Super, I know, I’m very proud.

Daren gained a bit of poundage, like all college kids do, from sitting around reading and paying attention in class.  The occasional hundreds of beers did not help.

I fell off the running/exercising wagon last September while we lived in that shitastic crapartment.

MY POINT: we both need to lose about 20 pounds.  Stat.

So he says to me last night, “Wanna lose 20 pounds with me?”

A regular woman would hear, “OH MY GOD YOU THINK I’M FAT YOU DIRTY BASTARD AND YOU’RE GOING TO DIVORCE ME AND MAKE ME RAISE OUR CHILDREN ALONE OMG OMG DON’T LEAVE ME!”

I am not any sort of normal woman.  In my veins runs the blood of a fierce competitor.

I hear, “Wanna see who can lose 20 pounds the fastest?”

So, I proposed a contest.  (Actually I wrestled him to the ground (which he totally enjoyed) and forced him to agree to this “friendly” competition.)

Tomorrow morning, we weigh in, Biggest Loser style.  Without the cameras, the host from Sabrina the Teenage Witch, the stage, lighting crew, makeup, and those sausage-casing outfits they put those poor contestants in to make them look worse than they….oh let’s face it, when they start they are fat.  Period.  But do they have to dress them like that?  It’s embarrassing and degrading.  ANYWAY.

So we weigh in tomorrow morning.  Naked as Jaybirds.  Course he gets up for work at like Stupid O’Clock a.m. and there’s no fucking way I’m getting up to verify his nor have him verify mine, so it’s on our honour.

We put a time line on it of 8 weeks, so end of May is the cutoff.  Winner gets to pick where we go and what we do on a date.  I could care less about any prize, I just wanna win so bad I can taste the zero calorie Jello now.

The Rulez:

- no starving yourself;

- no dietary supplements;

- just good old fashioned eating healthy, and exercising;

- more sex*

*Daren put that last one in.  Motherfucker.  (Literally.)

Not Being My Mother

March 21, 2009 Uncategorized

I feel the familiar ache, pull, rise in anger once again as I yell at my sons who are fighting for the 45th time this week.  “Enough!  You’re supposed to love each other!” seems so ironic to holler at them while my own words are projected in frustration.

She used to yell, says a little voice from inside me.

‘She used to scream uncontrollably,’ I counter.  ‘This is different.’

I carry out the tasks of being Mom, Mommy, Mother.  Folding laundry, matching small socks, finding it harder to remember which boy owns which t-shirts, as some are passed down every season from one to the other.  Remembering to take  meat out of the freezer, planning meal after meal, loading and unloading the dishwasher, running the vacuum, running errands, running the roads to get to hockey or soccer or guitar.  Running running running from that voice in my head.

‘She never made time to stop and teach,’ it says.  It’s true, even when I, as an older child, requested to learn how to cook or do laundry, I was met with ‘it’s my time alone‘ or a flat ‘no.‘

My oldest plans a meal with my help, we shop and we cook.  I bake with the youngest son.  They both know how to clean their bathroom, to pick up after the dog, to make their beds and do laundry.  One day they will be able to take care of themselves.

We laugh a hell of a lot in this house.  We enjoy each other’s company.  We play games, we sing, we dance, we crank the tunes and act like goons.  We snuggle and read nightly. We spend time together.

She always sent us to go out and play or to our rooms.  We were rarely with her for anything except in the car.  ‘Go play, go away…leave Mom alone.  I have a headache, I have to think, I have to see my show…’

If I pour a glass of wine, even one, I’m met with that little voice, ‘be careful now, you don’t want the boys to see you.’

‘As if it would matter?   Even if tipsy, I have never been an angry drunk,’ I reason with my little voice.

Her voice echoes in my head:  Get out of here!  Get to bed!  Go to your room!  No more in and out – stay out and don’t come back until the street lights come on!  I DON’T CARE IF YOU’RE HUNGRY!

We often went out to play on a Saturday morning and weren’t allowed to come back until the street lights came on.  Our stomachs would turn inside out from hunger, but we never dared to complain.  We would sometimes get in trouble for being gone so long even though she had sent us away, or sometimes she would be well-lubricated and fawning over her babies like we were 2 year olds.  She never apologized for her anger.  She never once said she was sorry when she was wrong.  After work, or first thing in the morning, she could be batshit crazy or completely calm.  We just never knew what we would get.

Yes, when that voice pops up – especially the one that has a problem with me disciplining my kids, I have to remind myself that I’m not my mother.  I’m not my mother at all.  That Yelly Mom that wants my kids to stop fighting isn’t an out of control screaming banshee, it’s just me, being A Mom.

There is a very valid difference between being our mothers and being mothers ourselves.

Disconnect

March 10, 2009 I Love My Family

There comes a time, every evening, usually after the dinner dishes are in the dishwasher, where the kids and Daren and I gather at the dinner table for a board game or snuggle up to watch something on the PVR that we’ve recorded.  The cell phones are often turned off and plugged in to charge, the laptop is put away for the night, having run all day long, and the four of us hibernate for the evening.

Often, I get buried in skinny little boy legs and a Spiderman comforter, and little dogs that Thomas carries around with him – 2 of them Webkinz that don’t often see their digital life, one a ‘little brother’ to the first Webkinz Thomas ever got.  Dylan’s tousled hair shadows over his forehead and the dim lights of the house light up their still baby faces.  My hope is that Thomas won’t stop carrying around his little dogs anytime soon.  Dylan is growing so fast I cry when I think about it.

After they are tucked in for the night, Daren and I stay up, chatting a little while he studies, while I watch tv, but we’re in bed long before midnight lately.  We’re all so happy to be in this new house, so thrilled with the conveniences of having him home every night (until school ends, anyway) and we’re really savouring this time together.

The point of this is that when I read Hilly’s post this morning about being connected all the time, I found it really nuts that people would whip out their phones and Twitter when they are with the people they normally talk to online:

I sit down at a table full of people who really make my soul dance.  Being in the company of such like-minded individuals is good for me and I crave the social interaction that they bring.  We make small talk, maybe even large talk and then it happens….one by one, we reach into our purses or back pockets and pull out our iPhones/Blackberries/SmartPhones, blah blah blah.  We sit with these amazing people in our faces, ready to talk about whatever the wind blows in.  We may only get limited amounts of time with them and yet somehow, it’s so fucking important that we let the whole of Twitter know what we are doing or even worse…we announce to the table what the whole of Twitter is doing.  We’ve started strong as a group of friends but by the end of the “date”, email is being checked and people are only halfway listening to what anyone is saying.  If I had any sort of nerve, I’d put my own phone away and ask others to do the same. “You know, I came here to see you, not the back of your iPhone.  I sorta know what that looks like already.”

Seriously? Twitter can wait. Since Lisa’s death, I’ve really thought about what’s important in my life. While I love my friends dearly, including the ones I’ve never met in person, they have my phone number in the event the internet blows up. And when we do get together, they’ll have my full attention. Just as my family does every night.*

* Except the nights Daren is at hockey because seriously, home alone after the kids are in bed?  Funtime for Mama.  We hijack blogs and stuff.

** Oh and not the kind of attention Daren gets.  So you know.  There’s only one man who gets to call me ‘penis breath.’  Just saying.

*** Yes, he really called me that.

**** I was not insulted.  We laughed like 12 year olds.

***** I don’t know why that one dog looks so worried.