Kleptomania and Drunk Cat Side-Effects

Hello? Anyone still out there?

This week has been forever and a flash, all at once. I was going to do a rundown of my week, but honestly, I can't really remember Monday or Tuesday. And if you knew me in real life, you would know that this totally isn't like me. I used to have the ability to remember every day of my life, from about the age of three to present day. I lost that talent around 21, because it just became too many days. So yeah, I'm like Marilu Henner, but unsure as to whom to call for my freakazoid accolades.

(Thank GOD for Facebook. I can look back at my status updates and remember what I was doing. What happened to that feature where they put my status update for that day in 2009 and 2010? That was pretty cool.)

Report cards come home today, and honestly, I don't even want to open Hoover's. I feel just as nervous as when I brought home my first D on a report card. (It was in 6th grade. And yes, "first" means there was more than one in my educational career. )

Hoover has been on meds now for three weeks. I'm not sure if there's any difference, as most of the time he's at school while on them. His teacher has noticed minimal difference, a few papers here or there completed, but nothing consistent.

He also has no concept of time. If I ask him if he got work done that day, he'll tell me about a worksheet he did. And then I learn that worksheet he's talking about is from a week ago. He also tells me he got in trouble when he hasn't (because it was a few days ago) and vice versa.

We've also started giving him his medicine at lunch time, which for right now means either Disgruntled Husband or I drive to school and give it to him. There's paperwork to have the school do this, but it's lost in my van right now, plus his medicine has to be in the prescription bottle, and somehow, Walgreens has a problem with us having a duplicate prescription filled of a controlled substance with a high street value.

Have you met my son?

The down-side to his afternoon dose is that it seems to have some weird side-effects. He'll go to sleep fine, but then wake up about midnight and roam the house like a drunk cat. One night this week, he crawled into bed with DH and me and talked to me for what seemed like hours. Then, at 7 a.m., he came in with a big box of neatly stacked cash and told us to look at his money.

(It was from Larry Potter's lemonade stand in September...we don't normally keep stacks of cash around.)

(Hoover has also been truly obsessed with money for the past few months.)

After we caught him lying about it ("No, it's from my whole life, Mom. And I've had a loooong life."),
and put it back, I recalled a note I got from his teacher the first day he had his medicine in the afternoon. He stole something from some math kit at school and only when his friend ratted him out did he admit it and give it back.

Great. Ritalin is either turning my kid into a klepto or making it happen sooner than it normally would have.

Last night was LP's belt test at karate. Because DH and I wanted to both see this, we brought everyone.

In the first 15 minutes, Hoover gave himself a bloody lip and accosted three people for food.

Fifteen minutes after that, Hoover and Mini Me had to extracted out of the room for fighting. Hoover did not go willingly.

The next 15 minutes it was quiet, and I was able to concentrate on LP. (DH was watching from a window in another room.)

The final 15 minutes, when LP got his new gold belt and had pictures taken, Hoover ran around the dojo like the Tazmanian Devil. No, not embarrassing at all.

The belt test was the longest hour of my life.

We see the doctor again on Monday. Thank God, because I'm out of creative parenting ideas.

Brushes with Fame

Happy Friday!

I woke up this morning realizing that I had turned the heat off yesterday afternoon and forgot to turn it back on. Talk about reasons to stay in bed!

I have a busy day today, so I thought I'd take the easy way out try something new.

I love stories of people that have met famous people and people that are actually related to famous people. Just about everyone has a story about their personal encounter with a famous person. So...break out your best cocktail party story and reply below with your own personal brush with fame. 

Best story wins...uh...(looking around my kitchen) a cup of coffee with me. But you have to provide your own transportation. And it can't be too early. And maybe we could just meet at Starbucks so I don't have to clean my house to company standards.

Did you ever meet this guy? He's related to me. That makes me *his* brush with fame.

My own brushes with fame? So glad you asked.

1.) My half-cousin once-removed is Julie Budd, a singer popular on the East Coast.
2.) I once sold Melina Kanakaredes a day planner. (The chick from Providence and CSI.)
3.) Hootie (Darius Rucker) chatted me up in line at a Dunkin Donuts at Logan Airport.
4.) I've met several authors and poets that you may or may not know...most memorable was former Poet Laureate of the US Billy Collins, before he was Poet Laureate. He was kind of drunk and spacey.
5.) I interviewed Loretta Lynn on the phone, and then met her in person.
6.) Same with Leroy Butler of the Packers.
7.) (See if you can follow this one) My uncle's brother-in-law is Elton John's ex-companion. When my grandmother died (in 1993 in very rural North Carolina), Elton John sent a tree.

Don't make me look like a tool here....reply with your own brushes with fame!

Christmas Foreplay

Halloween is over. Bring on Christmas!

(I know Thanksgiving is in there somewhere, but it's a hard holiday to get into. My parents are divorced, giving me two Thanksgivings ever single year. Neither of which I'm allowed to host, mostly because A.) I live hours from any one else and B.) at my Dad's house, I am fourth in the child pecking order.)

I both love November and hate it at the same time.

First of all, there's the weather. It snowed for the first time last night...just flurries mixed with rain, but enough to cause a small riot on Facebook and the local TV Weatherman to unroll his snow prediction for the season. (It's 64.8 inches, in case you care.)

It's still dark when I get out of bed, making getting out of bed really tough. It's dreary and ugly and just the word "November" makes me think of gray skies and soggy leaves clogging my gutters.

Which brings us to the love. With all the darkness and shitty weather, I get cozy inside with Christmas lights in my kitchen and a holiday candle on my table. Pandora asked me if I was F-ing Kidding when I pulled up a Christmas station. I got my Skinned Elmo robe on, a pair of slippers, and became my own modern-day Dickens novel.

Now, I get why people are upset with Christmas music and decorations at stores up before Halloween and Thanksgiving. It's not about the feeling of the season or brightening up an otherwise dreary day. It's about money, commercialization, capitalism, and the bottom line.

(This is a salesman's daughter talking. I am pro all those things, just not for public consumption in months that aren't December. Because my dad sold -and still sells- to all the stores for their Christmas gift-giving needs, our realization of Christmas was in July, and any family in retail knows that's absolute fact.)

Recently, this picture has been making its way around the internet:

Actually, I believe this was from last year, but I hear that Nordstrom's is doing it again this year. Things like this make Disgruntled Husband happy. He is a Christmas purist...no tree or decorations or music until after Thanksgiving.

The thing is, I don't want a tree. I don't want to bake cookies. I don't want to go shopping. Not yet. That stuff complicates things. Like most things in my life, I need a little downtime to process before the big show. Christmas is definitely no exception.

Plus, by the time Christmas Eve rolls around, I'm usually more than a little sick of holiday stuff, which makes packing up the tree and all of that much easier.

And it's socially acceptable to start going to my favorite Christmas website now. (I know I posted this last year. It's still my favorite.)

My DVD of The Family Stone is in my DVD player full time right now. It's a sad movie...if you haven't seen it 85 times and only watch for the set decorating and family dynamics. It's a Christmas movie, but not one that gets a lot of airtime on TV like my absolute favorite movie of all time....National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation.

This year, I'll have to figure out either how to get the extra channels on my TV in my bedroom or where to find another cable box, because the Hallmark Channel moved from channel 36 to channel 78, and my TV only goes to 73. These are real things I worry about.

If you feel like I do, go light a candle (Yankee Candle Holiday Sage is my new favorite), tell Pandora to F herself, because it's Christmas to YOU and cue those sugar plums, because the hype and pain-in-the-ass ness that is December will suck your will to live, as well as your will to listen to Andy Williams and Mannheim Steamroller.

And now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to try and answer the age old Christmas question: Why is Dan Fogelberg's Same Old Lang Syne a Christmas song?



My Mommy, the Drag Queen

A few weeks before Halloween, I was in Sephora (shocking) and made an impulse purchase.

(Let's not tell Disgruntled Husband that an "impulse" purchase at Sephora is about $15.)

These:



They're called Violent Lips and here's the website where you can get them (as well as Sephora).

The concept is pretty cool. You know those tattoos your kids get with valentines or trips to the dentist or pretty much everywhere? Same concept, but for Mommy.

I originally bought them for my college reunion to wear out to the bars, but couldn't find a pair of scissors at the hotel. So Halloween was the natural time to wear these.

Monday morning, I put them on. I should also note that they were the only thing costume-y I decided to wear.

I decided that the name of my costume was "Small Town Drag Queen."

Mini Me loved them. She asked if I would wear them to her class Halloween party. (She also asked if she could wear some, too. The answer was no on that one.)

Of course I'd wear them to her class.

At 1, I got in the van and went to school. When I got out of the car, I saw one of the families of a boy in MM's class that I've known for awhile. No comment on my lips, just a weird look and normal conversation.

When I signed into the office, no one batted an eye.

When I stopped into Hoover's class on my way to MM's classroom, his teacher just started talking to me like normal.

It was then I realized no one thought I was wearing a costume. They all assumed I'd finally gone off my rocker and showed up to school like this.

(It's also when I told Hoover's teacher that it was a Halloween thing, and I also told the mom of the other family that, too.)

As confident as I am, I couldn't pull of my red glitter drag queen lips. On Halloween.

I quickly began to regret my decision to wear them.

I did the whole classroom party with the lips on. And the cape of humiliation. All for my daughter who thought I was beautiful.

I came home and got a good look in the mirror. How could people NOT know I was in Halloween mode? They were all too polite to ask me.

Like when you see a woman who could be pregnant, but you don't say anything just in case she isn't.

To the people at my children's school: I like make-up and all, but glitter lip tattoos are not part of my everyday beauty routine.

In case you wanted to ask me about it.

Period. Next paragraph.

I think it's a sign of the age he's at. And it's only going to get worse.

After Larry Potter's nipple conversation last week, I thought we'd both (okay, just me) suffered enough embarrassment for the month.

And then, the next day, he surprised me. He's advanced, you know.

(I will preface this with a general statement: if you happen to know LP in real life or ever meet him, you will NOT talk about this incident. This kid has enough therapy to go through.)

(Though it doesn't stop me from writing about it. It's too funny to keep to myself.)

We were in the bathroom, putting things away in the cabinet in there, and LP asked, "Hey Mom, what are those Playtex things anyway?"

I stood silent, hoping what he said happened in an alternate universe.

"I mean, I've been wondering for awhile what they are."

Nope, same universe. I start to weigh the options of telling him. By the way, this was never a conversation I thought I'd have with my son.

And apparently, it was keeping him up at night.

"Is it something to make you look younger? Is it something to help you lose weight?"

Still trying to formulate my answer, I start laughing at the thought of tampons making you look younger.

I start to answer, "Well, it's something just for women..." and apparently, I start blushing, which kind of pissed me off.

Causing insomnia of fourth-grade boys since 1972.

LP, seeing his mother's red face, said in a whisper, "Is it something for your boobs?"

I assured him it was not. I start to stammer over my words, but a conversation I had with my aunt recently rings in my head. I told her I didn't mind telling my kids about sex and body parts and stuff, but I don't want my kids being those kids that inform the rest of their grade about such matters.

And LP definitely has that way about him.

I pulled myself together, "I'll tell you," I start.

"I don't think I want to know," he said. "And don't tell Dad that I asked."

We went downstairs and I pulled Disgruntled Husband aside to tell him what LP asked me. I chalked it up to helping me with a parenting question, as in, "What do I do?"

DH went outside and LP came into the kitchen where I was.

"[LP], I'll tell you what those things are for. Every month a woman isn't pregnant, things....come out....of her...."

He put his hands to his ears.

"I don't want to know anymore!" Followed with, "Does this happen to [Mini Me]?"

I said, no, just adults. I started to explain things further, and he screamed, put his hands up to his ears, and literally fell on the ground like this.

In the midst of all of this, I told him to not tell anyone else about this. Twice.

Not that I think he ever wants to think of this conversation again, but I have to make precautions.

But at least he won't be up at night wondering how tampons make me look younger. Or lose weight.

Both of which are pretty good hypotheses for a nine year old boy.