Embracing Change

Big changes are afoot* here at Masked Mom Headquarters. (For starters, we've apparently begun using the word "afoot" with a relatively straight face.) Long-time readers and long-suffering real world friends and family members all know that change is not my favorite thing, but the thing about change is that it comes whether you like it or not.

The flower shop where I've been working (or engaged in occasional work-like activity broken up by long periods of reading, writing, gossiping, and yelling at the boss) for ten years closed permanently as of May 30. I was fortunate enough to find a new job before the shop closed--so there was no gap in employment but instead an overlap during which I worked 50-70 hours a week at both places all while still ferrying around four children and trying to occasionally remember I have a husband.

The new place is a halfway house where I have already been promoted to the position of "transportation coordinator" which is a fancy way of saying I'm in charge of getting seventeen assorted recovering addicts to their various appointments (and back again) in a timely fashion. Plus filing monthly reports on mileage, gas and other expenses and keeping up maintenance for the house's four vehicles.

It's more money than I was making before--and way more challenging and entertaining. So I'm learning at this late date that maybe embracing change is the best plan--especially when it's inevitable.

And I would embrace it--I really would--but I'm too tired to lift my arms.

Apparently Not Everyone Is Equally Hooked On Phonics

There was a period of time when the kids were younger when Hubby and I got in the habit of calling each other "diphthong" as a teasing insult. I don't even vaguely remember how it got started, but I know that at one point, Hubby called Youngest Sister that and she quickly came back with "Umlaut!" To which he responded, "Schwa!"

You not only had to be there for that one, you also had to be a little bit of a geek.

Flash forward to this afternoon. Phone call from Son-One, "Mom, what's a diphthong? I just called Girlfriend-One a diphthong and she didn't know what it means and I just realized I don't really know how to explain it."

Ah, Son-One perhaps you should worry a little less about the defintion of diphthong and a little more about what other quirky time-bombs are left behind from your childhood...

Shakespearean Dandruff

Despite being present and very, very alert during her birth, I have occasionally wondered if Daughter-Only was perhaps switched at birth or dropped here from an alien ship because she is so very different in so many ways from her dear old mom. She's very social for one thing, supremely confident--occasionally annoyingly so, she will say anything to anyone (or so it seems). She has, for instance, proposed to several total strangers with a relatively straight face. She has walked down Main Street in town asking random people if they've ever been to Chuck E. Cheese or if they know the Mexican Hat Dance. She's just an all-around out-there kind of kid--unlike her mother, who while decidedly weird, has always kind of hidden her weird little light under a bushel.

Anyway, last night, she says to me, "Mom! How come T-9* has 'Shakespearean' but it doesn't have 'dandruff?'"

Try--just try--to imagine a texting world in which it would be necessary to use either the word Shakespearean or the word dandruff. And then, take that one step further into a universe in which the same person might need to text both words in the same one-hour period.

She's mine. She's definitely mine.

*T-9 is the texting "dictionary" in some cell phones.

Lessons Learned #346

In no particular order, some things Masked Mom has learned in recent weeks:

1. While I was born right-handed, I did go through a phase as a kid where I tried to retrain myself so I could work equally well (or at least acceptably) with my left hand. This was wildly unsuccessful and motivated almost entirely by the fact that I loved the word "ambidextrous." Recently I noticed that without even being aware of it, I had been texting left-handed. Not only can I text left-handed, I can text signficantly faster and more accurately with my left-hand than with my right: I'm ambiTEXTrous!

2. My 14-year-old daughter has a firm grasp of supply and demand and may be some kind of budding economic whiz kid. When she found out that tickets to the high school's production of Little Shop of Horrors cost $6, she said, "I thought, 'That's ridiculous for a high school play.' But then I realized that Hot Senior Boy is wearing tight leather pants in the play--now that's worth $6!"

3. There's nothing quite like waking up with a migraine to make you appreciate waking up the next day without one.

"Where's My Bailout?"

"Where's my bailout?" said Cranky Boss Lady to the (long-suffering and insanely underpaid) Masked Mom for the millionth time.

For the millionth time, I say, with exaggerated (and not entirely heartfelt) patience, "The theory* is that the bailouts given to the banks and other financial institutions will benefit the economy as a whole in the end--so we're all being bailed out, sort of."

Cranky Boss Lady says, with a whine for crap's sake, "It's not fair."

I lose it. "How old are you? Didn't you just turn 58?! Can you really be walking around expecting the world to be fair?!"

Seriously--you know what's not fair? Being trapped in a truly dead-end job with a FIFTY-EIGHT-YEAR-OLD boss who is still wounded by the unfairness of life and being trapped in that job at a time when the economy is so crappy that I feel lucky every day to have even that job.


*Note that I am not defending the theory. Neither am I pretending to fully understand the forces at work in high finance or in the federal government.

And the Winner Is--

Rough coupla days around these parts. When it comes to the most disturbing thing I've heard in the last four days, it's a toss-up. The candidates:

My mechanic saying, "It is the fuel pump. Once you figure in all the parts and labor it's going to be just a hair over $400."

The girl at the car rental agency saying, "We're going to go ahead and upgrade you to the Malibu because the Cobalt has a funky smell in it and we can't figure out where it's coming from."

Refrigerator Art

Last night, Son-Three yells from the kitchen: "Just what I want to see when I'm trying to decide what to have for a snack: a fetus!"

Technically it's not a fetus, but an ultrasound picture held on the refrigerator by a magnet. And it's not a picture of just any fetus, but a fetus with my youngest sister's nose or a fetus who looks just like my brother-in-law, depending on which side of the family you ask. It is, in short, a baby whose expected arrival in late summer is eagerly awaited not only by Youngest Sister and her husband but by the many people who love them.

Even Son-Three, who is sometimes relentlessly, dangerously adolescent, is excited. Son-Three happens, by sheer coincidence, to share a real-life name with Youngest Sister's Husband*. This afternoon, he says to me, "Mom, if it's a boy do you think they'll name it after me?"

*Lou B. of the Masked Mom Comment Hall of Fame**

**There is no Masked Mom Comment Hall of Fame, but if there were you can bet your butt he'd be in it.