Whose Idea Was This Again?

'Cuz I'd like to kick their asses a little.

The Nose Is Running, The Brain Is Not

Who had Day Six in the how-long-before-she-posts-a-cop-out-post poll?

Hot For Teacher

One night, a couple years ago now, Hubby was interested in a little, shall we say, "vigorous cuddling." On this particular night (as on so many particular nights), I was exhausted. But in the spirit of marital generosity, I said, "Okay, I guess we can, but on one condition--you're going to have to do like 89% of the work."

Ever the negotiator, Hubby countered, "Well that depends on what your 21% is going to consist of."

"For starters, I'm going to be tutoring you in math."

What's Next? A Thank You Card From FOX News For My Many Years of Faithful Viewership?

I know things have not been looking great for the Republicans, but I had no idea they were desperate enough to resort to random, nonsensical SPAM messages such as the one I found in my inbox this evening:


"Dear [Masked Mom],
On behalf of the leadership of the Republican National Committee, I want to thank you for helping our Party earn historic victories in Virginia and New Jersey yesterday.

Your steadfast commitment to our conservative Republican principles and your generous support of the RNC's 2009 campaign programs enabled us to provide all our GOP candidates with the resources they needed to run strong right through Election Day.

Electing Republican governors in Virginia and New Jersey is just the beginning. With the continuing commitment of RNC Sustaining Members like you, I am confident we can elect more GOP governors, make real gains in the U.S. House and Senate, stop the Democrats' radical leftist agenda and cut President Obama's term in half in 2010.
Thank you again for everything you did for our Party and our cause during Campaign 2009.

Sincerely,
Michael Steele, Chairman,
Republican National Committee"

I can only assume that the meanings of "steadfast commitment" and "generous support" have changed dramatically to include "doing nothing" and "actively rooting against."

At least the Republicans sprung for a better copywriter than that widow of the Nigerian businessman who keeps hounding me with misspelled and gramatically incorrect e-mails about the millions of dollars she'd like to split with me. Perhaps I'll put her in touch with Mr. Steele and show those Republicans just how generous my support can be.

Six Degrees of Influation

You know flu season is bad when conversation at work consists almost entirely of how close the flu virus (seasonal or H1N1) has gotten to each of us.

Client: My boss has a grandson who has H1N1.
Me: My oldest son's girlfriend's roommate has it.
Client: Well, it's way closer to me than to you!

Ok, ok, you win.

It's Like The Geek Olympics

So it's the original National Blog Posting Month (NaBloPoMo)-- the chance to achieve fame (uh, not so far), fortune (not that either) and fabulous prizes (but not for me--at least not yet) but most importantly, the geeky sense of accomplishment that comes from posting every single day for a month (good thing it's the most important part 'cuz I've had that in geeky spades for the past 3 years).*

*My sense of accomplishment was only minimally diminished the year before last when I was gypped out of the ability to post the final day by the failure of not one but several communications companies to provide me with the ability to communicate via the Internet. But I'm not bitter because the only thing worse than being a geek is being a bitter geek.

Escalating Acts of Randomness*

If random (and moderately disturbing) texting ever becomes an Olympic event, rest assured, you don't have a shot at the gold. Bronze, maybe. Silver, if you're lucky. But the gold surely belongs to Daughter-Only and I.


Here's a recent text conversation between Daughter-Only and I in its shockingly pointless and odd entirety. It began normally enough--with D-O asking if I was getting a break from work (presumably so I could give her a ride home)--and then swerved completely out of control almost immediately. Daughter-Only got the last word because I was forced by the cruelties of timing to actually pay attention to my job while I was at work.


D-O: Break?


MM: In Bolivar [a town about 15 miles from home].


D-O: Why?


MM: Meeting.


D-O: Until when?


MM: 9--I'm not getting a break. Working til 10:30.


D-O: I know you work until 10:30 you silly little poopsicle.


MM: Sweet.


D-O: Yep. Diaper rash.


MM: Ostrich ass feathers.


D-O: Blue chicken wing pillow fights.


MM: Are just the wings or the entire chickens blue? Is it a naturally occurring blue or a sign of injury, disease or other bodily distress?


D-O: The wings are. And they were born that way, after of course, the Great Explosion of Nayithe, in which a number of cats vomited on William's coat.


MM: Ah, but the question remains who put the bomp in the bomp-de-bomp-de-bomp? PS--Whoever it was failed to put the bomp in the T9.


D-O: Well the little ditty of Vienna thinks you're so vain time after time.


MM: Uh--of COURSE I'm vain--this song is about me. And then some.


D-O: Nope. Wrong again. It's about the Pilgrims swimming in tidal pools of iguana saliva.


MM: Sweet salmonella--you win. But worry not--the hounds of heinieville will rise to howl again--and maybe even hump your leg.


D-O: Wicked wheat waffles!! How could the dolphin orphanages host such a curtain of packing peanuts? It's slutterly ridiculous.


MM: Depends entirely upon what is packed among those peanuts. Was it Schrodinger's cat? Cuz if you apply the Dupendorfer principle the answer is bad venison.


D-O: No, no. Schrodinger's brother was in those peanuts!! Incoming news: an obese walrus from Tenessee just had a severe heart attack on the walls of a Turkish ballet studio. Bring immediate help! (And two lollipops.)


MM: What flavor? Lollipops I mean. Everyone knows walruses are root beer flavored. Except the really old ones--they taste like avacados.

D-O: Not nearly as bad as the douche canoe flavor of an Indian Vortex Lion. Oh, what's that? You don't know what a douche canoe tastes like? That's insane. Who hasn't tasted a makeshift boat filled entirely, and only with vaginal cleansers?! You are sooo deprived.


MM: True story.


D-O: Not as true as the skies are blue.

MM: It is too truer than the skies are blue. But not quite as true as the blue chicken wings were blue.

D-O: Goat killing should be provided by the 97th amendment.

MM: I thought that was the plan. Unfortunately both goats and their potential killlers will succumb to a rogue hiccup virus long before that amendment's passed.


D-O: Terrible how one tiny sheep-wannabe can be mentally damaged to the point of no-return by a single rusty-orange fingernail.


MM: That's a whole other bale of fish fur.


D-O: Shedding bananas, SmudgyFace! What a brilliant observation. It's as delicate as looking into a tin foil mirror with only seconds left on the clock of doom.

*Randomness beat out randmosity here largely because the suffix "-osity" was ruined for me by the episode of Growing Pains where Carol got the job writing for the school paper and in her eagerness to show off her superior intelligence fills her assignments with unnecessarily long and complicated words. The paper's advisor calls her in and tells her, "This story stinks." She says, "I don't understand." And he says something like let me put it in words you will understand: "It's replete with stinkyosity."

C'mon, October, Seriously?

Dear October,


My blog buddy Erika over at Dry, Ink had a few stern words for you last week about your behavior in Louisiana--specifically about your failure to show your face and put an end to temperatures in the nineties. I'm not sure what you're doing with yourself in Louisiana this week, but I'm not at all amused by what you've done around here.


Your job in our little corner of the world is to gently usher the leaves off the trees as you gradually lower the temperatures, preferably with strikingly blue skies to highlight the gorgeous colors of the leaves. Instead, we've had rain and cold and clouds and this morning, we had this:




I mean WTF and a half, October! Two inches of wet, heavy snow?! Widespread power outages due to the leaf/snow combination breaking limbs and taking out power lines across the region?!


I wasn't really sure what to do with you, October. Should you be grounded? Or fired? Have your paycheck docked? Fifty lashes with a downed power line? Then it hit me, I'm going to do something even worse...

I'm telling Erika on you.

Biopsy Performed By That Dude From The Frat House Down The Street

Son-Three was home from college a weekend or so ago and showed me a small growth on his neck--something he believed was a skin tag but that I was pretty sure was a mole in the larval stages. In any case, it didn't meet the criteria for anything to be overly concerned about--just something to keep an eye on.

He texted me the other day: "Can I rip off a skin tag?"

I texted back: "A. No. B. It might be a mole. C. No."

The return message? "Let's say I already did and I'm sure it's not a mole."

Let's say I'm glad I was 100 miles away when that determination was made.

My Newest Superpower: Interior Design

Looking around our cramped bedroom that's painted a horrid shade of blue just this side of teal*, Hubby says, "This room needs painted badly."

I look around at the bulging and cracking wallpaper covered with a quarter-inch thick layer of pukey blue paint and at the window and door frames plastered over with the same thickly applied paint, and observe, "Uh, it's already painted badly."

*Teal is a four-letter word.

How It Got Here I Haven't A Clue*

A month into his first year of college, Son-Three reports that one of his new college friends marked two milestones in one day. In the morning, this friend, JD, got his first tattoo--praying hands--at a local shop called The Pink Armadillo. That evening, he decided to drink alcohol for the first time--and ended up drinking until he was quite wasted.

So wasted in fact, he approached Son-Three and said in a conspiratorial whisper, "Dude, look at this, look at this. Someone drew hands on me! Who would do that? I'm totally going to get to the bottom of this."

Son-Three says, "JD, remember? You got that from The Pink Armadillo."

JD mulls this over for a second then says with amazement, "Dude--did you know pink armadillos could draw?!"

*From "Margaritaville," a song in which Jimmy Buffet commemorates a few of his own milestones such as looking for his lost shaker of salt, blowing out his flip-flop by stepping on a pop-top and, of course, the brand-new tattoo: "It's a real beauty, a Mexican cutie/How it got here I haven't a clue."

Let Her Out Once In A While To Get Some Air

Bumped into a former Shop Groupie at the grocery store two days in a row. She's an old friend of Cranky Boss Lady who dresses almost exclusively in various patterns of camouflage though she neither hunts nor was ever in the military. On seeing me the second day, she said, "You sure cruise these, uh, food places a lot."

"Yeah, that's how I keep my girlish figure," I said, while waving my hand to highlight my decidedly ungirlish shape.

Camo Lady raised an eyebrow. "Where do you keep her?"

Laughing, I said, "In a locker at home--it's the only place she's really safe."

"Yeah, I've had mine tucked away so long I'm not sure I remember where I left her."

"I used to take her out on special occasions--I guess it has been a while."

Happy To Do My Part

First day of school. Daughter-Only and I head out the door early--determined to get off on the right foot. Apparently, we're not the only ones. Traffic around the school is backed up through all the surrounding intersections--cars stopped at weird angles, people sitting through two or three lights halfway through the intersection, and so on.

Suddenly, I see our chronic lateness last year in a whole new light. I had thought I was disorganized and a failure as a parent for being unable to motivate my children to get out the door on time most days.

I see now I was merely playing an important role in reducing the morning traffic congestion around the school.

You're welcome.

I'll Take Potent Potables For $500, Alex

My current state of mind, revealed in text messages:

Little Sister: We have a bunch of lemons. Do you want them for lemonade?

MM: Sure--are these literal lemons or metaphorical lemons?

LS: I will just give you the literal ones and spare you my metaphorical ones. :)

MM: That sounds good. Despite what you may have heard, the metaphorical ones are often too sour to make a potable lemonade.

LS: Definitely! and bitter too.

Our Little Girl Is A Woman Now, Or Have You Ever Really, Really Wanted To Laugh Even Though You Knew Laughing Was The Utterly "Wrong" Thing To Do?

So Ex Sister-in-Law and I and her two daughters, Third Niece and Fourth Niece*, along with Daughter-Only, were school shopping over the weekend. This shopping involved driving in Rochester, which compared with my teeny tiny town is the Big City. At one point, I lost patience with the guy in front of me and said just above a whisper, "All right, fuckwipe, make a decision or get the hell out of the way."

ES-I-L chuckled and said, "Wow, I've never heard you cuss behind the wheel before."

I explained that now that my job involves driving so much I really have a lot less patience for other people on the road. Daughter-Only piped up somewhat in my defense, "Well at least you're not as bad as So-and-So [a family friend known to be a little, shall we say, testy, especially behind the wheel]. She screams at everyone."

"Well, that's because So-And-So is a B-I-T-C-H," I pointed out, oh-so-cleverly spelling the word even though my nieces are 9 and 12 and well beyond the age when I can get away with that.

Without missing a beat, Third Niece chimes in, "Are you just F-U-C-K-I-N figuring that out?"

*Formerly Youngest Niece and Next-To-Youngest Niece, whose Blog Names have been changed by the arrival of Fifth Niece, brand new daughter of Baby Brother and Sister-in-Law-To-Be. Similarly, Only-Nephew has become First Nephew with the arrival of Second Nephew (formerly Fetus-On-The-Fridge).

Don't Even Mention The Table Saw

So we've moved again about which I'm not at all happy. I've been acting like a complete ass instead of acting grateful to have a roof over my head. In my defense, it's not that easy to muster gratitude for a roof when it's not only got moss growing on it but grass and a few stalks of goldenrod sprouting up there as well. Looking on the bright side in this case probably means being grateful that the goldenrod didn't have fertile enough ground to actually bloom.

In addition to the flora sprouting from the roof, the house was full of the previous tenant's belongings. Not just a few things left behind in a last minute move, but rooms full of furniture, clothing, bedding, eyeglasses, half-finished bottles of water, and so much more--all tidily arranged and remarkably clean considering the house had been left empty for nearly a year.*

This meant essentially moving two households of stuff over the course of six days. Our new landlord told us we were welcome to keep any of the left-behind stuff that we wanted and have a yard sale with the rest. Hubby was delighted to find a variety of new (still in the package) and like-new power tools on the cluttered back porch. On one of our many trips between houses, he said to me, "There was a belt sander that I don't think has ever been used."

From the backseat, Daughter-Only piped up, "Why would you want to sand your belt?"

*Long and complicated story, but we've been assured she's not dead and also not coming back for any of her stuff.

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.