Caught in the snowstorm with nowhere to go.

Have you ever been so mad at your child, you lock YOURSELF in a room?

That’s where I was on Wednesday.

I had been at work for an hour already, when my cell phone went off. I didn’t recognize the number, so I ignored it. (I don’t answer phone calls that I don’t know what the number is, I don’t really listen to voicemails other than to get rid of the icon on my phone, and I don’t friend accept people on Facebook I don’t know, so if you “friend” me, then please include a little message that you read my blog or I will reject you.)

So anyway, whoever it was kept calling, and I guess my “mommy radar” must have gone off, because when I answered it, this woman was like, “Do you have a son named Taylor?” At this point, I did the roll of the eyes, “Oh SHIT, WHAT NOW.” Then she proceeded to tell me she had found my son, out walking around the neighborhood IN A BLIZZARD, crying, so she let him come in to call me. I got her address, and after letting my boss know that I was going to strangle my child, I went over and picked him up.

I got him home and I guess he could tell by the steam that was shooting out of my ears, that I was pretty mad. So he started explaining that he had gone back to the house from the bus stop to get his backpack and the bus came. He didn’t have his house key, nor his cell phone on him…so instead of going directly to our neighbor, he decides to walk around the neighborhood to try to find Gavin’s best friends’ house. FOR AN HOUR.The thing is, he has missed the bus several times this year because of going back to the house for things. But we only live twenty feet from the bus stop, so I don’t know how he doesn’t see the bus coming?!!

I just ended up taking him home instead of school, because it was snowing so good that I had a feeling school would be canceled, and it would be a waste of an hour if I drove him all the way out there. Thankfully, they did cancel school about an hour later.

My question is…why can’t we pay to get our kids micro-chipped? I mean, then we could go online and track them when they are playing outside, that our teenagers are where they say they are, and if they were kidnapped, we would know where they were! We could even hook it up to Foursquare, so they could check in along the way. “Taylor has checked in to XYZ Middle School”

This is why I made Andy get a vasectomy.



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I’m Single-Handedly Responsible for the Demise of My Son’s Social Life

In other words, it's just another day of my Bad-Assery in the realm of parenthood.

Before I made their "shitlist."

I would like to start by saying that I am fundamentally opposed to the idea of a 10 year old having a cell phone. I didn’t get a cell phone until I was 21 and had two kids. It exposes them to the demons of “sexting” and all the disgusting forwards that I know damn well these kids are sending each other. It also makes it harder for me to spy on him, now that I know he knows that I check his texts periodically and I’m sure he deletes them. It allows him to receive phone calls that I am not screening because I don’t know if he’s getting them, like he would on a home phone.

All this being said, I am generally lazy. This means that I don’t want to have to call 8 parents to find my son when he is outside playing during the day, and then get stuck in long, boring conversations with people who I have no interest in befriending.

Thank god my son’s best friend here has a cool mom. We had the chance to bond when the boys were arrested last spring for stealing a skateboard, and charged WITH A FELONY!!! We literally met at the police station when they hauled them in. Sometimes violations of the law bring families closer together! Turns out, there was a 3rd kid who actually made off with the skateboard and our two sons went to the house from which the skateboard was stolen and told them what happened, but the mother believed that since our ten year olds didn’t tackle the kids and stop it, they were also involved, so all three boys were charged with larceny and burglary. Which kills me, because it was broad daylight and it was taken out of an open garage. Gavin has had his skateboard and two bikes stolen out of our garage, but we are the morons who left it open, so that’s our bad. I am not one of those mothers who think their kids do no wrong. Believe me, I was ready to hang him upside down by his toenails when the cop came to my door. But you know when your kid is lying, and I knew he was telling the truth. The other mother and I cross-examined each other's kids and their stories matched up. They had also gone back to her house and told her what happened right away, so we felt confident that they did the right thing. They ended up having to write an apology letter to the kid, which I wrote since I was not going to make Gavin apologize for something he didn’t do…it’s the principle of the thing. Had the mother come to me, I probably would’ve grounded him just for being in the vicinity, but she was a bitchface and utterly RIDICULOUS, so screw her.

Anyway…back to cell phones…

So I got a new Droid Incredible this week. It IS pretty incredible, other than the fact it doesn’t hold a charge longer than 9 hours, whether I’m using it or not. So Gavin was super pissed because he doesn’t have a texting phone, and threw a giant fit that EVERYONE else he knows has them and he’s the only one without one. He actually said it hurts his fingers to text on a normal keypad. WHAT???!!! Never mind the fact he was already grounded from it for some other infraction. But then I have my sister, who works for Verizon, get my account checked out to make sure I’m not paying too much a month…and she discovers that the little shit texted back to a commercial and now it’s charging me $20 a month!! Instead of taking it like a man, he immediately lied about it when I confronted him. So I grounded him for another two weeks. Which is more of a punishment for me, normally, but tomorrow morning I get my wisdom teeth out, so I figure I will sleep most of the weekend anyway from all the fun drugs. So it’s more of a punishment for Andy. (Callous Snicker.)

Now it’s my fault that we are moving, and that he isn’t going to have any friends, so I should be letting him spend what time he has left with the ones he has here. He gives a compelling argument, and when he gets really creative, I just want to give in because it’s impressive. Sometimes I do. I take pride in their ability to talk their way out of a situation. That’s not something that comes naturally to most people, unless you’re a politician. But I didn’t give in this time because I was pretty mad. So I have become the WORST mother, and he is about to become a social outcast because he is without his cell phone for three weeks (even though it’s not a texting phone).

I will sleep well tonight with that thought.



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Moments of an Awkward Youth Part 3

 “I don’t know what was going through my mind at the time.” I can randomly apply this phrase to just about some event, every year of my life.

For me, 6^th grade became the Ground Zero ashes from which the rest of my life rose. There could be no getting lower. There I was, with my butch hair and my stone-washed jeans with holes in the knees. Not exactly popularity material. Dressing was also not one of my strong-suits. It was very popular back then, to wear your sweatshirt inside out. But me, coming so close, yet so far away, wore a white Toys R Us sweatshirt to school, thinking I would look cool. Unfortunately, the “I’m a Toys R Us kid” phrase was clearly visable on the front side of the shirt, making me look nothing but ridiculous. (My best friends STILL TO THIS DAY BRING THIS UP.) I blame my mother, of course, for buying me the damn shirt in the first place.

I always wanted to be something more than what I was. I definitely had dreams of becoming famous, and as it turns out, the name “Keri” wasn’t going to cut it for me. And so I informed my best friend in a note, that I was changing my name to “TT” which was short for Tori. I have a need to stop here and explain that 90210 had just started, so I loved it. As I tried to pass it to her, our teacher intercepted it and not only did he read it to the class, make me write it on the chalkboard, but he also posted it in the hall on the bulletin board so the other kids could read it! This is how I KNOW that teachers are fully aware of bullying, and sometimes condone and begin it.

Another way I know, is because there were these 3 guys that were the cool guys and they called themselves, “The Brothers”. One of them used to tease my best friends and I mercilessly on the school bus. He used to stand in front of the teacher and punch me right in the face! There was also an incident in gym class that involved about 30 dodgeballs and the whole class, but I’m still sensitive about that.  Now I was a moron, and didn’t know how to fight back then, but I saw this douche bag at a friends wedding a few years ago, and it took all I could to not follow him in to the men’s room and kick his ass!!! But karma came around and took care of him in high school. He was ugly and no longer cool enough to be a “brother”, so he was left in obscurity where no one we graduated with probably even remembers he existed.

As it turned out, Keri turned out to be a completely appropriate name for a female celebrity, and that’s why I can’t to this day, watch a movie with Keri Russell in it. She stole my impending fame and she was a Mouseketeer, which was what I wanted to be more than anything. Fuck Felicity.

I was nominated on Babble's Top 50 Mom Blogs List. So pretty please take two minutes and click here: http://www.babble.com/babble-50/mommy-bloggers/nominate-a-blogger/index.aspx then scroll down to "Glamorous Life" and click on the "like" button.
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Memories of an Awkward Youth Part 2

I had several things going against me growing up. One of them was the fact that my mother was blessed with 3 daughters, and my aunt, the hairdresser, had 3 sons. My mother had NO idea how to do little girls hair. This is one of the reasons that I prayed for sons. I couldn’t imagine putting a child through the emotional scarring that I endured, just in case I too, couldn’t figure out how a barrette worked when applying it to someone else’s head.

In order to solve this dilemma, my mom made us get our hair cut really short. Really short. Like butch-short. I was still in second grade at my new school, and my teacher who never really bonded with me after the Valentine fiasco, was out sick and we had a substitute. 

Now at this point in my education, I was still a good student. I excelled in English, and my teachers had always adored me. Our substitute was giving a spelling lesson, and one of the words was “orchestra”. I was so excited because I knew it, raising my hand, bursting with excitement to be the first one in the class to figure it out when the teacher called on me, saying “You..um..are you a boy or a girl?”

Now, over the years I have tried to figure out what could have possibly made the teacher think that this was a politically correct way to address a child. Did this lady not realize that kids get made fun of at this age? Did she think I was used to being mistaken for both genders? I have no idea, but I can tell you I am 31 now and this happened when I was about 7, so it kind of fucked with me and still does.

I was so shocked and horrified, I could barely eek out the word “girl”. And this was about the time I stopped raising my hand to participate in class. The substitute would become my teacher later in elementary school, and if you think I didn’t remember this bitch the whole way up until that point, you are WRONG. Needless to say, I did not have a productive school career in 5^th grade.

I was nominated on Babble's Top 50 Mom Blogs List. So pretty please take two minutes and click here: http://www.babble.com/babble-50/mommy-bloggers/nominate-a-blogger/index.aspx then scroll down to "Glamorous Life" and click on the "like" button.
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Memories of an Awkward Youth Part 1

I relate to both of my kids in different ways, but they couldn’t be more opposite. Maybe it’s my polarizing forces from being a Gemini. Maybe I’m just bipolar. Who knows?

My sons don’t even look alike. One looks like Andy and one looks like my mom. We remind him of that every chance we get, because what 10 year old doesn’t want to look like their grandmother? Their personalities couldn’t be further apart. One is crafty, cocky and popular with the kids in his class, and the other is quiet, awkward and socially inept. Between the two, they cover the evolution I have gone through in life.

I was always able to make friends easily growing up, but I was my own worst-enemy. I guess that part hasn’t changed much. When I was in second grade, we moved out of the city and in to the suburbs. My first day of school was near Valentine’s Day, and my sister was in Kindergarten. I was walking down the hall by myself and noticed there were hearts on the bulletin boards, decorated by my peers. One of them had fallen off the board and was laying on the floor. I can’t tell you what went through my mind at the time, but I thought it would be a good idea to take it and give it to my sister as a gift to tell her I was thinking about her on her first day at school.

Here’s where it went wrong:

I didn’t fully erase the name of the kid who actually made the valentine before I added my own message of adoration. And then I actually took it to her teacher to give to her, whose classroom happened to be down the hall from the bulletin board where the other 30 valentines of the same style were hanging. So, my first day at my new school, I was hauled in to the principals office to explain where I had gotten the present for my sister.

What did I learn from this childhood blunder? The boy whose valentine I stole and had to later apologize to in writing, probably never dated me because of it. That, and use a better eraser.

In all fairness, the same boy, Joe, gave up a recess to teach me how to stand on my head… and a first crush was born. A boy-craziness that lingered, mostly unreturned for the next 10 years. And it took me about that long to start to figure out how to attract the opposite sex.




I was nominated on Babble's Top 50 Mom Blogs List. So pretty please take two minutes and click here: http://www.babble.com/babble-50/mommy-bloggers/nominate-a-blogger/index.aspx then scroll down to "Glamorous Life" and click on the "like" button.
Thanks a bunch!