Great misunderstandings - the work edition.

So, in all my years of working retail, the one thing I have always prided myself on has had to do with being able to relate to ALL kinds of customers.

Rednecks? Yeah, I speak Chilton manual.

Philosophers? I'm fluent in Proust.

Comic geeks?  I'm Oracle to your Batman.

Trashy romance lovers? Let's talk pirates, cowboys and vampires, oh my.

Businesspeople? Let's go Fish, and find out Who Moved My Cheese.

Whatever.

But today, well today, I had a situation in which I completely missed the mark.

By a mile.

By a kilometer, for all you metric lovers.

So, here's what happened.

I was having a completely nice conversation with a completely nice man about a completely nice electronic gadget we sell.

Said customer mentioned that he was somewhat visually impaired.  I took that all in stride, then demonstrated the Extra Large font feature.

So far, so good.

He was loving it.

At some point in the conversation, the gentleman mentioned that he had been having so much trouble with his PSP that he needed to get some large print books.

It didn't really make a whole lot of sense to me, but whatever.  I can relate to ANYONE.

I just figured that he couldn't see well enough to play games on the little sucker any more.

Fine.

The conversation continued, and everything was going fine.

However, the more we talked, the more he bashed his PSP.  It was giving him all kinds of problems.  It was causing him pain.  It was ruining his life.

I'm all for being a little overly dramatic, but good grief.  Your video game is ruining your life?  That's a bit much.  Just stop playing the damn thing already.

So I started responding to these comments.  After all, me and my customer, we had RAPPORT.

"Oh it's not really that bad, is it?"

Oh come on. It's not THAT terrible, is it?"

"Oh come on.  My husband has one and he likes his just fine."

Epic. Fail.

Turns out that PSP is the degenerative disease that is causing his vision loss.

Oh, and as an aside, I did NOT get the sale.

It's from the WIlliam Shatner school of singing.

At least he has a captive audience.

Ah. I love this time of year.

All my stuff is in bloom.

Even that silly wild rose bush that I had given up for dead.

Now if I can just get zj to stop picking them all...

Oh Willie. How could you?

It is the end times, people.

Life as we know it - gone in an instant.

Changed forever.

Just... gone.

Because Willie Nelson has Cut. His. Hair.

Off.

Gone.

Kaput.

Shorn.

Oh, Willie, how could you betray me this way?

Me?

You know, your biggest fan? Hello???

You know, the one that came to your concert last year while nine and a half months pregnant in the 120 degree heat outside at night and I couldn't even drink a beer?  Because hello?  Pregnant.  You know, the one who owns all your albums, legitimately purchased, not downloaded, even the ones in musical genres I do not like and you cannot sing?  Now that's dedication.

I'm crushed.

Devastated.

Because you have gone from being a semi-hot-for-an-old-guy-fabulous-guitar-player-best-songwriter-to-ever-walk-the-planet to a creepy old guy whose hat doesn't fit right.

I can only hope that your hair is going toward a good cause.

Like, maybe you donated it to Locks of Love for old people.

Or possibly it's being used in the development of a new biodiesel.

Or maybe it's being used to mop up that big oil spill.

Or, quite possibly, you are selling it on ebay to pay your growing back taxes and legal fees.

You were the last true rebel.

And now you've conformed.

Gotta go.  I think I need another beer.

Sharing is a skill we have not yet mastered.

Is there some kind of training I can get in how to do preschool crafts?

Because clearly, I am not qualified.

Zj said to me today "Mama, can we make a robot?"

Sounds easy enough, right?

I mean, for goodness sake, I have been running a multi-million dollar retail establishment for YEARS, I've balanced work and career, I've birthed two children, so one little robot shouldn't be too hard.

Right?

Right?

Fourteen hours, countless tears (mine, not zj's), and three attempts later, this is what we got.

Never mind that I had to dump out a nearly full container of Kool-Aid to make a body, and unwind a whole roll of paper towels to get some legs.  Just never you mind that.

We made a freakin' robot.

At one point, about 3 hours or so in, zj said to me "Mama, I think I changed my mind.  We don't have to make a robot any more. Can I go watch tv now?"

Oh. Hell. No.

We are gonna finish this thing if it kills us both.

I'm pretty sure I'm not qualified to be a stay at home Mama.

Wonder if it's too late to rescind my resignation?

This is my first official "Oh Dear God I Have Quit My Job. What Have I Done?" freakout. 

More to come, I'm sure.

Superhero Tuesday.

Chocolate ice cream, take 1.

It's hard to be the baby.

For the record, hand me downs suck.

And in other news, it seems as though I might have quit my job.

For real, yo.

Like... oops, I suddenly don't have a source of income, or a career path.

As in, I'm going to be a stay at home Mama.

At least for a while.

I have really, really mixed emotions about it.

I guess it has always been in the back of my mind, ever since zj was born, that I would like to be able to actually raise this kid that I birthed, instead of sending him off to virtual (albeit kind) strangers every day.

But it never seemed it the realm of... real.

After cj was born, it got sort of exponentially harder to deal, and my attention has been too split to be very good at any of my roles.

So RJ and I talked, and I talked and talked and talked and talked and talked and talked and talked and talked and talked and talked and talked and talked and talked and talked and talked we agreed that I would quit and stay home with the boys.

Easier said than done.

I've worked in what basically amounts to the same job for 16 years, and I've had my current position, with many of the same people, for more than eight years.

I knew the leaving would be hard, but I guess I had no real idea exactly how hard.

So, here I am.

Last day of work yet to be determined.

Plans to be a full time Mama imminent.

Oh hell.  What have I done?

I feel certain there will be much much much much much much more on this to come.

Failure, mj style.

I've never been one who can do things half-assed.

If I'm going to do something, I am BY GOD going to do it.

I even fail with passion and drive.

See, back around the first of the year, I decided that I would post something, anything, on the blog every day.

Come rain or shine.

I'm sort of like the freakin' post office.

Anyway, I did it.  For more than three months.

Then on Sunday, I missed a day.

Then on Monday, I missed another.

Then again on Wednesday.

And Thursday.

So...

Should I just stop blogging altogether?  Because, hello?  Failure here.

Superhero Tuesday.

Really, since we went to see Ironman II, no other superhero will do.

Hey, remember that time I went to hair school?

Ok, not really.

OBVIOUSLY not really.

See, there are some big changes coming to the J household (more on that later), and for now one of my primary goals is to live cheap.

Real cheap.

Like, Ramen noodles and vinegar instead of Windex cheap.

So, one of the first places I saw a need to trim (ha, ha - God, I'm funny) was in the boys' haircut department.

As you may remember, I make hairy babies. I have, quite unskillfully, been cutting cj's hair since the beginning. Zj, however, has only known the barber's gentle love.

Until now.

See, here's how it went down.

Zj really, really, really needed a haircut.

See?

And I decided I would give him a little trim myself.

I might have mentioned before, zj is somewhat high spirited, and perhaps just a bit active.  Just a bit.

So...

What was meant to be a bit of a trim ended up like this:

RJ may or may not be speaking to me at this point.

Hair is important to him, you know.

But I saved $10.

And it will grow back.

Surely.

An $8 yard sale trampoline + and original musical piece = a star in the making.

Facelift, day 1.

Can I hear a huge shoutout for Jessica at The Frilly Coconut for the new blog design?

She's wonderful to work with, and patient, and I heard a rumor that her design list is open again.

Head on over and check her out!

I also have to give a big shoutout to Dianna at The Kennedy Adventures, since I did stalk her blog and claim her designer as my own ;-)

A public service announcement. Brought to you by ice.

Just a little heads up here, people.


If your parents are crazy enough to buy a fridge that has the freezer on the bottom


AND


If you decide, even though your Mama told you not to, to get an ice cube to eat,


AND


If you grab it and stick it directly to your lip,


WHEN


You pull it away from your lip,


It will bleed.


A lot.


This is a public service announcement.


Thank you for your attention.

Superhero Tuesday.

He may have missed a line or two in the middle, but you get the general idea, right?

In brightest day,

In darkest night,

No evil shall escape my sight.

Let those who worship evil's might,

BEWARE MY POWER ...

Green Lantern's Light!

Love hurts. And sometimes it throws up on you, too.

Mama Makes Dinner.

On this Mother's Day, I have struggled with writing an appropriate post.

I have a ton to say about my Mama, and about RJ's Mother (but we won't go there) and about being a Mama, but nothing felt right, until I remembered this story and decided to share it, so here goes.

My Mama was always one of the hardest working people I have ever known.  All of my memories of her, from my earliest until my most recent, have her somehow in motion, doing something, cleaning something, cooking something, wiping something...

I grew up on a farm.  It was by no means a fancy farm, and when I look back on it, I wonder how we actually survived sometimes because we were poor.  Real poor.  Like... dirt poor.  But don't worry, I 'm not going to go all Laura Ingalls up in here, I just want to tell this story about the time Mama made dinner.

So anyway, here's how I remember it.

I was maybe eight or nine at the time.  Probably.  At least in that range.

We ( and I use that term VERY loosely) had spent the day working in tobacco.  I can't really remember what season we were in - setting, chopping, topping, cutting, housing, stripping, whatever, but I remember it was after dark when we got home.

See, here's how it always worked.  Mama would go out and do whatever the menfolk were doing, and do it just as well, then when we got home for the evening, Mama would begin her second job as housekeeper, laundress, cook, Mama, and everyone would get to rest because they had all put in such a long day already.

At least that's how I remember it, anyway.

So this one time, we got home, and everyone wandered off to take a bath, rest, relax, and to wait on Mama to make dinner.  Then we'd all get to eat, and Mama would get to clean up.

Hey, I didn't say it was fair, it just... was.

I was walking down the hallway toward the kitchen, and I see Mama open the refrigerator and rummage around.  Our typical dinner fare was beans & cornbread, or chicken, or gravy & biscuits, or pork chops, or something equally delightful, and that's what I expected to see come out.

Instead, I saw a pound of bologna fly, and I do mean FLY, across the kitchen and land on the table, where it slid across and almost off the table top.  At that exact same moment, Mama yelled "Supper's ready!"

For this one day, this one dinner, this one time, she had had ENOUGH.

It was the first and last time I ever saw her cut a corner, or let herself off easy.

I have a lot of those same tendencies, and as a Mama, I'm exceptionally hard on myself.

I feel a lot of guilt when I feel too tired to play, or when I serve chicken nuggets for the fourth time in a week.

And then I remember the bologna flying across the kitchen, and I remember that it's ok to give myself a break.

Once in a while.

Happy Mother's Day.

A date with a four year old.

So, in the spirit of being the worst Mom ever, I took zj to see Iron Man II today.

Yes, I know he's four.

Yes, I know it's rated PG-13.

Yes, I know he'll probably be irreversibly scared because I let him watch this stuff.

It doesn't really matter, though.  He saw the trailer on tv, and at that point, I knew we had to go.

I expected the excitement, the uncontrollable energy, the zj-ness of it.

What I did not expect was that he was going to treat it like a first date.

He demanded a shower.  He demanded I blow-dry his hair.  He changed clothes 14 times.  He snuck away and used some of RJ's cologne.  He sort of smelled like a whole busload of highschoolers off to their first dance.  He ran outside and picked me some flowers before we left (who did he learn that from????).   He asked me about a dozen times "Mama, do I look handsome?"

And of course, it freaked me out.

Not what he was doing, exactly, just that it sort of dawned on me that it was going to be my responsibility to teach him about this sort of thing for real in a few years.

I am responsible for making sure both he and cj are respectful to the girls they meet.  That they are polite.  That they are gentlemen.  That they open doors and pull out chairs and carry bags and aren't rogue-ish and that they are never, ever, ever referred to as "those hoodlum J boys."

That's a lot of pressure.

Isn't there some sort of guidebook for this stuff?

I know that what they see now, the interactions between me and RJ, the interactions between me and them, will start to form how they behave and believe for the rest of their lives.

No pressure there, right?

Parenting is hard.

I promise this is the last post I will write about going on vacation. Really.

I have terribly unattractive feet.

Not that feet are ever pretty, really, but mine are at about the top of the ugly scale.

They're fat.

They're different sizes.

They're stubby.

My toes are all gnarled and bent.

They're hairy.

I have never bothered to paint my toenails, because that's just like putting lipstick on a pig.

RJ likes to point out every so often that he loves me even though I have the ugliest feet in the world.  I think that's just mean.

My feet also tend to be a little bit on the rough side - you know, callouses, peeling skin, general funk.

However, after a few days or so walking on the beach, I began to notice a difference.

They were still ugly, of course, but they were... soft.  Smooth, even.

But then I started freaking out a little.

Because if the sand exfoliated my feet so nicely, it must have done the same for countless others before me, right?

Right?

So basically, I had been walking around in other people's dead foot skin.

For days.

Ick.

I wore my flip flops the rest of the trip.

Beauty just ain't worth it.

There are reasons why vacations only happen once a year.

So, the J family just returned from a week lounging on the beach at beautiful Pawleys Island, SC.  The weather was 80 and sunny with a light breeze every day. The beach was pristine and nearly deserted.  The company was excellent.  A good time was had by all.

Well, except for the 14 hour car ride there.

In this car was me, an inquisitive, impatient, energetic four year old, a sick 10 month old, and a husband who doesn't deal with any of the aforementioned things.

It did not start well.

We had planned to get up early and leave about 6am.  The last time we made the trip, we got there at about 4 in the afternoon, which was plenty of time to unpack, relax, look at the beach, etc.

However, RJ had a bit of a cold, so we decided at the last minute  to sleep in a bit and leave a little later. No problem.  We'd just get to the beach first thing the next morning.

Ok, so far, so good.

We're out the door at 8am.

That's when it started going downhill.

We were not entirely sure how to get there.  On our last trip, two years ago, we had some directions written out on a napkin (for real, yo) and got there with no problems.

Alas, the napkin met an untimely fate and was not available for this trip.

We have a navigation system in our car that sends directions from outer space and cost a gazillion dollars that seems to work fine, but for some reason, RJ doesn't really trust it.

He thought I was going to print directions.

I thought he was going to print directions.

The nav system thought we were cheating on it and gave us the most convoluted directions imaginable.

So, we started the trip out by backtracking about 100 miles or so.

Stupid nav system.

Anyway, once we got going, really going, things started to look up a bit.  Or so I thought.  Until, after about mile 25 or so, I hear from the backseat "Mama, I have to go potty."

We stop at the next exit and go into a McDonald's.  We use this as an excuse to get breakfast.  Hey, we're on vacation, right?  Don't judge.  Also, and this will be important later, we get a large unsweet tea, foam cup only please.

Ok, potty break number one down.

Oh, and since cj woke up that morning with his first cold EVER, imagine everything I am writing about here punctuated with the hacking cough of a sick 10 month old.

Back on the road.

At about mile 50 - "Mama, I have to go potty."

"But you just went potty.  Do you really have to go?"

"Mama I have to go NOW."

RJ swings the car into the nearest McDonald's.  I would just like to take this opportunity to give a big shout out to MickyD for having clean and easily accessible restrooms.  Anyway, as RJ is walking in, I notice he is taking his tea cup, which is by now half empty.

See, apparently McDonald's offers free refills, and so we got a free refill of iced tea at EVERY McDonald's between here and South Carolina.

Really.

I cannot make this stuff up.

And as an aside, we also stopped at approximately half a dozen Burger Kings as well.  Because they have Iron Man toys, that's why.

Soooo...  back to the trip.

After two potty breaks, a couple free tea fill-ups, we were on the road.

Just in time to run into traffic that was at a complete standstill for about an hour.

At this point, we were still on the backtracked 100 miles that the green-eyed nav system sent us on, it's 10 am, and I had decided that vacation was overrated.

This was also the point that I hear the first "Mama, can I ask you something?  When will we be at the beach?"

This was the question of the day, so to speak.  We went all Griswold up in the J car, and from that point on, it became a combination of "Mama, can I ask you something?  When will we be at the beach?" and songs where the word "poop" replaced other, more appropriate words.  You know, like "Mary had a little poop" and "Twinkle, twinkle, little poop."  You know those classics, right?

After about 6 hours I was twitching like a meth addict.

After about 8 hours, I was hugging my knees to my chest and humming tunelessly.

After about 10 hours, I was drooling out of one side of my mouth and was unable to do more than grunt.

After about 12 hours, I blacked out and was coming in and out of consciousness.

After about 14 hours, we got there.

The end.

We're Baaaaack!

And clearly, we're exhausted.

More to come.

Superhero Tuesday. The Vacation Edition.

One day is starting to look like another - Vacation, Day ???

It seemed like a good idea when we started - Vacation, Day Four.

Uncle G is cool.

Sea creatures and things - Vacation, Day 3.