Black (Bag) Friday.

For 18 holiday seasons, I worked as a bookstore manager. 

That means that for 18 Black Fridays in a row, I was at work in a bookstore, trying to maintain my patience and sanity with the whole affair.  I didn't always succeed, by the way.   

The first year after I quit working, I spent Black Friday sitting on my couch in my pajamas, feeling for all the world like I was forgetting to do something really important.

It felt like bookseller PTSD.

Anyway, I've had a couple more years since then to get used to the idea that I really don't have to go to work any more, but I can say with absolute certainty that there is nothing - NOTHING - that would make me go shopping on Black Friday.  Or pretty much any other day between Thanksgiving and Christmas.  I shop online, I shop early, and other than an occasional trip to the grocery store, I stay home between Thanksgiving and oh, say, January 15.

I really hate crowds and traffic, so my particular brand of crazy just demands it.

But this year as my Twitter and Facebook feeds and my e-mail box began to fill ups with DEALS!  LOW PRICES! and as my friends and family planned strategies for where to go stand in line for the ABSOLUTE ROCK BOTTOM PRICES OF THE YEAR!  (Well, until tomorrow, anyway!) I felt like doing something.  

But I couldn't leave my house. (See: crazy.)

I could have shopped online, I guess, but my shopping is largely done, and it would have just been for the sake of shopping, and I didn't want to do that, either.

So I created my own new tradition.

I shall call it...

(cue music)

DUHN! DUHN! DUHN!

BLACK BAG FRIDAY!

I spent the entire day cleaning out closets, organizing drawers, and collecting bags full of things to donate.  

My kids kind of hated me just a little.  Ok, maybe it was a lot.

But I held strong and kept going.

By the end of the day, I had filled FIVE large garbage bags with things to donate.  Clothes, toys, household items, books... nothing was safe from the black bag of sudden death.

By day's end, I had also taken out two large bags of things destined for the trash pile, and I had taken one bag of Zachary's old clothes to the basement to save for Cooper to grow into.

It always makes me feel slightly less crazy to clear out and declutter my house.  This time it felt even better than usual, because I felt like I was getting my house ready for the influx of STUFF that is part of Christmas.

So, yeah.  Black Bag Friday.

It just became my new tradition.

And I can't wait for next year.

On becoming a stay at home Mama - Year Three.

It's been three years since I left my job as a more than full time retail bookstore manager to become a stay at home mama to my two little boys.

In that time, my little family has faced all sorts of milestones, losses, happiness and heartaches.  It's called life, and it has certainly kept on moving.

I've written pages and pages about how it has affected me as a parent, and that was the goal, of course. To be more present and flexible to the needs of my family.

But until now, I've never put words to just how profoundly it has changed ME.

As someone of the introvert sort, in retrospect, the job I was doing for 17 years or so wasn't really a great fit for me.

Let me try to explain it.

Imagine that I'm a huge bag (not a stretch, I know) and imagine for a minute that I'm all full of popcorn.    Now in my "I'm a huge bag of salty snacks" scenario, the popcorn represents everything that is good about me, and everything that makes me who I am, like my sense of humor, my energy, my ability to get things done, my interest in things like books and music and current affairs and writing and craft projects, my patience, and everything else that goes into making up me.  Now imagine that every time I encountered someone at work, whether it was a staff member, a customer, a delivery driver, a repair person, whatever, imagine that that person was like a little bird, pecking at my fluffy, delicious popcorn.  Maybe the delivery driver only pecked away a kernel or two, and maybe the staff member who showed up with a good attitude, on time and ready to work only took one, but then the grumpy customer got about a dozen, and the repair man got about 50, and the booksellers I had to cajole into doing their jobs got hundreds of my kernels, and by the end of the day when I got home, there was nothing left in my bag except the few unpopped kernels, some salt, and those little hard shell things that always fall to the bottom of the bag.

And that's all that my family and friends got of me.

I'm the kind of person who has to expend a great deal of energy every time I interact with people, and I recharge by being alone.  I totally get that that's not how some (probably even most) people are.  Many people get refueled by spending time around people, and jobs with so many people coming at them - even in a good way - are maybe a good fit.  But that wasn't really the case for me.

The way I felt after 17 years of that, day after day, went beyond exhaustion and bordered pretty close to numb.  I was totally checked out of my own life.  I really didn't feel much. Not happiness, or sadness, or highs, or lows, or joy, or pain.  In order to protect ME, I buried myself under layers and layers and layers of nothing, just so I could keep on functioning.  Add to that the guilt I felt that I wasn't really enjoying what little time I got to spend with my family, and to put it mildly, I was a hot mess.

Now I know that people work these kinds of jobs their entire lives and are able to thrive on the chaos of it, and when I was in the middle of it, I THOUGHT I was doing fine.  Ok.  Good even, most days.  It's only after being away from it for this long that I have been able to see what a difference it's made.

About six months after I left, R said to me one day, out of the blue, "It's like you just started to breathe again."

And that's exactly what I felt.

And after I started to breathe again, I slowly started to reclaim myself, bit by bit, piece by piece.  Now, three years later, I think I've finally started to become more of the person I was meant to be, the person I really am inside.

Now my biggest stressors every day revolve around what I should make for dinner, or whether or not I will ever pass level 102 in Candy Crush.  Most complaints in my life are resolved with a cup of juice, a bandaid, or a kiss.

Physically, I feel better than I ever have.  When I stopped working, I IMMEDIATELY lost about 20 pounds without trying.  It's like the weight of the world got lifted off me.  My chronic foot pain completely disappeared even though I'm running 25 miles a week, and the weird tightness across my back and shoulders that was my constant companion (and I thought my cross to bear) went away.  Completely.

For all the years that I worked, I wore black clothes.  Black pants.  Black skirts.  Black shirts.  Pretty much every day I wore black.  I told myself that it was practical.  In reality, I think it was just kind of a reflection of how I felt.  Over the past few years, I've been slowly letting color creep back into my wardrobe, and I'm proud to say that for the first time in my adult life, the pinks, red, greens and blues in my closet far outnumber the blacks.  It feels cheerful and good.  It feels more like ME.

I'm learning how to let things go more.

I'm learning how to share more of myself, without worrying that it's not "appropriate."  I'm learning how to ask for things that I want, that are for ME, and I'm learning how to be silly again.

I'm finally learning to live the life I was meant to live.

And I know that I'm so, so thankful for the chance.

Fifteen movies to watch over and over and over.

It's the middle of January.

This means the following things are totally, completely, and utterly true:

1.  I'm grumpy.
2.  It's flipping cold.  Except when it's not.  Then it's irritatingly warm.
3.  I'm stupidly sick with some unavoidable cough/drainage/mucousy stuff that I have had every January since the beginning of time.
4.  Really all I want to do right now is lay in bed, watch bad movies and eat mashed potatoes.
5.  I'm grumpy.

I'm thinking there's a pretty good chance I have just a touch of that Seasonal Affective Disorder stuff, because I can't remember a January that I didn't feel like this to some degree.  It may also be the vestiges of a post-holiday season retail manager hangover, which I still experience occasionally like phantom limb pain or something.

This year I've decided to give in to it a little bit.  Usually when I feel like this I might stick my nose (and my crabby, crabby mind) in a good book, but since I finished the last Dresden booknothing has interested me much.

So I've been watching bad tv (let's hear it for Restaurant Impossible!) just for background noise and in order to avoid... well, pretty much everything. But the Food Network can really only keep me going for so long, so I've started re-watching some movies that are old favorites.  I think most people have a list of movies that when you see it on tv, NO MATTER WHAT, you will drop everything and watch it for just a little while - ok, until the bitter end - and it usually leaves you feeling like you just had a nice chat with an old friend.  It doesn't hurt that you can recite most of the lines right along with the actors, either.

Yeah, I have a list like that too.  So here, in no particular order, are the fifteen movies that I can (and do!) watch over and over.

1. UHF  Yes, it stars Weird Al.  Yes, it has a TERRIBLE plot.  It doesn't matter.  Any time I've been asked to name my favorite movies, this one has made the list.  From Raoul's Wild Kingdom - FLY FIFI, FLY! - to WHEEL. OF. FISH. to "Supplies!" to Stanley Kowalski's mop, this is probably the movie I quote the most often, randomly, without warning, and often at wildly inopportune times.

2.  Coal Miner's Daughter If you've ever read my blog before, you know I'm a huge country music fan, but aside from the music, this movie is crazy important to me for one reason - it started my lifelong love affair with Tommy Lee Jones.  Apparently dry, irascible old men are my thing.

3.  Blazing Saddles  I've never met a Mel Brooks movie I didn't love, but this one is hands down my favorite.  It's wonderfully inappropriate and pee-your-pants funny.  It was also considered HIGHLY controversial when it was released in 1974 (a VERY good year, by the way), and may be even more so now, but I don't love it for it's political correctness and politeness.  I love it because it never fails to make me laugh, even though I can clearly see how terrible it really is.

4.  Top Gun It's Tom Cruise before he got all weird and started jumping all over Oprah's furniture and accepting roles for which he was not suited (I'm looking at you, Jack Reacher).  It's hot guys in white uniforms singing to deserving women.  But more importantly, it's Goose.  Gah, I love Goose.

5.  Footloose - the original, of course.  What's better than a coming of age story about religion, judgey small town life (a subject I'm a bit of an expert on, by the way), great music and dancing? Nothing, in my opinion.  Nothing at all.  

6.  Gone with the WindEverybody's always "Scarlett this" and "Scarlett that" but to be honest, I think she's a brat. I'm really more of a Melanie fan.  She's sweet, kind, pure and good.  Such a shame about the dying part, though.  Oops. I guess that's what's known as a "spoiler," huh?

7.  To Kill a MockingbirdGreat books do not always equal great movies.  However, this is a major exception to that rule.  Gregory Peck is SUPERB in this movie, and if I had to guess, I'd say I've watched this movie a hundred times.  True confession time - I pushed HARD to name one of my kids "Atticus."  Sadly, I lost.  Also, I'm still bitter about it.  

8.  The Shawshank RedemptionHere's another great example of how a good book CAN be made into a good movie.  Hollywood, take note.  It can be done.   This is, in my humble opinion, Morgan Freeman's best role out of a million fantastic ones.  

9.  Lonesome DoveI mentioned irascible old men were kinda my thing, right?  Robert Duvall, Tommy Lee Jones, cowboys, justice... all the things I love.  Now TECHNICALLY this is a mini-series, but it's my list and I want Lonesome Dove on it.  So there.

10.  The IncrediblesYeah, it's a cartoon.  Yeah, it's about super heroes.  But it's so so much more.  It's actually a pretty complex story about how marriages change over time, about finding your place in the world, and about doing hard things and making sacrifices to keep your family safe.  I cry every single time I watch it.  Which is pretty often.

11.  Great Balls of Fire!Jerry Lee Lewis was tortured and brilliant and damaged and that's just my kind of thing.  Also, Dennis Quaid.... Wowza.  And when that guy that looks JUST like a young Elvis shows up in his Army uniform and says "Just take it.  Take it all." I get chills every single time.

12.  JFKA three+ hour movie about history would not normally be my thing, but I've always had such a fascination with the Kennedys that this one holds my attention time and time and time again.  And we still don't really know what happened, do we?  Not really.

13.  OverboardThis is one of those movies in which the plot can't hold water, the acting is marginal... yet inexplicably, I still love.  I think it's because the deep theme in it is that people really can change. Also, Kurt Russell in a wife beater and overalls doesn't hurt.

14.  HoosiersWhen I was a kid, my entire elementary school got to go to the theater to see this movie right after it came out, and for a poor rural elementary school like mine, this was a BIG deal.  I remember how the small theater was full of kindergarten through eighth graders who fidgeted during all the "talking" parts and cheered loudly and wildly during all the basketball scenes.  When I watched the movie again as a grown-up, it struck me how bizarre a choice that was to take a group of elementary school kids to, but I also fell truly, madly and deeply in love with Dennis Hopper's character, and he continues to be the star for me.

15.  Big Trouble in Little ChinaHere's one more "bad plot, terrible acting" example that I inexplicable love.  Hey, I can't explain it; I just live it.

How about you?  Are there movies that you can watch over and over and over?  Let me know - I need a few more to add to my list ;)

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It's beginning to look a lot like...

In my previous life as a retail manager, the holidays were deemed largely something to get through, and not anything to enjoy.  At all.

It was pretty miserable, actually.

Non-stop work, very few days off, shopping for gifts in the few spare minutes I did have...  Yeah.  Most of my retail Christmas experiences have all melded into a blur of memories of crowded stores, upset customers who waited till the last minute to pick up the perfect gift because there was a whole stack of them RIGHT THERE sometime in November, and rushed family holiday celebrations because my one day off in the middle of all the chaos was too short to cram everything into.

Fast forward to today.

I'm coming up on my third Christmas season without a retail job.

I think the first year I was in some sort of post-retail PTSD and I frantically made all the cookies in the world and more candy than 12 sane families could consume and wore myself out with preparations and cooking and over the top decorations and basically when it was all over I felt pretty much the same way I did when I was working.

Last year was better, but I still swung wildly in the direction of trying to make up for all the years that I didn't really participate in holiday festivities.

But this year I think I've got it.

A little distance from my crazy retail days.

A little perspective about what's really important to me and to my family.

So yes, I will bake.  And yes, I will decorate.  And yes, I will entertain, and that will stress me out.  Some.

But I got an early start, and I've finished making and/or buying many of my gifts already, and my Christmas cards, which are usually a huge ordeal, are done.  Here's a sneak peek:

Anybody care to guess the theme?

I've been crafting up some special things for the boys, like these awesomely cool Christmas ornaments:

 

I found a tutorial on how to make them right here, and they were super easy - thank you Pinterest for once again making me look like a rock star.

And next up on my to-do list is sewing up some matching pajama pants for the boys to wear on Christmas Eve and morning.  I found some Grinch fabric on eBay for cheap that I think will do quite nicely:

I'm also in the process of looking for a service or giving project for me to do with the boys, maybe something like my friend Dianna is doing with her kids through Operation Christmas Child.

 So yeah, I feel saner this year, and less like I'm going to let Christmas consume me whole, as it has in years past.

Instead, I'm purposefully and deliberately picking and choosing what I will do based on what's important to my family.

And I'm not going to stress about it at all.

Well, not too much, anyway.

Following the rules.

I am a lifelong rule follower.

I don't know what exactly made me this way.  I don't have particularly vivid memories of either one of my parents being obsessive rule followers, or having particularly strict rules I was expected to follow at home.  I do remember being pretty young - maybe six or seven - and wondering why some of the other kids in my class were always acting up or doing things that the teacher said not to.  It made me nervous watching them misbehave, even when they didn't get caught.

Weird kid, I was.

But from some of my earliest memories, the whole concept of rebellion and rule-breaking just didn't make sense in my head.  "But the teacher said to not talk when she left the room," I would think to myself - not out loud, of course! - and my righteous indignation at all the little rebels would swell up in my chest until I felt like bursting with it.

Some things never change.

I'm still a rule follower.  And maybe I've learned to hide it a little better than I did at six or seven, but I still get a flash of righteousness whenever I see someone blatantly disregard a rule.

I have little use for people who don't obey traffic laws.  Speeding is for losers.  People who don't use their turn signals should be shot on sight.  Speeding up to beat a red light?  What a horrible person that must be.

There are few things that bring out my passive aggressive tendencies like someone who cuts line somewhere.  "Oh no, YOU go right ahead." I think. "CLEARLY you are more important than the 30 people who have been waiting for a turn LIKE GOOD CITIZENS."  But I only think it.  Of course.   Sixteen items in your basket in the "15 items or less" lane?  Don't think for a minute that I'm not counting them silently to myself as you put them on the conveyer belt.

A few months ago I read an article about some McDonald's manager somewhere who called the police on a mom who refused to make her kids put on socks in the restaurant's Playplace.  I don't remember all the details of exactly what happened, but I do remember the general tone of the comments, which was rousingly in the mom's favor to the tune of "Good for her!" and "It's MY choice about whether or not to put socks on my kids."

Hmmm...

I beg to differ.

It IS totally your choice about whether or not to put socks on your kids - at home.  Or a lot of places that don't have a no-sock rule.  It's also your choice about whether or not to let your kids play in a McDonald's germ-covered-bug-infested-ketchup-smeared Playplace (I do let my kids go there occasionally, by the way, against my better judgement) but all my hairs were standing on end as I read comment after comment giving kudos to this mom for yelling and cursing at the manager there, who was, for all intents and purposes, just doing his job.  Well, up to calling the police.  That was a bit much, I think.

Maybe it's just my natural rule-following tendencies.

Maybe it's all the years I spent as a retail manager enforcing so many rules I lost count, even when I didn't really think they were smart or good or useful.

But really?  Either play by the rules, or go home.

Is the "you must wear socks" rule a good one?  I have no idea.  I don't know it's origins or if there is some underlying reason for it or if some corporate bigwig just thought it up over a power lunch one day.

But I do know that it's not a rule I'm willing to risk possible arrest over.

My kids seem to be going in opposite directions on this "rule-following" business.  Zachary has never met a rule he didn't try  to find a way out of, around, or over.  Cooper gets worked up over the littlest perceived deviations from what is "right," like if he sees me sit down at R's computer for a minute I will immediately get chastised. "Mama, that's DADDY'S 'puter.  You NEVER use Daddy's 'puter.  You unnerstan me?"

So yeah, I guess we've got some work to do on what the rules actually are, huh?

How about you?  Are you a rule follower?  A bit of a rebel?  Something in between?

Approachability.

I don't really make friends easily.

It's not that I'm not a great person or anything, I'm just... hard to get to know.  I'm reserved.  I don't exactly exude warmth and kindness.  I'm pretty closed off.  I'm awkward around people.  Speaking to strangers terrifies me.  Hell, speaking to people I know terrifies me most of the time.  I know these things about myself, and I'm perfectly ok with it.  I have a very few very close friends and that's exactly how I like it.

In the two plus years since I left my retail clerk job, my approachability level has bottomed out big time.  It used to be impossible to snap out of my "happy bookseller" routine any time I was around people, so much so that I would occasionally find myself assisting customers in stores in which I did not work.   Now when I'm out and about I look studiously at the floor, never - NEVER - make eye contact, and avoid idle chitchat at all costs, as is more fitting my general nature.

Except there's a little problem.  Now that zj is getting older and having activities and such, I find myself - quite often - in close proximity with other mothers in the same situation.  And I don't want to seem unfriendly, exactly, so I try to make myself a little more open to the whole random-stranger-talking-to-me business.

Then the other day at zj's Tae Kwon Do class, someone spoke to me.  "You're so-and-so's mom, aren't you?"  Um, no, but it just so happens that I know who so-and-so's mom actually is, because I had noticed her several times.  She is the person who always, and I do mean always, looks exactly like this:

So I (awkwardly) cleared up the confusion.  Then, a couple days later, someone ELSE confused me with so-and-so's mom.  By the way, aside from a vague sense of brownish-reddish hair, she and I look nothing alike.  Nothing at all.  She's 6 inches taller than me, probably 10 years younger and she doesn't wear glasses.  

But it did make me wonder.  What about this woman was similar to me? Why would people keep confusing us?  OHGODOHGODOHGOD do I look that pissed off and unhappy all the time?!?!?!   Um, yeah, probably.

So right there I vowed to start working on my approachability a little.  I came home and spent an hour in front of the mirror practicing my facial expressions, trying to find one that said "I'm friendly! (But not too friendly.)  I'm approachable! (But don't actually talk to me!) I'm not a total bitch! (I'm just partially a bitch!)  

Cj walked up to me while I was practicing my calm, serene, friendly, accessible, sociable, amiable expression and said "I WANNA MAKE THAT FACE TOO, MAMA!" then looked at me like this:

So yeah, I guess that still needs a little more work.

Next I decided I would try to strike up a conversation with someone. Anyone.  I'm friendly!  I'm approachable!  I can do this!  My chosen victim target was a  guy I see at zj's bus stop regularly.  Usually we both stand just stand there checking our phones, awkwardly avoiding eye contact until the bus pulls up and we can each talk to our own kids, but on this particular day he had brought his dog with him, and that seemed like a great jumping off point.  People love talking about their pets, right?

"Pretty dog," I said tentatively.  Then I cleared my throat and spoke a little louder.  "What kind is he?"

He looked up from his phone, startled.  "Well, SHE is a PIT BULL.  THEY GET A BAD RAP, YOU KNOW!" he shouted.  "BUT SHE'S FRIENDLY!  SHE'S NOT DANGEROUS!  SEE?  SEE HOW FRIENDLY SHE IS?!?!" he shouted, while the dog, excited by all the noise, began to jump up on him and tried to eat his nose off.  "SHE'S  GENTLE AS A KITTEN!  SHE'S JUST A PUPPY!  YOU HAVE TO GIVE HER A BREAK!  SHE'S JUST LEARNING!!!" he continued to yell as he fought his gentle-as-a-kitten just-a-puppy off his face.  "I HOPE YOU DON'T HAVE A PROBLEM WITH PIT BULLS!" he practically screamed, batting the just-a-puppy down and away from the tender flesh around his eyes.

I assured him I had absolutely NO problems with pit bulls of any kind, even flesh-eating ones, then looked away, pulled out my phone and began to frantically check Facebook and Twitter and e-mail and whatever else I could think of so as to look EXTREMELY, IMPORTANTLY, RABIDLY busy so this guy would stop shouting at me about his dog. 

After that, I decided that maybe this "being friendly" business isn't really all that important.  It sure doesn't seem worth the effort and trouble, so I think I'm just going to be done with it.  Done.  All done. 

If you need me, I'm going to be the one over here in the corner, alone, glaring at you.  

It's my natural state, and who am I to try to fight nature?

Weekends.

Since the tender age of 19 when I got my first real job in a bookstore, I've never really understood the whole concept of weekends.

Saturday and Sunday were the busiest retail days of the week; therefore, they were pretty much always work days for me.

This trend continued for the next, oh, 17 years or so.

I would hear people talking about "weekends" like it was some magical time of fun and frolic, as in "So what are you going to do this weekend?" or "I've got big plans for the weekend" or "I hope you have a great weekend!"

This. Does. Not. Compute.

Well meaning customers would mention weekends to me and I would answer, quite self-righteously, "Well, I'll be here all weekend.  Working.  Someone has to work so you have a place to shop, you know."  They I would smile my nicest so they would know I was being all friendly about it.  I wasn't, by the way.


The UPS man who brought our packages to the bookstore was the worst.  Over the years I met no fewer than a dozen UPS men, and they all had the same patter of small talk.  It's like days 5-9 of UPS Man 101 Training went like this: "Ok, you're going to meet a lot of people and it's impossible to remember everybody's name, so you can get away with calling the women 'Lady.'  Try this.  'Hey Lady, how you doing today?'  If you can throw in a wink/click maneuver, even better.  Oh, and talk to them about weekends.  Everybody loves weekends, right?"


I would give him hell about it.  It's perfectly acceptable to be bitchy to the delivery guy, especially when he says the same damn thing to you every Friday for six years - "Have a great weekend!" - and you respond the same way - "I have to work all weekend, you asshat."

Ah, memories.

But then I quit working.

And then zj started school.

And slowly, it began to dawn on me that those two "S" days really were different from all the others.

No dragging a tired kid out of bed every morning and forcing "just one more bite, no you have to eat some fruit, too and sit up please. SIT UP NOW" down his throat before trying to get him ready "brush your teeth.  No, you can't just stand there you actually have to put the toothbrush in your mouth and move it around.  MOVE IT AROUND.  MOVE.  IT. AROUND!"

No homework.  No schedules to follow.  Nowhere to be.  Nowhere to go.  Total freedom.

So now we spend the weekends taking long walks:

And throwing rocks:

And playing video games:

And... actually, I don't know what the hell this is, but we do a lot of it anyway:

Oh, and we sleep in and eat a big breakfast while reading the paper and watching cartoons, and we don't fight about eating vegetables, because it's the weekend and we stay in out pajamas all day if we want to because HELLO!  it's the weekend and we don't do housework or laundry or anything at all that we don't want to do.  Because it's the weekend, of course.  And every Sunday night, we have pizza and watch a movie together, because the weekend is almost over and we're gonna celebrate right up till the bitter end.

Yeah.  Weekends.  I get it now.

And I can't wait until the next one.

The boys' bathroom.

It doesn't LOOK all that scary, right?

I sit here in front of my computer typing away.

It's not because I have anything profound to say, really.

It's because I'm avoiding something.

I'm avoiding my most hated, most dreaded, most loathed of all tasks.

See, it's time to...

Cue ominous music.

Clean the boys' bathroom.


*Duh-duh-DUH!*


First, let me say that I realize just how fortunate I am to have a separate bathroom for the boys.  I'm THRILLED that I don't have to share my personal private bathroom space with them and all their bodily fluids and little boy funk.

But cleaning their bathroom is BY FAR the worst job I've ever had to do, and coming from someone who worked for seventeen years in a retail store that had public restrooms, that's saying a LOT.  Lord, the things I saw...  I'm still not sure how women manage to pee on the walls.  Men, I get, but women...  It's anatomically impossible.  Except, somehow, apparently it's not.

I was definitely one of those stupid "I will never ask you to do anything I wouldn't do myself" kinds of managers, which means every time somebody pooped in a urinal or flushed a diaper and caused an overflow, guess who got the call?  Yeah, me.  Once when I was an assistant manager, a customer approached me and said "Your men's room needs attention."  Uh-oh.   That's never good.  Also, he looked kinda green when he said it.  Expecting to walk into a giant mess, I suited up - rubber gloves on, trash bags ready, mop bucket prepared, plunger in hand, only to walk in and see... nothing.  No shit dripping from anywhere, no overflowing toilets... I kicked open the first stall.  All clear.  Whew.  I kicked open the second stall, and there I saw it.  In the toilet was the largest poop I have ever seen in my life.  It was perfectly round and roughly the size of a cantaloupe.  Flushing just made it swirl around, but it was too big to actually go down.  Finally, I resorted to breaking it up with the stick end of the plunger so it would flush.  Afterwards, I threw the plunger in the trash, and the manager blamed the cleaning crew for stealing it.  I never said a word.  Some things, you just don't talk about.

But I digress.

To be honest, I'd rather be back in the land of giant poops and toilet paper all over the floor than to have to clean zj and cj's bathroom.

'Cause it's RANK, y'all.

I mean, I clean it more often than I do any room in my house, and while that's not saying a lot, really, it still amazes me how they can manage to pee on everything in there.  In one bathroom trip.  And I mean EVERYTHING.

And the smell.  Lord, the smell.  It's something between locker room and sewer, with just a touch of old garbage can.

Seriously, how can two little little boys cause such an atrocity?

I can only imagine that this will get (*gag*) worse as they get older.

Ok, forget it.  I just talked myself out of it,  I'm not going to clean their bathroom.

I probably need to start building up a tolerance to it, right?

Eyes of blue.

Cj is not really the social sort.

He loves me, and sitting on my lap is his favorite hobby.

He adores his daddy, tolerates his brother more often than not, and has  grown fond of several aunts, uncles and cousins over the past few months.

Other than that, though, he really has little use for other people.

Since I'm a bit of a homebody, too, this usually isn't an issue.  However, we occasionally have to venture out into big bad world to do necessary things like buy milk and bread and eggs, and these little excursions are often challenging for cj.

Mainly because everywhere we go, all the flippin' old people try to talk to him.

It's just a THING, I guess, to talk to little kids.  Maybe it's what normal people do.  Personally, I try to avoid speaking directly to anyone I don't share a house or some sort of genetic material with.  It's just the way I am, and it's served me well for 37 years.


Last week, cj and I were out doing a bit of Christmas shopping at the Dollar Tree - hey, don't judge, times are hard, ya know - and we passed a possibly 108 or 109 year old lady in the aisle.  Of COURSE, she had to try to chat cj up.

"WHAT PRETTY BROWN EYES YOU HAVE," she screamed at him.  I guess she was maybe perhaps just a BIT hard of hearing.

Usually when cj is faced with a stranger trying to interact with him, he does some sort of strange twitchy shoulder-to-ear move, averts his gaze, and occasionally barks at them.

He was feeling brave on this day, though.  Maybe it was the feeling of empowerment he gets from shopping at the Dollar Tree.  I can afford anything in this store!!!  Anything at all!!! Oh wait, that's me.

Anyway...

"No, Bebe Booper (Baby Cooper) bwue (blue) eyes," he answered.  Totally incorrectly, by the way.

Now I know I'm a bit biased, but I think cj's definitely BROWN eyes are amazingly beautiful.  I feel certain that these eyes will get him out of all sorts of trouble in his lifetime, and possibly INTO trouble of another sort...

See?

But anyway, back to the story.

"No, Bebe Booper (Baby Cooper) bwue (blue) eyes," he answered.

"OH NO!" the little old lady shrieked.  "YOU HAVE BROWN EYES."

"BWUE," cj said firmly, and turned his head away, because that was THAT.

"NO, YOUR EYES ARE DEFINITELY BROWN," the little old lady bellowed.

Seriously?  You're going to come into the Dollar Tree on a Thursday morning and pick a fight with a two year old?  Ok, lady, whatever.  You probably deserve whatever's coming to you.

"BWUE BWUE BWUE BWUE!!!!" cj screamed, then began to hiss and bark at her.  Typically hissing is a last resort for cj, reserved for rare occasions like when I insist on a nap or refuse a sucker.  The barking's pretty typical, though.

This exchange was quickly escalating in volume and before too long we were gathering a bit of an audience.  Apparently yelling matches between two year old brown eyed boys and Methusleah aged ladies are not the norm in the Dollar Tree.  It's more a Wal-Mart thing, I guess.

At this point, I turned the cart around, dodged several displays, and made for the door.

Once we were safely strapped in the car and heading home, I could breathe again.

Fighting with a little old lady in the middle of a store is not my idea of a good time, and I wanted to just forget all about it.

Cj, however, had a different way of handling it.

All the way home, he kept muttering under his breath "Bebe Booper no bwown eyes.  Bebe Booper BWUE eyes."

 Awesome.

At 2 and not quite a half, not only is he anti-social and willing to argue his convictions even when he's dead wrong, now he's a grudge holder, too.

Can't wait to see what happens when he's three.

My liquor store.

I live in a wet county that is surrounded by several dry counties.

This has absolutely nothing to do with the weather.

For you people who actually live in the world and haven't heard of this concept, this is what it means.

The county I live in sells liquor.  There are liquor stores.  You can buy a case of beer at the gas station.  You know, it's like... civilization.

In the dry counties around me, this is not the case.

There are no liquor stores.

You can't buy beer.  Or wine.  Or vodka.  Or gin.  Or tequila.

Bootlegging still exists.

When a wet county exists in the middle of several dry counties, there are usually a plethora of liquor stores.  This is certainly true in my situation.  Directions to my house include the phrase "Go over the bridge and past all the liquor stores," and everybody knows exactly where I'm talking about.

It's high class out here in the boonies, y'all.

Anyhoo, I picked MY liquor store early on, based on a couple things.  1) It was on the side of the road that prevented me from crossing the street and/or making a left turn - because I HATE to make left turns - and 2) It has a drive-thru.  As the Mama of two very active little boys who could do a shitload of damage in a place full of glass bottles, I appreciated the option of pulling up to a window and placing my order.  Also, they always had suckers there for the kiddos, because who would go through a liquor store drive-thru unless you had a carload of kids, right?

What I didn't count on was was the fact that the lady who is ALWAYS on drive-thru duty, 24 hours a day, six days a week (liquor stores are still closed on Sundays out here in the wild, ya know, because of God) would stay drunk at work and would be largely unable to fill any order that was more complicated than "a case of Bud Light, please."

I occasionally get a wild hair and try different tactics to see if she will be able to do something crazy like, I don't know, sell me a bottle of wine.  Last week, I thought that if maybe, just maybe, I went early enough in the morning, right at opening time, that she perhaps wouldn't be too drunk to help me buy wine without getting out of the car and dragging my kids inside the place.

Lazy and entitled.  That's me.

I pulled up to the drive-thru and waited patiently for her to come to the window.  Minutes pass, and she finally woke up and opened the window.  Uh-oh.  She had recently moved into Hangover City, from the looks of her.

"Good Morning," I said cheerfully.  "I'd like a 12 pack of Bud Light Lime in the bottle and two bottles of Oliver Soft Red wine."

Blank stare.

"A 12 Pack of Bud Light Lime in bottles and two Oliver Soft Reds, please."

Blank stare.

"A 12 PACK OF BUD LIGHT LIME IN BOTTLES AND TWO BOTTLES OF OLIVER SOFT RED WINE!" I screamed.

"PLEASE!"

Something switched on in her alcohol-soaked brain, and she started moving around.  First up, she pulled out a handful of suckers, which she thrust at me, then she turned and wandered off in the direction of the beer.

She came back toward me with a case of beer, clearly cans, and no wine.  She then put it on the counter, grabbed a second handful of suckers which she passed out the window to me, and started to ring my sale.

"Um, excuse me?  I'm sorry (I really wasn't.  I don't know why I always feel compelled to apologize to  other people when I tell them they're wrong.) but that looks like cans.  I asked for bottles.  And also, my wine?  The Oliver Soft Red?"

She reached down under the counter and I saw my life flash before my eyes as I envisioned a gun coming up and pointing at my face and OH MY GOD I'M TOO YOUNG TO DIE!  I DON'T EVEN HAVE A TATTOO YET!  handed me a bunch of doggie treats.  Um, ok?  Thanks?  My kid will love these?  I guess pet owners use the drive-thru, too.  Then, once again without saying a word, she turned and wandered off toward the beer.

She was back relatively quickly with what appeared to be the correct beer.  And still no wine.  As she started ringing it up, I prompted gently, "Um, my wine?'  Her response once again was to wander away without looking up.  She came back with two bottles of wine that she immediately put into a paper bag.   We finished our transaction smoothly, I declined more suckers, and I was on my way.

When I got home, I put my beer in the fridge and took the wine out of the bags.  It was Oliver Soft White.  Whatever.  Close enough.  Also, and somewhat inexplicably in my bag I found several Slim Jims which I had not paid for.

So here I sit, drinking my white wine, eating a free Slim Jim and tossing doggie treats up in the air for the boys to catch in their mouths and bring back to me.

Tomorrow, I'm planning to go back through the drive-thru to get some rum.

I can't wait to see what I come home with this time.

An open letter to the lady I was rude to in Wal-Mart.

Dear Lady,

First, I'd like to thank you for taking SUCH an interest in my little family.

Yes, I'll agree with you - I have two very cute boys.  And yes, they have a LOT of energy.

How wonderful for all of us that we were able to cross paths down EVERY SINGLE AISLE, even when I went out of my way to try to avoid you.

Also, I'l like to take a moment to thank you properly for all the unsolicited parenting advice you had to offer.  Clearly your wisdom in raising children knows no bounds!  I think it's a wonderful thing that your boys -spirited little scamps at that age! - were able to calm right down when given a little task or chore to help their grocery-shopping Mama out.  How wonderful for you that having your boys pick out which pork-n-beans to buy - one big can or two little ones, Mama? - made them into such well-mannered little children while you shopped, but I'm afraid my boys, one of whom I cannot catch and who has knocked down three displays and two people, and the other of whom is strapped into the cart, throwing his entire body violently backwards and yelling "HELP! HELP!" at the top of his voice in an effort to extract himself from the cart, may be beyond the "choosing which marshmallows to buy" stage.  But you're right.  It's excellent advice.  I'll certainly consider trying that next time we shop.  Which, of course won't be HERE, because I'm pretty sure we're going to be asked to leave and never come back if zj breaks anything else...

Anyway, is that your son with you, all grown up now?  How wonderful that he takes time out of his busy day to take his Mama to the grocery.  Such respect!  Oh, he's not that busy because he still lives at home in your basement, is unemployed, and spends his day looking at porn on the internet and playing World of Warcraft?  Well, still, it's nice of him to bring you out.

I'd like to take this opportunity to apologize to you for acting so rude and snappish after I was nice to you for the first 15 times you butted in and I'd also like to apologize for telling your to mind your own damn business.  We're in this together, you and I.  Raising boys is a tough business sometimes, and I certainly shouldn't have snapped at someone who was so CLEARLY on my side.  I was just a little stressed out at that moment, trying to get the bottle of syrup out of cj's hand, since he had somehow managed to open it, and to try to catch zj before he ran into the elderly gentleman with the walker and oxygen tank again. 

You understand, right?

And surely you forgive me.

We Mamas of boys have to stick together.

The pick-up fail. With Fresh lemon scent.

I went to a funeral a few weeks ago.

And as is befitting a funeral, I combed my hair, dutifully applied tasteful make-up, and wore something that was NOT yoga pants or ripped up cut off blue jeans.

I looked HAWT, y'all.  In a totally appropriate funeral-going kind of way, that is.

Anyway, after the funeral was over, I took full advantage of the fact that my kids were at the sitter's and ran some errands.  Because we all know that taking your kids to the grocery is something that should be avoided at all possible costs.  Right?

So anyway, I'm in Wal-Mart (I know, I know) totally minding my own business and trying to select floor cleaner - see, I have these lovely dark hardwood floors that are quite possibly the most difficult thing in the world to keep clean.  They were perfectly lovely for the two adults (me and RJ) who picked them out, but sorta a bad call for ALL THESE CHILDREN AND THEIR EVER-LOVING CRUMBS.  WHERE DO ALL THE CRUMBS COME FROM!?!?!?!  WHERE?!?!!?

Ok.  Whew.  I'm back.

ANYWAY, as I'm standing there, minding my own business, looking at the floor cleaner, out of the corner of my eye, I see somebody come up beside me to look at floor cleaner, too.

I did the glance-backward-move-sideways-slight-smile-no-eye-contact thing that is common in these situations, and continued my search for this:

which is the only floor cleaner that makes a dent in my dirt situation, for some reason.  For some other reason - like apparently the universe hates me - it is difficult to find.  

Then, over my shoulder I hear "Excuse me."

And then again, "Excuse me."

So I turned around to see a fairly tall military guy beside me.  Honestly, that's all I remember about what he looked like.  After a blue million years of working a retail job, I learned to pick two totally non-offensive characteristics to by which to identify random people who are asking you for help.  Red haired woman, blue scarf.  Teenage boy, red t-shirt.  Tall guy, wearing a military uniform.  

I carefully avoided all eye contact, staring at the mops past his left shoulder instead.

"Yes?" I replied.

He smiled.

"I was wondering which of these is the best," he said, gesturing vaguely toward the cleaners I had been staring at so intently just moments before.

So I did what all good former retail clerks who don't and never have worked at that store or sold that particular item do.  I began to ask questions.  

"What kind of floor is it?  Hardwood? Vinyl? Tile? What have you used before?  Why didn't it work for you? What kind of mop do you use? Do you prefer a scented or an unscented cleaner?"

I continued to ask questions and offer advice on each brand.

"Now, I've used this brand before and I like it, it does a pretty good job on my tile, but it's NOT for hardwood.  And this one has a weird smell that I don't particularly like.  And I think it's highway robbery to pay this much for this one..." 

And on, and on, and on.

At some point, his smile began to fade and his eyes began to glaze over just a little bit.

I decided to make my exit.

"Well, good luck getting your floors clean." Awkward laugh.  "I've got to run now."

At this point he was just looking sort of dazed and sort of shaking his head, but still holding on to the bottle of cleaner I had recommended.  

I grabbed up two bottles of my favorite cleaner and headed toward the front to pay.

I walked on, congratulating myself for being such a good citizen.  I'm so helpful!

Right before I rounded the corner, I glanced back, just to see the soldier guy put back the floor cleaner and walk away without buying anything.

BLAM!

Lightbulb moment.

He didn't care about floor cleaner.

He was just trying to start a conversation with me.

GASP!

And me, a married woman.

He was totally wasting my precious kid-free minutes.

Well, fine, then.

Serves him right if his floors are streaky forevermore.

I can think of few fates worse than that.

Zombie toes, part two. Or, about my recent shoe fitting.

I have foot issues.  Feet issues.  Whatever.  It's both of them.  One just more than the other.

Anyway, here's a little background.

My feet are small.  Not, "awww... how cute, she wears a 6" small, but more "awww... all her shoes have sparkles and cartoon characters because she has to shop in the kid's department" small.  Now, that has a few benefits.  Kid's shoes are generally much cheaper than adult shoes.  Ok, it has ONE benefit.  Try shopping for cute hooker heels for date night in a size little girls 3.5.  It ain't easy, folks.  Sadly, it's possible, but it ain't easy.

Oh, and also, one foot is wider than the other one.  Like, by half a size or so.  Enough to matter.

I've stumbled - literally - through my adult life wearing sandals, Crocs, and too-big boots, and I've managed just fine.

Up until now.

Up until running.

Once I started running for real, it became a quest to find running shoes that actually fit.

I went through about six pairs of running shoes, feeling all the while like Goldilocks.  "This one's too tight."  "This one's too big."  "This one's a device of torture."  You know the drill.  Being a huge Nike fan, and since most Women's shoes start in a size 5.5 or 6, my choices were somewhat limited.  Ok, they were incredibly limited.  I finally settled in on a pair of Nike Pegasus, size 5 wide to accommodate my fat foot, and was happy with my choice.

Until I started putting in some real mileage in them.  Three miles, fine.  Five miles, ok.  Eight or nine miles at a time, and my toenails all started turning black.  And falling off.  And then the part underneath the falling off part would turn black again.  And get blisters.  And ooze.

Ug. Ly.

And just in time for sandal season!

So, I did what any semi-intelligent person would do.

I ignored it.

For a REALLY long time.  Like, until I only had two toenails left.

Finally, RJ intervened and insisted I go get fitted at a real running shoe store, by someone who had a clue... So, off we went.

We walked into the cute little store, ooohed and aaahed over the cute little shoes we saw for a minute, then were approached by an helpful and earnest looking young man.  "What can I help you with today?"

"My wife needs new running shoes." RJ isn't one to mess around.

"Ok, come on over here and have a seat and" - glancing down at my sandal-clad feet - "OH DEAR GOD!  I'll be right with you.  In a minute.  As soon as I do... something... in the back... for a minute.  Just a minute."


He quickly made his way over to a couple other employees and began to whisper frantically under his breath, all the while making large hand gestures and carefully avoiding looking in my direction.  There was a quick game of rock, paper, scissors, which he lost - Dumbass.  Everybody knows you NEVER pick paper - then he headed back toward us, trying not to stare at my feet.  He failed miserably.

It's like that thing when you see someone who is morbidly obese, or only has 2 limbs, or has a hole where his nose should be.  You KNOW you shouldn't stare, but you don't want to be obvious about NOT LOOKING, so in the end, you don't know where to look at all and you end up looking at his crotch or something, which is WAY more comfortable for everyone.

Yeah, it was kinda like that.

Just as he shored himself up and started to do his duty, a lady, clearly his supervisor, walked up and asked him to go wrap a knee, which I assume is code for "I don't think you can handle this; go in the back, eat a Snickers, drink some water, take some deep breaths, and get over it.  We all have nightmares.  This is yours."

Anyway, the lady stepped in and took over our transaction like a pro.  She glanced at my feet, dook a deep breath, and said "Looks like you need some new shoes.  What I see there is never good."

At this point, she began to measure, assess, test, pull, push and shove my feet around.  I ran on a treadmill for a few minutes, and was labeled an "overpronator," which always makes me think of big noses for some reason, but really means I run all knock-kneed, kinda like Forrest Gump.

Then she started bringing out the shoes.

First pair, too big.

Second pair, too big.

Third through fiftieth pairs,  too big.

Along the way, there were a few lame jokes about my wearing shoes that light up, etc.  Yeah, heard it all before, thanks.  Anyway, finally, I said "When I buy little girl's dress shoes, I usually get buy a 3.5."

She went to the back again, and came out with a pair of Brooks Universal Platform stability shoes, size 4 in little girl's.  They have purple daisies on them, because - Hello!  Little Girl's!

And they fit.

Assured that my life would change now that I had shoes that fit, I set out to run 13.1 miles the next day.

Wearing my new shoes, on the advice to the nice lady who seemed to know what the hell she was talking about.

Yeah, bad call.

At the half mile mark, they started to tingle a little bit.  By mile two, my left foot was throbbing.  By mile five, I was vomiting from the pain, and I have a pretty extreme tolerance for pain.  Just ask the nurse who threatened to tie me to my bed when I was walking around 4 hours after my last c-section.  By mile 8, I had taken it off and was walking barefoot.

After the race, I've done a handful of easy runs in these on the treadmill, and although the searing pain hasn't returned, my feet hurt in places that my feet have never hurt before.  Like the heel.  And the bottom.  And the top.  And the sides.

So it's back to square one for me as far as running shoes go.

Anybody out there know of some shoe elves who might come over in the middle of the night and make me a new pair of running shoes?  Or maybe I could just borrow a pair of theirs.  They would probably fit.

  

That one time that I stole something from the Wal-Mart.

This post is brought to you by Mama Kat's Pretty Much Famous Writer's Workshop.  And by prison.  Which is where I'll go if any police officers or Wal-Mart loss prevention representatives read this post.



Long ago and far away, I had a high-powered career as a retail bookstore manager, where high-powered equals I worked a lot, career equals I got a 15 year pin, and manager equals I was the one who got to clean the bathrooms whenever someone had explosive diarrhea all over the walls.

It was a glamourous job, filled with travel (twice a year we got to stay in a hotel near the airport in Columbus, Ohio) and rewards unimaginable.  It was leading up to one of the trips that I began, and ended, my life of crime.

Here's some background.  At this point, we had a Regional Director (read: big bucks, no actual work) who believed in building what he called shared memories, which to him meant that at a three day meeting, we got to dress up in three different ridiculous outfits and sit in meetings all day dressed like that so as to lose any shred of dignity we may have once possessed all the while being gently goaded and/or violently threatened to SELL MORE STUFF.  Ah, how I miss those days.

This particular year, Day One was to be Dress As Your Favorite Character From a Book Day, Day Two was Dress As Your Favorite Sports Hero Day, and Day Three Was Hippie Day.

Good times.

I got online and ordered one of these, ironed a red "A" on the chest, and viola, I was Hester Prynne from The Scarlet Letter.   She's not really my favorite anything, but she's totally recognizable, even to a room full of bookstore managers dressed up mostly as Harry Potter, Hermione, Sookie Stackhouse and Harry Dresden.  I really love Caddy Compson from Faulkner's Sound and the Fury, but didn't want to spend the entire day explaining who I was.  Ok, Day One, check.

For Day Two, since I have exactly zero sports heroes, I - you guessed it - got online and ordered a baseball jersey with "The Beers" on the front, and "12 oz." on the back.  Drinking beer is a sport where I'm from.  Really.  I've medaled a time or two.  Day Two, check.

At this point, I had nearly half a week's salary invested in costumes for a meeting that was designed to tell us there would be no raises that year (true story), I decided to shop for my final costume at Goodwill.  Hippies donate stuff, right?  Anyway, I found some stuff, and used my mad sewing skills, an ugly skirt and a pair of $2 jeans to create these awesome pants:

Home Ec class for the win!

I also found some ugly platform shoes that looked like they were made out of hemp for $2, a vest for $1, and I made myself a headband with the rest of the skirt.  

I just needed a few accessories and I'd be done.

I needed a few groceries anyway, so I stopped at Wal-Mart, a place I typically avoid at all costs, especially after that time I got trapped in an aisle there.  I did my grocery shopping, then wandered over to the jewelry section, where on the clearance rack, I saw a necklace something like this:

It was perfect!  And it was on clearance!  Of course, it was from the Mary Kate and Ashley line, but never mind that.  I've always had tastes that are similar to those of a twelve year old girl.

I tossed it in my cart and headed up front to pay for my stuff.  

After the madhouse of the checkout lane, I headed outside into the bitter cold to load up my car.  

It was as I was unloading the last bag into the trunk that I saw it.

The necklace, the perfect Mary Kate & Ashley hippie necklace, had fallen to the bottom of the cart and was dangling out the bottom, held only by the tag, which was wedged on the side of the cart.

And I hadn't paid for it.

I immediate looked around to see if Wal-Mart security had followed me.  Was there going to be a take-down right here in the parking lot?  Maybe I'd make the next episode of cops.  Whew.  Ok, no security guard.  What about cameras?  Surely they were watching me on camera and getting my license plate number so they could arrest me later.  Plus, they knew my name.  I paid with my debit card and they could track me with that...

Clearly, I'm not cut out for a life of crime.

Ok, think, mj, think.  What would Chuck Norris do?  

I had three options.  1) I could push the cart, necklace still caught in the bottom, over to the cart corral and hope no one noticed.  2) I could untangle the necklace from the cart and go back in to pay for it or 3) I could untangle the necklace from the cart and put it in my bag and drive off like a bat out of Hell and never shop in that store again because my picture would surely be hanging on the bulletin board with the words "Teeny-bopper Jewelry Thief - If Seen Please Detain.  Crazy, Dangerous and Poorly Dressed." under it.

I ran through all the possible scenarios in my mind.  My conscience was telling me to "take the damn necklace back in and pay for it already!" but my super paranoid side was saying things like "They're never going to believe you.  They are going to think you are some sort of attention-seeking klepto with horrible taste."  What to do?  What to do?

So I made my decision, and wore my costume with pride, and even won a prize for second best costume of the day.  

Oh, and I'm not going to tell you what I decided to do.

I refuse to answer that question on the grounds that I may incriminate myself.