playgroupsarenoplaceforchildren

I just had to explain to my heartbroken four year old son why the woman pushing two kids about his age in a double stroller in front of our house didn’t say “hello” to us, even after we said “hello” and waved.

“Mommy?  Why didn’t they come over?  I wanted to play with them,” confused, Carson asked as tears began to fill his eyes.

I wanted to say, “Carson, I’m so sorry, sweetie.  I don’t know why some people are assholes.  They just are.  They are the type of people we should throw rocks at.  The next time they walk past our house I’ll scream ‘HELLO!  HELLO!’ until she replies like a civil human being.”

Instead I hugged him and told him that they probably didn’t hear us saying “hello.”  Carson looked up at me with an expression on his face that told me he wasn’t buying it.  (Because seriously, we were standing at the end of the driveway saying “hello” and waving.  There was no way we went unheard or unseen!)

“Well maybe they were in a hurry to get home or maybe they were really shy,”  I explained again.   Quickly I tried to redirect his attention to shiny, happy objects so that he wouldn’t cry and so that I wouldn’t let it slip how I really thought we should chase the lady down and ask her what her damn problem was.

People who can’t return simple human courtesies, such as saying “hello,” completely confuse me.    Sadly, it’s not the first time it’s happened.

It broke my heart to see my son look at me with such excitement to see potential playmates! in our neighborhood! walking right toward us!, only to be completely ignored.  How can you ignore two adorable little kids waving and saying “hello???”  What is wrong with people?

Oh right!  Some people are just assholes.

(These are the people we’re supposed to pray for, right?)

You know all those kids who are way too old to be trick or treating that come to your door?  They just stand there holding their pillowcase open, reeking of Sense of Entitlement, without even saying trick or treat?  Yeah.  THOSE kids.

I gave them all the crap candy we didn’t eat from Halloween three two last years ago.

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Well, actually it didn’t exactly play out that way seeing as we had a total of seven trick or treaters.  Thanks stupid rain.   But!  If we had had any of those annoying teens, I so would have given them the stale Whoppers and rock hard Tootsie Rolls, teaching the ill-mannered youth of today a valuable lesson.

On the bright side, that candy will be really ready to give out next year.

I just love it when people mispronounce common words.  And by love I mean, it irritates the crap out of me, but yet it provides hours and hours of hearty chuckling when I’m making fun of them on my blog.

My most favorite mispronounced word was one I heard last week.  The lady who was speaking said, “we’ll talk about all the scenarinos.”  Scenarinos.  As in scenarios.  I looked at the other people sitting around me to see if anyone else was trying as hard as I was not to bust a gut laughing.  Nobody was visibly shaking, but there is no way I’m the only one who heard her say “scenarino.”  Scene-arino.  Seriously.  That’s comedy GOLD.

Tate and I have made it our goal to work this new word into our everyday vocabulary.  “So Tate, which scenarino works best for lunch?  Ham sandwiches or leftovers?”  “Hey Jennifer, after the kids go to bed later, I imagine a scenarino with us going to bed early {eyebrow wag, eyebrow wag}.”

Other words that make me laugh/want to punch someone includes:

Supposebly.  Supposebly you’re an idiot.

Irregardless.  Irregardless of what you say, irregardless is not a word.

Warsh.   I’m going to warsh your mouth out with soap if you say this stupid word ever again.  (I used to hear this all the time when I was a kid and lived in Oklahoma.  I don’t know if it’s an Oklahoma “thing,” but I’ve also heard a few people from St. Louis say warsh instead of wash.)

Ideals. I have lots of ideals about how I can torture people who use the word “ideals” when they really mean “ideas.”  (I hear this ALL the time in Tennessee and it makes me want to punch somebody.)

Any words that people totally botch that make you cringe or giggle with delight?

Edited to add:   Your comments are reminding me of words I didn’t even think about!  Kindygarten!  HATE that.  Also, I lose intelligence points every time someone adds a plural ending to words that don’t need plural endings.  Krogers, Meijers, Walmarts…THERE IS NO “S” ON THOSE NAMES, DAMMIT.

After all the hard work and fretting over selling all my baby items in a garage sale a few weeks ago, the sale itself was a colossal bust.

It was such a miserable failure, that we ended up having the garage sale AGAIN this past Saturday also.

Prior to the first garage sale, Tate and I were certain that we were going to become members of the nouveau riche with the millions of dollars we were going to make.  People were going to see our newly acquired vast wealth with our extended holidays to Malta, our Ferrari’s, and our 64,000 square foot homes.  The other nouveau riche would whisper behind our backs at posh parties in the Hamptons, “how do you think they made their money?  Was it in the stock market?”  Their in-the-know nouveau riche friends would say, “No!  Didn’t you hear?  They made all their money in selling baby items at a garage sale.  Their baby swing sold for a cool 3.2 mil.”

Oh how we’d foolishly spent the money in our heads.

The dismal failure of our garage sale looked like this:  ONLY about 4 or 5 of Carson’s baby clothes sold at our first sale.  Not even one of Ella’s baby clothes sold, nobody even LOOKED at them.  Our only “big ticket” baby item to sell was our changing table.  Our swing?  Our baby papasan?  Our bouncy seat?  Our exersaucer?  Our high chair?  NOT SOLD.   We ended up making about $200, which is nothing to sneeze at, but it certainly isn’t going to buy a 300 ft. yacht.

So this past weekend we decided to have another sale.    My expectations were far less grand than the previous weeks.  I’d be happy to simply GET RID of all the stuff, I was willing to let the stuff go for far less than I’d originally intended.  And thank goodness I had low expectations.

I did sell a good chunk of Carson’s clothes, though I still have two completely full totes of his clothes.  Again, NOT ONE of Ella’s baby clothes sold, nor did anyone even look at them.  The only other baby item to sell was the high chair.  We made $50, not even enough to buy a week’s worth of groceries.

If I were the religious type, I’d think Jesus Himself was trying to tell us something.  “My child!  Stop being greedy.  Fulfillment cannot be found in riches.  Also, you’re going to need your baby girl clothes,” He said with a raise of his eyebrows and a smirk.

The summer before 5th grade I got a haircut that, 14 year later, continues to haunt me.  I’d always had long hair, but wanted it cut to look like an older girl on my swim team whom I thought was so cool.  Older Swim Team Girl had an I’m-cooler-than-all-of-you attitude, which fit because she really was cooler than all of us.  (Well, cooler than ME, anyway.)  Her hair was cut to about chin length and I wanted my hair to look exactly like hers, which logically would make me as cool as her.

Somehow, both my mom and the butcher stylist interpreted “chin length” to mean, “Let’s give poor Jenny a boy’s haircut that will haunt her for the rest of her life.”

Seriously, my hair was cut exactly like a boy’s.  It was such a boy’s haircut, that I was OFTEN confused for a boy.

Setting: Skating party, Fall 1985, a game of Red Light, Green Light set to the always popular roller rink band, ELO.

Skating rink DJ:  “And the winner is….The boy in the back!”

Me:  “I’m not a boy!”

Because of this experience, I try to be VERY specific when I describe how I want my hair cut.  I take pictures of people whose hair I’d like to replicate to show the stylist.  I discuss and show how many inches I’d like to be cut, or rather how many inches I’d rather NOT be cut.

Which brings us to my latest haircut.

Oh sure, it doesn’t really look bad, but it doesn’t look like the picture I showed and it certainly isn’t the “don’t cut it up to my chin, like in the picture I’m showing you, cut maybe an inch or less” haircut that I requested.

I know that in discussing the photo I brought to show my stylist, I used very specific words like, “NOT as short as hers.”  And “one inch at the most.”  And other gems like “I want the ends to look JUST LIKE THIS, but NOT as short.”  I even held in my fingers, the acceptable amount that she could cut off.

In the end, my stylist ended up cutting about two inches off around my face and about three inches off the back.

When she finished and turned my chair towards the mirror, she said, “You know, I could have totally cut it up to your chin.  You could have really pulled that hairstyle off.”

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That silence you’re detecting?  It’s me staring and blinking.

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Curious about whose hair I was trying to replicate?

Go here.  (The photo that I showed my stylist is no longer the photo that is posted.  FYI.)  (In fact, there’s really no need to click on the link unless you’re just curious about Dooce’s current hairstyle.)

I can’t put my finger on it, but admitting that I tried to get Dooce’s haircut makes me feel kind of pathetic.

(Edited to add:  I fixed the picture problem and all the grammar mistakes.  GEEZ LOUISE this post is a train wreck.)

With all these warm days we’ve been experiencing here in East Tennessee, the kids and I have spent several beautiful afternoons at the park.  Better soak up the nice weather before it becomes unbearably hot, I say.

While pushing Ella on the swings, I smelled…something. I turned around a saw a woman pushing her daughter on a different set of swings smoking. It caught me off-guard because I NEVER see people smoking anymore. (Okay, NEVER isn’t entirely true, I see people smoking behind buildings on their breaks and inside their cars.) I guess it would be more accurate to say I rarely see people smoking anymore and almost never around kids.

I started to think about who I know that smokes and I could only think of a handful, not counting the social I-only-smoke-when-I-drink smokers. The people I know that smoke are very thoughtful not to smoke in my home or car or around my kids.  In fact, I don’t think I ever see the smokers I know actually SMOKING.

Since we were outside at the park, I didn’t really care that the woman was smoking.  It’s not like were were trapped in an elevator with her and her cancer stick.  I did think that smoking at the park was, well…, I don’t know exactly WHAT I want to say.  I guess if I were a smoker, the park is not a place I would smoke because I’d fear people (read:  scowling mommies) might say something about smoking around kids.

I just never see other moms at the park smoking!   It was weird, okay?  Smoking is just not the norm in my group of friends and it’s not the norm at the park.  Most of the moms I see at the park are sipping their Venti Startbucks coffees and talking on their cell phones while ignoring their kids.

Something that bugs the crap out of me is yelling across the house to someone instead of just walking to wherever they are and speaking in a nice, even, low voice.

It bugs me, but I do it all the time and annoy MYSELF.  Despite my repeated self-reminders to STOP YELLING ACROSS THE HOUSE, I have such a hard time stopping.  I’ll yell downstairs to Carson and Ella to say that dinner is ready, shake my head at myself in disgust, and promise myself to STOP.  It’s just a few extra steps and those extra steps would really make for a much calmer and quieter house.  The next evening I’ll remember not to yell and instead calmly go downstairs and tell Carson and Ella to come up for dinner.  Such a sense of accomplishment!  Such a sense of calm!  So quiet!  Until the next night when I yell again for them to come to dinner.

It’s a vicious, vicious cycle.

And I wonder why my children yell.  Geez louise.

What category do you fit into?  Are you a yell-across-the-house kind of person or a walk-across-the-house-to-get-their-attention kind of person?

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On a completely unrelated note, I just want to thank those of you who recommended that I read The Book Thief a few weeks ago.  WOW!  I LOVED THAT BOOK SO MUCH!  DO YOU HEAR ME?!  I LOVED THAT BOOK!!!!!!  SUCH AN AMAZING STORY!

Damn, I really need to stop yelling.