HO HO HAH

Not finished with your Christmas shopping yet? Need some ideas for that impossible-to-buy-for person in your life? Thankfully, you have me to help you decide on a gift that will undoubtedly wind up being truly memorable. Ready?

Scrapbooking is so last year. We’re in an age now when we’re realizing our resources are precious and nothing, I mean NOTHING, should go to waste. Including cat hair. Have a friend who’s constantly taking out that lint brush to remove cat fur from their black clothing? Waste not, want not. Give them this book so they can get with the times.

If you know someone with a young daughter, it’s imperative you give that girl this doll so she can learn early on how vile body hair truly is. How else will she ever attract a man? Or aspire to porn or stripper status? Give her a head start on knowing what’s important in life, because it’s certainly not education or being a humanitarian. I mean, please! Who is ever going to take you seriously with hairy legs? (This gift not appropriate for European babies.)

Has there ever been a time when you’re horny AND hungry at the same time? And you’re going back and forth in your mind like, “I could eat a sandwich first, and then have sex, but I’ll probably just want to nap instead, OR, I can have sex first, but I’ll need to hurry because my stomach is growling like an angry dog…” Yeah, tell me about it. It’s a real dilemma. But not anymore! This is perfect for the man or woman in your life as it cuts out a huge amount of wasted time thinking, when you could be, um, eating? (wink wink)

What if your partner has trouble getting in the mood in the first place? You need to combine sex with a positive association. Rub some of this baby on whatever, and he or she will come running. Probably along with the dog and cat, but still…(Not appropriate for vegetarians, although a hummus-scented lube may be in the production stage as we speak.)

Now, me personally, I don’t need this book. I could have written this book.  But everyone has that one smug friend who thinks their kid’s shit doesn’t stink. Give her this book so she can see all the ways she is, in fact, unknowingly traumatizing her child. Then watch her scramble to catch up to all the money you’ve already saved in the jar labeled, “My Kid’s Therapy Fund.”

This probably isn’t in the Kid Trauma book, but here’s a surefire way to traumatize a kid. Wear these socks in their presence. Around their friends. Extra points scored for wearing them out in public. Like to the mall or the movies. This is a perfect gift for the husband of the uptight wife you buy the Kid Trauma book for!

What if you’re completely broke this year? It’s cool, you don’t need to spend any money. People LOVE homemade gifts. Try this one and make sure to remind the recipient it’s the thought that counts.

Hope this helps!

HAPPY HOLIDAYS!

 

 

TESTOSTERONE IS SOME FUNKY STUFF

Lately, it seems like all my son wants to do is wrestle with me. It’s hard to admit I’m getting too old for him to be body slamming me, but one session of wrestling runs the risk of 10 sessions with a chiropractor. The boy’s almost 12, so I can’t throw him off me like I used to. He’s rough. He hurts, and he takes sadistic pleasure in hurting.

One day, my son came home from school and we wrestled on the couch. Then he proceeded to sit on my head and fart. Who does that? Boys, that’s who. I can’t help but think if I had a daughter, her and I would be sitting quietly next to each other on the couch, doing needlepoint or scrapbooking or texting.

As I was cleaning up a hairball the other day, my naked son came up to me and declared, “I have a pubic hair. Look, it’s on my balls.” He was so excited I didn’t have the heart to tell him it was probably dryer lint. “I’m going through puberty,” he said proudly. “I even have a pimple.” He pointed to what may or may not have been a mosquito bite on his forehead.

I remember how I couldn’t wait to get my period. My best friend and I were in competition to see who would get it first. I won, and she was devastated. I had become a woman first. Yay me. My son can’t wait to shave. I tried to tell him once he shaves, he’ll have to shave EVERY day for the rest of his life. That he’ll quickly come to hate the daily obligation, eventually grow the defiant, non-shaving man’s beard and look like Zach Galifianakis. It fell upon deaf ears.

Puberty cannot come fast enough for him. Every day yields a new “symptom” of it—his throat is sore, his balls have dropped, the hair on his legs has darkened. Sex Ed started yesterday, and he was so disappointed to learn girls go through puberty before boys.

There’s a constant internal battle going on inside me over what’s appropriate to discuss with him. On the one hand, I want him to feel comfortable talking to me about sex, but on the other hand, I don’t want to feel like I’m living on The Mustang Ranch either. Out of the blue, my son will suddenly blurt out words like sex, or tits, or orgasm. It’s like he has an X-rated form of Tourette’s Syndrome. Whenever I ask him where he learns inappropriate crap like sticking dollar bills in the G-strings of strippers, for example, he always says Family Guy. How fantastic is that?

We were having a perfectly lovely conversation last week in the car on the way to soccer practice. I asked him who the most popular boy in his class was. He had no idea. But the most popular girl? He didn’t even have to think about it. “Gisella.” When I asked why she was so popular, he answered, “She has big tits. They’re like…huge!”

Sadly, I didn’t have a fork to stick in my eye at that moment, or bleach to rinse out my ear canals, but he understood my open-mouthed horror, because he quickly said, “But I don’t look at them. I look at her face. She has a beautiful face.” Uh-huh.

Of course, I threw in my 2.5 cents about how he should never objectify women—that it doesn’t matter how pretty a girl is if she pulls the legs off grasshoppers and sets her dolls’ heads on fire. But again, it fell upon deaf ears. I know this because a few days later when he was describing the girlfriend he was going to have in the future, he mentioned, “Big boobs, nice legs, a beautiful face. I don’t much care about the ass, but it can’t be too small.”

I have come to the conclusion that I am no match against the ridiculous surges of testosterone in a budding preteen’s body, and that every other word out of my mouth when discussing sex with him will be condom, because I sure as hell am not ready to be a grandma at 48.

IS 10:30 A.M. TOO EARLY FOR HAPPY HOUR?

Some days I don’t feel like being a mother. Some days I don’t even feel like being a person, especially when I find a stinky dead opossum with four dead babies rotting away underneath my shed.

My life consists of laundry and dirty dishes and cooking and yard work and cleaning the new spots of dog piss on what remaining carpet we have left, and trying to explain to my son why it’s not okay to leave poop-stained underwear lying around the house.

Sometimes it’s 10:30 a.m. and I wonder if it’s too early to start drinking. Who said Happy Hour needed to start at 5 in the evening anyway? The things I used to do to relax are no longer possible. Sleeping in; drawing the curtains and watching movies all day; NOT cooking or cleaning. It’s been almost ten years since I’ve done any of that.

Well-meaning folks always tell me, “Enjoy every minute. Kids grow up so fast.”

And sometimes they don’t grow up fast enough, is what I want to tell them.

Or they say, “Just you wait, soon they won’t want anything to do with you” and “They’ll be out of the house before you know it.”

I think, Ahhh, then I’ll get to sleep in, or sleep naked, or sleep with another adult. God, I can’t wait.

I dream of the days when I might finally be able to write without a gazillion interruptions. I’ll certainly never be at a loss for story ideas. The other day, a newspaper story read:

“Jilted dentist gets revenge by pulling all of her ex’s teeth—The bar for break-up revenge stories has just been raised. Anna Mackowiak, 34, a dentist in Wroclaw, Poland, is facing jail time after pulling out all of her ex-boyfriend’s teeth in a calculated fit of rage. While this is obviously unacceptable behavior, 45-year-old Marek Olszewski’s head is clearly missing more than just teeth, if he thought he could walk into his ex’s office without hesitation only days after dumping her for another woman and ask her to work on a toothache. Mr. Olszewski will have many lonely nights to ponder his actions. His new girlfriend was not cool with the toothless look and has left him.”

I couldn’t make that stuff up even if I tried. Seems like someone took “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth” a little too seriously. I’m sorry, but did the man not realize after his sixth tooth was pulled that something was amiss?

How about this headline? “Meth lab explodes in man’s pants during scuffle with cops.” Apparently, he was cooking meth and driving at the same time.

It’s a good thing there’s no shortage of idiots in this world, just like there will always be celebrities who cry over their loss of privacy and then get caught for soliciting man-boys in the bathroom of LA Fitness.

There are days when I’m up for the “Mother of the Second” award, and other times when it’s all I can do just to get through twenty-four hours without sticking a fork in my eye.