Squeak’s Squeals

I received an email from Roo’s second grade teacher.  She says Roo is “very disorganized, unprepared for class and frequently off task.”  While my initial response was ‘be grateful you don’t live with her,’ I opted for a slightly more gentile approach to the actual reply.

So, we now send a notebook back and forth everyday (cheesily titled “My Travel Book” by a teacher who doesn’t want to single Roo out and make her feel different from the other children… I personally think a couple days of making her feel different might be the kick in the pants she needs to get her crap together… but what do I know?  I’m just her mother… it’s not like I’ve had seven solid years of dealing with her behaviors and habits or anything…. ).

Regardless of how I feel about the hippie-dippy, politically correct, happy horseshit nonsense they try to force feed the kids in school, I still have to play along or risk being branded a “bad parent” and frowned upon for my child-rearing techniques.

So, every night, I sign the damned notebook and Roo and I discuss its contents and “how it makes her feel”…. it’s a load of utter crap.  Not to sound like some horrible, insensitive, evil bitch of a mom, but I don’t really CARE how it makes her feel.  If the teacher says to clean your desk, you need to clean your desk.  Period.  End of discussion.  We do not need to attend therapy to discuss what emotional stresses are causing her to not clean her desk.  I can tell you exactly why she doesn’t clean her desk… it is the same reason she doesn’t clean her room… she doesn’t want to.  And as long as the fear of punishment doesn’t exist, she will continue not doing what she should be doing.

Why DOES she clean her room?  What prompts such miraculous behavior?  She is afraid she’ll lose her .mp3 player or won’t be allowed to stay at a friend’s house this weekend.  She is afraid I’ll get mad enough to crack her rear-end and have a go at her room myself…. accompanied by a trash bag.

Maybe I’m too ‘old school’… maybe I’m just more bitter and jaded than I realize… maybe it is my mother’s constant ’shit happens, deal with it’ attitude reborn… but one day these kids will be out in the world with no one to coddle them, no one to care if they’ve had their feelings hurt, no one willing to discuss how something makes them feel.  And they’ll have to survive.

When Roo is 16-years-old, donning a brown visor and a nametag and scrubbing the machine-gunned diarrhea of a sweaty, middle-aged, fat man off the bathroom wall at McDonald’s, no one is going to consider her feelings.  No one is going to care if it makes her feel like less of a person.  They will only care that the job is done.

And when her shift is over and she comes home in tears, I’ll dry her big blue eyes, hug her close and whisper softly, “Shit happens.  Deal with it.”

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The kids and I were chasing each other around the first floor earlier this evening - running from one room to the next until someone wised up enough to go the opposite direction and cut the runner off as they lapped the area - when I was viciously attacked.

No, I was not attacked by my children, but by something much smaller and more sinister.

You see, it was my turn to be chased and as I ran through the entry, I felt the stabbing pain of pierced foot flesh beneath me.  I fell to the floor and turned my left foot toward me.  There it was… small, evil, vile, sinister…. it was a butterfly-shaped mood ring… firmly attached to whatever bodily tissues live in the soles of my feet.

The ring was shaped much like my crude little drawing to the right, with giant, pointy wings on top and small, pointy wings on the bottom.  I was lucky enough to land on the upper, giant wing which cut right through the flesh and slid roughly half an inch into the ball of my foot and embedded itself quite firmly.

After forcibly removing my temporary, new appendage, I left a lovely trail of blood across my tan rug and up the stairs where the wound was cleaned and bandaged.  The hole is about as big around as a pencil and hurts like mad.  I could probably use stiches, to be quite honest, but that’s a medical bill I really don’t need if I can avoid it.

And just in case you were wondering, the evil little beast was dark purple, as in “Very Happy”.  The little bitch.

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Generally speaking, I try to avoid discussing politics here at the ol’ blog, but in my advancing age, I’ve become compelled to start forcing my opinions on others as well.  Please bear in mind, any flaming comments will be declared spam and my mad little Akismet baby will never let you post again.  Anyway… on with it!

Today, I would like you all to bow your heads and observe a moment of silence in memory of the die-hard, tie-dye clad, poetry-writing, wannabe hippie, liberal who once lived within me (back in my college days, when I thought it cool that the President was getting his strange).  For, this morning, I am publicly confessing that come November, my vote shall be cast for the McCain/Palin ticket.*

“But why, Squeaky, why!?” I hear you cry through your sobbing, looking at me with those giant, tear-filled, anime eyes.  “Do you really feel that John McCain can effectively lead this great nation?”

No, my children.  I think John McCain is an embalmed corpse being kept alive by some radioactive, intergalactic technology emitted by Dick Cheney’s brainwaves.

“Then, why, Squeaky!?” I hear you plead.

Because I think Sarah Palin is a member of the Alaskan Eskimo Society of Gubernatorial Ninjas.  I think this woman kicks some serious ass.  And I’d be willing to bet if she accidentally shoots someone in the face on a drunken hunting trip, they won’t live to joke about it.

Honestly, any woman who can survive five pregnancies, five deliveries, a household with five children, run an entire state AND thrive in the barren wasteland that is Alaska, can certainly accomplish as much on a bad day as the ol’ Dick-n-Bush have accomplished, in a combined effort, in the last eight years.

A comment was made to me earlier this week… something to the effect of ‘Do we really want a menopausal woman with her finger on a button that could annihilate half the globe?’  My answer: Hell, yes!  What’s more frightening than a middle-aged woman having a hot flash on a bad hair day with baby vomit on her clothing, standing on a bear skin rug she shot, skinned and tanned herself?  Catch her on the wrong day and some little, previously unheard of country suddenly disappears from the face of the planet as a warning to the others to keep their asses in line.  Besides which, the woman JUST had a baby.  She’s not menopausal yet.

“But, Squeaky, do you agree with her viewpoints on the issues?” I hear you inquire.

No, young Jedi, aside from her opinions on the death penalty, I do not agree with her stance on much else.

“Then why, Squeaky?” You ask again.  And put away those anime eyes.  They’re getting annoying.

Because she has opinions.  That’s it.  Simple as that.  This woman actually has hard and fast opinions.  There seems to be no one behind her, pulling a string, with a hand in her ass, or floating above her in a spaceship telling her what to say and when to say it.  She very simply states exactly what she believes.

Example:

Is she pro-choice or pro-life?  Pro-life.  Even if her own child will ride a short bus.  Abortion is not an option.  She states it.  And she lives it.  And I respect that.  Even if I dont’ agree with it.

“But, Squeaky,” I hear you say, “what about the feminists who think she should stay home with her children?”

HAHAHAHAHA!  My dear, gentle readers, these people are not feminists at all!  These are poor, misguided souls who aren’t sure who they are or what they believe.  “Women should not have to stay in the home and take care of the children!  Women should be able to venture out of the kitchen and into the workforce!  Having children should not hinder a woman’s right to grow and develop and become who and what she wants to be!  Women can do whatever a man can do!”….. but apparently ONLY if that woman is a liberal.  What a crock of bullshit.  Anyone subscribing to this philosophy and calling themselves a feminist, is nothing more than a hypocrite.

“But what’s wrong with Barrack Obama?” I hear you whisper among yourselves.

He is the devil, my sweet babies, nothing more than Lucifer himself.

And is it just me, or does Governor Palin look an awful lot like Detective Benson?

*This statement is subject to change at a moment’s notice anytime between now and November.

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I have been sick the last few days. Yesterday, my temperature peaked at 103(F). This morning, it was still at 102. The bottom line: I feel poopy.

But life must go on and since I was not spewing forth nastiness from any of my orifices, I went about my daily routine as usual.

• Feed kids: Check.

• Everyone dressed: Check.

• Kids on the bus: Check.

• Car keys: Check.

• Four fully-inflated tires: um… well…

I had a flat. Not just a low-on-air flat. A pancake-on-a-rim flat. In my driveway.

I started digging through the car. I pulled out the dummy tire. I pulled out the pathetic looking little jack from the secret Subaru jack compartment. I looked it over. I put it down. WTF!? I don’t know how to use it. I’ve never seen one like it.

I went inside and called the office. “Boys, I’m gonna be late. I don’t know how late. Just late. Really, really late.”

“What’s wrong?” asked Bull, our resident tech.

“I’m stuck in a catch 22 at the moment. I have a flat tire and a jack I don’t know how to use. I can’t afford to pay someone to change my tire until I get my paycheck and I can’t get my paycheck until I get the tire changed so I can get to the office.”

“No problem,” my savior replied. “I have an appointment out your way in half an hour, I’ll swing by and change that tire for you when I’m done.”

“You, sir, are my freakin’ hero!” I replied.

I wandered around the house, straightening and tidying for about an hour, but there was no sign of Bull. I called his cell… his appointment was taking longer than expected, he had no clue how soon he’d get to my place.

Time for Plan B. The Internet. (Now, I realize with every blog post I write, I prove myself more and more the dumb blond I try NOT to be, but if it didn’t end with me doing something completely bizarre or utterly stupid it wouldn’t make much of a story, now would it?) So, I hopped on the internet and looked up instructions on how to use my weird little car jack contraption.

I changed my tire. All by myself. I was so proud! And all while running a fever that could fry an egg.  Now, if I could just get the grease monkey marks off my hands…..

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