Old People and Netflix

Despite having been a radioman in the Navy in her day, my mom is somehow forcibly ignorant of a computer. This morning she asks 
"What is that thing in my room I'm watching movies on? An Xbox?"
"No, mom, it's a Wii. This thing in my living room is the Xbox." I say as I point at the Xbox
"So what's an Xbox then?"
"That on top of my TV is the Xbox."
"What does it do?"
"Same as the Wii. It's just a game system and you can watch movies or Netflix on it."
"So can I burn the movies off of the Wii onto a disk and watch them anytime?" 
"No, mom, that's Netflix. You can watch that anywhere that gets Netflix"
"So am I running up your cable bill by watching it all the time? I love it except there's no commercials and if I have to get up to pee I miss a whole bunch!" 
"Mom! Pause it for the love of god! And no, you're not running up my cable bill. It's a subscription service that I pay around $15 a month for. Watch all you want"
"Oh, neat! Does that come with cable? Because I don't have cable anymore I only have dish or whatever."
"No mom, you just need an Internet connection."
"Does that come with Google?"
"No?"
"Can I get it on the computer?"
"Yes"
I'm fairly certain she still doesn't know what I'm talking about and we'll continue to have this conversation about how baffling netflix is.

Momisms

I've been sitting on this blog for some time debating whether or not to publish it, but with the advent of my mom staying with me, what the hell! I'll do it. Just don't mention any of this to her should you meet her. I do not want to get my ass chewed out for making fun of her, which I'm not doing. I love my mom and hope to be half as strong as she is one day. She is one tough broad. Take it for what it is; hilarity.

For those who don't know me in real life, my mom is what other's politely refer to as a "character" and what the courts call "incompetent" and what local city halls call a "nusance" Just polite ways of saying my mom ain't right. She has given me lots of laughs and with that I will share with you some conversations that actually happened between my mom and myself.

Conversation 1
The setup: My mom was telling me about her boyfriend's latest construction project. He had just helped complete this big beautiful house and took my mom on a tour of it with his boss because he forgets mom and people don't mix. This is what she had to say about it:
"It's this big gorgeous house in the country, but his boss is an idiot. That is a house for homos. The floor is shiny, there are windows everywhere and stainless steel appliances. No woman is going to want to clean all the fingerprints and shit off that! That's a house for homos! And the shower is huge! You could fit five big burly homos in there!" Keep in mind that she's recounting what she was saying as she was walking through the house, not her private thoughts.

Conversation 2
The setup: My mom is going to come visit and she was asking me about what kind of toys she could bring for the girls.
"Is it okay if I bring the girls a barbie horse?"
"Barbie horse?"
"Yeah, you just push it's butthole and it runs really fast!"
"What in the what what?"

Conversation 3
The setup: My mom is a collector. She's also a major hoarder. She was a hoarder before any of those shows came out and made it cool. I grew up like that, only instead of garbage, I was stepping over piles and piles of antiques and other collectibles. The house itself was actually clean, just extremely cluttered. Well, she lives near the American Picker people. Here's the thing, my mom hates them. She has always hated antique dealers and loathes what they do. They really really want to get a look around at her stuff. Hell, everyone does. My mom's stuff is cool as hell! Right now she lives on a run down farm out in the country that looks a little like a house you would see in a horror movie while yelling "Don't go in there, you idiots!". It's sort of House of 1000 corpses looking.  She also happens to have a couple of big rottweilers. I think you can see where this is headed.
"Those son of a bitches came out here to the farm with their cameras and when Bandit (the dog) came out there to check them out, they jumped back into their truck just like a bunch of mexicans! Bandit is a big dog, but he just wanted to check them out, he wasn't gonna hurt them, but boy does he scare those mexicans!"
Holy crap, please for the love of all that's holy, don't put my mom on tv. Later she told me she agreed to let one of their guys in there and no cameras. I'm pretty sure he won't be leaving.
I love my mom.

Conversation 4
My mom is in the room with me while I'm talking to my best friend. My friend wails that she thinks she's a leper. My mom says "Come to Georgia! They love their lepers here!"
"Have you seen any lepers around, mom?"
"Yeah, Georgia is real proud of their retards! They parade them around, even!"
"Holy shit, mom. Did you just equate being a leper with being retarded?!?"

Conversation 5
My mom was telling me how she found those timers that you put on your electronics to make them turn on at odd times so people will think you're home and won't rob you. Well, she hooked hers up to a radio and a light and a tv. But her neighbors know she's not home, so she's been telling them the house is haunted! It's ghosts in there! And then she told them all about the ghost until they told her about someone who died there and now she just keeps embelishing the story so now the neighborhood believes her house is haunted and won't go near it. Trolling like a boss.

Speaking of trolling, her boyfriend has bushy eyebrows. When he's sleeping she messes with them. One time she put googly eyes on each one so they would look like fighting squirrels, she said. The other time she was so bothered by how bushy his eyebrows were that she tried to trim them in his sleep. She ended up trimming a bald spot into the middle of each brow, if you can imagine for a moment what a bald spot in the middle of bushy eyebrows would look like. The poor guy is involved with a master troll.

pictured above is not the victim, but a member of  House Atreides with similar eyebrows

I'm Back!

Alright, after some encouragement from friends who are sick of hearing from me on facebook (too bad!) I'm going to reopen this blog, though most of it will be repeats from my facebook.
Today's blog has been brought to you by the letter F!
For those who don't know me in real life, I have a mom who is, let's say, eccentric. I love her and she's otherwise great! But she has this bad habit of having a failing memory, a severe potty mouth (I had to get it from somewhere!), and a large and in charge temper that does not fear going to jail. She is staying with me for a little while and helping me out through a deployment. So now that you have a little back story, here's the ancedote;
I'm in the van and stopped at the gas station while mom runs in for beer. My little angels are plugged sweetly into James And The Giant Peach behind me and I'm enjoying the quiet and fiddling with the radio when I hear "It's their peach you fucking girls!" out of the Lillybeast. I think my mom is a bad influence on her, like she needs that!
She sees that I have heard her and immediately says "Oh, oops!" too late, I'm already getting out to get up close and personal with her. I give her a pop in the mouth and remind her that words like that out of her are unacceptable and she's going to have to learn that just because it's okay for adults doesn't mean it's okay for kids. 
This is the second time in a week I've had to do this.
The first time I was on my way to pick up my mom. On this road trip I'm enjoying my xm radio and have it set to comedy. The f word comes out and instead of changing it I leave it thinking "you know what? they are too sheltered and they have to learn that just because they've heard it doesn't mean they can say it" Nicole says "oooh, they just said a bad word" Lilly says "yeah! He said fuck!" goddammit. 

Disturbing Lilly

Today is Lilly's first day of summer vacation! Yay, she made it to the end of pre-k without getting kicked out, sent home, or referred to a child psychologist! It's a big accomplishment and I'm proud of her and I have hope that maybe all her Lillyness is in my head. 
Then she, in an entirely joking and funny way, came up to me and said "Mommy! If I run away you have to freaking kill yourself! Hahahaha!"
What in the what what?!? 
"Hey, Lilly. We don't ever joke about killing yourself. It isn't funny and that makes me sad"
"Well Nicole said that if I ever ran away she'd freaking kill herself and if she ever runs away I'll freaking kill myself! Hahaha!"
"Lilly, we don't joke about that, it isn't funny"
After that she wandered off to get dressed and when she came back and I was sure I could hold her attention I said it again: "Lilly, look at me. We don't ever joke about killing ourselves. It isn't funny and it makes me very very sad"
"Okay, mommy"
But who knows what she heard. Who knows?

Great Moments In Parenting...

Leaving out all my great mom moments of the past few weeks, let's concentrate on last night instead. As usual I'm busy trying to clean the place and as usual my sweet little demon spawns are busy undoing it all. First I get the boy off of his sister's bunk bed and kick the children out of their bedroom then go to the kitchen where I need to sweep and I find toys, yet again, strewn about my kitchen floor. "Girls! Pick this up! I'm trying to sweep. Where's your brother? Is your brother in your room again?!?" Lilly: "Yeah, he's on my bed" "What?!? Did you not just see me get him off of there and kick you out so he didn't get in?!? Why!?!" muttering expletives to myself as I go their room and hope, yet again, that he is still on the bed and not, you know, fallen to the floor, I grab him (safe as usual), shut the door, and go back to the kitchen where, you guessed it, the girls are dumping their toys again. I might have lost my shit. Might. So they hurry up and clean it and I, more calmly this time, explain again why toys need to stay to the flippen play room. Lilly then looks at me and says "Is that why we have a playroom? To keep our mess in?" Yes! For the love of god, yes! Have I not been explaining this very thing for the last two years we've lived here? But that is not what I say. Instead I say "Yes, Lilly. That is exactly what the playroom is for. Now give me a high five and take it that a way."


I also had a nice long talk with Nicole about her attitude and dance. For the last week it's been parent watch week at the studio and I've watched Nicole flub up things I know darn well she knows how to do and knows how to do well. But because other kids were struggling she seemed to think that was the in thing to do and being all giggly and saying silly things in an obvious attempt for attention. God that was frustrating. I spent nearly the whole damned time giving her dirty looks and motioning for her to pay attention. Yeah, I know, kids will be kids. What bothered me was her dumbing it down to fit in. Also it made me worried that I wasn't paying enough attention to her at home. Maybe I'm not. I didn't see other kids acting quite so silly for attention. Her teacher is a saint, I tell you what.
So we had the talk. The don't try so hard to fit in and never dumb yourself down talk. This has been a long time coming. I've been watching her pretend to struggle with math and I'm sure it's because at school her friends don't like math. Once I get her past the complaining, she does her math perfectly, but the whole time she bitches about how hard it is and how she doesn't know how to do it. When her friends come over I hear them talk about how hard school is and how much they hate cleaning and, suddenly, Nicole doesn't know how to clean or do math. Methinks they're connected. I think she gets it. I hope she does. Now I just have to see what sank in and what went over her sweet little head.

Merry Christmas!

I am so busted.
We did most of our Christmas early before the husband left, but I wanted the girls to have a Christmas, too, so I wrapped some presents that they got in Iowa when we were visiting and I wrapped a big cardboard color it in house I've had stashed in my closet. I kind of forgot that they already saw them, but even so, they only saw them once before they had to be packed up. On some I wrote "From Santa". Well, Nicole opens up her first "from Santa" present and says "I already got this from Grandma Anna" and the next one "Aunt Micky gave this to me already" and the one from my closet "Didn't you have this in your closet?" then she said one way she can find out if Santa is real is to go to my closet and if the house is still there, Santa is real. Poor kid, she really wants to believe in Santa.
Lilly absolutely loved her presents and so did the boy! Neither of them remembered anything from before, so yay for that. And they got their stockings and thank goodness Nicole never saw what was going into those before because I told her that most of the stockings stuff was from Santa and that Santa left candy canes on their pillows. They camped out in the living room last night. It was pretty cute. I think Nicole's plan was to bust "Santa", but she sleeps like a rock.

Nicoleisms: Santa

Nicole has been trying to decide if Santa is real or not. She really wants to believe. She likes magic and unicorns and princesses, but as she gets older she's having a harder time buying it. My husband tried really hard before he left to get her back to believing again. He told the girls that I called Santa and that Santa brought presents early and we wrapped them together and everything. Nicole's little eyes just lit up.
Then tonight she says:
"Mommy, when daddy gets back I have a question I want to ask him"
"Oh, and what's that? Maybe I can ask him in an email?"
" I want to say this 'Daddy? Do you promise Santa is real?'"
"Oh, I see. And why don't you just ask me?"
"Well, you weren't there when Santa dropped off the presents. Daddy was"
"Okay, that makes sense. Well, what do you think?"
"I think it's something I'll find out when I'm a grown up"
"And what do you think you'll find out"
"That Santa is fake." She says resignedly.
"Aww, Nicole. You're adorable and I love you. You are the sweetest thing"
I love my little princess.