Oh, what a week it has been. If only I could work from home. Or not work at all. Or afford a cook and a laundress. Thursday night I got all excited about having chocolate milk and playing Uno with the boys before bed, only to recall when we all arrived at the refrigerator that we were out of GD milk. Cydney’s amore, Justin Devore, hauled over here like some knight on a white horse and sat on my couch while I went to CVS to get milk, wine and paper towels after the boys went to bed. AND THEN, he removed four bags of garbage to the dumpsters.
At least when Landen arrived to school late this morning and I joked to the secretary in the school office that I obviously had this single mother thing down pat, she told me it was fine, they were fine, I was doing fine. They smile, learn, are clean and know people love them. She did warn me that eight late days will cost me $10, but I’m not quite there yet. Thank God we’re at the end of the year.
(Oh, speaking of school. They sent home the supply lists for next year. There’s also a website where you can go and select your kid’s school, grade and boy/girl and they ship the entire supply list to you in one box. Everything still has to be labeled. There are still a couple items we have to buy from the home/school association…BUT…that’s one thing I can cross off my list because I ALREADY DID IT!)
Corey first introduced me to Landen in 2007 as a future criminal mastermind. The two boys together could wreak serious havoc on the planet in adulthood if they aspire to it. There’s a preview for this movie Despicable Me that shows The World's #1 Supervillain sitting on a couch drinking a juice box and ruining the day of his nemesis with just the push of a button. Jake could conceptualize and build. Landen will pull the trigger.
Yesterday Landen came downstairs and told me that I say too many bad words (and that I’m mean to him, but that’s because I punished him for hitting his brother by taking away his video game privileges for the evening.) In my defense, I am not nearly as explicit as their father, but how conveniently quickly they forget. Second, I do not use bad words when I’m angry. Do I say “crap” when I drop something, “dammit” when I lose at Uno and “asshole” when Murphy displeases me? Yes. Did I tell Landen the other night that he was not sitting his bare ass on my couch when he came down to play Xbox bukked nekkid after we’d been at the pool? I did.
I did not deny that I use too many bad words. I asked him if he would help me and he said sure and retreated to his room to gather tape, paper, markers and scissors so that he could make me a “cuss cup.” It seems that Landen has a friend in his class whose father is also prone to the zealous use of expletives, and this son has him cover his mouth with a cup to keep him from saying a bad word. So, now I have a homemade “cuss cup” that he even reminds me to bring in the car with me.
He had a vision when he created this. I do not question it. It is my cup to bear.
If I fail to use the “cuss cup” and say the word anyway, he gets to put a dot on my face with a marker. This was what we compromised on when I refused to floss between his toes with my teeth. Yesterday I had many dots on my face that Justin did not feel compelled to tell me about and the only reason I didn’t storm into CVS with marker-dots on my face was because I remembered the existence of said dots when I was telling him the story and showing him the cup on the way out the door.
Jake had a birthday party tonight for a kid in his class. It was a pizza/swim/slumber party, but he was not permitted to complete the slumber part. In this age of advanced technology, when your stepmother reports to your dad daily, the 7,000 mile distance between you does nothing to impair your dad’s ability to make decisions that disappoint you. Such as deciding that you are too young for a slumber party and are meandering through too much emotional fragility to be safe sleeping away from your family. We didn’t tell him that. We only told him Dad thought he was too young to sleep over, and maybe next year. The handle on the hammer is loooooooong and boy must it be disappointing to realize that everybody has to do what Dad says, even if he’s not here.
Jake's birthday party is Sunday afternoon, and I have the presents (unwrapped), the paper products, goody bags, eating utensils, candles...I pick up the cake on Saturday. I order balloons tomorrow and pick them up on Sunday. I have to get the little ice creams. The sa-weet thing about doing the party at Jump 'n Jive is they do try to earn a portion of the $300 they rape you for on a two-hour party by setting up the party room with your shit while you watch your children jump in the bouncy houses. Then when they move you from the houses to your party room for cake/presents, voila! It's already been set up with whatever you drop off. And they provide the punch. Thank Jesus, because if I had one more thing to remember to haul out there, I would forget one of the kids.
The boys wanted to sleep on the sofa bed tonight, which I agree to because I like them downstairs with me, and they have to do it anyway tomorrow when Great Clare comes to visit, because they let her sleep in their room. They wanted to watch Star Wars and asked me to sleep with them like their dad does, which I don't do. (I don't like to sleep with pants on in the summer and sleeping in separate beds is a boundary we keep.) Murphy and I (in pajama pants) did crawl into bed with them to start their movie. When the credits came on, all three of us started humming the song, and when we realized we were all doing it, we starting singing it with wild abandon. It felt great, and I thought "Cuss cup, this feels fantastic.
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