Bad mothers, unite!

A blog post on why I hate kids has been building up, but when I saw this as I perused the news this morning, I decided to let it build a little longer because this just blows my mind.

Raised in a $1.5 million Barrington Hills, Ill., home by their attorney father, two grown children have spent the last two years pursuing a unique lawsuit against their mom for "bad mothering" that alleges damages caused when she failed to buy toys for one and sent another a birthday card he didn’t like.

The alleged offenses include failing to take her daughter to a car show, telling her then 7-year-old son to buckle his seat belt or she would contact police, "haggling" over the amount to spend on party dresses and calling her daughter at midnight to ask that she return home from celebrating homecoming.

I'm sure you share my horror at the egregious sins of this mother!  Imagine a mother that encourages safety and frugality!  Not to mention a curfew!  Too bad this lawsuit was dismissed.  That mother should have got what was coming to her.

But seriously, the fact that this piece-of-shit suit lasted for TWO YEARS before being dismissed is a travesty.  If this is what constitutes bad mothering then who is a good mother?  The so-called mother who leaves her baby in a garbage can? 

I say we celebrate our badness!  I will confess to this sin of bad mothering:

The only gaming system I ever bought my kids was an old Sega I bought at a garage sale.

Shocking and horrifying, I know.  But somehow they survived.

So confess.  What is your worst mothering sin?

Finding my patronus

I haven't blogged much lately but I've been reading lots of them.  Recently, both Cognitive Dissenter and Kiley had posts that touched on the topic of toxic people.  (I could link to those but I'm just too darn lazy and tired. Find them yourself if you want to read them.) I have a sister that I cut out of my life five years ago because she is toxic.  I've seen her once since then and life has been good.  Peaceful, at least.  But all good things have to come to an end sometime.

My elderly mother has been very ill and the six sisters in the family need to work together to make decisions about her care.  This toxic sister, being a control freak, has legal power of attorney (acquired without any other sister's knowledge). She has stirred up my mother, my sisters, and anyone else she can.  She's stirred me up and I haven't actually seen her.  Simply hearing about her exploits is enough to get my drawers in a wad and make my stomach cramp. 

My youngest sister was mulling over the situation and came to the conclusion that this toxic sister is a banshee. We are into supernatural literature (okay, that's not a real term but that's what I call it) and in one particular series by Kim Harrison, banshees feed on emotion.  They stir up trouble in order to feed on the heightened emotions of humans or they will starve.  Or, in a term you might be more familiar with, she is a dementor.  Those evil, soul-sucking monsters in the Harry Potter series.  Merely being in the proximity of a dementor will suck all the happiness out of you until you're a hollow shell of a person. 

If you have a toxic person in your life, I know you will be able to relate. Being the non-confrontational wimp that I am, I prefer the avoidance technique of dealing.  BUT. There is a meeting of the sisters this week that I cannot avoid.  I have to face down the dementor.  But first I have to find my patronus.

I've gotta get my chocolate fix somehow...

I've got another guest post at White and Delightsome.  I'm not eating chocolate but I sure am fantasizing about it.  And check out the song that goes with it.  Mmmm.  Chocolate salty balls...

The ugly cat is out of the bag...

Yes, the secret is out.  My extended family now knows that I am, as one sister put it, no longer a "practicing Mormon".  Is that sort of like dropping piano lessons because I didn't practice?  Maybe if I'd just KEPT practicing I could have been a great Mormon.  Or pianist.

I prefer other more colorful euphemisms like "going apostate", being "seduced by the devil" or just "in Satan's power".  Meh.  Whatever.  Maybe I just wised up.

The thing that baffled me was how they found out?  It all seems to stem back to that incredibly random meeting on my way to Reno.  Yes, it did come back to bite me in the ass.  Not that ass biting is always a bad thing but I wish I could have picked the timing.  And the person doing the biting.

To hell with my handbag and back again

My youngest daughter has been heavily involved in a church production that is performing at the Conference Center Little Theater.  She is the ONLY reason I would go to something like that so I was compelled to buy a ticket.  There was a risk that those towering stone walls would collapse when I walked in the door but I guess I haven't done anything too horrible yet because the building is still standing.

I had a front row seat so close I could see up the (amateur) actors noses.  That was helpful because I was able to keep my mind occupied with noticing who'd had too much of a spray tan and those who didn't know how to properly apply stage makeup.

The curtain opened on the first scene.  The actors, in pioneer clothing, were laying on the stage floor covered with old quilts while fake snow and fog blew around.  I assume they were supposed to be shivering as with cold but the jerky movements looked more like the group was having a mass convulsive episode.  Dramatic music blared and there was much weeping and wailing.  Misery clearly abounded.  That was my first clue that this was a dramatic retelling of the infamous Martin and Willie handcart company debacle.  It was a retelling so sanitized that I could practically smell the chlorine wafting off the stage with the fake fog.  A couple of years ago I may have felt awe at the incredible strength of these people in the face of such intense suffering.  Now I just felt sorrow because their suffering was needless and completely avoidable on so many levels. 



My angel is waaaaaay better looking

 On the risers at the back of the stage stood an angel choir.  And there was my angel, dressed in my discarded white temple dress and slippers, hair in ringlets and back-lit till she literally glowed. I have gorgeous spawn, I have to admit.  For her I was going to ExMo hell for two hours.  But she's worth it.  And she made a damn fine angel. 

I could mock this production in so many ways.  It was an overly long, over-wrought, over-the-top dramatic version of the story complete with the requisite raising-from-the-dead and angels-pushing-handcarts.  It was written and performed as a faith promoting production by fervent people who utterly believe all of it.  Where once it might have affected me that way, now I just feel sad for them.  And, I admit, just a little bit superior for having seen through the facade. 

Whiny and introspective

I was reading in my room the other day when an unfamiliar emotion blindsided me with it's intensity.  I needed, craved, ached for my husband's arms around me, to feel the enveloping sense of security, peace and love.  As I sat shocked and trembling and tried to analyze the feeling, I remembered that rarely in the last thirty years have I ever felt this from him and on the occasions that I did it was short-lived.  He would do something insensitive or asinine and I would realize it was all an illusion anyway.  The times that I really needed emotional, or even physical, support were the times that I was let down the most.  When I finally realized that he was simply incapable of emotional connection was when I felt freed from the guilt and pain of not being enough woman to bring it out in him.

So why this feeling from out of nowhere?  I've been turning this around and around in my brain for days with no answers.  I still feel this marriage needs to end but I can't seem to pull the trigger and blast away the only life my daughters have known.  The words hover on the end of my tongue but I can't seem to utter them.  Yet.  But we all need to move on.  Me, my husband AND our kids. 

I HATE  being whiny and introspective!  It puts me in the worst mood.

Den of lies

At work the other night when the employees gathered for "cuddle time" we played a game called "Den of Lies". In this game three people are asked to tell something about themselves but one person will lie. Then the others vote on who they think is lying. I was chosen to tell the truth but I searched my brain for something so outlandish that it would seem like a lie.  Hmmm.  Got it! 

I sat there in my sensible, comfy shoes and capris, the picture of demure maturity, and said, "I write Mormon porn for a blog."  When it came time for voting, not ONE PERSON voted for me as the liar.  One of my co-workers just commented, "It sounds like something Zena would do."  Damn.  They're starting to see through me.

And, yes, I have another guest post on White and Delightsome!

Old and moldy

My top five reasons why getting old sucks:

5. Pillow face stays most of the day.  Those creases you wake up with that used to be gone in a hour now stay so long it looks like you just woke up at 2pm.  In ten more years they will still be there at bedtime.

4. Reading glasses.  You try and look cool and hip by texting and tweeting and all that shit but you have to pull out reading glasses to do it.  And you use words like cool and hip which aren't anymore.

3. Random hairs.  They sprout from your chin and neck in odd places but you can't see to pull them out without your damn READING GLASSES.

2. Your body looks like a slowly melting candle as it succumbs to gravity.  No part of your body could remotely be considered perky anymore.

1. It takes three days to recover from one night of drinking.  Why couldn't I have done this when I was young and energetic?  Oh yeah, I was mormon.

What else sucks about getting old?  And don't dare answer if you're uinder 40 because I do NOT consider that old.

As sisters in Zion...

An exceptional ExMo relief society meeting was held this past weekend.  But unlike MoMo meetings, it wasn't scheduled a year in advance and no meetings were held to plan it.  It was thrown together at the last minute as texts flew and hotel rooms were booked.  Then on Saturday night a motley crew of women in various stages of maturity (both mental and physical) descended on downtown Salt Lake City.  The center of Zion.

We, of course, needed piano accompaniment for our hymns so this epic homemaking was held at a piano bar.  We all belted out "Rock You Like a Hurricane" and "Piano Man" and many others that I can't remember because I was snockered on shots of Patron with a pickle juice chaser and raspberry mojitos.  Yeah, no Hawaiian haystacks and water for OUR refreshments.

Fanny came and brought her awesome friend, Twinkie.   Twinkie showed the true spirit of sisterhood when she grabbed my hand and asked, "Are you a sit-in-the-back girl like me?  Well, let's dance!"  And the two of us got up and danced right there in the window of that bar on Main Street.  We shook our half-century-old asses and didn't care what people thought.  Now THAT'S empowering.

We could have been sedately planning a workshop on using our food storage and quietly gossiping about all the juicy news that leaked out of the last bishopric meeting.  But instead we opened up and really got to know each other and accepted without judgment. These are the women that have held my hair while I vomited after too much drinking.  They've listened while I unloaded my confusion and fear and tried to make some sense of my life.  They know the worst about me and are still my friends. THAT is the true spirit of sisterhood. 

Now, if I'd just gotten a picture of four well-endowed sisters sitting two deep in a pedicab being pulled by a skinny little girl named Veronica in the wee hours of the morning.