I'm angry. Mad, furious, upset - whatever you want to call it, I'm IT.
You can tell I'm mad because I'm sitting here eating a bag of Ghirardelli milk chocolate chips. They were bought, ostensibly, for baking chocolate chip cookies. They're not making it into any cookie dough anytime soon.
I have PMS. Parental Misery Syndrome.
Now most columnists might choose not to write anything when they're in this mood. They're wimps. OK, if they're Dave Barry, then they're not wimps, at least in that category. They lack the essential hormonal explosions to bring them to the edge that I'm now teetering upon.
Of course, my children didn't help matters today. Usually I am able to let their little idiosyncrasies roll off my shoulders like water off a duck. Today I am very un-ducklike.
My 7-year-old girl, egged on by her 4-year-old sister and her 7-year-old cousin, created a bathroom of sorts in her bedroom. Generally that wouldn't be cause for alarm, but she used it. Not two feet away stood a perfectly good toilet, but she had to pee on a pile of paper, set upon a blanket on the carpeting. Then, when she decided she'd better clean it up, she picked it up and it went all over the floor. Computer paper isn't known for its absorbent qualities.
These little chocolate morsels I'm nibbling could very well be saving her life.
Then I had to go to a court of honor for my son. He's in Boy Scouts. On the drive over to the building he asked me why I was wearing the shirt I was wearing, indicating that it made me look like a hobo. He threatened to call the fashion police on me. I was reasonably sure I was safe, since he didn't have a cell phone on him.
His job at the meeting was to tell the assembled parents about the scout camp he attended this summer. I was so proud when his entire speech consisted of "Uh, it was cool because they didn't really make us do anything if we didn't want to, and uh ... uh ... the food sucked." Since they didn't make them do anything, he earned only one merit badge. I'm fairly certain he got that for just showing up. The other scouts earned piles of badges. My son? One. Parental pride was overflowing. Next time I'm sending him to a Boy Scout camp with drill sergeants.
And toss another handful of chocolate chips into my mouth. Breathe and toss, breathe and toss. I find it's best if you get a good rhythm going while doing this de-stressing activity. It keeps you from simply burying your face into the bag, which cuts into your breathing capabilities.
I gave two brothers a ride home after the Boy Scout meeting and they wanted to listen to a song called 'Stacy's Mom.' It's about a teenager in love with a girl's mother. My daughter's name is Stephanie. One of the brothers inadvertently sang "Stephie's Mom" instead of "Stacie's Mom."
The song says that Stacie's mom has got it going on. It doesn't say exactly what "it" is, but I'm inclined to believe it means that the woman wouldn't scare you if you saw her in daylight hours. As opposed to me, who merits having the fashion police bring out the handcuffs. The boy who indicated that my daughter's mom had it going on kept saying that he'd made a slip. I didn't really have "it" going on. IT left me years ago after I gave birth for the first time. IT isn't coming back. Ever.
I think I need another bag of chocolate chips.
When I got home, it was dark. My dear husband was still on top of our house, arranging the lovely blue tarps that have covered our roof for the past two weeks. I don't see him anymore. I do hear tapping above my head from time to time, and assume that's his way of letting me know he's still alive. The ark was built in less time it's taken to put a new roof on our house.
I wonder if Ghirardelli sends overnight emergency shipments.
As I was writing this column, screams of pain erupted from my 12-year-old son in the kitchen. Hubby and I raced to see which limb had been amputated, to find that he'd somehow gotten a lot of Ben-Gay in his eyes. He screamed as we poured water over his face, and he was flailing arms and legs and Ben-Gay in all directions. When things calmed down, we discover that there is Ben-Gay all over our living room. Seems he was running with an open tube of the stuff and waving it around when it emptied itself on the room and into his eyes.
We've told them not to run with scissors, but I never thought to warn them about the dangers of running with open tubes of non-greasy pain-relieving ointment. Now he's paying the price for my inept parenting.
My eyes are now stinging because I got some on my hands while I was helping him and then, naturally, rubbed my eyes in the universal parental gesture of I-can't-believe-I-just-saw-my-child-do-that-so-maybe-if-I-rub-my-eyes-it-will-all-go-away. (It never does, of course.)
This is only one day. I don't have enough column space to tell you about an entire week. One thing I do know is that I'm going to need a whole truckload of chocolate before this month is over.
The author, a freelance writer, can be reached at PamelaTroeppl@Comcast.net.[[In-content Ad]]
