I think last year's was a little late. Grace and Scotty, this year has been one of changes to say the least. Mama graduated from law school and Scottro started comimg up with questions like "Mom, what does verification mean?" He's been doing that a lot lately.

On the day of my graduation, the snow piled up two feet. It took us three hours each way to get there and back, but you better believe Lloyd was NOT missing this for the world. I couldn't have cared less. When I walked across the stage, all they actually handed me was a rolled up poster that said "Remember the Marathon Runner: Your diploma will be mailed in the early summer." The poster had a picture of a marathon runner. I was familiar with it because the Dean of Student Affairs used to plaster the stupid thing all over the classrooms during final exam periods. I mean he wallpapered them Martha Stewart stylie. It seemed like a sick joke -- a running one between me and the legal-academic-ethics powers that be. The saga continues, but that's a story for when you're older.

My diploma is sitting on Debbie and Papa's Harmonium because I can't afford to get it framed. How sad is that kids? Three years of soul-sucking toil and all I got was this piece of parchment in a box that says "Do not bend." The diploma is $140,000 kids -- FRAME NOT INCLUDED.







Right now, you guys are with your dad for the summer, and a little piece of me winces each time I talk to you because you're having such a wonderful time. I know that's horrible, but I feel like I'm the un-fun rule-making parent just because I make you listen to non-Faith No More Mike Patton project albums like it's your job.

It means "to identify and validate," Buddy. Mama had a hard week, guys. Feeling a little lost, like I'm needing you to come home, re-identify and validate me, ask me how gallbladders work and tell me they're not really bladders at all because they're in your stomach. I need that.

I need your idiosyncratic, yet PERFECTLY logical little brains to match my own. If I don't get to your birthday letters on time, know forever and always, you two are my heart.

No. I'm not knocked up. That entry would be entitled "Very Much Shrill Screaming." I was just thinking that whatever people might say about me writing about my children, my kids are going to be able to look back at this site someday and know their mother -- a feat I haven't accomplished in my own life in 32 years. Sure, they might not ever be able to get a date, or a job, or credit (ever), but they get to know who I was at very different points in my life.



I am a completely different person than who I was when I started this blog six, count 'em, six years ago, and the past six years have been some of the hardest I have endured. Maybe some day, Grace and Scotty will look back at what I have written and understand why "sometimes Mommy just has bad days."

Dear Grace,

Lately, it seems that very little makes you happy. You are going through a phase right now where every rule violation, every unkept notion, offends you to the core of your sensibilities. I still can't get enough of you. I see these fits as signs that you're learning right from wrong, and you have a delicious and deeply individual moral code. In that respect, the apple has not fallen far from the proverbial tree.



I really miss you. Because I am away a lot, of course, but some particular things I really miss. I miss the way you used to curl up with me on my lap, and I miss the way that we used to have dance parties in the living room every Friday. I miss how you would always request Twisted Sister. I miss painting your face like Paul Stanley's and jumping up and down on the couch to Firehouse.



I know that part of your dissatisfaction with things is my fault. I am not home with you as much as I wish I could be. I wish I could do more to make you happy. You make me really happy. First marking period of third grade, you earned straight A's and perfect attendance. Again, apple-proverb-tree. You have a truly exceptional mind and you see the world through your own eyes. No one can shape you but you. But I don't want you to feel pressured to excel in the same way that I did growing up.



Just know that you don't have to be perfect, but you are.

Love,
Mama

Wow. I haven't written in ages. I'm sort of titillated by the notion that no one is checking up on me anymore ... aside, of course, from the ever lurching Michigan Board of Law Examiners character and fitness committee. My stomach has been giving me trouble, and by giving me trouble, I mean trying to claw its way up my throat and out my mouth so it can zombify my family with hypnotic acid rays. And all I'll have to show for it is an inside out belly attached to my face.

I know it's just stress. Applying to the bar exam feels like cutting to be first in line for the Spanish inquisition. I have exactly 15 days to finish compiling every public piece of data ever produced on me. I haven't seen my children in more than 24 hours. By the time I do, it will have been 36 and they will be sleeping. I know that everything I've sacrificed in the last three-and-a-half years has led me here, but I genuinely feel like throwing up my hands.

I really wish I could be the next Heather Armstrong and make my living writing about the legitimately and accidentally funny things my kids say on a regular basis. I really thought that by this point in my life, I would be set as far as having a home and an occupation and control over my urge to choke Scotty's soccer coach. I don't.

But if I did, I would probably say that when we were driving a few days ago, Scotty said to me, "Mama, I hope John McCain doesn't get voted because he will try to put me in the army." I suppose I can take some solace in the fact that I'm raising the kid right.

I finished my third semester of law school this week. I have no idea how ... or if I did well. The day before my ethics exam (that's right, ethics), the professor sent an e-mail to the class that said she was allowing people to bring in any version of the rule book to use on the test. We were allowed to use a copy of the Model Rule of Professional Conduct, but the week of the exam, several students had their copies stolen. Their rules of professional ethics were stolen. These people are shameful thugs.

Wrong.

I haven't had a lot to say in recent days. Quiet reflection seems best sometimes -- not that I have much success at the quiet part. I thought about writing on 2006 -- the year in review, but anyone who's been following what a whackjob I am by reading my nonsensical blathering already knows I had a rough year. I don't necessarily want to recount it.

I'm safe and warm now, and I can put everything back the way it was before I went away. I even think my heart might not be broken anymore. The last few weeks have provided me with some much-needed perspective. Losing friends reminds me that I don't need to be so careful. I can love harder; it'll be ok.

Once in a while I find myself in a rut where all of my interaction with other humans seems dull and ineffectual. I've been in one for a while now. At other times, every person, idea, conversation -- they're new pennies, the thrill of remembering something before you forgot, summer thunderstorms.

Perhaps my novel freakiness is losing its novel-ness. You don't have to tell me it's novel-ty. I OWN words, motherfucker. Maybe that's the problem. See there was no need for me to overreact just then. I haven't a thing to prove.

Maybe I have something to prove. I miss New York. I miss the physical. I miss the people. I miss most of all the new pennies and thrill of remembering and summer storms and law school and sketchy nights and the little Jamaican man downstairs and my shitty apartment and cockroaches that could FLY around inside my shitty apartment and sitting on the fire escape watching dice games on the street below my shitty apartment and my Uzbekistani psychiatrist -- she was cute -- and parking tickets and too much laundry for a fourth floor walkup and the subway and the half-Chinese half-roti place around the corner from my shitty apartment and being this impressive midwestern anamoly instead of a mixed up girl who fell apart (again) and now has to try really hard to hold her head above water.

Yes I have something to prove. It's that I'm not so wonderful but I'm good stuff and where is everyone? And why is it so hard to surround myself with people who make my synapses fire -- not sparkle I'm realistic -- but fire god damn it?

I should have qualified this entire diatribe by saying that my interactions with Scotty and Grace still do inspire me. How could they not? Scotty just walked in here humming, in nothing but a pair of Madagascar underpants, clutching a packet of fruit snacks with his left hand, holding up his marker-saturated right hand to say "Mawm ... this, like, won't come off ... f'real." That makes me happier than knowing the car keys are in the front zipper pocket on my purse.

Mom: They're putting a Lucky's Steakhouse in in Clio.
Jodi: Oh yeah? Where?
Mom: In front of the Wal-Mart.
Jodi: rolls eyes.
Mom: Well, this one's not bad. I was in there the other day and it's kind of nice.
Jodi: Mom, you know ... it's not because it's scummy. It's the slave labor that makes me not want to save fifteen cents on Tide.
Mom: I know. I know. Don't start.

Pause.

Mom: We do have to get the kids art supplies there. They have huge buckets of supplies. You know? The little foam shapes. Animals and everything. Mom stretches her fingers apart while saying this. You know? For emphasis.
Jodi: Well I didn't know that. Shapes make slave labor ok.

My Sweetest Baby Scotty,

Your fifth birthday falls on a Thursday, and though I still get a little weepy thinking about it, you are in kindergarten now. Everything about you, from the minute you were conceived, has transformed the world around me. I never loved the way I looked until I saw my face on you.




Because you will be in school on your birthday, we had your party yesterday. And because you love all things Superman (including the fact that he wears a huge "S"), Mama made you red and blue finger jell-o. We had Superman icecream, a Superman cake, and a Superman pinata, which you annunciated with meticulous attention: pee-nee-adda.

You are fond of inventing your own pronunciations of words. Most recently, "kleenex" became "kleenext."

Some of my favorites are:

Regular = Reg-lee-ar
Shrek 2 = Shrek Tunes
Why can't I...? = Why I can't...?
Ohio = No-hio

None of this is a matter of baby talk -- it's all about stylistic choice -- just another reason you break people's hearts the moment they meet you, without exception.

Because your birthday is so close to Halloween, Mama thought it would be a good idea to have all of the kids wear costumes to your party. It was a good idea. We had your sister, the geisha, in precious addition to a bride, a witch, a power ranger, a pirate, and a bear. You were Superman, of course.

We bobbed for apples, and I filled a room with balloons for you. Watching them bounce around your little upstretched arms made me so happy.




Many things about you make me so happy. You do what you call "my sneaky eyes," and I giggle every time because although you're simply glancing from side to side, you do it with a half-smirk half-business expression that makes the impulse to gather you up and cover you with kisses irresistable.

You also love to sing and dance. You always have. You spend the entirety of your day humming. You hum Twisted Sister, and you hum Bizet, and you hum Bobby Darin, and you hum "Ridin' Dirty," my current personal favorite. You hum so much that your kindergarten teacher is concerned. I will always defend you, and I say, if humming is your biggest problem, you are, undoubtedly, the coolest kid ever.

You also covet trinkets. Like your mama, you love tiny things -- little secrets -- your treasures. Your favorites are a tiny wristwatch that doesn't even work, actually, and a little compass that hooks on your belt loop. No night passes where I don't lie down to read you a bedtime story and incur at least one little truck or plastic animal lodged directly in my spine. I do a thorough sweep of your backpack each morning to make sure you aren't smuggling contraband to school. For this reason, you LOVE clothing with multiple tiny pockets.

Each day when I pick you up from school, you come first from the duckling line of kindergarten children, dragging your backpack and wonderful, wonderful, wonderful. I remember how much I've missed you that and every day. As your classmates file by, one after another they shout "Bye Scott," "Bye Scott," "Bye Scott," and several little girls step out of formation to give you big hugs.




I am reminded by these processions that you are no longer Scotty and I am no longer Mama. You are Scott and I am Mom, and never again will you be my gurgling infant. Even so, you will always have my face and be my sweetest baby boy.


Love,
Mama Mom

Schools have been on my mind a lot lately. I have entered the realm of college graduate purgatory: the realm of substitute teachers. Since I'm new to subbing this year, I get all of the awesome leftover classes that nobody in their right mind would take, namely 7th grade special education and alternative alternative ed. So far I've had kids stick staples in their arms and stick pencils in a light socket. The theme seems to be sticking things where they don't belong. I wonder if that's a required course in education programs. It ought to be. Into to "It Went Up My Nose." Look out for Jodi's mom though. She'll have your ass in rehab for that.



The kids have also started school. Allow me to qualify that. The kids have started public school. In the past week, Scotty has told his teacher that he will not be eating any animal crackers because he is a vegetarian. Next week he's lecturing on non-violence at a local community college as part of their pioneers of preschool anti-globalization series. Then Grace came home and gave a stirring diatribe about how my forgetting to put a pudding spoon in her lunch box introduced her to that ever-elusive utensil: the spork. Grace doesn't pronounce "r's" well so it comes out "spoh-ook."



"It's half spoon, half foh-ook, mom." I looked at her.

"It's true. It's really true. It's half spoon half foh-ook. It's a spoh-ook."

"I believe you Gracie. I really do."

Not for use in suicides


We were driving the kids home from this movie, which is essentially the same as this movie with the only difference being the former's hunter antagonist versus the latter's sprawl antagonist when my mother nearly ground the minivan to a halt.

"Are you sure you supposed to be using those things like that?" I was putting saline drops in my nose at the time. I was putting saline drops in my nose at the time because my local pharmacist told me I couldn't have cold medicine with my medication. Not wanting to end up dead on the floor in my playboy playmate/Guess girl mother's Bahamian labor and delivery suite, I did what the man said. This brings us to me putting saline drops in my nose.

"How would you suggest that I use them, Mom?"

"Well, not so often. You've put them in there four times since we've been in the car. You're going to dry out your nose." I momentarily paused. I stopped putting saline drops in my nose to read the bottle.

"Place drops in nostril to relieve dryness as needed. Are you accusing me of abusing saltwater, Mom?" I resumed putting saline drops in my nose.

"I just don't think it's a good idea."

"Mom, I'm crazy, but my preferred method, if you will, would not be to drown myself in nose drops. Let it go."

"I deserved that."

"Yep. Pretty much."

I received this spam today:

I am Mrs jeny cole,CEO of Mark Arts and Craft,an establishment that deals in the Import and export of Cocoa butter cream,Rubber,Cotton and textiles and fabric materials, we are looking for a trustworthy representative in the united states that will aid as a link between us and our customers in the USA I would like to know if you are interested. Respond only if you will like to work from home part-time and get paid weekly without leaving or it affecting your present job. (deduct 10% in every transcation you recieve)Please if you are interested forward the following info to Me :

1.Full names 2.Phone number/fax 3.Full contact address
Hoping to hear from you soon.
Mrs Jenny.


Oh Mrs. Jenny, you KNOW that please I am interested. I'm forwarding you all that and a bag of my social security number. These crazy sluts will do ANyTHInG!!1!!!111

and you never will ...


I don't have jean shorts. I don't own a white bra. I have tattoos and a masters degree. It is not in education. The other moms are highly suspicious of me, as well they should be, even though they probably don't know about the bras. It could be because I don't give a crap if the cub scouts object to the all-school fundraiser including caramel corn because it might interfere their annual popcorn sale. People should not buy popcorn from homophobes anyhow. Scotty is not allowed to become a cub scout anymore than he would've been allowed to go to Vietnam or join the young Republicans. Cub scouts are incorrect. They do not belong in my child's school passing out literature anymore than does the KKK if you ask me.

Not blurting out "screw those little gaybashers -- arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgh" at my very first PTA meeting, as the popcorn debate waged on, almost made me pass out. I almost passed out. I felt brain cells dying because they were trying to jump out of my head because my head was trying to SPLODE. I cannot understand how in a room full of adults, I was the only person who almost sploded because serious concern arose over a PUBLIC school's possible interference with a PRIVATE organization's continued attempts to raise hate peddling money. I cannot believe I was the only one who thinks it's important to not let my kid be part of an organization that would eventually kick him out if he turned out to be gay.

If I were in New York, they would've been too uncomfortable to voice their concerns. But I am in a midwestern hellhole. A hellhole I tell you.

As long as rosy infants are born
No one believes it is happening now.
~~ Czeslaw Milosz


Everyone old enough to remember knows where they were when JFK was shot, or at least that notion has become part of our collective American mythos.

I am driving to work five years ago when the first plane hits the World Trade Center. I happen to be listening to NPR. I always happen to be listening to NPR, and Morning Edition is interrupted and Robert Siegel tells me that a plane has hit the World Trade Center. I think, hmmmm ... that's weird. Somebody flew a cessna into the lightning rod or something.

I am eight months pregnant, and the sun is shining and there are no clouds and the sky is blue blue blue. I am the first one in most mornings, but not today. Matt is already in the office sitting at his desk, door open, and I walk directly toward his open office door to reach my cubby every morning and every morning I stop and we talk. We talk about politics and religion and the company we work for and we talk about the other people in the office. We talk about everything my Grandpa Doc always said was an impolite topic of discussion, especially at the dinner table.

I say someone flew a plane into World Trade Center. I do not know what time it is, but I suggest that we go turn on the TV in the lunchroom to see what's going on. It seems like a novelty story to me at this point, and I could just as easily look online to see pictures of the tiny plane I imagine, but I don't. I say we should go to the lunchroom, and Matt and I go together because we are the first to arrive in the morning. We are always the first to arrive in the morning. We go together.

We flip on the TV to see the smoke billowing out and we realize that this isn't some 4-seater pilot who went on a bender because his wife left him. She wasn't upset about his carousing or wild spending on what she considers ridiculous hobbies like very deep sea diving -- at his age -- what is he thinking? Honestly. But that's not who is flying the plane, and that becomes obvious while we watch the smoke. It is obvious.

We stand there with glazed-over eyes hypothesizing about what kind of plane may have hit the tower. That's a lot of smoke. I am eight months pregnant. We are standing and watching and hypothesizing and the second plane hits, and we aren't sure what we have just seen, and we aren't sure what we have just seen for a long time, and I'm still not sure what I had just seen.

That's where I am. I am at work and the sun is shining and there are no clouds and the sky is blue blue blue and I am eight months pregnant and we are hypothesizing and we are not sure what we have just seen. The rest of the office begins filing in and makes their way to the lunchroom, and I don't remember what we are saying to each other. Probably more hypothesizing. Probably the programmers are calculating the odds of two planes hitting the same set of buildings randomly, but really no other explanation seems plausible. Air traffic control must've lost their motherfucking minds. That's what happened.

Someone did it on purpose and people are jumping out of windows and they are falling and the sky is blue blue blue here and the sky is black and thick and not like the sky at all there.

It's my grandpa's birthday.

People are jumping out of the windows on my grandpa's birthday and someone did it on purpose and they are falling and I am eight months pregnant and the sky is blue and the sky is black and it wasn't because of his drinking or his very deep sea diving. Someone did it on purpose. Air traffic control must've lost their motherfucking minds, but they didn't. They are jumping out of the windows and they are falling and they are dying.

After work, I drive to my grandparent's house for dinner. It is my grandpa's birthday. I am eight months pregnant and I say to my baby "don't come out. Never come out," and I am correct. I go to dinner and we are watching TV and they are jumping out of the windows and they are falling and they are dying, and I say to my baby "don't come out. Never come out," and I am correct. We have cake.

"[Her] diet of cocaine and unprotected sex with complete strangers this summer made her tanner and skinnier than anyone I've ever seen. " ~~ A.A.

Not a real genius

You are not a "borderline genius." Your child is not "borderline gifted." "Borderline diabetic"? You ain't eat right, as they say in the vernacular. Real geniuses, and most other people for that matter, know that people only claim to be "borderline [oh, pick one]" because if a putative almost-something claimed to be a full-blown something, everyone would refer to her not as a borderline something, but as an actual stupid idiot.

My child is quite tall, perhaps even abnormally tall. Even so, I do not refer to her as a "borderline giant." The boundaries of giantism, I'm sure, are marked by specific criteria created by some arbitrary authority on giants. So too for geniuses, diabetics, and gifted children. As to the latter, I'm sure the authority is not the program administrator for the gifted and talented program at your kid's school in chicken farm, Iowa, population 483, who said that your kid was "this close" to making the cut. Why do you breathe?

I was watching the Flavor of Love on VH1 the other day because that's how low I've sunk, and girl A tells Flav that girl B is a porn star after girl B told girls C-J that girl A gave Flav a quote "hand job" end quote. Flav then conducted some intensive online research, for which I'm sure he received a prestigious funding opportunities. He then outed girl B in the elimination portion of the show by holding up evidence of girl B's endeavors for girls A and C-J to admire. Girl B did not receive a fancy clock necklace, but she got to keep the printout of herself diddling ... uh ... her. I checked. That's actually grammatically correct.

Now you have saved yourself the trouble of watching the episode, and I have conducted a keyword experiment that includes both pornography and the Guggenheim Foundation. Solid.

This seems to be a Public Enemy oriented blog Permanent Link  |  Cosmos

I have received some crushing blows lately, but this, this is really sad.

When Gracie was learning to talk, we used to watch the Crocodile Hunter a lot because it's completely awesome. She used to point at the television and say "Papa!" My dad has these crazy feathered bangs. He's had them since 1974 at least. He also tends to only button his shirts half way up under the theory that the ladies dig chest fur. Typing that made me throw up in my mouth.

My dad does bear an attenuated resemblence to the late (sniff) Steve Irwin.


Much love goes out to Terri, Bhindi Sue, and small little baby Bob. Your dad was never going to let them eat you, shorty.

If I were going to have a bachelorette party, I would totally have it at the Mountain Inn in Mount Morris, Michigan. Where else can you find a wall full of animals, snowshoes, and tackle? Maybe northern Minnesota, but that's not really my problem, is it? I set the alarm off coming home to my parents' house tonight. Woops.

The time has come for me to create one. Times are sad for J-fab. A few weeks back, I learned that staying in New York was simply not economically feasible anymore. A few weeks before that, an insurance screw-up prevented me from filling my crazy-med prescription. In light of that, it's not profoundly earth shattering that I packed 7 boxes of my most precious possessions, gave everything else to a shelter, said goodbye to my three favorite people, and got on a plane to Detroit.

I live with my parents. I am about to turn 30. I am in a legal predicament. I cry every day.

This simply will not do.

I need a life coach.

Or maybe just a boyfriend.

Or like, a furry puppy. I miss my cat.

I bought a bicycle at a garage sale. I ride it around. I am looking for a job. My feet and heart hurt.