Because A Mind Is A Terrible Thing To Waste And All That Stuff

The other day, I got an email from a woman at Donor's Choose about participating in their 2008 blogger's charity event to benefit school programs, which is ironic because as some of you may remember, I've had a major beef with reading lately.

But I've also been on this quest lately to try to be a nicer, better mother, which is not only exhausting, it's making Spawn think that I either have a terminal disease or am getting sent to prison. So I thought that I could channel some good-deed-doing in another area of the universe, and what better time to ask people for money for a good cause than in the middle of the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression?

So I agreed to participate in the 2008 Blogger's Choice Donationpalooza because I think that Donor's Choose is a great organization. All of the donations on my page will go to projects in the Stamford public schools, which are perpetually struggling to find resources, so much so that they almost closed Spawn's school a few months back because they couldn't afford to operate all of the schools in the district.

So if you have time for a few clicks, and maybe an extra $5 to spare, please, click here and support a project that will bring so much into the lives of schoolkids in the area. Or pick another project if you don't like mine. The projects I chose are eligible for matching funds through the Fairfield County Foundation, so right away, your donation will be doubled.

As an added incentive AND a recession insurance policy, I will randomly select twenty people from the list of donors and mail you one (1) virgin, unspoiled scratch-off Connecticut lottery ticket. Just send a email to lambira@gmail.com with your snail mail address after you donate.

Whether you donate through my blog or someone else's, please, consider this: without education, I'd be an even bigger idiot than I am now.

Thank you for your time and generosity.

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A Little Help Please...

So...I haven't been blogging lately. And I'm afraid to blog about why I haven't been blogging, because most of what is torturing me lately is work related and I have no interest in being Dooced. Unless said Doocing comes with either widespread fame/fortune/adoration (like it did for her), or is accompanied by the kind of severance package that causes Congress to hold hearings on the injustice of executive compensation.

But neither of those scenarios seem likely. And another reason that I haven't been on the internets all that much is that I decided that instead of spending all of my free time blogging about what a terrible mother I am, I could, oh, I don't know, try being a better mother.

Novel idea, yes?

I've been trying to stop multitasking and really focus on being present with the Spawn. Not just physically THERE, but engaged. No checking emails while they're playing in the playroom. No sorting through mail and school papers while they're refusing to eat their Boston Market. No trying to put away laundry while they're getting ready for bed. Trying to take time to do things with them, even if it's just to play a board game or read a book together.

But today, I think my efforts to be Better Mom are setting me up for a rather spectacular flop. I told the The Girl that she could have her friend over for a sleepover, and she wanted to decorate cupcakes. So I did something that I never in my adult life thought I would do, given that my family often begs me to stay OUT of the kitchen, and especially since Stop & Shop does this type of thing so much better:

I baked.

I bought three boxes of cake mix and those little paper cupcake holder thingies, and some white frosting and food coloring to make different colors and some sprinkles for garnish. I borrowed some baking tins and from the bowels of my kitchen, excavated this strange-looking wedding-gift appliance that has these twirly things that mix stuff up. I emptied the boxes and cracked the eggs and figured out how to operate my oven, and now I have approximately 87 cupcakes cooling on the counter, waiting to be frosted.

Problem is, they look really weird. They're all different heights, and some are sunken instead of rounded, and some are covered in pimply looking nubs. I'm a little worried about that. Is it possible to kill a child with bad cupcakes? Death by Betty Crocker?

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Manager Mom's Gallery Of Shame, Part 2

My birthday weekend is over, and I'm sad to see it go. I had such a good time using "But it's my birthday!" as an excuse to avoid all of the things that I didn't feel like doing, from the trivial (fetching the newspapers from the end of the driveway) to the disgusting (doing the final assists on The Boy's butt-wiping) to the obvious (did not cook a shred of food the entire weekend.)

I meant to post these on Saturday, but I was busy lying on the couch. For those of you who enjoyed the first eight years, behold the terrible power of my adolescence, with its parade of overthought hair and questionable fashions:



















I would like to point out that my mother showed all of these to Manager Dad after he proposed to me. And he STILL went through with the wedding.

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Manager Mom's Gallery of Shame: Part 1: The Grade School Years

Sunday is my birthday. I will be thirty-eight years old.

"Wow, ManagerMom!" People never say to me. "At 38, you're quite the cougar MILF! Have you always been this stunning?"

To answer this question, I bring you portraits from the first eighteen years of my life, which my own mother faithfully saved in an 8 x 10 picture frame in our living room:
Having seen some of my fellow bloggers on Fug Mug Friday over at PapaTV I don't feel quite so bad.

On the other hand, there's still the adolescent years. I'll save those for tomorrow.

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I Will Run You Down Like The Vermin You Are

I have freely admitted that I suck at most of the things that wives and mothers are traditionally good at, like cooking, cleaning, laundry, and having emotions.

But the ONE domestic-ish thing that I USED be able to do was grow tomatoes.

Until this year, when EVERY SINGLE TOMATO got stolen right off of the plants. At first, I thought one of my neighbors was playing a joke on me. Then I thought Manager Dad getting even with me for something I've done to annoy him lately. And then I thought it was a raccoon.

So I tried chicken wire, scarecrows, the sprinkling of dog pee, hexes. Nothing worked. Every time a little green tomato would sprout, it would be plucked off of the branch by the next morning.

Now I realize it was you, squirrels. And today was the last straw. It's one thing to steal, another thing to taunt me with the remains of your theivery:

Game on, you little shits.

Oh. P.S. Happy Anniversary, Manager Dad.

No need to click - today's sadism is all above the fold.

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Dear Keanu,

I spotted your secret signal to me in last week's Wall Street Journal, and I knew that you wanted to meet:



I'm sorry that I blew you off, but I've been thinking about us a lot lately. Especially because this Friday is my and Manager Dad's ninth anniversary. It seems like this "starter marriage" of mine might actually stick.

And so, because of my love for MD and our Spawn, I think that it's time that you and I FINALLY put an end to our relationship.

I remember when we first met; we were so young, and dumb, and carefree.



I always appreciated the fact that you supported my career choices.

I'll miss the wild times we've had together, but it's getting hard for me to keep up with your Hollywood lifestyle.



But our affair wasn't ALWAYS about partying and fetishwear; some of my favorite times were the quiet, simple things that we did together.


I want to reiterate that I'm doing this for Manager Dad. This has absolutely nothing to do with my recent tweets about wanting to bear children for either of these fine young gentlemen:



So that's it. Our twenty years together have been lovely, but all good things must come to an end.

But I hope you take comfort in knowing that I'll always carry a little reminder of you in my heart, and my home:



I will love you desperately forever and am being forced to do this against my will

Fondly,

Manager Mom

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At Least I Know What She Wanted To Buy At Target

Found this one when I was straightening her room. It may or may not be related to yesterday's list:

Is she trying to re-enact a scene from the movie "Fargo"? Slay some vampires? Cross-stitch me a "Bless This Mess" needlepoint to hang on the kitchen wall?

I better not piss her off, just in case she actually manages to get her hands on any of this stuff.

Another shawty post... no need to click.

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The Girl Is Starting To Worry Me With Her Lists

I found this when I was cleaning up the random papers on the coffee table early this morning:

I can't even begin to figure this list out. I mean, she's SEVEN YEARS OLD. Midgets and prison? Is this a list of things she wants to do over the holiday weekend?

Nothing below the fold, no need for clickage.

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I'll Take Manhattan

This weekend, Manager Dad and I wanted to give Spawn an end-of-summer last hurrah by planning a weekend activity that was more fun than our usual trip to Costco. I have a friend who lives in New York City who was going to be out of town, and she very nicely (although I am pretty sure I saw fear in her eyes) agreed to let us stay in her apartment.

With the free place to stay, I thought we could do a weekend on the (sort of) cheap, but I must have been smoking something because as anyone with half a brain cell can tell you, Manhattan is not known for its great bargains. Everything we wanted to eat, see, or do cost a minimum of eighteen dollars per person. We probably could have stayed home and bought a used Toyota Corolla for less money.

But if Mastercard is to be believed, you can't put a price on family memories, and I was determined to expose Spawn to some legendary New York attractions. So naturally, first on the list was to sample authentic regional cuisine at a Times Square tourist trap themed restaurant. According to Us Weekly, Brad and Angelina took all five hundred of their kids to a place called "Mars 2112," and they're all worldly and shit, so if it was good enough for them, it's good enough for me. They start your 'experience' by stuffing you into a sort of elevator pod thing which simulates a rocket ride to outer space:

The Girl: (cackling) THIS is the coolest restaurant EVER.

The Boy: (terrified) I think we are really blasting off into space. (Grabs both of my ears and shouts directly into my nostrils). DON'T LEAVE ME ALONE ON MARS! I PROMISE TO BEHAVE FROM NOW ON!

The Girl: (turning green) Actually, I think I am going to throw up.


We got out of the simulator and The Boy spotted the costumed 'aliens', which made him completely unhinged, so he spent the entire meal in a state of panic, hiding under the table whenever any of the waitstaff even LOOKED in our general direction. We wound up throwing away most of Spawn's $15-a-plate dinners because the pasta was "too slimy" and the sauce "too chunky." After that, we gave up on restaurants and fed them a diet of bread, bottled water, and bananas, just like the monkeys at the Central Park Zoo.

We did a double-decker bus tour, although we had to de-bus after twenty minutes due to kid boredom and the absence of bathrooms. A pedicab bike tour through Central Park was a lot more successful, although it wasn't quite as much fun for the kid that was biking us around. Between the screeching of the bike's gears and the pained expression on his face, it was clear that he regretted offering to take all four of us in a cab built to safely carry MAYBE two people, and even then only if those two people were Kate Moss and Keira Knightley.

Hands down, Spawn's favorite part of the trip was shopping. We gave them each a $20 budget, which lasted about fifteen seconds at their "retailtainment" stores of choice: American Girl and the Pokemon section of the Nintendo store. Even I was excited about the Nintendo store because they had a stash of Wii Fits*, which I'd been dropping hints about as a potential birthday present ever since we got the evil Wii in the first place.

So thanks to the magic of capitalism, the trip was a smashing success. Spawn had so much fun that The Girl cried the entire train ride home because she didn't want to leave the city.

And now, back to reality, and the new school year, which starts Friday. I'd like to give a special middle finger shoutout to our local Board of Education. Thank you so very much for making the first day of school the DAY BEFORE the Labor Day holiday weekend.

*Warning: Do NOT subject yourself to the Wii Fit unless you have very high self esteem, and/or have been drinking. I took the "fit test" and despite the fact that I run 35 miles a week, it began taunting me, first criticizing my my Body Mass Index and then asking me if I trip and fall a lot because it thinks I am uncoordinated. But the kicker was when it loudly announced that my Wii Fit age as SIXTY ONE. I will NEVER hear the end of this from my family.

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Saving The Drama For Her Mama

Last Friday, summer camp officially ended.

To mark the occasion, the counselors decided to stage a hip-hop dance recital, because after all, nothing says “I’ve had a great summer” better than a bunch of white Jewish kids trying to breakdance to the vocal stylings of Kanye West.

The NIGHT BEFORE (thanks for all the advance notice, counselors!) I was informed through the state of the art “crumpled note in backpack” communication method that I was supposed to pack a black t-shirt for her to wear as a costume.

The Girl hates black, so she didn’t have one. And because I didn't find the note until after the stores had closed, I couldn’t buy one. So I made a rookie mistake, stupidly assuming that she could just get through the entire two minutes that she was going to be on stage in one of MY old shirts.

The morning of the show, The Girl put me on notice that I had to be at camp by 6, an hour before the recital started at 7. This of course guaranteed that some coworker would decide they absolutely HAD to have a last-minute meeting, and since it was critical to have it THAT DAY, it of course started at FIVE O’frigging clock.

So I didn’t even leave the office until 6, prompting a white-knuckled Grand Theft Auto-style drive up the Merritt Parkway.

I walked into the auditorium exactly 5 minutes before the show started. I looked around and it was like I had stumbled onto a battlefield scene from Braveheart: face-painted anarchy. Wild-eyed kids were running around in various stages of physical undress (and emotional distress), waving their arms and shrieking at whichever dazed-looking parents happened to be closest by; whether or not they were their own parents didn't seem to matter.

I spotted The Girl, who was accessorizing my black t-shirt with a look of white-hot fury. The shirt was enormous on her; the sleeves hung past her elbows and the bottom was brushing her knees. Her mouth was stained with fruit punch and her hair was matted with partly dissolved cotton candy, giving her the appearance of a tiny, ferocious Courtney Love.

"YOU. WERE. SUPPOSED. TO. BE. HERE. AT. SIX!" she screeched at me. Manager Dad threw up his hands and gave me a look of You dug your own grave on this one, Miss Latey Laterson.

She stomped over and stretched her arms straight out and started whirling them around in tight helicopter circles, making the sleeves flap like gigantic mutated bat wings.

"This (sob) shirt (sob) is (sob) too (sob) big. (sob sob sob) I can't be expected to PERFORM in THIIIIIISSSSSSS!"

(Insert additional sobbing)

I looked around, desperate for an assist, but everyone was either scraping their own kid wreckage off the floor, or was deliberately avoiding eye contact. Finally, one of the counselors saw an opportunity to upsize their end of summer tip by helping me out.

He hustled her onto the stage, where her tears magically dried up and she danced her little heart out, bringing her role of pint-sized hip-hop-‘ho to life with a level of enthusiasm that made Manager Dad fear for her future commitment to chastity.

But I was in no position to complain. If a dash of pop culture misogyny can be THAT effective in curing emotional outbursts, bring it on. I will sell out my feminist principles faster than Jamie Foxx can drop a chorus of, "Git down girl, go 'head, git down".

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