Those of you who are not on Twitter or Facebook or Cre8Buzz (and really, if you’re not on Cre8Buzz, what exactly are you waiting for?) may not know that I got suckered into stepped up to the plate for my kid and volunteered to coach his Little League team.

There are just a few issues with this.

I hate other people’s kids. Not all of them, mind you, but for the most part, people’s kids are shitheads. Two of the boys on the team hate me. Well, women. They hate women. How do I know? When I pull them in to talk to them about respect, and how they talk to me, they say, “Um, where’s our real coach?” Really? I am, dude. “No, you’re the team MOM.” No you little fucking cocksucker, I am the COACH. And I will sit your ass out in a motherfucking heartbeat if you roll your little womanizing eyes at me one more time. I Double Dog Dare you to try me on this one.

I hate other kids parents. What do the jerk-off dads of the asshole kids do through this whole thing? Stand there. Giggling. It’s going to be a long season.

I have played exactly ZERO baseball games in my whole life. This gives me the slightest little handicap in the whole “teaching other people” department. Fortunately, I am a fast study. And they gave me a handbook.

I can’t throw a ball for shit.

I am not quite strong enough to properly lock the equipment shed, which is 15,765 years old and made of lead and the eenciest bit warped. My angle for this? Get there early, earlier than ANYONE, and unlock it, set up my field, and play dumb blond when the other coach says, “But we’re the home team. We’re supposed to set up.” Ooooo, I didn’t know! Oopsie. (This is where the boobie shirt really pays off)

Me? In a Baseball cap? Like Britney without any makeup on. Like Jack Nicholson in the morning. Like the kid from Mask. Not. Cool.

I have three kids. One of which is two. Only one of which is on the team. Baby wearin’ is frowned upon in the middle of a baseball field during play.

Did I mention that I’ve never played baseball before?

I have the tiniest little potty mouth problem. Just sayin’.

Since I am a girl, the moms of the kids on the team think it’s totally okay to come up to me and ask about the baby, and tell me how proud they are of their son, and how though all the rest of the kids are total shits, well, see how good my boy is being and aren’t I a great parent and my isn’t that a low-cut top you have on and do you knit because I just got this new pattern and shut the hell up, woman. I’m busy over here.

I have a nasally voice. I can’t help it; I was born that way and you try living in Philadelphia during your formative years. It’s not exactly the hottest of accents. Point is, I don’t exactly command attention. Maybe I should go for the Fran Drescher thing. NO ONE can ignore that evilness.

Really, I’ve only ever even once watched a baseball game start to finish, and I am pretty sure I was fairly intoxicated and quite possibly making out with someone through most of it.

And the biggest problem of all? The real kicker? I am, and please don’t repeat this, I am kind of liking it. As in, enjoying it. Shitty kids aside (I have awesome stink-eye; that’ll be nipped in the bud) it’s kind of, well, err, um, fun?

Someone get me Chrysler on the phone. It appears I’ll be needing that minivan after all.

See all the Thursday Thirteens here.

The back-story:

You would think that sex
with a picture and an old
tube sock would cost less.

Slighty more appropriate Haikus to be had here.

I went on a date with a very cute boy yesterday.

Once upon a time, when we lived in Denver and the kids’ gramma did, too, she would take them on Saturday nights. Sometimes, though, she would just take one of them. Those were the days before 3of3, and the odd-boy-out and I would go on a date. A FANCY date. A not-McDonalds date. Since those days, gramma has moved to South Africa and we moved to Canada, back to Denver, and back to Canada again. Oh, and I went and had another baby. I totally screwed up date night for my boys.

2of3 is taking it the hardest. He lost his place as the baby and he lost his place as the IT boy at school. He doesn’t know where he his in his life right now, and we are all paying for it.

Yesterday, dad was actually home for once and 1of3 had a birthday party to attend, so we dumped big brother on the party and the baby on dad and 2of3 and I hit the town. The mall. Whatever. It was awesome.

I just followed him for a while. We started at Walmart, where he got to choose a present. He picked out a $20 pack of hockey cards. (A week before Christmas. Grrr.) We also grabbed a travel checkers kit. And then we headed over to Starbucks. We both got grown-up sized hot chocolates (YUM) and sat at Starbucks where my 7 year old kicked my motherfucking ass at some checkers without me letting him win in any way (not true).

After that, he thought we should ride the little train they have set up for babies around Santa. So we did. We only got nasty looks from about half of the people running the thing. We totally held hands while the train rode around the mall. Oh, we are suckers for the romance. And then 2of3 wanted to go into his favorite store in the whole wide world….House Of Knives. Creepy? A little. Almost my favorite store? Perhaps. We looked at axes and swords and old-fashioned shaving kits and all sorts of sharp, pointy, shiny things. Oh, we are suckers for the sharp, the pointy and the shiny.

And then we went to the grocery store (don’t you want to go on a date with me now?) and 2of3 got his dad a chocolate bar and his brother and sister each a necklace out of the vending machine thing. He’s thoughtful like that.

We came home after that and for the first time in I can’t tell you when, I did NOT have a child rocking in his chair, talking at me incessantly, picking at his brother or whining because the baby got more milk than him. I had a pleasant, sweet kid. I had MY kid back. It. Was. Glorious.

He decreed that Date Night shall be a regular event around here, one Sunday every month. He wanted every Sunday, but I had to remind him that there are 3 other people in this house who would like a date with me, and he agreed to once a month. I wonder where he’ll take me next time. Maybe Home Depot.

Chris, today, was talking about circumcisions. He was in no way asking for any advice, and so naturally, like a good e-friend and loyal reader, I am totally going to give him some.

*ahem*

I don’t agree with circumcision. I don’t agree with it because both of my sons are circumcised.

There comes a point in your pregnancy, when you know it’s a boy, when you and your spouse have the talk about this. Our talk went like this:

Him: What do you think about this circumcision thing?

Me: I don’t know…what do you think?

Him: Well, I’d kind of like to not explain why mine looks different than his.

Me: Well, last time I checked, I didn’t have one of those, so I’ll leave this up to you. But, if you do it, I want NO PART of it.

Him: Cool.

And that was it. 1of3 was born, and dad went with matching accessories. I really had no part of it; I wasn’t in the room when they did it and I skipped the next few diaper changes. Because, yuck. And ouch. Youch.

And then, when 2of3 was born, it wasn’t really a choice at all, was it?

Here’s what they don’t tell you about circumcisions, or at least what they do tell you but you absolutely cannot grasp until you’re dealing with it. Sometimes, sometimes the skin grows back a little. Sometimes, even if you Vaseline the crap out of it and do the alcohol swabs religiously like they tell you to, sometimes nature fights you and fights you hard and you are left, all alone, at 3 in the morning, to have to roll back that skin that has totally ignored your good intentions and healed itself right back to the tip of that thingy you were trying to trim it from. You have to roll it back, which honestly just means ripping it away from where it wants to be. You have no choice at this point…it HAS to be done. And as much as it sucks for you, what with the bleeding and the oozing and stuff, it sucks that much more for your child who has just gone through a rather strenuous move and really just wants to sleep.

There are other things they don’t tell you. They don’t tell you that if you ask for a circumcision, they will do it, and they will do it even if your little man is indeed a little man. They will do it even though that thingy isn’t sticking out far enough for them to get a decent hold of, and you will have to suffer through the cleaning and the crying and all the headaches, and when it’s all over and you man has grown a little, you will not be able to tell they did it at all. They will do this because they will do anything you’re willing to pay them to do. It will not bother you right away, but when the kid’s 3 or so, you’re going to be mighty annoyed at the whole uncircumcised-though-totally-circumcised deal.

There is another thing they don’t tell you. They don’t tell you that sometimes they won’t finish it. They don’t tell you that they do the bottom skin first, and then check for things, and then do the top. They don’t tell you that if they get half way in and the check doesn’t go well, that you are left with a half-circumcised boy.

On the off-chance that your son has a crooked urethra, they will do surgery to fix it, about when the child is one. They will need skin to graft after the surgery, and that foreskin is prime graft fodder. So, when they circumcise a boy, they cut off the top of the skin, do a quick check of the urethra, and then get the bottom half. Unless the urethra is not straight, at which point they stop. A year later, you go to the doctor to schedule the surgery to fix the urethra, and thereby remove the remaining flap of skin, only to find out that in the past year that urethra has totally straightened itself right out.

You now have three options:

1. Schedule a cosmetic, elective surgery that no insurance in the galaxy will pay for, because after your hospital stay for the birth, circumcision is considered major surgery involving general anesthesia and stuff while he’s still young enough to totally forget it.
2. Deal with it until he’s a little older, when maybe he’ll just have fuzzy memories of the whole thing in his adult life, until you can explain what the deal is and trust that he can get a local anesthetic and not mess with it after.
3. Ignore it and pray like crazy that he never has to change in a locker room, and perhaps start a savings account for the therapy bills you’ll have to pay when he realizes what you’ve done to him*.

We went with option 3. We really meant to go with 2, but by the time it came to deal with it, well, he was kind of fond of his little weiner and we didn’t have the heart to tell him it was different. And besides, there are advantages to having only your bottom foreskin. It makes a lovely hiding spot for small rocks and marbles; you can fill it with water and then toddle over to that new baby your parents just brought home and dump the water all over his weird, bald head. I don’t really ever want to know if there are any other perks.

What this is going to come down to is that one day, he’s going to figure this out. One day, he’s going to have to make a choice about this. I imagine that your feelings about that part of your body, as a man, are kind of pivotal to your image of yourself, and that is going to get called into question someday for my son. And all of this will happen because of an unnecessary, silly, traditional nip tuck. I know it’s unnecessary because, as you read up there, my other son had it done but it really wasn’t done, you know? I had to care for a circumcision, but then I had to care for it, and teach him to care for it, as though it had never happened. And I had to teach my oldest son that same care, just for one half.

So, yes, both of my sons were circumcised. And I regret those two decisions more than almost any other I’ve made with them. But hell, it makes for good, embarrassing stories later. And Chris, I hope this helps and I also hope you don’t mind that I left your comment on my blog. That would’ve been a mighty long comment.

*Or when he realizes that you’ve told the entire world about it, via the internet. Sorry, 1of3.