My husband and I have been married for eleven years. Eleven years is a long time to do anything. We’ve seen our share of ups and downs, and that is the understatement of the year. I am not the easiest woman to be married to, for any number of reasons. I am grossly insecure and particularly needy and excessively sensitive. He’s got his things, too, but this isn’t about him today, it’s about me. I’ve made him work for this relationship. I change the rules on him constantly and expect him to just keep up. Example: When he met me, I worked three jobs, 19 hours a day, 6 days a week. Now I stay home and let him go to work for at least 12 hours every single day while I fail in every way to so much as wash the dishes. He does this with a smile on his face, or so I assume; it’s not like I ever actually see his face anymore. I’d like to say that he at least gets to come home to a hot little body waiting for him in lingerie, but what he really comes home to is a snoring wife wearing his sweat pants hogging his side of the bed who used to be a size -0 and is now a solid 12.

I make few apologies for this. It’s not like I knocked myself up with a baby that decided to make me gain 105 pounds in nine months, after all.

However misguided my feelings on the subject, I do feel a little bad that the 98 pound girl with a D cup you could stack plates on that he signed up for a life with has now turned into a National Geographic centerfold. I feel bad enough, in fact, that I, on occasion, will buy him pistachios and roses and have them waiting for him when he comes home in the middle of the night after the umpteenth night straight at work.

He reciprocates occasionally, coming home late from work on the nights he’s due in early, bearing gifts for me, too.

That is a gym membership, brought home for me last week, because apparently he wants a divorce. You leave a man enough times and he’ll start double-dog daring you to do it again, all for the low low price of $31/month.

To his credit, he did include all-you-can-eat childcare in the package. So now I can’t bitch about being fat, having no where to go OR having no one to watch my kid while I go there anymore. It’s like he’s robbed me of everything, including my lovely lady lumps. Asshole.

But I’m determined to use it, partly because I do want to get the fuck out of this house occasionally, and I would like to do it sans-four-year-old, but mostly because I’m sick people congratulating me and asking me when the baby is due. The best answer to which is, “Four years, three months and eleven days ago; thanks for asking.” So I went last night to try this thing out. I got the four year old ready to go and the nine year old announced that he’d like to go as well. So I put my gym bag down, huffed a little, and called to see if I had a two-for-one daycare special. Which I do. I grabbed my bag, my two youngest, and headed out the door when my eleven year old ran down the stairs in full gym gear asking if he could come, too. You know, to work out with me.

Seriously, I just started being able to poop without company. Will there never be a moment’s rest from these people?

So I put everything down, again, and called the gym, again, huffed, AGAIN, and lied about his age, again, and found out that I could bring him. So off we all went. 45 minutes after I was planning on getting to the gym, we had two kids checked into daycare and one magically-turned twelve year old on an elliptical next to me. Who beat my fat fucking ass, hard. Every spanking this kid has ever received in his entire life was repaid last night, in full. He pwned me.

Vengeance is a dish best served sweaty, with burning quads.

It’s not like I can let me kid out-work me. If he does 50 crunches on the ab-thingy, I have to do 50, also. If he’s barely broken a sweat after 20 minutes on the elliptical, I have to grin and pray silently for god to strike us all dead and spare me this humiliating torture. If he gets through an entire circuit and asks to do it again, well, I just have to do it all again. Even if I can’t stand upright anymore. Even if I’ve sweated out every drop of moisture in my body and am now replacing that sweat with blood. Even if my legs are jello and I can’t recall where my arms used to be. Even if I just want so scream that THIS WAS MY PRESENT AND YOU ARE RUINING IT, SHORT PERSON. I can’t do that, now can I? We’re having a bonding moment, right? One of those fleeting mother-son moments that will be over the second this kid learns what a Playboy magazine is. Which, thanks to him, I may be able to appear in someday.

My son hasn’t been able to walk for a few weeks now. His heel bone has been killing him, which is only funny because I didn’t know your heel bone was capable of killing you. I imagined it was much like your brain; you could fillet it and scoop it out and grill it while fully conscious and you’d never know, because for some reason god decided to make The Most Important organ in your body without any nerves at all. Also, delicious, or so I’m told. Intelligent Design, my fat white ass.

Anyway, the kid has been gimping around here with a pouty face rivaled only by 17 year old anorexic porn start wanna-bes and that’s funny because he’s also breaking out in epic proportions and so totally not eating anything. This from the kid that will eat anything that is incapable of eating him back. Either he’s watching his figure and bored already with his newly-acquired vegan lifestyle, or he’s going through a massive growth spurt.

Two weeks before school starts. Exactly when all the super good sales are going on. He hates me; he really does.

His knees have been aching, his bones are burning, his hips are making him cry. So yeah, he’s going to be taller than me in 3.6 hours. Either that or he’s caught the Black Death, which he’ll catch anyway if I have to buy that kid another shoe wardrobe this year. Seriously, he was a size 4 junior in January. His new Crocs? Men’s 6. Six. MEN’S. I don’t even want to talk about the store I had to go school shirt shopping at for him, sufficed to say that I picked myself up a few tank tops while I was there and I can handle sharing Clearasil with him and I can even handle the whole “wash your own damn sheets” conversation, but this shopping at the same store as my firstborn? It’s just too much reality for one girl to handle.

Yesterday, we went to visit my neighbor who just moved out a few weeks ago and over tea and, yes, one entire carrot cake later *burp*, she told me about her friend’s son who is currently in hospital because he keeps having seizures which are abruptly followed with, you guessed it, aching heels, burning femurs and throbbing hips. It’s moved into his arms now, and his legs are collapsing in on each other. This is not information I wanted, especially since I keep sending my son to golf camp every day, and golf camp typically involves the slightest bit of walking for fucking ever.

I came home last night fully intent on taking him to the doctor’s office first thing this morning, after golf camp of course, but talked myself out of it when I sent my kids to bed. Because I’ve done the whole, “Dude, your kid has a mosquito bite, not the measles” thing and I’ve gotten the, “Seriously, three kids later and you still don’t know the croup when you see it?” lecture, which comes at the lowlow price of $3,000 and I just don’t have any interest in sitting in a doctor’s office, scarring the fuck out of my kid, and getting told to have him drink more milk and shall we up your happy pill medication, Captain Münchhausen?

When the first scream came, it sounded like anger. Whatever; they’ll work it out. The second scream sounded like pain. They better get their fucking asses in bed, I cautioned the ceiling. The third scream sounded exactly like the sound you have nightmares about your children making. The kind of scream that makes your uterus wince. I ran, 2of3 ran, hell…3of3 dropped what she was doing and ran to the hallway, where we found 1of3 drowning in tears, with a purple face and a sewing needle sticking straight up from his toenail.

Not since he was a toddler have I heard that sound come out of his mouth. I am not prone to freaking out, but I Freaked. The. Fuck. Out. He freaked out. 2of3 freaked out. 3of3 said, “Yay! I get band-aids!” She’s kind of dead inside, I think, or disturbingly obsessed with band-aids. Once we ripped the needle out of the toenail and the blood did its squirt-squirt thing all over the floor and he started breathing again, we limped him downstairs and iced his toe with frozen strawberries. Because I suck at Prepared Mom, that’s why.  Dad defied every posted speed limit in North America and battled a crack whore doing her week’s grocery shopping at the 7-11 to procure one bag of ice for us, and we all watched Family Guy until 11 while my son’s toe numbed enough that he could get to sleep for golf camp in the morning.

I paid a lot of money for golf camp. And will again for therapy, just later.

And karma once again sunk her yellow pointy teeth into my ass by making damn good and sure my kid did get to the doctor’s after all, and since I am so lousy at the mom thing that I won’t even take my kid to the doctor when he’s got alien armies harvesting his leg bone marrow to keep their hair shiny, now I get to take him for a tetanus shot, which is awesome only because, yeah, he’s totally not afraid of needles now or anything.

If you were, say, an old Denver friend or a relative, and you were to call me, we’d probably catch up on my kids.  You’d ask about 3of3 and I’d say that she was absolutely perfectly lovely and a raging lunatic.  You’d inquire about 2of3 and I’d tell you that he is just as funny and charming as ever and a compulsive liar bordering on sociopath.  We’d get to 1of3 eventually and all I’d really be able to say is that he wears one shoe size smaller than I do and that he’s a complete jerk.

You’d probably say something like, “Way harsh, Tai.”

But of COURSE he’s a complete jerk.  He’s 11 and has inhaled steroids every day for the better part of 6 years now.  Puberty has sucker-punched that boy, and hard.  The only thing more disheartening about him right now than his disposition is his aroma.

The boy makes Axe body spray smell like heaven.  And Axe deodorant.  And Axe shampoo.  And whatever Axe they come out with next.  Lesser of two evils, yo.

The thing is, he’s just not that into me anymore.  I am no longer a deity; I am nothing more than a boss whom he occasionally has to hug.  He’ll still throw me a sideways glance and a coy smile if he sees me in his school, but he’ll never approach me.  At home he spends most of his days trying to dodge me in new and creative ways.

Just because you turn all the lights off and totally bury yourself under a throw blanket, that doesn’t mean I suddenly can’t hear the Super Mario Brother’s theme on the DS from under there, you dumb ostrich.

I’ve noticed a sharp and speedy decline in both the length and quality of our conversations as of late.  Where he used to talk my ears off over dinner, now he powers down his veggie burger* and runs out the front door before I can catch him. Now I know where the sudden interest in Marathon training has come from.

We don’t giggle on our drive into school anymore; I giggle and he curls himself into a tight, fetal ball of over-it and prays for a quick death or the end of the torturous drive to school.  Which takes 42.36 seconds.  Drama Queen.

He still loves me, of this I have no doubt, but the boy has moved on.  He’s matured.  He thinks that I am a moron.

He told me one day that he wished I’d stop wearing all that Eye Shallow (liner).  Why?  Because he thinks it makes me look dumb.  His friend came to the door three nights about at 7:45 to ask if he could go outside to Ripstick and when I said no, he looked me dead in the eye and screamed, “Oh, COME ON.”  And yes, I let him live, thankyouverymuch.

I actually think this whole thing is quite endearing and almost funny.  See, I wasn’t allowed to so much as say Huh? to my mother without loosing my front teeth and so the fact that I’ve cranked out this man who isn’t afraid to tell me what he thinks, who isn’t afraid to be a normal teenager, well….I’m feeling pretty damn good about that whole situation.  I think I win, you know?

And I am going to keep repeating that to myself when the kid comes up to me and says, “Why are you dressed like THAT?” and I say, “What?” and he says, with a little finger drawing an air circle in front of me, “That.  That thing you’re wearing” and I say, “You mean this dress?” and he says, “Yeah, that” and I say jokingly, “You’re mom’s a girl, dude.  Did you forget that or something?” and he, dead serious, says, “Well, yeah” and walks away.

I’m a better parent than my mother.  I’m a better parent than my mother.  I’m a better parent than my mother.  But I’m starting to see where she got the idea to kill us all came from.  Bygones.

*That is a whole other story entirely.

Dear 1of3,

Wednesday marked the 11th anniversary of the greatest day of my life; the day I became your momma.  I spent that day the only way I could this year, by celebrating the life of another beautiful angel, another child who made the dreams of some other people that you’ll probably never know come true, a child that was taken from them far too early.  I want to tell you about that day, about how those parents reminded me of things I can so easily forget, how your kind and generous nature made it possible for me to be with my friend because you knew she needed me more than you did that day.  But I’m not going to tell you that yet, for two reasons.  One: It’s not my story to tell.  They will tell it as they are able.  Two: You really really need to know one thing more.

Donald Sutherland hates you and wants you to be miserable.

Auntie Tanis and I made it to the airport today 3 hours ahead of schedule, because LA traffic frightens us Canadians and we overcompensate like motherfuckers.  We poked around the internet, drank more coffee than is legal in seven states, sent Uncle Avitable several questionable text messages and then headed through security an hour before our planes we departing.

We stood in the queue waiting to go through security, taking our shoes off, getting our 3 ounce containers into their approprite baggies, when Auntie Tanis recognized the tall shaggy dude right in front of us in line.  Yep, Donald Sutherland.  He had that awesome Nick Nolte arrest hair-do, a really old coat on, and a boner the size of Texas for Tanis.  Because she’s awesome like that.  They went through their line, I went through mine.  I was done first and waiting for her to come through, and after she did we realize that either Donny was packin’ heat or he really shouldn’t wear his good belt buckle to the airport, because the poor dude was getting the full-on security VIP package. 

We stood for a while, debating whether or not to ask him for a photo.  He seemed pretty delayed, so we ran to the washroom to try and drop 10 pounds for the picturetinkle.  We bothwent in, we bothcame out, and we both stopped 2 feet from the exit of the washroom and waited for our Pretend Celebrity Boyfriend to come heading our way.

This is where I should tell you that the parts of me that lack in idiot make up for it with klutz. 

I’d been keeping my passport and boarding pass in my back pocket, and when I went tinkle, I actually remembered to take them out of my pocket and set them on top of my suitcase so I wouldn’t flush them.  And yes, I totally would have flushed them.  I got done, ran out, and waited with Auntie Tanis.  Two whole minutes later I realized my passport was no longer on my suitcase.  It wasn’t back in my pocket.  It wasn’t shoved into the front pockets of my bags.  It was gone.

I ran back into the washroom and the person who’d followed me in was gone, replaced by a pair of those old-lady club shoes in teal.  TEAL.  I asked the shoes from under the stall if they’d seen a passport.  Right then, someone came into the washroom calling out for Margine.  The shoes answered her call.  Someone told Margine her son was looking for her and she replied MY FEET.  BIRDS.  FRENCH FRIES. 

Okay.

Margine came out of the stall, sporting a very fashionable in Palm Springs only ensemble that totally matched her shoes.  And she had no bag, nothing in her hands and, most importantly, no passport.  I asked again if she’d seen a passport and she said I NEED A BANDAID.  WHERE’S MY SON?  MY FEET.

Okay.

I called security.  They called maintenance.  They called the gate.  They called the police.  They called Air Canada.  They called me out of the terminal.

Funny thing, losing your passport in a crowded airport.  Funnier still, trying to enter a country you weren’t born in without a passport.  And by funnier, of course, I mean impossible.  We searched everywhere.  High and low, near and far.  I was there for a long time goin’ through all kinds of mean, nasty, ugly things, and I was just havin’ a tough time there, and they was inspectin’, injectin’, every single part of me, and they was leavin’ no part untouched.  *ahem*  After a few hours they told me the passport was less “lost” and considerably more “stolen” and that I had to go to the Federal Building and apply for a new one.

Auntie Tanis has this term she likes to throw around sometimes.  It’s called “The Ugly Cry.”  Momma knows what that means now.  I cried like I was smack dab in the middle of a country western song.  I cried like the end was extremely fucking nigh.  I cried like the cure was in it.  I cried like I had to call your daddy and tell him what I’d done.  The TSA guy hugged me and told me to be strong.  And no, I didn’t just cry because he was hot.  Shut up.  I cried to your daddy, I cried to the Air Canada dude who I swore got shot driving Locke around a few weeks ago, I cried to Auntie Tanis, I cried to the lady walking down the concourse and she looked at me like I had the plague.  She’s not my best friend.

And when the crying was done, and Uncle Avitable called me to offer to kick a nun in the nuts just to cheer me up, I went to get a new passport.  At 1 in the afternoon.  Across town.  In LA traffic.  All by myself.

I got to the front door of the Federal Building and a scrawny little dude who’s future was, based on his shades, quite bright indeed, told me I had to make an appointment to go up.  I started crying.  He said he’d do it for me if I gave him my phone.  I gave him my phone and it turns out you can’t call the LA passport agency from a Canadian phone.  So he called them for me, on speaker phone, on his.  And I thought he was an angel.  And then the automated voice asked for my number and then I thought he was more devilish than I’d given him credit for earlier.  I made my appointment, took the two worst pictures in the history of photography, tried very hard to explain to a gov’t official why I had only an Arizona driver’s license, a Canadian work permit and a Social Insurance card.  After a few sideways glances and a metric shitton of money, I had a new passport a’brewing.  Which will be ready at 9 am on Thursday.  I left the building, found the scrawny dude and congratulated him on officially having the most creative pick up line in the world.  And then I cried. 

I realized I had no idea where I was and I cried.  I realized I was stuck for an entire day and night in a country I don’t actually live in overnight and I cried.  I realized I’d already checked out of the hotel and I cried.  I caught a glimpse of myself in a window and I died.

I called Uncle BusyDad. 

And tonight, when I was supposed to be home kissing your freshly-elevened face and giving you exotic gifts from a strange land they call California, I was singing happy birthday to Fury.  When I was supposed to be making you get to bed because Lost was coming on you need your sleep, I was trying to convince Modern Mom’s son that I am, in fact, NOT a Mr anything.  I was telling their Fury stories about the fish your godmother and I mutated once (sorry about that, D’Wife and BD, really.  It seemed like a good idea at the time).  When I am supposed to be slipping a fiver under your pillow that I know dadThe Tooth Fairy forgot to do all the time I’ve been gone (I know this because I forgot for the 5 days before I left.  I told you, I’m a shitty mom) I will be sleeping in BusyDad and D’Wife’s office. 

This is not the best part of the story.

Before dinner, after I’d already blown your inheritance on government ID, daddy called to tell me that someone named Pat from Minneapolis had called the house for me and I was to call her back immediately.  This is what she said, as close as I can remember:

Hi!  Pat’s not here right now, but I do have your passport.

Huh?  I’m in Minneapolis.  Why, were are you?

How the hell did your passport get from LA to Minneapolis?

Well, Christ, you can’t fly without it.  I don’t know what to do.  How do I get this to you?  OH GOD.

Oh, you have a new one?  ALREADY?  Good, I’ll have Pat call you.

What Pat said to The Donor was this:

Hi, I have Shannon (i’mnotevertellingyou)’s passport here in Minneapolis.  Some psychotic old woman came off the plane from LA with it.

The crazy old woman in the teal shoes STOLE MY PASSPORT and, I can only guess, shoved it in her bra or, worse, her grannie panties to hide it when she passed me in the bathroom.  And you know why she was able to steal my passport?

Because Donald Sutherland had to go look like the Uni-Bomber and naturally I had to have a picture with him and Auntie Tanis.  Because he hates you and wants you to be miserable without your mother on your birthday.

But I?  I love you so much.  So much more than you’ll ever know.  Enough to wear the same smelly clothes three days in a row and to take a cab on the 405 at rush hour.  Good luck finding a girl to top that.

Your Lovin’

Momma

My son is a moron.

Well, more precisely, he’s in the throes of adolescence, but still. Idiot.

My boys are all about the online games.  The 8 year old likes Andkon.com, and I don’t hate it because there aren’t popups.  And the games are like crack.  Bygones.  The 10-almost-11-he’ll-have-you-know year old likes more “sophisticated” games, like Runescape.  Runscape is WoW Jr., in case you don’t know.

Now, I did not take this “kids on the internet” thing lightly.  If I had it my way, we’d still have an avocado rotary phone hanging in the kitchen with an extra long curly cord any shade but avocado attached to it so that I could put my kids in the corner under the phone but then walk really far away from them to talk to my friend and totally forget they’re in there while they shuffle their feet and moan about being tired or hungry or something.  You know your mom did it, too.

Anyway, my point is that I still have a great amount of fear of technology.  Maybe ‘respect’ is the right word.  I just don’t think that I trust the internet that much just yet to hand my kids over to it.  They, of course, think I am some barbarian because I boil water rather than microwave it, so there’s that.

I think we’ve found a nice compromise, however.  I have to know of and approve of the sites they visit.  I have to be the one who registers them for use of any sites.  They can only be on the computer in the living room, and they are so afraid that someone is going to reach through the monitor and kidnap them, they’ll never ever chat online with anyone.  I’m not above scaring the crap out of them to get a job done.  My side of the deal is that I am open-minded and that I actually let them have internet time on occasion.

2of3 wanted me to get him signed up for Chaotic.com since he’s started in on those cards and dear god if something starts to smell over here it’s probably my dead, bloated corpse decaying under the mountain of abandoned Pokemon cards.  Help? and the thing kept telling us his email was already in use.  1of3 had registered an account about a week ago, so I asked him if maybe he’d set another one up under his brother’s email.  He said he hadn’t.  Okay.  I logged into 2of3’s email to see if there were any email notifications from Chaotic and oh my, were there.  I actually couldn’t figure out why it wouldn’t accept 2of3’s email, but what I did find out simply by logging into my 8 year old’s email was that my 10-almost-11-he’ll-have-you-know year old had set up several different Chaotic accounts for himself and used his 8 year old brother’s email address as the parent’s email.

And when I asked him, he denied it.

And when I asked him if he’d like to rethink that answer, he denied it again.

And when I turned the laptop around and showed him the five emails from Chaotic to 2of3, his parent, and asked him again, he denied it.  In the end, the most I got out of him at the end of it was an emphatic, “Iuhnoh.”

I can’t decide which is worse, that he was so amazingly stupid, or that he thought I was.  Either way, he’s grounded.  For, like, ever.