Barbara

Maniacal Bric-a-brac-ism

August 23, 2009 By Barbara 3 Comments

Home improvement do-it-yourselfers—beware. You will have no one but yourself to blame when things go wrong.

And they will.

I haven’t written for quite some time and now you know why. We have been doing a little home improvement this month. It all started with the need for new flooring, as the carpet was going on twenty years old. In dog years that would be 114, and believe me it looked it. It was beyond shabby and moving toward threadbare.

As you know, one thing leads to another. Kind of like buying a new outfit. If you buy a dress, you have to find shoes and a purse to go with it, etc… So it is with flooring. New flooring requires the walls to be freshly painted beforehand. The baseboards all need to be pulled off, sanded, and stained. And lighting fixtures must be replaced.

Instead of carpet we decided to go with wood. Being the keeper of two dogs who still have “accidents” and think carpet is the equivalent of a litter box, I hoped wood would mess with their little minds and maybe they’d be afraid to go on it.

The wood planks just click together so easily and you’re done in two swishes of a lambs tail. At least that’s what the Vietnamese man at Home Depot told us when he sold the boxes of wood to us. Of course upon our return to the store for a second room of punishment, we learned that he’d never actually worked with the wood, but just read the hype on the side of the boxes.

When the floors were finally done, I heard Karen Carpenter singing in my head—“We’ve only just begun…”

Redecorating has commenced. I am a novice at such things. I have no problem dressing myself, but when it comes to rooms, choosing colors, drapes, rods, lamps, or random decorations, I fall apart.

I think I have Home Decorating Phobia, or as it’s called in psychiatric circles—Maniacal Bric-a-Brac-ism. Whenever I find something I think would be perfect for my living room, it’s either in a museum—or according to my daughter—should be.

But the other day I braved the furniture/decorator stores on my own and came home with a lovely black and white lidded jar that I thought would look terrific on my bookcase. I was immediately met with looks of utter shock and confusion. The shock was from my daughter who was aghast that I would buy an urn as a decoration. Had someone died she didn’t know about?! The look of confusion on my son’s face changed to fear as he wondered if we were planning on moving him out of the house “the hard way.” Needless to say, I took it straight back to the store. The opening was a tad small for cookies anyway and I couldn’t think of anything else to put in there right now.

Budget Grooming

August 1, 2009 By Barbara 3 Comments

Arnold Schwarzenegger pulled out a big old bowie knife the other day and said he was going to “slash the budget of California.” I took his symbolism to heart and bought my own budget cutters. Electric doggy shears. Yes, grooming the dogs at home would definitely cut the budget around here and maybe then I could afford to go to the salon myself.

Well, it looks way easier than it actually is. We put Willow out on the deck tabletop and proceeded to buzz her with the shears for a good fifteen minutes, fur flying in the wind and littering the grass below.

She looked the same.

We adjusted the clippers to a lower setting and began again.

Nothing.

My husband decided since she was so matted underneath that we should just give her a crew-cut all over. He began in the middle of her back…and ended there. Her fur was so thick, the clippers bogged down and wouldn’t go anymore. She looked like she’d either been wearing a saddle for a long time or she was suffering from osteoporosis.

After taking a turn at the second dog—just in case the first one had abnormally strong, uncuttable fur—we finally gave up and realized our dog grooming abilities were nil and void.

Instead of saving money, cutting the family budget, and being self-sufficient, we wasted $30 bucks on worthless clippers and still had to take the dogs to a “qualified” groomer.

While there, Rugby had a near death experience, falling off the table and whacking his head on the floor, and I still didn’t get a discount.

Slashing the budget is much harder than Arnold made it out to be. Or maybe I just need a big knife.

Accident Prone

July 24, 2009 By Barbara 1 Comment

They say most accidents occur at home. To be technical, they begin at conception. From there on out accidents accumulate like lice on a turkey farm.

There was the time my son accidentally slit his sister’s eyelid open with a pair of scissors, missing her actual eyeball but necessitating an emergency trip to the hospital where she had a plastic surgeon fix the damage with extraordinary precision and expertise.

Then there was the time my daughter decided to place her foot in the path of the mower and my husband decided to remain oblivious to that fact by running over it. Another trip to the emergency room. This time only minor damage. Most of the toe remains intact. No surgeon necessary. Luckily she was wearing tennis shoes made in China. I’m pretty sure the amount of lead involved saved her toe from complete destruction.

You get the picture.

Threaded throughout actual emergency accidents were:

Hundreds of broken things: glasses, crockery, windows, doorknobs, doors, and screens.

Thousands of spills: pop, juice, milk, soup, etc.

Many, many bruised heads, elbows, knees, chins, and egos.

And multiple times when someone couldn’t quite make it to the bathroom to throw up.

Accidents of life.

Or as I like to call them—children. It’s how we know we’re alive.

Some people are blessed with abundant hair, a high IQ, wealth, or the ability to touch their nose with their tongue. Others are blessed with children. You decide which is preferable.

I truly believe the little blessings are a gift from God, sent with a smile and a wink. After all, he calls them arrows in the Bible and says we should have a quiver full. As anyone with children knows, a weapon in the house is never a good idea. Arrows flying hither and yon will definitely lead to accidents. Someone will surely get their eye put out.

Unemployable

July 17, 2009 By Barbara 1 Comment

When mothers talk about the depression of the empty nest, they’re not mourning the passing of all those wet towels on the floor, or the music that numbs your teeth, or even the bottle of capless shampoo dribbling down the shower drain. They’re upset because they’ve gone from supervisor of a child’s life to a spectator. It’s like being the vice president of the United States. — Erma Bombeck

I haven’t had a paying job for many years, but I never considered myself “unemployed” until recently. I’ve been a wife, mother, and full-time homemaker. I cooked, cleaned, gardened, canned, sewed, and whatever else came up along the way, all with the express purpose of caring for my family to the best of my ability and turning a profit in well-brought-up offspring to carry on for future generations.

But since my kids hit their 20’s things haven’t been running so smoothly. As CEO of the Brink motherhood, I find my duties dwindling. My authority is constantly questioned. My inquiries are seen as rhetorical if not ignored altogether. My position as mom has been relegated to maid, cook, and laundry fairy, but without the perks of whipping butts and declaring, “cause I said so!”

I am an unemployed Mother.

Where do unemployed mothers go when they have been demoted to kitchen help? Do we get a job at Perkins? At least there customers tip you in a show of appreciation. Or do we sit it out in retirement, taking up cross-stitching or bird-house building, in a pretense of staying busy?

Being unemployed means nobody listens when you say, “be home by ten,” or “clean your room—it’s a pigsty!” They may look at you and smile as though taking your declaration to heart when in fact they have no intention. Like a company taken over by corporate raiders, you no longer have any real authority. You’re just a figurehead. A Ronald McDonald or Colonel Sanders.

Where is the Unemployed mother bailout?

Unemployed mothers should band together, pool their wisdom, and find a way to get their advice heard. We may have to go on facebook or twitter, and blurp, vent, or tweet in the language of the generation we gave birth to. But in the long run it will be worth it. Cause I said so, that’s why!

What They Leave Behind

July 8, 2009 By Barbara 1 Comment

There have been a lot of random naked men in the news lately. It seems running around without their clothes on is liberating. Except that they tend to get arrested.

I call it dangerous behavior, but that’s because I don’t like sunburn, mosquito bites, or that strange reality show called, “How to look good naked.”

In Florida last week an ex-governor of Alabama was spotted wandering naked through a campground. He wasn’t out in the wilderness alone scaring squirrels—no, he was in a well-populated camping area scaring fellow campers. (The perfect excuse never to take your children camping)

Another man was stopped for speeding in Delaware and not only was he driving drunk but “driving commando” as well. He told the police he lost his pants. (A good example when teaching your children why they shouldn’t drink)

In Connecticut a man showed up for his dentist appointment five days late and bare as a peeled banana. The receptionist screamed and called police. Obviously, he didn’t look like Arnold Schwarzenegger in “The Terminator,” but then who does? The police later found him at his house. He told them he’d been sleeping all day. “So, who was that naked man in the dentist’s chair wearing nothing but a spit bib?” the police may have asked. He’ll probably sue the makers of Ambien. People have been known to get up and eat everything in their refrigerator when under the influence. Perhaps it’s also possible they wander out to get their teeth cleaned. (Another good reason to teach your children not to sleep in the nude when taking sleeping pills)

The Sound of Lawlessness

July 6, 2009 By Barbara Leave a Comment

The Fourth of July has come and gone and yet bombs continue to burst throughout my nights. No—my marriage is not going through a mid-life renewal, complete with fireworks. I just have teenage neighbors that enjoy exploding things. They enjoy it so much they must have spent their entire year’s allowance on firecrackers.

The Fireworks Ban is just another of those annoying little laws that apparently nobody follows. Like speed limits and picking up after your dog. Some rules are just meant to be broken.

Of course we like rules that don’t pertain to us personally. I’m all for adding laws against people that wear spandex in public or ride bicycles in traffic. This isn’t Japan after all.

But don’t take away my right to drive a big old honking SUV and carry a six-shooter. I don’t actually have a six-shooter, but I want the right to!

As for fireworks exploding into my REM time, they will eventually peter out and my nights will once again be filled with snores and the swishing of the ceiling fan. The dogs will have nothing to bark at but the next-door neighbor coming home on his Harley, or one of my grown children sneaking in in the middle of the night. All will be as it was before we celebrated Independence from the King of England.