Rest in Peace Mike the Fish

Alas, Mike succumbed to whatever random Betta disease he had. We spent more money trying to treat this fish than we actually spent on the fish. Mike came to us by accident sort of. Jacob had won a goldfish at the fair back in early September. He had just ridden a horse named Ike, so he named the fish Mike. Made sense I guess. That night, Mike the First died. Fair fish seem to go two ways- they live forever or die the instant your kid grows attached.

After Mike I's tragic death, I did the one thing I swore I'd never do- I replaced my kid's pet without him knowing. Here's the worst part, I replaced it with a fish that looked nothing like the original Mike, then I lied through my teeth. Jacob came home from daycare and said "hey, where's the orange fish?" I did some quick thinking and said "Oh, he turned purple over night! It must have been the water!" I am a liar. A dirty, rotten liar. My kid bought it, sort of. He continued to ask if Mike was going to return to his original orange color, but he seemed content to believe this was the fish he won.

Mike was a happy, well-adjusted fish right up until my mom broke her leg. I swear the fish missed seeing her every day. He got sicker and sicker. We tried all sorts of drops, treatments, and even frozen peas. But this morning, Mike was belly up. I chose not to lie to my kid this time. He had gone through my grandfather's death recently and sadly has a firmer grasp on what it means to die than I ever wanted my child to have at the age of 3.5. We said goodbye to Mike and flushed him down the toilet. Then Jacob turned and looked at me, with those big blue eyes, and sweetly said "Can we get an orange one now?"

Coulrophobia

I hate clowns. I'm not sure when it started, or how it started, but they scare the holy hell out of me. I don't understand how anyone finds these things amusing. Why do more people not run in fear every time they see that painted evil grin half-obscured by a bouquet of balloon animals coming towards them? Clowns freak me the hell out. Let me tell you why.

First of all, you just never know what evil lurks behind that fake smile. Anyone who needs to plaster a motionless fake smile on their face cannot be thinking good thoughts. They can distract you with that fake smile, so you don't see the pointy teeth waiting to devour you. Second, they're clearly supernatural, since so many of them can fit into a tiny VW Bug. That's not natural, and it's hardly funny sitting there thinking "Holy shit! When will it end!" It's like an army of evilness packed into a car designed by the leader of an army of evil. Does anyone really not see the correlation? Third, they have abnormally large feet, the better to stomp you into the ground with. Why are large feet considered comical?

Then there are the actual evil clowns, the ones that were intended to be that way. Stephen King's Pennywise gave me nightmares for ages. I spent years stepping over grates in terror of getting grabbed by him. Granted, most of those times I was on acid, but still! Stephen King ruined sewer grates for me for life. We also can't neglect to mention John Wayne Gacy, a real-life serial killer who used to dress as a clown, and loved painting them. If he isn't enough to give you a life-long case of coulrophobia, than what is? Killer Clowns From Outer Space, The Insane Clown Posse, the Joker, the clown doll in Poltergeist. My goodness non-clown fearers, open your eyes! Evil clowns are everywhere!

My own son, little traitor that he is, seems to like clowns. Not only this, but he finds it extremely amusing that they freak me out. He chased me around a costume shop with a clown mask laughing "clowns freak you out Mommy! Look at the clown Mommy!" He begged to be an evil clown for Halloween. It is one of the few things I have ever denied my son. Someday, he'll ask me to go to the circus. Thank goodness I can honestly say no, because they are mean to animals. Of course, if it's a non-animal show, I'm up the proverbial creek. I will sit, cringing in fear, begging the gods to not let me get eaten.

There are about three clowns in the world that don't freak me out. Crusty the Clown on the Simpsons, my friend in New Zealand who dresses as a clown, but always warns me when she's going to post pictures of it, and a clown in New Orleans who looked more like Raggedy Andy than IT. The rest of them make my heart race in terror. Sometimes I feel bad that I'm so scared though. Like the guy who came into the store where I was working years ago, during a street festival. He felt bad that I was sweating and ready to cry when all he wanted was to buy a soda. My boss, who knew I was terrified, just chuckled in the back of the store. Yeah, very funny! Good thing he was otherwise a great boss. Or the lady who does face painting near my seasonal stand, who just wanted to make casual conversation during a down time. I literally hid behind the register acting busy. Rationally, I know that many of them are just nice people who are trying to make kids happy. But when they're in disguise, I have no way of knowing which kind of clown they are, and that makes all of them creepy. I don't want them near me, and I don't want them near my kid.

Psych testing

I applied for a job at Old Navy a few months ago and they gave me a psych test. It was online, took about half an hour, and involved a series of questions about honesty, integrity, and stealing from work. I am pretty sure I failed it, because I never heard from them. I failed it because I refused to lie, it was after all, a test about honesty. The first question was something like "are you always honest?" I said of course I was. The next question was "If your sibling was stealing from their employer, would you turn them in." I said of course I wouldn't. Would anyone really do that? Why the hell would I choose a company full of people I don't even know over my brother? My brother could kill someone and I wouldn't turn him in. Not that he would of course, he's a fancy lawyer now, soon he'll be able to pay someone else to do that for him! I'm kidding of course, my brother would never risk losing his license to practice, he worked too hard to get where he is. But my sense of loyalty to family and friends is too strong to ever turn them in for anything. I'm also a hypocrite, because when strangers do certain things, I think "wow, that was really awful," but if a friend did it, I'd take their side against anyone. So why the hell would I turn my sibling in for stealing from work? Does anyone answer "yes" to that question?

Another question that I probably failed- "If a vending machine gave you a soda even though you didn't put any money in it, would you find a way to pay for it?' Seriously? Are there people so honest out there that if they got a free can of soda, they would hunt down the address and send a check for the $1.25? (Remember when soda was only .50? I miss that.) If these people exist, why aren't THEY in politics? Clearly they're much better suited.

Another failure- "If you got home and noticed that the cashier forgot to charge you for a $1 item, would you go back and pay for it?" I actually know people who do this. They think I'm a criminal because I said "hell no!" Free stuff is free stuff. Besides, it would cost me more in gas to go back and pay for it, not to mention the cost of my time. I work in retail of sorts seasonally, I've accidentally given away merchandise before, and I would never expect someone to come back and pay for it. Times are tough, and I think of the freebies as the universes random acts of kindness. The Gods of Retail are saying "hey, you look like you could use a free balloon today, I'll make that cashier forget to ring it up." I'm not want to go against the gods, if they want me to have a free balloon, I'm not throwing it back in their faces. Their revenge would be to overcharge me on something the next time!

Question after question, I answered honestly. No, I wouldn't steal merchandise from the store, but yes, I might steal pens and paperclips. Not on purpose, but if I got home and found a paperclip in my pocket, I would go turn myself in for theft. I think the question about whether or not I wanted to make cashiering at Old Navy my career kind of did me in too. I guess they were a little put off by the fact that I didn't find making $8 an hour for the rest of my life as appealing as say, finishing college and getting a job that actually allows me to eat, provides health insurance for my child, and possibly even contributes to some sort of retirement plan.

I find it very ironic that in order to get a job, you have to basically be a liar. I know how to pass those tests, everyone does. Lie, lie, lie. I cannot think of a single person who is so incredibly scrupulous that they could answer every one of those questions correct honestly. If those people don't exist, then the entire industry is staffed by liars. Kind of like politics!

Amazon Addiction

I love Amazon. No, correction, I am obsessed with Amazon. I spend hours a week meticulously going through all of my recommendations not only to find new stuff, but to laugh at the bizarre things Amazon thinks I might want. For example, because I said I own the Dream Day Wedding game, they thought I might like a Playtex 18 hour bra. Because I bought a Scooby Doo movie, I might like a power saw. I'm more than a little creeped out that, because I bought my dogs some Snausages through their grocery store, they think I should have Slim Jims. I don't even want to know the correlation between the two, but I'm kind of thankful to be a non-mammal eater right about now.

I have yet to figure out their process for recommendations, but I'm sure it's fascinating. Sometimes Amazon must really think they know better, because no matter how many times I tell them I'm not interested in the Burt Reynold's collection, they still keep throwing it up there with every click of the reload button. Amazon also assumes I need to have every item duplicated on every platform available. You said you own Thrillville off the Rails for XBOX 360, we think you should also have it for the Wii! You said you own Nightmare Before Christmas on DVD, buy it on Blu-Ray too! Don't have a Blu-Ray player? Scroll down a few lines, we've recommended twenty nice ones for you! If they don't work, destroy them with that power saw we recommended.

I am also obsessed with adding and deleting things from my six wish lists (one for Jake's books and DVD's, one for Jake's toys, one for books for me, one for DVD's, one for Games, and one for other random stuff). My child's wish list is full of six pages of stuff he doesn't even know he wants. At one point, I thought he might want every single Blues Clues book ever made. I keep adding Llama Llama books to it, even though he only liked the first one, and I have to beg him to let me read the second one. I just really like saying Llama Llama. He also shows no interest in the majority of "Caldicott Winners" books that I get him. If it doesn't have a bad guy and a superhero in it, he's pretty much not interested. He just started getting into fairy tales. Tonight I read him Rumpelstiltskin and Rapunzel. I have questions now. They're far more disturbing than I remember. Did you know the girl in Rumpelstiltskin marries the King who originally locked her in a tower to spin straw into gold, and they lived happily ever after? What kind of message is that sending? Should I be worried that my son is going to lock his pre-school girlfriend in a closet now?

But I digress. This is my tribute to the little company that could, the little book seller that turned into the largest internet retailer of all time. This is my thank-you to them for filling my boring hours with amusement and excitement. I used to order from them every other day when I had Prime. Pay $80 once a year, get unlimited two-day shipping for free. Except how is it free when I had to pay $80 to get it? I was short on cash this year, so I had to pass on the renewal. Now what will I do? Where will I be able to find six tubes of expiring bug-bite lotion for $2? Four bottles of expiring Tylenol PM for $5? What will my son do now that I can't log on and purchase a toy he doesn't even know exists for 85% off? It's a nightmare, it's depressing, and I'm going through impulse purchase withdrawal. Probably a good thing, since I can't even afford food on my own anymore.

Letting go

So this morning I got a bug up my ass to really clean my son's room. Not just vacuum and dust, put away clothes, but really clean it. There is an odor coming from somewhere in the room that I can't find. It's gross. It smells like my husband threw a urine pull-up somewhere and just left it. I've already been through the whole room three times and found nothing, so I thought perhaps it was time to tear the whole thing apart. I am forty-five minutes into this task, and here I am. I need a break already. The entire room is filled with junk from end to end. I tore apart his closet, I went through bins of clothes "for when he gets older" and found that I missed an entire season of brand new clothes that he could have worn last year. Now with the new consumer protection acts, I'll probably never be able to get rid of them. His closet is filled with stuff from when he was a newborn- bouncy seats, receiving blankets, crib bumpers, those little wedges you shove under the mattress so they can breathe when they're sick. Baby monitors, baby toys, a tummy-time mat, you name it, I've saved it.

Why do I save all this stuff if I've sworn over and over that I'll never have another baby? My son's birth and my complications were too much for anyone to deal with twice, and I'm happy with the child I have. I seriously have no intention of ever having another child. So why do I need all this stuff? I am incapable of letting go. It took a lot for me to let go of the six bins of clothing that he no longer fit into. I pared it down to one bin of stuff that is just too sentimental, like the preemie clothes sent to me from all over the country by wonderful friends who had never actually met me. I remember when those clothes were too big for him, and how I had to watch him grow into the tiniest of t-shirts, and I can't let go.

Today is the day I finally dismantle his changing table, which I've been using as a shelf. It is falling apart. The top is destroyed. It's banged up, missing bolts, and probably can't be used again. Guess where it's going? Storage. Why? Because my grandmother gave it to him, and she's gone now. I can't let go of her, or anything she ever gave us. She was an amazing woman, the light of the family. I lost her almost a year ago today, and I lost my grandfather last month. These are the people who helped raise me, who encouraged my imagination and spoiled me rotten. They sang to me, they baked me cakes and brought me gifts from business trips. Now, I am incapable of letting go of them. I am devastated every time I think that I'll never talk to them again, never hear my Granny talk about the ghosts she's seen or my Pop-Pop tell a corny joke. So I'll take up valuable storage space to save a changing table that will never be used again, just like my mom is taking up valuable freezer space for a container of my grandmother's sauce that will never be eaten.

Just like I can never let go of them, I can't let go of my son's past. The items in his closet are a reminder of how far he's come. I still have leads left over from his apnea monitor. I remember the first time I heard it beep, how terrifying it was. I remember running into his room, flinging on the light, and yelling "breath baby," and the relief when it stopped beeping. Seven beeps, seven seconds. It doesn't seem like a long time, does it?

But now he's nearly four. He has no residual effects of prematurity. Aside from a language delay, he caught up and surpassed the other children his age. People look at me in shock when I tell them he was 3lbs, 5oz when he was born, and dropped down to under 3lbs before he started gaining. I should let go now. But instead, I've got a car full of bins ready to take over to the storage unit full of stuff he'll never use again. I'll go back downstairs and shove more mementos of his life into the closet. Then I'll find the source of that damn disgusting odor and put the whole room back together. He'll come home and say "Mommy, you cleaned!" then proceed to tear the whole thing apart again. Life will go on as normal on the surface. But inside, I'll still be holding on to everything, holding on to everyone I've ever lost or nearly lost. Eventually I'll let go, but for today, I'll settle for just re-organizing the mess in both my son's room and my heart.

Green means go, ashbowl!!

I have horrible road rage. I just can't help it. I live in an area populated primarily by displaced or vacationing New Yorkers and New Jersey drivers who learned to drive in big cities where they had to be aggressive to get anywhere, or where they had to suffer through endless loops of driving circles to make a single left turn, so they've grown used to driving like morons and acting like the own the entire road. Driving makes me nervous enough as it is without having to deal with idiots like that.

So I scream and yell a lot in the car. Every idiot that cuts me off, every jerk that doesn't yield to my right of way, every inconsiderate prick that wont let me out when traffic is heavy and doing so would hold them up an additional three seconds. I scream at all of them. I flip them off. I think bad karmic thoughts about them. I want to chase them down and slash their tires, but that would be going way too far, and I do have an ounce of common sense left in my overwhelmed brain.

I only recently discovered how bad I really am in the car when my son started talking. I try to watch my mouth very carefully around my son. I was a Sailor's wife, twice. I am a Sailor's niece and a Sailor's granddaughter. I swear like a Sailor. Not very becoming of a lady, I know. But I really tried to clean up my language around my son. If I could manage not to swear at work around small children, then surely I could do fine around my own. And I was doing pretty well, except in the car.

It started with innocent enough proclamations from the back seat. Every time the light turned green, Jake would yell "go already! Green means go!" When we'd get behind a turtle, he'd shout "move it!" But then came the day a guy with, what else, a Jersey plate, almost hit me. He was flying down the road in my lane, coming right towards me. I screamed "you stupid asshole!" That was it. All the times I accidentally said "shit" or worse and got a free pass from the "Keep Your Kid From Repeating After You" god, it took one time for my son to latch on to that phrase. Suddenly every car on the road was filled with stupid assholes. I ignored him, I begged him not to say it in public (thankfully he never said it at school, or if he did they didn't tell me, which I doubt because they couldn't wait to tell me about the penis flasher incident), and finally I got him to lay off a bit, after several months. Now, he just says "Mommy, I'm not calling them a stupid assword, I'm not!" Yeah, I'm not getting the Parent of the Year award, am I?

I'm trying to mellow out, I really am. I was doing pretty good for a while. But I got cut off yet again the other night, and a string of expletives came flying out of my mouth. Jake asked "what did you say?" I told him "I said 'you doofus trucking ash bowl' baby!" He must have been tired because he just said "oh," and went back to singing the Ramones version of Spiderman. If he does start repeating some of my worse language, I'm prepared to say "oh, that's just how he says truck and ship!" It's plausible.

Disclaimer- I have many friends from NYC and New Jersey. They are aware that I think they drive like idiots and have no hard feelings about this. They think I drive too slow and like a sissy, so we're even. So if you're from NY or NJ and are offended, get over it. Even the insurance companies think you drive like a maniac. Oh, and thanks for that by the way, our insurance premiums are higher just because we share a border with you!

You're really pretty Mommy

I thought I would have a crappy Valentines Day this year. My husband and I are split up, not that we've ever really celebrated in a major way anyway, but I thought this year it would just be a reminder of the fact that I'm dangerously close to single. But my three and a half year old son actually made it the best one yet.

First, on Wednesday, he made me the cutest card in speech class, complete with flowers and little heart stickers that he picked out himself. Then, on Friday, he gave me a bouquet of tissue paper flowers that he made at school. Today, he behaved almost perfectly the whole day (no three year old can behave perfect all day, so I'll take close). We made Valentine cupcakes, we went shopping and he didn't ask for a single thing, and we painted with glitter glue without destroying the entire house (any day where he only destroys half the house is a good day). As if that wasn't all perfect enough, tonight we were reading books and he looked at me and said "you're really pretty Mommy!" That made my day extraordinary.

My son makes my life extraordinary. I've never really accomplished much in this world. I've dropped out of college more times than I care to admit. As my husband would tell you, I've never had a "real" job aside from a seasonal managing stint every Christmas and Easter. I've only been published once, and I have never completed a single one of the twenty-some novels I've started. But I did manage to have one awesome kid. It took me six years to produce him, and he had a bit of a rocky birth, but he's here, he's healthy, happy, and smart. He is my one major accomplishment, the one thing I can look at and say "hey, I did that!" He makes me proud every day, and if I'm proud of him, I can be proud of myself because I gave him what he needed to become the smart, well-rounded, happy little boy that he is. He's beautiful, perfect, and amazing, and he thinks I'm really pretty. You just can't beat that.