No Sleepovers Please

    We all have to make parenting choices, and many of them are wildly different. One of my more unusual parenting choices is the fact that I don't really do sleepovers and I'm not even a huge fan of play dates, especially in the home. Some of that, I suppose, can be chalked up to the fact that I am an antisocial little troll, but I do have other reasons. People can agree or disagree with them as they chose, and I know that I have offended and frustrated a lot of people with my dislike of sleepovers, but like any other parent, I have to do what works for me.
   One of the reasons for my dislike of sleepovers is that this gets in the way of my working schedule. I have to ask for time off. Even if my daughter is sleeping away, I have to make myself unavailable to work in order to pick her up and drop her off. I suppose I could let the parents drop her off at the empty apartment -- wait, no I can't. There are a million reasons why I can't do that, so I have to ask for time off; time off that I really can't afford for a reason that is really not a priority.
    Then there is the issue of how well do I know the parents? How comfortable do I feel with them? In all of her life, my daughter has only been allowed to stay overnight at one person's house, and then only because it was a birthday, and I knew BOTH of the parents. Not just one, both. That is very important to me because growing up, I knew several people who went to a friend's house and were harmed by one of the parents. This never happened to me personally, but this has happened to people close to me. So even though as a child, I slept over all the time, and friends came to my home all the time, this is not something that I am willing to risk my child over. If I know, am comfortable, and trust both of the parents, then fine, occasionally sleepovers may happen, but even then they are not going to be the norm. I like to have my daughter home. I am her mother, and no one can watch over her better than I can. I am not against her socializing and having a good time, but sleeping over at a friend's home is certainly not the only option.
    So why can't her friends come stay over here at my home? This option is not wholly out of the question, but again, I would want to know and feel comfortable with both of the parents. I would want to be able to trust that if there where an issue, and the kid staying over needed to go home, due to extreme bad behavior, illness, accident, or whatever, I would be able to contact said parents and have them come get the kiddo. I would want to feel comfortable having that family in my home. There is also the issue of the family understanding what type of person I am before they let their kiddo come over. I have a dark and twisted sense of humor, and they would need to be comfortable having their kids around that. This is not to say that I would be harmful, because I would cut off my own hand before I would hurt a child, but I say some weird shit. Also, I cuss like a sailor. I edit most of my cussing out of this blog, but you can't really edit the spoken word. If your child comes over to my home, they are going to hear the words fuck, shit, crap, damn,  and ass often and in various combinations. I understand that there are parents who don't want their kids exposed to this, and I respect that, but those kids shouldn't come to my home, because in my home, these things are said. And, I really am an antisocial little troll. I would have to feel really, really comfortable with a family to have their kid over often; I would have to feel that they were close to being my family.
    My daughter is a popular girl, and I try to be sure that she has ways to socialize, but I just don't feel the need to have my home invaded in order for her to do so, nor do I feel the need to have her invade other's homes. In all honesty, there isn't offense intended if my daughter hasn't been over to a friend's home; the real issue is that for the most part, sleepovers are not something that I am comfortable with, so we don't do them. It's just that simple. 

Bad Habits And Typhoid Mary

   Don't you love it when you have a three day weekend and you have some plans to get shit done, to manage to finally check a few things off on the eight mile long to-do list that you have been trying to get to for months and then BAM!!! -- sickness. I cooked myself a pot of crockpot lima beans, some of the best things ever, and I got sooooo sick after eating them. I thought I had managed to give myself food poisoning. How did you manage to poison yourself with lima beans, you might ask. Well, I'm Southern, and while lima beans might seem like a nice healthy option, nothing remains healthy after a Southern person gets a hold of it. My lima beans were cooked with ham hock, to give them flavor, and I thought the ham hock had gone bad or something, because I was sick, bad sick, and my stomach felt like it was trying to escape.
   So I slumped around the house, whining, got on facebook, and whined, and did my usual 'curl up at the bottom of the shower', with lots of hot water, as a method of pain management, and I whined there too. There was an awful lot of whining going on, and I even went over to my sister's and whined as well. What can I say? I used to be all stoic and 'eff you pain', but I've gotten soft. Don't judge me.
    Needless to say, my to-do list was ignored. But as I slumped around the house, sick as a dog, unable to keep anything in my stomach, trying to find something, anything, that wouldn't come up, I realized that my daughter has a really, really bad habit. I've known this for a while, because I've been cleaning up after this habit for a while. but for some reason this habit just hit me as I fought this war with my body, trying desperately to force my digestive system to fall back in line. I went to get a package of saltine crackers, and I knew that we had some because the box was still in the cabinet, so I reached in for a package and found -- air. The box sitting there in the cabinet, bold as you please, was empty. Because my daughter had taken the last pack, but she left the box as a kind of momento: crackers were here. But now, they were gone. And I realized that this wasn't the first time either, because I started recalling empty hot pocket boxes, empty pop tart boxes, and a long, long list of other food items, whose empty boxes I have been culling from the cabinets, fridge, and freezer for months. Ack! How did I not nip this in the bud already? I am death on cleaning; I hate it, I hate it, I hate it! So anything that reeks of me having to clean up some one else's mess when they are perfectly able to doing said cleaning on their own is usually nipped in the bud. All I can do is repeat what I have already said: I'm getting soft. However, I have not gotten so soft that I am allowing this habit to continue. Now that I acknowledge the problem's existence, the problem will be eradicated.
   And the three day weekend, which wasn't really a weekend at all being as these days off fell on Tues-Thurs, passed with me believing that I had poisoned myself with my own cooking. Then came today (Friday), which was my first day back to work, and my daughter is being considerate and asking me if I am feeling better and I am telling her I do feel better and thanking her for asking. The next words out of her mouth are, "I hope I don't get sick. Kids in class have been getting that stomach flu all week."
 

Treacherous little Typhoid Mary. 

   

What The Hell Just Came Out Of My Mouth?

   You remember back when you were a kid and you just thought your parents where so lame? The garbage that came out of their mouths -- If all your friends jumped off a bridge, does that mean you would too? Obviously, duh. Of course we would've, that shit is awesome and we were all adrenaline junkies anyway. And when you were a parent, if you even thought of that mind-boggling possibility at all, you were never going to be like that. You would be cool, you would be bad-ass, and all of your kid's friends would envy your kid for having the most awesome parent in the world.
    And then you are a parent and reality hits. If your kid jumps off a bridge and survives -- they are gonna wish they had died when you get through with them. Can you say grounded for eternity? I sure can. I can also say sore bottom pretty well too. And no TV or video games. What the hell kind of cool mom am I, right?
    Also, if all your kid's friends like you? That means that they are over at your house all the damn time. Eating your food, watching your TV, and getting in your way. Some parents might like that, I guess, if they have fully turned the corner and landed in batshit crazy. I haven't got there yet, so I want other people's kids to be at other people's houses. As in, not at mine.
  Try this little phrase that came out of my mouth not too long ago, "I don't care if all of your friends have Facebook pages. When they get kidnapped by pedophiles and you don't, you'll thank me." Can you just imagine the level of preteen stink-eye I got for that little gem? The stink-eye level was epic. And I didn't just get stink-eye from the kiddo, I got stink-eye from the random people who heard me. You know, whenever you say something like that, you always end up being in hearing distance of the real crazies: the stick-up-my-ass  people that think you should bubble wrap your kids and let them believe that the world is nothing but sunshine and butterflies. I've never been that type of mother; I prefer preparedness and awareness to ignorance. Or maybe they just let their kids have a Facebook page? I don't care if they did, this is totally their choice, but my daughter isn't getting one. That's my choice. But I digress.
    The thing is, when you turn into a parent, sometimes that lame-ass crap that was dripping from your parents' mouths starts to make massive sense. Last night my daughter was standing with her head in the freezer because we had just gotten back from karate and she was hot. I allowed this for about two minutes, because she had just been doing a pretty physical activity, and it's July, so it's hot, and our apartment doesn't have air conditioning. But she started acting like she was putting down roots. I mean, the energy! Kids can never fully understand the horror that is the electric bill. So out of my mouth flies, "Close the door! We aren't trying to refrigerate the whole neighborhood here!" What. The. Hell. Did I just say that shit? I feel so old now. What the hell happened to me? 

I Used To Be Sane, I Swear

   There are things that have changed drastically since I became a parent, and I know that I am not alone in this. As a parent, you often find that you are doing and saying things that you swore you would never do. Open your mouth, and the words that come out of your mouth were plagiarized from your mother. A true, "Oh my God, I'm turning into my mother" moment. And that is not the only thing. All that cool stuff you did as a teenager? All your friends who knew you back then are under a gag order when your child is anywhere within hearing distance because you do not want them copying you. Put firecrackers in the neighbor's mailbox? Don't say it around the kids, they'll want to one-up you. You morph into this spastic person who doesn't blink an eye at the insanity that is parenting; the old you is still there, but is at war with the parent you, causing some pretty insane behavior.

   An example of this is when you are with your sister's kids, and the nephew starts licking your daughter and niece's faces, so you decide the punishment must fit the crime, and lick your nephew's grubby-ass face, and then decided that licking your germaphobe sister's face would be pretty freaking awesome, which does nothing to stop the nephew from licking people, and in fact, spurs him to greater measures. You remember things like when you were a kid and used to climb onto the top of the roof and the car port, and then jump off, because why the hell not, but now you spaz-out when your daughter leans over a railing. These are all signs of your old personality and your parent personality fighting for dominance inside your brain. 

   Remember all that crap food you used to consume by the cart load? Eating spaghetti used to count as vegetables with me. There's tomatoes and stuff in that, right? Now I wage war with the kiddo, trying to convince her to eat more green stuff, because I'm convinced she doesn't eat enough veggies and her little ass is gonna get scurvy. Want a change in dinner? Try and convince the kiddo of that. By now I've eaten enough chicken that I wouldn't be surprised if I sprouted feathers and started flying, because chicken is her favorite. 

   Being a parent is watching more kiddo shows than you watched even when you were a kiddo yourself and swearing that if you ever meet a Wiggle, Barney, Teletubby, or any other similar TV character, you are going to take them DOWN, for the good of all mankind. Being a parent is when you've changed your kiddo's diaper and had the kiddo SHIT all over your hand, and the primary feeling you felt was relief because they weren't bound up anymore. When you go stand in the public bathroom line five times in thirty minutes because you are potty training your kiddo and they are in big kid undies. When you learn to like whole wheat bread because their doctor has said that your kid needs more fiber, and finding yourself actually reading the effing nutrition label to make sure the stupid whole wheat bread you are buying actually is high in fiber after you learn that some of the whole-wheat options are just white bread in disguise. Being a parent is suffering through your kids  being grounded and having privileges taken away, even though that shit is harder on you then it is on the kid, and after hearing them whine "I'm bored" and "This sucks" one more time, you want to remove your eardrums with the screwdriver, and knowing that a in your pre-parenting days, you would have thought that the shit they pulled was no big deal and might have even been impressed. Being a parent is being pulled in two by the wish that they would stay young forever and the desire for them to grow up and show the world what they are made of. 

   The truth is, that no sane, normal person can function as a parent. You have to be truly insane to be able to manage the multiple personalities waging war inside your body. You have to learn how to be firm with your kid, and discipline them and make them follow the frickin rules, but you also have to not be someone that they are afraid to talk to when they need help, and that is a hard person to be, and a person like that needs to have multiple personalities just to function. This is the truth of every parent. We may have started out as sane people, but we sure as hell aren't sane now.