Reason Number Infinity Plus 3 Why My Parents Think I'm Going to Hell

After several references to the Almighty Father and an extended prayer before the meal, Isabella says to her grandfather, "If you like God so much, why don't you make a cardboard cut out of him and you can just eat with him?"

Looking for the sunscreen...

Rural Weaves

So, full disclosure: I didn't write this. The Husband did. He wrote it after Isabella's dance recital last spring. I ran across it this afternoon, and it made me laugh. So, I'm going to share it with you and hope it makes you laugh, too. He didn't make any of it up, by the way. 


Dictionary.com defines a weave as a process in which a hairpiece is interwoven with real hair to conceal alopecia or increase the thickness or length of the hairstyle. Why am I sitting here thinking about weaves? We’ll get to that.

As many of you are aware, I went to an "urban" high school. Thusly, I am familiar with the concept of a weave. Generally, it was part of an insult hurled from one girl to another.

For instance, “Don’t shake your head at me! Your sorry weave’ll fall out!” Or, “Don’t come with that fake attitude that goes with your fake hair!”

These, of course, are approximations as said insults usually came with very demonstrative body language and peppered with some, um, colorful word choices. This rendered them more specific and a whole lot funnier.

So why am I sitting in rural America pondering weaves? Because I just witnessed more flying fake hair than when a classmate of mine didn’t keep both of his girlfriends far enough apart. It made me nervous then, maybe because one of the girlfriends turned on Ronny armed with a stapler and an extremely bad attitude. Unfortunately my advanced age hasn’t provided me any sort of understanding regarding the concept.

Saturday evening, I dutifully attended my daughter’s dance recital.  No, that’s not exactly right. That makes it sound easy. Saturday I cleared everyone out of my wife’s way for hours as she helped Isabella with her hair, makeup and costume. This included providing encouragement, running errands, complementing her progress and most importantly, flawlessly reading her mind to anticipate each of these needs.

Then, I met my in-laws, kept my two younger children quiet and well-behaved during all 36 dance numbers and purchased a rose for Isabella after the event.

The dancing wasn’t entirely painful. Some of the groups were really quite good, and many of the music selections were enjoyable. With the exception of one adult male, who apparently had daughters in almost every number, only teenagers screamed out names during the dances.

There was also a significant decrease compared to last year in the obnoxious posturing and videotaping. For some reason, there seemed to be a drastic uptick in the use of weaves.

I do understand that here in rural America there might not be the level of experience on the subject that was available to the girls in my neck of the woods, so I would like to offer a bit of advice on the matter. Consider it to be my little urban contribution to my new home.

First of all, it really works best if you try to match the color of the weave to the color of your daughter’s actual hair. Sometimes the girls I knew would weave in different colors, but to pull this off you have to go all in. In 1989, it was fashionable to braid in your school colors or match your neon leg warmers. But, putting a platinum blonde weave on a sort-of blonde child just makes it look as if you got tired of shopping.

Second, you should carefully select the style. Unfortunately, stick-your-finger-in-a-light-socket curly appears to rank very high on the popularity scale here. There are other options. Ones that don’t look like Wil E. Coyote after he accidentally detonated a trap for the Roadrunner. You might consider a bit more variety.  A bunch of little girls with fake hair is mildly disturbing, but a bunch of little girls with identical fake hair is a bit too Stepford Wives for many of us.

Lastly, we really need to discuss the importance of the weave actually staying on the head. I witnessed some fights in high school where even a well-applied, vicious yank wasn’t enough to budge a weave. Admittedly, I’m not sure of the methods they used to secure their hair, but I would think that with a bit of ingenuity and some pins you could come up with something that would make it through more than one tumbling pass.

By the end of a number, one mat looked as if it were full of sad, lost woodland creatures with little balls of curls dotting the area. And, back to the hair matching point, I’m not sure how the girls sorted out which little tuft was whose.

I hope these tips were useful. I’m still not convinced that weaves are a necessary part of the dance recital experience. My daughter looked just beautiful and all my wife needed was a one-inch curling iron and some Aussie freeze spray. Of course, I’ve seen pictures of her in high school and she definitely came to the table with some big hair experience on her resume.

All things considered, the day could have been much worse. My daughter did great and was very proud of her performance, my wife made it through with only limited amounts of sedatives, and I ended up being entertained.

Aside from the joy it brought my daughter, the cost of the monthly lessons, the costume (which, by the way, cost more than a whole month of lessons), and all of the little extras such as the make up and curling iron were all worth it to see a $40 weave fall off of a four-year old and her horrified mother look on as the girl tossed it up in the air repeatedly instead of participating in the dance. Priceless. And a sure-fire guarantee that I’m going to buy a video.

By the way, my new favorite hairspray is Aussie because of their instructions for use on the bottle. “It’s hairspray. You put it on your hair.”

Simple

Completely out of the blue, Isabella rolls up on me while I was cooking dinner.

"Mom, did you know that boys and girls have different types of humors?"
"Really?"
"It's true. Girls' humor is complicated and based mostly on memories. Boys... well boys have something called simple humor."
"You're absolutley right, dear. Do you know what else? They never grow out of that."
"I know. Sad."

Seal of Approval

The girls both take dance lessons. I don't know how their teacher does it. Emily's class has 14 girls all about age 6. And she manages to get them all doing the same thing in front of a big mirror with noisy shoes on. That, for those of you who are not familiar with small girls, is nothing short of a miracle. I suspect she is either blessed with an inordinate amount of goodwill and kindness, or she does a healthy amount of drugs. Either way, she does a great job.

This week is the dance class Christmas party. I procured a gift for Ms. Jamie, one for Taylor (the high school girl who helps her), a snack and a grab bag gift. The gift I chose was an assortment of very loud nail polishes and nail stickers - mostly sparkles. Emily called me with some concerns.

"Mom. Why is there wine in the stuff to go to my party?"
"That's Ms. Jamie's present."
"You bought her ALCOHOL!??!"
"Yes"
"Do you think she will drink that?"
"I do. And if she doesn't, she should."
"Well, that's between you and her. By the way, I looked at the gift I'm taking. You know, the nail polish and the stickers and they are acceptable."

Glad to hear it, your majesty.

Golden Years

Emily informed me (she does very little talking, asking or discussing - she mostly informs) that when she's an adult, I'll be old. I asked her if she would take care of me when I get old.

"Oh sure! I'll bring you zucchini every day!"


Awesome.

To the Moon

It was a momentous day in parenting. For the first time, a child of mine showed up at home with a referral from school. Apparently my son punched a kid on the bus. I told him I was proud of him and took him out to dinner.

Now, before you call the cops or something, let's back this train up for a second. I am probably the most peace-loving hippie you know. I don't own Birkenstocks, but other than that, I'm there. I believe in diplomacy instead of war, I think we overspend on the military and underspend on education, I compost and recycle, I have a garden, I shop farmer's markets and use CFL light bulbs. My kids always say please and thank you, they are hyper-polite to servers and they do not smash bugs. So why am I totally okay with Declan smashing a kid's face in on the bus? Because the little fucker deserved it.

Everybody seems to be concerned with the rash of bullying going on these days, and they should. It's horrible. But you know what? It was horrible when I was in school, too. I'm not going to go all "back in my day when I walked to school eleventeen miles every day uphill in the snow sharing shoes with my brother" crap on you, but the fact is that people have always been horrible to each other. Do you know why it didn't get as far when I was in high school? Because if you were a jerk for too long, someone would eventually kick your ass and that would make you less of a jerk. If it didn't guess what? Yep. Ass kicked again.that process was repeated until the system worked.

The kid that Declan punched is most certainly a jerk. He is constantly mocking other kids and pushing them around. He demanded a candy cane from Declan, and when he didn't hand it over, the kid shoved him off the seat onto the floor. Declan came up, grabbed the back of the kid's sweatshirt and started throwing hooks to the face. The kid had a bloody lip and I'm guessing a whole new attitude about my son. I tell my children that they are never, under any circumstances, allowed to initiate a fight or to be mean for any reason. But, they are allowed to defend themselves and each other.

So, this peacenik treated her son to Chinese for beating a kid up on the bus. You know what? I bet he never has a problem with that kid again. Referral? Worth it. And they still are not allowed to smash bugs. A Mom's gotta have her standards.

Advanced Spelling

Somewhere in the middle of her monologue about the day at school, Emily proudly informed me that she learned how to spell a new word.
"Oh yeah? What word is that?"
"m-y-t-f"
"Huh. What word does that spell?"
"My tooth. I thought you could spell, Mom."

Quote of the Day

Isabella (shouting): Declan are you in the shower again?? Isn't it your second one today??
Declan (poking his head out from behind the shower curtain and also shouting): I take my hygiene very seriously.

Pestilence

I'm sick. It sucks. Hence, my writing today will probably be terse, tangential and a bit angry. Continue at your own risk.

My kids got me sick. All three were ill earlier this week. While it is never fun to have three sick kids, I did find it to be an interesting study in gender psychology. The girls were slowed down a bit - not as loud, not as mobile and a little whinier. The boy, on the other hand appeared on death's very door. He attached himself to me whenever I wasn't moving with the subtlety of a Nerf sucker dart. He insisted on thoroughly discussing each of his symptoms to be sure that none were the early stages of a horrible demise, and insisted on medication. Immediately.

When The Husband delivered him the bottle, he studied it carefully, asked what he weighed, and confirmed his dose with me. Two teaspoons every four hours. He, like magic, appeared in the kitchen every four hours after that for two days. On the nose. Without fail. The girls declined the medicine. Apparently grape-flavored medicine is "nasty" and not worth the promised relief.

Before I was struck with the pestilence myself, I was sharing with a coworker and she laughed. "Well, what did you expect? He's a boy. And they don't grow out of that crap - it just gets worse. How's your husband feeling?"

Great. I'd better go take some medicine or something. I'm going to need to get better fast.