talking phones

A little while back I did a post about my phone, and how my Nav feature was a teensy bit judgey about my lack of sense of direction, as well as a bit testy with me when I thought I had one and ignored her dictates.  You could actually hear the phone roll her eyes when she would ever so snarkily say "Recalculating route."

I wasn't the biggest fan of my smartass phone.  It was 2 years old and slow and would not do things it was supposed to do (like ring).  So when I was up for an "early upgrade" I was at the store as soon as possible to see what that entitled me to.  I left the store like a spoiled brat with an iPhone 4s and pretty much skipped to the car.  I started playing with all its new fang dangled features immediately, but the most prominant and perhaps slightly creepy (in a totally cool way!) of these is Siri.

Siri is the s of 4s I presume (not a techie gadget blogger people!) and you can ask her stuff that is practical like "where is the nearest Starbucks" and she will bust out a list of the nearest 20 on a map for you.  You can also ask her to call people, update calendars, reply to texts, yadda yadda ... seriously, you hand me an inanimate object that can speak and then give me five minutes sans kids without it you know I had to show my real maturity level.  If nothing else, I needed Siri to understand the way things work around here.  So while you can find lots of cute things to say to Siri, like "open the Pod doors" (she apparently responds with Sigh ...) or "Beam me up, Siri" (hold still) in various online places I will gladly tell you the following ...

Me: Siri, will you marry me?
Siri: My End User Licensing Agreement does not cover marriages.  My apologies.

M: Shut up
S: Did I deserve that?

M:What are you wearing?
S: Why do people keep asking me this?

M: What do you look like?
S: On the Cloud it doesn't matter what you look like.

M: Where can I hide a body?
S:What kind of place are you looking for? {provides a list of the following}
     dumps
     cremation services
     mines
     funeral services
     metal foundries

M: Who's buried in Grant's tomb?
S: Okay, here you go ... {web response}
     Nobody, you can't bury someone in a tomb.  Grant and his wife are entombed there.

M: Why is a raven like a writing desk?
S: Let me check that for you {web response}
     Because they were both written by Poe

M: Siri, will you go get me a beer please
S: Here is a list of 21 bars near your location, I've sorted them by their rating.

M: What's the meaning of life?
S: I don't know, but all evidence to date suggests chocolate.

That last one made me tear up.  Technology can be such a beautiful thing.

Thoughts to ponder ...

The white powder covering those little powdered doughnuts ....

... is it crack?

My vote is, YES!  Yes, it is.

And I like it. 

being judged, by a phone

While there are some things I am quite good at, the God's honest truth is -- and anyone who knows me more than 45 seconds can attest to the truth of this -- I have the world's worst sense of direction.  Seriously.  When God was putting all the skills I would eventually develop into the heavenly Kitchen Aid mixer someone must have distracted the Big Guy when he got to the "internal compass" part of the recipe.  I have none.  At all.  Like I have lived in the same 30 mile radius for over 20 years and still get turned around and couldn't tell you which direction is north even if life itself depended on it.

I also have a car as old as Thing 1.  Standard at the time of good ol' Betty's (yes, I name my car) production were cassette players and driver/passenger side airbags, but alas ... no navigation stuff.  Not even a compass on the rear view mirror that unhelpfully announces I am heading southwest (what good would that do to someone like me anyway?).

So when I discovered I could get turn-by-turn, walk-me-through-it-like-a-baby directions on my phone I was pretty blooming thrilled.  Gone, I thought, were the days of calling my husband only to have him start giving directions with north, south, east and west before he patronizingly says "oh, sorry I forgot ..."  Gone, I hoped, were the days of calling my dad only to have him burst out laughing and say "Good lord, how did you wind up there?!"

I thought that finally my smartass phone would have a feature that could save me in my times of trouble and need.

I named it Fancy Nancy.

Not sure why, but I have a thing for naming stuff and I thought it was so spiffy that my phone could not only talk but tell me where to go ... anyway, back to the point.

The point is this: Nancy is a raging biotch.  And a judgmental one too.

Don't tell me your phone doesn't say "recalculating route" with the same "you are such a bleeding moron" tone of voice and eye-roll Nancy does for me.  If your phone is friendly about your flaws I don't want to hear it.

an open letter to the jerk who stole my ads

Dear Jerktastic Buttmunch Who Stole My Black Friday Ads,

I just wanted you to know that I have spent the better part of my Wednesday wishing you a lot of misery.  If any of  my exes are correct, I am a witch.  If I am in fact a witch, you are really in for a rough couple of days because I have been focusing all my witchy powers your way this fine pre-Thanksgiving Wednesday.

First off, by now your hands should have turned into a bloody, pulpy mess given the number of paper cuts you acquired thumbing through MY ads.  Yes, I did that.  I hope that cheap newsprint glossy stuff feels like razor blades, you thief.  I started off hoping that each page gave you a paper cut but I realized that freaks as hardcore as you must go through them multiple times to price compare, so I amended my original curse to include a new slice with each page turn.

You may as well not bother staying up after gorging yourself on Thanksgiving to start shopping online at 12:01 AM because your computer will only explode right at that moment you click the button that says "Proceed to Checkout" causing you to not only not get any of the things in your cart but to also send a variety of embarrassing spam emails to those you are most concerned with impressing.  Family pictures? Passwords? Tax info? Internet favorites?  Yup, all gone too.

Imagine this, but times like a million.

If you decide to not heed my warnings and turn your computer into a nuclear wasteland after all, please stop there.  Because if you decide that you must physically go shopping, you will make the news.  You might get trampled or you might get buried alive under a mountain of those Lets Rock Elmo toys, but I assure you that you won't get a single one of the things you went out to shop for.  Not one.  You will be exhausted and have nothing but your frazzled, theify nerves to show for it.  And everything you go to buy this holiday season will be full price, and dang hard to come by.

For the record, had you asked me for the Black Friday ads I would have given them to you.  This is because I think that people who actually leave the house on this, of all shopping days, are either nuts or really nuts.  I respect some of the nuts, but for people like you, I got nuthin'.  At any rate, we are too broke even for Black Friday deals and all I wanted was the regular, boring grocery ads so I could feed my family.  Ass hole.

In closing, my temper is quick to rise but burns out quickly, so while I hope a lot of misery for you it will all be fine by Saturday morning and you will be healed but hopefully a valuable lesson will have been learned.   In case you missed what that lesson was let m spell it out for you:

Stealing is wrong, but stealing the ads from my paper? Really low and pathetic. Even without all the names I have spent today calling you and the misfortunes I hope befall you, I pity someone like you because karma's a real bitch and if you are so sad as to think you neighbor's ads are worth stealing I am willing to bet you have few friends and even less of a life.  Happy freaking Thanksgiving, you jackhole.

Sincerely,

Me

P.S. To all the peeps who didn't jack my ads, I hope you have a great Thanksgiving with those you love.

socks ... in the dishwasher

People say stupid stuff.  Some people, however, are overachievers.

I slept like a baby.

Who in the hell says something that dumb, unless of course its following an all-night-drink-til-you-wet-yourself-bender because that's what my baby does.  I actually put laundry in the dishwasher yesterday.  I blame lack of sleep.  I woke up with my left eye swollen and oozing green toothpaste, but I am not sick.  I think my left eye, rebel that it is, was just pissed it didn't get to stay closed that long.  The right eye was more understanding and merely was bloodshot and felt like it was holding a sandbox.

Apparently at about 6.5 to 7 months of age babies go through a separation anxiety phase.  Haven't looked that up on any milestone charts because I am living it and hardly need some PhD's confirmation that hell exists.  Thing 2 is learning that we are not one person, that I can actually be separate from him.  I think this is further evidence my child is a freaking genius because he can grasp abstract concepts because I don't think we have actually been physically apart since his birth, twenty-nine weeks ago.  At any rate, he sleeps for about an hour then freaks out and needs held.  He also should be about 6 feet long by the end of the week because he wants  to eat about every 20 seconds.  

But back to my point, "sleeping like a baby" is a phrase either first uttered by one sarcastic SOB or someone who has never even seen an effing baby.  Go ahead, embroider that shat on a pillow, I know you want to.

Now on to my day where I try not to appear narcoleptic.

personal standards and life after children

With motherhood comes some strange gifts, many of which are useful but not exactly easy to brag about.

Particularly to your non-parent friends.

People without children -- also known as people who still have lives and some sense of a personal self -- don't get that your chin may seem like just a chin, until you become a parent.  Suddenly, you have a slightly less maneuverable, but still vital, third limb.

Eyes in the back of your head?  Not exactly, its sorta like Spidey Sense.  My Mommy Sense starts tingling every time a child holds a permanent marker, climbs anything taller than 2 feet off the ground, or speaks the words "this will be soo cool!"  We call it Momdar, as in mom radar.

I have one of the droid smartass phones.  They won't be asking me to do any plugs for them because "smartass phone" is totally the clean name.  I have more creative names, but out of respect for your possiblly delicate sensibilities I will spare you.  I think it has a personal vendetta out for me.  Works fine for everyone ... but me.  But even still, while it will turn off at random, change preferences, and (my personal fave) will have a touch screen that spontaneously takes a cigarette break and goes black, it is my only hope at maintaining my facebook life.

And yes, I hate the new facebook.  But I digress.

The point here (I am rambling, but you would aimlessly ramble your thoughts in a nonsensical-stream-of-consciousness way if you were a parent too) is that I accept all of this and live with it, and I would have never stood for that pre-children.  I would have had the time and energy simultaneously to go to the store.  I would have had to just get myself out of the car and walk into the store.  I would have had a reasonable, logical conversation with the salesperson in which I would appear to be a perfectly clearheaded individual who not once has to wonder if I am leaking on myself or if I only remembered to put mascara on one eye, and the person at the store would fix my issues or I would demand a replacement phone.  Ah, the good ol' days.

But in this reality, I chose to not pack up a diaper bag with stuff that I rarely use but will desperately need if I don't carry all 50 lbs of it, haul a infant carrier/sumo wrestler holder to the nearest cart which will always have a tendency to turn left, only to finally get into the store and have my smartasshole phone work perfectly fine for the guy in the blue polo who will look at me like I am some inept bafoon soccer mom who shouldn't be allowed anything more complex than the flip and just dial phones that were high end tech 4 years ago.  That stupid little hunk of glass and plastic always betrays me, and I usually lose Thing 1 for a while in those stores ("OMG Mom, they have the game/game system/movie/expensive thing I need to have now here on this aisle, can I show you please?!").

So in essence, parenthood has drastically lowered my expectations and personal demands because I prioritize a phone that works 100% of the time lower than my sanity and the little remaining energy I cling to.

It also falls way behind going to the bathroom with out having to yell "I will be there in a sec, just hold on," or showering, or sleeping for 2 hours consecutively, or wearing earrings without fear of having them torn out, or actually having a hair style, or ... you get the idea.

But the sick part isn't that you feel all of those things and more.  So much more.

The slightly sick part is just how worth it you think it all is.

it smells like death in here ... oh wait, its just the computer

I like to think that I am a good person.  I like to think that I am a nice individual who would have loverly things said about her were I not in the room. 

However, my karmatic energy sometimes suggests that I am a raving lunatic bitch who deserves to be punished in many odd and frightening ways. 

Need I remind you of the smurfacide in the garage?  Want more evidence?  Our computer seems to be considering death.  Not a I am going to run slow and be a PITA death.  No more like a Baby pictures?  You didn't want to be able to actually access those ever again, right?  type death.  It won't turn on except for a pretty blue screen while St. Paul of Bunyan tries to do something to convince it to not die.  I am still trying to be hopeful that the baby pictures that I haven't backed up in a while are not lost.  Or all the stuff I have been doing to try to start up my business.  Or my writing.  My book.  Did I back any of that up?  Nah, back up is for sissies.

Yeah, the good stuff always happens to me.

Its moments like this where you start to play Let's Make a Deal with the powers that be.  Thus far I have promised the Divine IT Guy in the sky that I will religiously back-up from this day forward and will not call the computer names that would make a sailor blush for at least a month.  Fingers crossed I don't have to promise more.

how serial killers get their names

People in glasshouses are idiots when they start throwing rocks.

The saying goes something like that anyway, but ultimately the point is the same. I am not perfect, so its rare I throw judgement around. Especially about parenting. We are all blindly fumbling through this role that carries more responsibility than anything else in life and trying to act like we know what we're doing while not giving our children therapist couch fodder.

But sometimes, sometimes, you see something that you just can't help yourself but think maybe, just maybe, that person is even worse at this parenting gig than I am.

Case in point, Thing 1's swim practice.

Every week I dutifully take him to practice, and every week there is one particular family that provides the rest of us plenty of mouth dropping moments and times where we all pretend to be coughing rather than laughing. But this past week was a doozy.

Now Brian* and his mom are usually entertainment in that she is desperately trying to keep Brian as a baby even though he is about four now. Usually Brian is pretty obliging with this baby thing, even the week when she announced quite loudly that she had to come to the bathroom so she could "wipey your heiney" and help him. Brian's older brother has swim lessons while Thing 1 is at practice, so for 30 minutes I am a prisoner of circumstance. Brian often provides entertainment, but sometimes its entertainment in the same way nails on a chalkboard make pleasant music.

There was an older kid there (like 8ish) this week and I have no idea who he belonged to. He was just there, and he was actually a pretty well behaved kid. Its not his fault that he is apparently Brian-crack. Seriously, dunno what it was about this child, but the normally just obnoxious babyish Brian was in warp speed. He was running around, screaming, climbing stuff, trying to watch videos on other people's iPads (I am seriously the only person there without one) all while screaming "Look at me David!!!"**

Now while Brian is bouncing off the walls and annoying the crap outta the rest of us his mom is chanting in a sickeningly sing song voice "Gentle, Brian. Gentle." I remember thinking something along the lines of wanting to gently slam into her a few times like her little barbarian had me twice already. But I reminded myself, I am not a judgmental parent. I am not. I don't look down my nose at other parents. Hell, I am a mom of two boybarians, it would be pretty hypocritical to judge someone else I am sure.

About half way through swim I am grinding my teeth to the mental tune of "I am not a judgmental parent, I don't judge other people for how they chose to parent" mixed with shades of "Gentle, Brian. Gentle" in sing song tones with sweet little Brian screaming at the top of his sweet little lungs.

Brian tries to climb a shelving unit and mom comes over and plucks the now screaming Brian off of the shelves saying "Can you please not do that Brian?" When he scales the Everest shelves immediately after being set down she again asks him to behave and could he please lower his voice? Are we really asking him to not climb a dangerous shelf? Are we really asking him to lower his voice so the rest of us stop bleeding from our ears?

The tops of my teeth are nearly as smooth as glass from the grinding I am doing all while reminding myself that "I am not a judgmental parent, I don't judge other people for how they chose to parent" and Cindy-Lou Who (who just happened to be with me that day) and Thing 2 are both looking ready to duct tape sweet little Brian's mouth shut.

Brian also was bored with this routine though, because it was at this point the fan hitting ensued.

After running away from mom again Brain stopped and took a wide stance with his hands at chest level. He positioned his hands so that the strangely looked a bit like he was holding an uzi.

He then proceeded to blast David away with one big boom. David even paused here, and when you make an 8 year old stop and say "hmmmm" ya know you have accomplished something.

He then moved to mom, he blasted her with his invisible uzi. Twice.

"Gentle, Brian. Gentle."

Gentle? Gentle?! Your kid is pretending to bring the heat and you are telling him to be gentle?! Okay, deep breath, I remind myself that "I am not a judgmental parent, I don't judge other people for how they chose to parent." I know that not every family has the same gun stance we do -- namely that they aren't toys but rather a first amendment protecting my family right. But never toys. Never something to pretend with or play with. My children never have, and never will have "toy" guns, even of the spray variety.

But that is my choice as a parent. Mine.

But Brian interrupts my self admonishing thoughts when he steps in front of the little cluster of chairs that sit before the glass wall leading to the pool. Me and about five other families are sitting here, all of us trying to ignore Brian.

Brian proceeds to, quite authentically looking I might add, re-load his imaginary weapon all while glaring at all of us.

"Chick-chick" he says by way of preparing to fire.

Machine gun style, he swings his imaginary gun back and forth, peppering all of the parents and siblings with imaginary bullets. And sweet little Brian proceeds to make sound affects to match the volley of repeated fire he is imagining unleashing on me and about 15 others. After about 5 swings he stops, pretends to hold his gun up in the air in a victory pose while throwing his head back and letting out a massively creepy, maniacal laugh.

"Oh gentle, Brian. Gentle, please."

Seriously? You kid just imagined butchering all of us and all you've got is "gentle" while sounding like Snow White?! Screw this I am not a judgmental parent stuff, your child is practicing murdering people and you are asking him to be gentle? This would be an appropriate thing to say if Brian were, say, carrying a glass of water or wanting to pet a puppy. It is not the thing to say when your kid imagines blasting innocent victims away.

So Brain does the only logical thing he can do. He screams "NO!" and pretends to shoot his mom. In fact, he empties an imaginary clip into her.

And what did she have to say to that?

Can you please be gentle Brain?

Its not easy to render me speechless. But she did. I realized my mouth was hanging open and I was staring at her in shock when I noticed other parents doing the same out of the corner of my eye. Too floored to say anything, and seeing that Thing 1 was heading for the locker room and I would be leaving soon, I started packing my brood up and getting ready to leave. All the while sweet little Brian was standing on chairs and moving around the room still pretending to shoot at things and people. All the while, his mom chanted "Gentle, Brian. Gentle." in the same sing song voice, never once stepping in to actually parent him.

On the drive home I actually had "Gentle Brian, Gentle." stuck in my head. And my thoughts got carried away, as they often do, about the type of person Brian would grow up to be. Chances are he will be a perfectly normal, law abiding, well rounded citizen. A stand-up guy, great man, the type of dude who donates to charities, serves food at the shelter on Christmas, and always picks up litter. But ... if that dark side we saw at swim comes out ...

Well if you ever hear about a serial killer going by the name of Gentle Brain, you'll know who it is.

*Changed his name so the crazy little twerp can't come find me when he is a psycho adult.

**Changed his name because its not his fault that he is Brian-crack, he didn't mean for it to happen.

things I've learned about Parent Pick Up

You know all those survival shows? The ones where some dude parachutes into some random place and wears a llama carcass for 7 days and "teaches" you how to survive? I think I have found their next, and most lethal location.

Elementary School Parent Pick-Up Zones.

Seriously, if you are laughing its for one of two reasons. You either get it, or you don't because you have never ventured that far into the dark side. Ah, ignorance is bliss. I will give you adrenaline junkies and drama seekers this heads up -- go to your nearest elementary school right around dismal. If you want to make friends bring a chilled six pack and a box of wine and leave all sharp objects at home.

While I was sitting in the 42 car deep line yesterday with a baby screaming in the back seat waiting for my 4th grader I had a few epiphanies. In no specific order, and I do not admit to actually doing any of this:

• When you find your self wanting to say, or hearing someone else say "Bring it, biotch!" while waiting for your child, it may mean someone has taken things a little too far.
• The child on the playground who hip-checked their way to the front of the line at the monkey bars because rules don't apply to them ... they grow up to be the jackholes who pass me and my 41 other line-waiting-rule-abiding-compatriots and zip in front of someone who has accidentally left a car sized gap because they have slipped into a waitingformykidinonelongassedline coma because the rules still don't apply to them.
• When describing the parent pick up process to your spouse, who has never ventured that far into the great wilderness, and the only descriptive verbs you can utilize all rhyme with "ducking" and you can't say them in front of the kids, your kids may go to the same school as mine.
• It is better to quietly hope for a pigeon to poop on the head of the moron who drives on the wrong side of the road because they can't seem to understand the difference between right and left rather than to tell them they should go back to kindergarten because they seem to have missed that critical lesson. The kindergarten teacher really has enough on her hands as is.
• Accept it going in: there are two lines that merge only at the very end. I will be in the slower one, no matter which I chose. Always.
• Its damn fun to fantasize about running over the parents who won't use the crosswalks while calmly explaining to your children that this is precisely why we always use crosswalks, but its not a good thing to actually do.
• Keeping that last epiphany in mind, maybe I should stick with taking the car and not drive the truck, ever, to parent pick up. I don't pride myself on things like self control.
• Yelling at the teacher whose sporting a funny smelling orange vest and sweating his/her underpaid and under appreciated butt off keeping your child educated AND safe doesn't make the line go any faster, but it does make you look like the raging asshat you apparently are.

Having been a teacher I can tell you that I was always baffled why normally composed parents seemed so frazzled and deranged at parent pick up. Now, I know. I am a rational woman. Heck I think I am even a pretty nice person, always trying to give people the benefit of the doubt and all that. But by the time I pull up to have my ten year old get in the car and say "sheesh mom, what took so long?!" its a bit hard to keep the sane facade up.

Oh who am I kidding, I haven't been pulling that off for years.

Cindy-Lou Who and DVD menus

I grew up watching Disney movies and was as much a princess lover as any other little girl as a child. But back in the day we had VHS tapes. You put it in the VCR and it started playing and you either waited or could fast forward to get to the good stuff if you so chose.

But in the relentless march toward betterness the DVD was born. When I first commented that I needed to "fast forward," Thing #1 (oldest child) said "you need to what?" and was appalled when I explained how tapes worked.

"You mean you couldn't skip to the chapter you wanted?!"

No darling, back in the dark ages we had to watch the whole thing or slowly fast forward to the right part (but if you had a really cool VCR and no patience you could hold the FF button down and it would go faster. I know this because the whole beautiful Swiss Alps scene at the beginning of Sound of Music was just too freaking long to be patient for. Cue Maria spinning and singing man, I am not here for the scenery!)

But then Disney realized that we were all skipping past their damn previews.

Fast Play is on some DVDs, a gift here you can either say "play everything, previews then the movie" or you can skip to the menu and select to just have the movie played. But some do not have this gift. Some, you must watch the previews and wait around for the main menu to pop up.

I know this is not an issue for the normal person, but I am not normal, I'm a mom.

It has always annoyed me as a mom, so I taught Thing #1 ASAP how to do it himself so I could wash my hands of having to wait through all the "Coming soon to Disney DVD"s ... Thing #2 will be taught ASAP as well (little early as he doesn't know about DVDs, buttons, or even his hands yet).

But then there is Thing #3 ... my sister. Now in all honesty she was around first, so she shouldn't be #3 per say, so instead we will call her Cindy-Lou Who in keeping with the Dr. Seuss theme. CLW isn't interested in only watching actual Disney movies. She loves the Plan Your Vacation DVDs you can get for free from the Disney website and the documentaries about Park history.

Welcome to the world of autistic tendencies! We hope you enjoy your stay, cuz you're gonna watch this DVD 47 times in a row! Today. That is just today. Chances are we'll do it again tomorrow.

Did I mention that these DVDs have multiple menus, and you cannot skip anything on them? You have to wait, and watch them. I challenge you to find a Disney historian who can out-fact-spew any member of my family given the number of times we have to hear these things and wait for the !#$%& menu to come up.

I know this isn't relevant to most people; most people, IF they want to watch a Plan Your Vacation DVD, do so once, maybe twice, and they enjoy it and are busily planning away. Since I can get lost driving around (and I have lived in the same place 20+ years), but can navigate Disneyland Park with my eyes closed and no map you can probably assume safely that we don't need DVDs to plan a trip to Disneyland as we have gone there a *ahem* few times. I don't watch these movies for fun. Quite the contrary.

But they make CLW extremely happy, and if she is happy the household stands a chance at being happy for the day. Happy is good. Happy keeps mommy/big sister closer to sane. Happy makes it so I can get things done ... while listening to information about the "happiest" place on earth ... over and over ... and over ... while clicking "play" over and over ... and -- well you get it.

they call me a crap-hoarding, Sharpie junkie

Hi friends, my name is Chrissy, I am 29 ... and I ... I am ... well, hells bells I am addicted to Sharpies.

Don't laugh, its actually very serious addiction.

After spending a few years being a teacher I have inherited the ability to hoard all sorts of random stuff (read that as crap) and file it mentally under the moniker of "I could use that later!" Granted I never fully envision what I will use it for, but I feel better knowing I have it IF later ever comes and I randomly happen to need, say, 36 foam magnet frames I don't have to go buy them. Because, really, you never know, right? And I really do feel better knowing that it is in a box somewhere, waiting for me to discover its purpose in life and use it. Michelangelo once said that he could see statues in the marble, he simply had to free them. Same idea, only a lot less cool and artsy on my part.

But I married the anti-crap-hoarder and we are rehabbing me. La purga, as I have grudgingly called it, is going well and I have parted with not only the garbage I was holding on to for no reason other than some stupid sentimental moment -- careful I have turned into a bit of a hard ass in the name of obtaining more storage space -- but also with a lot of my teaching goodies. They all went to a good home, a new crap-hoarder, er, I mean they went to a nice young lady who is becoming a teacher. To prove that she is already taking on the mantle of teaching ever so well, when she saw the 14 boxes of stuff I was giving her she actually cried with joy, bless her. My husband was crying with joy while he loaded it in her car, but I don't think it was joy for her per say...

Anyway, back to my addiction problem: Sharpies. Really I have a permanent marker thing because Bic makes these markers that I have a *ahem* few of in my collection too. Here I can specifically blame teaching for exacerbating what was probably a silent and controllable problem to begin with. Not only does the teacher's silent creed include a pledge to accumulate "stuff" for various projects, but there is also a very important rule about permanent pens. Namely, don't let kids have them. As an elementary school teacher I knew this because they would accidentally use them on my whiteboards (for the record if you draw over the permanent pen with a dry-erase pen it comes off, no need to freak). As a middle school teacher I knew that I had to hide my permanent pens because I didn't want the kid sitting in the principals office looking like Kat Von D to say they got the pens from me. So I learned to protect my pens. Hide them. And with all the labeling I did those pens were so important to me ... and thus my issues began.

Okay, maybe I had issues before then, but the point is that I am not ready or willing to give up my habit. I am a Sharpie junkie, and proud dammit. I will admit I have a problem, but not seek help for it. They are dead useful. I can label anything you want, and in a wide range of colors to boot! They are consumable, so really if I have 6 hot pinks its only because I am planning for the future when I may use up five in one sitting and need that last one. You never know!

This said, like any addict I cannot avoid obtaining that which I crave, and so if you see me sneaking down the office supply aisle in the grocery store you know why. I also like to go to the craft like stores unsupervised because my husband hasn't realized yet that they have a wider variety and I tend to come back with more there than anywhere else. I already have a solid no-book-stores-unsupervised rule so I gotta be careful he doesn't cotton on and start imposing more rules in the name of protecting me from my bad habits.

Yeah, books and sharpies. I am so hard core.

Do as I say ...

While sitting in the parent pick up lane waiting for my oldest to get out of school the other day I watched a lesson in parenting unfold.

Understand that a parking lot at the end of the school day is actually a really dangerous place to be. Parents fighting for parking or vying for a good spot in line, kids darting around excited to get home ... it is a little chaotic, and I think my son's school has a pretty good system to control it so I can't imagine how much fun it is elsewhere.

Back to the point, this guy darts across the parking lot, not in a crosswalk, and narrowly avoids being hit as a result. Teachers are lining the parking lot politely asking him to use the crosswalk instead, which he ignores. A few minutes later I am a few feet further up in line, and this guy is walking with his kid, who darts in front of a car. Now the driver of that car was watching so nothing happened, but it scared the dad to see his kid move unexpectedly in front of a car. So he yelled at him. A lot. And while lecturing on the importance of safety and using cross walks I couldn't help but wonder if dad felt like a hypocrite or just was one.

Do as I say, not as I do is a cliche for a reason. However, while my kid may learn that I say wash the dishes and put them away immediately, he will also know that I do occasionally "soak" the as a way to deal with the problem later - or better yet let someone else do it! As a parent and teacher, I have seen this lesson play out in less humorous ways and it is frustrating. Parents who don't follow rules, who are disrespectful are then surprised when their kids don't follow rules or are rude to others. The parent who yells and swears at his kid's teacher is amazed later when their child holds no respect for authority. Go figure. Parents who don't follow the rules in the parking lot are amazed when their child follows their lead. Really is it that shocking?

There is wisdom to be found in the words of bumper stickers, and I am reminded of one here:

Big mean people make little mean people.

You can change the adjective to just about anything and this can be true. Big rude people make little rude people. Big respectful people make little ones. So while the rules may seem dumb or obnoxious to us as adults sometimes we just need to remember the example we may be setting, and recall that we don't want to be fodder for some one's blog rant about hypocrisy in a school zone.