quirky

Midsummer Night Moonlighting

/ Quirky Girl / 5 Comments

It’s 2:30 am, and the alarm clock jolts me from a deep slumber. Although freakishly early to be starting the day, I need to get out of bed and get ready for work.

But there’s a highly important mission that I must first accomplish.

I tiptoe into a dark, hazardous room. Why isn’t there any Caution tape surrounding this disaster area? And not even so much as a nightlight to illuminate my treacherous path?

A massive pile of Legos that rivals Mount Everest in magnitude litters my path, and there’s simply no way around the obstacle.

Lego Darth Vader, with his evil red light saber drawn menacingly, doesn’t miss a beat.

I stifle the urge to scream as I misjudge my next step.

I’m fairly certain I just irreparably injured my pinky toe. Then my entire left foot, tingling with the sensation of a thousand angry needles, goes completely numb.

A child stirs from the peaceful world of Dreamland.

I silently drag my numb-footed self over to his bed, and gently but thoroughly rummage under his pillow in search of the hidden gem.

The child squirms and groans.

“Just wanted to say goodbye before I head out to work!” I whisper.

Like a wary cat, he cracks one eye open and squints at his space shuttle alarm clock.

“It’s 3 o’clock! Let me sleep or I’ll lick you!” he mumbled.

Lick me? Really?

Clearly, he must think it’s his brother. Would he really lick me?

Another tingling sensation startles me, this time in my hand.

He bit me!

A knee-jerk reaction bitch-slap sends his Teddy Ruxpin face first into the wall with a resounding thud.

My sweet son, oblivious to the chaos, has fallen back asleep.

I don’t particularly resemble Tinkerbell, the sweet little winged fairy. But apparently, there’s an unspoken agreement that having kids means you must be prepared to magically transform into the Tooth Fairy (or Santa Claus) at a moment’s notice, and be subject to potentially lethal working conditions .

(The L in Lego stands for lethal, in case you ever wondered.)

Underpaid and unappreciated, the Tooth Fairy is a freaking unsung hero.

She dodges perilously grooved Legos and stray FurReal penguins, monkeys, and unicorns.

She especially has to avoid inadvertently taking out the family pet in the middle of the night with one wrong step.

She suppresses the screams of agony when she makes a wrong move and discovers a Lego permanently lodged in her heel.

She risks her life in a virtual minefield, always one sole step away from breaking her neck.

And then there’s the injustice of having to witness the grotesque act of a child engrossed in determined bloody-pulp tooth yanking at the slightest telltale wiggle, as he sits on his bed with an arsenal of floss, gum, and a compact mirror.

All for a two dollar reward.

After another round of manhandling both the pillow and the oblivious boy’s head, I give up, stuff a little surprise under the pillow, and softly kiss his head.

Then I bolt out of the room faster than a fleeing fugitive.

A fugitive with a bum leg, anyway.

Hopefully, my son will forget about this whole encounter come morning. Or at the very least, he’ll think it was all a very strange dream where his teddy bear came alive in the middle of the night and attempted to jump through the wall.

The next morning, the boy still hasn’t even noticed tooth fairy had come.

He’d forgotten to put his tooth under pillow in the first place.

Oh, but it gets better.

His brother did remember to put the tooth under a pillow for him.

Well, under his own pillow.

Was he purposely intending to deceive the tooth fairy, or simply trying to help his brother?

Chalk it up to one of life’s greatest mysteries, I suppose.

Now if you’ll excuse me, it’s time to switch gears and trade my magical wand for a slightly less magical pallet jack.

Think you had a rough night? You and me both, buddy.

Think you had a rough night? You and me both, buddy.

8 Shades of Madness: The Back to School Edition

/ Quirky Girl / 9 Comments

(A Not-So-Helpful Guide to School Readiness)

Don’t panic… but when’s the last time you actually looked at your calendar? It’s still on June! Do you realize that school starts in less than a week? You need all kinds of… stuff… and… things… for school.

And now the fun really begins.

1) School Supplies

The list gets longer and more demanding each year. A two dollar generic binder? Yeah, right. Like that’s really gonna fly. This year, you’ll need a $20 Five Star zipper binder that your kid will yank the zipper right off with his teeth by the second day of school.

Oh, and they insist on red and blue folders only. You bought yellow? Really? And neon orange polka dot composition notebooks? The list specifically says black marble composition notebooks! And they say that reading is a lost art.

2) Clothing

Your kids have outgrown all of their clothing over the summer. The boys’ shorts could easily pass for Daisy Dukes, their jeans fit like capri pants, and every last shirt has mysteriously morphed into a cropped top. Their socks are either orphaned, mismatched pairs or holier than a slice of Swiss cheese.

As for the girls and the two things in their closets that actually do fit? Sooooo last year. Their skirts are all bordering on indecent after sudden growth spurts. (Expect a phone call from concerned school administrators on that one, with a polite “inquiry” about your questionable ability to serve as a role model for your children. What exactly is it that you do for a living, again?)

3) Tax-Free Weekend

Sounds promising, right? Who doesn’t like saving money, after all? And it truly is a fabulous concept, in theory… if your idea of a good time is reenacting Black Friday, school supply style.

So instead of fighting over the newest PlayStation that’s on sale, you now find yourself in a big box store, shoving your way through endless aisles of school supplies while vying for that last pack of Crayola crayons. Until common sense kicks in and you realize that knocking someone out with a left hook in front of a selection of Care Bear and Sesame Street backpacks is probably not worth going to jail for.

4) Drained Bank Account Syndrome

You know how people are always saying having kids isn’t cheap? Well, guess what? They’re right.

5) Locker Practice

As kids get into the higher grades, they are assigned a black hole with a lock to shove their 80 pounds of books/unwanted homework assignments in. Of course, they end up with the dreaded bottom locker. By the way, when’s the last time you had to actually open a combination lock?

So now you’re on all fours and panting like a crazed dog in heat, in an unsuccessful attempt to “demonstrate” how to open your child’s sadistic locker. You finally get it after 28 frustrating minutes and 37 infuriating attempts. And you are then rewarded for your effort with the equally enjoyable task of trying to cram a shelf evenly into that locker, because a lopsided shelf is supposedly as useful as no shelf at all.

6) Schedule Pickup/Teacher Assignment

Ah! The joy of walking with your child through their daily schedule, from class to class, a few days before school officially starts.

One class is undoubtedly outside in the portables, and somehow you take a wrong turn and end up lost in the parking lot, which is greater than or equal to 6 football fields in dimension.

7) Wakie, Wakie!

Having to get up early/go to bed early has been a challenge lately. Some mornings, you’re all still in bed at 9:00. And school starts at 7:45? Ha! This ought to be good. Time to invest in a rooster, perhaps?

8) Misery

After grumbling all summer about the incessant insanity and begging for school to start again soon, you’re actually secretly sad that school has started. The carefree days of eating ice cream for breakfast and hanging out by the pool have come to an end.

Silence is so overrated. It’s tempting to climb to the top of the staircase and dropkick a lamp on to the tiled floor below or go outside to pick a fight with the neighbor in an attempt to replicate the very chaos you’ve just spent the entire 12 weeks of summer trying to avoid.

Go ahead. Give it a try. I dare you.

Go ahead. Give it a try. I dare you.

Life’s a Pajama Party

/ Quirky Girl / 4 Comments

No matter what time of the day, no matter the season, life is simply better in pjs.

Summer break is notoriously the worst offender. Sometimes I don’t even realize several days have passed since I’d last gotten out of my pajamas.

And there are definitely some lazy days when my boys and I just lounge around, eating animal crackers for breakfast and root beer floats for lunch.

I might need to get out more.

I do go outside every afternoon to get the mail. Occasionally, I even go to the trouble of putting on a more decent top or bottom to do so.

Then I get pissed if the mailbox is empty. All that ordeal for nothing.

But it’s like that saying, put on your good underwear in case you get in an accident and end up in the hospital.

I mean, do I really want to take that chance of stepping outside in my pjs and getting plowed down by the garbage truck?

Talk about crappy luck.

But I still do it anyway.

It doesn’t even matter what time of the day it is. Some mornings I get dressed, take the kids to school, and immediately slip right back in to my pajamas.

Come to think of it, I often do the exact same thing on weekends, after getting home from work at noon.

Huh.

Oh well. Comfort is so underrated.

And yet, it clearly comes at price.

Here’s a fun flashback from last August:

The Hotel Incident

After a late start this morning, I really needed coffee. Badly. So I decided to take my chances and stumbled into the hotel lobby in my pjs- hot pink penguin shorts and a thin tank top- only to walk right in to a business meeting in progress.

The room fell completely silent for a moment, and I figured it was already too late to turn back, so I proceeded to pour my coffee nonchalantly before strolling back out, like this was perfectly normal.

Once bitten, twice shy?

Not exactly.

I had another similar experience last Friday.

The Mailman Incident

It’s 9:30 am, and I look out the window to make sure nobody is around before stepping outside in a semi-sheer pajama top and jeans to empty the bin of recyclables and drop a handful of mail into my mailbox.

I fling open the front door and gasp in disbelief. The mailman is practically sprinting toward my door, unassumingly approaching the house with a package.

Oh no! He’s spotted me! It’s too late to run back inside and slam the door shut. And judging by his momentary pause, he’s equally taken off guard by my bedhead and/or lack of appropriate clothing.

I make a quick grab for the package. The flustered mailman actually has to ask me if I planned on mailing those letters clenched in a death grip in my left hand.

I’m sure this, too, passes for perfectly normal human conduct. In some other part of the universe, perhaps.

I could make this stuff up, that’s true. But I don’t have to.

I have a knack for experiencing these things first hand.

At least there is a silver lining in all this!

If I am in pajamas, then I don’t get out (or go very far past the driveway, anyway.) And if I don’t get out, surely I’m saving money on gas and other unnecessary expenses.

Right?

That’s got to count for something.

If my pjs had a cape, I could fly away from awkward situations.

If my pjs had a cape, I could fly away from awkward situations.

Southern Inhospitality

/ Quirky Girl / 5 Comments

The struggle of being a former New Yorker/Washingtonian/Arizonan in an excessively friendly southern state is all too real for this girl.

One of the hardest things about being a transplant in the south is the challenging adjustment of having to talk to people. Especially extraordinarily friendly people, because they make me feel like a sorry excuse of an ill-mannered human being.

For someone naturally reserved, such unexpected conversations with enthusiastic random strangers can be grounds for a full-blown anxiety attack.

On an exceptionally good day, I can plaster on my most natural fake smile.

Then I cross my fingers, in hopes that my face won’t actually freeze that way. Especially if I am unintentionally bearing teeth.

When I’m out bicycling around my neighborhood and people go beyond the perfunctory wave and vocalize their greeting, or worse, initiate a conversation? What am I supposed to do?

The obvious answer, of course, is to make a run for it.

I go outside to throw away the trash in my pjs in broad daylight and the neighbor twelve houses down to the left with the terrifying horse-sized Scottish Deerhound smiles and starts waving a little too enthusiastically.

My typical instinct is to discreetly crouch down and scuttle away like the stealthy ninja that I am.

Suddenly, my brain is rapidly firing off panic signals.

Crap! You made eye contact! What were you thinking?

“How ya doing? Nice day out, don’t ya think?”

Great. Now the neighbor wants to make conversation while you’re standing outside like a fool in your Hello Kitty pajamas!

“A shame about that field being plowed down for another housing development, ain’t it? Where all them cows gonna go now?”

Might as well be standing outside naked. Maybe that’d be less awkward.

Must. Get. Out.

Quick! Excuse yourself! Get out of there NOW!

The last time I had been caught off guard by a neighbor, I managed to back out of there after a record time of 1 minute and 28 seconds…by pleading a bathroom emergency.

Classy, I know. But it was the best I could do after my overactive brain presented the pitiful excuse on a silver platter.

Yet once again, my brain is tasked with conjuring up “logical” excuses while my neighbor continues on with his riveting monologue about cows.

I’ve narrowed down my choices.

I have to go because:

a) Dinner is almost ready, and I need to go turn the oven off

b) The house is now on fire because dinner has been in the oven 5 minutes too long

c) The kids are beating each other within inches of their lives with Nerf swords

d) All of the above

While all of these seem like perfectly rational justifications, I naturally go with the most plausible one.

The house is on fire.

Not seeing the thick gray smoke?

Really?

Well, gotta go! See ya later!

I made eye contact, and now it's all over. This must be the end.

I made eye contact, and now it’s all over. This must be the end.

A Touch of Holiday Cheer

/ Quirky Girl / Leave a comment

It’s July and I’m still brazenly using Christmas address labels.

Why, you might ask?

Are you a huge fan of Christmas?

Is it so you can feel the holiday cheer all year long?

Do you live in a freaking igloo?

The answer is simply this: the alignment on my printer is out of whack and I haven’t been able to print my own labels. No matter how much whacking I’ve inflicted upon said malfunctioning printer.

In my defense, sometimes whacking things gets them working properly again. Admit it. You know you’ve done it a time or two. Or three.

Anyway, I’ve been shamelessly relying on the charitable contributions of charities and their solicitations of donations through the gift of address labels.

(There’s something horribly wrong with that sentence, I know.)

I’ve been using the same sheet of irritatingly festive Christmas labels since last November.

I’m sure my mortgage company is getting a good laugh out of the monthly bills affixed with labels featuring dancing cartoon reindeer or bundled and bloated penguins.

Or maybe they’re secretly concerned about my cost-cutting measures and taking bets on when those prompt mortgage payments are going to abruptly stop altogether as part of phase two of my penny-pinching crusade.

But just when I’m in grave danger of running out and having to- *gasp*- hand-write my return address on all correspondence, lo and behold, a new set of summer-themed labels arrives in the mail.

So now I have six sheets of non-holiday themed labels. Yay!

Talk about practical. I plan to make good use of these well into the New Year.

After all, if I can pretend it’s Christmas in July, I ought to be able to pretend it’s flip flop and Mai Tai time on some tropical island in the dead of  winter.

Works both ways, doesn’t it?

T'is so not the season!

T’is so not the season!

The Cows Next Door

/ Quirky Girl / 3 Comments

My neighbors are a bunch of cows.

I’m not even kidding. They truly are cows. There’s no beating around the bush. There’s no other way to describe them. They’re cows, plain and simple.

Brown cows, white cows, black cows. Brahman cows, Angus cows, Fighting Bull cows.

Cows with spots and a cow with… humps?

Maybe that one is some weird breed of horse. Or donkey.

Almost one year after arriving in No Man’s Land, I still know next to nothing about animals. Or farms. Or anything remotely country-related in general, for that matter.

Except for hay barrels. Those things are fairly self-explanatory. I mean, it’s barrel-shaped hay. Even I can figure that out.

Sadly, the only reason I even know for certain that those animals two blocks down the road from me are actually cows is because I asked my friend Michelle for confirmation.

To add insult to injury, I’m a vegetarian. So not only do I have cows for neighbors, I am also frequently forced to think about these poor cows’ sad existence.

Suffice it to say, I would highly prefer to not think about the fact that I’m driving past a field of somebody’s dinner tonight.

But I always console myself with the knowledge that most people have only “hunted” for their beef in the meat department of their local grocery store.

That makes it a bit easier for me to look these cows in the eyes.

And when I do gaze at the cows, I can’t help but wonder how in the world the notion of milking cows ever came about.

Did some drunken dude wander over to a random cow in the field during the middle of the night, thinking to himself, Hey, I wonder what this here fine animal got in his bladder? Well, don’t matter, ‘cause I’m thirsty, and whatever comes out of it, I’m gonna drink!

Yikes.

I don’t want to think about cows anymore. And after that line of thinking, I’ll never be able to look at them the same way.

Oh, and for the record, I do have real neighbors. They’re very nice, but I think they’re getting tired of being pelted by our stray baseballs while they’re out on their patio relaxing and drinking iced tea.

The cows, for their part, don’t seems to have any complaints.

Evidently, this is a cow.

Evidently, this is a cow.

High on Scented Markers

/ Quirky Girl / 3 Comments

Smell the rainbow!

Okay, that just sounds wrong. But it works for Skittles, with their Taste the rainbow slogan.

Oh well. At least there’s still the joy of sniffing. Repeatedly.

Good old Mr. Sketch markers.

I came across them a couple weeks ago at Target, and a wave of nostalgia hit me hard. Man, I used to love those things!

Watermelon and licorice were among my childhood favorites, but cherry and grape were great, too.

In retrospect, I’m surprised I never tried to swipe a pack from school; the obsession was that strong.

The best part of elementary school was art class, because that’s where the treasure was kept. That’s right. The stash of Mr. Sketch markers lived in the art room.

I still wonder to this day what kind of delusional teacher thought it was a good idea for each table of six kids to share a single pack of those delectable markers.

Discreet pig-tail pulling ensued over who got which color. The occasional fist fight would break out, too.

Was one of those marker colors by chance called Blood Eraser? You know, one that smelled like antibiotic ointment from the first aid kit?

Elementary school ended far too soon.

But one incredibly awesome day in 9th grade Honors English, a girl named Jen brought a pack of Magic Scent Crayola crayons to class.

One of the crayons was appropriately named Dirt, but I personally preferred Bubble Gum and Banana. It wasn’t quite the same, yet the wonderful memories quickly came flooding back.

It was the best 55 minute class in my entire four years of high school.

Sadly, the Magic Scent line was discontinued a year later. Turns out kids were eating the crayons. Evidently, it just wasn’t fun enough to take a whiff and then draw something creatively cool.

No, those renegades had to go and eat the whole pack of crayons (and probably the box itself, too) and ruin it for all kids, big and small.

And really, parents. Shame on you. That’s like handing your toddler a Lotso Bear plush from Toy Story 3 and expecting it to not have the strawberry-scented stuffing eaten out of it like cotton candy.

But hey, at least the crayons were non-toxic! Unlike that Chinese-imported stuffed bear.

Anyway…

Yes, I bought the markers. They weren’t even all that cheap. Eight dollars for a pack of 12 markers. Which fool spends that much on a set of markers? Oh, right. That would be me.

The chance to relive my childhood clearly justified the ridiculous price tag, though, because buying those markers turned out to be the highlight of my day.

When the kids came home from school, I hid the markers in my closet.

I’ll eventually share.

Maybe.

Truth be told, I’m enjoying them. Perhaps even a tad bit too much.

Which leaves me to wonder- how is it that I once got carded for buying canned air, but this is somehow okay?

I’m blissfully buzzed…from the sheer delight of re-experiencing one of childhood’s greatest pleasures!

Mr. Sketch Markers

Mr. Sketch Markers. Mmm Mmm Good!

The Journey to No Man’s Land

/ Quirky Girl / 34 Comments

“Life is a journey, not a destination.” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Emerson really whacked the nail on the head with that one, didn’t he? The mere experience of relocating to No Man’s Land is indeed a journey.  A journey that conjures up images of the treacherous voyage to Hell!

An unexpected job transfer has my family packing up and moving to a place with cows and cornfields, without the knowledge of where exactly we would live or even where the boys would go to school. We did manage to book a hotel for one week, so that’s a promising start.

Traveling as a family is notoriously dangerous territory, especially at the airport. We’re all hauling hefty carry-on bags, while I’m also loaded down with a large purse that could easily fit a small whale, and the zipper is about to bust right off the jam-packed suitcase.

When it’s time to check in the baggage, it’s discovered our suitcase is 15 pounds over the 50 pound weight limit. Paying $75 in overage fees? Not going to happen.

After 20 minutes of chaotic rearranging, the 9 year old now totes around a 45 pound carry-on of coloring books, shoes, bras, superhero action figures, underwear, crayons, and other random goodness.

Our sulking preteen child, hauling a backpack crammed with his nine pairs of Converse shoes and six electronic devices, sets of the metal detector.

A TSA agent glances at him, gives him a once-over with the wand, and sends him on through.

Guess which bag gets flagged in the x-ray scanner for search? That’s right, the 9 year old’s backpack with Batman and all the underwear.

“Is this your bag, sweetie?” the TSA agent asks. Seven different times. You know, because there’s the possibility it’s actually daddy’s bag, loaded with cocaine and explosives.

After confirmation that bag does in fact belong to the child in question, a search ensues.

Out comes underwear of every size, shape, and color.

Out come Batman, Hulk, and Captain America.

Out comes a dog-eared comic book with what appears to be teeth marks at the top left corner.

A shoe flies out, along with a handful of sea shells.

As the bewildered TSA agent continues rummaging through the bag, the child grabs his Hulk and Captain America action figures and engages them in a disturbingly intense battle, complete with self-generated sound effects. Hopefully from the mouth and not from his other end.

Then he turns to the TSA agent and asks, “My daddy said we can’t say the word ‘bomb’ at the airport. Why can’t we say the word ‘bomb?’ Is it like a nuke?”

The TSA agent is now frantically searching the backpack, puzzled by the odd looking Minecraft toys- tiny swords and a small plastic box labeled TNT.

She pulls out her walkie talkie and quietly asks for “assistance.”

The child is sent back through the metal detector, and he asks one last time, “So, why can’t I say the word ‘bomb?’ Have you ever seen a real nuke?”

After my husband’s brief detainment by the TSA, we are permitted to board the plane.

With the security fiasco behind us, one might think the rest of the trip ought to be smooth.

The three hour flight is mostly uneventful, until we are close to our destination.

“Good evening, passengers. A severe storm is preventing us from landing at this time, so we’ll be circling briefly until conditions improve,” the flight captain announces.

And so we circle. And circle. And circle.

A full hour passes before the captain’s voice booms through the aircraft again, notifying us that the plane is running out of fuel.

There’s none of that “fasten your seat belts and prepare for landing” nonsense as the plane plunges from 30,000 feet onto the runway in record time. Of course, we land at an airport that’s not even our intended destination.

Maybe we should have hung out at the airport with the TSA, discussing bombs and having our bags searched just a tad more thoroughly.

The Death Tube eventually makes its final descent into No Man’s Land and we all hustle off the plane like a pack of feral beasts.

The entire family is hungry, tired, and disgruntled enough to use nukes on each other.

But hey, there’s only a 10 minute ride to the rental car depot and another 30 minute ride to the hotel. We can do this!

I should know better by now.

As we drag our beaten and overloaded suitcases outside, the shuttle pulls up. Between the confused look on the young gum-chomping driver’s face and her abrupt curb-hopping stop, my gut tells me we probably should have waited for the next shuttle.

U-turn after U-turn, we are clearly going in circles. The driver stops on the side of the road and stares blankly out the window. It could easily be her first day on the job, or perhaps her goal is to ensure the boys hate us for the rest of our lives for dragging them out to live in the middle of nowhere.

A passenger marches up to the front of the bus.

“Why don’t you just follow the signs that say, “Rental cars, this way?’ ”he snarls.

A lightbulb seems to go off in the brilliant girl’s head, and within five minutes, we arrive at the rental car depot.

We are off in a nondescript rental car shortly after, rocketing down the freeway with a GPS that doesn’t seem entirely convinced itself which way we need to go. It’s tempting to enable the off-road option so we can plow straight through yards, cornfields, and lakes to get to the hotel faster.

Perhaps we should have.

We find ourselves at a complete standstill on a backed up and construction-heavy freeway. I glance out the window and notice a 1,000 foot drop into oblivion on one side of the road, and a concrete barrier on the other.

A sudden sensation of crunching metal jolts me from my drifting thoughts. It takes a minute to realize we had been rear-ended, and the same jerk who hit us is now trying to push our rental car out of his way so he can keep going.

The kids are screaming, my husband is screaming…or was that just me?

The police finally show up, after passing us twice on an adjacent freeway and then getting stuck in traffic, but at least we are back on the road again.

We arrive at the hotel after midnight, only to discover that we’ve been deemed a no-show and the staff had rebooked our room. There’s only one room left, with a double bed and a pullout sofa.

We enter the room and flip the light switch.

Holy crap! Had this room recently been the scene of a horror movie or satanic sacrifice?  I’m far too exhausted to determine whether it’s actually Heinz ketchup or blood splattered all over the wall.

Well, this will have to be dealt with. Tomorrow. Or rather, later today.

The boys are already asleep on the lumpy double bed, so my husband and I wander downstairs to the restaurant.

Who am I kidding? We’re practically galloping to the hotel bar.

A few lackluster drinks later, we head back to the room. At least the boys are managing to get some rest.

No Man’s Land, it’s me, Quirky Girl. It sure doesn’t seem like you want me here any more than I want to be here. You’d best bring me a better day tomorrow, or be prepared to face the wrath of my 9 year old and his imaginary nukes.