I can't think of a good title. Anybody? Anybody???

We're still on a Monopoly bender in this house.  My kids are watching TV and I think I'm slowly going insane watching all the old cartoons on Boomerang.  They have found Tom and Jerry and Scooby Do.

I'm in hell.

My kids think the Mystery Mobile is fricking awesome and thank you very much Tom and Jerry for introducing my kids to the phrase, "Come here little pussy, pussy, pussy."  Now they are chasing the baby around calling her a little pussy.  They think its frigging hysterical and I'm less than impressed.

(And I know what the p-word is going to do with the search engines.  Every frigging wack-job is going to come her looking for some action and boy will they be sorely disappointed.  I don't care, I'm that worn out.)

I got so desperate to get out of the house that when we ran out of popcorn, I schlepped them all up to Target and I bought a popcorn maker because my kids eat popcorn like Jerry eats cheese.

All the frigging time.

And since I bought the popcorn popper I had to buy the popcorn, and because I bought the popcorn I had to buy the seasonings, and because we had the seasonings, we had to have something to put the popcorn in.

And that is how it came to pass that I have about three million pictures like this:

I can't show you the first few pics---I burnt my arm on the
steam, dropped my phone, cussed a few good ones and
now I have pics of the ceiling....

And this:

Don't let the pic fool you--there was
popcorn everywhere...

And now I have to go up to Target to get more popcorn because my mice ran out of cheese and in a house full of mice, a girl can never run out of cheese.

On the upside, I finally beat Alex at Monopoly.  It was the worst example of social skills ever.  For both of us.

I may, or may not, have said something along the lines of, "BOO-YA!  Sweet Jesus I did it!  Oh yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah.  I did it, I did it, I well and truly did it."

And I may, or may not, have done a victory dance, or three, around the basement.

I will never tell.

He hit the mother-load.

After a long day of therapies, my son looked at me and said, "Mom, I hit the mother-load of special needs, didn't I?"

My heart dropped to my knees.

We were in the car and I couldn't see his face as clearly as I wanted to (damn you stupid rear-view mirror) and I had no idea where he was going with this.  I said the first thing that came to mind, "Whaaaat???"

"I hit the mother-load of special needs.  I have to go to OT, Speech, I saw Dr. B today and we just now came from Group.  And when I'm at school, I have Friendship Group, Gifted and I go and see my other teachers.  And I have asthma.  I just hit the mother-load of problems."

I still wasn't sure where he was going with this.  We've talked before about how he's different and how everyone's different.  That if we were all the same, it would be pretty boring and we all know how much we like being bored.  We've had these conversations and he's uncomfortable.

He knows he's different.

He struggles with knowing what other boys are doing and how most of the time he gets excluded or he just doesn't get it.  He wants to have friends, hell a friend, but everything just moves too quickly and he becomes lost.  Overwhelmed, and eventually on the periphery.  He hurts and my heart aches for him.  

He looked at me in the mirror, with a little smile, and said, "Well, if we were all the same how would I beat you in Monopoly?  I guess my mother-load isn't so bad.  You stink at that game.  You want to play when we get home?"  

"Yeah, sugar-bug.  I sure would."

And that's exactly what we did.

I will beat boredom with a stick if I have to. Someone hand me a stick.

Remember last week when I wrote this post about how my kids were bored and driving me insane?  Well I was out at a store and found this:

And I was all, "Boredom, I'm going to kick your ass.  Thank you very much Table Topics, you have saved my life and together we are going to survive this summer."  And I picked those things off the shelf faster than my kid spying a box set of Lego's.  And for a brief moment I was happy.

Happy to have something new to do and secretly?  I was lying in wait so the very next time my devil-spawn issued that horrible whine of, "I'm bored" I'd be ready.

And of course it took two whole days for them to utter that little phrase and when they did, I pulled that box out of hiding.  Alex started giggling and Lizzy started eye-rolling.  Gracie, I don't know where she was.  I think she was napping.

Anyway, this was the very first one we pulled out:

Are you fucking kidding me?!?  A ninja?  Seriously?  Did they not read my last post???  I swear the world is conspiring against me.

We did it anyway and they found a spider behind a chair in the living room (mental note to call Orkin) and a few lost Burger King toys and then somebody touched something and before I knew it, I was separating them to opposite corners of the room.

Moving, on, we pulled out the next one:

We did and our cake turned out like this:

Awesome.  Pure awesome.  My husband's birthday cake, a complete and utter mess.  It self destructed in the most unnatural and horrible way I've ever seen.  We could only get like five candles on that thing before the rest of it slid right off the top.  We still ate it and best of all?  We laughed.

Then we pulled out the next card:

My short answer on this is, "No, no she does not like surprises and no she most certainly does not like balloons.  And blowing up her own frigging balloons for her own frigging surprise?  No, no, no."

Moving on....

Now we're talking.  Silence.

I will tell you, this lasted for about one minute before I heard, "Ugggh, this is sooo boring!"


Note: I was not endorsed for anything here.  Table Topics probably doesn't even want to know what else we did with their little cards.  I link to them as a way to give credit,  where credit is due.  And we did have fun with them, we still are.  

This is what happens when you don't pay attention to your husband.

My husband had a great idea for the oldest two.  I wasn't listening when he mentioned it and I gave him a, "Sure babe.  Sounds great.  Whatever you think hon," and finished dinner.  Since I was being an exceptionally good wife, I promptly forgot about it.

And that's exactly why my kids are now in Sword Camp.  Let that be a lesson out there to you ladies....listen to your husbands.

SWORD CAMP.

Yeah, you read that right, Sword Camp.  My kids are in Sword Camp.  Remember how much fun we all had when they were at Nunchuck Camp over Spring Break?  It's like that but with big swords.

Look ma!  Free tee-shirts!

I've had to repeat that several times because I can't quite process it.  Swinging swords around, clobbering each other.  We're actually spending money on teaching our kids how to kill each other with swords.  Nice.

Because one sword is never enough.

It's like natural selection at its best.  I feel like I'm Darwinizing my own children.  And because it's a camp, and at camp kids get free things, they are now the proud owners of two swords.  Each.

They each have two swords. Oh-My-God-Un-fucking-Believable.

One's made out of bamboo all thatched together and the other one's made out of some random hardwood.  The kids tell me the bamboo sword hurts "way worse" than the other one.  I didn't ask how they found that out and I'm not going to either.  There are some things a mom just doesn't want to know.

I walked in early on a class one day and they were swinging around metal swords.  Real metal swords.  Oh-My-God-Un-fucking-Believable.  I almost passed out.

Like light sabers.  But not.

Alex sees me and is all, "HI MOM!  Look what I'm doing!"  All proud and happy.  He's waving his hand around and here's a key bit of information: he forgot he had a real metal sword in his hand, so he was waving that around also.  I let out an "Oh Shit" and dove on him like I was at the Who concert, trying to stop that sword from swinging.  I almost got gutted like fish in the process.

He was beaming.  Waving that big metal sword around, proud as anything.

I think I lost a little bit of my life in that moment.  And I almost pissed myself.

After that, I made a decision: I don't watch.

I have learned from their Nunchuck Camp and this time around, the swords stay in the car.  There will be no sword fights over summer break in the house.  There will be no beating the shit out of the windows, sofas, chairs, each other.  No, none of that.  I don't know how I'd explain to the Emergency Department that they got pissed and had a sword fight in the living room.  I'm sure it would garner, at minimum, a Social Services Consult and I have to tell you, I don't have the intestinal fortitude for that right now.

So I'm guessing it would surprise no one that while I was peeing, they kids had a sword fight in the garage.

No, it really didn't surprise me either.

You make up my heart.

I had another post all ready to go up today but something happened over the weekend that I'm still trying to put into words.  I was plagerized.  Flat out, plain and simple, someone took my words and used them as their own.

One of the images/pictures I made on Facebook was duplicated, without my permission, and was passed off as someone else's work.  Let me be clear--this image was not shared as is standard on Facebook.  This was someone who duplicated something I had already done and put her name on it.  

I won't go into all the details here.  I can't.  I won't.  I guess I'm not quite ready to go there and, for as much as I loathe to admit it, I'm a grown up.  I'm not going to go to a base level and start slinging mud.  I will not bring myself, this blog or anyone else down to that level.  I believe in a certain amount of respect and while others can, and do, play in the mud, I will not.

And to be honest, this will probably be one of the most disjointed posts I've ever written.  I can't seem to get what I want to say out in a coherent pattern or order.  Words fail me for many different reasons.

The thing is, those little sayings I make on Facebook are important to me.  It's how I feel.  Sure, they're sappy and they totally go against my snarky side but at the core, it's how I feel about my son, my family, my life and my friends.  I love them all deeply.

And to have someone take that, to claim it as their own, is wrong.  It's flat out wrong.

(I would love to name each and every one of you who helped but I fear we will all be blocked.  Who will keep an eye on things then?  That would just not do, not do at all.)

So those of you who saw what was going on and decided to do something, anything, I am in awe of you.  There are so many people who did what I could not do alone.  You stood up for me, stood up for what was right, and together we were able to do what I simply could not have done on my own.

I am humbled, awed and left without words.

You see, I have always grown up telling myself, "You have to do this on your own.  No one else will do it for you."  I've had that wedged into my brain since as long as I can remember, so asking for help is foreign to me.  I don't know how to do it.  I was scared to death to reach out to you.  And when you all did help me?  I was brought to my knees. 

Those of you who helped me, you know who you are.  I know you do.  Please know that you have a special place in my heart.  You are the friends I've never met but you mean more to me than you will ever know.

While one person may have destroyed my faith in humanity, you have resotred it beyond measure.  And you taught me something else, something about me.  Something that I've been preaching but too busy to hear my own words.

I'm not alone in any of this.  I have the support, friendship and love of this community that I never knew I had.  Turns out, you were always right there next to me, it just took someone stealing my words to make me see what was right in front of me all along.

And while someone may have taken something from me, you have given me my heart.  You've filled it up, handed it back and made me see there is hope.

Thank you.  Thank you for doing something that made me see what was right in front of me all along.  You.

My family. My friends.  My community.




Note: I know there are others who can put into words what I did not and do a much better job of it.  I do not own the patent on this and I welcome you writing your own posts on this matter.  Sometimes distance give clarity and right now I don't have that distance.  


Please also know while I have been blocked from this particular Facebook page, that page owner still has access to mine and thus, my blog posts.  I expect respect in the comments and will not tolerate rude or otherwise defamatory remarks.