Fear Me, Dammit.

I want my children to grow up to be happy, healthy, productive members of society who never have to see the inside of a shrink's office or a prison cell.

I also want my kids to like me and think I'm the coolest mom on Earth, worshipping my every move while putting me first at all costs and maybe at the expense of future in-laws who will hate me and stick pins in a voodoo doll made in my likeness.

Ya. So therapy may be in their futures after all. The apple doesn't fall far from the tree and all that...

In the meantime, when I'm not brainwashing them into idolizing me and overlooking my vast array of parental flaws, I want them to hold a healthy dose of fear in their teeny tiny little hearts. Fear of pissing off their lovely and awe-inspiring mother and having to face the hidden monster of wrath that lay beneath my skin.

Call me old fashioned but there is something to be said for having a little fear for one's parents. I know I used to fear having to face my angry and disappointed father after I snuck out of the house with my girl friend, got drunk with her on vodka shooters and then found our sorry asses abandoned in the middle of nowhere. I had to call my dad to pick us up in the dead of the night after our buddies forgot about us and took off.

I still remember swallowing my fear and making that phone call. I also remember leaning over and puking up my innards all over the interior of his brand new truck on the way home.

I would have feared the repercussions of tossing my cookies but luckily for me I was drunk and I passed out before we got home.

If I had any sense of fear in my head I would have stayed awake all night and prayed for forgiveness instead of sawing logs only to be woken up four hours later at the crack of dawn by a deceptively happy father.

Not only did he make me scrub out hours old vomit from the inside of his truck with a toothbrush but when I finished that grim task while still slightly drunk he made me and my girlfriend strip the varnish off our fence and then restain the entire thing during the heat of the day.

I've never been so hung over in my life. The fumes and my killer hangover just about killed me.

If I had any sense at all, I would have lived in fear of my father's revenge before ever downing that first vodka shooter.

So ya, I want my kids to have a healthy dose of fear of me in the back of their heads as they go about their daily business of treating me like the wanna-be rockstar I am and maternal queen I demand to be.

Lately, with their father gone so often and for such long stretches, a little fear would serve all of us well. It would save my children from having to watch me rip out my hair as I try to get them to do something and it would certainly save my vocal cords as I seem to spend most of my time repeating nurturing commands at a high noise decibel which seem to go unnoticed by everyone except for my dog.

How I love thee, Nixon. Thank God you listen to me. And love me. Even if you do lick your own arse before bestowing a kiss on me.





That's right, at least YOU love me.

In other words, my kids don't listen to me. Unless I'm dangling icecream in front of their noses or wielding a large roll of duct tape and sporting an evil glint in my eye.

For the past week, I have been trying to get my kids to clean up their rooms. As children, they don't understand why they shouldn't be allowed to live like pigs wallowing in their own filth.

Call me crazy, but I would really rather not have my home overrun with ants or mice.

It has been a vicious circle of me asking politely; repeating said request a little louder yet no less polite; ditching the politeness while starting to yell; yelling at them as steam comes out of my ears until finally my head pops off and rolls under one of their filthy beds and my eyes start to get nibbled on by what ever hairy thing lives under the bed.

Good times.

Yesterday, my darling children decided to amp it up a notch, in a game of 'let's see how far we can push mom before she reaches for her wine glass.' Made even more fun by the fact my sister was over to witness the fun.

Frac was in fine form. He took great pleasure in rolling his beady little eyes at me parroting back my every word in a ballsy, completely disrespectful manner.







When I threatened to take the door off his room so he couldn't hide his dirty ways behind it, he huffed indignantly at me that I had "no business even going into his room" (I was looking for dirty laundry) as it was "his personal space."

And then he informed me that even if I managed to take off his door he would just put it back on because "he knows more about power tools and fixing things as a ten year old boy then I will ever know in my entire life time as a female."

It was right about then my sister's eyes popped out of her head and rolled down my driveway.

As Frac ran outside to enjoy the victory of telling his mother off and living to brag about it, my sister hastily scooped up her eyeballs, dusted them off, pushed them back in and then looked at me and said rather incredulously, "I can't believe you let him talk to you like that and get away with it!!"

She then reached over to feel my forehead to see if I was suffering from a mysterious fever because normally I would have made him eat his disrespectful words while licking my feet clean with his tongue.

"You know Sis, Boo has been gone for three weeks now. Three long weeks of me parenting two preteens by myself and trying to get them to listen to me. I've hit a wall. I just don't care tonight. I need a mommy break."

"Still Tanis, you shouldn't let him get away with behaviour like that. You have to let them know who's boss so they don't morph into neighbourhood drug dealers who end up pimping you out at the highest bidder to some skeevy john," my sister worried.

Just then my lovely children, who were really on a roll, opened up the front door, stuck out their tongues at me and wiggled their little asses in our direction as if to say "Who's your momma now beyotch?" and then ran away giggling like loons.

My sister raised her eyeballs and looked at me with disbelief. Any respect she had for me as a parent was quickly slipping away.

I watched my children play and I turned to my sister and shook my head.







"I know, but I'm so tired. Besides, I know something they don't know."

"Oh yeah, what's that?"

"Their father should be rolling up the driveway in about five minutes. They're dead kids walking. They just don't know it yet." Heh.

Just then, Boo's car pulled to turn into our driveway. I heard the familiar rumble of his car's engine so my sister and I stood up to go outside.

Fric and Frac stood there with their mouths hanging open. "You tricked me!" Frac cried. "You called DAD!"

Fric quickly made a beeline to her bedroom to start shoving things under her bed to make her room seem clean (smart kid) while Frac stood there with his bottom lip quivering.

His aunt looked at him and grinned and then tousled his hair as she told him she was leaving because she didn't want to stick around to watch his father rip off his arms and beat him with them. She had a weak stomach she said as she beat a hasty retreat to her car while nodding hello to Boo.

Frac burst into full fledged tears and then ran to hide in the washroom to pray for mercy like the scared little schoolboy he is.

While I am thankful for Boo's safe arrival home and to have some much needed parental relief, I can't help be but a smidge annoyed.

I want my children to tremble with fear when I pull into the driveway.

I want my children to run and hide in the bathroom rather than face a look of disappointment in my eyes.

I want my presence to be enough to snap my children into model behaviour; inspire them to be good as gold.

I want to be able to discipline my children with just a look.

Like Boo.

Instead, I get my kids mooning their cute little asses in my face as they laugh like hyenas.

I'm sure my mother would say something about karma and what goes around, comes around, but I can't hear it.

I'm too busy hiding in the pantry with a bottle of red with my fingers in my ears, chanting "lalalalaala" while my husband gets all draconian on my children's arses.

Harumph.

To All the Kick Ass Maternal Queens Out There

I've been in hiding these past few days.

The government is looking for me. Something about duct tape, small children and turning the ceiling fan on high.

Apparently, they have no sense of ha ha. They call it "Inappropriate parental behaviour", I like to think it is just another ride over at the Redneck House of Horrors Carnival.

Heh.

It is all about perspective. And what side of the law you sit on. Heh.

I'm off to spend the day hiding from playing with my children and pretending to be the maternal queen I am.

Bow down to me, my servants subjects and honor me. It is my day. I've earned it after countless months of gestating your nine pound arses, squeezing you out of my delicate flower parts and letting you attack my nipples like a puppy with a chew toy.

Not to mention all the years I've provided maternal services with a smile.

Heh.

Here's to all the mother's in the world. May your day be worth all the times you've had to wipe up vomit, cleaned up scads of scat and kissed skinned knees.

I know I'll enjoy it.

I plan on making my children call me "Her Majesty" for the entire day.



Happy Mother's Day.

Mom Speak

As a child, when I wasn't being stuffed into lockers for being such a tool geek, or running around endlessly on a circular track trying to chase my teenaged demons, one could usually find me with my nose in a book.

The books I tended to like the most were the ones written in different languages or were about language themselves.

Nothing fascinated me more than learning how people around the world communicated. I sucked it up like a sponge and was delighted to find I had a knack for picking up new languages rather easily.

(Reflecting back on it now, I realize that perhaps it may have been my obvious distain for the peons who struggled in French and German class that contributed to my geek quotient. I may have had a slight superiority complex when it came to watching my peers struggle to decipher the lessons while I was reading Shakespeare in foreign languages that landed my ass in the back end of a dark locker more than a time or two.)

It probably didn't help that I would cuss out my tormenters in French or Japanese while they tried to fold me in half and lock me up away from the student population.

I was a charming kid. I swear.

When I found myself knocked up with child unexpectedly I remember looking at baby books and envisioning my child as a multi-lingual cosmopolitan globe trotter who would single handedly bring about world peace, end poverty and solve world famine all the while being able to converse fluently with people from all over the globe.

Never mind my child would be born to a farmer and a redneck, my child would pop out of my womb requesting a tit in three different languages and go on to rise above the mediocrity he or she would be born into.

My delusions were shattered fairly quickly when Fric arrived. Turned out I would be happy if she would just stop using my nipple as her personal chew toy while she screamed at me in a language completely foreign to me. The language of baby.

As she grew my expectations slowly sank like a lead balloon. My once lofty goals of raising a bilingual child suddenly morphed into the more realistic expectations of simply getting her to tell me she had to use the potty in English instead of peeing on the carpet. Turns out, the parenting gig was a lot harder than I had imagined it.

I went from hoping my daughter would pick up a new language to hoping she would just stop picking her nose.

Fric didn't talk right away. She waited until she was past three before she started to string words together. Her brother Frac, a year younger, was hot on her tail and almost her equal in the speech department. I began to worry I was doing something wrong. How the hell was she supposed to talk with people from all corners of the world if I couldn't get her to tell me if she wanted a cup of juice?

Just when Boo and I were started to seriously consider banging our heads against the wall in frustration, the gates of language development burst open and all of a sudden I had not one but two toddlers who learned to speak at the exact. same. time.

God can be cruel.

Our suddenly quiet home now had a chorus of "I want, I want.." generally shouted at me in tandem, while my loving demon spawn would back me into the corner while poking at me with sharp sticks and demanding peanut butter sandwiches and sippy cups of grape juice.

I rued the day I ever worried they would learn to speak. Suddenly I couldn't shut them up.

The bright side of this was their eagerness to learn new words. I could say anything and they would parrot it back to me. I took great pleasure in teaching them to tell everyone who walked into the door that "pwe-marital-sex is bad."

Or their father's favorite "Fow-ni-kay-shon is fun."

It wasn't until they started cussing like little sailors that I realized that I may be abusing my parental powers.

Thankfully, we survived language development relatively intact and unharmed and I was continually delighted to hear my children have sweet conversations with one another while I hid in my pantry looking for a moment of peace.

It is one of my saddest regrets to this day that I never heard my sweet Bug tell me he "wuved me" or call me Mommy.

Fric and Frac try to make up for this by talking non-stop. Even when I threaten to duct tape their mouths shut politely ask them to be quiet.

Fric has developed my love of languages as well. She is currently learning Spanish and French and takes pride in tormenting her brother with her talent at Pig-Latin. He, in turn, has picked up some cute Russian cuss words from some of the kids he goes to school with and takes great glee at hurling them at her with a sneer.

I feel so proud. It may not be the multi-lingual conversations I had envisioned while I was gestating the little suckers, but I'll take it.







Last night, after a particularly grueling and long soccer practice with Fric and her team mates (read: I stood around and froze my arse off until I thought I was going to turn into a popsicle) I was eager to come home, put the kids to bed and zone out in front of the computer while wrapped in a soft blanket.

The kids, they had different ideas. Stupid me for raising them to be independent thinkers. This'll learn me.

After repeatedly asking them to put their soccer gear away, get their pajamas on, brush their teeth and get into bed, my requests fell onto deaf ears. They ran around doing everything except what I had asked of them and I could feel my temper start to rise.

They took note and decided to see just how far they could push me before I snapped like a twig and went bat shit crazy.

It didn't take long. I finally lost my temper (shocking I know) and bellowed at them. They jumped at my raised voice and then proceeded to roll their eyeballs at me and continued to ignore me.

I momentarily thought of beating them, but let's face it. The adoption peeps frown on that and more importantly, my kids are almost as big as me. With my luck they would hog-tie me and leave me in the laundry room while they celebrated their mutiny.

Frustrated with them and myself, and really wishing my darling Boo was home (because he just has to whisper and they take heed, immediately running to obey his every command. Not that I'm bitter or anything.) I decided to change tactics. Yelling was getting me nowhere.

I walked into Frac's bedroom where my two belligerent minions were joking and asked them if there was a problem.

"Why aren't you listening to me? You are being rude, it's past your bedtime and you need to do as your told."

Because reasoning always works with preteen children.

They looked at me trying to calculate just long it would be until I went medieval on their arses while weighing the pros and cons of being obedient.

They must have decided I looked pathetic enough to grant me a reprieve so they immediately apologized and started getting ready for bed.

Satisfied, I went to the kitchen to get a bowl of ice cream (don't judge me, I earned it) when before long they were farting around again.

I snapped. My spoon clattered into the empty bowl and I abandoned the pint of ice cream on the counter as I went to go knock some heads together. They want mean mommy, by golly, they'll get her, I thought to myself.

"What is going on in here? Are you having trouble understanding me?" I yelled.

They stopped, stunned into silence.

"Fric, you speak French and Spanish as well as English. Would it help if I used one of those languages or perhaps tried pig-latin?"

She sheepishly shrugged and got busy examining the dirty socks on the floor.

"Frac, are you hard of hearing or are you just not understanding what I asked you to do?"

He stood there, looking miserable and took great interest in his fingernails.

"I mean, really you guys, what language do I need to use to get you to do what you are told?" At this point, I was ready to run away from home.

Continued silence as they both tried not to awaken the hidden dragon locked beneath the exterior they call Mom.

"Are you so busy learning new cuss words on the playground that you have forgotten how to understand the English language? Just what language is it that you think I'm speaking that you think you can ignore?" I persisted.

Frac looks up and I could see the impish look in his eye.

"I guess it's the language of MOM. We just don't hear it," he explained.

That stopped me short. I stood there for a second, stunned by his brave show of insolence and quick thinking and then snarled, "Well I suggest you get fluent in it rather quickly."

"Yes, Mom," they nodded and finally got into bed.

Hmm. The language of Mom. Looks like I've picked up another language with out even being aware of it.

Now, does anyone have any suggestions on how to teach it to two know-it-all children who have a penchant for tormenting their mother?