I May Be Huffing Glue Soon

It's that time of year again when my bank account starts to weep for mercy.

It's time for back to school shopping. The only thing worse than back to school shopping is Christmas shopping. Except at Christmas I can self-medicate on foil-covered chocolates, an abundance of baked goods and the promise of finding something interesting in my own stocking as I shop to stuff everyone else's.

This time of year? Unless I resort to huffing the fumes of rubber cement while eating paste, there is nothing that will erase the pain of having to fork out for school supplies, clothes and shoes for three kids. All the while reliving my own back to school nightmares of yore.

My kids, however, love, love, love going back to school shopping. Clearly these are not my children. While I admit to getting a little jazzed up over getting a new box of pencil crayons and maybe loving the Trapper Keeper my mother once bought me, I didn't get overly excited about going back to school shopping. Getting new school supplies was just a reminder of having to go back to school to try and avoid getting stuffed back into my locker by a kid named Joe who was half my size but twice as annoying strong.

My children have been known to roll around in stacks of new loose leaf paper while rubbing their scientific calculators against their cheeks and purring. All the while wearing every piece of new clothing I've been forced to buy for them.

Is it just my children who seem to grow five inches each summer rendering the perfectly good clothing they wore only two months ago completely useless? I've talked to other parents who insist they only buy their kids a new pair of gym shoes when school starts. When do their kids grow? Because I swear my kids suck up the sunshine and shoot up like weeds, every damn year.

And don't get me started on buying kids shoes. I used to think it was bad standing in the shoe store with my kid trying to find a pair of shoes that weren't plastered with images of Barney, Dora or Spiderman.

I'd happily go back into time and buy every Barbie, Cars and Batman shoe I could find if it meant never having to pork out money for expensive athletic shoes that won't fit my child's foot for more than three months.

Back in my day, I'd be lucky if my parents would give me a new piece of cardboard and some duct tape to make my own shoes for school.

(Just kidding Mom.)

Then there is my problem with the school dress code. Or lack there of. Walking inside the school and you are immediately subjected to more crack than an addict could want. Boobs. Butts. Skin. It's as though each girl is trying to out skank the next one and each boy is trying to see how low his jeans can hang while walking around looking like the unibomber with his sweatshirt hood pulled up over his head.

Where are these kids' parents? *Read that in the screechiest Sanctimommy voice you can muster. Because that's how I feel about it.*

And the worst part is, my kids want to dress just. like. them.

Over my dead body, I tell ya. Which, surely enough, they've plotted more times than once as I've sent them back into the stores to choose something a little more mother friendly as I stand by the change rooms to wait to see their choices.

If you take my general frustration about shopping for my kids clothes in general and add two teens who are fashion conscience clothes horses and one little boy who refuses to want to wear clothes in general and suddenly I'm wishing that school uniforms were mandatory and school supplies consisted of slate and chalk.

Which is what I'm venting about on my latest Momversation video. Ranting about kids walking around in tank tops with their boobs hanging out. As I'm wearing a tank top with my boobs hanging out.

Oh, hypocrisy, thy name is Mom.

So go ahead, watch it and let me know if you hate school shopping as much as I do. Which team are you on? I will be honest. I'm siding with team School Uniforms all the way.

 



 

It's All In The Cards

She was packing up her table filled with tarot cards and crystal balls when we walked past her just as the sun started sinking in the sky.

I've never been a believer, not when my mom used to go for tea readings and played with runes, and not now with my very own personal ghost. The last thing I need is to be told there is a five year old boy haunting me from beyond. I don't need to pay money to know that. He sits on my soul like a heavy weight as is.

"Do you want to?" Shan asked. "Let's do it." Why not? I thought to myself as we wandered over and sat at this woman's table, her office on a sidewalk.

I listened as she prattled off my friend's future and fortune, just accurate enough to make me listen, completely absurd enough to make me smile and then our new psychic friend asked if I wanted my cards read.

No, not at all, I thought to myself as I heard myself saying, "Sure," out loud. I'm my very own personal traitor.

As I pulled dog eared tattered cards and palmed dingy crystals this woman told me how my dead son would live to be 'older than dirt', how Jumby would be obnoxiously over educated, become fabulously wealthy and father two very white daughters. She spun stories of professional jealousy rearing it's head and how my life was at a cross roads and spoke of a great true love.

Her hands animated, her eyes cloaked, filled my head with the shadows of wishes and yet all I thought about as she prattled on, clutching my hand, was 'he can't live to be older than dirt when he already has been reduced to dirt.'

The word 'dumbass' rang in my head over and over as the frayed cards lay spread out on the table, mocking me.

We thanked her, paid our pennies for our wildly ridiculous fortunes and strolled down the boardwalk, hand in hand.

I'm still very much a non-believer and 20 dollars poorer for the experience.

It's all in the cards.

I was in San Diego for a conference, one I've attended before with various levels of success, and unsure of my reasons for attending. Unlike years past, this conference felt more personal to me. For the first time since I started this blog, I know who I am. I'm no longer clinging to who I once was before my great tragedy and I'm not struggling to define who I want to be.

I didn't need Redneck Mommy for the first time in years. I am finally at peace with being just Tanis.

Which would have been great if everybody didn't think I was Mr. Lady.

I don't see the similarity. 

Since this isn't the first time Shannon and I have been mistaken for one another, she came armed with cheeky business cards. Because she is clearly smarter than me. And much more of a smart ass. See exhibit A:

*reads: Mr Lady, Not Redneck Mommy since 2005*

It's all in the card.

Like conferences before, there was drunken revelry, but unlike the years past, it didn't involve me. I watched as people around me danced in a thrum of community and drank in each other faster than they could redeem their free drink tickets and I enjoyed every minute of it.

I somehow managed to find myself as a last minute speaker replacement and pretended I knew what the hell I was doing as I listened to others prattle on about the powers of twitter. I learned then the smartest thing I ever did was surround myself with intelligent friends, and as they sat in the front row to heckle me they ended up being the best contributors of the session.

My momma was right after all when she said having smart friends will make you seem smarter. Thanks boys. You all made flying by the seat of my pants a whole bunch of fun.

Like so many others, I connected with old friends, acquired a few new ones and generally enjoyed the hell out of myself. It's hard to write a recap of this experience when it is still burned so freshly into my soul and I just want to wring the last drops of joy from it while savouring the deliciousness of the moments we all shared.

I was just one more blogger in a sea of so much talent and having taken a moment to just examine where I've been and how I got there as everyone bustled around me, I realized something. It didn't matter who knew who I was and who didn't and what I was invited to or wasn't.

Over these past years as I've struggled to find myself I've been collecting a rag tag motley crew of talented people who have all helped bring me to the place I am now.

I'm so very proud of us. Each of us has struggled to create, to examine, to thrive in a world where creativity is often undervalued next to marketability. Talent everywhere, both female and male, and it was hard not to be excited and inspired while walking down a hotel hallway.

With a fist filled with cards from new writers and old who inspire me to be me, I feel really damned blessed about the cards I hold.

*A heartfelt thank you to the Diva Cup company who made my trip possible with their sponsorship.

The Secret To Keeping Your Teens Happy

Years ago, my husband and I used to drag all three of our children, including Shale, with all of his medical equipment, to a ball diamond down the road every Friday and play slow pitch in a beer league.

We were the youngsters on the team, surrounded by more seasoned parents and our children were the toddlers and infants in the ball diamond.

These games consisted primarily of me standing in the outfield, picking my nose and wishing someone would hit the ball in my direction as two of my children ran around like wild little heathens and their little brother sat in his carrier freaking out our slightly inebriated team mates with his tubes and medical equipment beeping away.

More than once a game was halted because Shale's oxygen levels dropped or his feeding bump squawked with it's alarm and the people around us panicked in fear that something was wrong with our kid.

Apparently it is not common to drag a wee child who is medically fragile out to the ball diamond but I was always of the opinion that the dude needed to learn to love ball just like every other member of our family. The reality was, I needed a few hours each week to escape the medical drama that surrounded us every minute of the day and I needed to build a support system within the community around me.

It may have been unorthodox, but it worked. People stopped seeing Shale's medical tubes and diagnoses and started seeing my kid. And I learned how to finally catch a grounder without it popping up out of my mitt and bopping me in the nose.

One summer night, after a particularly sweaty game, one which we likely lost, because we lost most of them, my husband was standing at the tailgate of one of the other player's trucks, doing what men do, bullshit and brag, as I herded our small tribe into their car seats and prepared to take them home for the evening. I was hot and sweaty and annoyed with my smalls for being uncooperative little turd nuggets and as I went to fetch my husband, the man he was talking to paused to take note of my now surly demeanour.

He chuckled at the sight of my dirty children squawking in our vehicle, and shook his head, remembering a time when his now grown children were the same age.

"Enjoy this now," he warned me. "It gets harder as they get older."

I snorted and rolled my eyes at him, because I just spent 15 minutes chasing two children around a playground trying to convince them it was time to go home, changed one boy's stinky diaper in the front seat of my van and then tried to buckle all three kids into their car seats as each and every one of them tried to make a mad dash for freedom when I wasn't looking. It simply couldn't get any harder than the last fifteen minutes of parenting had been.

"No, really," he insisted as he tossed back the final swallow of his soda. "When they're young, you have full control of them. You make all their decisions. What they wear, where they play, who they see. You even decide what they eat. When your kids get to my kids age, you lose all of that," he said as he nodded towards his teenaged boys who were standing around some girl's car, flirting with them.

"I have to tell you, it sounds like bliss," I admitted, thinking of a time when diapers were a bygone, purple dinosaurs never blared out of my television and sharing skills were firmly acquired.

"Oh, it's not all bad, but you'll miss them. They will never be around. They'll always want to be somewhere 'cooler' than home and you'll have no way of knowing if your kids are hanging with good kids or punks."

Remembering some of the punks in my past, I shuddered to think of my children falling into a trap of hanging around with a bunch of dumbasses.



"There is a secret though, a weapon you can use to keep your kids close to you. To bring the kids to your house. So that you can still parent and be involved," he whispered as my husband and I leaned in closer to hear the secret of the holy grail of teen parenting.

"It's sandwich meat."

It was so absurd and so not what I was expecting to hear, I burst into laughter as my husband simply nodded along with his friend as though he'd heard this truth before.

"Sandwich meat?" I guffawed.

"No really. Not just sandwich meat but food in general. But sandwich meat is the most important. Teens need to eat. That's all they want to do, besides sleep and play. They eat. Make sure your fridge is always stocked with sandwich meat and your pantry always has munchies in it and I guarantee you, your kids won't be leaving your house to go hang at someone else's. Your house will be the house where all the kids will want to be. As long as you can feed them and generally let them be, you'll never lose your kids. And you'll gain more than a few along the way."

Back then, I couldn't imagine how parenting could be any harder. Nor could I fathom a time when my kids wouldn't always be underfoot or a time when they would want to be anywhere other than next to me. A decade later, and I now understand what he meant about parenting getting harder. Learning to let go, while giving your kids the tools to navigate their path to adulthood, it's hard.

As I survey my house, filled with my teens and their friends who have set up camp in my living room for almost a week now, I can't forget that long ago conversation.

Mostly because I'm going somewhat delirious from sleep deprivation and having to listen to the late night cackles of a group of rowdy teen boys and one teen girl in the small hours of the night, long after I keep yelling at them to get their asses to sleep.

This morning, after I clanged a pot to wake up the crew of slumbering teens, I watched as they all filtered into the kitchen and made themselves breakfast while trying to rub the sleep out of their eyes. As the kids made plans for the day, one of them stood at the refrigerator and surveyed the contents with great intensity.

"Is something the matter? Looking for something in particular kid, or are you just trying to air condition my kitchen with the fridge?" I teased.

He blushed and shut the door and then said, "Nope, I was just checking out the lunch meat."

Turns out, my friend from all those years ago was right. Lunch meat is the key to keeping your kids close, and every other kid in the neighbourhood even closer.

All hail the power of some honey ham.