mAkInG fUn oF mOm

My dear husband declared that blogging really wasn't fair. He didn't think I should be able to make fun of everybody else in the family and nobody could pick on me. I welcomed him to become a guest blogger, but he said he has back surgery every day for the next year. Or, maybe, he wanted to learn to paint stripes on the highway, or expand his string collection. Either way, he didn't take me up on my offer.

I decided to do it for him. That's what good wives do, they do all the things the husbands should do and could do and would do if you let them wait a year or ten. As a good helpmate, I will help him and make fun of myself.

Sad to say, these things are true, unexaggerated, and a fair show of the abuse I take around here. I blog in kind retaliation.

4-09 I had treated myself to a rare experiment in pampering, a haircut by a stylist friend with a shop in her backyard. She washed, cut and fixed my hair, curling each long strand in a gorgeous do'. I was ready to stun my family with my grand entrance. Instead, I was stunned.

Grace, Aamzing Grace, greeted me with wide-eyed enthusiasm. "Wow, Mom! Your hair looks just like DNA!"

"DNA?" my husband asked, thinking he missed some new rad teenage term. "What's that?"

" A DNA strand, ya, know, like in Biology."

5-5-09 I was snuggling with Beka in her bed, enjoying her comments on how much she loved me and how she thought I was so pretty. Suddenly she shuddered, jerked back a little, and said, "Ooh, sometimes when I get too close to you, you look scary. But, then when I get far away again, you look normal again."


8-09 While on vacation in Montana, I relaxed. I really relaxed. I didn't wear make-up and I didn't fix my hair. I spent a lot of time on the dock sunbathing and reading. The day we were going into town I decided to fix my hair and put on make-up. However, because of the dryness of the air and the slow speed of my mom's hair dryer, I was having a hard time getting my hair styled the way I wanted it.

My Dad greeted me with enthusiasm I mistook for admiration. "I'm glad you fixed your hair today," he began. I waited in anticipation for my daddy's adoring compliment to make all things feel better. "It reminds me that I need to buy a new mop."

9-09 Scott, "You should have been born a cat. You are SO finicky."

9-16-09 I was expressing frustration to my husband that one of my kids had messed with my camera. This was the same day that one of my kids left the van key, the only key we have to the minivan, in her friends car, a few towns north of us. Another one of my kids left the weedwacker and a bicycle outside after they were told to put them away. This same kid didn't take out the roast to thaw, so we had no meat ready for dinner. My world is always being messed with or kept from rotating perfectly.

My husband, as always, had the perfect solution. "I think you need to be on a planet where it's only YOU."

Get me on the next flight!