Proud of my Framboise but also worried she will get scammed

Framboise is leaving today on a 2 months jaunt to Europe.  I'm a little worried but also very proud.  A little worried because a week ago, she was fooled into thinking a sexual predator was following her, thanks to the hijinks of her siblings.  Not sure how they managed to fool her, the situation was extremely improbable, as they wrote from Dirk's phone number and managed to make her think that Dirk was actually a 23 year old sexual predator with bushy eye brows who was coming over our house to have a rondevous with her right at that moment.

I am very proud of Framboise for independently coming up with this trip and planning it with sisters over the Internet.  I'll be looking forward to following her misadventures and such on her blog.

My son is a pathological liar or hopefully he might be successful as a sick film-maker that manipulates people

Don't you hate when you watch a movie or series or whatever, and they leave some shreds or crumbs that you immediately pick up on; you think it will lead to some sexy dénouement but they totally pull the plug out from under you?  For example, in the Queen's Gambit, there is a scene where the agent tells Beth to watch out for signs that Borgov might be sending (implying perhaps that he might defect).  Well now, that's pretty exciting, to stir the flames that a controversial political statement might be made through the series at some surprise point, so like a hungry beggar, we watch every scene waiting for this delicious dénouement. But of course nothing happens, they left these crumbs to be a total jerk, I felt dissatisfied and manipulated!

Now, this afternoon, as I was driving Dirk to climbing, he mentions that he wants to be home schooled.  Most moms would ignore such a ridiculous comment and chalk it up to random teenage drivel, but I'm not like most people.  Oh, I say with some encouragement.  If you can prove to me this summer that you are self-motivated and learn better in a home environment, I will absolutely pull you out of 8th grade and allow you to be homeschooled.  Confronted by this unintentional threat, Dirk admits he actually doesn't want to be homeschool.  

WTF, Dirk, are you in bed with the writers of Queen's Gambit, leaving a crumb that you know never leads to anywhere?  I hope you succeed as a sick film-maker, but it's more likely you fit the profile of those idiotic chain e-mail writers.

Facebook version

Suprisingly, after reading my latest blog entry, J was disappointed that I wasn't more glowing about how his awesomeness. I guess he's used to Facebook where it's full of people are posting things like being proud of their kids (feel so lucky to be mom to....), being more in love than ever with their spouse and other untruths. If anything is fake news, I think it's Facebook posts.

Nevertheless, ask and you shall receive, J.

Let me rewrite this moment in time.....
J - He is incredibly tanned and muscular. Every major and minor muscle is super hard and defined. He is always working miracles around the house without his shirt on. We have to do our best to not drool or pinch his incredibly well-defined gluteus maximus as he is always teasing us by wearing tattered but revealing clothes that his growing muscles have ripped off.

In actuality, he is often seen in this ridiculous teddy bear pajamas that I bought for only $6. He has to wear a hat indoors all the time because we don’t heat our house adequately.

This moment in time

S - She's 12 and still very interested in candy. She's become a semi-vegetarian and the pickiest eater. She's studying for her bat mitzvah. She wants to and has watched shows that I think are inappropriate like Pretty Little Liars and Stranger Things. She's basically becoming a teenager. Always on her phone and plotting to get more slime. She goes around the house playing and poking with the smelly stuff and doing unhygenic things like microwaving it and wetting it repeatedly. Just yesterday, she hurt her eye by dripping some of the run off slime water. Still, she pesters both of us, mostly J for more of it and has cried that it is all the meaning that her life has. She is also interested in clothes that are "not babyish", basically trendy and sort of revealing. Recently we caved and let her buy a sweater with cutouts in the shoulders.
D - She's 10 and cranky and stubborn all the time. As soon as she gets home from school, she goes into her room, sometimes slamming the door. Recently J has been able to get her do some challenge math problems with him. She is a voracious reader, her favorite genre is fantasy. We had an argument last night about who was a better author, Rick Riordian or JK Rowling. I pointed to some facts about the appeal of each author and how many books each has sold, but she is convinced that RR is vastly superior due to the unpredictable plots. She said Harry Potter was so predictable and gave an example from a RR book that she's reading - the main character dies in the beginning! How's that for unpredictability? I asked her how could that be possible because if the main character dies off what does the author write about. She triumphantly replies, his afterlife! She has a job! Last year, she enrolled in a chess class and developed a rapport with the teacher. So now she helps him teach the beginner class once a week for a whole $5!
D - Almost 8, the age that Frank forboded when your children stop giving you pleasure. He still comes into our bed at night and likes to hold hands. He doesn't have confidence in reading and I'm sad that he doesn't enjoy the activity that was a big part of my childhood and the girls'. He is a great little helper. Whether it's cooking, cleaning or fixing things around the house, you can always count on him to want to help. He is also prone to fits of violence. He is very sensitive to insults. He doesn't generally start the fights but if you make him feel lesser in any way, he will go insane. He isn't involved in any activities right now, except for Hebrew school. In the past, he had been on the swim team, gymnastics and chess. Right now, all he wants to do is go on electronics. I think addiction to electronics is a national crisis for kids and adults.
J- J has been in his job for a few years and the schedule that he has is unbelieveable. He doesn't have to go in super early or stay super late so we get to spend a lot of family time together. In July, he can practically take the whole month off! His hobbies are still ordering random things from the internet, fixing things and baking bread. He is competitive about the bread making. The children say that Frank's bread tastes better and this might actually bother him a little. Although logically, it doesn't make too much sense since Frank puts so much more time and energy into it than J. But I guess he is used to being superior regardless of effort.
Me - I am still stay at home. I'm still make too large quantities of food. In the past few months I've been able to stick to a regular workout stchedule of 4-5 days a week. Swimming and a form of circuit training that I invented where you go to the next muscle group with no rest in between. This way, you can maximize your workout time. But the biggest news here is that I've given up shopping. After a few decades of accumulating, I've come to realize that I have enough stuff for too many lifetimes. Since it used to take up so much of my time and give me so much pleasure, I have to look for another hobby...one of the reasons, I'm trying out going back to blogging.

My son is disgusting

"Mom! Dad!" S yells excitedly at us as we are waiting for the Costco employee to process all of our returns.
"What?" I reply wearily.
"Dylan found a piece of gum on the floor and is eating it!" she reports.
"DYLAN!" yells Josh, "Did you find a piece of gum and are you eating it?"
"No," he replies with the utmost gumption in his proclamation of innocence. He is chewing with his mouth open and clearly, he IS chewing gum.
"You didn't?" confirmed J.
"No," Dylan insists and assures his father of his innocence. All of this is happening in less than 5 seconds, but it feels like an eternity to me because I can almost feel the germs in my own mouth. I was really shocked by what I felt was a delay in the appropriate response. I started thinking that J was going to let this horrid act slide or that he was fooled by D's outrageous lying, but thankfully, he gave D a what-fo and told him how disgusting he thought it was. And of course, he made D spit out his found treasured booty.

Welcome back, Me, after a long blogging hiatus. The reason for starting up again is to "butter" (more about that later) my father in law all up.

You see, he'd rather read my blogs than interact with me. At least he had admitted to that in person in the past.

Anyhoo, because my mother has gone and moved in with my sister, I'm in need of intermittent childcare and occasional chauffeur. My father in law will be fitting this bill.

To get ready for his arrival, my husband and I are going into a nervous fit of frenzy making arrangements for his arrival. We are "afraid" that he could fly off the handle or get into a fit because something isn't just so or is just so, who knows? So we have major plans to clean the garage, basement and the room that he is staying in. And ultimately, maybe none of this would matter if he was in a good mood, but you never know. This way when he does have a fit, at least we can say, "Well, we tried."

This morning, my husband forgot to put the Smart Balance away so it was sitting on the countertop when I came downstairs and into the kitchen. I looked at the nutrition information, 90 mg of sodium per serving. I was satisfied, knowing that a tiny amount was going to add a lot of flavor. So I buttered up some toast for my kids. Then something on the package caught my eye, "Tastes like real butter". Now that set off some alarm bells in my head. It must be full of fake stuff and chemicals, I surmised, as it's trying to imitate something "real".

I scanned the ingredients and came up with diglycerides and a preservative or two. I wasn't sure what diglycerides are and it also reminded me of mono-diglycerides, which I see all the time in junky baked goods. So I did a little Google search. Basically that stuff is trans fat. It doesn't need to be labeled as such per the FDA (only triglycerides need to be called out as "trans fat"), since mono and diglycerides are classified as "emulsifiers". I don't know what kind of disgusting woo-ha this is but it allows manufacturers to use trans fat without labeling it. Another terrible thing is that a lot of mono and diglycerides are derived from animal sources. The redeeming factor in this area for Smart Balance is that it's made from "vegetable" diglycerides. But that only means that you are eating hydrogenated palm or other oils.

I hope that my in-laws stop using such a pernicious product. It will be very hard as they are both addicted (or maybe mostly my father in law). I don't have the guts to tell them to their face about this, so I will publish it on my blog.

And since this is the way my father in law prefers to interact with me, I'm hoping it will work.
So back to "buttering" him up - I hope that he will stop using Smart Balance and find this blog to be sufficiently satisfying. Best of all, it's real and is not trying to be something else.

School pictures

I can't make peace with the fact that I am compelled to purchase overpriced school portraits each year. I try to select the cheapest package possible, but it works out to about $30-40 each time. I do enjoy the portraits that my mom bought when I was in elementary school but that might be because so few of my childhood pictures exist. Or there's something about the expression/feeling that's somehow not captured anywhere else like a school portrait that really brings you back to the time it was taken. Even though I admit I like looking at the portraits of my children, I don't feel like I should be buying them.
That's because I can put myself in J's shoes...$35 compounded for 20 years....
(begin anguished wail) OH THE MONEY WAAAAAAASTED! (end of anguished wail)

S: Daddy, can you teach me how to make Challah, so I'll still be able to make it after you die?
D: Yes.
S: Will you die when my kids are grown?
D: Yes.
S: Daddy, please stop talking about dying ... it's scaring me.
D: OK.

 

Started kind of shallow ... but seemed to grow into recognition of something a little deeper.

New toy

I gave little D a new toy today. As I understand it, it's supposed to be some kind of a robot with different parts that fold into itself so that when all appendages are folded, it forms a ball. Then if you press a button or something, all the appendages come out and the form is quite different from a ball.

Little D was trying to get it to "come out" but couldn't figure it out. "Let big D try it," I told him. "She's good at...
"mysteries!" as she finished my sentence.

How does a starfish eat?

How does a starfish eat? A question I posed to D.
"They take out the stomach and then chew. When they're done chewing they put the stomach back in!" (In her signature booming voice).

The Amazing Human Body

We were looking at a medically inspired drawn picture of the human body and its various parts.
"What are those red grapes?!" D says in her loud booming voice. "Red blood cells," I answered.

"Look! That's my stomach," as she points to the small and large intestine. Then, she correctly identifies the heart. She is puzzled by the eye. I ask her to look carefully at the ear and she correctly identifies it as such.

Here are more amusing labels she made and what they are in actuality.

Pizza (plasma)
A piece of pie (cross section of the skin)
Big worm (spine)
Necklace (I'm not sure)
Blueberries (Gall stones?!)
Avocados (I don't know)

First day of school for the big D

She seemed happy when she got off the bus. But when I asked her how her day went, she frowned. I tried all sorts of questioning. Finally, a dismal proclamation, "There were none toys to play with" and then another equally depressing declaration, "I sat in my chair all day". Poor D. Kindergarten is an adjustment from preschool.

I still love him

I often physically and mentally struggle with my 21 month old son who doesn't always like getting buckled into his carseat. Usually I'm short on time and not in a good mood, so that helps to exacerbates the situation (especially for me). This morning was no different.

So, I'm in a rush and probably foul mood as I carry him into the car and try to place him gingerly into the carseat. His body goes stiff and he immediately wriggles out of the seat. D always has other ideas. Dammit I'm thinking. Car keys? I say desperately as I jangle them in his face. Sometimes this enticement works really well but this time, he ignores me. I offer him another trinket but again he ignores me.

His mind is wrapped around something else. Like a hungry raptor with determination and precision, he reaches down and across for a shrink wrapped goody that I made Dazee leave behind earlier today. With that treasure in hand, he is completely pacified and oblivious to me. Now, I have reflexes like a predator as I quickly take the opportunity to put him into the car seat and buckle him up.

Only seconds before, he had fought me out of the seat for dear life, but now he is too busy pawing his booty like a depraved animal. "OPENITANDRIPIT," he commands me in one quick breath. "Rip it!" he repeats like a mantra.

I was so shocked by his first statement - 5 words I counted. I couldn't believe my ears. A month or so ago, this boy-genius only knew two words - "No" and "mama" (not for me but a word he used indiscriminately for anything he wanted).

It is funny to me when D behaves aggressively because his voice is so soft, like a kitten.

Recently I've been trying to re-teach him to say Thank you in a voice that can be heard. He had been saying it but stopped all of a sudden. He replaced it with "You're welcomed." I guess that always followed when he said "Thank you" that he decided saying "Thank you" was totally unnecessary.

"Say thank you, D" I would ask. "You're welcomed," he'd say.

After I successfully got him to eliminate the extinction of "Thank you", I decided to conquer the other skill with him. Saying it in a loud, audible, big, voice like Dazee.

"Say THANK YOU LOUD" I coached him.
"Thank you LOUD", he'd say.
Later that day, I asked him again, "Say THANK YOU LOOUUUD!"
He replied, "LOOUUUUUD!!!!"

Poor D is always in the car with me because I shuttle his two sisters to so many activities during the week. What's a 21 month old to do except find trouble and amusement even if he's bound and shackled? So when S left for Hebrew school, she threw her book into the car. As I drive off, I hear a crinkling of paper noise. "Noooooo!" I shriek, as I realize while driving that my son is probably tearing the book to shreds. "It's S's new book! Please give it to me." Of course he doesn't. And being that my patience is low, I try to snatch it from him. But that never works. Somehow whenever I try to get into a physical struggle with D, I always lose. (It doesn't seem to be that way with J, but then again, I think he doesn't know about opening doors for women or stepping aside in the elevator to let them off first).

Of course, I need to find another distraction. Granola bar! I offer him one. I throw one to the back of the car and he is soooo happy. He throws S's book to the floor like a scorned piece of garbage. I do a modified yoga-like move to grab it off the floor and throw it in the front seat, away from his reach.

"Open it!" he commands me. I wait for a red light to peel off the top part of the wrapper for him. He breaks off the visible piece and holds it in his hand. "Open more!" he commands again. A true offspring of two hoarders, D will not eat something unless he has at least two pieces in hand.

I didn't want to give him more (because I'm guess I'm a hoarder too) but I go against my will and open up more of it. He's now holding two inch-and-a-half pieces in each hand.

I take away the rest of the bar, saving the still ensconced bar in its wrapper, maybe for myself. We could all use a sugar rush.

Well that must've set him off. He crumbled up his two big pieces into a million sticky pieces. He smeared some of it on himself, the car seat and dropped the rest with glee on the floor of the car.

It's all in the tone and teaching your 4 year old about idiomatic expressions

Upon leaving a birthday party, I ended up speaking with a woman walking her dog about children's birthday parties. She then told me she had three grown children - something like 18, 23 and 25.

She looked so young, I couldn't believe it. "Get out of here!" I exclaimed. We chit chat a little bit longer. After we said our goodbyes, I rolled up my window and started driving away.

S tells me in a soft and serious voice, Mom, telling someone to get out of here is not nice.

She automatically thought it was her sister

Picture this scene: S and D are standing next to each other on the ball field with their backs facing me. Another child, who was off the field, is running towards them. That child throws a ball and unfortunately it hits poor D from the back.
As soon as the ball strikes D, with the quick reflex of a predator in the jungle, or a sister who's been damned too many times, D makes a fist and hits S really hard. S starts crying and hits her sister back. This may have happened for a few rounds until someone broke them up.

The mom of the girl who had hit D with the ball starts apologizing profusely for being the cause of the hurt and the fight between the two girls, but I don't think it's necessary, plus I'm too busy laughing. I really wish I had it on tape.

For some reason it was really funny to me. The other parents probably thought I was mean to laugh and out of a dozen or so parents only I and this other guy (who admitted that it wouldn't be funny if it was his own children) found it funny.

Cheap date and cheap thrills

Tonight before S goes to bed, she told me it was the best day ever. Why? I asked.
She told me it was because she "got sparkly hearts and a candy can".

A candy can is a candy cane - For his own amusement, J does not correct them when they mispronounce words. Another one that he likes is when D says, "shop" for shot. Am I going to get a shop? she might ask.

Nice ending

I couldn't get the kids off the playground to go home today. After a few "five minute warnings", I started to get a little frustrated. It was already 6PM and they were still in the sandbox making "cookies". All the other families had already left. I felt like an irresponsible parent (although a level below the people who smoke pot with their kids), in allowing my preschool children to play so late.
S is focused on playing with a huge bucket, I tell her two scoops and then let's go. No, she bargains. More. I want to fill up the bucket and dump it out.
I agree to let her do it but I start scooping like a mad woman to help her fill it up. We filled it to the top and she dumps out the sand which makes a little mountain. She and D start to stomp in it. At this rate we'll never get home so I threaten to leave and start to walk away.
Finally, they leave the sandbox, we head out towards the gate....but they get sidetracked by the plentiful fallen white azaleas. Two flowers for each girl and then we go, I bark.
I unlock the gate and D runs out like a locked up criminal, heading straight into the parking lot. "FREEZE!" I yell at her. I'm so afraid she's going to get hit by a car. Let's hold hands, I suggest. S and D don't like this idea. I modify it a little and asked them to hold each other's hands while I hold one of them. For some unknown reason, this is agreeable to both of them. So we go on our way to the car. While we're walking, I'm nervously scanning for any moving vehicles.
When they are finally in the car, predictably, we had other "struggles" and mishaps.
Preempted by a four year old - First S takes off her shoes and dumps literally a liter of sand from her shoe into her car seat just as I said, Can you please give me your shoes so I can empty the sand outside the car?
A 3 yr old driver? Just what I need - D crawls into the front of the car and starts playing with the steering wheel. Seeing her there made me think of her as a teenager driving and that made me anxious. S interrupts my free floating anxious mind with a request, Can you get my ____ (I didn't quite catch what she said) for me? I bend down and strain to reach under the passenger seat to pluck out something that looks like garbage to me. It turns out to be a drawing she had made a time long ago.
As soon as it's in her hands, she starts with the complaining. It's not straight! she screams with consternation. She looks like she's going to cry. I have no idea what she's talking about. I finally figure it out and I tell her that we can get rid of the jagged edges by cutting it. Nooooo! Don't cut it! she whines fearfully as if I suggested cutting a body part. She goes back to being a broken record by repeatedly asking, Why isn't it straight? None of my explanations or solutions satisfied her. I pray that she forgets about it and move on but of course that won't happen. When she's focused on something, she can amazingly retain it with unrelenting zeal.
Meanwhile, D is still in the front seat, doing what she does best, trying to break things. This time it's the steering wheel. Because the car is parked, it's locked, but I'm confident that if I had given her enough time, she'd definitely unlock it, despite what the manufacturer may claim when a car is in the "Park" gear. I can see her saying to me, I broke it Mom, with the gleeful satisfaction after a job well done. My mind starts to drift into a daydream that we will get a nice new car if she breaks this one.
Back to reality, we have to go home! One of my children is in the driver's seat! So I bribed her to go into the car seat with some trinket.
Finally both kids are buckled in their car seats and we're headed home.
Unfortunately for me, I feel a bad mood coming on and just before it actually descends on me with full force, I get a break of light...D starts singing this ridiculous silly and funny song that made me laugh out loud.
She belted this out. It was funny, loud, obnoxious, flat and un-melodic:
WAH-TER MEL-YON, WAH-TER MEL-YON
DRIPPING DOWN MY ELBOW, DRIPPING DOWN MY ELBOW (I can actually picture this comically messy scene happening since she's such a slob with food).
SPIT OUT THE SEED, PFFFFFFFT, SPIT OUT THE SEED, PFFFFFFFT (as she bends her head to mime spitting).

They grow up too fast

Earlier today, D told me that she had a boo boo.
Where? I asked
Right heah, she answered, lifting her head up showing me her chin.
Do you want me to kiss it? I asked.
No, that doesn't work, she replied matter of fact-ly.

My hair is definitely too cool for me

I recently got my hair highlighted and regret the results. Although I've received a lot of compliments, I feel that it looks trashy and like I'm trying to be 18.

In any event, today I was a little disoriented driving around White Plains. I was driving on the right street, but I wasn't sure if I was heading in the right direction. I nervously scan the sidewalk for pedestrians to ask for some directions. I see a very young and unsavory looking character, the type that I wouldn't normally ask for directions. I figure why not, it's a simple question that he'd probably know the answer to and it's not nice to prejudge who might know the answer to my question. He did know the answer and pointed me towards the right way. As I drove off, he yelled, YOU'RE HOT!!!

I feel so embarrassed. I could be this kid's mother. This is not the type of attention I want to generate.

This is why my cheap husband married me

Recently I vexed over the application for our temple membership. Mostly because I wasn't sure what to fill in for "Hebrew name" and the "Hebrew names" of my parents.
Finally, upon the advisement of my mother in law, I left it all blank.
Today I got a call from a temple official who inquired why I left it blank. Boy did I feel put on the spot. Then he went ahead and said, "Are you a Jewish person?" I practically felt like crying (for some reason). And I even considered lying. Anyway, very awkwardly and full of shame, I told him, Um no.
And he told me that I couldn't be a member of the temple, as per their constitution. He went on to console me about how Josh could be a member but not me but that didn't mean I wasn't welcomed to all events. Plus, we would even get mail in both our names, Mr and Mrs Josh Jupiter. I couldn't help it but feel a little left out of the club.
Finally he said that he would have to bill us at the single rate, not the family rate since only one of us (Josh) would be a member. The single rate happens to be a lot cheaper than the family rate.
After I got off the phone with him, I turned to my husband and asked him, Did you know about this? Is this why you married a shiksa? To save on your temple fees?