The new moms at my bus stop stand in the street.

I know it sounds silly, and I know it shouldn’t be a big deal, but what kind of example is that? How am I supposed to teach my kids to stay out of the road if there are seven moms standing in the street just chatting?

I think it is awful form.

The thing is – how can I say to an entire group of grown women “Please don’t stand in the street. You are setting a crappy example for my children, and I would really prefer that my kids don’t get hit by cars.”

You know how women are? They would think I am judging their parenting – which I totally am – but I really don’t care what they do at home. The same way I don’t care if you smoke,  are a snakehandler, participate in extreme rodeo, or choose not to wear your seat belt, I just don’t want you to do it in front of my kids.

What do I do here? Do I tell my kids that the other moms are wrong and risk them repeating it? Do I tell the one loudest mom that it bothers me? Do I drive The Goon Squad to school every day?

I’m not super over-protective, but we are pretty serious about life safety issues around here and standing in the street is just asking for trouble.

Am I nuts?

Wait. Don’t answer that. Instead tell me how to handle my first world problems gracefully.

(Laurie and Suebob should stop reading now)

Q: Why did the chicken cross the road?

A: Diarrhea.

I turned my head as his mother scolded him for that kind of talk at the table because I was laughing and I didn’t want to encourage his behavior. His second joke was “Why did the diarrhea cross the road?”*  Then he said – and he said it really loud and we were in a restaurant – “WHAT? YOU DON’T LIKE DIARRHEA?”

I had to hide behind my child so that Todd couldn’t see that I was laughing so hard I was shaking.

I know it is inappropriate lunch conversation. I know that I am a parent and a grown up and it takes a village and I should be throwing him stern glances as his own mother tries to raise him right, but dammit, diarrhea is funny.

Especially when it crosses the road.

* He never gave an answer. I think that one was rhetorical.

Why I am offended by the iPhone commercial.

A picture I took on a walk in my classy neighborhood. ————>

Why the Cincinnati Bengals pissed me off.

For $11.5 million, I will sell you two of my toes.

Now I am off to prepare for a birthday party for two six year olds. If you are a person of faith, pray for me. If you are not, please send beer.

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Backstory: yesterday morning we bought a shed. It is the kind that you put together, kind of like Legos for grownups except it requires hammers to assemble and is more utilitarian. It came in two huge boxes. Really big boxes. One of them could have been used for a double bed. The kids in the neighborhood – who had perhaps never possessed or seen such large containers – all thought I was awesome.

Anyway, we had hauled all of the pieces into the back yard so that my husband could get started on the shed building and I was in charge of breaking down the boxes so that they could be recycled.

So there I was sitting in my front yard in this gigantic cardboard box, hacking away at it with my Exacto knife, when a lady in a Jaguar drove by very slowly. She smiled and waved so I smiled and waved back.

I didn’t know her. She was probably in the age group that is older than my parents but younger than my grandparents would be if they were still alive.

She drove to the end of my street, turned her car around and drove toward my house again. This time she stopped and rolled down her window.

“Do you want me to pull you?”

She smiled at me.

Even as a joke the offer to tie my big box up to her Jaguar for a ride around the neighborhood was pretty awesome.

At least I think it was a joke.

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illustration from “Not a Box” by Antoinette Portis

“I googled you and I found your blog.”

If you want to know what stops my heart it is a mom in Ian’s class telling me that she read my blog.

I don’t keep it a secret. I am not anonymous. I am mostly pretty proud of my work here, but this was this morning and I happen to know I wrote a post this week about testicles and I only know this lady from kindergarten class parties. I have no idea what is coming next.

Fortunately it was ” I read your post about your underwear falling down at Tae Kwon Do. I was reading it at work and I was laughing so hard I was crying. I can completely relate.”

I got lucky. This particular mom is very cool and has a sense of humor.

Now two parents from Ian’s kindergarten class have approached me about my underpants issues. I am thrilled that they are reading me and like my work, but I have two concerns.

1) If you google my first and last name and, I don’t know, zip code, is the first thing that comes up The Saga of the Traveling Underpants?

and

2) Am I going to become known as the lady who had underwear problems at Tae Kwon Do?

I guess these are the risks that you run when you tell all of your most embarrassing stories to the internet.

The game was 2 – 1 Canada at the time and it was so exciting that my husband and I were actually both standing in front of the television.

When the door bell rang we just looked at each other and said pretty much in unison “You have got to be fucking kidding me.”

Who is soliciting door to door during the U.S.A./Canada hockey game?

I almost didn’t answer it, but we have a DVR so we paused the game and I went downstairs.

Through our sidelights I saw that it was Leanna, my seven-year-old neighbor. I stopped being angry right away because: 1) I like her. She’s pretty cute and what does a seven-year-old know about Olympic hockey?, 2) She was wearing a sombrero. It is really hard to be mad at somebody wearing a sombrero. and 3) She was holding a bag that was probably for me.

I opened the door and the bag WAS for me.

The bag contained four boxes of Girl Scout Cookies. Two boxes of Somoas and two boxes of Thin Mints.

I don’t know how closely you are following my life, but I am currently involved in two weight loss competitions, really three if you count the side bet that I made with my dad yesterday.

It was as if he was in cahoots with Leanna.

But my father scheming against me with neighborhood children isn’t my point. My point is that every year, just as I am figuring out how to diet and exercise properly a cute little girl comes to my door with cookies, delicious Girl Scout Cookies, and tries to sabotage my diet.

I’d like to propose that the girl scouts move their cookie deliveries to the fall when I tend to be on a Halloween to New Years Eve food bender anyway.

I’d also like to propose that anyone who rings my doorbell during an important sporting event wear a sombrero to lessen my wrath.

And while I’m making rash proposals to the world, can somebody make sure that Sidney Crosby stays in Canada. That guy pisses me off in the NHL and internationally.

Him: I just talked to all of our neighbors.

Me: Really, what is everybody doing out there

Him: Janet is cursing in her driveway.

Me: That sounds pretty good. Maybe I’ll go out too.

Him: Well, she was shoveling. You can’t just go out there and wander around and mutter obscenities. You have to actually be doing something productive.

Me: Oh, well, never mind then.

But I went out anyway. It was nuts! NUTS I SAY!

I don’t think that people understand what it is really like here. My children have only gone to school one day in February.

I have not gone more than 300 yards from my house in eight days.

On the upside, when I ventured out Janet was still cursing in her driveway and it was just as awesome as I had hoped.

I swear her driveway is under there somewhere.

Somebody told me that it is supposed to snow more next week. I think I might lose my shit entirely.  This could go either way, a crying jag or a killing spree. Let’s all root for the weeping.

All work and no play make Sarah something something.

Calm down, I’m not going to kill anyone. But since Gabe went to work today (No, he couldn’t get out by car. He HIKED to the main road and had a friend from work pick him up. True story.) it is possible that I will go outside and wander around mumbling profanities. That sounds freeing, and kind of fun.

Don’t judge my ideas about fun. It has been a rough week.

This Means Something

I know Kris, #firstworldproblems right? I am stir crazy but I really can’t complain too much. We didn’t even lose power. The worst thing that happened to me (besides being trapped with my own progeny for 8 days in a row) is that I missed a Caps game because our satellite was out.

Everyone should be lucky enough to have my problems.

And as much as I bitch about it sometimes the snow is really pretty.

It was one of those conversations that should have taken two minutes and we both ended up standing in my driveway talking about life for 45 minutes when I should have been unloading the trunk full of groceries I was supposed to be handling.

Somehow we got into the subject of retirement. These neighbors have kids about my age and none of them live in this area anymore. She was telling me how they have friends that live here and there and how [insert retired professional athlete here] is a good friend of her husbands and they might end up near where this guy lives.

And I said “Oh, my Dad went to college with [aforementioned retired professional athlete] at [big sports school]. They were in the dorms together.”

My neighbor, whom I have lived across the street from for almost four years stares at me for a minute and then says:

“My husband went to [big sports school] and was in the dorm with [same retired professional athlete]“.

Holy shit people, my Dad was in the dorms with my across the street neighbor. They were freshman the same year. I have lived directly across the street from this man for FOUR YEARS and I didn’t even know that he went to the same college as my father.

It is like when you are on facebook and you realize that two of your friends from totally different places know each other. Like when it turned out that a lady I knew from preschool lived on the same street as Aviva when they were growing up in Colorado.

But what are the odds? And who else lives here. I feel compelled to run around asking everyone where and when they went to college.

Has this happened to you?

This is not my point. What I was going to say is that I come by it honestly. My mother’s entire family are pretty solid drinkers. This tends to get me in trouble when I hang out with my cousins.

So one night I was drinking (heavily) with my cousins and we had to get up early the next morning. We had a pre-wedding get together. I wasn’t hungover exactly, but I certainly wasn’t at me best. When we got to the shower the hostess offered us a mimosa. Not to be the type of person to turn down such an offer I accepted.

Here is the thing with champagne in the morning after a long night of drinking: after about a half a glass I was buzzed again.

I need to give you this back story to justify my behavior.

This was the first time I had been to the house of these people. They are very nice upstanding people. The bride’s whole side of the family are lovely upstanding Christian people. Our side, not as much.***

I hope you understand that I have been forthcoming that I possess the maturity of a 12 year old boy when I tell you that when I saw this plaque hanging by their garage door I laughed until I was doubled over and crying.

It was the kind of laughter where no actual sound was coming out.

That is when my Dad walked into the kitchen.

I think he thought there was something wrong with me. Probably because I was weeping and gasping. When he asked me what was the matter all I could do was point was point and wheeze.

I believe his exact words were “Nice, Sarah”.

My parents are very proud of me.

Fast forward about ten years. I am actually a grown up with my own house and children and a job and everything. I had just successfully convinced my kids to clean their rooms. I was feeling pretty good. My deadlines had been met, the house was clean (ish) and I was ready for my evening fantasy football draft and neighborhood birthday party. Then I heard knocking.

I went downstairs to the front door.

Nobody was there.

Yet, still there was knocking, as of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.

I found the kids. They weren’t hitting anything. The cats were sleeping. I was starting to feel crazy and I asked the kids if they heard knocking.

“‘Tis some visitor,” I muttered.

And then I looked out my back door and it was no bird. It was my new neighbor. She is going into Kindergarten this week just like The Goon Squad and she was coming over to play.

About ten minutes later there was another knock, and this time I was prepared and I went to the kitchen door first.

It was the new neighbor mom and she was looking for her daughter.

I think I actually have my own back door friends.

And now I understand the sign.**

Back door friends really are best. I think it is the idea that there are no formalities.

Then my new neighbor brought me a beer. I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

*In fact I once had a friend nickname me “Tip ‘Em Back Sarah”.  It has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it?

** Not to infer that I really thought these people were advertising sodomy.

Also their sign said “Back door friends are the best kind” but I couldn’t find an image of one with the exact wording.

*** It was the same day my cousin set something on fire while changing a baby’s diaper and my Aunt said something about being a non-practicing Agnostic  just as the minister walked around the corner.