Momnesia

So it's the end of the first month of the year, and I've realized that I will never keep a New Year's resolution. Apparently, neither will you. But that's okay. Because there are many things we'll never do in our lifetimes.

Things I will never do:

1. I will never finish an entire tube of Blistex without losing it.
2. I will never learn more numbers of Pi than just 3.14.
3. I will never slam a revolving door.
4. I will never construct a triangle from its angle bisector. Effing heck, I don't even know what that means.
5. I will never win the cinnamon challenge.
6. I will never travel in space.
7. I will never count to infinity - and beyond.
8. I will never tame a unicorn.
9. I will never escape from a black hole.
10. I will never escape to Witch Mountain.
11. I will never understand the appeal of "Seinfeld."
12. I will never get my acceptance letter to Hogwarts, Harvard, Starfleet Academy, or the Xavier School for Higher Learning.
13. I will never smoke. Anything.
14. I will never volunteer at a clown convention.
15. I will never climb Mt. Everest.
16. I will never kiss anything with an exoskeleton.
17. I will never ask anyone for their "buy-in."
18. I will never abandon my child.
19. Of course, there's this...
20. I will never get anything else pierced... again.
21. I will never voluntarily take a class on taxidermy.
22. I will never watch a "Jerseylicious" marathon.
23. I will never finish the Ghettoburger at Anne's Snack Shack.
24. I will never become a Disney star.
25. And, finally, I will never go up against a Sicilian when death is on the line.

So, I suppose I shouldn't be worried about one little New Year's resolution, when there's SO MUCH that I will never do.

I'm listening to a lecture by Lawrence Krauss, and Emmie has half an ear tuned in.

"Mama? Was Einstein real?"

"Yes, Einstein was a real theoretical physicist who did a lot of work that gave good knowledge to the world."

"... but den he turned eebil?"

What the...?

"No, Emmie, he didn't turn evil. Where did you get that idea?"

"I dunno. Nebbermind."

As I approached a group of acquaintances recently, I heard one say, "...beaten up and thrown in jail!"

I bounced up: "We can go toe-to-toe in the middle of a cell...!"

They turned and looked at me as if I had eight tentacles, all enthusiastically waving child porn. Uh-oh.

"Umm... We're not rapping, are we?" I said.

No.

Occasionally I post a story about my sister's part-time gig at a natural foods store in North Georgia. This is another installment.

A woman in her 60s (we'll call her Nana) came into the store and asked for aloe vera. The store carries a number of different kinds - gels, liquids, some for internal use, some for external use.

"Nana said, 'I had a cyst removed from down there, in there,'" Kelli said. "She was pointing to her vagina, really pushing the point across about where it was located. I was like, I GET IT! IT'S YOUR VAG!"

Nana shared a detailed history of her medical experiences, visits to homeopathic doctors, etc. She wanted to know how Kelli could help her.

"I am not a physician or a homeopathic doctor. I am a part-time retail clerk. Why tell me about your vaginas and wieners?" Kelli said.

Nana wished she had known about the miraculous pure aloe gel when she'd had children, because childbirth had basically ripped her in half. And now everyone is freaked out by Nana's vagina for forever. Anyway, the cyst removal left a spot that gets irritated. Nana wanted to treat it with aloe, per her homeopathic doctor's recommendations.

Kelli continued: "She said, 'Because sometimes it just gets so irritated that I can't stop messing with it.' Again, THANKS FOR THE VISUAL OF YOUR VAGINA... ma'am."

Emmie and I are taking advantage of a gift card we had to Yumo, a sushi restaurant out in Evans. We are in high spirits, and she is cracking joke after joke.

"You are really on a roll, Emmie," I giggled.

"You mean a shushi roll?"

And then she laughed so hard at herself that she almost fell out of her chair.

Sorry, Alice Wynn. It looks like there will be no future shortage of jokes for Popsicle manufacturers to print on their sticks.

I had some free rental codes to Redbox this weekend. I let Emerson pick a movie on Friday, and I picked one on Sunday. Apparently, my choice was not to her liking.

"But...! I wanted to pick da movie!"

"It's mommy's turn, sweetie."

Then she proceeded to be a little buttface through the whole thing. It honestly took me 4 hours to watch a 90-minute movie, because she could not be quiet. Finally, I sent her to her room for smarting off to me for no other reason than she was feeling irritable.

When I let her out of her room, she was even more wound up. And it was all my fault, she said.

"Mama, I'm angwry wif you."

"That's fine. You're allowed to feel angry," I replied, totally not giving a crap.

"You're not being fair."

"I'm okay with that," I said, turning the movie back on.

"Are you eeben lithening to what I'm thaying to you?" she demanded.

"Uh... to be honest, not really. I think you've had a lot to say today, and you've been pretty rude to mommy. I'm going to finish this movie, and you're going to do something quiet."

She glared at me. I ignored her. She put her hands on her hips. I continued to ignore her. She stomped her foot. I choked back a giggle.

"Mama, I fink you are not being like Martin Luther King. An' dat's a bad fing."

Uh, what?

This was totally worth turning off the movie to hear.

"Okay, I'm listening, Emmie. What's on your mind?"

She burst out with her explanation. Here it is, verbatim:

"It's Martin Luther King Day, for Pete's sake! And Martin Luther King wanted us to be equal - to be the same thing. Every children in this country wants to boss the parents around a little. So they just want to boss them around sometimes or a day because children are not sussposed to be in this argument. If anything happens to any children I'm gonna fits [fix] it because children are not equal to grown-ups. They're not even making this 10 percent fair. This is just a plain piece of meat. It doesn't feel like I'm in charge because mommies and parents don't even do what the children says. Period."

"So... you're saying that I'm not living up to the ideals of Martin Luther King Jr., because I don't let you be the boss and make the decisions?" I asked.

"Right. I think that children should be the boss a little. Because I don't really lite parents bossing us around because it's not very nice. You already do 'blah blah blah blah do the dishes blah blah blah blah get dressed blah blah blah blah do the floor' - lite that. And I don't really lite that," she said.

"Emmie, I try to involve you in our decisions. But there's a reason that I'm in charge. While children are capable of making good decisions, and you mostly do, parents make better decisions, generally speaking. Sometimes, of course, we make mistakes, too."

She was standing on the bed now. She put both of her hands on my shoulders and stared at me intently.

"Mama. You need to be lite Martin Luther King. An' he showed us how to all be friends. An' how to be nice to each other. An' how to be equal." She waved her hand back and forth between the two of us. "How we should be equal."

I stared at her, torn. On the one hand, there was so much that was good in what she was saying. And ownership does breed responsibility. On the other hand... no.

"You know, that was a really strong appeal to my emotions and my sense of morality, Emerson. I have to applaud you for almost making that work. What law school do you want to attend?"

Emerson is mad because I put her to bed early.

"But I'm lonely."

"Yes, Emerson, a punishment is supposed to make you uncomfortable."

"Wull, dat's done. Can we stop now?"

"No. Go back to bed."

"But... why would you wanna mate me umcumpftorbul?"

"Because maybe that feeling will help you to remember to bring home one of the 65 jackets you've lost this year."

"Sixty-five?!"

"That's called hyperbole. I was exaggerating for impact."

"Sixty-five, mama? Really?"

"Well... two. I was rounding up."

I sent Emerson to bed early because the child cannot keep up with a single article of clothing unless it is stapled to her body. After having left her jacket and bookbag god-only-knows-where for the I-long-ago-lost-count-th time, I'd had enough.

But 30 minutes later, she came stomping down the hall like nothing happened.

"Can you scoot ober? Can you share da blanket?" she asked.

"Just what are you doing?" I retorted, and she began to stammer a reason why she should be out of bed.

"Wull, so I was in da bedroom and... wull, see, there was... oh, nevermind. I'm a wuss. I'm juss scared to be by myself."

She didn't get out of her punishment, but we both had a good laugh.

Emerson got almost everything she wanted for Christmas, except the iPad she desired so greatly. She'll have to make do with my iPod Touch until such time as pigs fly.

Conveniently for Learning Express Toys, however, Emerson's birthday is coming up at the end of the month. But now I have no idea what to give her. I asked her what she wanted, but she got so much stuff from her very loving and generous extended family that I don't think she has any ideas, either. Seriously. She has so much stuff that she can't even imagine anything else to want. First world problems: We haz dem.

So this morning she told me that she wants a parrot. I tried very hard not to laugh in her face.

No, I'm serious, people! She's going to get something ridiculous like a cemetery plot for her 7th birthday, because she has maxed out all the major categories of children's toys:

1. Toys that make annoying sounds
2. Toys that hurt your foot when you step on them
3. Toys that startle you when you walk through the house at night
4. Toys that cost more to play with than they do to purchase
5. Toys that devour batteries like Takeru Kobayashi eats hot dogs
6. Toys that make such a huge mess that I conveniently misplace them in the back of her closet
7. Creepy dolls that may kill me in my sleep

The only thing we never have enough of are books and science toys. If you have any good recommendations for such things, I'm all ears.

Actually, that might be all that's left of me after her enormous Baby Alive toddles into the bedroom one night and murders me.

Me: So I spent all day yeterday thinking that I had missed an important meeting. I was trying to figure out what to do about it. Then, this morning, my boss asked me about it. I said I had nothing to update. Neutral, right? Turns out the meeting was today. I spent all yesterday thinking it was today.

Alice: Don't you have some kind of electronic device that helps you keep track of these things?

Me: Um... yes?

Me: I don't know what I'm going to do NYE. I'll be in Atlanta, I think.

Alice: Go to the Clermont Lounge. I'm sure it'll be kicking.

Me: That is the kind of thing one does with a group of drunks at 3 a.m. It's not fun before then. It's just sad.

Alice: True.

Me: Ooh, Kansas is playing the Peach Drop. We can ring in the new year with the existential crisis that is "Dust in the Wind."

Alice: LOL!!!!!

Me: Start 2012 off with some morose navel-gazing. Happy times.

Alice: I'm sure there will be lots of bikers/rednecks whooping it up.

Me: The other grown-up option is the annual downtown countdown, with Ed Kawalczkqxkwvpgh (formerly) of Live and Naughty by Nature. What a weird combo.

Alice: Glad the '90s are back... When Jayson worked at the dining hall at UGA, one of the guys he worked with had to get coke for Ed Kawlakghsdfhhblech when they played the Athens Fairgrounds.

Me: I'm not complaining - unless someone starts playing "My Heart Will Go On" and then Hanson roller blades through the room while everyone does the Macarena, in which case, DEATH TO ALL. I like 90s music. BUT THERE ARE LIMITS. And I hit that limit when the younger cousin of my friend went to the Soul Bar for 90s night. She was wearing torn jeans, a flannel shirt and Docs. She said she was "in costume." I almost drop-kicked her off this planet.

Alice: LOL!!!!!

Me: I was all:










Alice: I just almost spit hot chocolate on my monitor.