Dealing with obnoxious mom and pre-teens, and living to tell the tale

This weekend was full of events. 

Saturday morning we were at The Minion’s school for his big fall festival school fundraiser thingy.  Because I was having a moment of weakness, and truthfully just damn tired of getting all the stupid emails, I volunteered to do an hour at his classroom game booth.

I don’t mind doing that sort of thing, when I have the time.  But, I sure do hate the people I have to deal with.  First, let me say that this is my first official kindergarten volunteer experience.  Second, our room mother sucks.  Not only did she not tell the volunteers what the game actually was, she also didn’t mention where it was located.  I assumed it would be by the classroom.  It was not.

I spent 45 minutes searching for someone (ANYONE) who could tell me where his class game was.  It took me several volunteers before I was finally sent to a PTO mom with a walkie talkie, and she pointed me in the direction of another PTO mom with The Notebook.  Notebook Keeper was able to tell me what the game was, and where it was located.  In the courtyard, across from the library … which was nowhere near his class.  I was 5 minutes late.

The mom that was there was cool.  There were two senior guys there helping, and it was actually a fun bean bag toss type deal with an Angry Bird theme.  The boys were very sweet with the kids.  And one of them had actually played in the big town rivalry football game the night before, so he was dead on his feet.  Yet he still volunteered for the day and arrived at 9 AM for his duty.  Bless his heart.  He is the kind of kid that I hope The Minion becomes.

My time to leave comes and goes, and no new mom is there to replace me. Finally, at about 20 minutes after her scheduled shift, she rushes in, dumps her pre-teen daughter to help me, and then rushes back out saying she has to find her son first since he thought the game was near the classroom.

Now, at this point I need to take a little side journey regarding this mom. Follow me, if you will.

You may remember a Facebook post a while back about a birthday party where the birthday boy was kind of a dick.  Where the mom was actually about 15 minutes late to her own kid’s party.  She was a flurry of drama in her very fashionable maxi skirt, and I just couldn’t even deal.

A week later, this same mom made an appearance at another party.  At this party she ranted about how the party mom not personally addressing her and welcoming her to the party pissed her off.  About how she had to do EVERYTHING at home and that even when her husband asks if she needs help, she’d just rather do it herself. Because, obviously, if he can’t look around and see what needs to be done, why bother.  Remember her?  Yeah.  A real crazy bitch if I ever encountered one.  So, her behavior here isn’t all that surprising.  Okay, back to the tale.

The son is quite the little shit.  But her daughter is fantastic.  She jumped right in to help.  She is super sweet. I actually feel rather sorry for her.  For those keeping a tally … she arrived 20 minutes late to her appointed time.  Now, she FINALLY reappears another 20 minutes later.  She has approximately 20 minutes left of her volunteer shift.

Once again, she rushes out the door to where we are, all frantic drama.  So so sorry it took so long.  She had to find her son, and then she had to get him fed.  But she’s here now, and thanks so much for staying longer, blah blah fucking blah.

Now.  I have several problems with this.  In no particular order:

    

    You volunteered for a specific time frame.  Do not show up late and then vanish again.

        

       You were aware of the time frame.  Feed your kid FIRST.

    POF saw her leaving initially and her son was WITH her.  They actually went back outside and he jumped on the bouncies for about 15 minutes, then they spend the last few minutes walking around the cafeteria looking at the crafts and stuff, and stopping at the bake sale booth for a treat. Bitch just flat out LIED.

POF said that she had Crazy Eyes and he would stay well away from her if he was me.  I concur.  As I said, based on my previous encounters with her, this wasn’t really a surprise.  But it did really piss me off.  She gets to pat herself on the back for being such a good volunteer mom – with such a busy schedule – and everyone else gets to clean up her mess and resist the urge to smack her.  

I am sure there are MANY moms like this at school.  And I am wondering how long I will endure it before losing my shit on one of them.  Time will tell.

Finally, to POF’s credit, he did not say a word, but he did let her know that he knew she was full of shit.  Apparently she passed him as she was rushing out to “go find her son”.  Since he was with The Minion and they were wandering around, he passed her a few times.  He made sure to make eye contact with her at the bouncies AND in the cafeteria.  

And he was back in a flash at the game site when he saw her headed that way.  He made eye contact there too, as she was giving her “I had to find him and feed him” routine.  He stared her down HARD.  There was no doubt that she knew that he KNEW she was spouting bullshit lies. And he made sure that she knew that he was with me.  So, hopefully she will keep her distance in the future and I won’t have to verbally disembowel her in public.

After I was finished with my momly duty, we went back home for a bite to eat and a nap before our evening adventure. 

The evening was all about some Halloween fun at The Hermitage.  The Hermitage is a historic site, the home of President Andrew Jackson.  One night a year they open the plantation up for trick or treating and other fun stuff.  I had never been to the Halloween event.  In fact I haven’t been there since I was a kid on a school field trip.  I happened to score free tickets, so I figured it was worth checking out.

We got there and there was a huge line waiting to enter.  And as luck would have it (sarcasm on), we happened to end up behind a group of 25. The group consisted of approximately 18 pre-teen girls.  All were in elaborate costumes. Two of the parents that were chaperoning consisted of a local news station anchor and his wife.  Obviously private school.  One of the other moms had her big fancy camera, and she was so obnoxious with the photo taking, I was ready to slap her before we even got in the gate.

Okay, Queen of Hearts, give me your best Queen face!  Oh, love it!!!

Alright Cleopatra, give me your best Egyptian pose!  So great!!!

Come on Miss Pirate, give me your best ARRRGGG!  LOVE IT!!!!

And on, and on.  It was so over the top.  I swear that woman filled up a memory chip before we even got to the main part of the night.

As we are standing there in line waiting, the news van for this anchor’s station pulls up.  So of course he’s all “Oh, what are ‘my people’ doing here?” and goes to check it out.  Here he comes back a minute later, camera crew in tow. 

“Come on girls!  Let’s circle around and say hi to everyone watching the news!!!”

Oh yay.  I am trapped behind this group.  And now I might be shown on the news, totally against my will.  I am beyond thrilled.

We make our way through the gate and manage to get around them as we head up the path toward the house.  But as we are literally walking up to the first trick or treat point, they swarm us and another family, totally pushing us aside to get there first.  Alright you little Mean Girl bitches, it’s on!

They go in the two house tour groups ahead of us, and I am hoping that gives them enough time to get a bit ahead so we can avoid them.  No luck.  Every stop has a line waiting.  We get into the potions line.  We are in front of the group, thankfully. 

The set-up was neat.  Three ladies, in period costume, at this long table.  Each had three ‘herbs’ in big apothecary jars.  They give a little spiel about how back then they didn’t have pharmacies and had to rely on home remedies for things, and explain a little bit about what each of the three herbs were for.  Then they put a tiny spoon of each into an adorably small mortar and pestle and let the kids crush it up.  The results are put into a tiny little vial with an equally tiny cork stopper.  So cute.  The Minion was excited to get a magic potion.

It is finally our turn and we are with the lady at the very end of the table.  The group of Mean Girls is slowly starting to crowd around the table, to the point where they are just about in her lap.  She asks politely, twice, for them to please not crowd.  She’s trying to go through her little speech and is getting distracted by them.  

One interrupts her, right in the middle of a sentence.

“Hey, is that candy?” (pointing to the plastic cauldron of gummies next to her)

She stops, looks up. “Yes.  You get a treat for your candy bag after you make your potion.” Prepares to continue her speech.

“Oh, can I have one now?”, as she is taking one out of the pot.

“Me too! I want one!” Another hand into the cauldron

And another hand, and another.

At this point, I am glaring at them. I mean, really, could you be any more rude and obnoxious?! No manners.  The parents looked on.  I was incensed.

Two of the girls from the group had by this point come to the other side of me, to the lady in the middle of the table, for their potion.  The one next to me looks over, sees hands in the cauldron, and says, “Oh I want candy!”, and proceeds to reach ACROSS me and The Minion to get one.  I looked her square in the eye and said “REALLY?” She drew her hand back pretty quick and looked away.

 

Ran into this little guy in the Stay-Puft costume several times.  Cutest. Thing. Ever.

We finished our potion, then took a stroll through the garden and ventured over to the hayride line.  We managed to get far enough ahead of them at that point that we had about 8 people between us and their group in the hayride line.  This was enough to ensure some distance from them for a while.

The Minion loved the haunted hayride.  He wasn’t at all scared of the ‘monsters’ that were jumping out at us, and loved the zombies from the cornfield chasing us. Even when we went through the old barn and fireworks were popping and people were jumping up from everywhere screaming … he wasn’t impressed.  The ten year old boys beside us were losing their shit.

Afterward we grabbed some popcorn and a big sugar cookie to tide us over, then moseyed our way around the grounds to get a bit more candy before leaving.  We went to the original log farm house and walked out to the big porch on the back.  The two rooms on each side were set up for pumpkin decorating, but it was PACKED and I wasn’t going to deal with that chaos.  After playing on the porch area for a bit, we headed back toward the main house.  

If I ever get to build my dream house, I want a porch like this.

They had a big movie screen set up and they were showing Halloween movies, so we sat down and watched about 15 minutes of Frankenweenie. By then it was close to 7 pm, and they changeover to the more scary stuff for the older crowd was about to happen.  The Minion agreed we needed to get gone before that happened.  It was fully dark and he was starting to worry about people jumping out to scare us.  So we headed to the parking lot and made our way home.

I asked him what he wanted for dinner, and he chose Krystal.  Love this boy.

For those not of The South, you may have something similar in your area known as White Castle.  However let me stress that, while similar, White Castle ain’t got nothin on a Krystal.  They are tiny squares of deliciousness.  Best consumed when slightly drunk at 3 am, but always good.

We scored our bounty – including a few Krystal Chicks for variety (little chicken sandwiches, equally yummy) – and headed home.  I was fighting a headache pretty seriously by that point, so I was ready for bed.  I had all day Sunday to rest and recoup.  I STILL have a headache.  And I also still have some serious seething rage about those bratty ass teenage girls.  Someone needs to smack some manners into those little heifers.

Boys apparently find it impossible to aim INTO a toilet. Surprise.

Today, my friends, we are talking about pee.  Specifically, the tiny one’s inability to effectively convey said pee from his body to the toilet.  The Minion, it seems, has very shitty aim.

Okay, that’s not exactly true.  The kid has a surprising trajectory and range, given the right circumstances.  Put him outside with a target, and the kid could hit a bull’s-eye from a good ten feet.  He’s like that carnival game where you shoot the water gun at the target to inflate the balloon.  It’s impressive.  But, give him a toilet a mere foot away, and all bets are off.

Add to the fact that this same child, who can sit for HOURS and build with Legos, apparently enters the bathroom and suddenly develops the attention span of a housefly with ADHD.  He’s looking around everywhere.  And naturally, where his eyes go, the penis follows.  So that means the pee follows.  Suddenly I have some sort of demented Water Wiggler situation in my bathroom.  No wonder it always smells like a gas station men’s room.

Just the other morning, I walked into the bathroom to something so incredible, I thought I was seeing things. 

Now, keep in mind, the total width of the bathroom is maybe 6 feet.  And once you add in the toilet sticking out, there’s probably only 3.5 feet of actual space between the wall and the toilet. Still. 

I walked in to find The Minion, casually leaning against the wall, peeing into the toilet.  The toilet on the opposite wall.  Over the distance of that 3.5 feet.  With terrible inaccuracy.  Pee was going all over the place.  And he did not give a shit.

Now, I realize he was sick and didn’t feel well.  But damn, dude.  No wonder I can’t ever get rid of the pee smell.  I screeched at him to pee INTO the toilet.  And, as a natural response, he looked AT me to whine that he KNEW that.  And, as it always happens, when he looked at me, the penis followed.  So now, not only do I have pee all over the toilet – and wall – but also on ME.  It was a moment.  And not a good one.  He starts crying.  I try to calmly remind him that we pee INTO the toilet, not around, beside, above or below it.  More crying.  I send him shuffling out and spend a good ten minutes scrubbing the area.  Gagging was involved.

So now I am THAT mom.  The mom that follows the kid to the bathroom to supervise and remind him to aim at the actual toilet.  Repeatedly.  And then remind him to aim down, he does not need to look at me.  This is followed by the caveat that I know we generally make eye contact when communicating.  But when we are in the bathroom and I tell him to not look at me, for the love of all that is holy, keep your eyes on the toilet. 

And this inevitably ends up with him saying that he can look around and not pee everywhere.  Then he tries to demonstrate.  And then we have pee everywhere again.  It’s like Groundhog Day, the Urine Version.

I am dreading the teenage years.  Though I am hoping that his aim will improve somewhat.  His father seems capable of hitting the bowl, so there’s hope.