Tag: summer

• We Need To Discuss Your Summer Plans

  

  “Summer plans,” or – as I like to call them – “just another group of months with the same old shit only hotter” are steadfastly approaching, and I feel like we need to discuss them.

  We were at the doctor the other day, my 15 year old was having her yearly physical. The doctor asked what our summer plans are and the crickets chirped. Summer plans? The concept is lost on me.

  It’s been in conversation for about two months now.

  It’s a woefully tiresome topic, because – inevitably – it becomes one of those instances in which I feel like I have to explain myself to people. Twenty minutes into it, I’ve gotten nowhere. Usually this is evidenced by whomever I am talking with clearly not understanding what I’m saying, and changing the subject with something like “well there’s always room for spontaneous summer plans!”

  And herein lies the first problem I have any time people ask me questions: I can never just give simple answers. Somewhere along the line, I conditioned myself to always justify what I am saying. In reality, I don’t have to explain my or my family’s reasons behind what we do, or in this case don’t do, to anyone.

  We don’t have summer plans. Why not? Because we don’t want to.

  Because we homeschool, we might be a little unique. My kids are around all the time during the school year, so I can’t exactly identify with the whole you-people-are-driving-Mom-crazy-for-these-two-months-every-year thing.

  My kids drive me crazy all year long.

  So in terms of camps or classes, or special outings: there’s really no need for it. Why would I put my children in a day camp that is the older-kid-equivalent to daycare when there is literally no need for me to do so whatsoever? It isn’t like they’re getting bored and need to be kept entertained. Or they are driving me batty and I need them out of the house. Summer for other people is our lives, every day of the year (except there’s schoolwork in there).

  This is the second problem, although I wouldn’t call it a “problem,” so much as a circumstance. Our circumstance, because we homeschool, is that my kids are around all the time. I don’t need to keep them entertained, or do all kinds of extra activities because they are driving me crazy in the house. These things (the stuff we do, including the fun stuff) is peppered here and there through the entire year, because we aren’t beholden to a school district calendar.

  That’s just the way it is, and yet no one (and I mean no one) can seem to grasp that concept.

  The third thing worth mentioning is my husband’s work schedule. One of the reasons we homeschool is to accommodate his career in film. It’s hectic, it’s unpredictable, and it’s overnight. Anyone that’s ever worked in the film industry knows that summer and holidays are the busiest times for them, so vacations around then are not always in the cards.

  If I’m being entirely honest, vacation isn’t really something we normally do at any time of the year, either. He’s just usually too busy, and when he’s not busy he’s catching up on sleep. What kind of a vacation involves Dad sleeping half the day, and keeping everyone up all night because he can’t (and shouldn’t) change his sleep schedule for the couple of days?

  (And also, if we’re being REALLY HONEST… film work doesn’t exactly cover the cost of exotic cruises and trips to Hawaii for 5 + my dad.)

  At a tennis match the other day, the mother of a couple kids my kids play with told me that she’s decided since her husband is working a lot this summer, she’s going to maybe just do the craziest thing ever and take the kids somewhere on her own! Can you imagine?

  I take my kids places on our own all the time. If we waited for my husband to be available, we would be waiting years behind our graves.

  This, I think, is a suburban thing: that families should do it all together, and if they don’t there’s something crazy or exotic or weird about it. The reality of it is that there is absolutely nothing unique about our situation at all. So many people have so many different circumstances to their jobs/homes/lives, it just is what it is.

  And yet… this is the fourth thing. I waffle back and forth between wanting to live my life and let my kids live theirs; and feeling the guilting and the pressures that our culture has me conditioned to believe, which is that we should all be patiently waiting to live our own lives with our hands folded neatly in our laps for my husband to be available.

  Except that he’s living his life by working in his dream career. This is literally what he dreamed about in childhood, went to college for, and has worked all these years to achieve. So we should not live while he… lives?

  Why do we worry so much about summer plans anyway? Maybe this is just some weird stage of life I am in, where your plans end up largely dictated by your children’s plans, forcing everyone into these specific time frames to create family memories and – oh I don’t know – live life.

  Or maybe it’s something bigger. Like a status thing. I remember a movie once where the guy says in a snooty voice: “where do you summer… I SAID WHERE do you summer?” The concept is lost on me.

  My summer plans are the same as my every day plans. My kids do schoolwork. They do chores. They play tennis. The baby and I watch Story Bots and play with blocks. I cook. I clean. Sometimes we go to museums and libraries, some days we binge watch Supernatural.

  And I think I’m much happier and more content than a lot of people. We don’t save life’s moments for special occasions or the summer months, when conditions are perfect. We live them every day.

  June 8, 2019

  California Lifestyle, homeschool, Homeschooling, kids, life, life balance, life lessons, lifestyle, Mom Life, parenting, parenting kids, parenting stories, school, social commentary, society, sports, summer, summer activities, summer plans, summertime, work-life balance

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• I Went Camping And Survived

  

  Okay, so let’s start this off by saying that to call what I did “camping” is a bit of a stretch.

  Four nights were in a hooked up RV with running water, air conditioning, and electricity; in an RV park with free Wifi by the beach.

  Two nights were in a hotel.

  Regardless of those little details, it was camping and I did it and also I survived.

  I have a very complicated history with camping.

  On one hand, the bulk of my childhood is made up of one camping story after another stitched together. So you’d think camping brought about fond memories.

  I camped a lot when I was very little in Girl Scouts. We hiked and made s’mores and eggs in paper bags over campfires and we sang songs and did crafts, and all that other happy horse shit the Girl Scouts do that I currently am at a loss to remember. I think there was some ghost story telling and TAPS playing in there somewhere.

  My grandparents owned a lot up at The Pines (near the California-Nevada border), so we went there often when I was little as well. In fact, there’s a huge pine tree on the mountain today that I planted when I was only 6.

  As I grew older, though, I became way more high maintenance; the result of which was that camping was no longer something I generally enjoyed. I grew to love my conveniences and my hair dryer and my makeup. And, more so, to dislike things like hiking and allergies, being bored sitting and fishing and getting nothing, and really not liking to be almost eaten by a bear.

  …which, for the record, happened once. We were camping when I was 15 at Kings Canyon and after my entire family hiked to a waterfall, someone started screaming because a brown bear was walking up the pathway, straight for us. It ended up turning back (or something); nonetheless, I slept in the car and stayed close to our campsite for the rest of the trip.

  Everyone this year was doing big vacations and trips, though; and – by comparison – my kids had an all time shitty summer. It started with a funeral for my husband’s grandmother; and shortly after that my oldest daughter sprained her ankle, effectively canceling all of her summer tennis plans. My younger daughter still played some, but then around mid-summer we found out she has Osgood-Schlatters, further hindering our tennis stuff…and to make matters worse, we have no AC and it has been HOT AS BALLS since mid-June.

  All in all it just kind of sucked.

  So as summer started coming to a close, I was determined to figure something out to salvage the season. But I was also on a tight budget, it being last minute and all; so when my mother in law offered us up their RV whenever we want it, I knew that was the best option.

  

  In all honesty, with the amount of a high maintenance, pain in the ass princess I am now – today, 21 years after that day the bear almost mauled us all to death up at Kings Canyon – I considered our four nights in an RV and two nights in a hotel really roughing it.

  1. Have you people ever showered in an RV? First off, it made me feel like Andre the Giant. My head hit the ceiling; and the shower head was effectively a glorified hose. And to make matters worse, calling RV hot water “hot water” is a bit of a stretch.
  2. It was just me and the three kids. That, alone, was absolute craziness. I had to make fires, put together the charcoal grills, use matches – all while keeping the baby from falling out of the RV window, and the girls busy and happy enough to feel like the summer had been salvaged.
  3. The third morning we were there, it rained. This soaked all of our stuff outside, including our firewood. It wouldn’t have been that big of a deal (the sun came out shortly after the rain storm); except that the firewood wouldn’t light in the evening. I came up with the GENIUS idea to pour lighter fluid all over the small amount of flames I had been successful in getting going. I’ll let you guys know when my eyebrows grow back.
  4. The final morning we were there – and this was a big one – the RV toilet clogged. As it turned out, we were using the wrong type of toilet paper. Nevertheless, we couldn’t figure out how to get it unclogged, until finally we found this magic wand my in laws had stored in one of the outside compartments. It sprayed the paper out of the toilet, but after we got it back outside, my daughter started unscrewing it from the hose before the water was fully off; and, in short, there was a large mess.

  

  Okay, obviously two nights in a hotel was not even remotely like camping. But it was      still roughing it. We were on the first floor with some noisy walkers above us; and there was a local corn hole tournament going on, so the hotel was packed with rowdy corn hole enthusiasts.

  We’ve been home, now, for two days and I feel like my entire perspective on life has changed. I can handle a long and rough vacation with the kids, alone. That’s a really big deal. Also, I can figure out how to do things like build fires and unclog RV toilets if I’m given enough time and resources.

  I’m definitely more of an all-inclusive resort kind of gal, though. What about you?

  

  August 28, 2018

  back to school, camping, camping blog, comedy, dark satire, end of summer, glamping, hotel camping, humor, life, lifestyle, lifestyle blog, mom, mom blog, Mom Life, random, rv, rv camping, satire, summer

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• No Such Thing As Global Climate Change, MY ASS

  

  We’ve been in the throws of a heatwave for three weeks now. It’s more like a heat tsunami. It’s basically hell. We live in hell now.

  The issue, actually, isn’t the heat or humidity – per se. It’s the fact that fucking no one in this town has air conditioning; save for the newer houses that no one wants to live in because they’re built like trash.

  Trash filled hell.

  Which means that the town smells like trash. More so than usual, that is. Typically, 5 days a week, if you stand outside long enough for the breeze to blow past your nose, you can smell the faint scent of fertilizer, since we are surrounded by farms. Add 90-100 degree temps and high humidity to that and it’s like living in the middle of either a trash dump or a cow’s asshole.

  I’m still trying to determine which.

  So. I’m in a bit of a mood because of this hell I’ve found myself in yet again. Not sure if you guys can tell…

  What’s more maddening than the heat and humidity and the lack of air conditioning and also the general scent around town, actually, is the way people talk about it.

  “Oh…it never used to be like this.” (No shit.)

  And:  “it’s not usually this warm here!” (Lies.)

  Also: “well…you know I’m still not 100% convinced about this whole climate change thing, even in spite of the heat.” (You moron.)

  Those are the most common things people lie to themselves and others about, on the regular around here.

  I get that twenty, thirty, forty years ago, heat waves weren’t quite as bad, frequent, long, and often as they are now. But they did happen.

  And the fact that they happen so often now is just more evidence than modern science has already fucking provided of global climate change.

  We’re also at a point now where this is – factually – the norm. So it seems a little irrelevant to say that it never used to be like this. Sometimes, it almost seems as though by saying that people are implying that this is temporary – that’ll it be not like this again.

  I just don’t think that’s true.

  It has been like this for at least a decade now. You can’t really say this is new, and you definitely cannot imply it’ll stop anytime soon.

  I’ll say it one more time: it is usually this warm here now. It just is. Deal.

  People like to lie to themselves and say that it’s not because it allows them to justify the cost of living with pithy witticisms like “oh well you know we pay for this wonderful weather!”

  Fuck that. I very seriously believe I should get a reduction of my rent for the amount of time I have to deal with this shit. Because we don’t have air conditioning: IT. IS. NOT. WORTH. IT.

  For three weeks we’ve eaten take out, deli sandwiches, and nothing. Enough.

  I haven’t really cleaned my house, because the average temp downstairs is 86, upstairs is over 100. ENOUGH.

  We basically can’t do anything but sit in front of fans and be miserable. But we pay for this beautiful weather!

  Can it with that shit and cut me a break already.

  This weather fucking sucks.

  Climate change is real.

  I have very little interest to continue to living in this trash pile if we cannot do something to make it more palatable. At the very least that would be a little honesty with ourselves about the state of things.

   

  July 24, 2018

  California, california climate, california weather trends, climate change, global climate change, heat, heatwave, hot, it’s hot out, life, lifestyle, people, social commentary, Suburbia, summer, summer weather, warm, warming, weather

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• Summer Is Basically the Worst Right Now

   

  

  IT IS SO FUCKING MISERABLE OUTSIDE.

  Ok…to be fair, it really isn’t entirely miserable. I mean, it’s not like in the south where it’s 100 degrees and humid. It’s not the Midwest either, and it’s certainly not equator-weather.

  Nonetheless, it’s hot out; hot for coastal California. And it’s humid; and basically no one has air conditioning but the five square miles around us (I think because we live in the equivalent of Hell in terms of heat for this area). So I’m not going many places, except this weekend our air conditioning broke. Now I have nowhere to go, on account of ostracizing myself from society to a) stay in my nice, air conditioned house; and, b) out of a general disdain for other people. Last night it was 97 degrees in my house at 11 o’clock at night because the air conditioning guys were running the heat to fix the air (I just don’t understand) and I was just sitting there, dying in a puddle of melted skin.

  Which leads me to the first reason I hate summer: it may as well be called boob sweat season. Can’t go anywhere without busting a major boob sweat.

  

   

  There’s pretty much twenty kids milling around outside my front door on a daily basis now, too. Which should be OK – seeing as I’m a mom and all – but I don’t typically enjoy the company of other people’s children (especially when those kids are disrespectful creeps); and to top it all off, most of them don’t seem to understand the daytime concept of “some of us actually have lives that need to go on without your loud and incessant chatter outside our front doors.”

  When do these kids go back to school again?

  The third thing hacking me off about the summer season right now is watermelon.

  Now, don’t get me wrong: I love me my watermelon. In fact, I have a really strange obsession with buying those personal mini watermelons EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. I go grocery shopping (so we’re talking several personal mini watermelons purchased per week…all year long).

  But…my love of watermelon is mine. Not everyone else’s. I don’t like seeing all the articles about what people can do with watermelon showing up on my Facebook newsfeed. Similarly, I wish I could hit ‘dislike’ on all of people’s Instagram posts about their tequila watermelon or how they came up with the novel idea to stick their watermelon on popsicle sticks.

  Novel idea my ass. I’ve been sticking my personal mini watermelons dipped in tequila on popsicle sticks since before you people even knew what a personal mini watermelon was. And to top that off, I don’t really dip it in tequila – that was a joke for emphasis – because WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT TO WATERMELON?! When summer is over, you’ll all go back to your complete disregard for what may very well be the greatest fruit on the planet, and I will still be obsessively purchasing my personal minis several times per week.

  Which makes you all posers. Summertime watermelon posers, making this summer basically the worst right now.

  Corn on the cob is another one.

  I love corn on the cob. Who doesn’t? No really… is there anyone that doesn’t at least moderately enjoy the summer vegetable?

  All year long I wait, patiently. Patiently for the day that corn will be on sale again, and – more importantly – when we will start getting this delicious bi-color corn in our weekly CSA box.

  Except when we get it, there’s like one. Or two. Have these people not gotten how many meals I serve every day? The bi-color corn is so goddamned good that we all fight over it, and when there’s only one in the week’s box I feel as though I have to ration out bites.

  No really. One week I actually suggested we each take approximately three bites of the one cob. Just pass that shit on around the table until we’ve all had our fair share.

  I almost just wish I had never heard of bi-color corn, or that corn weren’t a big summer thing either.

  Where are we at now? Four reasons summer is just the worst?

  The fifth is my inability to tan. Not that I want skin cancer or anything, but it seems as though everyone around me is suddenly golden and tan – which I equate with having a relaxing lifestyle that could afford the time to lie around and garner such a thing.

  And then there’s me – good ol’ whitey. My skin is so pale and white, people’s eyes hurt with they look at me with the sun reflecting off my glow-y, pasty skin.

  Not my hair, though. My hair lightens. And my dark hair dye that I use religiously to cover my annoying-non-Californian-Californian-blonde fades pretty much the minute I walk out of the hair salon, leaving me looking terrible. Just. Terrible. Glow in the dark white skin, matched with faded-nappy-looking-hair and sweat pretty much everywhere. Crabby from all the kids hanging around my neighborhood…bitching at people to shut up already about their watermelon. H-angry because I didn’t get a full cob of my week’s rationing of bi-color corn on the cob.

  In a nut shell, I hate summer. It is my least favorite of the four seasons, for these and many other reasons. Like the price of sunscreen – which should be given out for free, not charged at $15 a bottle that barely covers my white and pasty ass.

  Or the fact that California is on burn alert FLAMING RED 24 hours a day. We are all literally one asshole flicking his cigarette butt in the wrong direction-away from burning completely and utterly to the ground.

  I could go on.

  Summer is basically the worst right now. Well, really always for me but it’s really getting to me now that we’re in the innards of the season.

  I know you all will probably disagree, as you eat your tequila watermelons on a stick and bask in the glow of your perfectly tanned appendages. In the meantime, I’ll be counting down the minutes until fall.

   

  July 7, 2015

  comedy, complaining, DIY, griping, hate, hot, hot weather, humor, kids off school, life, lifestyle, Mom Life, satire, seasons, social commentary, summer, tirades, watermelon, whining

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• Saying Goodbye to Summer

  I don’t mean “saying goodbye to summer” as in it’s nice and cool and you can all break out your Uggs and seven-layered scarves and crap. No, no – as I sit here and think about changing my shirt since the boob sweat has now soaked through – no, I don’t mean that.

  I mean that all these little bastards are going back to school somewhere between the end of this week and the Tuesday after Labor Day. This is a blessed thing, in my book.

  Now before you all get huffy because I called your precious cargo “bastards,” please keep in mind that I don’t actually mean to say all kids are bastards. Just the majority of those in my community are. And we’ve all got to admit that some kids just are not the little sweetie-pies kids are supposed to be anymore. I think video games, television, and the culture of entitlement really ruined it for everyone.

  Being a homeschooling family, I don’t usually get a sense of “back to school” time. I know when the kids are back to school, because those little jerks aren’t running their scooters into my car and letting off fireworks outside my bedroom window anymore. They aren’t screaming at 6:30 in the morning to each other. Their parents are back to work too, rather than overcompensating for their lack of involvement during the school year.

  I think you know what I mean, though, when I say we don’t really get a sense of “back to school” time. We are in school all the time.

  There will be no “back to school” supply shopping for me because homeschooling is done all year in this house. Sometimes I take advantage of the back to school sales – because, quite frankly, homeschooling ain’t cheap – but if I don’t really need anything at the time, it usually comes and goes with no notice. This year, I already had more than enough of everything and had planned through the end of December of this year.

  I will have no overachieving parents to contend with whose children are in the same class as mine. I won’t have to stand around at the bus stop and chit-chat with mothers who don’t know my name, no matter how many times I’ve told them. There will be no carpool to deal with. No pick up/drop off lines. I won’t have to dread the return of the P.T.A. or P.T.O. or whatever the school calls them now. The “back to school” carnival will have no fish for us, because we won’t be there. My husband won’t be worried that this year he will finally have to volunteer for the carnival’s dunk tank. And when the Halloween party comes, I won’t have to take a Valium to prepare for the parents yelling at me – the room mom – for not presenting the baked goods in a way that properly highlighted them.

  There will be no volunteer hour requirements to once again meet. There will also be no fundraisers. There will be no auctions that I have to make baskets for. There will be no bake sales. There will be no cookie dough orders and gift wrap sales. There will be no bills for funds not raised and hours not volunteered.

  Summer may be coming to an end, but my sleeping until 9 in the morning every day won’t.

  Summer may be coming to an end, but trips to the museum whenever we want won’t.

  Summer may be coming to an end, but the added traffic and lines and public hassle sure will.

  At the end of the summer, I usually celebrate the return of school by scheduling all of our really fun stuff. This year we’re going to Catalina Island, although there will be very few people there. We’re going to Disneyland and there will be no lines. We’re heading to the Angels/White Sox game – in the middle of the day on a school day. No one will be around, but we will and this is so awesome words cannot describe.

  There are plenty of reasons why I am envious of the end of summer for many of you. You get showers again. You get “me” time again. You get order again and eight free hours a day to sip your coffee or tea or whatever until it’s time to get the kids and start on the homework. You don’t live and breath school, which is exactly what we do.

  There will be no day that comes and it is suddenly quiet in my house. There will be no quiet shower in the morning; uninterrupted by questions and complaints and “I’m hungry”s. There will be no eight hours of uninterrupted “me” time, when I can go to the spa or mop the floor in peace. Shopping will still include a stop at the toy store as a bribe to get the rest of the shopping done with no issues.

  But on the note of shopping, we will have no “school clothes shopping” day, where I am suddenly confronted with dress codes and the rising cost of uniforms.

  In the end, I still prefer my end of summer much better. Without the hassle of supply shopping, and the drag of getting out of bed before 7. Without the jerk kids running their scooters into my car and the overachieving parents forgetting my name. Saying goodbye to summer is saying hello to pretty good times for me.

   

  August 13, 2012

  back to school, children, comedy, end of summer, homeschool, humor, kids, life, lifestyle, mom, mom blog, mom humor, mommy, random post, random thoughts, satire, school, summer

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• Losing Touch With the World

  Today was Day 1 of Week 2 in “My Kid Is Better Than Yours Hell.” For those of you that don’t know what I am talking about because you haven’t been keeping up on my blog lately, every summer there is this crunch time in which all of the extra-curricular and other community activities we want to do fall at the same, damn time. Every day is a long and arduous march of activities – shuttling from one thing to the next until the end of the day where I collapse in utter exhaustion.

  Today, though, I took it a little more easy through the death march and took a look around, as well as at myself. In doing so, I realized that we all seem to be losing touch with the world.

  #1 Facebook Bullying

  I’ve said it once before and I’m going to say it again: I am so sick and goddamned tired of people that are Facebook bullying it makes me, well … sick. You know what I’m talking about: that person that posts a status update or an eCard they thought they were so clever to make:  it’s Facebook, not your diary. People that make fun of or put down other people are bullying. They’re judging. And they’re saying “I am the standard by which other people should judge their actions.” All of this is just a little out of touch with the way the world really is.

  

  Yesterday I saw a friend had taken it even further when she posted a picture of two people she saw on the beach – a man and a woman, both of which were a little frumpy. She included a pithy comment “nothing but eye candy here today…” and I immediately lost every ounce of respect I had for this woman. She is so out of touch with the world it is astounding. To think a woman in her 30s is still sitting around judging the way people look – and then talking about it – is a little sickening.

  #2 Motherfucking Octomom

  I saw some people talking on Twitter last week, and then again on Facebook, about how Octomom is now turning to stripping to make some money. Or was it porn? Who cares what it was, what is out of touch with the world were people’s responses. People are saying she is a bad mother because she is stripping. People are saying that child services needs to get involved.

  To begin, Octomom stripping to pay the bills is a good thing. The very people that are criticizing her for using the system to pay for her many children are also the ones complaining now that she is trying to support them. Even if she uses some of that money for herself – whatever the case may be, if she is working, she is working.

  To continue, Octomom has been center stage for some time now. Every time I hear or read someone say “can we please have a child services intervention?” I think this person must be a complete moron; because only someone terribly moronic would not realize that child services has known about Octomom for some time now and has no problem with her.

  Do you know why child services has no problem with her? Because there are a lot of mothers in this world with that many children. Single mothers, no less! Single mothers that strip to pay the bills!! Gasp!! Because she is not actually harming the children – she doesn’t do drugs, she isn’t abusing them. She’s stripping – something probably millions of mothers before her have done. This has been going on for decades in this country, alone. Why everyone acts as though Octomom is any different than your average, uneducated, middle-aged woman in an unfortunate position is beyond me.

  #3 Breastfeeding in a swimming pool

  And then today I saw that one of my friends had commented on some article about some lady that got kicked out of a public wading pool for whopping out her tit and squirting her boob juice at her 10 month old kid.

  The article begins “It’s never a good sign for society when a breastfeeding mom is told she has to stop nursing in public because some prude has their panties in a twist.” The writer of this article, the publisher of this website, and every idiot that agrees with this sentiment and the plight of the woman who breastfed in a public swimming pool have clearly lost touch with the world.

  That’s right, I did say “every idiot.”

  I am all for breastfeeding if a woman decides this is the best course for her and her baby. I’m all for public breastfeeding, as long as it doesn’t get on me. I do not believe that a woman should be forced to go in a bathroom, or in the car.

  But I also know that it’s never a good sign for society when we have forgotten the very real dangers of disease. HIV and AIDS are transmitted through breast milk, as well as a number of other bacterial, viral, and fungal agents. If that mother had spilled some of her milk into that pool, while the chlorine may have killed it, it also may have not. The people that asked her to get out of the pool to do the feeding were doing nothing other than exerting their right to protect themselves from someone else’s bodily fluid. This is a matter of basic hygiene, and I’d have to argue that it’s never a good sign for society when such things are being overlooked for the sake of proving a point.

   #4 “My Kid Is Better Than Yours Hell” Tennis Dads

  Remember last week when the tennis dads (I called them SOAPS – Summertime OverAchieving Parents) almost got into a fight over whose daughter was more into watching Wimbledon? Well, this week one of the dads did not return; the other brought his daughter 15 minutes late. When they walked up he said “sorry we’re late, but I think we all know Katelyn doesn’t need lessons.”

  Are you kidding me? This guy’s arrogance is off the fucking charts.

  A little later it was revealed that he had spent an assload of money on a new, adult-sized tennis racket for his six year old daughter. The coach gave her a kid’s-sized one to borrow since the big one kept falling out of her hands and the dad started screaming about it.

  I realized at this moment that the only one in touch with the world at these tennis courts was Coach Harvey, because he said something so wonderful and amazing I am still grinning from ear-to-ear: “perhaps if you worried less about your daughter becoming a pro and more about helping her learn to actually hit the ball things would go a little smoother here.”

  Fuck yes.

  #5 The B(itch) is losing touch with the world

  And last, but certainly not least, it appears that I am even losing touch with the world. No, I am not posting as a bully on Facebook, and I’m certainly not breastfeeding in a swimming pool.

  But I am losing touch with everything I love. Since I got home from vacation in April, life has been something of a downward swing. I’m homesick. I miss my family. And a lot of my hobbies and interests seem to be dwindling.

  Even my blog is losing its fanfare. Last week I posted about an upcoming video blog series I want to do, and an unprecedented number of people – people I called friends – said they were not interested. Really? REALLY? That’s the last fucking time I ‘like’ their pages, or share or support their causes. A lot of people said they were interested too, and I plan on doing it in the future … but not until I figure out just how and why I have lost touch with the world a little myself.

  My general readership is dwindling too, which seems odd since nothing in my blog has changed, save for a little design changing here and there. The most popular thing people seem to come to my site for now is donkey pornography. I haven’t ever been able to get more than a small amount of Facebook fans.  Contrary to popular belief, I’ve done everything the so-called experts say you should do: I published an eBook for my blog, utilized my personal network, I hosted a giveaway. And yet, the more I try the more I seem to lose touch with the world (the blog world, that is). I Googled it. I asked around a little. So far, I can’t seem to get a straight answer.

  Although while I have retreated into my shell just a little bit more than I was before – both in my online life, as well as my in-person life – I at least have comfort in knowing I haven’t lost touch with the world like tennis dad or the people that rail on about Octomom. I’m not popping out my boob in a swimming pool to leak my bodily fluid everywhere. At least I haven’t lost it as much as them. I don’t think I ever could.

  July 16, 2012

  blogging, blogs, breastfeeding, breastfeeding controversy, bullying, children, comedy, Facebook, Facebook bullying, humor, kids, life, lifestyle, morality, octomom, parenting, random events, random post, random thoughts, satire, social commentary, summer, summer activities, writing

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