Meijer Meany Mommies?

I have heard multiple mothers tell me about rude things people said about their life choices at Meijer.  People have made comments about the number of kids someone has, the ages of the kids, the personal appearance of the kids, and the behavior of the kids.  These comments usually feature mean and judgmental comments.  These comments always shock me.  The recipients are always the sweetest and sweetest looking moms.  I am always appalled that these comments could ever be made.

I have never experienced this.  I thought it was because my Meijer was the nice Meijer.

WRONG!

The secret is my meany repelling husband.  My husband is tall, dark, handsome, and unapproachable.  We usually do the grocery shopping and local park visiting together.  I feel this is why none of the meany mommies make comments to me.  It isn't me that is immune, it is the hubby.  I learned this the hard way just now.

I was in line at the Meijer pharmacy.  I decided to escape the craziness of my house for a minute, so I was there alone.  A woman yelled from across the store:

Meany Mommy:  My goodness you look like you are about to have a baby!
Me (by the way, I no longer get offended by people pointing out that I am preggo.  Everyone feels the need to point that out these days):  Not ready enough, I have two months left.
Meany Mommy:  But you are REALLY big.  Are you sure you are not having twins.
Me:  I hope not, I am definitely not ready for that.
(Then I took a runny start and jump kicked the woman in the face)

Lesson learned, gigantically pregnant women are incredibly approachable.  Everyone wants to talk to them.  I cannot leave the house without the hubby until after this baby is born. 

Home Safety Town-ing

So, Chazzy Chazzerton will be starting kindergarten in the fall.  I don't know if they do the same thing everywhere, or just here, but the big thing to do the summer before you start kindergarten is to attend a week of Safety Town.  Safety Town is a day camp type thing where they teach your kid about safety.

When I was a kid I did not attend Safety Town.  I am not sure if they didn't have it or if I just didn't attend.  I do not know how I have survived this long without it.  However I managed to survive, Chazzy Chazzerton better figure out the same strategy because I am not sending him to Safety town.  Why?  Here are the reasons:

• I am lazy.  Sending the boy to Safety Town would take some planning.  We would need to figure out who would drop him off and who would pick him up and blah blah blah.
• I am cheap.  It costs some amount of money to attend Safety Town and there is an additional cost for the after Safety Town care and I already pay for him to go to daycare.
• I am dumb.  I just don't get it.  What could they possibly teach that would take a whole week?

To make myself feel better for the shortcomings listed above, I have decided to home safety-town Chazzy Chazzerton.  Here is what I came up with that he needs to learn:

• Stranger Danger.
• Look both ways before you cross the street.
• Don't climb up the slide.

Then I talked to some friends that are not lazy, cheap, or dumb, so they did send their children to Safety Town.  Here are some additional things they learned:

• Fire Safety (Actually, I don't mind that he missed this.  I remember learning fire safety and I was in a panic for months about burning up in a fire)
• Police are Friendly
• Severe Weather safety
• Don't climb on furniture and fall down
• How to put on a fabulous safety based performance

It looks like I am going to have to step up my home Safety-Town curriculum.  Any other thoughts of what I should add?

On a side note, one of the dads of a kid that went to Safety Town accidentally called it Crazy Town.  Now, if that was the name, you could teach the kids to sing "Come my lady, come come my lady, You're my butterfly, sugar baby" in the final performance.  I think I will add that to the home Safety-Town curriculum.  I will also add the theme song to Reading Rainbow (Butterfly in the sky, I can fly twice as high...) and it will be a butterfly themed safety performance. OH, and I will teach some sort of choreography that goes along with "The Safety Dance".

Karate Kid, then and now

Recently, my son fell in love with the new karate kid movie.  No, not Karate Kid 2, 3, or the one with Hilary Swank, he likes the one with Will Smith's son in it. 

At first I encouraged this love of the Karate Kid.  I loved The Karate Kid and all the sequels.  For some reason, I don't like this new one.  It is not Jackie Chan's fault or Will Smith's son's fault.  Both of them do a fine job.  I surprisingly enjoy how similar, almost word for word at points, the plot is to the original.  I am even willing to overlook how a young kid from Detroit can beat a ton of kids in China at kung fu.

My problem with the movie is one part perspective, and one part the age of the karate kid.  I think the character is only 3 or 4 years younger than the Ralf Machio's character, but those years make a big difference.  Seeing a kid that young get beat up so badly really bothers me.  I guess the change in perspective is because I am a parent now.  The possibility that my child could get beaten so badly and try to hide it from me REALLY bothers me.  Now that I am a responsible adult, I notice that when Jackie Chan steps in to protect the karate kid, he does not hit the kids at all.  He just uses the force from the boys against themselves.  I can't tell you if that is the same when Pat Morita stepped in to save Danielson, because I didn't care if an adult beat those teens up.  They deserved it.  When watching the original Karate Kid movies, I never thought Danielson should run to his mommy to take care of his bullies.  Now, I can't understand why the kid refuses to tell his mom he got beaten to a pulp.  I guess this is just another sign that I am getting old.

Which Karate Kid Movie is your favorite?

slivers and splinters...my worst fear.

I have a fear of splinters or slivers or whatever you want to call them.  This is a HUGE fear.  When I was a kid, my mom always went in after the splinters with a needle and it seemed to be the most painful thing in the world.  As an adult, I go to great lengths to avoid getting slivers.

Over the 4th of July weekend I was reminded why I fear them so.  We had some people over for the 4th, and the kids were running on the deck with no shoes on.  There is NO way I am going on the deck with no shoes on, but I figured I shouldn't let my fears run over onto my kids, so I let them.  Dessy Dess got 3 slivers in the heal of her foot.  I didn't notice.  No one noticed until we were camping with my family over the weekend.  Dessy Dess was limping and my aunt nurses noticed.  Armed with tweezers, needles, and disinfectant, they removed the slivers.  Poor Dessy Dess.  Aunt Amy was holding her for part of the time and I had her for the other part.  She was crying in a way that only a tortured two year old can cry.  It broke my heart.  After the removal, the foot was medicated and Dessy Dess spent the rest of the weekend in uncle Jim's extra long grey sock.  She just kept saying, "boo boo, me".  I don't think she will forgive my aunts for a while, but I am super thankful that they took care of it.  They said it looked infected.  Had I discovered the problem myself, the poor little thing would have gone to the doctor, because I don't think I could dig it out.

This tragedy reminded me of the reasons for my fears much more vividly.  I think I could pick a live spider up in my hands before I could run my hand across splintered wood.  I use the daintiest touch when picking up any type of wood.  EWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW

So, how do you handle a sliver/splinter in your own body?  In someone else's body?  I hear it is easier to get it out of your own body, because you can control the pain and such, but I don't know about that.

OK, OK, I will join your book club!

It has been a LONG time since I posted a blog, but I just had to since I remembered that my last post 2 years ago was about NOT wanting to join a book club...and now I have gone and joined a book club.  Maybe this signals the revival of Rockin' like Chocken.

I recently met a few new friends that are members of a book club.  A month or so ago they invited me to see The Great Gatsby with them and their book club friends.  Their book club friends all seemed very nice.  The movie was beautiful.  I generally knew what was going on because I read the book in high school.

Fast forward a month and they asked me to join their book club.  I took time to really obsess about this invitation.  I like to read, but I don't read much.  I don't like to discuss literary stuff, I just care about the story.  BUT, the people seemed really nice, so after the appropriate amount of obsession time, I decided to attend the book club.

It was a delight.  They didn't even tell me what the book was until I got there, but it was still a delight.  It was nice to sit with a group of women and just discuss life.  They discussed aspects of their lives as they related to the book.  There were also great snacks and entertainment as the resident toddler danced around the room for us.

Overall, a great success!