Tag Archives: half-assed mom

Recently I’ve culled my expectations for my kids down to five big ones. Here they are, in chronological order:

1. Learn to wipe their own asses

2. Read obsessively

3. Play an instrument

4. Nurture a passion

5. Be a liberal

This list outs a few basic things about me: I’m practical and immoderately idealistic; part taskmaster, part dreamer; part outspoken smart ass, part tea-sipping pacifist.  Which may or may NOT bode well for raising sane kids; time will tell, or rather, therapy bills will tell.

In any event, I’m confident my first four expectations will fall into place without massive effort. But number five is a different story,

The more conservative PAL can’t help but pull the kids (gently) under his right wing. But since I’m hell-bent on cultivating the buds of liberalism I can already see pushing up at the fertile soil of their souls, there’s no doubt our funkhouse will flourish with lefties.

This entre into liberalism is as close to homeschooling as I’ll get, and includes all sorts of “lessons” I’m loathe to put into practice (cause I have the patience of a day trader), but for the sake of an entire generation’s salvation, I’ll give it a shot.

If I don’t start the acclimation (do I mean edification?) process now, I may end up the only liberal in my house which makes for sordid odd-man-out scenarios I’ll be compelled to pepper into my short stories.

Here’s how I propose we start liberalizing our kids:

 

1. Play Monopoly and insist all their money go toward defending Park Place with tanks and spy planes and whatnot. But that’s not in the rules, the kids protest, and Park Place doesn’t need our help.  Oh Contraire, you say, if your government is LIBERAL you won’t see that, otherwise, you’re S-O-L, sweeties.  Up the ante on the lesson:  When they’re not looking, sneak 90% of their money and heap it in an “Invade and Shoot ‘em up” pile.

2. Read the Bible at bedtime. Liberals galore—including the amiable protagonist in the second half.

3. Sit the kids out on the back porch for the night; deny blankets, pillows or water until they go get a job. Yell through the screen door: This is what happens if you’re homeless in a conservative world. Don’t be homeless. Don’t be conservative. Clear? That’s what I thought. Bring them in before it becomes a memory they one day exaggerate in a memoir, then cuddle and practice spelling E-M-P-A-T-H-Y.

4. Run into their rooms at 2 a.m., scream, turn on the lights, scream some more, puke (if you can) on their pillows.  Rattle them to their contended little cores. Wait for them to mumble, “Mom, what are you doing?”  Answer: You want a world without birth control? A Santorum world? Then let’s hope you don’t get pregnant in high school. Otherwise, plan on not sleeping a full night ‘til you’re incontinent, is all I’m saying.

5. Refuse a Band-Aid next time someone scrapes a knee. Demand an insurance card. She gives you what she has in her piggy bank. Laugh out loud, say that hardly pays for you to open the Band-Aid, let alone hand over a Sleeping Beauty Band-Aid. You chide, welcome to a conservative healthcare system. Think about maybe one day checking “liberal” on your voter card, sista.

Meantime, while my kids work on mastering the forward to aft butt wipe, I’ll be taking them to more independent coffee shops. We’ll sit next to same sex couples and talk about how they’ll one day be allowed to get married or give a homily.

We might even get out pom-poms and pipe cleaners and do some kind of craft paying homage to liberalism. Probably not, but you can.  Then send it to me and we’ll tape it up.

 

 sMother: (noun), as in a mother who smothers. A mother whose hypervigilant hovering, constant emotional redirection and excruciating involvement in their kid’s every tic, rant and loose stool is downright clinical.  A sMother can be found refereeing playdates, manning the slide at parks, and always in a doctor’s office. A kid of a sMother is rarely allowed to eat his first tree nut without a paramedic on deck, nor skip through a park without strict instructions for skipping.

Sad part is: they’re everywhere, these sMothers with their mini antibacterial bottles clipped to key chains, flashcards rubberbanded in their purses—and they’re dangerous, viral.

My biggest concern is, of course, a mostly selfish one. I’m worried my kids might someday date/marry/shack up with a kid of a sMother and I can only assume the racket of dealing with a partner who’s never picked out her own socks, who’s never been allowed to dismember a dung beetle, one appendage at a time.

I’m no psychologist, but based on my vast experience with psychosis I sort of should be, and so have compiled this handy guide to reference next time you’re sharing a bench with a sMother and wonder, what kind is she? They’re a species and should be duly categorized:

 

1. The First-Aid sMother: Good on her, she’s got a Ziploc baggie busting with Neosporin and band-aids and anti-venom, but she’s still making her second grader sit in a bucket swing.  She volunteers to man the first-aid table at the school’s annual fundraiser.

2. The “No-Touchy” sMother:  You can hear that grating chirp in your sleep. “No touchy, Timmy, that’s a flower and flowers should be looked at not touched. No touchy the dirt Timmy, no touchy the doggie, no touchy your friends, your food, your eyes, your penis. Timmy, did you hear me? The world doesn’t like to be touched.” You will smuggle a gift card for counseling into Timmy’s pinch-free lunch pail.

3. The Grammar sMother: Former English teacher turned full-time mom. She can’t get her job back, nor can she get off her high-horse about bygone rules.  She makes you self-conscious of every word so you shut up when she shows up at the school’s annual fundraiser and sits her schoolmarm ass at your picnic table.

4. The Choking sMother:  She choked on a grape once and can’t get over it. Her kid is ten and she still shreds his cheese sticks into smithereens.  You saw her the other day, fishing Cheerios out of her teenager’s mouth, all petulant and singsongy: One at a time, sweetie, one at time.

5. The Academic sMother: She goes beyond quizzing her kid in the car, at story time, at the dinner table.  What’s this letter? What’s five times five? Who gave the Gettysburg Address? This sMother supplements the rigors of private school with pop quizzes at breakfast, trips to art museums and re-runs of Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom. She makes you feel like a dope, so at the annual school fundraiser  you start a rumor that she’s a stripper.

Five types, all of them equally detrimental to the psyche of this up and coming generation. It’ll be a fetid pool of wishy-washy, scaredy cats without a single lumpy scar to show off at a bar someday—if you don’t intervene.

You can get a sMother help. Send her here: www.halfassedmom.com. I can set her straight. Sure I can.

 

The Santorum Dictionary Of Idiotisms

BIBLEOCRACY:

A system by which the preferred monotheistic religion dictates laws and governing bodies, unless your body has not been deemed holy in which case your body is free-market fodder and will be drilled for oil.  Bibleocracy is in no way restricted to the most restrictive terms of the namesake book, if the dictates therein make for huge inconveniences like banning a man from wearing mixed fiber garments (Leviticus 19:19) or restricting one from eating anything leavened (Exodus 12:20) or demanding we feed the hungry (Matthew 25:35) or love our neighbors (Matthew 22:37-40):, since, as we all know, the kindest neighbors sometimes harbor oil.

THE MICRO CLASS:

the fourth and lowest of the lower class.  The phytoplankton of America. Enough said, as Romney, in his most sensible moment, has already pointed out.

 

GLOBAL WARMING DIVERSION COMMITTEE:

Created in response to the overwhelming (and spasmodic) concern for the environment, the committee is focused on the “science” of scientific studies. By 2014, the committee aims to reallocate environmental funds to what matters—and it isn’t trees. God gave us trees; he can give us more trees.  He’s got clean oceans on stand-by, a double-decker ark loaded with second-coming species, architectural blueprints for erecting a civilization on the “Goldilocks Plant.”  If anything, unloading our scourge on this earth will only reap us a prettier one.  So let’s talk about gay marriage. Committee meets every full moon.

THE GAY-LESBO EFFECT:

The deficit, the melting ice, Iran’s nuclear enrichment, the global genocide,the bi-partisan politics, the mortgage boondoggle, the smear-campaigns and crappy caucus in Maine—there’s only one group to blame. If weren’t for two same-sexed peoples sexing it up with sexual intercourse and promiscuous sex in acrobatic ways entirely contradictory to the rules of Bible sex and procreation, we’d have diplomacy and cheap gas and peace cupcakes for all.

THE UTERINE COMMUNION:

A happy, free-speak forum by which all reproducing women can openly communicate about their prolapsed uteri and unrecognizable anatomy stretched like salt-water taffy. Since contraception is only a “license to do things in a sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be,” here’s a community dedicated to you selfless brood mares.

 

As the campaign trail prattles on, we expect many, many more thoughtful additions and look forward to sharing them with you.

Yours in family values and unprotected heterosexual sex,

The Santorum Campaign