Bored? Are they SERIOUS?

Finally, I had to sit all the kids down for one of ‘those’ old geezer-y talks earlier. Y’know, the ones where you have to lecture the kids about the way it was when we were kids? “We used to walk to school both ways barefoot, uphill, in the snow!” (And stuff of this sort that makes you feel eleventy-billion years old, y’know?) My talk sort-of went like this:

“Kids, you have toys. You have bikes. You have skateboards. You have a trampoline. You have a train table. You have action figures. You have blocks. You have a sprinkler. You have costumes. YOU HAVE YOUR FREAKING IMAGINATIONS IN THOSE BRAINS OF YOURS! Why on earth do we have to hear ‘I’m bored’ from you guys eleventy-billion times a day until we invent something for you to do ourselves or finally get sick and tired of the whining and let you stay in? Do you know, when we were kids, we’d be outside as soon as we were up and only come inside for bathroom breaks, drinks, meals, and when the streetlight came on – that was it! We were NEVER, EVER, inside! We L-I-V-E-D outside, played games, tag, chased fireflies, went on bike-ride adventures, built forts, climbed trees.. video games and watching cartoons wasn’t a thought on our minds, and we ALL knew better than to tell our moms that we were ‘bored’ or she’d give us chores to do. DO YOU WANT ME TO GIVE YOU MY CHORES TO DO? DO YOU?”

And the kids, in their shocked, who-pissed-in-mom’s-cornflakes kind-of way, as though someone’d just farted in church, they looked at me with their “Holy crap!” faces and simply shook their heads side to side, mouth agape. They couldn’t speak, they were so floored by the actual IDEAS flying from my lips at them.

“Alrighty then, now GO OUTSIDE. PLAY. USE YOUR IMAGINATIONS. Stop coming in here to complain/use the restroom/fidget with stuff every few seconds, or there will laundry, vacuuming, dusting, and many other not-so-pleasant parental-type things for you to do, ya got it?!”

I saw puffs of smoke where they once sat as they left my living room so fast. My older ones, though, I saw smidgens of atrocity blended with sincere disappointment in their faces as they left a little slower, a little more downtrodden and dejected. They knew I was onto their, I-need-a-drink-every-two-seconds acts, and they knew it didn’t take them an hour to use the restroom upstairs where their TV was.

My talk with them didn’t help me, though. Not like I’d hoped it would. I suddenly felt very old, very tired, despite summer lasting another 5+ weeks, I already feel beat-down and ready to snap. Or, perhaps I already did?

I just don’t get it – I used to love summer as a child. My children revel in their last days of school the same way I used to. What the heck has changed? How has society changed? And why do I feel like a bad parent for kicking my kids outside to play? What is wrong with this picture?

Sigh.

My hands were moist with nervousness as I fumbled with the keys in my hand, slipping them onto my key chain. I hung them from my fingers for a minute, admiring them like a set of new diamond earrings, except even more precious. Keys to my home.

My.
Home.

The house was a flurry of activity, as movers wielded heavy boxes of our belongings into rooms, watching furniture wheel in on dollies, as landscapers shoveled and heaved and laid sod, planting our gardens and lawn.

In the blink of an eye, it became quiet. Boxes sat silent, furniture in the wrong places, gardeners and movers gone. We sat in our house, listening to the walls and to the air-conditioner, hissing sweet coolness in our house.

Our.
House.

Over a week’s passed since the first turn of our shiny silver key, and 90% of the boxes are unpacked and gone, and finishing, perfecting touches are being made to each room. Many, many trips are being made to this store, or that shop, to pick up what’s needed and remains to be completed; all acts of making this brand new house our home.

Our.
Home.

I wake up to the ceiling fan above me, standing and seeing the morning sun cascading in rainbows from the decorative glass from the front door. There isn’t much in this house that I haven’t fallen head-over-heels in love with.

Preparing coffee in my now-spacious kitchen, sipping it on my new front porch, as the sprinklers weigh our new sod down with water, breathing in the morning Texas air, ready to take on yet another day of prepping this house.

Our house.

Sometimes, I almost can’t believe it – we’re officially homeowners now.

But oh, they are!

We looked at rentals, navigating through the tumultuous rental waters, only to find way overpriced homes in not too savory areas. So, with house prices and mortgage rates as low as they are, we’ve decided to buy our first home. This wasn’t the original plan, of course. We haven’t been scrimping and saving, or putting “Buy Our First House” on our Bucket List for 2011. And because we’ve suddenly turned to this decision in, what feels like, lightning speed, this situation is quickly careening out of my comfort zone, and rapidly approaching DEFCON 80 in SUCK factor.

Let me tell you, If you want to experience something that is going to make you grow gray hair faster than those that crop up while being a parent, g’head, buy your first home, and watch ‘em sprout.

This isn’t a peaches ‘n cream, Beaver Cleaver experience, folks. This isn’t what they portray on TV, “Oh look, honey! We’re homeowners! Look at our beautiful home with a picket fence and cute, non-shedding dog and neighbors we love!”

Oh hellz, no. This is an experience I’m not sure I ever want to do again, to be frank. Maybe I’ll be so successful as to be able to pay cash for a home someday, because this mortgage loan, showings, shady realtors and sellers crap is for the birds.

We’ve put in offers to three homes to have two fall through, and the third turn to crap when the house inspection went south. (The foundation had major problems, and the house is sinking into the ground. No joke.) In fact, we’re currently embroiled in a battle as we speak to get the earnest money back from the third house, because the sellers are trying to scam us, just as they were trying to scam us into their sinking home. I guess I have “I NEED MORE STRESS IN MY LIFE” tattooed on my forehead for all to see.

This fourth house, the one we’re currently in contract for, is a builder home. We couldn’t use our lender, we had to use their lender. We just received the list of “accompanying paperwork” they need for this loan. W2s? Check. Paystubs? Check. Photocopies of ID & social security cards? Check. Three months worth of bank statements, every page, every thing you’ve spent on every account you have? Um, what? Hello, invasion of privacy? What’s next, what brand of underwear I prefer?

And to make matters the tippy-top of ultimate crud, the movers came for a pre-inspection and told us they are too busy to try to make this a two-day pack, they’ll have to squeeze our five-bedroom house into a one-day pack. Which means, they’ll be throwing my stuff into a box as fast as they can. I’ll be lucky to get it to arrive at our new house in one piece.

Seriously folks, this move is going to kill me. Pray for us, for our sanity, and for the misery to stop. We’re going to need it.

“Yes, mommy?” She responded, hair all over the place.

It was clear she’d been playing hair-do with her brother. I could hear his groans from the other room from her pulling his hair too tightly. “Baby, can you pick up your hair-pretties, please?”

“What hair pretties?” She asks.

“Those hair pretties!” I say, even more authoritatively, as I nudge her into the right direction.

Before she can ask again, I reiterate, “THERE!” pointing now, frustrated from repeating myself several times.

“Can you hang them up?”

“What?” she asks.

“Can you hang them up? Y’know, where they’re supposed to be hung?”

“Hung?” she asks.

“Yes, hung!” I repeat.

Again.

“Hung?” she repeats again.

By this time, my face is reddening, and my patience are gone. “Oh my gosh, baby, YES! HUNG! As in, go HANG them UP where they get HUNG. OVER THERE!” I motion, again, pointing to her dress-up area.

“Oh! Hang it up!” she responds.

And I sigh, grateful she finally seems to get what I’m freakin’ saying.

“Where?” she asks.

As if she doesn’t play with these all the time, and they’re always found in the same freakin’ spot, but no, she needs to put them away, and suddenly she forgets where to put them? ARE YOU SERIOUS!?!?!?

And then, I die inside. Or maybe I fainted, I don’t know.

——————-

Knock, knock

I ignore it, figuring it’s one of my children who can open the door. I continue to write.

Knock! Knock! Knock!

Getting louder. I still ignore it.

KNOCK!KNOCK!KNOCK!

“OHMYFRIGGINLORD, WHAT!?” I mumble under my breath as I see a teenager with God-awful make-up like a vampire on my porch.

Wonder-friggin-ful. “Is your daughter here?”

“Hold on,” I grumble, turning to call upstairs to her.

No answer. My husband calls to me from beneath his snores on the couch, reminding me she’s out walking with her friends. I open the glass door to Nosferatu to relay the message. “Do you know where she went walking?”

“Um, no? Around the neighborhood somewhere…” As I shoot a desperate, I need-to-get-back-to-my-work-at-my-computer look, uninterested in assisting the living dead any further, “but I’m sure you can probably ask one of my children outside, they might know whose house she was headed to.”

“Oh, okay. Thank you!”

I grumble to myself as I return to my work, once again. Not 2.4 seconds later, someone barrels through the door, storms upstairs, opening my daughter’s bedroom, closing it, running downstairs like a herd of elephants, to turn the corner and peek out from the wall behind my desk. “Have you seen her?” asking for the very same daughter himself.

“Dude! I asked her friend to ask you guys, because she already asked me and I didn’t know. If you guys don’t know, you can tell her you don’t know, okay?”

“Oh. Okay, mom!” As he rushes back out the door, I’m now leaning against my hands, staring at the screen, completely blank-minded of where I was two seconds ago from massive interruptions, and noticeably grayer than I was five minutes ago.

–

A diaper-less, potty-training toddler let loose in the house? Surely there are worse forms of torture out there.

First of all, why the heck is something you pee and take a crap in so expensive, anyway? So what, it makes a magical fairy-dust, sparkly sound when you “flush” – is that two-bit musical piece, decorated in princessesque decals and painted pink worth the price of a month’s paycheck just to get her interested?

Apparently so.

And we,desperate-to-get-away-from-changing-poopie-diaper parents are willing to spend that much.

Those toddler toilets don’t even clean themselves, you know. You have to take it eleven-kinds of apart just to get to the dreaded poop and pee “collector” to dump its contents in the toilet then wash it out, all while trying to keep from gagging.

But amidst the choking-back gagging and silently cursing at the grossness of it all, you have a triumphant toddler, cheering herself, pushing the jingling flush button over and over “I potty! I potty! Woot (look), mommy!”

Not to mention the pride you feel. Sure, it’s gross, but you’re thisclose to her doing this all on her own, and one step closer to no longer having to change her diapers. You almost get giddy, all while wondering where time went, how big she’s getting, your life with her flashing before your very eyes as you smile at the ideas you devise to celebrate your soon-to-be new-found diaperlessness with her.

Until you discovered she didn’t completely make it to the potty to begin with – she actually started on the carpet, caught herself, and ran to the potty to finish.

Crap! (Literally.)

Such is life of the potty-training mother. Where’s the “What To Expect..” manual for this?