WTF Friday: Volume 11

February 8, 2013 by UndercoverL | 12 Comments

Oh this week.  What a week.  Did anyone else begin this week thinking: oh, what I wouldn’t give to have a body double this week?  You know you did.  Don’t be shy about it.  We are in an honest and safe place.  I’ve been there and I understand.  Did you find something to complain about this week?  Complaining is accepted here, too, because– you know what?– complaining means you are not satisfied with status quo.  You have ideals and you feel it important to convey just what those ideals are.  I respect you for that!  I do!  Want to know what I complained about this week?  Sure you do!  Come along then…

1)  I didn’t even get to finish last week before my list of WTF-ery began to take form.  Remember the mice of WTF 10?  I convinced my husband on Friday that it was important– vitally so– to take care of these little varmints!  So we went to Home Depot and bought some mouse traps.  (I have only seen one mouse, but I wanted to hedge my bets in case there is an infestation that I don’t know about.)  We bought the traps and returned home, where we baited and set the traps in sly places around our garage.  We used mozzarella cheese (because I like my sharp cheddar too much to share), and only three of the four traps we bought worked, but we felt confident in our booby-trapping.  Boy Wonder helped us set them– well, he watched because I wasn’t about to take a trip to the ER with a broken finger– and he was disturbingly excited to see his first dead mouse.  (No, not this guy…)

So, traps are set.  Kids are in bed.  Mama and daddy sit down and watch a Spartacus: Vengeance marathon (we are catching up on three missed seasons).  The night ends on a morbidly blissful note.

Saturday morning begins early with a flag football game, so we are up at 6:15 AM.  First thing out of Boy Wonder’s mouth is “did we kill the mouse?”  So we go out to check.  The cheese is gone.  Only one trap has been sprung.  The mouse has evaded capture/death.  The mouse won.  We have the smartest, craftiest, most conniving mouse in the world living in our garage.  If there was one before, there are more now because I am sure all we managed to do was allow him to spread the word that the idiots in this house hold mouse banquets on Friday nights.  WTF?!

Irony is: the name of this trap. I am fairly certain that was meant to encourage me to victory… but apparently, it was just another way for the mouse to put up his tiny middle finger to me.

2)  Did you watch the Stupor Bowl on Sunday?  I didn’t.  I meant to.  I am a football fan, though I didn’t give a mouse’s backside who won because I am not a fan of the Ravens or the 49ers.  But I was too busy drinking and socializing at my friend’s house.  I think I caught 2 plays of the whole game, and only one commercial (that stupid Coke race commercial… lame.  Who won?).  I had fun, and that’s what counts.  So my WTF is not about the game itself– though I don’t understand why companies pay such ridiculous amounts of money on 30 second commercials when there are so many people suffering because of poverty.  Another time….

My WTF about the Stupor Bowl has to do with why it takes place on a Sunday.  I know I am not the only idiot who woke up Monday morning feeling like I had been dragged down the street behind a moped.  I would venture (in my “I don’t want to do actual research on this comment” way) to say that Stupor Bowl Sunday is probably the second most inebriated festivity of the year behind New Year’s Eve.  Why does it have to fall on a Sunday when people have to return to work the next day?  How did you fare on Sunday?  Take this poll:

I will bravely submit that it would be a good idea to move Stupor Bowl Sunday to Stupor Bowl Saturday.  Keeping it on Sunday will always make me say WTF?!

3)  My next WTF happened early, early, early Tuesday morning.  I am a light sleeper and have been ever since I had my first child.  If a sippy cup hits the ground in the middle of the night, I spring into action.  (I am Sleepless Superheroine.  Yep, that’s me.)  Well, I was as peacefully sleeping as I could on Tuesday morning when suddenly, at 3:45 AM I hear a child crying “Mama!  Mama!”  I listen carefully, but am fairly sure that it isn’t my children because they are freaking LOUD and this, while loud, was not loud enough to be them.  Also, it was coming from outside, so unless one of my kids managed to get down the stairs and out one of the locked doors without me knowing, it was unlikely to be my child.  I rolled over, hearing the incessant crying thinking, “Poor kid.  I’ve been there.  I bet mama is outside with the baby now trying to get him back to sleep.”  But the crying persisted.  By now I could tell that the child was probably about 18 months old and not just upset, but in pain or very sick.  I began to get irritated at the mother of this child, wondering why she was keeping him outside in the dead of night while he was screaming his poor lungs out.  I considered calling the police.

After ten minutes of constant on-again, off-again crying, I decided I should probably get up to check on my kids.  You know, just in case.  So I got out of bed and checked.  Princess Red Chief and Boy Wonder were slumbering peacefully.  Thank God I wasn’t the bad mother.  But who was?  I sourced the noise to somewhere behind our house, so I went to the playroom window and looked into the night to see if I could catch sight of this child-in-peril and his terrible mother.  The lights were on at a neighbor’s house (these folks are weird, weird, weird).  I watched for a while to see if there was movement inside the house (or out in the backyard, because this crying was hella loud).  No movement.  All of a sudden I hear a series of loud crashes and screams, the Rottweilers next door began to bark very loud.  Then it was silent.

“Oh my God!  That child was just killed!  I just heard a murder!  Oh my God!  I have to phone the police!”

I walked back to my bedroom and asked DH what the hell just happened.  (The sound woke him up too, which is saying a lot because I could fire a 50-cal rifle over his side of the bed and he wouldn’t stir.)  His response was, “I hope that damned cat is dead now.”  I told him that it wasn’t a cat it was a child and he laughed at me.  ”Darling, I heard them fighting the whole time.  It was a couple of cats fighting and then knocking over the trash bin.”

Have I told you that I hate cats?  I do.  A lot.  More than rats, possums, diseased mice, and my ex-husband all together.  (Well, maybe not my ex.  I hate him more.)  I will not get graphic here because I know some people love cats (and they need help, not ridicule).  But let’s just leave it at an extreme loathing of cats.  So to find that two mangy, menacing felines had disturbed my sleep was enough to illicit some foul language and extreme ire.  I didn’t get back to sleep until 5:00 AM.  My alarm went off at 6:00 AM for the day.  Eff you, stupid effing cats.  I am going to buy a dog so that the next time I hear you, I can let him out and he can eat you!  Get out of my damned yard!  WTF?!

Photo courtesy of creator-reloader.deviantart.com

4)  Princess Red Chief decided early Wednesday morning that she would not be outdone by two marauding felines in the middle of the night.  So at 3:00 AM, Princess Red Chief decided the day was due to begin for us.  She raised the alarm by kneeling on her bed and screaming “mommy” at the top of her lungs until I got to her bed.  When I got there, she looks at me with all the innocence that a child who may be the Earthly spawn of the Prince of Darkness can muster and says, “It’s morning time.  I want to go wake up bruthies (what she calls Boy Wonder).”  I told her that it was still dark outside and it was not time to wake up.  I also reminded her that bruthies has school in the morning and needs his sleep.  I told her to close her eyes and go back to sleep and I would wake her up when the sun came up.  She sneered at me, but decided to lay back down and close her eyes.  I turned on her little singing dog and went back to bed.

When I got into bed, I snuggled up next to DH and began my calming techniques for returning to sleep (I am pretty sure I suffer with insomnia).  Just as my mind drifted to sleep, I hear Princess screaming again.  I look at the clock and it is 3:15 AM.  I rush back into her room so that she doesn’t continue to scream and wake up Boy Wonder and DH and ask her what’s wrong.  She looks at me and says, “I want a drink.”  So I hand her the sippy cup full of water that is on the edge of her bed.  ”No!  I want you to hold it while I drink!”  Yes.  I am her bitch.  Especially when I am trying to keep her quiet so everyone else can continue to sleep.  Once she has had her fill of water, I tuck her back in and tell her that if she wakes me up again I am going to turn off her night light and shut her door.  She says ‘okay’ and closes her eyes.  Ahhh.  I won.

Not.  At 4:45, I hear the door to Boy Wonder’s room open and Princess Red Chief scream, “Bruthies!  Wake up!”  Bloody effing hell.  (Yes, I said that out loud.)  I, once again, brave the Lego minefield strategically set up by Boy Wonder on the landing, and high-tail it into his room so that Princess doesn’t succeed in arousing him.  I tell her that she needs to go to sleep or else we won’t do anything fun in the morning and that she is being very mean to me.  She begins to cry (faux crying… she is really good at this) and tells me that she doesn’t want me to be mad at her.  (Really, friends, she doesn’t care if I am mad at her.  It’s part of her connection with the Prince of Darkness.  As long as she gets what she wants, she doesn’t give a s#!t who is mad at her.)  I put her back in bed and tell her not to come out again until I come and get her.  She agrees.

That lasts 15 minutes.  At 5:00, she wanders into my bedroom and stands next to my bed.  I normally don’t let kids sleep with me, but I still have 1.5 hours until my alarm goes off so all is not lost for sleep; I let her climb in bed with me and I tell her to go to sleep or I will never let her in my bed again.  (Okay, I get that most parents don’t talk to a 2 year-old like this.  Not only does it seem mean, but it seems a bit complicated of a conversation for a parent to have with a toddler.  People who think that don’t know my daughter.  She is a freaking genius, and I don’t say this to brag.  I say it so that you know that I am totally and thoroughly effed because I am her mom.  She will be smarter than me by the time she is 8.  I am sure of it.  I am so screwed.  As bitchy as I am, she trumps me every time.  And she is cuter than me, so she can get away with anything.)  Back to the story at hand:  She agrees to go back to sleep.

That lasts until 6:05– an hour I spent pushing her feet away from my stomach, brushing her hair out of my face, and stealing my pillow back from her– when she rolls over and asks if she can go play in the playroom.  I concede.  At 6:30, she screams, at the top of her tiny lungs, “Good morning everyone!  The sun is up!  Get out of bed!”

Here is what I am thinking now:  Princess Red Chief, if you ever do this to me again, I will buy a dog and I will sic him on you and have him eat you.  What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.

(Brief aside: I totally adore my daughter.  I am immensely blessed to be her mom.  She is as cute and charming as she is evil and conniving.  She isn’t in danger of anyone hurting her, especially me.  So you can all relax now.)

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It’s been a shorter rant this week because today is Boy Wonder’s birthday!

However, birthdays do not call for a cease in WTF-ery.

If you witness a WTF moment, let me know.

I will add it to next week’s list of head-scratchers, hair-pullers, and finger-flippers.

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For more WTF-ery, check out:

WTF Friday: Volume 1

WTF Friday: Volume 2

WTF Friday: Volume 3

WTF Friday: Volume 4

WTF Friday: Volume 5

WTF Friday: Volume 6

WTF Friday: Volume 7

WTF Friday: Volume 8

WTF Friday: Volume 9

WTF Friday: Volume 10