Much More Chill

As the title would suggest, I'm much more chill today. A long afternoon with Guy #1 tends to do that for me. So I am probably not going to drink my way through Thanksgiving, but I may have a couple of shots here and there. I'm not going to call them shots, though, I am simply going to call them fortifiers. I don't know if the ex-wife will show up, but if she does, then she does. I have no choice but to roll with it and be the princess that I am. I will simply nod my head at her and say, "What it do?" My stepfather, on the other hand, may get a few more curse words hissed at him randomly throughout the day. Or... I'll figure out which alcohol belongs to him and I will work on drinking that exclusively. As long as it's not moonshine, we'll be good to go.

I had to pick my mother up from work today and she never mentioned the whole thing and I didn't either. I had already decided I wasn't going to mention it, because I didn't want her to be in the predicament of hearing me bitch about her husband. I mean, really, she can't help what comes out of his mouth any more than I can. So it was a long and awkward ride, what with this whole topic hanging in the air and yet remaining unspoken. I decided halfway through the trip that this too would go on the "List of Shit My Mother And I Will Never Discuss". It's not a pretty list, trust me.

Oh, I forgot to mention that the football picks thing over at http://www.armchairlinebacker.com/ kind of fell apart, but hopefully we can get something going again in the next few weeks. I think we did it for a total of four weeks. Week 1 - I fucking rocked! Week 2 - not so great. Week 3 - I know a few retarded people who could make better picks than me. Week 4 - I lost so much pretend money that I was only allowed to bet on one game, and I picked right! Ha! I win, bitches! But this was also the week the whole thing fell apart. However, if you need a guest contributor to blather on endlessly about everything and nothing and maybe a little bit of the requested topic, I'm yo' girl! Hit a sista up!

We've wrapped up the whole fall athletic thing. My older daughter survived cheerleading and I've managed to extricate the cheer director from her life and from mine. Culling the herd is a good thing, you know? My younger daughter played football this year, yes - football - I can't remember if I mentioned that or not. Anyway, she played flag football, but that was because of her age, not because she can't play tackle. She did awesome, and I'm pretty damn proud to have been the mother of the one girl a team of 30 boys. Once she understood what she had to do, she did her best to go out there and make it happen. I was surprised that towards the end of the season she was telling her eye doctor that she played football and the doctor asked what position she played. I whispered to her, "Safety", because that's what I thought she played. My daughter looked at me quite scornfully and rolled her eyes, and said, "No, Mommy, I play outside linebacker!" Well, excuuuuuuse me, is what I thought. But fucking awesome that my daughter is playing linebacker! Hell yeah! And I was even more excited when she managed to hold the other teams players off, sometimes two at a time. Yep, that's my little princess out there. And even better was that she was one of the few kids on her team who didn't cry all season. The Ex and I had drilled into her over and over and then over again that THERE'S NO CRYING IN FOOTBALL!!! We figured that as soon as she started crying then it was over for her. The whole girl stereotype thing would just take over and her season would be done. Sidelined. But my girl hung in there tough and didn't shed a tear once. She made a point of telling the coach that she was the only one who didn't cry all year, and then, at the awards banquet, when her name was called, the coach made sure he repeated that she was the only one who didn't cry all year. I'd like to think this was because she had earned his respect, and not because he spent last football season and this football season trying to make 'eye contact' with me.

My older daughter surprised me the other day by informing that she had sold one of her cups of jello to a friend for a dollar. Several things were wrong with this picture. First of all, I just got screwed because I bought that jello for her, and I did not get reimbursed by that dollar. Second of all, her friend got screwed because I'm pretty sure that jello cup wasn't worth a dollar (or maybe it was to the friend, I don't know), and lastly, why the hell is she selling the jello instead of just giving it to her friend for the sake of being a good friend? Oh, that wasn't lastly, lastly-lastly, that jello was for her to eat since she's still recuperating from having her tonsils taken out two weeks ago, although I'm positive this little budding hypochondriac will make this recovery last for about 2.89 years. But on the other hand, I was still kind of pleased, because this does show some early entrepreneurial skills, and because she's learning the laws of supply and demand along with a touch of negotiating skills. I asked her why she sold the jello instead of giving it away, and she said because her friend offered to buy it. Well, okay, but why does an elementary school kid have cash on them? The school has a rule - no cash with kids, probably because of stuff like this, and because my younger daughter will be that other kind of kid strong arming everyone out of their lunch money. Oh, her friend had that cash on her because the friend stole it from her older sister. Lovely. Since my daughter doesn't like the friend's older sister, I know she took even greater joy in selling the jello, then. We had a little talk about how if you have an extra jello (which Mommy bought for your throat!) and you'd like to share, then just give her the jello for the sake of being a good friend. As a reward, I promised to set her up the candy bar business in middle school and she can run around and financially rape those kids if she so chooses. Middle school IS a dog-eat-dog world, you know. Everyone needs a niche in middle school and I'm glad we've already defined hers. My father, half-shyster and Indian-giver that he was, would be delighted by this.

And with that, Happy Thanksgiving!