Thursday, May 28

Florida babies!

We're down here in our second home, Florida! Once again, we flew into Jacksonville. I have a cousin there, and she's letting us use her old RV. Apparently her ragamuffin kids have been sneaking in there since last summer to relieve themselves, because the toilet was filled the brim with stinky old brown pee.

Using this RV was supposed to be a money-saving measure, but I'm not sure that it's been worth it. Aside from getting about one mile to the gallon, the goddamn thing has no air conditioning, all the seats are covered in leather-textured vinyl. This is unbearable because it's hot as hell down here right now. Also, when the engine is running the whole inside smells like exhaust.

I didn't realize how nauseating this could be until we ate our first meal at a questionable roadside dairy and clam bar. The kids were moaning about their stomachs all the way to Orlando. That's right! I took these spoiled little shits to Disney World! Disney's Blizzard Beach water park, to be exact. It wasn't easy, because it was Memorial Day weekend, so I had to take a special route to avoid all the DUI roadblocks.

Blizzard Beach is a winter themed water park, and there's a little something there for everyone. My favorite part of any water park is the lazy river. The #1 rule for this attraction is that nobody with diarrhea is allowed in the water. I decided to go ahead and get in anyway, because it's not like I'm ever going to see any of these people ever again! That's pretty much my philosophy for everything when I'm away from home.

The food they were selling at the park was decent looking and reasonably priced, but it adds up with three kids. So for lunch they shared a king-sized pack of Reese's cups that were melted from being in my purse all day. They loved it! They walked around all afternoon with chocolate smeared all over their mouths. Talk about shit eating grins!

By two o'clock the sun was really beating down. The ground was so hot that it was burning all our feet. But on the bright side, it's still a water park, so it's easy to cool down, and the kids never whine about having to pee. Phil doesn't know how to swim, so he stayed out of the water. Within an hour the heat had him sweating like pig. The body powder he uses to keep cool had turned to a pasty batter, which was caked into his curly body hairs.

Of course my stupid kids all got sunburned, so they had a blast slapping each other in the RV on the way out of the park. Then they fell asleep. That's when we took the opportunity to ditch them with the RV in a souvenir shop parking lot (with a stick of salted butter to treat their sunburns with). Phil and I took a shuttle to Downtown Disney. It was raining all evening, and I didn't wear a bra, so some folks really got an eye full!

We've decided to finish up our week in beautiful Siesta Key, which was recently rated the #2 beach in America. The kids are having fun throwing shells at pelicans and playing catch with the turtle eggs. It's cool how the state puts little flags on the nests so the kids have less trouble finding them. I think that recent shark attack in Clearwater ruined the joke I had planned, because people didn't appreciate it when I yelled out, "SHARK!" at the sight of a few dolphins.

P.S. I realize now that I should have taken the easy route!

Tuesday, May 19

Making his mama proud!

I took my eight year old son Brandon with me to the grocery store last month. He had managed to make some extra money by helping our neighbor drain her foot, so I let him hang around near the toy vending machines while I shopped. Along comes this kid Matt, a porky little outcast who's a year ahead of Brandon in school.

Matt asked Brandon to loan him a quarter. In good faith, Brandon did so. Matt bought a rubbery sticky hand from the vending machine. Then they went outside the store and Matt threw his toy against the front of the building. It somehow got stuck up high where they couldn't reach. Then Matt did the unthinkable. He told Brandon that he would not be paying him back the quarter!

Brandon is at that age where he's learning how to assert himself. It's not about the quarter. Hell, you could throw a quarter at someone and get your money's worth. It's the principle of the thing. So I told him to demand what's his! Our family doesn't take shit! I told him that if Matt won't pony up, go ahead and threaten him.

Brandon usually walks to school with older kids from our block, and they sometimes run into Matt at the last crosswalk. For three days in a row he warned Matt that his older friends would beat him up one day during recess. Brandon didn't really mean it, and Matt laughed it off.

So around dinnertime last night, Matt and his father showed up at our front door. They'd already been around to visit Brandon's older buddies. Apparently his friends didn't get the memo, because they'd beaten the shit out of Matt during recess that morning. His father pulled the back of Matt's shirt up for us so we could see the bruises that covered his back.

Brandon looked shocked. He had never intended for this to happen. Then Matt's father said, "Matt, isn't there something you wanted to say?". Matt looked up at Brandon, stuck out his arm, and opened his palm to reveal a shiny new coin. "Here's your quarter back..." he said weakly. Brandon took it and said thanks and said he was sorry. Both boys looked devastated.

Later that night I found Brandon crying in his room. He felt really guilty about Matt getting hurt. I did my best to reassure him. I said, "I know you feel bad now, honey, but it was for the best. You got your quarter back! You won, and he lost!". After hearing that he smiled. As I left the room I saw him pull the quarter out of his pocket to admire it a little.

Tuesday, May 12

Theme parks touch our lives!

The house feels hot and itchy. The dog is shedding like he's got radiation poisoning. We have to get out! I decided that it was time for our annual trip to the theme park. We're sneaking because last year they kicked us out after my son used a ketchup pump to make a mess out of the handicapped bathroom. I told him that from now on, if he wants to ketchup a bathroom he'll have to stomp on packets!

I stopped off at this one shitty gas station, the type where you usually have to complain about the empty glass cleaner tubs in the service area. But this time the tubs were brimming. I grabbed the squeegee out impulsively and the shit gushed blue cleaner all over the pants and shoes of some man who had been standing there pulling paper towels out of the dispenser. He yelled something.

I realized that I should have waited until he was done before I grabbed that squeegee. Unfortunately I had just finished watching Pulp Fiction while smoking over a pile of my children's freshly laundered clothing. Something about that movie makes me want to act bad ass. I left the station with a wet foot, and the satisfaction that comes from kicking the balls of a angry man who had every right to be mad!

It's fun to visit theme parks, laughing and sharing your own memories with your kids. Mine loved hearing about the time I swiped a mascot costume and stumbled around the entrance fondling the mouths of strangers. There was that hot summer night when I opened a can of potato soup at the top of a roller coaster. Or the morning I shot up heroin and rode the gondola all day in the fetal position

You start to feel old when the rides start kicking your ass. I remember how, in younger days, we'd jab at roller coaster safety equipment with sharpened screwdrivers. Sleazy men would ask for help with their flimsy safety bar while sportin' some major wood. Later those men would sit hunching on a bench near the kiddie rides just leafing through porno mags, and nobody would say nothing!

These newer rides miss the point. I'll have to take my kids to a State Fair if I want them to learn the value of barfing straight back into your own face on a centrifuge ride. Or the delight of luring other kids away from their parents and putting them on terrifying rides. The mystery of finding an out-of-the-way old local fair that will still let you powerwash the crack of your ass with a reverse, bent-over flume ride.

I sometimes wish this place was more like those old fashioned theme parks, with the kind of magic that insipires people walk around with their hand in their lover's back pocket, everybody wearing those small loose shorts that offer occasional peeks of hairy junk. It's an experience so timeless, you'll want to do some poppers, gamble on a round of Skee-ball, and then use a straight razor to teach preteens some manners.

Friday, May 8

Too much stress!

I had a big presentation in front of the CEO on Wednesday afternoon. My knock-off Wonder Bra was sopping with flop sweat. At 3:30 pm, during the middle of a demonstration, I remembered that I'd never dropped off the baby, and he'd been outside in his car seat since lunch! I couldn't get outside to check on him for another 45 minutes!

I decided to get my head straight by taking a personal day on Thursday. I got up extra early for my favorite activity: sitting in the back of a courthouse watching poor people get their lives ruined. Then I drove home to get high. The funniest thing about huffing freon is how I'm getting high for free while my neighbors are sweating their asses off all night!

I let the kids skip school and I drove them to the mall. I told them before we went in that if they get lost inside the mall they'll be abducted and left headless in a canal like John Walsh's son. They were freaked out. We stopped at the food court to feed the baby. I hate the way people stare, but my baby won't eat ripe bananas until I smash them up between my breasts.

As I cleaned up from the feeding I was paged by mall security. They caught my son jamming his own shoelaces into the base of a moving escalator. I explained that the kids are still upset about Easter because all they received was a woman's hat full of low fat Pop-tarts. That's when a big back pimple broke open and started soaking through my white blouse.

After a day like that I'm actually happy to be back at work. Before I get home I'm going to stop off at Dominic's to eat a steak sub the size of a neck pillow. We are out of clean dishes at home, so the children's dinner will be cooked in and served from an old electric foot bath. Anyone who complains is in time out.