Sundays with Stretchy Pants

ETA: By good I mean, well, a decent enough Christian. Mostly, though, it’s cool Muslims in the video (why are they at a McCain rally? I don’t know. Free country, I guess). I wrote the title like that because I’m always all down on the Xtians (they hate when you put an “X” there. They hate it when you do it to XMas, too, because what if Jesus is that small that it makes him go away when you abbreviate the Christ out of everything?) and I thought you’d be surprised that I used the words “good” and “Christian” together. Surprise!

Maya watches the Mr. Roboto video more times per day than necessary. And she sings along. I blame my brother. Maybe he didn’t introduce her to Styx, but some of our shared (obviously mutant) genes must have been lying dormant within me and I inadvertently passed them on to my precious baby. Too bad there’s not a pre-natal screen for that. At least we would have been prepared and we could’ve tried to keep the gene from becoming active. My theory is that Maya’s mutant Styx gene would have remained dormant if she hadn’t been next to me listening to her uncle’s voice on the phone the other day. Obviously, it’s an auditorily-activated gene. Sick.

In other news, more of this needs to happen:
Muslim McCain Fans Confront Intolerance at Rally

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ETA: I put the right video on this time; I don’t know how that other RATM vid got on there. FAIL!

My brother will be proud.

My children think they can tell me what songs to listen to when we’re in the car. This might be because I usually let them listen to what they want to listen to. These days, I generally only provide songs that I enjoy, but back when Lena and Liberty were babies and young toddlers, I let them listen to Barney and Raffi and Sesame Street. It couldn’t be helped. They were car cry-ers and I wanted them to shut it. Barney works so well because he makes little kids stop and go, “What the f*ck is this sh*t?” I wanted them to shut their traps, so I listened to what they wanted to hear over and over and over. Then they grew a bit and decided that car rides were just a touch more tolerable than a trip to the dentist, so the need to make them shut it was less. And they learned to fear me, so they shut it no matter what was on the radio. I’m kidding, gosh! These days, we generally listen to a rotation of CDs that are agreeable to everyone in the car.

Now to the part where my brother will be proud: The other day when we were driving home from the pool in Bryan’s car without our previously-agreed upon CDs, I was repeatedly hitting the seek button in order to find something, anything to listen to. Every time the radio stopped on a song, it was a light and poppy little diddy and I heard 2 light and poppy little voices yell, “NO!” from the backseat. This went on for song after song until the radio finally stopped and I heard no objections. Then one of the little voices said, “Leave it here!” What was the song? I’m glad you asked. It was “Renegades of Funk” by Rage Against the Machine. What happened to my timid little girls who were soothed by Barney’s voice? When I was a little girl, I thought the mixture of screaming and loud guitar and drums coming from my brother’s hi-fi was dangerous and scary. I preferred gentler music like Cyndi Lauper and Madonna and Debbie Gibson. Some people might argue that that was because those artists are who was marketed to me, but I think it’s because they weren’t screaming at me. My taste for grunge and heavier stuff only came later when I was a hard-livin’ young lady. My brother always tried to introduce me to new, better music, but it never stuck. Now his nieces are following in his footsteps musically. Of course, his joy may be short-lived because I will surely ruin Lena and Liberty’s love of this song by turning it into the Best History Lesson Ever! Lookie:

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We switched the bedrooms around so all 3 girls have their very own room for the first time ever. Lena and Liberty have always shared a room and when Maya started beginning the night in a bed other than mine, it was Liberty’s bed she wanted to be in. Recently, though, their accumulation of stuff and clothes has made me very annoyed with the closet/bookshelf/toybox situation so I broached the subject of splitting them all up into their own rooms with their very own closets. Everybody was on board, so we went for it.

Yesterday was the first full day of lone bedroomdom and Lena used most of the day to lounge on her bed listening to her mp3 player with headphones on, singing right out loud to all manner of tween songs, both local and foreign. It was just as adorable as you’d think, but it also brought back one of my most awful childhood memories: When my brother was a teenager, he would put on his headphones and sing RATT and W.A.S.P. and Black Sabbath very badly and very loudly. Constantly. He wasn’t adorable. And he wouldn’t shut up. I at least had to good sense to turn my portable tape player up really loud in order to try to drown out my own voice when I was singing in my room. Not my brother. And, though he can sing very well now, back then, with his headphones on, singing his devil music, it was just painful to hear. Also, my portable tape player didn’t have a very high volume, so sometimes his voice drowned out my Cyndi Lauper. Not cool. Even if I didn’t know what She Bop was talking about, I still thought it was a kick-ass song and I wanted to hear it without some dumb boy singing “Round and round, what comes around goes around, I’ll tell you whyyy!”

It makes me shudder and it occurs to me that I’ve never addressed this deeply repressed childhood memory in therapy. Excuse me while I make a phone call.

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I just took my music player thingy off of auto-play. I wanted it to play These Are the Days automatically in honor of our anniversary because that’s what I walked down the aisle to, but it’s back to same ol’ same ol’ now. Because it’s not our anniversary anymore. Everything’s back to same ol’ same ol’. Well, almost everything. We’re dragging it out just a bit longer because Kristen will be watching our kids tonight while Bryan and I go to Studio 35 to drink hard cider and watch Run Fat Boy Run. It’s just a big ol’ 3-night anniversary extravaganza! Saturday night, we stayed close to home and watched Dan in Real Life together. Last night, we ate ice cream and watched 30 Rock and The Soup on TiVo (enough links already, look it up on your own if you don’t know what those shows are. Sheesh.) We like to watch tv/movies and eat snacks. Don’t judge us. You guys probably do boring stuff, too.

Anyway, now I’m going to the grocery store without my kids because I spend less money that way. Also, if they don’t come with me, I don’t have to undo all of the damage that the magazines at the checkout line do. This article (ok, one more link) at Racialicious talks about one kind of issue that needs to be undone, but I also have to work really hard to undo the images caused by headlines like, “Stolen in the Night! Why Your Child isn’t Safe at Home,” or “What You Need to Know about the Dangers of Breathing Air!” or “What Would Your Child Do if You Died Right Now? It Happens EVERY DAY! You, Yes You Reading This…You Could be ORPHANED!” My kids don’t like that crap. And I’m not good at assuaging fear since I’m a Fearful Fannie, too. It’s likely that we could very well end up huddled on the floor, crying and holding each other after a trip to the checkout lane. If they’re not with me, I don’t read the headlines and I can go on living in my little bliss bubble. Ta-ta!

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I took the girls rollerskating yesterday with the homeschool group and I was surprised to find that the roller rink did not play “Pac-Man Fever” or “Freeze Frame.” I know, right? Back in my day, those songs were the go-to skating songs. I must have been a little young because I remember being disgusted whenever “Open Arms” would start to play. Disgusting! All the teenagers holding hands or skating with their hands in each other’s back pockets (”Here, let me move my comb to my other back pocket so you can put your hand in that one.”) Disgusting!

The roller rink I went to back then was about 30 minutes away from where I grew up and it seems like every weekend I went skating with my friend Melinda and her family. It couldn’t have been every weekend, though, because that would’ve made for an awesome childhood and it would have totally compensated for all of the benign neglect and outright abandonment that has contributed to my issues that some people say I have today. It was probably only a few times, but those are some of the best memories I have. Sometimes Melinda’s brother Jeremy even chose his best friend Bryan to go with him, but not often. (Not good with the wheely sports, that one.) That’s ok, though, because I had yet to realize what a catch Bryan would be and I was there to skate with MELINDA! (Ok, I might have had a little crush on Jeremy back then, but that had more to do with proximity than anything else. I see that now.)

I might be projecting a little bit, but I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one who had fun yesterday. Lena, Liberty and Maya got right out there and kept at it, fall after fall, big ol’ grins on their faces. At one point, Lena said to me, “Do you feel young, Mama?” Nothing gets past that girl. I answered her with, “Who you callin’ ‘Mama’?” And then I skated away and pretended I didn’t know her. Next time I’m bringing a comb for my back pocket. And maybe some pom pons for my skates.

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