You Crazy Bunch of Mothers

If the cops didn’t get called on your Mother’s Day brunch, then you might be hanging around with the wrong mothers.

At least, that’s what I’m told.

I went to a perfectly normal Mother’s Day brunch on Sunday. We had fresh fruit and quiche. I was up in Oregon, visiting my parents and my oldest sister, and our brunch was lovely. I then got on a plane to come home to what I thought was going to be a Mother’s Day tri-tip dinner, cooked by my sons. I came home to something a little different than that.

You see, our good friends down the street hosted a neighborhood potluck Mother’s Day brunch on Sunday morning, and I was thankful for that. I was going to be out of town for the morning, so I was happy my wife and boys would be down having a nice time at our friends’ house. The plan was for them to go enjoy the brunch, then I would get back into town and we’d have dinner all together.

I kinda got the impression the plan was changing when I got to the airport in Portland and started texting my wife and boys about what time I would be arriving. No one texted me back. I had sent a long string of unanswered texts by the time I was in my seat being told to turn off my mobile device or switch it to airplane mode.

I had a text from my wife waiting for me when I landed at 6:00 pm, saying that we were probably going to hold off on cooking the tri-tip for tonight.

I arrived home to an empty house and the sounds of laughter and the pop-pop-pop of street pickleball coming from the other end of our little road. I threw my suitcase in the house and strolled down to what turned out to be one of the most epic Mother’s Day brunches ever held.

It had started at 9:00 am, and was still going STRONG at 7:00 pm. There was a live garage band – courtesy of two slightly intoxicated musical dads with acoustic guitars – along with a pool party, a hot tub party, and a cornhole tournament in progress in the back yard, and a pickleball game in the street in front of the house where the moms playing were required to do shots whenever the total score became evenly divisible by five. (It was a loose rule). A large cheering section in lawn chairs had gathered, and I’m pretty sure some of them had wandered in from other neighborhoods.

I’m not sure what kind of traditional brunch food was served in the morning, but they had been through all of that, then onto lunch, and by the time I showed up the party was knee-deep in take-out hot wings and delivery pizzas. My wife was one of the lawn chair spectators, waiting her turn for another pickleball match, and when she saw me she gleefully told me the cops had been called on them.

Our friends’ house sits at the end of our street, between two tee’s of adjoining streets, so it happens that very few cars ever actually drive past the front of their house. You are either turning off our street before you get there, or you would have come around from the other way if you needed to be on the street at the end of ours.

This low-traffic phenomenon makes it a near-perfect spot for a street pickleball court. When you bring the net out, the court sits lengthwise with the road, up against their sidewalk, so there is a full car-width lane to get past it on the other side if you happen to need to drive past their house. Someone – and no one knows if it was a neighbor, a pedestrian, a motorist, or a member of a tennis league – called the police to complain about the “illegally closed off road,” or the “crazy out of control street party,” or something. No one was really sure, including the cop.

Apparently, the cop pulled up, took one look at what was going on, and just shook his head in the “I can’t believe some idiot wasted my time and the taxpayers’ money to have me respond to a Mother’s Day brunch” kinda way. Before he left, he wished all the ladies a Happy Mother’s Day and dutifully reminded all the pickleballers of the obvious, “try not to get hit by any cars.”

Anyway, the music continued, the pool party raged on, and when the sun went down, the floodlights came out to make sure darkness wouldn’t slow down the pickleball tournament, or the mom’s mid-game shots.

My wife, who isn’t as young as she used to be, tapped out at about 9:30 pm, with over twelve hours of Mother’s Day brunch under her belt. I’m a full five months younger than her, so I was able to make it another fifteen minutes or so before I had to pack it in and head for home.

Anyway, happy belated Mother’s Day to all you wonderful ladies out there doing the hard work! And hey, if you don’t have Mother’s Day plans for next year, I’d highly recommend coming by our street. The brunches are legendary.

In fact, it’s possible that Sunday’s brunch is still going on. I left before it broke up, and I haven’t gone back down to check.

It wouldn’t surprise me.

See you soon,

-Smidge

 

Copyright © 2024 Marc Schmatjen

 

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National Son's Day

Apparently, Monday was National Son’s Day. I didn’t know this, because I had never heard of National Son’s Day until yesterday. National Daughter’s Day was on the 25^th, and I only heard about that one for the first time this year, too.

(Side note: The fact that National “Son Day” is not on a Sunday proves that our leaders are barely functional morons.)

Why have I never heard of these national days? I have a theory. They sound very much made up, like Lifetouch’s recent “National School Picture Day.” Give me a break! What are these daughter and son days for? Mother’s Day and Father’s Day make sense. What am I supposed to be thanking my kids for? Thanks for being here? Wasn’t your choice. Thanks for taking all my money? Nope.

Now, please don’t get me wrong. I love our three sons to pieces, but that doesn’t mean I think we should have a special day to celebrate their existence. We already have three of those. They’re called birthdays.

Since I don’t have daughters, I really have no way of knowing, but I assume they might take these things with a little more weight than the sons out there. I didn’t know about National Son’s Day, and as such, I didn’t post anything about how much I loved my sons that day. You know what the great thing about sons is? They don’t care!

If National Daughter’s Day needs to remain a thing because of all the emotions and whatnot, I understand. But I’m here today to let everyone know we don’t need this National Son’s Day thing. If we insist on keeping it, I would like to suggest that we at least practice a little truth in advertising and rename it.

Here are some possible alternative names, just off the top of my head:

National Please Stop Eating Everything Day

National Please Stop Clogging the Toilet Day

National For Goodness Sake Put Some Deodorant On Day

National Can You Please Quit Wrecking the Car Day

National Stop Beating Up Your Brother Day

National This is the Fifth Time I’ve Asked You to Take Out the Trash Day

National What Are You Planning to Do With That Lighter Fluid Day

National Please Take a Shower This Week Day

National Put Down the Phone and Read a Damn Book Day

National How Have You Lived This Long Making Decisions Like That Day

National This is Why I Have Gray Hairs Day

National Please Stop Wearing the Same Underwear Four Days in a Row Day

National How Did You Already Grow Out of Those Shoes Day

National Can You Please Dial the Sound Down Six Notches Day

National Please Slow Down in the House Day

National Take it Easy, This Room is Not Bulletproof Day

National Your Brother is Not a Punching Bag Day

National Seriously, How Are You Not Full Yet Day

National What’s That Smell Day

National Just Go into Your Room and Clean Anything Day

and

National Where Did All My Money Go Day

Those all seem a little closer to the truth.

See you soon,

-Smidge

 

Copyright © 2020 Marc Schmatjen

 

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Multitasking Moms

I am getting stupider. Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t all that smart to begin with, but over the last few years I have actually felt myself dumbing down tremendously. I can pinpoint the exact moment it started happening, too: My first day as the stay-at-home dad.

Back when I was an engineer and had an office job, I was actually pretty good at getting things done. I would knock out tasks left and right and check off the to-do list every day. Now that I’m in charge of the house, I can’t find my socks. Seriously, I have like two pairs left and they don’t match.

I have always blamed multitasking on my recent inability to do anything well. I’ve told my wife for years that my brain does not have the ability to do two things at once. I can do one thing adequately or two things very poorly. Those are my choices.

Well, now it turns out that my inability to multitask has been validated. Hooray! Dr. Labcoat and his research team at the University of Stanford-or-Somewhere recently published a groundbreaking study that proves, among many other things, that funding is somehow still available for college brain studies. Also that no one’s brain has the ability to do two things at once. The study found that people who thought they were good at multitasking actually multitasked worse than people who normally tend to focus on one task at a time.

They also found that multitasking during cognitive tests actually reduced performance on those tests as much as smoking marijuana. I think that part of the study was done in Colorado. When the Stanford researchers contacted them for follow-up data, the Colorado team replied, “Huh?”

Add all that to the fact that they believe more studies will prove that multitasking actually causes brain damage, and... hang on, I have to go change the laundry.

This news is huge! I finally have some concrete scientific proof to point to when my wife questions my inability to function. It’s not me, honey, it’s the kids. There’s three of them and they all want stuff at the same time. They’re to blame, not me. It’s science.

As an example of what I’m talking about, here’s a typical conversation between me and my wife when she gets home from a long day at work:

Her: “What’s for dinner?”

Me: “Sorry, Son Number Three’s shoelace broke this afternoon, so I haven’t gotten around to planning dinner yet.”

Her: “Uh... it’s 6:45.”

Me: “Have you seen my socks?”

See what I mean?

Mother’s Day is this weekend, and as we celebrate all those stay-at-home moms, all those working moms, and all those single moms who do everything all at once, let’s remember this multitasking study. The fact that they can get anything done at all is a sheer miracle. The amount that they do accomplish for their families is a testament to how awesome they really are.

They could probably find a cure for cancer if we just left them alone for a few hours.

So to all you moms out there - Happy Mother’s Day! Take the day off and go smoke some dope or drink a couple bottles of wine. It will actually be better for your brain than dealing with the kids. You can find a cure for cancer some other day.

You know, come to think of it, those two pairs of socks I still have might match if I just swapped their partners...

See, this is what I’m talking about. What’s for dinner?

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2016 Marc Schmatjen

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The Husband's Guide to Shopping for Mother's Day

As a public service to all man and womankind, I like to post something about Mother’s Day each year. Mostly they have been cautionary tales, because it’s important to write what you know, and I have a long history of screwing Mother’s Day up somehow.

This year, I have drawn on my many years of inadvertent research to provide you men out there with a handy Husband’s Guide to Shopping for Mother’s Day. Now, I know we men can be stubbornly independent, so many of you may not heed this advice. To you I say, good luck, and I hope you can dodge flying cookware. If this only serves to remind you that Mother’s Day is this weekend, then I’ve done all that I can.

For the rest of you who are wise enough to listen to advice from a guy who’s been through the Mother’s Day school of hard knocks, here are some categorized gift suggestions and advisable parameters. You’re welcome.

Traditional

Starting Point: Chocolates

Recommended: Chocolate-dipped strawberries and champagne

Avoid: Asking her to make you chocolate chip cookies

Starting Point: Flowers from the garden

Recommended: Large, expensive flower bouquet with balloons

Avoid: Suggesting that she weed the garden while you catch a nap

Children

Starting Point: You and the kids clean the house

Recommended: A whole-house deep cleaning by a professional cleaning service

Avoid: A new bottle of Windex with a bow on it

Starting Point: Hand-made cards from the kids

Recommended: Hand-made cards and hand-made gifts from the kids

Avoid: Asking her to watch the kids while you golf

Health and Beauty

Starting Point: Coupon for massage at the gym

Recommended: Swedish massage at luxury day spa

Avoid: Telling her that if she rubs your feet you’ll make it worth her while *nudge, wink*

Starting Point: A home pedicure kit

Recommended: Manicure/Pedicure appointment at luxury day spa

Avoid: Suggesting that if she would simply stop buying purple blocks of pumice and metal rasps to sand down her feet with, the calluses would eventually just form and protect the skin underneath, thereby eliminating the need for any future foot maintenance, using your own gnarly, callused feet as a helpful example

Shopping

Starting Point: Gift certificate to Macy’s

Recommended: Gift certificate to Tiffany & Co.

Avoid: Gift certificate to AutoZone

Starting Point: Perfume

Recommended: Gift certificate to her favorite cosmetics counter and a shopping day with her girlfriends

Avoid: Deodorant

Food and Entertainment

Starting Point: Breakfast in bed

Recommended: Champagne brunch at her favorite restaurant

Avoid: Suggesting that if she doesn’t want to make everyone breakfast, you could all go out to The Waffle Barn

Starting Point: Taking her to the movies

Recommended: Tickets to the theatre, complete with a romantic dinner

Avoid: Tickets to the demolition derby… for just you and only some of the kids… and your dad

Starting Point: A nice bottle of wine

Recommended: A membership to the wine club at her favorite vineyard

Avoid: Box of Franzia White Zinfandel from Chevron     

That should be enough to get you started. Good luck, men!

None of this stuff is in our budget this year, so I’m not actually going to do any of these. I’m just making her a quick card with some printer paper and crayons. And maybe I’ll get her a nice three-dollar box of Riesling.

She’ll love that, right?

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2015 Marc Schmatjen

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Mother's Day Exile

Exile Log, May 11, 2014, Day 1:

I found out that today was Mother’s Day. Shortly afterward, my wife kicked me out of the house. I have made several attempts to get back in and have been met with heavy resistance. I have taken refuge in the backyard play structure. More to come…

Exile Log, Day 2:

Things aren’t looking good. I tried to get into the house again this morning, but my wife still looked angry. She glared at me through the back window, so I retreated yet again. I don’t think she’s any happier than she was yesterday.

Things in the play structure aren’t as comfortable as you might think. Sure, it’s a big play structure, and it has a roof, but it still has drafty open sides and a limited amount of floor space.

I am sore from sleeping in a curled-up position. I tried sleeping with my legs hanging down the slide, but I kept ending up in a heap on the ground. I just want to go in and take a shower and maybe have a sandwich, but she doesn’t look ready.

I was able to establish a decent network connection today from the neighbor’s Wi-Fi after he took pity on me and gave me the password. His wife had instructed him not to speak to me, but The Man Code won out. Unfortunately, The Man Code has its limitations, and I had to promise to mow his lawn for the whole summer. In exchange, he’s snaked an extension cord over the fence for me and has given me a few beers and some pop tarts when he could. Things could be worse, I guess. 

Exile Log, Day 3:

It was cold last night. I have redwood splinters in my butt. I’m sore from sleeping with my head on a soccer ball. She’s still not ready to let me in, but I think she is softening. She threw a bottle of water and a bar of soap out the back door this morning after she saw me trying to drink from the lawn sprinkler. I’m not sure if I am supposed to bathe in the sprinkler and drink from the water bottle, or vice versa, but it’s at least a glimmer of hope. I wish we had a pool.

I’ve had a lot of time to think in the play structure. I am beginning to think this has something to do with Mother’s Day. It was this past Sunday, or so she told me, which happens to be the day she threw me out. I think those two things are connected.

The boys have been no help whatsoever. Not only did they fail to remind me that Sunday was Mother’s Day, but they haven’t visited me once out here since she kicked me out. She is keeping them inside, and as far as I can tell, they have made no effort to sneak out and help me in any way. I have done a poor job of teaching them The Man Code.

If she leaves the house today I am going to attempt to break in. I need clean underwear.

Exile Log, Day 4:

After another fitful night of sleep interrupted by the horrifying sounds of either two cats mating or a raccoon molesting a set of bagpipes, I have come to the conclusion that this whole thing must be about Mother’s Day. I managed to get into the house for a short time yesterday when she left to pick the boys up from school. The Salad Spinner we bought her is still in its box on the kitchen counter.

I have replayed the events of Sunday over and over in my head. I am fairly certain that she was upset by the fact that the boys and I didn’t know it was Mother’s Day when we woke up. I am also pretty sure that she didn’t like the fact that she was the one who had to tell us what day it was, after she had made her own breakfast.

What I can’t understand is why she was still upset enough to throw me out of the house after we totally redeemed ourselves. Sure, we might have forgotten all about Mother’s Day, but when she reminded us we promptly jumped in the car and headed to Walmart.

Not more than a half-hour later we returned with possibly the best Mother’s Day gift ever. I mean, who doesn’t love the Salad Spinner? Right?

Plus it was a really timely gift. I had accidentally broken her old Salad Spinner a few days earlier when I was using it to get the sweat out of my gym socks so I could get another day out of them. I mean, it’s a great gift in the first place, plus she needed a new one. That’s a win-win. That can’t possibly be the reason she’s mad.

Maybe it was because I bought it with the $10 Walmart gift card I got her for our anniversary? No telling, I guess. I’ll just have to stay out here and wait until she cools off.

Maybe next time she goes out I can retrieve the new Salad Spinner and use it really quick. I figure if I’m going to be out here for a few more days I can probably rinse my underwear in the sprinklers, and that Salad Spinner should do the trick to dry them off.

Don’t worry, I’ve learned from the socks incident. I bought the heavy duty model this time.

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2014 Marc Schmatjen

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A Boys' Mother's Day

My wife is a mother of boys. When she was younger, and dreaming of getting married and having her own family someday, she always said she wanted to have four boys. That’s the only part she ever tells me. She won’t tell me what kind of husband she dreamed she would have, so I will have to assume that I obviously met or surpassed all of her expectations.

While she likely met 400% of her goal in the husband department, we ended up with only three boys, so she made just 75% of her goal in the offspring department. That is just fine with her. After we had Son Number Two she began to question her earlier logic, and by the time Number Three was on the scene, she knew that four was just crazy talk.

Every once in a blue moon she will see a cute little baby girl, or one of our nieces all decked out in a pretty dress, and she will make that “awww” sound that women make when they find something unbearably adorable. Then she hears a story from a friend about eight-year-old girl drama, and breaths a quiet sigh of relief. (And so do I.)

While we both think that having only boys takes a lot of the stress off us as parents, I don’t think she was fully prepared for all the fighting. She may not have been prepared for all the peeing, either.

Fighting, to boys, is like climbing. It is ingrained in their DNA. See a tall, dangerous-looking structure or tree? Climb it. See your brother over there looking smug or having fun? Go tackle him. It’s just a fact of life. They start very young by wrestling each other down as toddlers. It’s a fact that infant boys with older brothers learn to roll themselves over at an earlier age, due to the desire to keep from getting pinned and avoiding the three count.

She was initially concerned with how much fighting was taking place between the first two, but by the time the third one was in the mix, she had resigned herself to the inevitable melees. I knew she had finally come around one day when I heard her tell Number One regarding his youngest brother, “Be gentle if you’re going to fight with him.” No one but a mother of boys would ever utter those words.

As far as the peeing goes, she definitely wasn’t prepared for that. Truth be told, I wasn’t really either. This is the area where the parents of girls probably gain back some ground. Sure, there’s drama and fashion and hairstyles to deal with, but the peeing is at least straightforward. Or should I say, straight down. With boys, there’s a moving part to the equation, and it can be unpredictable.

Son Number One summed it up for her about a year ago when she was questioning him outside a public restroom. We were all dressed up for a wedding rehearsal dinner, and he came out sporting wet underwear, with his pants still undone, looking for some help. When she asked, slightly exasperated, how his underwear and his nice dress pants had become covered in pee, he explained, “My penis just went wild.”

When she brought him back and told me the story, I just nodded. “Yep, sometimes that happens.”

I knew exactly what my son had meant, and I could even envision the whole thing happening. The mistake I made was assuming he also knew what had happened and why, and he was just giving his mom the condensed version of the events. As it turns out, maybe I should have been doing a little more coaching with the boys when it comes to peeing. That became evident recently.

Son Number Two came out of our downstairs bathroom the other evening with a forlorn expression on his face.

“Mom, something just happened.”

Nothing good has ever preceded those words. Since it was obviously a bathroom incident, and my wife happened to be cooking dinner at the time, I bravely stepped in to help.

“What’s up, buddy?”

“Well, I started to pee, and then all of a sudden, instead of going down, it was going up.”

As we rounded the corner and stepped through the door to the little bathroom, I was amazed at what I saw. There was pee on the toilet seat, on the top of the toilet, on the wall behind the toilet, on the step stool next to the toilet, and all over the floor. There was even a puddle of pee on the floor all the way behind the toilet, between the base of the toilet and the wall. How do you get a puddle directly behind the toilet??

It took me a whole roll of toilet paper to clean it all up.

“What happened, buddy?”

Not one for long detailed explanations, and perhaps to try and figure it out himself, he opted for a reenactment. He dropped his drawers in front of the toilet and said, “I don’t know. I was standing here like this, and then it just went all over the place.” He was standing with both hands down at his side, simply thrusting his hips forward.

“Well, it helps to aim it down.”

“Is there a hole or something?”

Come again? Is there a hole or something? You can’t be serious right now.

“Uh, yeah, buddy. Right there. That’s where the pee comes out. You need to aim it.”

“OK, dad. I will next time.”

What was that all about? How have you had this penis for seven years and not figured out how it works?? Depending on the time of day, that thing can be pointing anywhere. You’ve got to aim it, man!

Oh, well. I guess I need to do a little better job explaining the obvious to my boys. We should probably go over the wonderful benefits of wiping your butt again, as well.

Happy Mother’s Day, sweetheart! You are doing a fine job of being a mother of boys. I on the other hand, am obviously falling down a little bit on the fatherly end. I was concentrating on teaching them important man skills like how to field a grounder and how to use a saw without removing any of your fingers. I figured peeing was self-explanatory. I guess not.

I will try to stay on top of all the bodily function-related issues, and I promise I will be all over the future penis conversations when it comes time to talk about its other function!

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2013 Marc Schmatjen

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Mother's Day, Part III

I think my wife is still mad about my handling of Mother’s Day two years ago. She exacted some amount of physical revenge last year by tricking me into a dangerous kids’ craft project, but I get the feeling she’s still not over it. Mostly because this year she said, “I’m going to Las Vegas for Mother’s Day. You’re in charge of the kids for three days.”

Hmm. Either she’s still upset, or she has absolutely no faith in my ability to provide a satisfactory and appropriate Mother’s Day celebration. Either way, I can’t blame her. But if she was going to leave me alone with all three boys, I would definitely be taking the opportunity to lock in my status as the cool parent. Unfortunately for them, I am far too lazy to actually take them anyplace awesome like the waterslides or the wild animal park by myself, so I did the next best thing to win their eternal love. I let them eat whatever they wanted.

My wife left for Sin City on Saturday morning. As soon as she was out the door I toasted Eggo waffles and doused them with whipped cream, syrup and chocolate chips. Yum! A few hours later we were off to the little league fields for Son Number One’s baseball game, so we ate lunch at the snack bar. Icees, nachos, hot dogs, and Drumstick ice cream cones for everybody! What’s for dinner? Pizza and donuts, of course. The next morning we had more Eggos, this time with extra chocolate chips, and Hershey’s chocolate syrup, just for good measure. Our lunch consisted of bacon. Just bacon. Sunday’s dinner was a little weird. Son Number Two had a can of black olives and half a gallon of chocolate milk. Son Number Three had two bananas and the other half-gallon of chocolate milk, and Number One had leftover pizza and a non-alcoholic beer.

I’m pretty sure I locked in my position as the cool dad with the older two, but I must say, their behavior, and their pooping schedule has been a little off. Probably just a coincidence.

To really seal the deal with One and Two, I announced on Monday morning that they would be getting hot lunch at school that day. That is a rare treat at our house, and I played it off like I was doing it out of the kindness of my heart. Truth be told, I was just far too lazy to pack their lunches in the morning.

Now, although I did a great job of winning the love of his older brothers, my efforts had the opposite effect on Son Number Three. He was upset with me for the entire weekend. Now, it wasn’t because of the menu, but because I wasn’t paying the usual amount of attention to him. My wife has always accused me of coddling him, even going so far as to say, “You’ve never told that boy ‘No’ in his whole life.” That is of course patently false, but she sees it differently than I do. That’s because I have never been totally honest with her about my handling of Number Three. It’s not that I am looking to give him special treatment, it’s just that I’m lazy. I think we’ve established that.

When you have the third child, you suddenly go from man-to-man defense to the zone. Zone defense, from a parenting standpoint, is a lot more work. Because of my inherent laziness, I have been “graciously” looking after the youngest since he was born.

It’s because he’s the lightest.

Invariably, my children want to be held in some fashion or another whenever we go somewhere. Hip, piggyback, up on the shoulders, you name it. I don’t really want to carry any of them, because they’re all pretty heavy, but if I cut my losses and volunteer to carry the littlest one, I’m instantly back to man-to-man defense, and relieved of looking after the other two. “I’ve got Number Three, babe. You’re welcome!” Like I said, I’m lazy.

My wife apparently never saw through my laziness, and assumed I was coddling our youngest. I guess Number Three never saw through my charade either, because apparently he was used to quite a high level of attention.

As soon as my wife left, I was playing zone defense big time. I was fielding eight to ten questions, requests for help, and emergency spill response calls every minute of every waking hour. By the end of the first day, I was ready to sell all three kids to the first person who offered me more than two dollars. I don’t know how my wife does it!

Anyway, when I kept telling Son Number Three that I couldn’t hold him right now, or that he would have to wait a minute until I was done helping his brother, he took it very personally. He kept getting progressively more and more upset with me, ultimately ending each evening in fits of crying and wailing at the slightest transgression by his mean old dad.

Either that, or his strange diet and lack of naps was affecting his mood. Who can say?

On Sunday night he had had enough. Shortly after lights out, he protested my rule of law and declared his never-ending love for his mother by peeing all over the bathroom floor, not six inches away from the toilet. Sure, he cried and claimed to be just as upset about it as I was (the man who was in charge of cleaning it up), but I know he was just putting on a show to avoid any trouble.

I saw through his sob story about how he “just couldn’t make it in time.” He was showing me just how he felt about my handling of the weekend.

I hear ya, buddy. Loud and clear. Mommy will be back tomorrow.

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2012 Marc Schmatjen

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Mother's Day Done Better

If you have been following my weekly ramblings for any length of time, you might recall the tale of my impeccable handling of last Mother’s Day.

I had skillfully purchased tickets to a demolition derby that happened to be scheduled on the same day that America was holding Mother’s Day. The derby promoters refused my requests to move the event up a day, so I was forced to explain to my wife why it would be a good thing for me to take the boys away to a car smashing event on her special day. To add a slight level of difficulty, I had to explain my reasoning while dodging cookware being thrown at my head.

I broke the news of my inadvertent double-booking a week or so before Mother’s Day. By “broke the news,” I of course mean that she told me what I had done. Then she threw a saucepan at me. Anyway, she was able to calm down in a day or three, and finally saw the error in her initial reaction, or so I thought. She acquiesced and agreed that the gift of relative solitude (I was leaving her with Boy Number Three while the other two went to the derby with me) that I had so thoughtfully provided her was indeed a fine Mother’s Day gift from a loving husband. A few days later she even helped me figure out what the boys could get her for Mother’s Day, since their dad obviously had no clue.

Going so far as to tell me that she had found an “easy and fun” way to have the boys make her gifts, she presented me with the news that I would be going to our local home improvement store on the coming Saturday morning. They were having a kid’s craft event for Mother’s Day, where the kids could make their mothers a flower pot holder. Better yet, it was free!

My initial reaction was, “Oh, OK, great. That should be fun.”
I am a stupid, stupid man. Obviously it was a trap. A trap of retribution.

Off I drove with the boys on Saturday morning, oblivious to my real situation. Fortunately for me, Boy Number Three was deemed too young to come to this event as well, so he stayed home with mom. I am convinced that is the only reason why I made it out of there alive. I barely made it through the ordeal with two boys, but adding the third youngest one would have surely been the coup de grace.

It started off innocently enough. We were greeted by teenage store employees who outfitted the boys with kid-size orange store aprons with their names written on the front in black Sharpie marker, which they thought were really cool. Then they handed us our flower pot holder kits, and invited us to pick any open spot at one of the many workbenches set up for the occasion. That’s where things began to go south.

My first question caught them off guard. “Where are the kid’s workbenches?” I asked.

“Those are the kid’s workbenches, sir.”

“Why are there hammers on the workbenches?”

“To hammer the nails, sir.”

“Nails!?!”

“Yes, sir. They’re included in your kit. You’re supposed to glue the joints and then nail them together.”

“Glue!?!”

“Yes, sir. Is there a problem?”

“Is it real glue and real nails?”

“Of course, sir.”

“Then, yes. We have a problem. You mean to tell me that these things don’t just snap together like Legos? You want my four-year-old to be swinging a hammer?”

“Well, we don’t think they should swing them, so much as just tap the nails into place.”

“Have you ever met a four-year-old boy?”

Oh, well. There was no going home empty handed, so to the workbench we went.

Two minutes later, as I had predicted, I was refereeing a tug-of-war over an erupting bottle of Elmer’s wood glue and desperately dodging the claw ends of two fast moving hammers.

I found myself holding miniature nails upright between my thumb and index finger, praying the first blow would be to the head of the nail, and not to the head of the dad, or to the fingers, hand, arm, or face of the dad.

I spent a considerable amount of time fighting back the onslaught of excess glue with almost an entire roll of paper towels, all the while trying to decipher the steadily more glue-ridden assembly instructions before my boys had nailed or glued something to the wrong spot.

It was a lot like trying to do a crossword puzzle while trapped inside a spinning dryer full of open glue bottles and claw hammers. And nails.

After we had somehow managed to complete two fairly intact and somewhat recognizable flower pot stands, and the employees had found me some extra-large gauze pads and an ice pack, we made our way to the garden section to find some nice Mother’s Day flowers to adorn our new creations.

I foolishly thought that this would be the easy part. How hard could it be to find a couple of small flowers in pots? Ha! You have obviously never shopped for flowers with my boys! Neither had I.

Apparently my children are not very impressed with ordinary, everyday, run-of-the-mill flowers. They seem to only be attracted to the high-dollar exotic breed flowers. No azaleas or daisies for their mommy! No, they just had to buy mom the Madagascar crouching tiger orchid and the greenhouse-raised Turkish gold river lilac, each costing about the same amount as an entire pallet of rose bushes, and both guaranteed to last about 1.7 hours under our family’s expert horticultural care.

Again, I couldn’t go home with two boys telling their already emotionally iffy mother that Daddy wouldn’t let them buy the pretty flowers for her, so out came the credit card. Ka-ching.

The whole experience hurt. Physically, financially, emotionally, you name it, it hurt. All things considered, I think I would have rather gone to the mall, and you know how I feel about the mall.

When we got home, my wife gave me a sly smile and said, “How did the project go, sweety?”

I knew right then and there that this had been payback for my demolition derby scheduling blunder and lack of believable spin on the reason why. As I went to get a fresh ice pack, I vowed not to make that same mistake again. She is way too smart for me.

True to my vow, this year I learned from last year’s mistakes. This year I won’t fall into any of those traps. This year there is absolutely no way for me to get into any trouble!

This year, I have planned absolutely nothing for Mother’s Day.

Smooth sailing ahead!

Right?

See you soon,
-Smidge


Copyright © 2011 Marc Schmatjen


Have kids? Have grandkids? Need a great gift?
Go to www.smidgebooks.com today and get your copy of My Giraffe Makes Me Laugh, Marc’s exciting new children’s book. Get ready for a wild rhyming adventure!

Mother's Day, Kinda

This Mother’s Day, I went above and beyond the call of duty and scored the best gift any husband has ever given any wife and mother of three. That’s right… Tickets to the Demolition Derby! For me… and my dad… and two of our three boys.

What’s that you say? “What kind of Mother’s Day gift is that?”

Funny… That’s exactly what my wife said.

OK, here’s what happened. A long time ago, I explained what a demolition derby was to my boys. Because their veins are coursing with my DNA, their eyes lit up at the mere mention of cars crashing into each other. They were almost unrestrained in their enthusiasm as I described how tow-trucks, tractors, and even giant forklifts remove the cars that can’t move anymore. And I had to peel them off the ceiling when I hit them with the best part… No mufflers, and sometimes, the cars catch on fire. It was love at first description.

“When can we go, Daddy?”
“We’ll go the next time there is a demolition derby anywhere around here.” I promised.

So, when I spotted the billboard proclaiming “Demolition Derby – May 9th” at the Dixon May Fair, it was obvious what I needed to do. I rushed home, got on ticketmaster.com, and procured four tickets. Boy Number Three is too young, so it was me and the first two, and my dad, since that happens to be his birthday. What better birthday gift for any American male than an evening watching total automotive chaos?

Beaming with pride at what an outstanding father I was, I triumphantly relayed the news of my ingenious purchase to my wife, to which she responded simply, “That’s Mother’s Day.”

Since I am such a genius, I assumed she was worried about the fact that I was taking my dad, and leaving my mom home alone. So, I replied, “That’s OK, my mom won’t want to go.”

I am an idiot.

After narrowly ducking a flying saucepan, I realized where she was going with that comment. Damn you, mouth! Quit instantly repeating everything the brain comes up with. Give it some time!

Since ticketmaster.com is non-refundable, and more importantly, the boys REALLY need to see a demolition derby, I had to think fast. But as it turns out, it’s hard to think fast about much else when you’re trying to dodge cookware.

After I made my escape to the garage, I applied steady pressure to my head wound, and began to formulate a plan. The tickets were paid for. No going back, there… Only one way to play it… spin it.

When I was relatively certain that my wife was no longer within arm’s reach of any pots or pans, I made my move. I kindly explained that if she had given me the chance to finish the story of my incredible purchase, she would have known that the demolition derby was at night.

“You’re going to keep the kids up late on a school night?”
“Let’s stay focused here, honey.”

Since the derby was at night, we would obviously have the entire day to celebrate her Mother’s Day any way she wanted. Then, in the late afternoon, I would whisk away two of her three children for the evening, leaving her with only the smallest child of the bunch to tend to. That in and of itself is the greatest gift I could give her for her special day, because when you spend all day refereeing three boys, suddenly only having one is tantamount to a vacation. Really, what I had purchased for her was a Mother’s Day vacation package.

Hello! Does it get any better than that? You’re welcome!

She’s still not speaking to me.

I’ll bet for a while there, my wife probably thought that giving birth to three boys meant she would only be looking after three boys. No such luck, honey. I am most certainly the fourth boy in the equation. Like the other three, I have wild ideas, and rarely consult the family calendar. But unlike the other three, I have a credit card.

Happy Mother’s Day, sweetheart. I love you. Please put down that skillet.

See you soon,
-Smidge


Copyright © 2010 Marc Schmatjen


Have kids? Have grandkids? Need a great gift?
Go to www.smidgebooks.com today and get your copy of “My Giraffe Makes Me Laugh,” Marc’s exciting new children’s book. Get ready for a wild rhyming adventure!