Boys will be...gross?

Sometimes I am fully responsible for my kids' misbehavior.  I am often the corrupting factor in their lives.  For example, yesterday we were watching a CNN piece where volunteers smoked weed and then drove cars on a controlled course to determine their level of impairment.  We watched (on CNN, mind you) these volunteers smoke a bowl, and then drive at up to 10x the legal limit of intoxication.  Both the supervising police officer and the driving instructor said that they were driving alright, and that they didn't feel the need to pull them off the road.
My kids' takeaway:  "Look at how much FUN they're having.!!"

Yes, kids, weed is fun.

That is not where I expected that news piece to go.  I was expecting the people to die in fiery wrecks with the message written in bloody letters across the screen:  "DRUGS ARE BAD."

Oh, well.  Parenting fail # 3,000,456.

But this morning, M  took bad parenting to a more, um, intrusive level.

We were watching Beverly Hills Chihuahua.  Please don't ask why.  I think it's because we started watching Phineas and Ferb and there were chinchillas and chihuahua sounds like chinchilla and...oh, god I don't know.

During the course of the 3 1/2 minutes that Disney showed the movie without commercial interruption, S asked how "they" make the dogs talk.

I said they used digital manipulation.
M said he didn't know about nowadays, but to make Mr. Ed talk, they put a carrot in his butt.

1.  This is not true.  Everybody knows "they" used peanut butter.
2.  WHY would you tell kids that there were people who went around shoving root vegetables up horses' asses?

We googled it.  Of course, we came back with the peanut butter story.  But the kids got the carrot thing in their heads, as kids are inclined to do.

Those little nitwits spent the next half hour running around trying to violate me.

Eventually, I was sitting on the stool in the kitchen when E came by and jammed his finger in my crack.

"What the hell?  What are you doing?  Why are you doing that?  Leave me alone!"

DAAAAAAAAAAAAAD, it totally works!  We made mom talk!

I totally should have been wishing for girls.

Existential PMS

After a particularly vitriolic Facebook post this morning, I felt a rejuvenated sense of hostility toward my fellow man.  Don't get me wrong,I made the obnoxious post--I just feel as though my relationship with mankind has hit a wall.  Hard.

A great friend pointed out to me that I seem to do this every new year.  I carry over my bah humbug into a post-new year dysphoria that I can only express through sarcasm and open disgust.  Apparently, it's like an annual period.  I get unholy mean and intolerant every January.

Maybe it's because I've made my resolutions to improve my health while every other jerk on the planet has decided to throw himself headlong into a fried Twinkie.  I've committed to being more community minded while every other ass is testifying before Congress that it's every (wo)man for herself in our neat-o domestic, post-apocalyptic arms race.  Maybe I've decided to reduce my carbon footprint while there are a bazillion people choking on chunks of air in China.  Maybe I claim the 6 weeks before I give up on all of my resolutions as my time to be superior and condescending to the whole rest of humanity.  Suck on this, people.

OK, so maybe I didn't make all those resolutions.  I mean, I sorta want to do those things, but let's be honest, I'm old and lazy so it's unlikely that unless recycling services come to take the non-compostable chips bag and Coke Zero can from my napping hands, my carbon footprint isn't shrinking.  I am trying to be healthier, but that's only because I'm vain and want to be skinny.  Maybe the reason I'm so hard on everybody else is that I'm filled with a depressing and miserable self loathing.

Maybe it's my own jaded soul.  Last night, I was speaking with a mom who (awesomely) has found a great opportunity to go back to work.  She really found something she's interested in, made it meet her criteria for being home a lot with her kids, and she is rediscovering the working world of grown ups.  I thought, wow, I should totally get on that.  She's so energized and enthusiastic.  I'm so filled with inertia and malaise.  I thought, hey, maybe she's doing something interesting to me, too...financial planning??

I CAN NOT think of a worse field for me (well, except physicist, chemist, astronaut, firefighter, police officer, CEO, CFO, anything with "C" in front of it, priest, pilot, masseuse, anything involving tact or drug tests, and/or  interacting with the public in any setting.)

Here's is my financial planning survey:  

Are you a deity, god, goddess, demigod, mythical deity or superhero?

If no, answer next question:

Have you currently or ever engaged in a pact with a devil, demon, gnome, troll, elf, US Senator, or other creature that has promised you immortality in exchange for something valuable, say, a soul or your vote?

If no to both questions:  Screw it.  You are going to die.  When you will die, exactly,  is merely a matter of happenstance, genetics,  environmental factors and possibly karma. You plan, God laughs.

If yes to either question, awesome.

So, in short, my fellow humans, I need to come to terms with the bad ones among you trying to wreck my short, meaningless existence. If you don't care about me, fine.  I can take it. Please stop screwing up my kids' planet.  They're going to need it one day.