Rock band party

In my house the most peaceful time of the year is the morning after Lane's sleepover. The house has the same calm that I imagine a small island does the morning after a hurricane. As I carried my mug of tea around the house collecting cups of pop, apparently the allure of pop is in the pouring not the drinking, I smile quietly at the boys sleeping on the sofa. Some are only half on the sofa, their legs are hanging over the edge, feet touching the floor. Some are still sitting up, their open mouths dripping drool onto their shirts. One boy still has a drumstick in his hand.
Last month, for his birthday, I gave Jason Rockband. Lane is so happy with this new addition that he couldn't think of a thing he wants for his birthday. His cake was a life size replica of the drums and guitar. They rocked all night long. At five-thirty this morning I could still hear the tapping of the drums in my room. Like true rock stars they had all crashed by eight-thirty, which is when I got out of bed.
Video games have never had much appeal for me. I grew up in the eighties, hanging out in game rooms and bowling alleys like everyone else. I just was never any good at them. Standing in line with my quarter, watching somebody play one game of Mario brothers for what seemed like hours, until my turn would come and go withing five minutes. It seemed like a waste of a quarter to me. Later as people started getting Nintendos in their homes I sometimes would outlast the other kids and practice all night at getting through the first three levels while they slept. Still I never was good at them. As an adult several different gaming systems have came and went through my house. I like to sit and watch the boys play some of the games. I can watch hours of Prince of Persia. some I have played a bit, Columns and Tetris are the ones I've like best, but I never have spent much time playing. Now with Rockband, I still suck, but here is a game I enjoy playing badly. It still isn't something I do when alone, but if one or two of my sisters comes over we neglect their young ones and play.

Jason running in his underwear

Last night was the birthday party. The coat we had ordered as a present wasn't here yet. So I wrapped up the jumper I had bought her baby and gave it to Fria Chica as a gift. We also gave her the order receipt we had printed off so she knows what is coming soon. At one point late in the party Jason came in from the kitchen and starting taking his clothes off. When asked to explain this strange behavior he told us he had lost a bet.
Rolando had bet both Jason and Raul, Rolando's little brother (about 25), that he could take the cork out of and empty wine bottle. It was a cork he had shoved all the way in for the bet. He told them he could do this using nothing but a plastic grocery sack.
Rolando got the cork out by slipping the sack inside the bottle and blowing it up. Jason payed up when he lost by running in his underwear to the post office and back. The post office is two blocks from Miss Universe's and Rolando's house. He is lucky that we are having such a mild winter;it is still around forty degrees out last night.
Raul never did run, or strip for that matter. He insisted that Rolando had failed to pay up on similar bet. Godiva, Raul's wife, insisted that they both should make the run to even it out. That never happened. Many times through the rest of the night Lee and Godiva pointed out that the only man in the room was Jason, a thirteen year old boy. Rolando and Raul both willingly admitted that they weren't men and were okay with the shame.
It was a good night. We had too much pasta and bread, just the right amount of wine, and lots of laughs. I had never mad pesto before and was really pleased with the results. Although it may have been easier in a food processor than a blender. I added a food processor to my Christmas list.
Speaking of Christmas. There are few people around here that are really against the Eid stamp. I'm sure this comes from the stupid e-mail that is going around or an even more stupid radio station. A radio station that is supposed to be about Christianity, but instead uses that as its cover to bind people together through hate and prejudice. Anyway I mentioned the other day that I was going to use them on my Christmas cards and got, not just one, but two lectures on the subject of why it is wrong for the postal service to make these stamps.
What is funny is that I was only suggesting this as a way to help out our Postmaster. She gets Eid stamps every year, but since we have a very low Muslim population they are hard to sell and she has a lot left after the holidays. I am not a huge fan of the knitted sweater stamps, but love the blue and gold of the Eid stamp. It seemed like a good solution. I am now thinking about specifically sending cards with this stamp to the two people who lectured me, and everybody else I know that believes whatever propaganda crap they hear on the radio or read on their e-mail. Come on Christian Americans think for yourself, act Christ like, read your bible instead of believing everything Dobson and his gang say. They are trying to steal freedom not give it.

penis vs vagina they are only words

Yesterday was Fria Chica's birthday. We are celebrating Saturday with a dinner. Miss Universe and I have went through several possible menu ideas before settling on a pasta night. I am making brioche, spinach pesto, pasta puttanesca, spaghetti cabonara, and linquine w/red clam sauce. Miss Universe is making linguine w/chicken alfredo sauce, and spaghetti w/meatballs. Can you tell we love pasta?

My brother stopped by last night and ate supper with us. I whined about my nano novel to him and he was very sympathetic. He used to live with me. When he moved out he still lived in the area for years. Now he lives in Guymon and it seems like I never see him. Stupid jobs. I have his name for Christmas and instead of having trouble thinking of something to give I am having trouble narrowing down the list I have. I am already in the holiday spirit this year.

At work the other day I heard what has to be, to me, the most despicable phrase in human language. "I would do it but my husband would kill me." She was talking about dying her hair. WTF! As an adult it is my firm belief that my hair is my hair. When will women quit letting their husbands act like their fathers. I wont go on for long about this but I have to say that they won't stop treating us like children until we insist that they do. Women dye your hair, cut it, shave it, let it grow whatever you want. If you honestly believe your spouse will kill you it may be time to rethink the whole spouse idea. Equality means we all get to think of ourselves as adults not just those of us with penises.

Along those same lines I have been thinking for years about the word vagina. I know the monologues and other feminist attempts have made the word a little more mainstream but in the household it is still treated like an unspeakable word. With my children I used the anatomically correct word instead of pee pee I taught them to say penis. I often wondered if I would have had the strength to do the same if I would have had daughter. None of the women I know who have daughters do. A few years ago I was driving on an empty highway with a lot of time to think. I started wondering about this. The word penis is thrown around pretty carelessly. Penis head and penis breath are common insults. At that time I had never heard anyone call out vagina head as an insult. That surely has to be a sign of the different status of the two words. This was a few years ago and I haven't given the subject much thought since then. Just the other day I overheard Lee calling somebody a vagina face. I was a bit irritated at first. Why should a part of the female anatomy be used in an insult. Before I said anything out loud I remembered that lonely highway and thinking that this kind of an insult would be a good sign. Since then I have heard him use the phrase again and again. Maybe this is a sign. Could the word finally be becoming just another word that describes a body part? Have we moved out of the unspeakable stage? I hope so.
I remember the first time I really gave thought to how mothers react to the vagina. It was in the middle of an interesting conversation. I was talking to a mother of three girls. I of course had three boys. She was saying how she hated cowboy hats. She couldn't understand why a man would want to put something that looked like a female body part on his head. "A female body part?" I asked. "Yeah, you have boys but believe me," Here she lowered her voice. "When you change a girl and you see 'her' it is really ugly." We still have a long way to go.

Bithday party and prom

We survived the sleepover, and most of the chips have been vacuumed up. Most years we have warm, sunny weather for Lane's party. We go outside and play kickball or soccer. Not this year. Friday it started out misty and cold. By ten it was hailing. At eleven-thirty they canceled school because of snow. For the first two hours of the party he had invited his whole class. That meant I was going to need to entertain over twenty kids indoors. Since he loves Law and Order I had decorated his cake like a crime scene, complete with chalk outlines and a bloody knife. to entertain them I wrote up a mystery for them to solve and gave them all pencils and little notebooks to write the clues on. They got to keep these in the place of goody bags. Dh was very vocal about this not working and that they would hate it, but since he didn't have a better idea we went with it. I didn't hold back from rubbing it in when they seemed to be having fun with it.

The next night was prom. In a small school, our senior class has about 18 students, several underclassmen get invited as dates. They also invite the school board members, all of their current teachers, and all of their previous teachers to the banquet. Lee is a freshman this year and a senior girl asked him to go to prom with her. Every year the sophomore class serves the meal, their reward is getting to go to the dance. I guess I can count on having to rent a tux for the next three years too. One of the memorable moments of the night for me, as an adult the prom pretty much means a free meal and slipping on heels, was how damn handsome Lee looked in his tux. His kindergarten teacher is retired and lives out of town, so he hadn't seen her in while. When he walked up to say hello she stopped looked him over and said she almost wished he were her date. He talked to her a bit about his upcoming trip to Europe and she put into words the reason I have been working so hard to make this happen for him. She and her husband have done quite a bit of traveling themselves. She took him by the arm and said, "Wait until you get over there and see we don't have a corner on the world. You'll see the things they are doing with art, historical buildings, and recycling and be amazed." I really believe that if more of our young people traveled, less of them would grow up thinking that being an American means being right all of the time. I don't mean to slam my country here. I am very proud to be an American and proud of some of the great things we have accomplished. However, I have listened to our government tell us that to be true Americans we have to think as they do, when to me the best thing about being an American is being allowed to think for one's self.
I'm not sure how I got off on that tangent. Back on topic, another thing that I was reminded of on prom night is how mean high school girls can be. After prom I popped back up to drop of some plain clothes for Lee. He wanted them to wear to the after party. I asked one of the senior boys how prom had went and he said it sucked. Lee explained to me that this boy's date, a freshman girl, refused to dance with him most of the night. The poor boy had not realized beforehand that she only agreed to go with him because she wanted to go to prom, not because she wanted to go with him.

The thing about being a parent is that one day I can be gushing about how great my son is and the next day I want to kill him, literally. Sunday I told him to put his tux back on the hanger so I could return it. There is a late fee so I had to return it that day even though I really didn't feel like making a trip. Since I was going anyway I made a list of a few things I needed at the store. It was a beautiful day so I put the trip off for awhile and took a walk in the country with my mom, the girls, and Jason. We walked a couple of miles out. We took a stroller so Curly top wouldn't have to walk on the way home, so we could go that far. There were still patches of snow on the ground from Friday, so I got hit by several snowballs. Jason packed one so tight I was sure I was going to have a bruise.
As I was getting ready to leave I reminded Lee to put his tux on the hanger. He was leaving to go to my mom's house so he ran to his room before he left. I went back to get the tux and it was on the hanger all right. He had tossed the hanger on his bed then tossed the clothes on top of it. I went through my repertoire of curse words as I hung it up myself. When I got to the store I realized the pants were missing. The store closed in thirty minutes and there was no way to avoid the late fee. Worse than the fee was knowing I had to make the trip again in the morning. He was very lucky that I had time to cool down on the drive home. He was also lucky that Jason had went with me and suggested stopping for a milkshake. We had such a good time together that my mood had improved considerably by the time we made it home.
I had an appointment in Guymon the next morning to pick up the cheese Lee had sold as a fund raiser, so I buckled Huggy bear into her car seat and drove in a ninety-five mile circle that morning. We had to be home by eleven to pick Curly top up from preschool.
The crazy part of the trip was that I was dying to buy something. I never run out of town for just one little thing. If I am going I have a list of things to do since I try to only go every couple of weeks. As I left the clothing shop I kept trying to think of something I might need even though I kept telling myself I didn't need anything. I looked back at Huggy bear and wondered if she needed anything. She was content with her crackers and a bottle, so I thought about stopping for ice cream. I didn't really want ice cream, I just had a silly need to do something. Logic won out though and I just drove on home. I also overcame the urge to kill my firstborn.