I hate The Man

It's officially summer! The kids are finally out of school and we spent this morning eating pancakes, and making our weekly schedule and list of field trips. One of the things we have been planning to do is hold a bake sale to benefit Share Our Strength, a charity that focuses on childhood hunger. Our plan was to hold it during the morning commute at our local train station, selling breakfast items like muffins and scones, thinking the site of adorable children up at the ass-crack of dawn, all to benefit charity, would persuade the locals, most of them parents themselves, into donating. It would be like shooting fish in a coffee-cake-flavored barrel!

And then I called town hall.

I wanted to be sure we didn't need some kind of permit, before I spent a week baking and loaded my three kids and several cartons of baked goods in to the van at 6:00am. Turns out we don't. We can't do it AT ALL. The town does not allow any kind of fundraising on its property. The good news, I got from the poor woman I was interrogating, was that the town does not own the train station and I'd have to call New Jersey Transit. How bad could that go? I mean, why the hell would they care about some little Podunk train station out in the suburbs?

Turns out they don't. They care about being sued by some idiot who claims to have had an allergic reaction to something we made. We can do the bake sale if we write a letter of intent and only sell packaged goods from manufacturers. My kids were going to make breakfast breads and muffins! Homemade goodness! A Fiber One muffin I bought at Stop & Shop could never compete with a Mollorca sweet bread from Starbucks down the block (and what the hell is that anyway? I smell bullshit. More like Jersey City sweet bread).

I am enraged, dear readers. This fear of litigation is sucking all of the fun out of our society and our kids' childhoods. I am not asking to sell wine coolers, or crack. I would assume any reasonable adult with food allergies would be able to read the sign "contains nuts" and stay away from the banana nut bread, and if not, would be too embarrassed to sue. Or, at least, that should be the case. Why must we be protected from ourselves? All common sense seems to have gone out the window. We live in a society where our coffee cups need to warn us of their hot contents. Is this all really necessary? Aren't we messing with some kind of natural selection here?

So I have two choices. I can hold the World's Lamest Bake Sale, or I can sell our poisonous fare outside the local grocery store, since that's private property and they allow that sort of thing. I refuse to sell that packaged crap, so it looks like the latter, which I am thinking , will be way less successful. Now we'll have to try and sell baked goods to harried mothers and geriatrics, both of who often (infuriatingly) pay for their groceries with checks instead of guilt-ridden, over-worked parents who have a few quarters leftover after buying their morning joe. I plan on bending the law though. The town technically owns the sidewalk, so we would be restricted to the parking lot of the store, but a lot of people walk by that store on their way to the train. Whatevs po-po, I ain't on your sidewalk, I'm just at the very edge of this asphalt selling my wares, keep it movin'.

H, make sure you keep your cell on that day. And cash for bail.

Oh, Carnival Fish, why won't you die?

OK, OK, I know. It’s the end of the school year with all the attendant performances and random gifts that need to be purchased, so, please, no more, where-the-hell-are-you-mail. I’m barely hangin’ on here.

So, yes, that is a picture* of the goddamn carnival fish from last year. No, I’m not kidding. This fish is still alive. Not just alive, but thriving. Not much has changed in Harold’s small, boring world. He’s still only got the purple rocks, fake plant and pirate treasure chest to keep him company, and he’s still swimming in a bowl full of unfiltered tap water that usually includes a high percentage of fecal matter, but this fish behaves as if he’s in the rare tropical fish exhibit at Sea World.

I suppose part of what’s keeping him alive is his change in location. As I wrote last year, Harold had taken up residence in the girls’ room, which I decided was the best way to expedite his demise, knowing H’s care of pets has a distinct as-needed aspect – the dog has to literally be doing laps around H, scraping his asshole on the rug, ala Toby from the Stanley Steamer commercials**, in order for him to contemplate possibly taking him to the vet to have his annal glands squeezed*** - so it was less than likely he’d remember to change Harold’s shitty water.

So what happens? You all know. H does not change the water, as predicted, and I wind up bring Harold down to live in the kitchen where I give him the malocchio twice a day when I feed him , despite the girls’ promises that they would be in charge of his care. I keep making jokes about flushing him, while the girls squeal, “Nooo, Mommy!”. Then Christmas morning I come down and realize Harold is not moving. He’s sort of drifting around the bottom of the bowl, completely still. His bowl is directly in front of the kitchen window that had been left open during the Christmas Eve fish-fest. The combination of cold air and watching he aquatic brethren being butchered by the pound must’ve been to much for him. “You can’t die to day you little shit!” I yell as I frantically tap the side of the bowl. And he wakes with a start. The damn fish was asleep. I realized at that moment I’d miss this tough little asshole of a fish, and from that point on things have been different between me and Harold.

I’m not going to lie and say I love having a fish now. I still sigh dramatically as I wash all the fish crap out of the bottom of his bowl, but we have found a way to pleasantly coexist. As a reward for my perceived change of heart, Harold has started acting, for lack of a better word, like a dog. If you come over to his bowl, he swims right up to you, happily wagging his tail and popping his face above the surface. He has become our own Air Jaws, jumping a little bit out of the water when I feed him. Having cocktails in the kitchen one night****, H and I were convinced the faucet was leaking as we kept hearing water. It was Harold bobbing up and down at the surface, trying to get our attention.

The girls are so excited because Harold’s “Gotcha Day” is Friday. Exactly one year ago, we brought our little piscine friend home. They are determined to have a party, which, between planning the Girl Scout moving up ceremony, doing interviews for the new pre-school director, preparing for #2’s birthday party, Father’s Day for twelve, and my sister and her wife coming into town, is not going to happen. Harold and I have reached a begrudging peace, let’s not go too far.

Watch as I’m up at eleven o’clock at night Thursday night mixing up some Duncan Hines.

*Notice the evaporation ring of tap water calcification around the top since it’s been three weeks since I changed his water.
**I felt so validated after seeing that commercial, knowing I wasn’t the only one whose dog uses the carpet as a large piece of toilet paper. But sadly, I am not running to the phone to have my rugs cleaned afterwards.
***Which I'm sure is what the vet envisioned when he dreamed of caring for animals - wrestling a hundred pound dog to the ground to squeeze nasty gunk out of his asshole.
****We used to get dressed up and go out to bars where we were served drinks and snacks, now we hide in the kitchen trying to suck down alcohol so we don’t have to provide that service.

To Tweet or not to Tweet, that is the question...

You all know I have this blog as a means of keeping my sanity and preventing my brain from being filled entirely with lyrics from Sesame Street songs and the names of The Fresh Beat Band, but over the past, almost four years, a few of you have suggested ways I market myself and Mean Mommy to gain readership and, if H had his way, some cash. H installed the ridiculous content based adds you see, and I do keep tabs on my stats occasionally, but really, even if only my immediate family were reading, I would still be doing this because I love it. I am beginning to wonder though, with all the resources out there whether or not I'm being a bit of a simpleton about this writing game and perhaps I need to enter the modern age and use some of the tools at my disposal.

A reader recently suggested in her comment, that I put a Facebook "like" button on the blog - which might not be a bad idea. Although I primarily see Facebook as a non-threatening way to see what losers you ex's turned out to be, and for everyone to try and win the My Life is the Most Fun or My Kids are the Cutest Contest, it would be a way to really drum up some readers. I'll do that as soon as I figure out how to work this flux capacitor - or wait until H gets back from his FIVE day business trip* and ask him to do it.

My neighbor also suggested I start Tweeting. This is the second person in two days, over the age of thirty (shout out Arti), I have discovered Tweets. Up until now, Tweeting, for me, fell squarely in the "Nobody Cares" category of show-off behavior. We all, myself included with this blog, are too sure that other people want to know all about us. Other than celebrities, whose every bowel movement we want to know about, who the hell cares about the minutiae of someone else's life? I've de-Friended people on Facebook for posting too often about too dull things ("Great tuna sandwich at lunch. I need a mint!"), Tweeting seems like it would be that in spades. But then my neighbor explained I could Tweet teasers about new posts, or even comments related to recent ones. The teasers seem like direct advertising, which I'm not sure I want to do. I sort of like it when people stumble upon me by word or mouth, or accidentally. I'd be too afraid of disappointing anyone I lured in myself.

She does have a point about Tweets related to recent blogs though. There have been many, many times, something has happened right after I've posted, that I want to share with you guys, but I don't want to put up just two lines about an old post. For example, the morning after my Lightening my Load post, I discovered, after #1 asked why I still pee with the door open, that I can pee with the door closed for the first time in nine years without the fear of someone killing themselves in the ninety seconds it takes me (you want to be behind a mom in line for the bathroom at a major sporting event or concert, she will also have baby wipes when they inevitably run out of TP). If I were Tweeting, I could have Tweeted, "Just discovered that, in addition to no longer needing diapers, I can pee with the door closed!" Well, I think it's funny.

I have to mull this one over, dear readers. While I'm not exactly technologically averse, I'm just not that into new stuff until someone, usually H, clearly shows me how useful it can be, ala, my Blackberry. And since H doesn't even have a Facebook account, I'm not sure how helpful he'll be in the Twitter world. And I can't help but feel I'm too old for this. Will my signing up for Twitter akin to your grandmother Friending you on Facebook?

And speaking of Facebook, I have to figure out this "like" button thing...

*I loved being texted from another continent that it was rubbish night and after taking the kids to the school pool party from 6pm-8pm, then bathing them and putting them to bed, I got to drag seven, fifty pound contractor bags to the curb, only to notice half way up the driveway, they were all leaking a brown, primordial ooze from having sat in the garbage shed for four months.