Wine vs. Whine

Wine is great 

Wine is good

Drink plenty

Everyone should 

Whining is bad

Whining's not good

Please make them stop

I would if I could

You know how people like to say you should take something with 'a grain of salt'? Children need to be taken with 'a bottle of wine'. I firmly believe in the benefits of alcohol in the raising of children. I do NOT mean to give the children alcohol, although I have thought about it on more than one occasion myself. Alcohol creates different effects on different people. If it makes you mean and ugly, ignore all of this and keep it to the bar. If you're like me it mellows you out. This is a good thing in the raising of children since their sole purpose in life seems to be to push my every button. If this fails them, they've successfully been beaten. If you're a parent you know how important that ability is. My children can tell when I am drinking. Instead of saying things like, "I hate you and never want to see you again," they've been heard saying, "Mom, you're being fun today!"

Whining can be combatted with nothing but alcohol. I know this for a fact. I am a professional mom. I have taken many a parenting class. They all tell you how to successfully gain control of a situation. This is best done, they say, through timely punishments well suited to the 'crime'. Time-outs are thought highly of. None of these people have ever tried to get MY son into a successful time-out position. Unless you're a pro wrestler, it ain't happening. Sending them to the solitude of their room is another tactic. My son only attempts to break the door down which he's artfully locked on HIS side. After that fails he turns into a toy tornado successfully trashing his room which you know I won't be able to get him to clean. Removal of privileges is another suggestion. I take the Nintendo DS away only to have to deal with the child in the car or a restaurant without this amazing pacifier of sorts. If I take away TV I am removing many a half-hour of personal sanity in which they're quietly tuned in. When my daughter was younger and occasionally at fault I had to take her books away. Yup, the only thing that would upset her was being unable to read. How sick is taking books away? May I recommend the only proven solution: wine. It's a known fact that parental stresses and attitudes effect the children. If you've been transformed into a jolly old elf they will be, too. Laughter is a powerful tool, too. Wine is usually necessary to provoke laughter in the most bleak of situations. So why is that Super Nanny freak on TV so successful? She's a wino. She keeps a flask on her at all times. This rubs off on the children. Are your children so incorrigible that you have thought about intervention? Save all that money and buy a cheap bottle of wine.

Everything Blue

My face is red

The carpet is now blue

You'd better run fast

'Cause I might kill you

My daughter has a mouthwash fascination. Yes, the girl who won't brush her teeth. (?!) I never let her have any because I thought my son would swallow it or drink it or worse. This is the kid that hid in his room with a bottle of chewable vitamins when he was quite small and had a picnic with his stuffed moose. Well, didn't she come home from a friend's house with a sample of mouthwash from a hotel. This was like a new toy to her. I watched in awe as she brushed her teeth so she could swish the minty fluid about. 

I'm over protective to put it simply. I decided it was time to give in to the mouthwash woes. I got Listerine's Agent Cool Blue. It's designed especially for kids my son's age. Used before brushing it turns plaque dark blue. The mouthwash itself is very dark in color. The kids then brush until the teeth turn white, or at least that's the idea. They'd seen it on TV and about freaked when they saw I bought it. They clamored to brush right away, in the middle of the afternoon. Hmm, maybe this wouldn't be such a bad thing after all.

It turned their teeth blue. It turned the sink blue. It turned the yellow carpet blue... I was immediately disgusted that something so darn BLUE would be meant for kids. They obviously had a hard time keeping it in their mouths. 

That was the first day. The second day my son decided, for some reason unknown to me, to carry a cup of Cool Blue into his room without my knowledge. Of course, it got spilled. It looked like something CSI should be called in for. The blue stains and blue spatter were everywhere in his room, mainly concentrated on the light tan carpet.

If you don't know me very well, you might not know I have some serious OCD. This was gonna be a problem. I wasn't gonna lose it, though, I was determined. It took everything I had not to.  I went right to work cleaning. I don't even remember beating the child. I don't think I did, after all!

So what do I whip out but my magic blue bottle: Fantastic Oxygen Action. No, this is not a paid advertisement. I just love this stuff. If I thought my insides were dirty, I'd drink it. It takes anything out of anything. I found this miracle product when we had cats. Nothing else would remove cat feces from the carpet where Shiggy, in her sickened stupor, decided to wipe her ass in a long streak across the light grey carpet in the main room. Did I mention we no longer have cats? Anywho, nothing from pet stores or off the internet worked. This stuff rocks!

I was finally able to remove all of the blue from the door, woodwork, carpet and everything else within ten feet. I was feeling pretty smug. I had a talk with the kidlets in which they were sternly warned against further shenanigans. I was sure this wouldn't happen again.

Did it happen again? Nope. I took it away before there was a chance. What was the final straw, you wonder? It was bedtime. The kids didn't really want to brush their teeth but they made it to the bathroom anyway, just for the Cool Blue. Well, my son swished. He managed to do this without spilling it anywhere! Then he immediately ran out to the living room to inform us that he didn't need to brush. His teeth, it seemed, didn't turn blue at all. No blue teeth no plaque and thus no need to brush.  I was amazed that he was capable of such logic. That was the last of the Cool Blue. I really need to go write to the Listerine company now.

Wallpaper Woes

Ever stripped wallpaper? If you said, "No!" keep it that way. I love this new house of ours, don't get me wrong. Wallpaper, though, it's everywhere! Seriously, there is not a single room that isn't papered in some way, shape or form. The living room won't stay. Problem is, it's covering the whole room and it's vinyl. I must say, they used top of the line wallpaper. I fear it will never come down. I decided to start on the kitchen border since it looked like it might be easier and if not at least a smaller task. What a mistake that assumption was.

I decided to invite my sister-in-law over to help. She's got a death wish, I guess, and loves to strip wallpaper, she said. I fixed her quick. We bought 'The Paper Tiger' it's a round hand held contraption that pierces millions of tiny holes in the paper for the remover to penetrate to better reach the glue underneath. That's the idea, anyway. It sounds better than it is. I finally broke it. We tried fabric softener, first, as a glue loosening agent. It made my house April Fresh, but did little else. Then it was time for the big guns. I'd bought DIF, a wallpaper stripper solution. It's supposed to dissolve the glue. Yeah, right. Nothing dissolves the glue- nothing. It also smelled pleasant and not as over powering as the fabric softener. 

We followed the directions to a T. Still, the paper scraped off in teeny tiny little pieces leaving the backing and glue behind. My sister-in-law was artfully able to remove the backing, somehow. I was not. Everywhere I did still shows the underneath of the paper. Grr.

Finally it was time, after about three hours, for my sister-in-law to leave. She had to meet a bus at home with her daughter on it. That's more important that my wallpaper, I found out.  :(  I was left alone to my own devices. Gulp. I did very little over the next few hours. When I gave up, finally, I still had about 1/3 of the room to go- seriously. 

I bit the bullet and took on another session a few days later. I got a good amount done. Still, it's not done. I've given up. The hideous border remains just enough to taunt me every time I see it. It's hard to miss. 

I've resigned myself to failure. I am going to have to suck it up and invite my sister-in-law over all the damn time or hire someone. If a professional has the same hard time we had, it'll be prohibitively expensive. The funny thing is, the living room, which I hate, matches our furniture beautifully. It's just so not me. Wallpaper, in general, is just not me. The kitchen matches my dishes. The bedrooms match our bedding. Why do I want it down? Maybe I don't. Hypnosis to make me love it might be the best solution.

Wii Addiction

We got the Wii for Christmas. My kids never once asked for it. That hardly stopped me. It sat under the bed for about a month. I wanted to open it up and try it so badly. Finally the big day came. The Wii was a hit all around, thank dog. It might have been the first thing we set up from all of that present carnage. It was instant wonder.

The kids only ever play it now when friends come over. It is, after all, the ultimate party device. It seems every time anyone comes over the Wii is the center of attention. We have a tween girl karaoke game with a microphone. We have Guitar Hero, which is plain impossible, I decided, after another adult friend and I made complete asses of ourselves one night trying like hell to master it, only to be miffed.

I am addicted to Wii Sports (which the system comes with) bowling. If you know The Dude (what my friends call me in honor of The Big Lebowski) you know she likes to bowl. I am so much better in Wii bowling than I am in real life. I think that's the case with everyone because my young nephews have me beat, hands down. Still, I'm a pro. That's one of my dreams, to either be a pro bowler or own a bowling alley. I know. Toddler's addicted to Dr. Mario. He can battle those viruses for hours on end. If only he were a real doctor...

I decided after a while that if anyone was going to have Wii Fit it was gonna be me. They advertise them every Sunday everywhere for $89. Think anyone actually receives any in their shipment? Nope. The people I know who have them happened upon them before Christmas. Even then I saw none.  :(  I called, literally, 14 stores. Think one had it? Nope! I tried this for three or four days and finally got lucky. One store had ONE and they saved it for me. 

Wii Fit can be addictive and annoying at the same time. It gives you a Wii Fit age based upon your ability to center your weight on the board. My first Wii Fit age was embarrassing. It told me I must trip when I walk. I kid you not. It's a sarcastic little bastard. . We immediately bonded. The first week I worked out for over two hours in three days with it. I haven't really done it much since, but it is a lot of fun. I just tend to ignore anything that might make me feel better about myself. It ruins everything I stand for.

Then there's Bocce and Shuffleboard and all sorts of other highly addictive games that I can use to make a fool of myself. You know the computerized opponents even make fun of you when you play? Seriously. They have a field day with me. Nothing like a little Wii to boost one's self-esteem. 

Come on over. We can play Wii if you don't already have one. I think everyone got one for Christmas. You probably did, too. Come over anyway; you can laugh at me!