Do I Still Have the Receipt? You're Kidding . . . Right?

Do I Still Have the Receipt?  You’re Kidding....Right?

Years ago while shopping, I noticed my 18-month-old was barefoot.  She hated shoes, and somewhere among the aisles she had shed her Barney sandals, bought at the same store a month before.

Granted, Velcro is the greatest invention of the 21st century—how else would one secure the fly of men’s swim trunks?  However, Velcro on kids’ footwear was the bane of my existence.  Easy on, easy off.  

We could’t find the sandals, and we were late meeting friends at the zoo.  So we hit the shoe department to buy something cheap.

I saw a pair of Barney sandals just like my daughter’s.  Same size.  They even had my dog’s teeth marks on the sole.  An employee must have put them back on the shelf, thinking they were new.  

I could’ve walked out with the shoes, but a blue-haired clerk was watching me like Lindsey Lohan in a jewelry store.  She resembled Maxine, the grumpy old lady on greeting cards.  Since she’d raised children before the miracle of hook-and-loop technology, she didn’t understand my frustration at a toddler unstrapping her Velcro shoes 83 times a day.  

Chuckling, I recounted the incident to Maxine.  Frowning, she asked me for the receipt.

“I’m pretty sure I lost it,” I said.

She assessed my baggy sweatpants and yesterday’s mascara and shot me a “that’s-what-they-all-say” look.  If I had a dime for every time I’ve seen that condescending look, I’d slap a For Sale sign on the kids, board a plane incognito, and relinquish my muscles to the capable hands of some Italian masseuse.

After I'd originally bought the shoes, I remembered the receipt falling out of my purse in the store’s bathroom.  My three-year-old got on her knees and sucked it up with her lips like a vacuum cleaner.  My expression of sheer horror didn’t scare her.  She’d seen that look on my face a million times when the grocery store was out of my favorite crullers.  She crammed the dirty ticket back in my purse. 

                                                          

During my conversation with Maxine, my preschoolers ran amok pointing at all the sales associates, like Donald Trump from The Apprentice, and yelling, “You’re fired!”  

Maxine, judging me mercilessly over her reading glasses, told me to take the shoes off my daughter and take my children outside where they belong. 

Really?  With that comment, Maxine was officially up in my bizness, seriously underestimating my “back-in-your-face” skills.  

“Oh, wait, I think I do have the receipt,” I said, gingerly pulling it out of my purse along with the hand sanitizer.  “My daughter sucked it up off the store’s bathroom floor.”  I added nonchalantly, “She says it has brown spots on it because she’d been eating from the Nutella jar that we’d just bought.  But I can’t be sure.” 

I pushed the receipt into her hand where it stuck like Velcro.  My crew and our Barney sandals swaggered away.

  

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I thought I delivered a pretty clever payback, if I do say so myself.  I bet Donald Trump would love me on The Apprentice.

Is a Lack of Gray Matter That Hysterical?

Is a Lack of Gray Matter That Hysterical?

  My friend, Angela, has three kids and is continuously frazzled. Last spring, she dropped off her second-grader, Marcus, at his Catholic school for May Crowning, a religious ceremony dedicated to Mary. She dressed him in a suit and purchased the requisite bouquet of flowers to take to class.   

Angela’s memory is “over the hill,” but she remembered May Crowning, and she felt pretty darn “mother superior” about it.  She silently gloated, I have got it goin’ on! I’m sorry you other moms aren’t as organized as me. I’ve come a long way since all that Show and Tell business from September.  

The previous fall Angela forgot about Show and Tell so, of course, she gave Marcus an eyelash curler from her purse. A girl in his class used it and pulled out all her eyelashes because they stuck to the mascara caked on it. His teacher, Mrs. Uppington, who overblows everything like Stephen Spielberg, flew into an unnecessary panic. Angela thought, What’s the big deal? I mean, eyelashes grow back.

Then there was that incident on Career Day. Little Doogie Howser swiped a bottle of blue pills from his parents’ bedroom nightstand as a visual-aid for his presentation. 

The next day, he announced to his class, “Ladies and Gentlemen, this “scripshun” is for Vy-ag-rah.” 

Mrs. Uppington overplayed a case of trauma, and Angela’s husband can’t show his face at parent/teacher meetings anymore. 

After dropping Marcus at school, Angela enjoyed a latté to celebrate her alpha female dominance over the other loser moms. Shortly, Mrs. Uppington phoned.    

“Mrs. Peterson, are you aware that today is April 27th?”

“So??” she said. Here comes Spielberg.

“Well, I just wanted to inform you that you sent Marcus to school today dressed up and with flowers . . . ”

“Yeah??” Angela said, annoyed that her latté was getting cold. 

“And as a rule, Mrs. Peterson, May Crowning occurs in, ahem, MAY.”

A few hours later, Angela slinked through the lobby with Marcus’ school uniform, past the PTA Taliban moms who were at a school meeting and had heard about her memory malfunction. She also needed to check her fourth-grade daughter out of school for an appointment.

“Ha! I guess I thought they moved May Crowning to April,” Angela joked as she greeted the grinning moms. “It’s SO Friday! Ready for the weekend, ya know? Wow, what a hoot! Soooo, I’m mostly here to pick up Claire for an orthodontist appointment.” 

They laughed together a little longer, and Angela headed home. Great. I had to face Miss Uppity AND those Super Sally’s Gift Wrap groupies.  A few miles away, she worried she’d forgotten something. The orthodontist. She forgot to pick up Claire.

Angela slipped back into school and the PTA extremists were still in the lobby doubled over, laughing hysterically at her lack of gray matter.

I bet those Taliban moms experience their fair share of brain cramps. So they should watch out. Angela might devise a radical plan of her own and drop an undisclosed number of little blue pills into their husbands’ sweet tea glasses at the next school auction.  

Bambie and Buddies Lovin' Life at My Herbicide House

Bambie and Buddies Lovin’ Life at My Herbicide House

A recent article in the newspaper gave tips on how to create a “wild-life friendly” yard.  The story suggested that one’s environment needs to become more eco-friendly.  However, there’s always such a menagerie outside my house it makes me wonder if the animals are getting a herbicide high every night with the garden gnomes from my chemical-laced crabgrass.  Come see if you want.  Bring traps or a bb gun.  Or a cat, unlike mine, that will actually hunt.  

Here are some of the newspaper’s suggestions to cultivate a space that attracts wild-life:

“Replace one’s sod with native plants and trees.”  

“Leave some dead trees or branches to provide insect food and cavities for nesting birds.”     And have plenty of black widow and copperhead anti-venom handy.

“Leave a section of your property messy with weeds, leaf litter and brush.”  Then Ms. Frozenface Snootybutt from the Homeowners association will be up in my bidness with a citation from the Germantown Gestapo of Ordinances.

“Use wood chips instead of dyed mulch.”

“Apply compost tea to your yard instead of fertilizer.”  Really?

And most important of all:

“Stop using chemicals on your lawn and pesticides in your garden.”

So, just to be clear, my family wins the neighborhood prize like every month for the best lawn on account of we have teenage slave labor.   

So, teenage slave labor + toxic chemicals = green, Lance-Armstrong-climbing-the-Alps juiced-up lawn.  

My grass is beautiful, and I can’t pronounce even one poison in that pre-emergent that I love and which is invisible in my drinking water.  However, my flowering shrubs leave something to be desired.  

Why, you ask?  Because every single freaking deer and their redneck Bubba cousin comes to OUR ‘roided-out, fertilized chickweed turf to graze at half past midnight every night.  There are even BUCKS chomping our suburban broadleaf.  I’ve seen them.  And every day in the morning dew you can see their sweet, graceful footprints after they’ve chewed up every azalea I have.  

There would be a lot fewer deer on my property if the crazy people in Germantown wouldn’t go ballistic and call the police every time they hear a gun shot.  Geez.  

Why do deer prefer my toxic edibles when there are perfectly good “green” democrats right across the street with lawns covered with clover and wild dandelions and nourished with tea compost?  Whatever that is.

That’s not the only wildlife my gorgeous, poisonous landscaping attracts.  We put every Weed-Be-Gone, triple strength, Nature’s Avenger, Round-up, Ortho-Spectracide concentrate you can buy on our vegetation, plus loads and loads of dyed mulch.  Yet, we have woodpeckers (and, consequently, holes) gracing our chimney, moles and chipmunks tunneling in our flower beds, ducks and frogs chillin’ in our pool, birds pooping on our porch, and squirrels wreaking havoc in our attic. And a stupid outdoor cat that obviously does nothing to keep them out.  Actually, she probably charges Admission.

So the way to attract wildlife to your grounds is obviously not to mess with all that “green” stuff.  I’ll gladly give you my left-over Ortho-licious fertilizer pellets and split a truckload of black mulch with you in order to create a pleasing pasture on YOUR property for my deer to graze.  I’ll spread the wealth, or manure, as it were, and even dump our grass clippings in your yard when my slaves empty the bag on the mower.  (Heaven forbid we would bring down the neighbors’ home values by not bagging our grass clippings on mowing day).  

I’ll even let you have rent my cat for a few months to do nothing in your yard.  After Bambi and friends move in with you, the cat could at least provide you with some natural fertilizer.  And feel free to keep the proceeds from Admission.