I'm sorry for flipping you off today when you cut me off in traffic with a hugely illegal U-turn, making me miss my light. It was only because I didn't know sign language for "I'm sure you're a fine person, but I strongly disapprove of your most recent driving maneuver."
Sincerely,
Dear Crabby
Dear Local Elementary School:
I am so glad that, in this time of deep budget cuts, you have not eliminated funding for art classes. I am thrilled that you are familiarizing my children with great artists like Claude Monet, who is well known for his paintings of water lilies, not Waterlillies, as you asserted on the tag you stuck to the back of my daughter's art project. Twice, in fact, so I know it wasn't just a typo.
Also, as the parent of a child with a food allergy, I am very pleased that you carefully and prominently announced, on the door of my son's classroom, that nuts are forbidden within. It makes quite clear that one of his classmates has an allergy. But I'm pretty sure that he's "severely" allergic, not "severally." Just thought you'd like to know.
Yours truly,
Nervous Girl
The Michigan primaries are tomorrow. I will be voting, but my children, much to their relief, will be in school. I say "much to their relief," because on election days when the schools are closed, I take them with me so that they can witness Democracy in Action. In case Democracy in Action does not offer enough Action, I offer a running commentary on the importance of voting. The look on my offspring's faces during said commentary is precisely what you would imagine on a wolf's face the moment after he realizes the only way out of the trap is to gnaw his leg off.
For I am giddy about voting. I simply adore exercising my Constitutional right. I show up for school board elections, dogcatcher, you name it. So you can imagine my glee at being able to help select the Democratic Party's nominee for President of this great, great nation.
Except. Except that Michigan decided to reschedule its primary for January 15 in violation of DNC rules. So two of the top three contenders for the nomination decided not to have their names on the ballot. Write-in votes for them will not count. So here are my options:
The Republican candidates know this, God bless them. They know there are a lot of ticked off Michigan Democrats who are all dressed up, as it were, with nowhere to go. They don't care if we're trying to eff with their election, so long as we vote for them.
They have reached fever pitch. Yesterday, I was answering one of their mechanized phone polls when call-waiting kicked in. I ditched the poll for a live caller, only to hear John McCain's recorded voice. I hung up in dismay when my phone rang immediately. It was the mechanized poller, who hadn't yet given up on me. I hung up in disgust this time, when my phone rang again. This time, it was some pre-recorded Huckabee spawn, inviting me to drive across town to hear his old man speak.
Thank goodness the new phone is remarkably sturdy.
Today was more of the same. By mid-morning, when the phone rang, I snarled, "If that's another Republican who wants to make love to me, I'm going to tell him where he can shove his campaign, and how far."
It was, in fact, another Republican who wanted to make love to me. And, no, I did not tell my husband to take that campaign elsewhere.
How come the cool Valentines with candy come in packs of 22, including the teacher card? Don't the manufacturers of the cards know that most schools, even in your better districts, have class sizes greater than 22 (which number assumes that your child won't want to keep one of his Valentines for himself)? Of course they know. They just want you to have to buy two boxes of their tacky little cards so you'll have enough for every kid in the class.
Then, of course, you have about fifteen to twenty cards left over, and somebody's got to eat all that leftover candy. And it's not like you can let the kids do it--they've got all the candy from their 24 classmates to deal with. And I'll be damned if I'm throwing the excess candy out, after I had to go and pay for it.
I wonder if my children will ever appreciate the little sacrifices I make for them..
Dear Lady in the Costco Parking Lot:
Yes, I realize that my vehicle's proximity to your car is making it exceptionally difficult for you to pull out. No, I am not moving, even though I am close enough to you to see your lipstick bleeding into the lines around your mouth. Perhaps if you had actually bothered to look behind you before backing out of your parking space, you would have seen that my car was in motion and nearly directly behind you. Yes, I probably am being unnecessarily harsh, especially since, realistically, you probably couldn't have seen over the collar of your ginormous mink coat.
Yes, I am a bitch. Thank you for noticing.
Sincerely, Dear Crabby
***
Dear Mrs. Reading Specialist at my son's elementary school:
Thank you for the informational flyer you sent home with my son today with the notation "Dear Mrs. Nervous, I thought you might find this interesting." I did, I really did! I had no idea that reading was going to be important to my child's education. Boy, am I embarrassed! Thank you for calling it to my attention; it would never have occurred to me to encourage my son to read. Now, though, thanks to you, I can see that my son is doomed to academic failure thanks to my lax parenting.
Thank God for dedicated educators like you. I had actually been feeling pretty good about myself as a partner in my son's education; fortunately, you saved me from continuing to focus on skills like watermelon seed spitting and nose-picking. Reading, you said it's called? I'll have to look into it.
Very truly yours,
Crabigail Q. Nervous
***
Dear Mrs. G (my son's second-grade teacher),
Julian has reported twice this week that his classmate, Ryan, has been picking on him in gym and before recess. I know you are concerned about good citizenship in the classroom and on the playground, so I felt sure you would want to be aware of this, particularly in light of the fact that Ryan is about one and a half times Julian's size (although I suppose that's not really his fault, since this is his third time through the second grade). I don't want to dictate how you manage classroom behavior, but in this case, could I suggest that you smite Ryan with the fury of God's own thunder?
Of course, if you feel uncomfortable smiting students, or your contract for some reason prohibits it, please do me one small favor. Tell Ryan that I'll be volunteering to help the kids with their portfolios this week, and that I'll be spending five minutes of quality time with him out in the hallway on Thursday. Alone.
Thanks for your support,
Mrs. Nervous
Good afternoon, everyone. I have PMS. Also, I'm getting a tiny head cold. Probably a cold in the nose isn't a big deal to most people, but if you've seen the size of my nose, you realize that such an ailment puts three-quarters of my body out of commission.
So you can probably see why I'm a little more disposed to crabbiness than usual. These are the three things that have raised my ire so far today:
1. Apparently, there is an upcoming event in Birmingham, Michigan, involving basset hound lovers gathering to walk their adorable pooches in a parade of sorts down a thoroughfare in that town. People are coming from all over to participate. A radio news segment about this observed that a couple is even coming to Michigan from Ireland, just for this event. However, they don't want to force their dogs to travel such a distance in the belly of a plane. So they're coming by themselves and borrowing dogs to walk in the parade.
People: don't you think it should be more important to you to actually love your basset hounds than to be identified as basset hound lovers? Save the plane fare and donate it to an animal shelter.
2. On another radio station, I heard the deejays discussing a book, by a woman, telling men how to cheat on their women and not get caught. (I did not get the author's name or the title of the book, or I would have linked to it. And, G, if you somehow stumble across my recent Google searches and find "how to cheat and not get caught," it was just because I wanted to provide substantiation for this rant. Honest.)
They mentioned a few of the tips on the radio, but they also said that the female author of the book urged men not to cheat unless....the person they were cheating on really deserved it.
News flash to idiot author: if the person one is cheating on "deserves" to be cheated on, then they deserve to be divorced/broken up with. There is no justification for cheating, boys and girls. None. Fellas, if you want to get with someone new, for whatever reason, then take ownership of your wanker and have the integrity to make a clean and honest break with your partner.
3. Good Housekeeping featured none other than that famous idiot and misogynist Tom Cruise on their cover this month. Hey, that's just what I like in my women's magazines: a moron who believes I'm at fault for my own postpartum depression and that psychiatry is a "pseudoscience" grinning up at me.
For the record, I read the article before leaping to the conclusion that it was just a soppy softpedal TomKat lovefest. (It was). Then I canceled my subscription. And I told them why. I hope the operator knew how to spell "misogynist."
A few random thoughts about the Christmas season as experienced by yours truly...
I can be easily manipulated by Christmas songs. If you want to make me cry, any version of "O Holy Night" will do the trick (including the version by Kelly Clarkson, but that makes me weep because she butchers it). "Rockin' around the Christmas Tree" and "Jingle Bell Rock" make me want to go on a three-state killing spree. "I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas" makes me homicidal, too, but only toward the helium-sucking midget who sings it.
Christmas cookies rock. But don't ask me to join a cookie exchange. Because every time I do, I spend an evening making Lebanese shortbread cookies or my Aunt Edie's Mint Sticks or something suitably festive, and I come home with nine dozen slice-and-bake sugar cookies. Store brand, too, not even the Pillsbury kind. If you're going to participate in a cookie exchange, push the boat out a little bit, people, or you'll see none of my homemade gingerbread men.
Vendors, please do not try to use the season of my Lord's birth to sell me things that have nothing to do with the spirit of the season. In no way would my buying the farting teddy bear or the towel specially marked "face" and "butt" as a gift be a proper celebration of Jesus' birth. Do not try to convince me otherwise; you will fail. There is nothing in the Gospels about flatulence. I have checked.
News flash: There are different religions in this country, and they celebrate different holidays. Do not panic: it's okay. You can admire a Christmas tree (lately known as "holiday trees") without having to be baptized. And no one is going to make you renounce Christ before you can have a latke. If the whole thing is stressing you out, just focus on the whole "Peace on Earth" thing, which I believe is largely universal. If even the idea of peace on Earth is too much for you, lay in a store of sedatives for the month, have some hot cocoa, and call me in January.
I don't think I'm cut out for life in the suburbs. I do not seem to have that gene that so many suburban SAHMs have, the one that makes you turn paper plates and styrofoam bowls and yarn into graduation caps for six year olds.
Is it really necessary to graduate from kindergarten?
It's possible that I'm underreacting here, so I would really appreciate some feedback from any of you out there who have gone to kindergarten yourselves. I just think it's mildly insane to pump this end-of-kindergarten thing up so tremendously. Yesterday I went to a school assembly where the kindergarteners performed a sing-along in front of the whole school, the very one they had performed the previous day for their parents. I was next to a mom, a very nice woman, who was practically apoplectic because she couldn't see her son on the stage with the other fifty students. Apparently she felt that those of us parents who bothered to show up (again) should have our kids positioned in front. "This is a big deal," she sputtered. "It's like their graduation."
No, actually, it's not.
Not that it's not a big deal. I'll concede it's a big deal that the kids have made it through their first year of school, and that they get to perform in front of the whole school. But I don't think my kid should get special positioning just because I'm there (he didn't), and I especially don't think kids whose parents couldn't show up should get shoved to the back.
And I don't think kindergarteners should graduate.
I think we should be proud of them, and tell them so. I think we should buy them special first-grade books to read over the summer, and read with them. I think a special dinner out at Chuck E. Cheese on the last day of school would not go amiss. But I do not want to see a "diploma" or one of those cunning little styrofoam-and-yarn caps.
Where does it end? How much sunshine do I have to blow at my kid to get him to move from one grade to another? Isn't the promotion to the next grade a reward in itself? And if it's not, how do I top myself year after year? What kind of extravaganza do people throw when their kid actually graduates from high school? I read in the paper recently that people are now spending on their kids' high school graduations what they used to spend on their weddings. Is that not, perhaps, a touch extreme?
I think it is. Who's with me?
Dear Crabby-
My two year old daughter, Maia, has Influenza A, strep throat, typhoid fever, the cholera, bubonic plague, an imbalance of bodily humours, and my wife thinks possibly an incubus has been visiting her at night. She has stopped spitting up snakes and frogs, though, and is only spewing green mucus four to six feet when she sneezes or coughs. And that's only every thirty seconds or so. Don't you think it was okay for me to take her to the children's room at the library for a couple of hours? Some of the people there seemed to be staring at us, and honestly, I can't imagine why, unless it's because Maia turns such an adorable shade of puce when she coughs.
-Maia's Dad
Dear M.D.-
I'm no doctor, but it sounds to me like Maia could have used an extra week or so of bed rest, not to mention the services of a pediatrician, an epidemiologist, and an exorcist, before hitting the library. Even so, it sounds like everything she has is curable. You, on the other hand, seem to be suffering from TSTCL (Too Stupid to Continue Living). I'm not sure there's anything that can be done for you. If your wife is unable or unwilling to have you put to death, please contact our offices. We'll be happy to help.
