HELLBEAST:
Poor Hellbeast. Her life was going pretty well: she had a place to sleep, rent-free, bowls of food and water that magically refilled themselves, and two humans who would pet her or leave her alone, depending on her desires.
Then IT came.
IT was a miniature human with a huge head. IT lacked the ability to give Hellbeast treats or play with her. So she ignored IT. But sometimes, IT was really loud, and for some reason the humans gave all their attention to IT instead of her. Hellbeast occasionally approached IT with a quizzical look, but the humans would shoo her away.
One day, IT began to sit up. The humans seemed excited by this, though Hellbeast didn't think it was all that special. Then, ITS ravenous gaze fell upon her. IT bared ITS teeth, and from ITS mouth issued a horrible squealing noise, high-pitched and full of...glee.
After that, ITS eyes followed her everywhere she went. IT watched her all the time. Sure, it was unsettling, but at least IT was immobile.
Until one day IT wasn't.
Suddenly Hellbeast found herself in a constant race to stay ahead of ITS grasping, yanking hands. She became very familiar with the underside of the human's bed. Worse, IT began to interfere with her stuff. IT played with her toys, threw her food out of the magic bowl, and splashed her water everywhere. IT even tried to dig into her litter box. Hellbeast was living in a nightmare.
And that is where things stand today.
KHAN:
Hey kitty I like you I live you kitty you're cool let me pull your tail just once okay kitty hey let me chew on your ears come on kitty be a sport I love you and you won't feel a thing I promise just for a second kitty come on one second I love you kitty come here to me KITTY KITTY KITTY where are you going kitty? Why are you running away?
We're working on 'be gentle with animals', but until then I'm afraid Hellbeast will remain a creature of the night, venturing out only when IT sleeps.
Showing posts with label parenting. Show all posts
Showing posts with label parenting. Show all posts
Saturday, July 31, 2010
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
Writing Mommy
I’m an author. And a blogger. And a housewife. And a mommy. And a payroll specialist (I work from home). And a vigilante who dispenses justice when the legal system’s hands are tied. No wait, that last one is The Punisher. I get me and him mixed up all the time.
There’s only 24 hours in a day. I kind of have to take care of Khan, since he’s my kid and all. And dog payroll provides me with money. And I also kind of have to wash laundry and scrub the toilets, or the place would start to look like a frat house.
And trust me, that’s really gross.
So what suffers? Yeah, my writing.
Before the baby, I wrote every day for at least an hour. Now I’m lucky to find fifteen minutes, and this is usually broken up into one-or two-minute increments scattered throughout the day. It’s frustrating, to the point that I’ve considered giving up writing altogether, at least until Khan is in school. Finding time to write and worrying over my writing career- such as it is- is just more stress I don’t need.
But for me, like it is for most writers, writing equals breathing. Quitting is tantamount to suicide. And I’m not ready to kill myself just yet.
So I struggle on, writing what I can, when I can. It’s not easy, but neither is childrearing. And in the end, they’re probably both worth it.
There’s only 24 hours in a day. I kind of have to take care of Khan, since he’s my kid and all. And dog payroll provides me with money. And I also kind of have to wash laundry and scrub the toilets, or the place would start to look like a frat house.
And trust me, that’s really gross.
So what suffers? Yeah, my writing.
Before the baby, I wrote every day for at least an hour. Now I’m lucky to find fifteen minutes, and this is usually broken up into one-or two-minute increments scattered throughout the day. It’s frustrating, to the point that I’ve considered giving up writing altogether, at least until Khan is in school. Finding time to write and worrying over my writing career- such as it is- is just more stress I don’t need.
But for me, like it is for most writers, writing equals breathing. Quitting is tantamount to suicide. And I’m not ready to kill myself just yet.
So I struggle on, writing what I can, when I can. It’s not easy, but neither is childrearing. And in the end, they’re probably both worth it.
Wednesday, July 7, 2010
Not Without My Nose
One day, before Khan could really sit up, he was lying on his back. I leaned over to talk to him, and he reached up and grabbed my face, pulling it down to his. Aw, I thought. He's going to give Mommy a kiss.
And then his mouth closed around my nose.
Khan has a thing about chomping on noses. A while back, he and a little girl at Story Time leaned toward each other. Khan's mouth opened into the predatory O I had come to know so well.
"Aw," The girl's mom said. "He wants to give her a kiss."
She probably thought I was a snob for sweeping him up and removing him before contact could be made. But at least it saved her daughter's nose.
And then his mouth closed around my nose.
Khan has a thing about chomping on noses. A while back, he and a little girl at Story Time leaned toward each other. Khan's mouth opened into the predatory O I had come to know so well.
"Aw," The girl's mom said. "He wants to give her a kiss."
She probably thought I was a snob for sweeping him up and removing him before contact could be made. But at least it saved her daughter's nose.
Monday, July 5, 2010
The Sacrifices We Make
As soon as I realized I was pregnant, I told The Scientist, “Oh #&$@! I have to stop swearing.”
This is harder than it sounds. Somewhere in the first thirty years of my life, I developed the mouth of a sailor. A pissed-off, creative sailor. It just came naturally. There’s a rhythm in long strings of swear words that irresistible; the syllables roll off your tongue like sweet, sweet grape Kool-Aid.
I swore quite a bit in casual conversation, but it got really impressive when I played video games. There’s something about mushrooms with feet and pastel ghosts that just makes me want to insult them in the worst language possible. It helps that they’re little two-dimensional dudes and they can’t turn around and punch you in the face when you tell them to go %!@* themselves.
My favorite targets were the hapless half-demons of Mortal Kombat. One day, twelve weeks pregnant and beating the living crap out of Johnny Cage, I had a sudden premonition of my kid’s preschool years.
Teacher: “Sweetie, why did you call Billy a donkey-punching, pig-%$#@ing piece of *(&^$ &$#%sucker?”
My Kid: “My mom called Subzero that when she was playing Mortal Kombat.”
And that was when I became determined to quit for good.
I’m doing okay so far. I manage to confine the majority of my profanity to times when Khan is asleep and to e-mail (I can’t swear in my Facebook status updates because I am Facebook friends with both my mom and my mother-in-law; yeah, I knew that would come back to bite me someday).
Then, the other night, The Scientist made a comment that led me to realize I have a lot more work ahead of me. He said, astutely, that someday we’d see Lindsay Lohan ‘spit out by the bottom of the porn industry.”
Oh crap. We make a lot of comments that, while not overtly profane, refer to activities of a salacious nature. Things Khan won’t know about until he’s at least ten: sex, drugs, and Inside Edition. We have to cut the allusions to South Park and Mitch Hedburg. At least until Khan is old enough to sneak around and watch these videos behind our backs.
Man, being a parent is rougher than I ever expected. $%@#.
This is harder than it sounds. Somewhere in the first thirty years of my life, I developed the mouth of a sailor. A pissed-off, creative sailor. It just came naturally. There’s a rhythm in long strings of swear words that irresistible; the syllables roll off your tongue like sweet, sweet grape Kool-Aid.
I swore quite a bit in casual conversation, but it got really impressive when I played video games. There’s something about mushrooms with feet and pastel ghosts that just makes me want to insult them in the worst language possible. It helps that they’re little two-dimensional dudes and they can’t turn around and punch you in the face when you tell them to go %!@* themselves.
My favorite targets were the hapless half-demons of Mortal Kombat. One day, twelve weeks pregnant and beating the living crap out of Johnny Cage, I had a sudden premonition of my kid’s preschool years.
Teacher: “Sweetie, why did you call Billy a donkey-punching, pig-%$#@ing piece of *(&^$ &$#%sucker?”
My Kid: “My mom called Subzero that when she was playing Mortal Kombat.”
And that was when I became determined to quit for good.
I’m doing okay so far. I manage to confine the majority of my profanity to times when Khan is asleep and to e-mail (I can’t swear in my Facebook status updates because I am Facebook friends with both my mom and my mother-in-law; yeah, I knew that would come back to bite me someday).
Then, the other night, The Scientist made a comment that led me to realize I have a lot more work ahead of me. He said, astutely, that someday we’d see Lindsay Lohan ‘spit out by the bottom of the porn industry.”
Oh crap. We make a lot of comments that, while not overtly profane, refer to activities of a salacious nature. Things Khan won’t know about until he’s at least ten: sex, drugs, and Inside Edition. We have to cut the allusions to South Park and Mitch Hedburg. At least until Khan is old enough to sneak around and watch these videos behind our backs.
Man, being a parent is rougher than I ever expected. $%@#.
Thursday, July 1, 2010
How We Ruined the Wedding
To set the tone of this blog, here is a story about how Khan ruined someone's wedding.
Last month we attended the wedding of two of The Scientist’s friends. This was the first time several of his buddies had seen Khan, so we were anxious to show everyone what a Perfect Angel he was, and thus what Superior Parents we are.
Since The Scientist was a groomsman, keeping Khan corralled was all on me. I did pretty well during the rehearsal and the dinner, if I do say so myself. He spent most of the rehearsal attempting to electrocute himself at an unsecured outlet in the back of the church; I spent most of the rehearsal retrieving him with a firm-but-loving “No.”. Excellent, I thought. Surely everyone was impressed with my Supernanny-like patience and tenacity. The weekend was off to a good start.
At the wedding, Khan played quietly on the floor during the processional. I was getting his bottle out of the diaper bag just as the bride reached the groom at the front of the church. And at that moment, Khan lost his balance, tumbled over, and banged his head on the pew.
Now, Khan bumps his head on various surfaces approximately 2, 639 times a day. Usually he gets back up, blinks a couple times, and crawls off to wreak havoc elsewhere.
Not this time. No, this time, in front of 200 people, in a large church with awesome acoustics, during the most important moment in the lives of two people we care about, Khan screamed.
I’d never heard him scream like this before. I’d never heard anyone scream like this before. It was like every tortured soul in Hell joined forced with every teenage slut from every slasher movie ever made, and they all cried out with one voice.
I didn’t wait for the horrified glares. I grabbed Khan in one hand, the bottle in the other, and bolted. Not easy to do in strappy sandals and a floor-length dress.
In the vestibule I crammed the nipple into his mouth and sat on the floor. He sucked down the bottle, and then I made a doubly horrifying discovery: it was pouring rain, so I couldn’t take him outside, and I’d left his pacifier in the church. When the formula was gone, I resorted to let him chew on my fingers to keep him quiet (Khan was teething, and still is teething, and has been teething pretty much constantly since he was 4 months old).
After the ceremony, everyone streamed out of the church. And, to my surprise, no one glowered at me. No one chastised me for being a bad mom or accused me of ruining the couple’s chance at happiness. They were probably just too shocked by my fingers, which looked like they’d been chewed by a rabid shrew.
With shrunken ego and a throbbing hand, I navigated the reception (which consisted of three hours of me pulling Khan away from an unsecured electrical outlet…). And you know what? The wedding wasn’t ruined. Everyone who was supposed to get married that day, got married. And we all got cake, except for Khan because he was too little.
Your kids are going to surprise you, usually at the worst possible time. It’s not the end of the world. It doesn’t make you a bad parent. Just be prepared to sacrifice your dignity- and your fingers- at a moment’s notice.
Last month we attended the wedding of two of The Scientist’s friends. This was the first time several of his buddies had seen Khan, so we were anxious to show everyone what a Perfect Angel he was, and thus what Superior Parents we are.
Since The Scientist was a groomsman, keeping Khan corralled was all on me. I did pretty well during the rehearsal and the dinner, if I do say so myself. He spent most of the rehearsal attempting to electrocute himself at an unsecured outlet in the back of the church; I spent most of the rehearsal retrieving him with a firm-but-loving “No.”. Excellent, I thought. Surely everyone was impressed with my Supernanny-like patience and tenacity. The weekend was off to a good start.
At the wedding, Khan played quietly on the floor during the processional. I was getting his bottle out of the diaper bag just as the bride reached the groom at the front of the church. And at that moment, Khan lost his balance, tumbled over, and banged his head on the pew.
Now, Khan bumps his head on various surfaces approximately 2, 639 times a day. Usually he gets back up, blinks a couple times, and crawls off to wreak havoc elsewhere.
Not this time. No, this time, in front of 200 people, in a large church with awesome acoustics, during the most important moment in the lives of two people we care about, Khan screamed.
I’d never heard him scream like this before. I’d never heard anyone scream like this before. It was like every tortured soul in Hell joined forced with every teenage slut from every slasher movie ever made, and they all cried out with one voice.
I didn’t wait for the horrified glares. I grabbed Khan in one hand, the bottle in the other, and bolted. Not easy to do in strappy sandals and a floor-length dress.
In the vestibule I crammed the nipple into his mouth and sat on the floor. He sucked down the bottle, and then I made a doubly horrifying discovery: it was pouring rain, so I couldn’t take him outside, and I’d left his pacifier in the church. When the formula was gone, I resorted to let him chew on my fingers to keep him quiet (Khan was teething, and still is teething, and has been teething pretty much constantly since he was 4 months old).
After the ceremony, everyone streamed out of the church. And, to my surprise, no one glowered at me. No one chastised me for being a bad mom or accused me of ruining the couple’s chance at happiness. They were probably just too shocked by my fingers, which looked like they’d been chewed by a rabid shrew.
With shrunken ego and a throbbing hand, I navigated the reception (which consisted of three hours of me pulling Khan away from an unsecured electrical outlet…). And you know what? The wedding wasn’t ruined. Everyone who was supposed to get married that day, got married. And we all got cake, except for Khan because he was too little.
Your kids are going to surprise you, usually at the worst possible time. It’s not the end of the world. It doesn’t make you a bad parent. Just be prepared to sacrifice your dignity- and your fingers- at a moment’s notice.
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