An Open Letter to the Jerk in the Blue Car in my Kid's School Parking Lot

Dear Jerk in the Blue Car in my Kid's School Parking Lot,

There's something we need to discuss. I'm writing you out of concern. Concern for your health and safety.

You are dangerously close to being dragged out of your car and murdered in an elementary school parking lot, so please listen to what I have to say before it's too late.

Are you familiar with the school pick up line? No? See, that's funny, because you and I both navigate this line each and every day. You did know there were other people picking up their children at 3:00, right? We all form a line. Let me illustrate.

See the jerk in the blue car? That's you.

It's a line, Jerk in the Blue Car. There's an order to it. We all wait our turn. This is how civilized society operates. See, we all enter the parking lot through one small driveway. Then we pick up our children, and then we circle around the rest of the parking lot until we get to the other driveway. And then we exit.

But not you! You have another strategy entirely, don't you?

What...what are you doing??

This is where things get weird, Jerk in the Blue Car! We're all sitting in line, and then suddenly, your blue car just...gets out of line!

Yes, I know you have already picked up your child. I see that. I saw him climb into the backseat of your blue car. This was before I knew you were a jerk. Does your child know this about you, jerk? Is he a jerk as well? Is this some kind of jerk training program you're running?

Why are you turning? Do you not see the 9 other cars in line in front of you? You may not realize this, but we also have picked up our children and probably have other places to be. Yes, I see that there's a big gap between the parked cars, large enough for your car to fit through. But...I just...DO YOU NOT SEE US HERE?

No! No! Why are you doing that? Are you really doing that? You're really doing that! You're such a jerk!

 Why?? Do you seriously not see all these other cars, waiting patiently??

What's that? You need to get to the bank? Oh, ok. Well, I personally was planning to just pick up my child and then hang out here in this parking lot for the rest of the afternoon. So I can see that your need to exit this parking lot 3 minutes faster is definitely more urgent than anything I have going on.

And look! You have a friend! Did you pay this guy? Threaten his children? I don't understand why he's letting you get in front of him, as if crossing the parking lot in this chaotic manner is a legit route to the exit.

You need to stop this. You're a jerk. Please. Just stop, before somebody (not necessarily me, I mean, anybody could do it) snaps and flies across the parking lot in a fit of rage and tears your car to pieces. I'm just saying.

Think about it.

Sincerely,
Alyssa

A warning to my laundry.

Fair Warning.

If you are fabric in my house that is not nailed down, you will be put through the washing machine when you become dirty. And you will become dirty. This is certain.

If you have one of those fussy, entitled tags demanding you be "hand washed only" or even "dry cleaned only" (in the case of the latter, I don't know how you got here in the first place, and I'm sorry for the things you're about to see), you may be afforded the luxury of the "delicates" cycle, if I'm in a generous mood. But you will be washed.

Most of you will make it through just fine.

And those of you who don't? I'm sorry, but trust me when I say it's for the best. This ain't the life for you, princess.

Personalized Trick or Treat Buckets

One of my best sellers over the summer was my personalized beach buckets. I made so many of them and they were just so fun to do.

Custom Beach Bucket, $10.

Well, summer's over and I still have lots of buckets! The nice thing about these is they can be used for so much more than just the beach. I mean, it's a bucket! Use it to store toys or craft supplies, use it as a fun alternative to a gift bag at your next birthday party.

Or, of course, add a spooky design and give it to your kid to fill up with candy on Halloween! You guys know how much I love Halloween. Remember Gnarles? Gnarles is ready to come out and play again! STAY TUNED! Seriously. Stay tuned, or he will find you.

Anyway. :) This is what the Princess (who seems to believe she's dressing not as a princess, but as a vampire this year!) will be trick or treating with:

Your kids can have one too! $10

Louisa May Alcott actually died of tuberculosis. For the record.

So. My son had croup.

Remember my son? We call him the Monster in these parts.

He'll be 2 next month. TWO YEARS OLD. My BABY. He just turned 1 last week.

Anyway. Croup.

Or as I like to call it, The Croup.

Text message conversation between me and Ashley last week:

Her: "A. [that's her daughter] has croup."
Me: "What? Croup? Who is she, Louisa May Alcott??"
Her: "Croup is a modern day disease! You're thinking of cholera. Or the dropsy."
Me: "No way, dude. Kids in Little Women and Anne of Green Gables were always getting The Croup."
Me (after some fancy google work): "Croup was once a deadly disease caused by diphtheria bacteria. However, modern day antibiotics and immunizations have helped prevent or treat it. Today, most cases of croup are mild. See? Kids in old books were always dying of The Croup."
Her: "Well. There you go."

Naturally, after all of this, my son woke up the next morning burning with fever and barking like a baby seal.

Baby seal photo added for visual interest. Isn't he cute?? I'm sure he doesn't have croup, don't worry.

Of course our entire family was concerned and sympathetic. I stayed home from work for 3 days to cradle him and love him and let him give me slobbery croup-germy kisses.

When he wasn't coughing, he was breathing like Darth Vader. It was pitiful. And it led his loving big sister to initiate conversations like this:

"MONSTER!" [She didn't really call him that, you guys. She called him by his actual name.] "STOP IT!"

Me: "Honey, he's not doing it on purpose. He's SICK. Leave him alone."

Her: "No, mom. He keeps BREATHING and it's really LOUD and ANNOYING."

Me: "I know. He's sick, he can't help it. Please stop yelling at him."

Her: "He looked RIGHT at me and then he started breathing LOUDER. Make him STOP."


In conclusion. Don't call your friends' kids Louisa May Alcott when they get weird old-timey diseases, and also don't have a mouthy 6-year-old daughter. You're welcome.

Desperate, Elfless times

Yesterday I told you how I desperately  need an Elf on the Shelf to keep my kids in line spread holiday magic throughout my house.

These elves are incredibly creepy:

"Hey, girl."

But as you know, I kind of dig creepy. And Christmas. So Christmas creepy is right up my alley.

Knowing this about me, @MotherhoodTruth suggested the possibility of locating a Zombie Elf.

Naturally I thought of Gnarles, who is really wasted packed up in the Halloween box all year when he could be spreading his special brand of cheer year-round.

What do you think?

You better watch out. You better not cry.

The possibilities are endless. He's nothing if not versatile:

Hippity, Hoppity.

Folks, Christmas is drawing ever nearer, and not an Elf in sight. These are desperate times, and I'm not above resorting to desperate measures. Gnarles would be thrilled to come out of the shed and hide in my children's rooms and dreams. Don't think I won't do it.

Somebody send me an Elf, or this might become reality.

Wordless...Monday. Dude, shut up. It's my blog.

From Ashley, my dear friend and personal photographer:

"Why do I get the feeling that your son has some evil plot to take over the world?"

Hmmmmmm.

Muahahahahahahahahaha.

Halloween Madness. No seriously. It is MADNESS.

I like Halloween.  I like it almost as much as I like Christmas.  And I really like Christmas.  But that's another post.

Because this is October.  As you may be aware, October is the month of Halloween (not Christmas. I'm talking to you, retailers everywhere). And because October is the month of Halloween, I've got Halloween on the brain.

I like to dress my kids up:

That's the Princess, age 7 months.

Age 19 months

Age 2.  A pirate with attitude.

Age 3.  Snow White.

Age 4.  Pinkalicious!

The Princess, 4 years, and the Monster, 6 weeks.

Costume 1: Vampire

Costume 2: Wyatt Earp

Wyatt Earp, people!

I like carving pumpkins:

OK. Truth? I do not like carving pumpkins. I like looking at pumpkins carved by my husband and child.

Yes, my husband is the Official Carver of Gourds and Melons in this household for good reason.

I LOVE trick or treating:

 And yes.  I like dressing up.  I work in an office where people are awesome:

Theme: Zombie Prom.  There were balloons and dance music.  And a strobe light.
I brought a fog machine.  It set off the smoke alarm and several hundred people had to evacuate the building.
And everybody was all, "Those zombie prom girls on the first floor know how to PAR-TAY!"

Another year, another zombie.  Mother-daughter zombies!
  This was for my brother's zombie-themed birthday party (his birthday is October 26).
The Princess was 3 and she was a zombie ballerina.

I even like Halloween cakes:

It's a brain.  It's a cake.  It's a brain cake, and I made it for the aforementioned Zombie Birthday Party.

OK.  I don't always dress like a zombie.  I've been Dorothy, Alice in Wonderland, Tim Burton's the Corpse Bride, a fairy, and a host of other things.  But for some reason I can only find photos of the zombie costumes right now.  That's OK.  Zombies are awesome.  There are more zombies to come.  Just wait.

So.  You can imagine that one other thing I like is decorating my house for Halloween.  But see, the thing is, I have kids.  Young ones.  And they get all...scared.  So we've done some cutesy pumpkin crap for the last few years so the Princess wouldn't be terrified of her own front door or whatever.  Kids, right?

But this year she's 5, practically a teenager, and we think it's time to introduce her to the truth about Halloween.  It's scary.  In the most awesome way.  I think she's ready; she's fully aware of zombie and vampire mythology.  Whereas past years have been all about the princess, the costumes she's been considering this year have been decidedly on the side of horror.  (She settled on a witch, by the way, and kind of a cutesy sparkly witch, but a witch nonetheless, which I count as progress.  It's not a princess.)

Also?  We have a new house.  And the front of our new house has a gorgeous roomy porch with bushes and trees and flower beds and lots of space for...creativity.  Space for lots more fun than some stupid grinning pumpkins, right?

Today the Princess spent the day with her grandparents, and tHe O.G. and I found ourselves at the local Spirit Halloween store.  Looking.  And imagining all the various ways we could turn the front of our new house into something that would terrify and repel children, leaving us with a bowl full of candy to consume at our leisure delight the neighborhood children with the true spine-tingling spirit of Halloween.

We came home with some stuff.  A lot of stuff, maybe.  We might have come home with like 3 big bags full of creepy, demented, twisted stuff, OK?

And the crowning glory of this stuff?  Brace yourselves...

...No seriously, brace yourselves.  If you have a weak constitution you might want to turn back now...

INCREDIBLY LIFELIKE ZOMBIE BABY EATING ITS OWN FOOT!!!

That feeling you're feeling right now?  It's called jealousy.  Or nausea.  One of those.

But probably jealousy.



UPDATE:
This post now linked up at the following parties:

(Howleriffic Halloween @ By Word of Mouth Blogging)

Did you know? I'm a writer.

I'll be participating in my third National Novel Writing Month this November.  NaNoWriMo, if you weren't aware, is a challenge to complete a 50,000 word novel in 30 days (the month of November).  I started in 2009 and successfully completed 50,000 words.  Let me tell you something:  That's a lot of words.  A LOT of words.  Many try.  Few succeed.

Check it.

In 2010 I gave birth in September and attempted Nano in November with a 6-week-old in the house.  It was a spectacular failure.  But I was ok with that.

So now I'm trying again, 2011, ready to go.  My baby is a year old now and reliably goes to bed at 8 and sleeps all night (holla!).  So I should be able to get some writing in each evening and get my gears turning again.

Because I want to be a writer.

I want to be a writer?  How sad.  I used to say "I am a writer."  But writers write.  Right?  Writers write, and I don't write anything these days.  Well, let me qualify that.  I write for a living.  Technically.  I am a writer.  But I write marketing copy, admission letters, college catalog copy.  I write other people's words.

And I write this blog.  And I love writing this blog, and part of the reason I started blogging was to find my voice again.  And I plan to keep writing this blog as long as you keep reading it, and maybe even if you don't.  But at the end of the day, the writer I want to be is a fiction writer.  A novelist.  And I haven't been actively writing fiction since...November 2009.

So I'm here to say that I am a writer, and I am going to write. I'm going to write marketing copy and admission letters and academic catalog copy, and I'm going to write this blog, and I'm going to write 50,000 words of fiction in 30 days.

 I'm pretty sure placement of this badge constitutes a legally binding contract.

Some of that may cross over.  Well, I won't make you guys read any admission letters.  Probably.  But you might have to read some of my NaNoWriMo fiction posing as blog posts.  Deal with it.  It's good stuff.  You'll like it, ok?

Oh, also?  I'm cheating.  The rules of NaNoWriMo state that you must write an entire novel, a new novel, in 30 days.  I'm not doing that.  Because that's not what I want, what I need, from this experience.  And I don't work for NaNo, NaNo works for me.  Yeah.

So I'll be starting my word count at 0 and doing 50,000 new words.  But they'll be part of a larger work in progress, because I'll be continuing the novel I began two years ago.  OK, the novel I began at age 16, the novel that has grown up with me, that's been written and rewritten and burned and resurrected a dozen times in a dozen different iterations over nearly half my lifetime.  Because that's the novel that's in me, and someday it'll be finished, and someday it'll be great.

Here's a synopsis of that novel:

In 1979 Dr. Vivian Bell, two-year-old daughter Julia in tow, led a motley band of idealists from a California university to a patch of rural farmland and built a commune--a self-proclaimed “Utopia” seeking to create a life of equality and harmony. Rebelling against both the competitiveness and materialism of the culture at large and the free-love individualism of the hippies before them, the founders of Orchard Valley Homestead set out to create something better for themselves and their children. Decades later the community lives on, forgotten by the world, its members doggedly clinging to ideals they’ve failed to live up to time and time again. It was here that Julia grew up, both inextricably bound to her mother’s creation and unbearably resentful of it. 

How We Go On is the story of mothers and their daughters in a world defined at once by isolation and by community. Vivian will grow larger than life in this world; Julia will be destroyed by it. And in her last moments Julia will throw her own daughter, 13-year-old Shelby, the only lifeline she has—a life somewhere else, with a man Julia once cared for, a man who left their childhood home without her. Shelby steps out alone, still numb with the loss and betrayal of her mother, towards an unknown future in a culture both deceptively familiar and terrifyingly foreign, only to be confronted by her own past: her newly appointed guardian, an uncle she’s never known, holds secrets about her, her mother, her long-forgotten father—and the community they all once belonged to, the only family Shelby has ever known.

I hope you guys will all stick with me through November, and cheer me on, jeer me, kick my butt, mock my failures, etc.  I need you to hold me accountable.  OK?  OK.  Thanks.

Bringing the Hilarity. Soon.

I'm feeling rather nonhilarious lately.  I mean I go back and read this and this and I think dude, I am fully capable of being funny.  But I'm totally not feeling it right now.  I think my Zoloft dosage is cool, so it's not that.  I'm not sure what it is.  But I'm working on it.

Please stand by and fully expect a blog post that will score high on the chocolate milk scale.  Soon.  Very soon.  It's coming.

The future of our country.

Please don't count the inaccuracies in the following conversation.  She's 5, ok?  I'm doing the best I can over here.  And I still think I handled it better than I did the where do babies come from discussion.

I liked it better when she just ate things she found on the floor and didn't talk.


"Mom.  Is there only one President in the whole entire world?"

"No.  There is one President of the United States, but the world has a lot of countries, and other countries have their own president, or a king, or a queen, or a prime minister..."

"What's a prime minister?"

"Um.  It's like a president."

"So every country has a president?"

"No...some do, and some don't.  Every country gets to choose its own kind of government."

"What's a goverment?"

"It's the people who are in charge of making the laws."

"Oh!  I want to be one of THOSE people."

"You want to be in the government?"

"YES.  So I can MAKE THE LAWS."

"Um."

"Does the President make all the laws?"

"Well.  No...there are lots and lots of people in the government, and everybody in the country gets to vote for who they want those people to be and what they want them to do, and the President is like...the...boss of the government."

"Oh.  Well then I'm gonna be the President."

"OK."

"So I can be the boss."

"Right."

"Where do I sign up?"

"Um.  You have to work really really hard your whole life and then get people to vote for you."

"I know what voting is!  And I have to run around and yell really loud VOTE ME! VOTE ME! VOTE ME!"

"Yes.  Exactly."

"And then I'll be the President."

"Well.  Lots of people want to be President, and you have to get the most votes of all the people who want the job."

"Oh.  Well I'll just yell VOTE ME like a hundred and fifty times."

"It's in the bag."

Warnings

1. I have a blog now.
2. I'm generally pretty well medicated but I do have my moments. 
3. If I have ever written anything even vaguely smart/funny/interesting/not sucky to you, at you, or near you it will most likely be recycled on this blog because you're the only person who knows it's been used before and I know you would never sell me out because we're tight like that.
4. If you don't know me, disregard #3.  It never happened.