People.
ENOUGH.
Enough with the fucking glitter. Every holiday card I open has glitter all over it that got crunched up when it went through the machines at the post office and then ends up all unstuck from the card and all over me like fucking Anthrax. It seriously harshes my holiday mellow to open an envelope that turns out to be a freaking dirty bomb, spraying me with yuletide shrapnel as if I was standing too close when Ziggy Stardust stepped on a landmine. STOP IT.
p.s. YES THIS MEANS YOU, AUNT LUANNE. [As if glitter isn't bad enough, Luanne likes to stuff her cards full of motherfucking christmas-tree-shaped CONFETTI. Holy fucking shit confetti, are you fucking kidding me.]
It's not just the holidays. I already have to deal with enough glitter as it is. It's on every damn craft project my kid brings home.
I swear to God sometimes I think I send him to preschool all day in a gay disco.
What part of the curriculum says "you must sprinkle TINY SHARDS OF METAL AND/OR GLASS all over your artwork, so that they stick to your clothes and your hair and every surface of your home and hopefully, make their way into your eye so that when you rub your eye it is lacerated to the point that you blind yourself and then you have to go to a school for the blind and CPS won't have to deal with you anymore"? Wait...I think this might be Chicago's way of solving classroom overcrowding.
Last year, we gave MashugaMom's older boy, Monkey, a gift bag for some minor holiday that had "Moon Sand" in it. IN MY DEFENSE, the packaging for moon sand made it look like Play-Doh, but in cooler colors, and with a moon on the packaging. I thought it went nicely with the rocket and the astronaut that were also in the gift bag. I did not know I SWEAR TO GOD I DID NOT KNOW that Moon Sand is crumbly and dry and weird and IMPREGNATED WITH GLITTER. Not even glitter...glitter DUST, the microscopic, subatomic-particle-version of glitter. MashugaMom's husband looked at me like I'd just given his son a Glock. "Dude, WTF?" he asked. "Glitter is, like, the herpes of the preschool set. We're gonna need antibiotics now."
I quickly dustbusted up the remaining Moon Sand and we threw it all away right then and there, but Jesus, these people have carpet. That shit is never going away. I was there last night for a Chanukah party (yes, AFTER Chanukah, they know, and there wasn't any popcorn on a string but there WAS peanut butter chocolate mousse pie so, you know, we cool) and the carpet--a year later, mind you--is still sorta sparkly. So with the time warp from the late Chanukah and holding their new little baby on my hip and all the sparkling, it was kind of like I was having a flashback: "doodle-oo, doodle-oo, doodle-oo." <--say this out loud in a high pitched voice and wave your fingers in front of your face, you'll get it. Work with me, here.
So Frog ate a shitasston of Chanukah gelt at this party (Trader Joe's sells it as interdenominational "COINS OF THE WORLD" by the way), and THEN made and ate some cookies, and then, like idiots, we were all, "Okay, let's go home to bed!"
Morons.
It was like giving a 25-year-old guy some cocaine and then saying "Hey! Let's not have great ideas about how to change the world and invent stuff!"
First, he came out and had to go potty.
Then, I caught him in his book nook (aka dog bed) reading books with his rocket flashlight.
Then, he was fiddling around with his radio, changing the music. I knew he wasn't sleeping when I heard Nirvana playing. ("Mommy, WHY is it less dangerous with the lights out?" great bedtime music).
Then, he came out and asked, "Mommy, if cats eated the mice" [he had seen a dead mouse on the sidewalk outside his dad's optometrist that afternoon], "then what amimal" (not a typo, that's how he says it) eatses the cats when they are died?"
Me: "Uh...." (referring quickly in my mind to the "i know an old lady who swallowed a fly" song, the source of most of my knowledge lately) "dogs."
Frog: (big exasperated sigh) "Mommy...no. Dogs eat dog food."
Me: "OH, then....bigger cats?"
Frog looks at me for a moment, expressionless.
Then: "I'll ask Daddy." Shuts door.
Seriously? You believe, for instance, that a giant man in a red suit comes in our house through the balcony, eats cookies and leaves you presents, and then departs via reindeer, but not that cats might sometimes be eaten by bigger cats? Since when AM I NOT AN AUTHORITY on these matters? Just because Daddy watches Mythbusters does not make him an expert on debunking shit.
So then later I caught him fiddling with his nightlight, making shadow puppets on the wall, and I opened the door. He scowled at me. "I don't want you in here. This is my room."
Holy teenager, batman.
I went over and sat on his bed and said I just wanted a hug. So he relented, came over and sat in my lap and I sang to him for awhile and then we put our heads on the pillow, and he hooked his little arm around my neck to keep me there, in a tiny headlock. So I stayed. And we cuddled, and he kept his arm around me the whole time. I stayed for about 10 minutes and then tried to get up, but he hugged me tighter and kissed me on my forehead, so I gave in, overcome by cuteness, and ended up falling asleep there and being woken up by Aquaman at midnight.
Frog has never wanted anyone in his bed before. He's never asked to be in our bed. He is the most independent, straight-to-bed, great sleeper, not clingy, not particularly cuddly child I know, but last night, my kid wanted to cuddle with me for HOURS, so I released into it and got it while the gettin' was good.
I didn't realize until I looked in the mirror this morning that there was one unfortunate side effect of sleeping on a preschooler's pillow:
(*@#^@(*#@(# glitter in my hair.
Still.
Worth it.
