Wednesday, February 01, 2006

So, in honor of my kid's birthday (tomorrow) and my birthday (a week from Sunday - you still have a few shopping days left) my dad and stepmom are coming to visit this weekend.

This is cool because:

• My dad rocks
• My dad likes to cook
• Both my dad and stepmom take an interest in my child (unlike my mom)
• They've never been to Savannah before so I can do touristy things
• There will be presents (duh)

This is not cool because:

• They're staying with us... at our house
• We're letting them stay in the "master suite"
• This means we'll be stuck on an inflatable mattress in the junk room*
• My dad's house is immaculate while our house is our version of clean (seriously, you could eat off of the floors at his house, I don't know that I'd advocate eating off of the dishes at my house**)

Having visitors in the house stresses me out... it's a comfort zone thing, I think... even though it's just family, I'm not good around "other people" and it makes me neurotic and uncomfortable and it makes me disconnect even further from the rest of the world***

And then tonight, I get to play happy homemaker and make about 4 trillion cookies to take to my kid's school tomorrow for his birthday.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

And speaking of my kid's school... I have a teeny tiny issue with stay-at-home moms - no, I'm not going to go all feminist here (even if it's been a little bit too long since I shaved my legs) with some rant about women emancipating themselves from the kitchen and diving into the workforce, hey, if you can afford to stay home with your kid, great, more power to you, I'd do it if we had the cash, but when you leave the house in scroungy sweats and slippers with a dirty scrunchy in your gross hair, you're pretty much broadcasting to the world that you've given up. White flag, hands raised, the party's over.

I'm not saying that you have to get all gussied up and wear heels and hooker red lipstick, but come on... at least try not to embarass your kids by looking like you slept off your crack-and-kinky-sex binge in a bus station parking lot. And I'm not just talking about in the mornings, lord knows if I was a(n) SAHM, at 8:30AM, you'd see me in jeans and no makeup with my hair up in a bitch clip, but I'm pretty sure by 3 in the afternoon, I'd closely resemble a human... a female human. I go straight from work to pick up my kid and even in jeans, a thrift store vintage sweater and Converse, I look like a pageant contestant next to half of these frumps.

Is it asking too much to want people to take a little teeny tiny bit of pride in themselves?

*That room in the house that, because we don't have a garage, or any other form of storage, contains everything from Christmas decorations to a couple of tool boxes.

** kidding... kind of

*** as anyone who has emailed me within the past month or so and not gotten a reply for 3 weeks (or not at all) can attest, I'm already pretty disconnected.

Labels: adventures in shitty parenting