The Truth

Having tried in vain since November to change it, or at least avoid it, I must now swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth:

I don't like being a stepmom.

"Buh buh buh buh...."

(c) Kentuckians for the Commonwealth

Ack! I didn't post anything this week. Big sad face. :-(  Monday I was getting ready for I Love Mountains Day, Tuesday I was at I Love Mountains Day marching onto the Governor's mansion lawn (yay!), and then mid-day Wednesday my stepdaughter came home early with chronic constipation. After two whole days at home being a full-time stepmom by myself and weekend full of even more 5-year-old exuberance, my week has left me full of writing material and devoid of writing faculties. Think Goldie Hawn in Overboard: "Buh buh buh buh buh...." (minus the diatribe about the spawn of Satan at the end of the clip):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RndG23-Vu-k

I promise to share these stories of fun and flatulence in the week ahead. ;)

Dad's Attic Potpourri - Big Finish

By Alex Valavanis (Flickr) [CC-BY-SA-2.0
(www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)],
via Wikimedia Commons

Catch up before we conclude. Click the text for Part I, Part II, and Part III.

Outside, we replaced our bouquets of moldy attic flowers with handfuls of puffy dandelions, violets, and wild strawberries. We stuffed red dogwood berries into the gaps of pinecones to be sold at our make-believe market alongside home-made mudpies. We threw the dollies and ourselves into the hammock and thrashed about wildly, buffeted by imaginary storms on invisible seas. We gave her mom mini-heart attacks, shrieking as the hoards of tent caterpillars hidden in the grass squished their guts between our bare toes. We were high on life, but we still craved danger...and height. Being genetically-doomed to shortness does that to a person.

Dad's Attic Potpourri - Part II

Missed the beginning? Read Part I here.

Leah's mom didn't seem to think her husband was such a brainiac either. This surprised us at first since she poured over boring wildflower books during camping trips instead of racing leaf boats with us. But she suffered from chronic vicarious-hypochondria, and she was losing the myriad of threats the attic posed to her children's health. She seemed to really enjoy warning us that we'd get frostbite, or cook our brains out, or suffer a brown recluse bite and subsequent expert medical-drowning in peroxide, or get sucked into the giant blades of the house fan. Now she was going to have to dream up all new child-health hazards to enhance her own immune system.

Everything I Need to Know about Lobbying I Learned in Kindergarten

Photo Credit: Kentuckians for the Commonwealth

Wednesday I got home from KFTC's Economic Justice Lobby Day just in time to pick up Sophie from school. On the way home, I told her, "Sophie-dog (yep, my stepdaughter and dog have the same name, more on that another time) is going to be so excited to see us. I haven't been home all day."

Sophie(-girl), incredulous: "You finally found a job?!?" (Child, if we were cave people, you might not have survived to adulthood.)

McDonald's: "Making Stepmoms Evil, since 1697"

Going from child-free to stepmom has been a crash-course in parenting. Emphasis on crash. You're not supposed to have children before birthing children. Biologically speaking, I'm 99% sure that the propagation of the human species depends entirely on this premise. Irrefutable evidence: step-parenting has taken me from "I definitely want kids" to "We'll see...."