Random Dude 3

OK, so I was at the mall the other day, which I usually do not do because as I have gotten older, I have grown to hate "The Mall." I do not enjoy the confluence of humanity in all of its sketchy, ill-dressed form, nor do I dig the inflated prices and surly teenager sales associates who couldn't act more offended when asked to do something crazy, like, I don't know...do their job. So yeah, I don't go there much.

So it was kind of ironic that I encountered the third winner of the Random Dude Award on a Saturday afternoon at the Westland Mall. I happened upon his vehicle, a very large, very white Ford F-250 as I trolled the aisles for a parking spot located an acceptable distance from the door--it's how I keep in shape, and as an added bonus, it allows me to continue to silently judge the old fat guys who drive up and down and around, all in the vain hopes of gaining the highly sought-after "right-next-to-the-handicap-spot" parking spot. That, plus I am convinced that the close-by spot has bad mojo. If I park in that close-by spot, I will not find what I am looking for, and be forced to visit the dreaded Mall once more.

But I digress. I saw the huge, yet not-jacked-up F-250, and was struck at once by it's behemoth size, pristine cleanliness, and of course, the obligatory two stickers in the back window that won him the coveted Random Dude Award. Now, shield your eyes, my Darlings, because these stickers were kinda bad. But on the other hand, I guess if you were a connoisseur of taste and refinement, you certainly would have stopped reading my blog months ago, so here goes, my little dirty little Lovelies.

OK, on the left-hand-side of the rear window was a sticker that proudly read "Ditch the Bitch--Let's Go Ridin'," and on the right-hand-side was a sticker of a hand gesture commonly referred to as "The Shocker." Seriously. Now, I am not going to get into the specifics of "The Shocker," you will need to check Wikipedia or your 17 year-old nephew for that definition, but suffice it to say that it is not classy. At all. And I think this is what surprised me, because the Westland Mall is widely-known as a pantheon of cosmopolitan culture and distinction, a veritable hotbed of distinguished charm and grace. And here was this travesty, sullying the place.

So I went against my innate, Jersey-perfected nature and did not ram his vehicle repeatedly, thus creating a tailor-made excuse for the insurance adjuster to cover up my still unrepaired bumper after the East Side Shopping Cart Incident. No, it would have felt really, really good, but I did not do it because I am growing emotionally, or so my therapist says. Instead, I pulled into the adjoining spot, and waited--hey, it was Saturday afternoon, I had nowhere to be, and I just had to see this colossal doofus with my own eyes. As I sat, I wondered what he looked like. Would he be a barely-twenty-something in one of those stupid white tank-top undershirts (I will not call them Wife-Beaters--if Child Molesters wore them, would that be a socially-accepted description of them?? I think not) with too much product in his hair, his pants slung low and belted well below his scrawny ass? Or would it be some scraggly 30 year old with a spotty goatee and a sideways-cocked Red Wings hat carrying a baby carseat? And then it dawned on me. What if, on one of this one occasion, the Random Dude with the Poorly-Thought-Out-Window-Stickers was actually a Random Chick? After all, I did see that really big lady with the poofy blonde hair and fluorescent pink acrylics tooling down Hall Road in a Jeep Liberty that said "Have a Nice Day Butthole." Hmm...nope...the presence of "The Shocker" sealed the proverbial deal. It had to be a dude--no self-respecting chick would be caught dead in a car with that sticker on it. Unless she borrowed it. The truck, not the sticker. Duh.

I waited, and waited, and after about 15 minutes, I saw the folly in my actions. I realized that it didn't matter what the Random Dude looked like, because he so had the Award in the bag no matter what. Actually, I began to fear that perhaps he was normal-looking, even worse, mildly attractive, because I may be a judgemental chick, but I'm still single and I gots dates to go on and a blog to write. I live in perpetual fear of meeting some nice guy, with a job and a house, and a well-adjusted sense of himself, and then going out to his car and seeing a PTOWS. Much like bad grammar or spelling errors, that's just a personality flaw I don't honestly know that I can overlook. In the end, I abandoned my quarry, and headed into The Mall with my head held high. I will never know what Random Dude 3 looks like, and I will have to be OK with it, because, even with good reason, stalking some poor stupid guy in a parking lot is not classy. And yeah, nothing says class like Kelly-Girl and the Westland Mall.

This Roar Ain't Dull

OK, so it's a relatively subdued morning here around Casa Chica, and I am thorougly digging the P & Q. The Hobbit is away at his summertime lair (a fact I know because I saw one of his underlings gain access to the Hut of Darkness, ostensibly to bring in the mail, but who are they kidding? It was to check on the collection of shrunken heads, poodle tails, and hearts of children whose parents have inexcusably parked directly in front of his home while visiting neighbors), the Banana has been oddly absent, and when he is around, even more oddly--completely clothed--so not sure what's up with him, and so here I sit in a clean, laundry-completed Casa, just waiting. The Chicas returned from Up North, and are still ensconced in their beds, sound asleep, or more-likely semi-comatose, based on their being gone in the sun and fun and fresh air for the past week. Yep, it's pretty freakin' quiet.

The phenomenon called "quiet" does not happen very often in this house with 3 little girls (yes, that's how many kids I have, and if you did not know that, you should be throat-punched, or at the very least directed to review previous posts--on your own time, for now you need to keep up with the rest of us). I gotta admit that I myself bought into those quaint pictorials featuring doe-eyed, freckle-faced girls skipping through the meadow in lavender plaid sundresses holding a bunch of dandelions, whose fuzzy white tops are delicately trailing behind them. Or the image of three sisters with neatly plaited hair, all cuddling together around a book, perhaps one of the Laura Ingalls series, the older ones taking turns to quietly read aloud to the younger one, introducing her to the joys of literature and the world of imagination. Yeah, all that is a bunch of crap. You want to know the real-life images associated with Casa Chica? Buckle up my Lovelies, here we go.

Casa Chica functions in a state of perpetual motion at a constant noise level of about 285 decibels. It could be the sheer number of children in my house, or the hardwood floors, or lack of dining room furniture, but I still contend it's because my kids are LOUD. Even when they whisper, they can be heard by the semi-deaf. And outside? Oh, My Ever-Living God, it makes your ears bleed. And as for gently guiding the youngest Chica? Yeah, not so much. Yesterday the oldest two shoved her in a bucket and hosed her down because they were playing "Filthy Dirty Baby Needs a Bath and the Bathtub is Broken." Granted it was a large bucket, and she seemed to enjoy it for 3 of the 18 minutes she was in said bucket, but still. Or there was this time...

This photo was taken a couple of weeks ago at the Livonia Spree fireworks. All around us, families were quietly picknicking with their wholesome snacks of fruit and organic free-range soy crisps, eagerly awaiting the start of the early-summer spectacular of light and sound (ok, it is Livonia, so that might be a bit of a stretch). And what happened on our blanket? Yeah, I had three kids, all hopped up on faux-cheese Pringles, red-dye #12, and good old fashioned high fructose corn syrup pounding the life out of each other in a Tweeenage Version of Summertime Smackdown. They were a tangle of limbs, hair was flying everywhere, and at one point the Smallest Chica lost her pants. Oh, man, we were soooo the topic of many hushed ride-home discussions between horrified parents in their mini-vans emblazoned with stick figure kiddos and pets.

And you know what? I couldn't care less. I'm not saying that I don't make a good-faith effort to tame them when they start to act utterly feral, but really, at the end of the day, if they're not causing direct physical harm to either themselves or others, does it really matter? I know for a fact that I am referred to as "That Divorced Woman with Those Wild Girls" in certain circles around these parts, but I also know that my girls are good kids. They can be helpful, and kind, and quiet--just not around each other or me. And that's OK. They know how to behave well when it matters. I am purposefully making an effort to not sweat the small stuff, and in turn give them a place where it's OK to act up, yes, maybe even wild, and be as loud as they want because there's going to be an awful lot of people that want to paint them into a corner, plug them into a little box, and expect them to act and do things a certain way. But they sure as hell won't ever hear that from me.

So yeah, I'm embracing the calm before the storm on this lovely morning, and wondering what the day will bring. There was some talk of a lemonade stand after yesterdays "Buy a Bubble" stand was a bust (sorry, couldn't resist) and ended in a screaming match, or maybe they will once again tie Baby Girl and some teddy bears to the fence and invite their buddies over to see their petting zoo. The possibilities, along with the volume, are limitless. And I wouldn't have it any other way.

Up North

OK, so let's just overlook how much time has elapsed since my last post, shall we? The Chicas have been gone for the past 10 days, are home for 4, then leave again for another 10. It seems to me that the FM is playing a little fast and loose with the summer visitation rules, but the Chicas love being Up North, and it will only cost me a small fortune to deprogram them once they are safely back into my fold, so what do I know?

For those not in the know, "Up North" is a unilateral Michigander directional term much like "Down the Shore" is for us Jersey Natives. Except there's a whole lot more geography "Up North" than there is "Down the Shore," so Up North means pretty much any destination above M-59, including the UP. So that also means that in order to travel Up North, you can either be in the car for an hour, or for 8, and it still counts the same. It also encompasses virtually any type of property--whether it be a big-pimpin' house on a lake, a permanently-parked trailer in the woods, or a family farmhouse in BFE--doesn't matter and no one asks. As long as you have a place Up North, you are spoken about in hushed, envious terms by those of us trapped in the D on long-ass holiday weekends.

Not that my weekend was uneventful, my Lovelies. Nope I hung out with Monroe (the fella formerly known as "The Camping Guy," thusly nick-named for the town in which we met, purposefully overlooking the dodgy RV circumstances) and learned the painful lesson that I really cannot hang out with a dude for that long this early in the game. Not that it was completely my fault--there was literally nothing to do here in the D last weekend. The Tigers were away, there weren't any festivals or other people-watching opportunities, and absolutely everyone we knew was....say it with me...Up North. Yes, see you do pay attention after all! So there we were, two people still getting to know each other, trying to find something to do, and not having much luck. His neighbors had a lot of Blow-Your-Hand-Off Fireworks, but other than watching those over the fenceline, and waiting to see if EMS would need to be called, there wasn't nothin' goin' on.

And this week was no different. It was completely foreign to me for the Chicas to be gone and to not have to be anywhere or do anything. I guess I function in a constant, unconscious state of flurry, so the fact that I didn't have to race home to relieve the babysitter, or get anyone to practice or really do anything besides to go to work was kinda mind-blowing. So I did what any self-assured, independent single chick would do--I emotionally shut down for 72 hours, and then got off my ass and shook it off. I went for a 5 mile walk, went to dinner with a couple of girlfriends-past, and played an absolutely terrible round of golf on Thursday. But I got closest to the pin and some passably good pizza afterwards, so it all worked out well in the end.

So yeah, I did it. And now I'm going to enjoy my Chica-weekend and get my snuggles and kisses in before they head off again.We're going to have little friends visit to Slip-N-Slide, go to Art in the Park, and catch up on all their newly-forming vacation memories. I already have a game plan for this next break in the parenting action, and if Mr. Kid Rock comes through with my requested tickets (sorry to keep harping on this, but I really do not understand the delay) all will be entirely good in the 'hood once more. Oh, and just so you don't think I've gone completely Midwest, I'm also planning a kick-ass August Chica-vacation back East. Not that I'm deliberately trying to trump the FM and the mighty-mighty "Up North," but I'm pretty sure a visit to DC and Philly might come close. I might just throw in a side-trip Down the Shore for good measure.