As I waited for Sean to finish his Party Burrito at Taco Bueno the other day, I picked up a newspaper that someone had left behind in our booth.  I never read the newspaper anymore, so it was kind of a treat. 

The first page I came to was the obituaries and I scanned them out of morbid curiosity.

There was a picture of a handsome man that caught my eye and so I read his obituary hoping to discover what had happened to him.  So I could then feel better about my own mortality. Somehow.

Anyway, this is what I read, exactly in this format:

“Bob was also an

uncleand friend.” 

Whaa?  Was this a statement on his salvation or his hygiene? And is this really the time to bring it up?

Rest in peace Uncleand Bob and thanks for the inappropriate laugh.

Yesterday I decided I would go through all of Sean’s baby stuff, pull out a few cherished things and then pawn off donate the rest to our church which has a program to distribute gently worn baby stuff to people who can use them.

It was a monumental and difficult task but luckily I had the help of Antique Daddy who pulled every article of clothing out of the give away bag just as I put it in and wept loudly into it.  That really helped to move things along.  Additionally I had the help of Sean who had to try on everything. 

I won’t show you the picture of my living room looking like a Baby’s R Us that was hit by a tornado, but I will leave you with this picture of Sean wearing a Santa suit size 18-months which made me turn off task mode for a minute and laugh which helped to offset the sound of wailing coming from the give away bag.

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Ho! Now go away and take that camera with you!

Ever since “the incident” with the sunglasses, I have not felt the same about them.  Since that day in infamy, any time I have put them on, I involuntarily shudder, unable to forget their dark and soggy sordid history.   I lost that loving feeling towards them and decided that I should probably go ahead and splurge on another pair of cheap sunglasses.

So today, I found myself at RossDressForLess (you have to say it like that) and as luck would have it, I found a gen-u-wine pair of Ralph Lo-wren sunglasses for only $7.99!  And I even looked half way decent in them.  There are some people who look good in glasses and hats and other things on their head, Jennifer Lopez for example, but I am not one of those people. I could don a ball cap, a hair bow or an otter and look equally ridiculous.  Yes, the best I can hope for in the way of head gear is half way decent, not that bad — not terribly hideous is my fashion goal. So I excitedly headed out of the store with my new designer sunglasses anxious to remove the tags and be all uptown girl or as uptown as one can be when cruising the suburbs in a mom-mobile. 

As I left the store, I ripped the old pair of sunglasses off my head and slam dunked them into the trash can with the kind of flourish that made Michael Jordan famous.  Good riddance, so long and adios ya big losers, it’s me and Ralph now! I pulled out my cute little Swiss army knife that I keep in my car especially for tag cutting emergencies and just as I went to snip the tag, the itty bitty sissors slipped and gashed the lens right down the center, deep and long.  And I was filled with the joy of the Lord, all mirth and glee and delight as you might imagine.

So then.  After I cursed the Swiss army and Ralph Lauren, I stomped walked back into the store to buy yet another pair of sunglasses.  I paused at the garbage can where the $5 Wal-Mart flush-me-nots rested in crumpled peace and I gave a moment of consideration to pulling them out of the trash can and stomping on them with both feet for good measure but decided against digging through the garbage, because you know, I have my standards.

As I went through the checkout line for the second time in less than twenty minutes with a second pair of sunglasses, the check out girl gave me a puzzled look.  “Didn’t you just buy a pair of sunglasses?” she asked.  “Yup,” I said.  And then I put on my new not-terribly-hideous sunglasses and I wore them out of the store, tags and all because at my level of cool, price tags don’t make much difference. 

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When you wake up in the morning and the light is hurt your head
The first thing you do when you get up out of bed
Is hit that streets a-runnin’ and try to beat the masses
And go to Ross and get yourself some cheap sunglasses
Oh yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah

ZZTop

Is it too early to start thinking about Halloween?  Apparently not according to retailers. But if you go by the retailers, I should probably be putting up my Christmas tree.

Anyway, back to Halloween.  Halloween is not a big thing for me, I could take it or leave it frankly, but for several months now, Sean has been saying he wants to dress up as a pirate for Halloween.  So being the over-involved, over-engaged mother that I am, I have been looking at pirate costumes at said local retailers and oh my goodness! – $30! No way people.  And it’s not just the money, it’s the principal.  You know whenever someone says it’s the principal, it’s the money.  Only cheap people stand on principal. And that would be me. Not that there is anything wrong with it. Disclaimer, etc.

When I was growing up, and given that was a few years back, we made our own costumes and that was half the fun.  We’d go through the Goodwill bag (which was ironic since most of our stuff came from Goodwill) and cobble together an outfit of sorts and then we’d crowd around the bathroom mirror and draw blood on our face with a tube of mom’s old lipstick. No matter what you were going as, it required a trickle of lipstick blood — and there is nothing more frightening than Raggedy Ann with a facial flesh wound. 

So I’m undecided on the pirate costume – to make or to buy. To make one would require a substantial amount of effort on my part that could be better spent sitting.  To buy one would mean spending $30 that could be better spent on me. 

Do you celebrate Halloween? If so, do you make or buy costumes for you/your kids? What did you go as when you were a kid? Did you buy or make your costume? What’s your favorite Halloween candy?  Or just make up your own Halloween question and answer it.  I’m flexible.  

your vacation photos look like this:

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Hello reader friends!

I have a number of projects that require my attention this week, so I will be otherwise occupied and unable to entertain you with tales of run-ins with public toilets or chi chi sandals that conspire against me.  I am working on writing and illustrating a children’s book as well as writing another family memoir.  Not to mention I need to workout. Badly.

Now that Sean is in school a few days a week and getting a bit more independent, I want to take advantage of that of free time and get back into my studio again and paint and do the creative things I love– in addition to writing this blog.

Please feel free to browse the archives or drop me an email and say hello.

See you next week!

~ Antique Mommy

Yesterday, we spent the day at a local amusement park. Now that Sean is fully potty trained, I no longer have to lug around diapers and always be on the lookout for a place to change him. And all that is good.

However.

Yesterday I took Sean to go pee at the park and since it was a public restroom I gave him the “don’t touch anything” lecture. I removed my sunglasses from my head and tucked them into the collar of my shirt by one earpiece and then I held him up to do his thing. When I stepped back to put him down, his head bumped my glasses and you guessed it, they tumbled into the toilet. At which time the automatic toilet began to flush. We both stood there watching in amazement as my sunglasses swirled and whirled and crunched against the mighty force of the flushing toilet.

When all fell quiet in the stall all that stuck out of the water was the earpiece of my glasses. If not for the thought of spending $35 for a new pair of $5 sunglasses in the gift shop, I would have turned and walked away. I had no other option but to go to that big blank white space in my mind.  I reached in and quickly grabbed my glasses. And miraculously my $5 Wal-Mart sunglasses were no worse for the wear.

“Mom! Don’t do that again!” Sean admonished me. “You are not supposed to touch anything!”

This is where the “Do as I say, not as I do” speech would work.

And yes, then I stood at the sink for 30 minutes scrubbing my glasses and arms up to my elbows like a surgeon and then I drank a quart of Purell just for good measure.

Now. Let us never speak of this again.

When Sean was first born, some people wondered if I was really his mother. He looked nothing like me. When his 85-year-old great aunt first laid eyes on him in the NICU she declared that she could have picked him out as Antique Daddy’s boy out of 1,000 babies. And she was right. They were both bald and had prominent chins.

These days the boy looks more like me – uncooperative hair and usually wearing food. No matter whom he currently resembles, the quirky things he does that his quirky antique parents both do, makes him undeniably our offspring. And I have to wonder – how much of our weirdness is genetically hard-wired into his little (but obviously exceptional) brain?

Sean’s father is an obsessive wiper-downer and I am an obsessive picker-upper. He deals in clutter, but can’t tolerate dust. I’m okay with a little dust, but can’t function in disorder. Antique Daddy will tell you that if he gets up to use the bathroom in the middle of the night, I will make the bed while he’s gone. But he is a wiper-downer and that is way weirder. The second he boards a plane and gets in his seat, he pulls out his Clorox Wipes and wipes down the tray, armrests, seat back in front of him, anyone sitting next to him — and then shows the grimy gray gossamer remains to any flight attendant that will make eye contact with him. Much weirder than putting your glass in the dishwasher anytime you put it down.

So, the other day I’m busy in the kitchen, putting things away, and it’s kind of quiet, so I look into the den to check on the boy, because you know, toddler + quiet = bad. Anyway, he’s in there with a now empty box of baby wipes, wiping things down – the TV, the sofa, the coffee table, the toy box, his books, my books, his hair. And this is the scary part — he makes eye contact with me over the breakfast bar, holds up the cloth to show me and victoriously exclaims “Doot!” (which in English means “dirt”). And then he gives me the same “Can you believe this filth??” look that his father gives the flight attendant.

The next day, I picked Sean up a little early from school and I had an opportunity to stand at the half-door to his classroom unobserved for a few minutes and watch him. Playing? Napping? Crying for his Mommy? No. He was tidying up the classroom. That’s my boy.

This post was originally published in October 2005.

One morning last week, as Sean and I were sharing a piece of cinnamon toast for breakfast, he stops eating and looks hard into my face.  

“You look pretty this morning Mommy,” he says matter-of-factly.

“Really?” I ask.  My spirits buoyed.

“Yeah,” he adds.  “Thank you for putting paint on your face.”

Mental note to self: Wear makeup more often.

Yesterday I went to the zoo with my boyfriend. Sure I had to drive and I had to pay our way in and even buy lunch, but it was a wonderful date and I totally love him. The air was sweet and we strolled around hand-in-hand.  Occasionally he would stop to kiss my forearm and tell me that someday when he gets big he’s going to marry me.  Although it’s the first time I’ve ever had to help my date go pee pee.

This week, my little boyfriend seems taller and more grown up and I have become almost painfully aware that these days when the two of us can slip off to the zoo and just hang out together are dwindling.  It won’t be long when he will have other things to do and prefer the company of another woman. But I’ll always be his first love.

Here are a couple of shots from our day at the zoo.  Sean’s favorite exhibit was the Bobcat. And the man driving it.  And then the second shot is just one that I took trying to be all creative. Unfortunately I had somehow messed up the settings on my el cheapo camera and set the quality to “worst ever” and date to “completely wrong” because I am just that creative. Or don’t know when to stop pushing buttons.

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 The rare and exotic Texas Bobcat.