I took the kids camping a couple weekends back.

We were doing the campfire horror story thing, and here’s what Taylor came up with.

SHUT THE FUCK UP. NO HANDRAILS?!? Sleeping with all the teddy bears tonight, you guys.

Lately my darling son has been a real dick.  Yeah, that’s the story I’m leading with, do you have a problem with it?  IF SO I WILL GROUND YOU.  I am pretty much the best at grounding people lately.

I think the most frustrating part of his recent behavior at school, which has been mostly about him refusing to do the things he is supposed to do, is that I don’t get it.  It doesn’t seem smart, and I don’t handle Not Smart very well.  If Behavior B gets you in trouble, but Behavior A gets you rewards and fun, WHY WOULD YOU KEEP DOING BEHAVIOR B I MEAN COME ON YOU ARE A LEARNING ROBOT ARE YOU NOT?  I was only rebellious at school when I wouldn’t get caught, which wasn’t until I was a senior in high school.  It’s a little cocky for this seven-year-old to think he’s going to get away with it.

Today I picked him up and the first words out of his mouth were, “My necklace is bad luck.”  And I’m like, “(head-tilt, question-mark eyes)” and he’s all, “It’s bad luck because I had a bad day today.”

SO NOW HE THINKS I’M STUPID, TOO.

Anyway, parenting is fun.  Thanks for letting me get that out.

We survived our four-day trip to Phoenix.  Next time I want to stay long enough to be able to forget the horrors of the flight out there before we have to get on a plane home, though.

One of the main reasons for this trip was for Andrew to meet My Entire Redneck Family.  I have to improperly use caps there because it’s the only way to stress the Entirety and the Redneckedness of My Family.  And there are many of us gun-toting, truck-driving motherfuckers.  I have four brothers and two sisters and my parents and all my grandparents are, miraculously, still alive so what I’m getting at here is POOR ANDREW.  But he survived.  The children also survived a total of eleven hours on a plane, BUT IT WAS CLOSE.

After we had checked our luggage, Maya screamed “HE STOLE OUR BAAAAAGS” woefully in the middle of Tampa International Airport and that was sad.  One night Andrew and I were out without the kids and as we drove back, we seriously considered bailing to Mexico, but we didn’t, and that was sad too.

Now it is wedding-planning time, so excuse me while I go hyperventilate into a paper bag.

It’s like yelling at your neighbor about the couch he keeps in his house.

OH WAIT. YOU CAN’T YELL AT YOUR NEIGHBOR ABOUT THE COUCH HE KEEPS IN HIS HOUSE. BECAUSE IT’S NOT YOUR HOUSE, SEE?

No matter your opinion on abortion, it’s irrelevant, because her body is not your house.

Last week I was running some errands while Maya and I waited for her glasses to be made at the optometrist.

Sidenote: Maya got glasses, and HOW CUTE DOES SHE LOOK I MEAN SERIOUSLY YOU GUYS HOW CUTE.

All the cutes, that’s how cute.

So we are in the car driving back to the optometrist and I feel a tickle on my arm and you guys, I JUST KNEW.

I JUST KNEW IT WAS A SPIDER.  Like Kristin Bell just knew there was a sloth in her house, I JUST KNEW THERE WAS A SPIDER ON MY BODY.  In case you need a reminder, I don’t like spiders.

But I didn’t want to freak out the little girl in the backseat (although who am I kidding, she is about nine times tougher when it comes to bugs than I am) and also, I was driving in heavy traffic with no place to just pull over and handle this– so I convinced myself it was not a spider.  Just a hair, Brianna, I mean seriously, how could a spider get in the car and then on your body, haha, you’re such an L7 Weenie.

And that actually worked until a half-mile later when I felt a tickle on my ribcage and looked down to see this

running up my side towards my face, which it obviously wanted to eat right off.  It ran up my ribcage, across the boobs, over my shoulder, and down my back.

Oh my God, oh my fucking God there is a spider running all willy-nilly over my body while I am navigating a two-ton, flammable metal object, one that is also carrying my daughter, through a moving network of other large, flammable metal objects.  There is absolutely nothing I can do in this situation except shit my pants and call it a day, right?

I kind of wiggled the best I could and Maya wanted to know what I was doing.  “There is a spider on me,” I didn’t yell, an accomplishment for which you can send cookies to me directly.  And Maya, ever so helpful and informative, replies, “Oh. Okay. Maybe it’s a tarantula.”

MAYBE IT IS, KID. THANKS.

Now I am in the middle of a left-hand turn.  I cannot see nor feel the spider moving on me, but I know it’s there, waiting for a clear shot at my jugular or perhaps down my throat where it can lay eggs that will eventually burst through my stomach.

I’m squealing noiseless squeals.

Spider decides to make a break for it and shoots from between my back and the driver’s seat, across my hip, and down into my crotch.  I saw my opportunity and took it, and people, I killed that spider with my ass.  Here is a horrible visual for you:  me, hands in a deathgrip on the steering wheel, maintaining a cool 50 miles-per-hour, bouncing and grinding my ass wildly on the driver’s seat, squealing and sweating and all this with an innocent child in the backseat.

I know.  I KNOW.  I don’t even have tinted windows.

I did this for the remaining two-mile drive to the optometrist and when I finally stopped the car in the parking lot, I took a deep breath and got out.  It was dead.  My ass ground that spider into dozens of pieces.  I HAVE NEVER BEEN MORE PROUD OF YOU, ASS.  I JUST WANTED TO SAY THAT HERE IN FRONT OF EVERYONE.

I was shaking and sweating and cursing and yes, I know this was a gross over-reaction to what is just a bug, but you know what?  Forget waterboarding, or electric shocks, or phone books, or whatever other torture method those types of agencies are using nowadays– Spider On You In A Car While Driving In Heavy Traffic should be THE go-to interrogation tactic.  Your prisoner will absolutely be willing to share all the details within seven minutes of the spider being released onto their person while driving, or you can smack my spider-killing ass and call me Shirley.

This morning I went to the store for one thing and one thing only– a Christmas tree.  Since Maya has wicked allergies, I was looking for an artificial one.  I picked one out online and went to pick it up.  This will be quick!  I thought. In and out! Only one item!

Isn’t my naivete adorable?

So I was in the store, had spotted my intended purchase, and went back to the front to get a cart for the massive box.  Sometime between wheeling the cart out of the cart stable, and getting back to the artificial tree aisle, I must have… gotten lost, or SUCKED INTO A BLACK HOLE OF CONSUMERISM, because I don’t remember anything between grabbing my empty cart, and waking up in the rear lot of the store on a pile of 39-cent holiday candles, bruised, my wallet empty, with “HAHA SUCKER! LOVE, TARGET” carved into my stomach.

Okay, that part is not true, but close. By the time I had found my way back to the artificial tree aisle, my cart was full of shit, just absolute crap.  If a warehouse full of plastic washed down chorizo and eggs with Jäger bombs, got diarrhea and could only find my cart in which to relieve itself, it would look like this.  I WILL BUY ALL OF THE THINGS.  I snapped out of it, thankfully.  All of a sudden I looked down at some 97-cent plastic snowman-shaped cup for the kids that had appeared in my cart, realized it was just shit– shit that would pile up in my kitchen, living room, dining room and drive me crazy and and and WHY?  No.  I emptied everything straight into the middle of the aisle (save the tree), and ran away.

I’m not writing some bitter diatribe on advertising and consumerism; someone else can do that much better than I.  I am just amazed, more than anything, at how easy it is to get sucked in.  I love Christmas (there! I said it! it is my mom’s fault!) and want to make it fun for my kids and start traditions for our newly-meshed fambly, but something tells me that the 97-cent plastic snowman cup isn’t an integral part of that.

I can’t be the only one– Do you ever get sucked into the BUY ALL THE THINGS holiday spirit?

Today’s post was written by a very talented guest-blogger.  You know him as Peter DeWolf, or “that goofy adorable Canuck”.  I know him as the guy who kicked my ass in fantasy football last season and the guy who is doing much better at producing posts for my blog than I am!  Enjoy!
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“It’s never going to fit,” she says, well aware of how dramatically it came out.

“Sure it will,” he replies, his eyes never leaving the football game.

“You’re not even looking.”

He glances over quickly, with just his eyes, and then back to the giant flat screen tv.

“It’ll fit.  You’re just not doing it right,” he says.

“Come show me how,” she smiles.

He hops up.

“Fiiiiiiine.  That play is under review anyway.”

He looks at the clothes.  He looks at the suitcase.  He strokes his chin.

“You need to roll your clothes,” he declares.

“Is that so?”

“It is so.”

She stares at him.  She bats her eyes.

“Need some Visine?” he asks.

“Maybe if you roll one piece to show me how?”

“But… But the game…”

“You’re so fast and talented that you’ll have it all finished before the game comes back on.”

He rolls his eyes, as he picks up the suitcase and dumps everything out.

“You’re taking my FoxyBingo.com t-shirt?”

“Yeah.  I like sleeping in it.  It makes me feel like you’re there.”

“Oh crap.  That’s annoyingly sweet.  I’ll roll two things,” he says.

“My hero.”

He takes a pair of skinny jeans and rolls them tightly, as he hates himself a little for knowing that they’re skinny jeans.  He places them gently in the suitcase.

He grabs a cardigan and begins rolling.

“You have to roll it like… those Mexican things that you make fun of me for having never tried before even though I’m Canadian,” he explains.

“You’re doing sooo well,” she says, taking a handful of the fries he left on the bedside table.

He shakes his head.

“It’s good that you got me to do this.  I’m going to show you have packing is done.”

He rolls.  He places.  He rolls.  He places.  And so on, until everything is rolled.

He stares down at the suitcase.

She walks over and stands next to him.

She stares down at the suitcase too.

“They don’t fit, do they?” she asks.

“No.  They don’t.”

“Hmm,” she says.

“I’ll buy you a bigger suitcase and give you a backrub if we never discuss this again.”

“Deal.”

“You ate all of my fries, didn’t you?”

“*Buuuuurp*  Maybe.”