parenting, something I am so good at

I'm not exactly a parenting paragon. I accept that. My kids haven't totally gone postal and blamed me in the plea bargain, so I take some consolation int that. But it's not like I pretend to be all serious and right and shit.  People (and blogs) like that drive me nuts.  

That said sometimes I possess even the astounding ability to amaze myself. Take tonight for example. In the course of one single hour the Meatball acknowledged that I am the source of his knowledge on swearing in sign language, witnessed me trying to wedgie Paul Bunyan, and said "we'll if its a pin up of you then it would be clever and pretty."

Starting at phase one -- sign language swearing fluency -- American Sign Language (or ASL) is a second language for me. Growing up with a non-verbal sister we incorporated sign into our familial language early on.  Naturally, I learned to swear proficiently because ASL offered me the opportunity to not only communicate with friends brilliantly on multiple choice tests, but also a way to covertly be a rebellious little pain in the ass in high school.   Apparently somewhere, sometime, somehow Meatball saw me sign a phrase that rhymes with "duck two" and tonight he asked me "Mom, what does this mean?" Um yeah, mom of the year I never claimed to be.  But at least I don't lie to him.  Oh, and I also told him that if he ever uses it I will shave his eyebrows off in his sleep.

No, that is't a how-to for you, but it is a totally badass ASL interpretation of Marilyn Manson's This is the New Shit.  If you watch it closely, you are likely to learn most of the bad words anyway.  Be smart about watching the video if there are children around or if you are at work.

Second high point of the evening, wedgie time. Dear ol' husband and I are being argumentative and messing with each other, so of course we resort to fighting slightly dirty. When Meatball and Beans where looking the other way, Bunyan proceeds to smack my ass hard enough to make a loud crack. Of course, the boys notice that, and somehow *I* am blamed.  Don't ask how, logic has no place in this.  My menfolk have solidarity, none of them claim to miss the toilet or leave the seat up -- yet both things happen regularly -- and no one will rat the others out.  So when the boys look the other way again I know I only have moments with which to exact my revenge.  Knowing that returning the spanking would only thrill the perverse Paul, and not make my point at all, I decide on a small, but ever so poignant, wedgie.  Of course, Paul Bunyan can strike my derierre on the downlow but I can't yank his boxer briefs up without getting caught. While I believe that parents should honor each other and never argue in the presence of their children, I categorically refuse to believe that my wedgieing Mr. Bunyan is in anyway not a healthy precedent for me to set.

Lastly, me as a pin up. Meatball really doesn't understand pin-ups a sexual beings, he knows them as a tattoo style of women he wished would be more conservatively dressed -- an indication of both the environment we've created (tattoos are art) and his youth and kootieish tendencies (he's eleven, this will end soon). So when I was mentioning using my Kitchen Aid for something I had to bake I told Paul Bunyan that I'd seen these amazing works of art (artist's website) and desperately want to do that to MY mixer.  We decided it should totally be a redheaded pin up in an apron, thus making her look like me.  Being the wise little brown noser he is, it was at this point Meatball dropped the line about how if it is a pin up of me she'd have to be clever and pretty but wondered how we could fit all the awesome on to the surface of my mixer.

Well played, Meatball.

But I will still shave your eyebrows if I catch you swearing in sign language.