One Whipped Mother

O Holy Shite

Well, hello! I’m back, as you can plainly see. Hope your holidays went well, and that you’re all looking forward to a gluttonous New Year’s Eve.

Thought I’d take a few minutes here, while I can, if I can-- got four kids home from school (plus one -- my oldest daughter’s boyfriend’s dad went in hospital on Christmas Eve morning, and so has been staying with us) -- to post a few unimportant yet extremely irritating things I either noticed or experienced during the holiday weekend. Let’s begin, shall we?

1) I still can’t stand Patti LaBelle’s voice. Although I like and respect her as a human being, and know that many people believe her to be one of the best singers alive, I nearly had a brain aneurysm on Christmas morning while listening to her destroy “O Holy Night” when she performed her version of it on Good Morning America. Even my children, who had been deep in gift opening frenzy, unmindful of anything going on around them save for the gleaming boxes and loot-filled stockings, froze with terror soon as Ms. LaBelle began to howl. My boy, however, quickly broke free of his fear, brave little man that he is, then turned to me and said, “Mommy, you told me werewolves aren't real!”

2) Extended family who call every ten minutes to report incredibly idiotic things that I nor anyone else in my home care about, should really just get a grip. Step away from the phone, noodle-noses. Back away from the phone and be silent.

3) Why is it that sanitation workers take an extra day off, even when a holiday does not fall on their work day? We now have a mountain of trash so high, my husband, embarrassingly enough, disappeared somewhere near the summit late yesterday afternoon.

4) Instruction manuals that give instruction only in foreign languages, which results in a child’s ineptly put together Christmas gift. I’m sorry, dear, Daddy and I didn’t realize that speaking French was a parental responsibility. Now go play with your new block of plastic fromage -- it beeps when you press the mysterious blue button!

5) Rain, rain, go the hell away. Don’t you understand that this is Western New York, man? Did you, perhaps, take a wrong turn on your way to Virginia or something? I can’t shoo the kids out to play in the mud, for Christ’s sake! Children don’t want to build mudmen or decorate the budding lilac bush with Christmas ornaments! Jeepers, but you’re stupid!

6) A certain mailman who is quite nonchalant about delivering the goods on Christmas Eve day, and was two hours late, thus missing the intended recipients because they, you know, had places to go at four o’fucking clock in the afternoon and couldn’t wait around for the packages, will receive no tin of homemade cookies next year from this annoyed mother of a disappointed sixteen-year-old whose main Christmas gifts were ordered online. Merry Christmas, darling girl -- enjoy your little yellow “Sorry we missed you” slip.

7) Patti LaBelle’s voice is the stuff of nightmares. Yeah, I already mentioned that, but honestly, I’m still traumatized.

8) What’s worse than having four (plus one) kids stuck in the house for a week? Four (plus one) kids who are all sick.

9) What’s worse than having four (plus one) sick, cranky kids stuck in the house for a week? Dealing with that after a night of no sleep due to a four year old whining and sniffing and coughing and kicking my head -- on top of not sleeping the night before because wrapping presents keeps parents up till two a.m., and children rise on Christmas morning at exactly five a.m.

10) My house is awash in tiny Styrofoam balls and scraps of metallic paper -- all stuck to the floors and walls with unidentifiable gooey substances and cookie crumbs. And I’m too tired to give a damn.

Interesting side note: After researching the origin of Patti LaBelle’s voice, I discovered that her vocal chords were created sometime in the 1860s by one Thaddeus S. Beaumont of Baltimore, a notorious and decidedly insane anatomist cum barber who was known to have once styled the hair of Edgar Allan Poe. Beaumont, while under the influence of absinthe, built those vocal chords with snippets of Poe’s hair, some tree bark, and a bit of dog jowl. His evil creation was originally intended as a form of military scare tactics, requested by General-in-Chief of the Union army, George Brinton McClellan -- ostensibly some sort of sound-augmenting implement placed in the neck of a bugle to terrorize the opposition during company advancement -- but had somehow escaped from Beaumont’s workshop and remained in hiding until 1944, whereupon the vocal chords reappeared in the throat of a child named Patricia Louise Holt, better known as Patti LaBelle.

Shocking, isn’t it?

posted by Ms. Lori @ 1:17 PM