“She’s what?”
“Shaving.”
Maj stares at me as though I have suddenly grown tusks, “Say it again, Mother. I want to appreciate this moment in which your adequate motherhood of me ground to a complete and utter halt.”
“Oh for god’s sake. It’s not that big a deal.”
Maj closes her eyes and breathes deeply, “Say it, Mother. Say it so that I can taste the treachery.”
“Your sister started shaving her legs.”
“When did this happen, Mother?”
“A week or so ago . . . she texted me from the bathtub and asked if she could . . .”
Her eyes pop open, “Did you just say Kallan texted you from the bathtub?”
“Focus, Maj.”
Maj does not focus, “We are not allowed to text from the bathtub! Mother, are we allowed to text from the bathtub? That is insanity!”
“Yes, well . . . I’m not sure I ever explicitly laid down that rule, but it’s certainly not wise to text from the bathtub. Anyway, Kallan texted me from the bathtub the other night and asked if she could start shaving her legs and I said she could.”
Arms waving incredulously, Maj sputters, “Where was I when this happened?”
“Doing homework, I think.”
“Why was I not consulted? Why was I not informed?”
“I’m telling you now.”
“Mother, I am her older sister. I should be the one shaving first. I am older.”
“Yes, well . . . You and I have discussed this before.”
“I AM TOO YOUNG TO SHAVE.”
“Yes, and that’s fine. Thing is, though? Your sister is not required to wait to do things until you decide to do them first.”
“Mother, things are not supposed to happen out of order. I was born first. HOW DO YOU NOT UNDERSTAND THE SIGNIFICANCE OF BIRTH ORDER?”
I turn to open the refrigerator and start pulling things out for dinner, “Anyway. I just wanted to let you know.”
Kallan twirls into the room, and Maj turns to confront her, “So what is this I hear about Mother letting you play with razor blades, smallish girl-child? How does it feel to know that both you and the razors are disposable in Mother’s eyes?”
Reaching for a handful of grapes, Kallan answers happily, “It feels smooth, Maj. It feels nice and smooth.” She pulls up her pant-leg, “Want to feel?”
Maj does not bend an inch, “No, I do not want to feel. What you’ve got there is the scraped skin of laxitude, and it is unattractive in the extreme.”
I interrupt, “Laxitude is not a word, I don’t believe. Lassitude, maybe.”
Maj is fierce, “Laxitude, Mother. An attitude of lax mothering that causes children to be ruined. Look it up, Mother.”
I wave my hands in surrender, “I give up.”
“As I knew you would, Mother — the defense of laxitude would require the laxitude itself to be abandoned.”
“Maj, you drive me insane.”
Maj scoops up Jack the smaller badly behaved dog and hugs him tightly; she addresses herself to Kallan again, “It’s going to be a long cold winter. Jackie and I will have furry warm terrier legs, and you will be a shivering Mexican Hairless.”
Kallan stares at her sister, “Way to be weirdly racist, Maj.”
Maj tries again, “Don’t you see, Kallan? Mother is failing us. She is a bad mother to have allowed this to happen. She is supposed to be a disciplinarian, but instead she just lets the disciples run amuck. She is failing both of us.”
Kallan grabs a few more grapes, “I don’t actually feel that failed, Maj. Pretty sure this is just your issue.”
“MY ISSUES ARE EVERYONE’S ISSUES.”
I mutter, “You can say that again.”
“Mother, what did you just say?”
“Ummm . . . nothing.”
Later in the evening, Maj is reading on the couch as Kallan wanders the room and speaks dreamily of the upcoming holiday season, “I can’t wait for Christmas.”
I pick up a book, “Mmm hmm.”
Kallan leans to hug me, “I want an iPad and an iPod this year – they both have new models, and I want them both.”
Maj snorts but says nothing.
This is not going to be a year of big gifts, and so I say, “Kallan, I thought you were saving your own money to buy an iPad.”
Kallan waves her hand dismissively, “Yeah, but it took me like eight months to save the money for an iPad. It’s almost Christmas – why would I spend my own money at this point? I can just ask to get it as a gift. She smiles, “Plus the iPod. I need a new iPod. Plus other stuff – I’m going to get started on my list early this year.”
Maj is annoyed, “You can’t ask for all that stuff for Christmas. That’s ridiculous. Mother and Daddy aren’t going to get you an iPod and an iPad and a giant list of other greedy stuff.”
Kallan sticks her tongue out at her sister, “That’s why I’m going to ask Santa for some of this stuff. So there.”
Uh oh . . . I speak cautiously, “Ummm . . . this might be a good time to let you know that as you get older, Santa is less and less likely to give you big-ticket items. He still visits and everything, but when you start growing up a bit, Santa is more about the stockings and less about gifts under the tree.”
Kallan looks at me, “And in this stocking, he has placed gift-cards I might use to buy an iPad?”
I shake my head, “Not so much.”
Kallan slumps into the couch beside her sister, momentarily defeated, but then she bounces back up again, “Wait! Maj is two years older than I am, and she got gifts from Santa last year and the year before that. I still have two good years of generous Santa left!”
Maj speaks before I can formulate a response, “Kallan, you have brought this on yourself.”
Kallan wails, “But I am only eleven!”
Her sister speaks with false sympathy, “I know, but Santa sees you when you are sleeping and when you are awake and when you have been good and when you have been bad . . . and when you text your mother from the bathtub and ask if you can start shaving I’m pretty sure Santa makes a note about how you are too old and mature to need expensive gifts from him anymore.”
“Wait, what?” Kallan’s eyes go huge in protest, “Santa keeps track of stuff like that?
Maj pulls up her own pant-leg, rubs her hand along the fuzziness, “That’s why I don’t shave. I figure being as short as I am, I’ve got a couple more years before it occurs to Santa that I’m a grown-up. I’ve been trying to stay off his radar for quite a while now; last thing I want to do is draw his attention to my maturity by shaving.”
Kallan wails, “But I want an iPad!”
Maj reaches to pat her sister’s smooth leg, “A stocking full of razors is nothing to sneeze at, Kallan.”
“Waahhhh!”
Maj muses, “I wonder if you haven’t ruined Christmas for both of us? Santa knows I’m the older sister — not like he’s going to believe you suddenly leapfrogged over me.” She looks at me, “Thank you very much, Mother. With a single permissive swipe of the razor, you have killed Christmas for your daughters . . . forever.”
“Wahhhhh!”
People?
I may not be good at this motherhood thing . . .
but I am having so much fun.
Hee hee.
Two days until Halloween.
I got a Christmas card this morning.
From someone on Mark’s side of the family, of course.
FUCK.
WHAT? Those people need to be banned.
Hee hee.
You are not the first to make this suggestion.
If only this was not a member of Mark’s family.
Banned.
My unrepentant laziness has forced me to give up the whole Christmas card thing. It’s a money saver! Not only the cards and the stamps, but the extra school pictures that always used to go in there. I figure it’s kind of a win-win…for me anyways. I get to use the excuse of my tight budget to hide the lazy!
Mark and I skipped Christmas cards last year, promising we would get to them after New Year’s Day.
We did not.
The girls were SO disappointed.
So this year, Christmas cards.
Come hell or high-water (with apologies to any East Coast readers who are in the midst of both), there will be Christmas cards.
When it comes to sending Christmas cards, I am quite comfortable in my laxitude.
Hee hee.
I like the fact of having sent them, but the work involved in making that happen?
I am not so much a fan of that.
And to those of you about to tell me of the joys of e-cards?
Not fucking even.
THOSE DON’T COUNT.
Duh.
I think Santa went down off the East Coast this morning. He was on a test flight, with two new reindeer, and Sandy knocked him right off the radar. Break the news to Kallan gently…
Bill?
Were his two new reindeer named Jack and Persie, by any chance?
Because they are useless in a storm, those two.
Poor Santa.
“she just lets the disciples run amuck”
hahahaha
This is my goal. Except my disciples being on the 3 or 4 year old side tend to run amuck on their own. “Santa” has been storing all of their Christmas presents in Mommy and Daddy’s closet all year and they know this. You can ask Maj what she thinks of that bit of mothering.
Ummm . . .
Maj would be scathing in her indictment of your parenting if you were her mother.
However, she is quite understanding about mothers who not her own.
What’s up with that, you think?
Maybe she thinks that the mother who birthed her should have been perfect.
Yes, pretty sure that’s the case.
Poor doomed Maj.
I have never been perfect . . . not once.
Hee hee.
You got a Christmas card and it’s not even Halloween yet???
What the fuck kind of shit is that?
Who is that freaking organized?
As far as shaving goes? Kaylee is 10. I let her start shaving her armpits over the summer. Thankfully she hasn’t inquired about shaving her legs, yet.
Yet being the keyword. It’s only a matter of time.
Sigh.
Yes, Kallan started shaving her armpits maybe a month ago.
Maj does not yet have need of this sort of shaving either . . . shhhhh.
Being two years older does not always mean your body is on board with the schedule, turns out.
That said, I knew as soon as I gave Kallan a razor, she would be heading leg-ward soon enough. She’s a cheerleader, for heaven’s sake. ALL of the other girls on her team shave their legs. So yeah . . . no way around it.
Maj will have to deal.
Sigh.
This is silly…
But I swear that when comments were on before, I would get a notification email when you replied.
Am I remembering incorrectly?
Um nevermind.
I’m an idiot. I figured it out.
Snort.
You’re not an idiot.
The old plug-in for that functionality no longer works on my blog.
We installed a new one just this evening.
Silly you.
Wow. A Christmas card already? Pretty sure I’d “forget” to send them one on principal.
Glad you got comments back on! Good luck with the Santa thing. My ex took care of that problem the first year he couldn’t afford Christmas. Mini-Me was devastated.
Right? If it wasn’t a relative of Mark’s, I would so leave her off the Christmas card list. Rats.
As for Christmas and Santa?
The girls no longer “believe” in Santa, but they know better than to say that to me. People who don’t believe in Santa get no gifts from Santa, and the girls do like gifts. That said, it’s time for Santa to become the stocking guy.
Hee hee.
In our house, when it comes to Santa, the motto is “If you don’t BELIEVE, you don’t RECEIVE”. That works when the older relatives think they’ll tell the younger ones that Santa’s not real.
Of course, at 12 and 10, the time has about come to break the news that I’m sure they already pretty much now. Sad times…
Yes!
Exactly my motto, which I mentioned in response to the comment just prior to yours. My daughters are both quite sophisticated, and I am sure they are both aware of Santa’s imaginary status. But the gifts are real, and so for the gifts? They will believe.
Kallan’s tears are for the loss of gifts, not the loss of Santa.
To be clear.
She is eleven, for goodness sake.
Hee hee.
Okay so I am bored and should be going to bed, but I went back to see if I could post on older posts. Now I am bummed. I thought I was going to have some fun.
Awww . . . sorry.
I needed that chapter of this blog to stay that chapter of this blog.
Because I have a few readers who would comment on every single post, if given the opportunity.
I simply do not have the time to address one person’s quick-fire thoughts on over 100 posts.
Better this way.
With apologies.
“Where was I when this happened?”
My fav line ever. I say it all the time here…
M
Hee hee.
Maj likes to know everything EVERYTHING that goes on around here, especially if any of that EVERYTHING involves her sister.
So she says, “Where was I when this happened?” quite often.
Every time she steps out of the room, something happens, according to Maj.
Ahem.
WHAT?! COMMENTS?
I’ve missed this.
Hello, you.
I missed you as well.
I have good intentions to send out cards every year. I have a box full of addressed cards from last year I never bought stamps to mail. Swear-to-God. I give up.
I swear to god, last year is the only year I have ever ever missed.
And oh goodness, the girls are still pissed.
This year? Christmas photos and cards and a newsletter.
Maj and Kallan demand it.
You are ever so good at this motherhood thing. Having raised three daughters I’m an expert on this. I, on the other hand, was absolutely the worst at the fatherhood thing. I have one who claims me, one who insists I’m a myth and one undecided. My grandchildren all figure I’m good for the occasional gift so they’re keeping mum about my score as a granddad.
Don?
I believe you had your good moments and your bad moments, as all of us do.
As I do.
I do the best I can in the moments I have, but what the girls will write as my history?
That’s for them to say.
We all just do the best we can.
P.S. I’m thrilled you’ve re-enabled comments. Awesomeness!
It’s lovely to see you here.
Thank you.