In Which Big Momma Opens Up a Can of Whoop-Ass

And by Big Momma, I don't mean me, although arguably I am growing bigger by the day.

If spanking upsets you, please skip this.  Really.  Do NOT read any further.

Me?  I am a graduate of the school of Dr. James Dobson, and earned my Master's from Dr. Pauline Schaefer, both of whom espouse spanking under the appropriate circumstances...but alas The Great Spank Debate is not my purpose for this entry...just warning the gentle spirits to look away.

As a huge fan of The Well Applied Butt Whoopin', I have roundly enjoyed the south, where I have witnessed a wide variety of well earned whoopin's as well as ear twistin's, and arm twistin's.  In public.  In California, they're trying to outlaw spanking - anywhere.  

If this measure passed, I'd be in jail.  I won't lie...I've had some difficult days when three hots and a cot has held huge appeal to me...but if I go down, it will absolutely not be for disciplining my children as I see fit.  

That being said, we have a family friend - a young man, who is about to get married, and we were chatting about his plans for a family, and his beliefs about parenting.  He floored me by telling me how his mom used to keep he and his four brothers in line with the well deserved butt whoopin's.  Even more hysterically, when the rascals were misbehaving in the care of their grandmother, she'd send them out back to 'pick out a switch...make it a green one, so it doesn't break when I whoop ya with it!'  

At this point, I'm laughing so hard I'm about to pee my pants (and I'm not kidding, my bladder is ruined, people) and expecting him to share how he will never lay a hand on his children.

Instead, he tells me he and his wife intend to pattern themselves after his mother...right down to her 'scary eyebrows' that could freeze your blood.  He was adorable.  He loved and respected his mother, and had a great relationship with his parents...  :)

He then proceeds to tell me that his two little sisters, in the first grade, have a friend who lives with grandma.  Now follow this, because THIS is where it becomes the best story I have ever heard...the twins came home and shared this morsel...

The little girl who lived with her grandma got tired of taking orders to do ridiculous things like, pick up her room, and clear the table, so when she was complaining at school one morning, another child wisely apprised her of her rights:  you know, you don't have to do what that ol' biddy say.  If she spank you, you can call the PO-lice!

This little girl went home, prepared to rebel.  That afternoon, when grandma told her to pick up her schoolbag and take it to her room, and set the table for dinner, she sassed:  I don't have to do what you say, and if you try to put a butt whoopin' on me, I'm gonna call the PO-lice on you!

Grandma put her in the car and drove her to their local police station.  

The girl feels very victorious when they enter, until Grandma announces to the desk sergeant:  Officer, I'm gonna put a butt whoopin' on this here girl for disobeyin' and being sassy in general.  She tole me she was gonna you all if I did that, so I thought I would save you all the trip to my house.

And proceeds to put a butt whoopin' on her granddaughter in the presence of the desk sergeant, who, when she was done, said:  ma'am, that was the best butt whoopin' I seen in a long time.

Can words express how much I love the south?  No, they can NOT!  Suuuure, it might take me three days to figure out if I'm being insulted, but where else can I take my kid for that kind of Scared Straight program, baby?

Bless Her Heart,

Part of being in any new country is learning the language.  This goes for Tennessee.  Although I do love it here (quite desperately, in fact), I am a stranger in a strange land...I'm here via New York and LA, and although our area is chock-full of transplants, most of them are southerners of some ilk.  

As a New Orleans native, Chip has been most helpful as a translator.  When we moved here, every single one of our neighbors brought desserts or a warm meal within the first two days of our arrival, all with notes welcoming us to the neighborhood, phone numbers, email addresses.  I was touched to my crusty, cynical core...how southern!  how country!  how delightful!  Nooooo, my husband reassured me.  They're just here checking us out, making sure the cops won't be coming to this house.  As soon as I tried emailing around for playdates and happy hour, I realized he was right.  The south is a closed community...they were watching and waiting...making sure our kids weren't brats and the cops weren't coming to our house.  It took a few months, but our kids aren't brats and the cops haven't been to our house (except along with the ambulance for my son), and the neighbors?  They really are wonderful (except crazy milk lady...).

The other code I've had to crack is the "bless her heart" code, which is southern for "you can say ANYTHING about a person if you preface it with 'bless his/her heart' " ... you can pepper it with a "poor darlin' "...  The obnoxious, sanctimonious crowd likes to end it with a "I'm prayin' for..." (eyes rolling)

As a New Yorker, I've never brought a knife to a gun fight.  I say what I mean and I mean what I say.  Always.  It's therefore not surprising that it's been terribly confusing here...the lovely Steel Magnolia mannerisms paired with the back handed insult...take the blood draw for my son's well child check...it took me three days to figure out we'd been insulted:  

The phlebotomist had my son sit in my lap, and proceeds to say, "Oh-Who's-A Big-Boy!  Bless His-Heart, It's-So-Hard-These-Days-With-All-That-Junk-Food, Poor-Darlin' " 

(translation for Yankees:  D*MN, your kid is fat, stop taking him to McDonald's and force feeding him french fries!)

Bless her heart, I could barely understand her, drawling through those snaggled brown teeth of hers!  You'd think they'd have better dental for people who work at a hospital, poor darling!

(Translation for Yankees:  Not fit for print.)

Yah, I do believe I'll get the hang of this.

Thank God I'm a Country Girl, Part Deux

I know most moms view play dates as virtual free babysitting...me?  I supervise.  I want to know what's going on when my back is turned and my daughter thinks I'm not listening.  

This afternoon, when I was spying, er, listening in on my daughter and her five year old friend as they played with two inch tall plastic princess figurines and Littlest Pet Shop animals, I overheard this delicious snippet:

Friend:  Why does Jasmine have to show her belly button?

Lucy:  Yeah!  She needs bigger pants.

Friend:  Or a longer shirt.

Lucy:  Or a jacket, or something!

Let me play that for you as spoken by California five year olds:

kid 1:  Jasmine is like, so pretty.  She DEFINITELY got her boobs done.

kid 2:  For sure!  Her lips, too!

kid 1:  And don't you think that of all the princesses, Cinderella has the most slammin' dye job?

kid 2:  There is NO way that's Miss Clairol in a bottle.  Lifted the base and a full head of highlights.  So worth it.

Okay, the satire is over the line, but not so far that I can't see it in my rearview mirror.  Although there is enough freakshow to go around here, it the variety I can contend with, and coach my daughter through. 

Yah...I'll take the humping cows over octomom any day.  Sing it with me:  Vivaaaaa Nashvegas!

Thank God I'm a Country Girl

It's our first spring in Tennessee, and the countryside is impossibly green once again.  As we acquaint ourselves with the sights and sounds of this beautiful gift, there have been surprises that make me feel like a little girl:  calving season, blossoming trees (this literally happened overnight), and the occasional 70 degree day that allows me to zip around on my blades.

Other surprises make me snicker behind the back of my hand like a 13 year old boy...like the one we saw this morning on the way to church.  

Our church is in the countryside...and I mean COUN-TRY.  Each week, we have the privilege of driving by beautiful farms, fields, horses, cows, crops, streams, and even the occasional flock of wild turkeys.  It has all been very pastoral until this morning when, in a field, there was a giant black bull mounting a cow.

I just couldn't help myself.  I elbowed Chip, snorted, and started laughing hysterically.  HE started laughing hysterically.  LUCY starts laughing hysterically.  I'm thinking, 1. does she even SEE what we're laughing at? and 2. does she know what it is?  questions answered when she pipes up:

MOM, THOSE COWS ARE DOING THE HOEDOWN!

Yes, Lucy, they are.

in the car:

lu:  mom, hugh is touching his privates.

me:  that's okay, it's very normal for babies his age to do that.

lu: oh, why?

me:  well, they're just discovering them, really.

lu:  seriously?

me:  seriously.

lu:  well, did it take me that long to discover my ooh-la-la village?

me:  your what?

lu: my ooh-la-la village.

me:  do you mean your privates?

lu: ya.

me:  and why is it a village?

lu: because, you know, it's like a town square.

me:  (internally monologuing)  ...because it wasn't enough that it takes a village to raise a child...now it's somewhere everybody gathers?  what the heck?

me:  (out loud)  you know honey, we can just call them privates.

lu:  or what's that other word?

me:  vagina?

lu:  yes, ooh-la-la pa-jiy-ma village.

pauline:  chapter 11 in our book:  the ooh-la-la pa-jiy-ma village...DEFINITELY one of my proudest moments...

These are the days...

At Hugh's most recent well child check, the pediatrician asked me how many words he knew...I didn't even know I had the ability to blush (the bloom is OFF the rose, bay-bee!) but as I desperately tried to count, I realized that a) he hardly knew ANY and b) the few he knew probably didn't count as words, per se.  Lucy, at this age knew over 100 words.  I actually stopped taking a running record at 120, figuring that we had exceeded the 20-50 the pediatricians are looking for.  Hugh?  What running record?  I am so busy simply delighting in him that I'm actually not keeping track.  This is a lovely change for me (and for my daughter, I'm sure) but in a world where parenting is a bloodsport, I am sweating in the pediatrician's office.

Does "HOLLA!" count?  Are "WOW!" and "WHOA!" different words?  Can I count his expression "lookatthat!" as three words, instead of one?  Does the fact that he calls EVERYBODY "dada" make him special?  You know, like, short bus material?  So, I flub the interview with the pediatrician, telling her that Hugh is "getting there," and "knows a few words" but looking like a meth addict mother, I'm sure.

Fast forward to our trip to Lucy's swim lesson in the car yesterday...Lucy's favorite new thing is to tell knock knock jokes.  Bad ones.  So bad, they're not only not funny, but make no sense, and then screech, "GET IT?!"  (it's adorable)  Halfway to swim, my short bus son, who STILL doesn't call me "mama" starts saying, "not not" and I start laughing.  He can learn "knock knock" but he still doesn't know my name?  Can't say words we use all day, every day in our home, like DOG?!  So I have Lucy screeching "GET IT?!" after telling a knock knock joke about tooting (and singing a song about mom and tooting...don't ask) and hugh chiming in "not not!" and I throw back my head and laugh and laugh and laugh, wishing to God I had a tape recorder, knowing that I'll already have forgotten the nuances of it by the time I get home.  Surely, the good the bad, the ugly, these are the days...

And as my friend Pauline often says, life is good.

Oh, yes.  it is.

not not TOOT TOOT GET IT?!

hugh's girls

not hefner.  if you're looking for that kind of reading material, you'll definitely need to look somewhere else.  These are the net result of being housebound with an immune suppressed little guy while he recovers from his asthma attack...he can't be in public daycare settings for the risk of any kind of contagion, and as we live in our bubble world, we run out of things to do quickly...it's like a snow day on acid.

After watching every video, reading every book, and much nose picking, my daughter disappeared into her playroom, having decided that her princess barbies needed a bath.  She undressed them, neatly lined up their royal ensembles, washed them, and arranged them on the counter in her bathroom to dry.

We didn't see her handiwork until it was time to tuck her in.  I perched on her bed, ready for tummy scratching duty while my husband took her into her bathroom to brush her teeth.  He emerged, moments later, red with unspent mirth, and said, 'Anna, it's an episode of Girls Gone Wild in there, and seriously, two of them are about to hook up.'

Naturally, I ran for my camera...as Pauline say, I'm livin' the dream, baby.  :)

Mother Superior

Meet Hugh, aka The Moose, The Big Hairy Boss, Chunky Monkey, Mr. Happy, and (my personal favorite) Chubkinz (distant relative of Webkinz, I think).  At his one year well baby check, he was about 34 inches tall and weighed in at a whopping 31 pounds.  Fortunately, the good people of Tennessee are as enamored of his (ahem) stature as I am.  

Besides proving once and for all that big is beautiful (or did Queen Latifah do that?  I'm not sure), he has come to this earth to be a ray of sunshine, with a laugh that could soften the blackest heart.

Unfortunately, today was not his day...typically, he does his happy baby show despite the fact that he has lung disease...severe persistent asthma, the worst kind...but today, he had an acute attack that took at least 10 years off my life and could have ended his.  Thank God, we had everything we needed on hand (including a phone to call 911), I was able to treat his symptoms, and care for him until the ambulance showed up.

It has been pointed out to me by a well meaning neighbor that breast milk is the answer!  Although she is no longer nursing her children (ages one and three), she swears that when her children pick up pinkeye or an ear infection, all she needs is to put a few drops of breast milk in the eye, or the ear, and voila!  Clear!  Apparently, nobody thinks this is weird, and her nursing friends will swoop by with a bottle when somebody gets sick.

If only I had a nursing friend today, that call to 911 could have been avoided! (note to self:  business opportunity...nipple911!!)

To be perfectly clear:  I nursed both of my children, both of whom have lung disease, and one of whom has a host of life threatening food allergies.  When she went into systemic shock after ingesting an offending substance, I'm pretty sure breastmilk couldn't have helped her.  It certainly didn't prevent the allergies, despite my good intentions and the best research.

Needless to say, when it was suggested to me that breastmilk prevents these things by this well meaning neighbor (who clearly blames me for my children's health issues, because not everything in my house is organic, and I don't make them change their clothes every time they come in from the outside world, and I don't decontaminate their toys after playdates and, and, and, and), it was all I could do not to laugh.  If only I, too, worked for a furniture company and had read a few internet articles about the value of breastmilk and organics say, instead of having my MA from NYU in Early Childhood Development, ongoing studies at Columbia and Stanford, five years of experience with asthma, allergies, and nutrition...maybe I could have come up with such a genius panacea!

But as Pauline says, there's just no talkin' to crazy.

the little yuppie that could

I am, in equal parts, appalled and amused that I spent my day readying my five-year-old for her yoga lesson at our club.  Did she have a mat?  Yoga pants (or at least adorable leggings)?  Should I braid her hair so it didn't fall into her face when she learned down dog?  HAVE I BECOME *THAT* PERSON?! (no, no, no Escalade, no botox in my forehead, no restalayne in my lips...not yet...)

How did this happen?

Ten years ago, I lived in a BIK (that would be bathtub in kitchen, for those people who can see the convenience of scrambling eggs while conditioning their hair) apartment with mice, flying cockroaches, and rats so big, you could identify their GENDER (yes, as they ran away hissing, I could see their b*lls, they were THAT BIG).  I often had to choose between buying cigarettes and food (cigarettes won, hands down every time), and I was somehow the envy of all my friends, despite the fact that my toilet was in the only thing that could ostensibly pass for a closet...because my apartment was rent controlled.

And today it was children's yoga at the clubhouse.

And here she is...may she never see the balls of an escaping rat as it curses her with a view of its rat man parts.

Pauline says done is better than perfect, which is why I've started with this absurd entry.  Maybe it will loosen my tongue (like THAT needs to happen!) or brain, or fingers, or jostle something loose...

Off to watch some CSI and wish I could eat a pound of pistachios.

I'm Anna Crane, and this is my blog.

Because Pauline said I could, and I believe her...I'm Anna Crane, and this IS *my* blog, but you will get to meet Pauline, my muse and oft-quoted, oft-emulated sil on a near daily basis here.