humor – Page 3 – Are You Finished Yet?

My Minivan Isn’t Cool, But My Music Video Is

Published on March 13, 2013February 1, 2015 by Kelly Suellentrop47 Comments

It has been a long time coming, but the deed is done. I told my husband to just look at it like ripping off a band-aid. He still wants to throw up a little in his mouth every time he sees it, but I am not going to pretend I feel anything but that a destiny in my life has been fulfilled.

We got a minivan.

minivans are cool — image from http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2010/09/the-booth-babe-chronicles-can-a-minivan-be-cool/

For some reason, society likes to brand this parental milestone as the epitome of being un-hip, or that it is the final nail in the coffin containing a person’s sense of individual self. But I think that is just plain ridiculous. What WOULD be ridiculous is trying to deny the fact that I AM a parent who needs to take my children into consideration with every single decision I make, including what car I drive. Not that I am saying a minivan is necessarily always the best choice, but it was for our family. I like having the extra room to cart around toys, groceries, Girl Scout supplies, projects, and every other random thing that might need to be transported. I like that we will be more comfortable on road trips, and the kids can sit in separate rows if they start getting on each other’s nerves. I like that I now have enough seating to carpool or let my kids spontaneously bring a friend home to play after school without it involving a scheduling chart to see who can drop off and pick up when. And I like that I now drive a big, sturdy car that gives me a snowball’s chance in hell should I mingle steel with some birdbrain who is texting behind the wheel of an SUV.

I am also not the kind of person who determines how cool she is by the kind of car she drives. But I am the kind of person who has probably never really been cool anyway. So with that said, I will say loud and proud: I LOVE MY MINIVAN!

In fact, I love my minivan so much that a regular old blog post didn’t seem enough to announce its advent into my life. As I searched for inspiration, the same line kept popping into my head…I like minivans and I can not lie…

So without further ado, I give you the very first “Are You Finished Yet?” Music Video!

A big thank you goes out to my husband and kids for spending pretty much an entire Saturday shooting the video and dealing with this first-time actor/director. Now I know how Tom Hanks feels. Thanks also to Sir Mix-a-Lot for introducing a song into our cultural fabric that is always ripe for a good “Weird Al-esque” parody. And thanks to Weird Al for just being Weird Al.

*the picture of the river barge in the video was from http://www.boldts.net/album/D-RiverBarge.shtml

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Hallmark, Shmallmark. I Got Your Real Valentines Right Here

Published on February 12, 2013February 13, 2013 by Kelly Suellentrop6 Comments

I just spent a mind-numbing half hour helping my son sign eighteen valentine cards for his classmates. Even he was getting bored, evident by his increasingly lax standards of how to make the letters in his name: “This is a different way to make a ‘C,’ Mom.” Looks good to me, buddy. No one is going to pay much attention to your valentine anyway since mom here went the cheap-o route this year and got the ones that don’t come with any candy.

kids valentine cards — The slow deterioration of good penmanship

I don’t care much about Valentine’s Day. It’s not that I dislike it; I am just completely apathetic toward it. Valentine’s Day is like the fifth guy from *NSync in the world of holidays…you know, the one that’s not Justin Timberlake, Joey Fatone, Lance Bass, or JC Chavez. You don’t mind that it’s there, but you also wouldn’t really notice if it wasn’t. (And since I spent a ridiculous amount of time deciding which holidays the other guys would be, please indulge this small tangent: Timberlake is totally the Thanksgiving-Christmas-New Year’s triplet threat. Fatone is Halloween; goofy, fun, and you know he has some mad skills for trading bad jokes for candy. Bass, he’s a firework who lets his colors burst like the Fourth of July. And just like the Easter Bunny tries to be as cool as Santa, Chavez ain’t no Timberlake. Now back to the point.)

I am not the only one in my house who feels this way about Valentine’s day. My husband has made a declaration that I never have to buy him a card as long as we live. He thinks they are a racket. In fact, he doesn’t want me to get him anything for Valentine’s day…well, anything that costs money. Wink, wink. (*eye roll*) But we always feel the need to help the kids put something together for one another. I have to be honest. Despite the fact that we know we all love each other, these little tokens of Cupid feel a little forced and trite. For example, my daughter informed me today that she was going to write a poem for everyone in our family: “Roses are red, Violets are blue, Happy Valentine’s Day, I love you.” (Members of our family, I am so sorry to ruin the surprise.) Forced. Trite.

What my kids don’t know is that they give me little valentines all year long. And this is what they look like in my head:

real valentines — AHA! They DO really love each other!

kids valentines — I adore the little notes Grace leaves for me all the time

That means the pressure is off for Valentine’s Day. I already have everything I need; and I am pretty sure the rest of my family does, too. So we can instead enjoy the fun of Mardi Gras today and properly stuff our faces for Fat Tuesday. And then tomorrow on Ash Wednesday we can realize that all the crap we ate today might lead to that whole “to dust you shall return” thing happening just a wee bit sooner than later. But at least we won’t have to worry about last-minute Valentine gifts.

However, maybe someone should send something to that fifth guy from *NSync. This is his holiday after all.

Chuck E. Cheese Could Have Been Your Father

Published on February 7, 2013February 1, 2015 by Kelly Suellentrop8 Comments

This is a post I wrote about a year ago, but I felt the driving need to re-blog it today as I will be heading to Chuck E. Cheese’s with my children for our preschool’s fundraiser night. Please pray that tonight I don’t encounter another reason to ever write another post like this…

Chuck E. Cheese’s.

That is all you have to say to hear a collective, audible grunt from every parent within earshot. It may very well be the place “where a kid can be a kid,” but it is most certainly the place where a parent can get a preview of one of the circles of Hell. Okay, that may be a bit of an exaggeration. But a place where your money gets you a mediocre pizza, a temporary tattoo and fun size Airhead candy for a mere 100 tickets, and a lingering sticky film over your entire body is not what I envision Heaven to be. Maybe Purgatory.

But I can deal with all of that. And I understand that in the eyes of my children, Chuck E. Cheese’s is the ultimate restaurant. After all, as a kid I felt the same way about its predecessor, Showbiz Pizza. So when faced with having to take my own kids to this pizza funland for a birthday party or fundraiser night (because those are pretty much the only circumstances under which we set foot in there), my audible grunt is not rooted in my disdain for the place. My distaste for Chuck E. Cheese’s comes from the mouse himself.

Yes, Chuck E. has scarred me for life. Let me take you back in time to the day it all happened…

The year was 1993. I was a sophomore in high school. For some reason completely incomprehensible to me now, but which clearly made sense to the idiot teenage brain, I went to Chuck E. Cheese’s with a few friends. Maybe we really wanted a neon pillow shaped liked an alien head and figured the best way to get one was to earn tickets playing Whack-A-Mole for an entire afternoon. Anyway, I remember it clearly. I was in the middle of one of my personal best rounds of skee ball when I felt a large, cartoonish presence next to me. There stood Chuck E., mimicking my skee ball maneuvers. Ha ha. Funny Chuck E. Now move along and go high-five some six-year-old. But he did not move on. He stood there for a little while, looking at me. I tried to ignore him and continued playing until he left. To my dismay, he did not stay away for long. He followed me, silently, creepily, from one game to the next. Don’t you have to go perform “Disco Chuck” or “Rockin’ Robin” with your band right about now? It was incredibly disturbing.

Finally, it must have been Chuck E.’s break time, because he scampered away behind a door, and I started breathing easy again. That is, until I turned around and found myself standing face to face with a Chuck E. Cheese employee – a human one this time. I thought maybe he was coming over to apologize for Chuck E.’s annoying behavior and to treat me to five free tokens for my inconvenience. I was mistaken. Here is how the conversation went down:

Employee: “Chuck E. wanted me to come out here and tell you that he thinks you’re cute.”

Me: <crickets chirping>

Employee: He’s a really nice guy. He wanted to know what you thought of his tail.

Me: <crickets chirping>

Employee: So when he comes back, you wanna hang out?

Me: I don’t date mice.

That’s right, ladies and gentlemen. I WAS HIT ON BY CHUCK E. CHEESE. Of all the celebrities whose eye I could have caught, that was my one shining moment. Pathetic. Disgusting. And down right Creepy with a capital C.

And THAT is why I hate Chuck E. Cheese’s. Since that very unfortunate day, I shudder a little whenever I hear Chuck E.’s nasaly voice on a commercial. When we are at the restaurant, I get weirded out and have the urge to hide whenever Chuck E. starts walking the floor. But I grin and bear it, all so my kids can have their fun.

And that is exactly what I did this past Thursday when Michael’s preschool had their fundraising night at Chuck E. Cheese’s. I bought my pizza and tokens like a dutiful mother. I helped Grace score extra points on the basketball game so she could earn more tickets toward junk I don’t want in my house. And I even alerted Michael when I saw Chuck E. sauntering among the customers (no doubt scanning the crowd for some unsuspecting female on whom he could work his “playa” moves). Michael loves Chuck E. Cheese, and when he saw the mouse, he ran up and gave him a hug. As I watched, a bit horrified, I had the thought, “Oh Michael. You have no idea. Chuck E. Cheese could have been your father.”

Then I threw up a little in my mouth.

(The Chuck E. Saga continued a few years later. For the next chapter, click here.)

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Miss Sassafras

Published on February 6, 2013September 3, 2013 by Kelly Suellentrop7 Comments

Can somebody tell me when little girls started becoming teenagers at age seven?

My daughter may look like a seven-year-old. She may still dress in clothes from Gymboree and have crooked teeth not quite yet ready for braces. But she has the sass factor of a sixteen-year-old. And frankly, I am a little tired of it.

I have recently been relieved that I am not the only mother struggling with this. I have witnessed the behavior in some of her friends and have heard exasperated “I-can-not-take-this-anymore” ventings from other moms. And just the other day, my friend Heather said of her young daughter, “I think she just finds being difficult an acceptable hobby.”

Well, that made me laugh out loud, of course. Yet it also confirmed my worst fear: we are facing an epidemic of sass among little girls. This is likely a by-product of years of letting girls in elementary school dress like teenagers planning to give it up on prom night. Little did we know that teenage fashion was simply the gateway drug to teenage attitudes.

I, for one, am not going to stand for it. I will not be made to feel irrelevant by my daughter until she is AT LEAST in middle school, like in the good old days. So I took immediate action.

And my immediate action wasn’t very successful. I can’t imagine why. Whenever my dad stopped dead in his tracks, glared at me with white-hot anger, and bellowed, “WHAAAAT did you saaaaay?,” that was enough to keep me on the path of straight and narrow. (My grandpa was also successful using this method the time I had just seen Little Shop of Horrors and decided to quote Audrey II’s line, “tough t*tties” to show my lack of sympathy towards one of my cousins. In my defense, I was too young to know what that meant. In grandpa’s defense, he didn’t care.) But apparently my fury does not strike the fear of God in my daughter. Instead, she ended up crying that I was”hurting her feelings,” then she went to her room, slammed the door, and proceeded to say sassy things about her horrible mother behind my back.

Well, that backfired.

Oh hells no! (photo credit: tweenparenting.about.com)

Next I tried the extremely mature tactic of sassing her right back. You wanna go down this road, little girl? Because you have no idea who you are dealing with. Not only could I post some major sass points in my day, but I also used to teach rooms full of teenage girls, some of whom were very privileged. Rich, spoiled teenage sass is about as top-notch as it gets. So between my own natural-born talent and my ivy league education in the art, I believe I have earned the equivalent of my B.A., Master’s Degree, and Ph.D in Sassology. But I guess the fact that I don’t use these degrees very often anymore (because I tend to communicate like, um, an adult) made me a little rusty. Grace matched my sass every time…and then raised the bar.

Admittedly, part of me wanted to throw in the towel. But that is not what moms do. So finally I decided to try a more thoughtful approach. Maybe I need to create that magical little panacea called a “teachable moment.” Grace’s usual defenses when she has done something wrong are “I didn’t realize I was doing it,” or “It was an accident.” While I know this isn’t true all the time, I can also give my daughter a break in realizing that sometimes the sass probably does fly out of her mouth before she has time to thoughtfully construct her words. Heck, that happens to me…and she is only seven, after all. So I came up with a plan.

I told Grace than whenever she speaks to me or anyone in a disrespectfully sassy tone, I would give her a warning by simply saying, SASSAFRAS. That is her cue to change her attitude, and if she doesn’t, then there will be a consequence. Pretty smart, if I do say so myself. My hope is for a gradual training in appropriate attitudes towards people. And I was certain Grace would be appreciative of my calm and reasonable treatment of this matter…

Grace: “Sassafras????? I don’t even know what sassafras is!!”

Me: “Right now all you need to know is that it means you are being sassy and you need to stop.”

Grace:”Why don’t you just say Miss Sassy? Sassafras is stupid.”

Me: SASSAFRAS!!!

Grace: “What?”

Me: “You are doing it right now. Sassafras. Stop being sassy.”

Grace: “When I have a daughter, I’m going to use Miss Sassy. And she is not going to be sassy at all.”

Sigh. Despite the rocky start, I am going to stick with this plan for a while because I do think it has merit. But right now it feels like the only thing I am going to get out of sassafras is possibly a tasty microbrew.

Safety is Relative

Published on November 5, 2012September 3, 2013 by Kelly SuellentropLeave a comment

I might have multiple personalities. I say this because it is the only logical explanation for what could be called “inconsistencies” in my parenting. Some of the time I am fueled by anxiety, completely obsessed with shielding my children from every possible action, food, disease, location, toy, person, animal, chemical, mineral, element, intention, or idea that may harm them. This personality shall be known as Mrs. Pennynickels.

And then there’s Marge. Marge says things like, “Michael, stop that and go play on the ladder instead.”

Yes, the very same woman who channeled Mrs. Pennynickels to write “An Instagram Diary of Anxiety” also let Marge take over her body and encourage her son to goof around on a ladder. When those words sloppily slid from my lips, my husband (whose unofficial motto since becoming a father is “don’t tell mom about this”) clearly recognized that something was amiss.

“Did YOU just tell Michael to play on a ladder?” he asked, mouth agape.

“Yeah. But it was only because he was wrapping an extension cord around his neck, so I needed a quick distraction.” Totally logical, right? Marge is a genius.

I think my husband likes Marge better than Mrs. Pennynickels, because he seemed to agree with her course of action. “I guess safety is relative,” he quipped.

Indeed. Sometimes safety is relative. In the above case, it was comparatively safer for Michael to play on the ladder and risk falling (from a rather low height, mind you) than continue playing with the extension cord and risk strangulation AND electrocution. You have to give your kids something now and again…like letting your son shove a glow stick up his nose because you’re just glad that this time it isn’t a Fuse Bead which gets stuck and results in a trip to urgent care.

Or risking the possibility that your child might get inadvertently purchased for $7.50 if it means he is not stacking towers of 2×4’s at Home Depot.

Thankfully, Marge and Mrs. Pennynickels both know not to overstay their welcome, and they each usually spend just the right amount of time influencing my parenting: Mrs. Pennynickels enough to keep child protective services away; Marge enough to keep the bottle away. My kids stay relatively safe; I stay relatively sane.

But I guess sanity is also relative.

P.S. Just to say I have done my public service announcement today, DON’T FORGET TO VOTE! For the love of everything holy, please vote…so we can get this over with and go back to recognizing most of the numbers on our caller ids. Also, Mrs. Pennynickels likes Romney while Marge likes Obama, and I am getting tired of all the mudslinging they subject me to.

Eye of the Tiger, Juice of the Freckle

Published on October 23, 2012September 3, 2013 by Kelly Suellentrop4 Comments

Are you ready to read this blog post?…I can’t hear you! ARE YOU READY TO READ THIS BLOG POST???? Well, this should pump you up:

So I have admittedly never watched this music video before now, and somehow the bad-assitude of that song diminished the moment I saw a gaggle of mullets led by Captain Beret struttin’ down what clearly looks like a perfectly safe, well-lit city street.

Bad 80’s music video aside, “Eye of the Tiger” is arguably one of the top go-to songs when it comes to getting oneself psyched up, especially in the arena of athletics. And it conveniently came on the radio as we were driving to my daughter’s soccer game. I could feel its magic working on me; I was definitely pumped to go spectate the hell out of that game! But Grace was just sitting in the backseat, reading Freckle Juice by Judy Blume.

t-ball — Looking eager in the field during a T-ball game

Throughout her young sports career, Grace has not exactly been the picture of the enthusiastic athlete. There was the time in pre-K soccer when the other team scored and she marched off the field, declared she was done, and walked straight to the parking lot. (My husband and I were of course laughing at her and videotaping the whole thing.) And then there was the time in first grade during her school’s annual kickball tournament when she was so clearly not enthralled with the game that she let three kicks go right past her without missing a beat in her conversation with a friend. We don’t force her to play sports, mind you; she is always willing to sign up. It is only after we have paid the slightly ridiculous fee that she suddenly informs us that the answer of “yes, I would like to play soccer again this year,” actually means, “no, I did not really want to play soccer even though I said I did, so I will now just whine every time you tell me I have to go to practice or a game.”

Thanks to my psychology minor (I totally just impressed you, didn’t I?), I know that part of her apathy stems from her belief that she just isn’t a good athlete…which stems from her fear of not being perfect at something the very first time she does it…which stems from the unfortunate strain of DNA I passed along to her. So when “Eye of the Tiger” began rockin’ our four-door sedan, I took this as a teachable moment of sorts. All Grace really needed was a little confidence to help her see all the fun that can be had playing a sport. Maybe what she needed was the eye of the tiger. It helped Rocky beat Mr. T, after all. And Grace only needed to beat a bunch of other second grade girls…fool.

Me: “Hey, G. You hear this song?”

Grace: “Uh huh.”

Me: “Well, this is probably the best song you could hear right before your soccer game. Lots of athletes listen to this song to get themselves pumped up to play. It’s got a good beat that gets you excited.”

Grace: (not even looking up from her book) That’s nice.

So much for the thrill of the fight. Apparently freckles are more thrilling.

But I bet you would never guess what happened next. Grace played the game of her life! The girl who normally does everything she can to avoid the ball was alert, aggressive, energetic…dare I say good? Maybe the “Eye of the Tiger” worked after all.

Or was it Freckle Juice? Was my daughter’s inner athlete awakened by a rousing piece of literature? I joked about the coach reciting excerpts from Blume’s books as his pre-game pep talk.

Then again, Freckle Juice is about a second grade boy named Andrew who desperately wishes he had freckles like Nicky. Unhappy with the way he is, Andrew allows himself to get taken advantage of trying to get freckles only to find out in the end that Nicky actually hates his own freckles. And both boys are reassured by their teacher that they are each just the way they need to be: Andrew is perfect without freckles; Nicky is perfect with them.

Well, look at that. A story about confidence. Just what she needed. I have always believed that literature is amazing stuff.

So tell me. What story gets you pumped up?

Me and Debbie Gibson: Separated At Birth?

Published on September 19, 2012September 19, 2012 by Kelly Suellentrop8 Comments

At our house, we like to have music playing during dinner. Seeing as how we are not the kind of family who “dresses for dinner” (in fact, Michael is usually in some state of undress by dinnertime), we don’t listen to anything refined like Beethoven. One is more likely apt to hear Dave Matthews Band, O.A.R., the bluesy incarnation of John Mayer, maybe Foo Fighters every now and again; and if I’m lucky, my husband will throw me a bone and play one of The Monkees albums. But only if I’m lucky.

Last night the ipod landed on my Debbie Gibson playlist. (Laugh at my musical preferences if you will, but don’t pretend you didn’t just let out a barely audible “awww yeeaahh” and mindlessly sing, “Shake your love. I just can’t shake your love.”) Grace was particularly happy about this dinner music, having discovered quite the adoration for her mom’s favorite old tunes…which makes me particularly happy that she is jammin’ to Gibson and her squeaky clean pop instead of to some maturing Disney starlet who feels some pressing need to prove she is growing up by also proving she is ~~a hoochi mama~~ sexually empowered.

So there we were, chewing on our pork tenderloin to the bubble gum beats. A little “Only in My Dreams.” Spicing things up with “Red Hot.” Then Debbie slowed things down with “Lost in Your Eyes.” My husband felt the need to add his own commentary that “mommy likes to sing this song to me.” (Which is not true…because singing that song to him would kind of be like cheating. I used to sing that song to my poster of Micky Dolenz in my room. It’s “our song.” Mine and poster Micky Dolenz’s.) So when I failed to flex my not-so-golden pipes in response, Kurt protested, “Aren’t you going to sing to me?”

“You want me to paint a smiley face on my knee, too?” I asked.

He stared at me with a blank expression. Preteen Kurt obviously did NOT have the Out of the Blue cassette tape in his boombox rotation, otherwise he would have understood my clearly witty reference. So I explained what Miss Gibson was wearing on that album cover, ingrained in my memory as being the height of fashion: the ripped, tight-rolled jeans exposing her happy knee, the white Keds, the giant earrings, the striped shirt…

At that very moment, I glanced down at myself and realized I was wearing this:

And of course, that meant that THIS had to be done:

It took me twenty-five years to finally be as cool as Debbie Gibson was in 1987. I think a little Electric Youth perfume would really be the piece de resistance to complete the outfit.

Now let’s get back to the dance party with a little more “Shake Your Love”…while I go tease my bangs.