The Weekend Rundown
2006-02-28, 8:15 a.m.

Eek! Yipes! Sorry! The internet broke yesterday afternoon, so I had to do work involving Actual Paper, rather than the virtual I tend to roll around in day in and day out. Anyway.

My phone is so happy that I finally got its little battery fully recharged, that it took this picture of me.

Who am I? Go on! Guess!

The Weekend Rundown

Friday night: took LG to the middle school ice skating event, and when we walked in the door, a little group of girls squealed �Oh! LG!� and clapped their hands together excitedly. Go him! I kept asking him who he was going to hold hands with during couples� skate, and he told me that couples� skate had been abolished. Texas is a tough state.

So I moseyed over to one of those �fix yer own bowl of stuff and we�ll cook it fer ya� places with 4 other moms � all moms of boys who LG is either currently close friends with, or has been in the past, and I proceeded to learn that I am very different from the other moms. Some of those reasons are very obvious and somewhat superficial, i.e. I�m divorced and I have my kid living with me and the baby-step-daddeh, I�m not Catholic, and LG is an only child.

There are more subtle ways I am different, and it�s hard to describe this. I think it�s that I have the same sense of humor with him that I do with other people, minus the stuff that isn�t appropriate for a young boy�s ears and experience. I believe I am the only mom that was at the table that would openly admit to asking �Am I going to have to put a foot in your ass?� to encourage their son to study for his history test.

It�s as if the other moms, all of them to a certain degree, although some more than others, have a distinct personality that they use on their kids. This may have to do with having more than one kid, in that they have to put on a very stern, mother-like face in order to keep peace and order in the house.

But I feel that I use the same personality on everybody, and while I have a very keen sense of what is appropriate and what is not in a given situation, I don�t censor my personality out of my relationship with my kid, much to his chagrin. I�m still the authority, and he knows that what I say goes, as much as ANY 13-year-old boy can know that, and I�m certainly not trying to be his friend, but I relate to him using the same sense of self that I do with everybody, and I try to keep the overall tone of our relationship friendly.

In other words, there�s lots of laughter between him and me. I suspect I might be the only mom that will call her son �Dude�. As in, �Dude, where�s your homework?�

Am I wrong? Do I need to act more like the �mother� you might read about in a book, who is stern yet loving, completely oblivious to what the kid�s experience might be from his own point of view, and refuse to try to relate to my child as if he is on some level my equal? I think not.

Suffice it to say, I�m a cooler mom than any of the other moms. Cooler in that I really listen to him, I don�t have my mind made up ahead of time, and I try to think through the things that infuriated me about how my parents treated me, and decided on a case-by-case basis whether that infuriation is really necessary. Sometimes it is, and many times, it is not.

(Note: I�m not the kind of cool mom who lets everyone come over and watch rated R movies and smoke pot.)

Saturday: DW played in a golf tournament as we experienced the first measurable rainfall we�ve had since August � half an inch! � and LG and I hung out around the house, draping ourselves across various pieces of furniture in various rooms, enjoying the sound and smell of the rain until it let up and the sun came out. I enjoyed very much calling DW while the rain was pouring, and asking him �Is it raining on you?� �Yes, buttloads.� �Are you having fun?� �No.�

He told me that Killer had thrown his back out, and that he was unable to bend over and tee up his ball, pick it up out of the cup, mark his ball, etc. I told him to tell Killer that that much really be hampering his lifestyle, to not be able to bend over.

Ha! Am so funny.

Then LG and I got ourselves to Best Buy, where LG burned off a few of his Christmas gift cards, buying an I-Toy, or i-Toy, or Eye-Toy or whatever that thing is. It�s a video game thing with a camera. Please don�t make me explain it. He LOVES it and spent the rest of the day playing i-Toy games, and trying to rope me into playing with him. I played a bit, but dude, videogames bore the snot out of me. We had a fight that involved a whoopee cushion and an orange battling it out on-screen, and then I was overcome with excitement, and took a nap on the floor while he kept playing. I only love Dance Dance Revolution.

Saturday night: since Don has dumped his horrible girlfriend, whom I have nicknamed Snatchy in my admiration for this, we are welcome back into the buxom bosom of our circle of friends, and so we went to the Larrupson�s house and had a bit of wine, and then went out to eat catfish. By 9:30, everyone was tired and sleepy, and several of us were resting our heads on the table, and NOBODY wanted to go bowling, so no good pictures for you.

Sunday: I woke up at about 1:30 in the morning, to find that my husband was not there next to me. Stupid video games ! Stupid Medal of Honor! I moseyed out the bedroom, and found him asleep on the couch with the freaking dog. Went upstairs, made sure LG was in bed, turned off various TVs and video games and shit, and went back to bed. DW made his way to bed a little later, but the damage was done. I was pissed.

You see, I have this hard-wired concept that if you sleep on the couch away from your spouse, it�s because you (1) are angry, or (2) have been kicked out of bed for snoring or coughing, or (3) there is no three.

He explained Sunday morning that he just fell asleep there. Whatever. I can find people to sleep with me, dude. Just try me.

Then LG had a friend over Sunday afternoon for a whopping 6 hours, and they felt that that was not near enough time to get done everything they needed to get done, so we are going to have this friend spend the night in the near future. They didn�t even get to jump on the trampoline, and the golf cart has two bad tires that need to be actually FIXED, not just filled, and we didn�t go practice tennis (they are both on the B-team), and come summer, we�ll have to go swimming, etc.

I used the opportunity to clean the house from top to bottom�OK, I�m exaggerating. I didn�t clean the top. I did not clean the upstairs, I did not clean any ceilings, I didn�t clean light fixtures or ceiling fans or anything I had to reach up to get to. Nothing on top.

I only cleaned the house�s bottom, but that�s the part I see and walk on and sometimes drop my snack on, so it�s important that it be clean-ish.

In closing: I�ll try not to break the internet anymore.