Hey!  You wanna know what the WORST Mother’s Day Celebration idea is that I’ve come across?!  Ever in the history of man-and-woman-kind??

The mothers vs. sons football game and cook-out we have planned with my son’s football team for this week-end.

See?  You agree, don’t you?!  Worst.  Idea.  Ever.

Not only do I know ABSOLUTELY NOTHING about football.  But it’s the LAST thing I want to be doing for Mother’s Day.  Rip my fingernails off?  Sure – count me in!  Poke my eyes out with sharp sticks?  Absolutely – wouldn’t miss it!

Football with monkeys?  As a special treat for ME?!?  To celebrate MY day???  And as added incentive I get to cook hotdogs outside for the monkeys afterwards AND bring TWO DOZEN CUPCAKES??  GAAAAAHHHH!!!!   Suckiest suckiness from sucktown ever to suck….SUCKITY, SUCK, SUCKS!!!

But on the bright side, it will be FLAG football.  Not full-on tackle or anything totally stupid like that.  But do they even make flag belts big enough for moms’ waists?  On a 9-year-old boy, the flag belts look like hula skirts with mange.  On me?  It’s gonna look like a demented loin cloth that doesn’t cover any loin.  At all.

And if we’re skipping the flag belts altogether and going straight to “touch” football??  I’m afraid.  Very afraid.  I’ve seen my son’s “touch” football and it strongly resembles everyone else’s “tackle” football.  AND he’s gonna be gunnin’ for me.

So a bit of motherly advice here: run fast, don’t look back, keep going even if you feel his fetid breath on your neck.  I’ll be at the corner bar when it’s all over – God willing.  Happy Mother’s Day to me!

AND…HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY TO ALL; AND TO ALL A GOOD NIGHT!!!

Anyone else doing this annoying thing where they go to Sprouts with their weekly ad in hand and buy whatever produce is on sale that week?  I mean who cares if no one in the family likes eggplant (1 for 99 cents) or mangos (3 for a dollar).  The price is right and you’ll eat what I make for you.  And you’ll enjoy it.  You’ll enjoy it as soon as I figure out how to make it.  With a recipe that doesn’t involve going to Olive Garden for eggplant parm take-out.

As for the mangos, I don’t need any recipes.  I just need to know how to cut those slippery sumbitches.

And you know what else I bought while I was there?  Herbs (say it the way Martha Stewart says it, or don’t say it at all).  Fresh herbs.  Let’s see…from the “3 plants for $10” table I bought chives, parsley and lemon thyme.  And from a separate table I bought basil.  (2 plants for $4 – because who doesn’t LOVE basil?!  Except for my kids.  Who are weird and annoying with their anti-herb stance on life.)

Not only will I be saving money this summer (especially when you consider that a bunch of herbs at the grocery store costs $2.99-$3.99 each but now I have my own replenishing supply) – but I’ll finally be living the Herb Dream I’ve always wanted to live because I have the TIIIIME and energy to do so.  I’ll transplant these herbs into cute pots and place them on my kitchen windowsill where they will flourish.  And I will endlessly be sprinkling chopped chives or parsley over every dish I make so as to add some fun color and flavor to every meal.  All the ideas I’ve ever seen in Good Housekeeping and/or Home & Gardens for cute, fun, zippy herb dishes will finally be mine!  Mine I say!!!  I mean, who doesn’t LOVE salad caprese for dinner on a warm summer day?  Or how about a flavorful omelet sprinkled with chives on a lazy Sunday morning?  And who’s not willing to at least TRY a bite of goat cheese drizzled with olive oil and sprinkled with lemon thyme.  Anyone?  Anyone??  Right!  I rest my case.

The problem is that the plants will never get repotted.  I’ll forget to water them.  They’ll get too much sun.  They’ll die within the week.  I’ll resort to sprinkling rancid, dead stuff on my family’s food.  Everyone will get the runs.  And I’ll be out fourteen bucks.

I should have just driven past Sprouts and thrown fourteen bucks out the window of the car – along with their %^&*ing flyer – and saved myself some TIIIIME and herb angst.

Anyone else watching Game of Thrones?  Probably all of you and it’s only my husband and I who are TOTALLY late to this particular party.  In fact, recently, my husband was even calling it Game of THORNS!  (What?!  That was just totally clueless, Honey.)  But that just goes to show you how out-of-the-loop we are on this show.

You see, we usually watch all of the various Housewives series-es.  But those shows have devolved into five-part reunions and lost footage episodes.  Yawn.  (Although Housewives of NJ comes back next week and I gotta say I’m gettin’ excited about it.  I’m morbidly fascinated by the train wreck that show has become.)

If I HAD been watching THORNS since it started, I would know what’s going on.  But by joining it in the last month or so?  Not so much…and I feel like I felt in every episode I ever watched of Lost.  But with Lost, I didn’t even know where that show was taking place.  At least with THORNS, I’m pretty sure it takes place in Middle Earth.  Unless you’re watching that bizarre sub-plot where it’s taking place in Egypt.  But during Middle Earth times.  With that chick and her unnaturally blond hair and her army of 10,000 Unsullied (which she traded her pet dragon for…but then had the dragon bbq the dude she traded the dragon TO and she walked away with BOTH the Unsullied army AND the dragon.  Brilliant!).  Or that OTHER subplot where it’s taking place on that ice planet where Luke Skywalker got captured by the Yeti and taken to its ice-cave.

But mostly it takes place in castles where they call the women “Mi’lady.”  I love me some “Mi’lady!”  I am a total sucker for it. 

One time my husband and I went out to eat at a high-end steak house for our anniversary.  The waiter called me Mi’lady (“What would Mi’lady like to drink?”) and that was all she wrote (“Your special pineapple martini please, tee hee hee!!”).  One of the best meals EVER!  AND we left him a big tip!!

But as much as I like all of the Mi’lady business…it’s kinda hard to take some of the actors seriously since these are the same actors who star in Dr. Who (not the super weird old one, but the slightly less weird/slightly better special effects one from nowadays) and/or the English version of The Office.  I know that these folks actually work in an office with computers or can time-travel so I’m constantly wondering when they’re gonna trot out those mad skillz.

And what’s up with John Snow?  Who is he?!  And why do we care??? 

The following conversation about John Snow typifies every conversation my husband and I have during Game of THORNS.  [Oy.  Really?  THORNS?!?  It’s so dumb that I have to keep saying it and annoy myself in the process.  Thorns.]

Me:  Who are those tweens in the forest?  And that one with all the furs covering his legs.  Can he not walk? 

Hubby:  I dunno.

Me:  And why is that epileptic one dreaming about John Snow?

Hubby:  He wasn’t having an epileptic fit.  He was having a vision.  He can look through the eyes of animals and see what’s happening in another place.

Me:  Oh.  Yeah.  Right.  Anyway…who IS John Snow?  Is he that guy we just saw walking through the snow?  And what’s the icewall he’s “on the other side of” from the epileptic tween’s dream??

Hubby:  I dunno. 

[cut to a scene where a red-haired chick keeps calling the guy she’s with, “John.”  She’s mackin’ on him, but there’s no nudity – unlike ALL the other mackin’ scenes in the show.  I suspect it’s because they’re in the SNOW!   D’oh!   Nudity here would be gratuitous and dumb.  Unlike all the other nudity which is totally necessary to move the plot forward.  And now I’m starting to realize why my husband likes to watch the Game of THORNS.  Oy.   It’s for the nudity.  Not the scintillating Mi’ladies!   Which is what I’m watching it for.  Anyway…I’m now almost certain the man-in-the-snow IS John Snow.  Red-haired chick and Possibly-John-Snow just came through a harrowing incident climbing the snowy mountain where they slipped off and they were cut loose at the direction of their co-worker from The Office.  But John Snow managed to save them both and they finally get to the top of the mountain.  The clouds part.  John and Red-haired chick look every which way.  They see lush green lands and flowing rivers everywhere they look.  Which is weird.  Why would there be a snowy mountain in the middle of Africa?  And why would they climb it instead of just going around??]

Me:  Ok.  What?  I don’t get this.  Why is there a snowy mountain in the middle of this warm place??  This show is annoying.  I can never figure out what’s going on.

Hubby:  Uh…it’s a wall.  It’s the icewall.  John just got to ‘the other side of’ the ice wall.

Me:  Oh.  [Gaaah!  Whatever, Mr. Mi’lady.  Uh…I dunno…at least I never called it Game of THORNS!  Oy.]

I joined the tennis team at the local country club!  Am I living the dream or what?!  Home Mom in the house – makin’ the most of her FREEEEEE time!  What up, what up??

It’s been “fun” so far, but I’m pretty certain 99-100% of my team wants me gone.  Even though the tennis pro keeps reminding them that, “We LOOOOVE left-handed people on our tennis team!”  She claims it’s because left-handers save right-handers from serving into the sun…but I think it’s because I save them from having to look like the WORST person on the team.  Me and my left-handed self have that covered.

You see, I’ve never played tennis before in my life.  In fact, when the tennis pro contacted me to find out what level I was at (3.0? 3.5??), I told her I had no idea what she was talking about so that should give her some idea of my skill set.  [Turns out I’m a bargain basement 2.0 but you have to be no lower than a 2.5 for league play so she got creative with the math.]

My racket is literally 22 years old (I remember my then-fiance-now-husband-of-21-years bought it for me brand new so we could hit balls around at the tennis courts near his first-apartment-out-of-college).  And every time I show up for practice, the tennis pro switches rackets with me.  So that I can see how “modern technology feels” (her words, not mine).

I wear my three-day-dirty yoga pants instead of all the super cute tennis skirts (and tennis DRESSES??!) that the others wear.  And to this point I’ve been wearing some old running shoes on the court because I don’t think I’ve ever owned a pair of true TENNIS shoes in my life (unless Keds count.  Do they?  In which case I ROCKED the white Keds look in the 80’s, but you probably knew that already.  R-O-C-K in the U-S-A!  And no, you don’t have to buy NEW white Keds when they start getting dingy, you can just BLEACH the white Keds back to new!)

But the tennis pro keeps making comments every time I come to practice that all the grooves on my running shoes are gonna catch on the court and I’m gonna hurt myself.  But I mostly think it’s because she doesn’t want me to go down on her watch.  Or it could be she’s trying to save me from looking like even MORE of an a$$ than I already do by tripping over my own feet.  (Remember Gals!  We LOOOOVE left-handed people on our team!!!)

Hard to say.  But I finally did break down and get some new tennis shoes.  At the local PGA Tour Superstore.  They have cheap tennis shoes there.  Because they’re a GOLF STORE!!!  D’oy!  But I am NOT spending a ton of money on shoes for a sport that I suck wind at.  (Or should that be: at which I suck wind?  My mom is back from her trip and she’ll clarify shortly so hang in there.  I’ll get back to you soon on this pressing question.)

Until then, here’s an interesting observation about tennis shoes: It doesn’t matter how cute your hot pink tennis dress and matching visor are…you still look like a nurse from the ankles down.  Tennis shoes are not flattering on anyone!  And when you have size 10.5 boats like I do…there’s no hope.  So go cheap or go home.  And imagine my surprise when I was at the golf store and I lucked into a pair of ASICS court shoes – size 10.5!  All the Sports Authorities and Dickses sports superstores only carry 10’s or 11’s.  So the 10.5’s (in the same brand as my super expensive, special-order running shoes) was a true find.  Combined with the already deeply discounted $39.99 price tag which was FURTHER discounted by another 25%…and SCORE!!!  Except for all those weird black hairs on the inside of the shoes.  Those gave me pause.  At first I thought (hoped?) they were black cat hairs or something.  But then I realized they were curly.  I have NO IDEA what could have been going on in those shoes, or where the socks of the person who tried them on before me had been (shag carpet of a infrequently cleaned 20-year-old-hotel-bathroom maybe??), but the price was right, so curly-joes be damned!

And now?  Now I look like I’m making my way cross-court to take someone’s blood pressure STAT!  While wearing mini-canoes strapped to my feet.  But it’s all good.  ‘Cept for the scoring.  I signed up to play tennis.  Not to do math!  And there is soooo much math going on I can’t even keep it straight. (And when I say math I mean the nonsensical scoring of traditional tennis: 0, 15, 30, 40 whoaaa.  Whaaa?  Add-in.  Deuce.  Add-OUT??  WHAAAAA???…as well as how you rotate around the court, who serves first, which side of the court you want when the sun is shining or the wind is blowing blah blah blah.  This can all be considered “math” to a left-hander like me.)  So I just follow everyone else on the court and hope for the best.  When it’s my turn to serve, I do make sure I announce my “second serve” if it comes to that, so the others think I’m somewhat engaged.  And I find it useful to float a “30-30” score periodically to see if there’s any dissention from the other side.  Or from my own side for that matter.  There usually is – at which point I find out what the REAL score is.  Problem solved!  Also?  NEVER say THIRTY-THIRTY.  You sound like a total tennis fool.  First off, the server always announces their score FIRST, and my score never gets to 30 for some reason so I’m safe there.  But secondly and more importantly, it’s THIRTY ALL.  %^&#!!  More math.

And if, for example, the score is 0-30?  Which is more likely to be the case for me.  Say LOVE-THIRTY.  Because LOVE means NOTHING to a tennis player.  Get it?!?  Hardy har har.  Oh – and speaking of LOOOOVE??  Remember Gals!  We LOOOOVE left-handed people on our team!!!

As my son was falling asleep the other night (I LOVE these conversations.  They’re the BEST!) he asked me what I do with all my time at home while Teddy (the new puppy) is sleeping.

I gave him a rundown of things like: exercise, clean bathrooms, do laundry, bake desserts, vacuum, volunteer at school, grocery shop, meet friends for lunch, knit.  You know – all the exciting things we Home Moms do.  (Home Mom in the house…keepin’ it real.  Whoop, whoop!!!)

Sensing perhaps that this list wasn’t fulfilling in some “former high-powered Marketing Executive” sort of way, he asked what I REALLY wanted to be doing.  You know.  To have a job.

And I confessed that I’d really like to have a job blogging.

There was such a long pause after that, that I thought he’d fallen asleep.

But then he said, “is that even real?  Is that even a real thing?!”

Hmmmm…this coming from a boy, who – when he was three – wanted to be a “motorcycle guy who sang opera and had an iron claw.”

Yes.  It’s a real thing.

Dream big, boy!  Dream big!!

In Gay Pair-ee they have a charming tradition on May 1st.  Various (possibly homeless) vendors sell (without a permit) sprigs of Lily of the Valley from every street corner.  Men wear the sprigs in their lapels or on their hats.  Women tuck the sprigs into their own lapels, hats or purses; Or they combine several sprigs into a little bouquet and walk around holding this posy while periodically sniffing it.  Today is France’s Labor Day which means the whole metro system goes to Hell-in-a-handbasket.  But it’s also La Fête du Muguet or Lily of the Valley Day.  [side note – Come on!  A Bachelor’s Degree in French?  Who WOULDN’T want to hire me??  I’m all that AND a bag of ‘les chips’ (which can also be called ‘les croustilles’).  Aren’t you impressed yet??  What’s it gonna take?!  Come on – hire me already!!!]

Their way of celebrating Spring and extending best wishes to each other for the upcoming season is a whimsical, olde-tyme-yet-cosmopolitan tradition that’s quintessentially Parisian.

Not to be outdone…we have a lovely tradition here in Colorado as well.  On May Day it snows like a mo fo and we all get thoroughly TICKED OFF because IT’S FRICKIN’ MAY ALREADY!  ENOUGH WITH THE SNOW!!!!  GAAAAAAHHHHH!!!!!!

See?  Absolutely lovely!!

And you know what else is awesome about May 1st?  It’s the first day of my birth month and as a result…I get a little bouquet of my own.  It’s a bouquet of birthday wishes…er…coupons from stores I frequent.  Let’s see – there’s a $10-off-anything-costing-$10-or-more coupon from JC Penney’s AND one for the same amount from Cost Plus World Market.  And bumping it up a notch is Vera Bradley with $20 off a purchase of $20 or more.  [Why she’s sending me that sort of coupon is beyond me because I never actually buy stuff there.  I just use their $20 off coupons and get stuff for FREE!…or sometimes six extra dollars of my own money.  But I’m still coming out ahead in that little game, right?  Right??]

And speaking of games…my old frenemy Kohl’s is in the mix with their own $10 off coupon.  But I will NOT fall into that trap.  My husband has expressed his doubts on that with his recent rhetorical, “Yeah…’cause you’ll ONLY spend $10, right?”

But the challenge has been extended.  And accepted.  I will only spend up to the value of each birthday coupon and not a JC Penney’s more!  Or die trying.  Perhaps I have FINALLY found those errands that don’t cost money?!?  Or maybe I’ve just sealed my fate and don’t need a job afterall since I’ll be dead within the month.  Time will tell.  Either way, please wish me Bonne Chance (that’s French for ‘Good Luck!’… NOW HIRE ME ALREADY DAMMIT!!!!)