Unemployment Math

So, the husband and kids and I go out to eat as a treat last week. Now, I had just entered the State of Unemployment four days earlier. You know that state, the one whose welcome sign is “Welcome to the State of Unemployment, the Home of Ye Who Have Abandoned All Hope?" I believe it is the 53rd state that most of us generally try to not visit. Do have to admit that the motto is a bit catchier than Georgia’s “Welcome to the Peach State” especially since that motto is a bit disingenuous as even Georgian’s won’t eat the peaches grown here. The motto really should be “Welcome to the Peach State Where all of the Peaches Taste Like Unflavored Rocks of an Undetermined Nature.” Probably just couldn’t get it all on the sign. Really, when it comes to peaches, us Georgians look for that little sticker on the peach that says South Carolina on it. Now, they have a good motto, “While I breathe, I hope.” which is just the inverse of it's sister city, Beijing, China where the motto is "I Hope I Breathe." However, none of the mottos are as good as Alabama’s “At Least We Aren’t Mississippi.”

So after cheering up considerably when I compared unemployment to the job of putting those little stickers on every single piece of fruit sold in the US, it was off to the Waffle House. I had learned through prior reconnaissance that one could buy the big time breakfast meal at Waffle House for an awesome price. Then, one could divvy it up among family members according to a formula based upon whoever was being nicest to me at the time.


So, we go in. Aidan is excited. He wants to sit at the counter as that is what he and I would do to celebrate our success after we would go to Lowes or Home Depot for the kid’s build-a-something clinic and manage to not nail any two fingers together. Or hit ourselves in the head with the hammers, which we always celebrated as I had demonstrated how that wasn’t a good idea by role-modeling it once early in our build-a-something career. So, he is pointing to the counter. I point out that that will just not work as there are only two chairs, there are five of us and the laws of physics just do not bend to our will. So, he goes to the other counter where there are four chairs and tells me that we could put Mia’s highchair in one of those places. Again, I point out that won’t work as there are five of us and there are only four places. He tells me that he can make it work but I tell him the decision is made, the five of us will sit in a booth.

We get a high chair for Mia and sit down in our appointed booth. The waitress asks us what we would like to drink and do we know what the other person would like? I’m wondering if she is seeing dead people or is merely hopped up as I do not see anyone sitting next to me and am assuming that she is. I decide to go out on a limb and ask – what other person? She gives me the look like I am either seeing dead people or am really hopped up which, considering we are in a Waffle House, is a likely possibility and then carefully, loudly and very slowly so that I could understand tells me that she had heard me say, numerous times, that we had five people in our dinner party and since we only had two parents and two kids, that would mean we were waiting for another. After some deliberation, I agreed that her assessment did appear to represent the facts in question but that the other person apparently just couldn’t make it.

The five year old starts loudly telling me that there isn’t another person, and asking who was I talking about, but I quickly suggested that he get all the incoming sausage which clearly wasn’t fair but as he was my favorite son, at least as of that morning because he generally doesn't ask his mother lots and lots of questions, he shut down his line of inquiry.

Guess I was counting the cat in the number of mouths I have to feed.

Today's topic, Fun with Unemployment

Well, "none" is pretty much the most accurate description so far.

However, there is the son's fear that he will have to eat sandwiches, an idea that apparently is totally distasteful to him and my new ability to either see dead people or my lost ability of being able to count to 10. And, of course, there is my on-going idea of driving a school bus so I can influence young lives in a positive and engaging manner. I'm making my plans now.

But since I have to hose the children off for their day tomorrow, the details will have to wait.

Don't want this one as a defense witness

Wife to husband: You don't let Mia jump on the bed, do you?
Husband: Nooooo. Of course not.

Wife to husband: Has she fallen off yet?
Husband: No, I watch her to make sure she doesn't.

Witness to Husband : Man, I sure wouldn't want you as a defense witness...

Lion Poop

African Proverb - Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up and knows it must run faster than the fastest lion or it will be killed. Every morning in Africa, a lion wakes up and knows it must outrun the slowest gazelle or it will starve.

Yesterday, I was the slowest gazelle. Which, I believe, makes me lion poop today. Sure feels that way.

If I knew it only took a note

So, the son is pushing his sister in her stroller and is running it into something about every 23 seconds. He then pushes the top of the stroller forward so his sister gets violently thrown forward with about the same G-forces the Apollo astronauts had on take off. She then is jerked back by the opposing force. Of course, she has a very good five point harness which undergoes inspection on every outing. To accentuate the impact, the son also yells "airbag" for effect as one of his parents must have told him something along the lines of how an airbag deploying in your face somehow colors the rest of your day along with your face.

Airbag is apparently on the top of the kids' list for fun, fun, fun. As I do not resemble either child, I have a plan to act like I just found them if DFCS comes over to inquire about who is parenting the kids.

So, after walking through at least one half of a very small parking lot slightly larger than a postage stamp, the son informs me he is out of breath. I suggest that perhaps he needs to get some exercise. After at least 5 seconds of consideration, he said that, "yes, he could do that or he could also just write a note to Jesus and ask him for some more breath." So he slowly limps at least two parking places to my car and writes his note on the dirt on the hood. Of course, it was in cursive as he doesn't know how to spell or write in print yet. He also doesn't have any idea how to write in cursive but feels it is much more convincing. I tend to agree as it is clear that an individual's handwriting deteriorates the further along they get in school and, here's the biggie, the smarter they are. This clearly explains doctors' abilities to only write 3 letters that don't appear to be horizontal lines. It also goes to explain my very clear and precise printing and cursive.

So, I consider my options. I can't tell the kid that he shouldn't send it up to Jesus. That would be wrong on so many levels. I can't tell the kid that Jesus called me as he will want the call back number. This kid wants proof. No idea where he may have gotten that trait from. I could tell him I'm hearing Jesus in my head but he will help his father take me to a very special place.

So, I am currently looking for a sample of Jesus's handwriting that will say, "thanks for writing. I would be happy to give you more breath. Think I would have invented treadmills and exercise otherwise?" Although, in my opinion, treadmills may have come from the dark side.

Car Games in California

As all of us are aware, each and every child in America must ask the question, “are we there yet” a minimum of 327,432 times or they will never mature into an adult. Apparently, my son was let in on this factoid and made sure to diligently work to meet his childhood quota while we were on the road in California. As the car was clearly in motion when this question was asked, it seemed somewhat obvious to me that perhaps we were not. But, that is just me. Now, I could have always used my father’s very wise “in ten minutes” answer that he used each and every time we asked the same question when we were kids. Didn’t bear any proportion to where we were or where we were going but, by gosh, we all somewhat figured out after 50 or so tries that it was a rather futile question and quit asking it and moved on to “Mom, he’s looking at me.”

But, always eager to improve on the past, I decided to give my son the answer he deserved. So, I asked for more information. What did he mean by “there?” After all, how could I answer the question accurately if I didn’t know where “there” was? Wouldn’t that be cheating him of the top notch parenting he deserves? So, again I went after his definition of “there”. Specifically, for him did being “there” mean that his basic needs for food, shelter and clothing be met or did he need to be fully self-actualized which I considered might be a little bit of an overreach, even in California where they have that medical marijuana, not that I would know of such things. And, even with the unconditional positive regard of his parents and sister, had he considered existential angst? Would that impact his being “there?” So, what did he mean?

Watching his careful consideration, I could tell he was in very deep thought,and I knew I had taken the right path, especially when he said he needed to have a bit of a conversation with his “guys”, the stuffed animal retinue that accompanies us on our travels. Told him I thought he could get the benefit of brainstorming unless, of course, they fell into groupthink.

So, he moved on and asked each very carefully if they had to pee. Apparently, they did not as he began pointing out cars which wasn’t very difficult as we were on a freeway. Then, another clever although not original idea came to me – the alphabet game as in, find a license plate with an A and then a B and then so on. That used up 2.75 minutes and was good to approximately Q. From what I observed, Q ticked off California in the past and was banned from the state.

And then, voila, it came to me. A new game. I called it Ration. Somehow it just came to me as I reflected on the $4.75 a gallon gas in the bear state. All that was needed was several movie size boxes of Jujubes and a GPS and, by gosh, we had the GPS. I made sure it could be viewed by the budding backseat driver who had been putting forth a lot of effort to make sure I was always very well advised on what the speed “number” was and how I was doing in relation to it. Apparently he was conducting some scientific field study as he also queried my father on the same issue on our drive home from the airport in the middle of the night on our return to Atlanta where the official airport slogan is “If you die and go to hell, you first must go through Atlanta.”

But, I digress. So we acquired several hundred of the chewy candies and began playing my new game. Specifically, the rules were that he could have one Jujube each and every time the GPS showed that we had covered two miles. He also had to give his sister half of one and he had to give me one every six miles. As it takes approximately one minute to chew one of those things, I figured that would work well and would only leave one minute for his speed numbers check.

But, I also gave him options so he could exercise his mind. He could play Super Ration instead. He could have one of the globs every three miles, did not have to give any to his mother but the sister requirement stayed the same. Oddly, he wanted to know about Super Super Ration and Super Super Super Ration so I gave him the directions. For Super Super Ration, he and his sister could have one piece for every ten miles shown on the GPS and if he chose to play Super Super Super Ration, he needed to find the most ostentatiously wealthy person he could see and hand over all the candy while reserving none for himself for no good reason. Somehow, he just didn't get that one.

Oddly, after we arrived, the kids seemed to have a wee bit of energy and worked at bouncing on the beds while trying to reach the ceiling. That was, of course, after the little one did her “Dance With The Swimming Diaper My Head” routine. Need to brush up on my traditional Chinese folk dances as I had not been previously introduced to this one.