Have I talked about Virtual Villagers before?

There's this really stupid downloadable game called Virtual Villagers and I guess we have the 3rd one.
My youngest wanted me to buy it for her and she and I worked on it until we got to the end. There were some things I was a little iffy on, but she seemed to enjoy it.

NOW THE PROBLEM: Haley has rediscovered the game on this computer because she is so bored by not having any life at all. And those things that I ignored for Gina are SO OBVIOUS for Haley.

Like the sounds the characters make when you pick them up. OOH, AAH. It's like an Herbal Essence commercial and not in a good clean way!

And I pointed out that she could name her characters and it would be funny to name them what they are. So then she named one "Retard" and one "Whore" which wasn't quite what I meant. But "Retard" keeps running away from the tasks he's supposed to learn. And "Whore" keeps ignoring her duties and running off to breed.

Somehow I find it amusing that Haley spends her time virtually chasing after these people and saying things that sound a little like what I keep saying to her.
"Get back to work!"
"Why don't you learn after I tell you twenty times?"
"Kissing again and again makes you want to breed more."

Okay, not that last one. Not quite like that. But why have a game in which one of the skills you have to teach them is how to embrace each other and head off to the Love Shack to have babies?

Haley was mad when her doctor got pregnant. Well, not really pregnant. They go into the Shack and come out with a baby that they breast feed for two years (Two years!) and during this time they can't work for the village at all.

And I'm all like "SEE, Haley! That's what I'm talking about."
And she ignores me.

She should pay more attention to the game. Then she'll understand why she is to have NO CONTACT with any boys until she's 35.

New Age Parenting Has Created Teenage Idiocy

Teenagers are entirely different in this generation. I know every . . . ahem . . . older generation says that. But I really think a major shift has occured after the new-agey bullshit crap of the nineties. We were told to never yell, never spank, never take control and instead just have conversations with our children and let them make their own choices and learn from the "natural consequences" of their actions. If your kids hate you, then you're a BAD PARENT. Be their friend or they won't come back for Christmas when they're older.

So we have created our own NATURAL CONSEQUENCE which can be seen everyday in small interactions with the new set of fledgling teenagers.

For example:

A barely 13 year old boy thinks he can debate with me about whether or not he should be allowed to date my daughter. Which he's not. In my generation, no child would have ever imagined calling, texting, or emailing an adult to argue anything EVER!

Part of me wants to give him my reasons for not allowing continued communication with my daughter, but I find that debating with a 13 year old little boy to be, well, RIDICULOUS. At 13 he does not have the capacity or ability or language or life experience to understand what I would have to say, even IF I cared to tell him. It seems that children now think they are equals to us and have the right to share their opinions. Humph. His opinion seems to be that It's Not Fair!

Maybe I'm just not SCARY enough. I have yelled at him in front of a crowd of teenagers at the movie theater. I have thrown my daughter into my car when I find her walking down the road with him. I have given him the STINK EYE. I have talked about placentas and played country music in my car. How much scarier can I get? In my day (here I am sounding old again) adults were scary because they were ADULTS. That's all it took for them to maintain authority. There's no authority now.

And no grasp of the English language either.

All of this texting and email and chatting online is turning proper English into some kind of shorthand gibberish that everyone makes up differently. Did the tower of Babel story in the Old Testament say anything about computers or cellphones? Fledgling teenagers in middleschool have gone past the boundaries of anything decipherable and are now making up words.

For Example:

"do you think im a pesation or somthing cus every time she gets in troble you take me away and thats not fair to me cus i didnt do anything."

Now seeing as I spend some time on the internet and I can now text fairly well without spelling errors that turn boxes into boxers when I'm sending a text to my daughter's therapist, I can decode most of that sentence into something that makes sense, EXCEPT for the word PESATION.
Is it short for Compensation?
Is he a Superstar Sensation? With an ego so big that he dares email me?
Does it have to do with PEZ, as he's 13 and should be into PEZ right now?
Pest?
Truthfully, I appreciate that he's given me this new word to play with. I LOVE new words.

But if you're going to try to argue with an adult by hiding behind an email, cause you know that if you try to argue to my face I will SMACK YOU DOWN like the little punk you are, then at least show me that you're smart enough to not be a pesation.

It's not his fault really. It's the fault of parents who give a kid a cell phone without teaching them social rules. It's the fault of a parent who will tell another parent that they don't understand how not letting the kids keep seeing each other is going to help the situation. It's the fault of a parent who says things like "If we don't let them see each other they are only going to do something worse."

Sounds like you're a hostage to your teenager, and not a parent.

Which would be why your son thinks he can argue with me. To take me hostage as well.

Perhaps pesation means CHILD. I think he's a child and that's why he has to follow my rules concerning my daughter or not be allowed to speak with her.

Imagine that!

I can hear all those NEW AGE people coming after me with their robes flying and their crystals and their electronic music playing the Age of Aquarius.

I'm just going to yell out "Pesation" and shut the door now.

Reasons I shouldn't OWN a CELLPHONE

I was trying to get in touch with the head of the Math Department at the highschool but kept missing his call, and instead kept getting that You've Got Voicemail buzz. Thankfully Haley was standing next to me so I handed it to her and said "Fix it!" because she was born with the phone manual implanted in her head. She said something about Bluetooth being on, but I don't even know what that is although I suspect it has something to do with PIRATES and I don't know how I turned it on.
But the problem with carrying a cellphone is more than that. It puts the focus on how distractable I am. I got a text message while I was walking over to get Haley at the school and I dared to read it quickly, but then I had to WAIT until I got to the school to text back. And then I felt like I was trying too hard to look cool while leaning against the track fence and texting, but really I was just trying not to fall over. Standing and texting is almost as dangerous as walking and texting.
So no worries about me driving and texting. The kids won't let me. And the cellphone is buried in my bag or in my left pocket secured by the seat belt. In all the fumbling and swearing I realize that I can't even get the phone out without endangering myself.
It would be cool if it did come with Pirates because then they could take my calls and text for me and everyone would think I was cool sounding like Captain Jack because I'd be all "Har, and Aye, and Where's the RUM?" And everything comes back to Johnny Depp just as it should. Johnny Depp should come with my phone. I'm turning on Bluetooth as soon as I brush my hair and teeth and throw on some perfume.

Wine Dispensing Drive Through and don't tell anyone but I bought a BOX...shhhhhhh

After 15 days of self-imposed sobriety due to the recent economic downturn and future high costs of putting braces on teenage girls without help from the ex, and fixing my car which is now loud enough to rumble instead of hum, I have given up and become one of the wine box drinking hoard. Hoard is a word that means angry crowd of wine drinkers who storm a liquor store because they've recently decided to not stop drinking after all and they aren't very happy about drinking cheap wine.
These are the people who take the wine bag out of the box and blow it up like a balloon in order to inhale the last few drops.
These are the people who always have a splattering of wine on the kitchen floor, directly under the counter where the wine box always goes. They'll say it's part of the tile pattern, but it's really from that last drop after they've taken a glass.
These are the people who never need a bag at the liquor store, who avoid direct sunlight, and who are usually toasty by two in the afternoon because when they open the fridge to look for orange juice and the wine box is sitting there, it's difficult to look away.
But my sobriety was making me bitter and unfunny and not a very good mom. And I was eating a lot of sugar to try to get that same high, but it never worked out.
So then I decided that wine was necessary for my health, because without it I'm a rambling anxious mess and I don't sleep more than a couple of hours, and it's noisy in my head. So I took my insurance card down to the liquor store because it's cheaper for the insurance people to pay for wine instead of a nice prozac/lorazepam/sleeping medicine mixture. I'm sure they would agree and would actually APPRECIATE that I was trying to save them money. So I decided not to tell them and instead surprise them with the idea later.
I swiped my card through the credit machine, while grinning madly at the cashier in an effort to distract her. I don't want other people to copy me because I'm sure that the BUSH people are still out there and would try to stop the typical American Family from buying a box of wine because that money is needed to bomb other people on the other side of the world who don't agree with the BUSH World Domination plan.
It DIDN'T work! DECLINED. Sigh.
I guess I'll call the insurance company tomorrow or maybe write to them. They might take a professional looking letter much more seriously.
So I drove to the ATM to get $20 out and thought that it would be a great idea to put a wine machine next to the ATM in order to save me the time and gas money to run all over town for wine. A wine dispensing unit that would refill my empty bottles while I was sitting in my car!!! Or at least a vending machine that I could drive up to right after I take money I don't really have out at the ATM!!!! With all the time I would be saving, I could do something more productive. Like BLOG. Or spend time with my kids. Or get a second job so that I can pay more taxes! I know this idea will be found by someone IMPORTANT who loves wine as much as I do and they'll send me money for it!

Avoiding Hannah Montana

I was in Payless yesterday looking for sneakers that didn't have Hannah Montana's face on the side, or were pink, or were "MOM" shoes, whatever THAT means. It was an impossible mission as Hannah Montana has taken over the World, the only color all the OTHER girls wear is PINK, and anything else is more than ugly which somehow equates to being MOM-LIKE.
Then in the shoe-store-silence, a muffled ringing sound. I looked at Gina. She looked at me. The cashier looked at me. And then I realized that I'd accidently left my new cell phone in my bag after the Fair. This new cell phone experience is overwhelming. I like to be UNAVAILABLE. I like for people to think that I'm doing something so super important that I can't talk to them right now. I like to hide when my child visits the school nurse for the 20th time this week and it's easier for the school to call me and ask me what to do about the paper cut on their tongue.
I answered it ONLY because everyone was looking at me.
Haley's voice sounded far away, another cell phone feature I hate.

"Mom, can I jump off the footbridge on my way home?" she asked.

"Aren't you wearing your green plaid pajama pants?" She'd already lost one pair of pants in the river this week. That I had to stick my hand inside of to turn right side out before washing them. The thought of it makes me cringe.

"Yes," she said.

"Then no, you can't jump in the river," I said and hung up.

Now, was that conversation important enough to call me when I really just want to hide out in the mall and avoid Hannah Montana? That's difficult enough without being distracted by the ringing in my bag.
And would Haley have jumped off a bridge if she hadn't been able to reach me?

Probably.