When Phyllis Nefler calls a parent meeting for Troop Beverly Hills to concoct a plan for selling cookies, her best friend, a glamorous romance novel writer, laments, "If all you're looking for is money, then why don't we all just buy a thousand boxes of cookies."
Phyllis says, she thought of that too, but realized it defeats the purpose, which is much more than raising money, but teaching your kids not be an LB.
Thats a term my brother taught me, "LB" which stands for "lil' bitch," and is generally used to explain someone who is acting like a whiney asshole, and is bringing everyone down. When I was young, my brothers, sisters and me would lounge in front of the TV for hours. We'd rise from our state of rest only for fresh-from-the-oven bagel bites. When my dad would come in the house after work, we'd all go tense because we knew he would never get on board with this scene of inactivity.
And he wouldn't. He'd usually look upon his fleet of lazy children, silently scowl, walk into the other room, and we would get the false impression that he is totally cool with us spending our Saturday on an eight hour TV bender. Minutes later, he'd walk in the room and command, "Turn the TV off. You need to move the wood from the front of the house to the side of the house."
Then we'd all moan under our breath, taking out our frustration on each other, with a shove and "get out of my way" shout, and then start a work line where we'd spend the next two hours walking chopped wood from the front of the house to the side of the house, for no reason except my dad doesn't want his kids to grow up and be LBs. Weeks later, he'd come home and ask us to move all the wood back to where it was stacked in the front of the house. And so on.
I'm with my parents this week, sleeping on a blow up mattress with my two kids. A fourth of the mattress' air escapes when I put the cap on it, and there is a slight leak somewhere because after a couple hours, we are all sleeping on the floor. George wakes up frequently throughout the night screaming for no apparent reason then to test my strength in containing any involuntary reaction to be abusive. I practice visualizing us back at home, where he is in his bed, and I am in mine, sleeping soundly. But waking up in the dry Carson City desert, after sleeping a couple hours on the floor of a room that's last seen a vacuum in 2012, my throat and nose clogged with dust bunnies, I guzzle eight cups of water and then onto coffee and take on a day which has become much less active now that my kids are old enough to keep themselves busy, running around like a pack of wolves with their four cousins.
Last Christmas there was always something to do; snacks to make, potty mess to clean up, something to organize, or a tantrum to extinguish. Yesterday I was so hapless, I spent eight hours laying around and eating. I went to bed traumatized by the dud of a day I had, and said, "Im going to read a book tomorrow. I can't go on doing nothing!"
Yesterday I took two long ass walks. The first was with my brother and sister's families. The second was an emergency walk, I initiated after watching George waywardly wander through the room, leaping on furniture, looking like he was going to climb the TV stand with the hope of body slamming the coffee table. I could have carried on, eating a dozen more mini powdered donuts while staring at the ceiling, but he needed to run.
As we started down the path I chatted with my sister on the phone. We hung up, and then George and I walked, looking for rabbits. When we reached the end of the path, I reached in my pocket for my phone so I could get a picture of him with the city background. I put my hand in the deep pocket and pulled out a knitted cap, two sets of gloves, three little kids socks, and Starbucks napkins, but no phone.
I knew I had the phone when we started on the walk, so it fell out somewhere in between here and where I hung up. I regretted buying the camouflage otter box case because it was only fourteen dollars on Amazon, knowing if it were case side up, it'd blend into the brush and dirt. I found the phone glistening in the dirt right around where I hung up. George and I high-fived, then I went to take his picture, but the phone died as I opened the camera.
We then came upon a family of deer. There was about eight of them, and they looked huge, motionless, staring at us. I picked up George, and was a little frightened, as we said, "Hi deeeer," creeping away. I couldn't shake the image of them walking towards us, then quickly charging, a short distance stampede. The path soon turned to cement, and we entered the neighborhood. I turned around and saw a little deer peek its head out from behind a stone wall to look at us.
This morning, after George woke me up, we joined the bustling part of our family thats on East Coast time, I grabbed a book from the shelf, The Epic of Gilgamesh. Harletts seem to be the most useful tool of the time, and proclaimed, "I will not eat any of those fucking corn syrup donuts, or guzzle diet coke like it's water." A couple hours later my mom came out of her room singing, and I reiterated how I couldn't be a glutinous couch dwelling jabba the hut sloth today. She shook her head at me, dismayed, and said, "You stop being a complainer, and lay down on that couch and relax."
I know what she meant by "complainer" so I sucked it up, grabbed some donuts and fell into an armchair, tossing the book to the side and started watching rain drops hit the window and ground.
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