Pranksters

The other morning I was heating up soup for the kids’ lunch and the smell made my stomach turn. I ran to the kitchen sink and threw up. My mind went right to, “Oh my goodness, what have I done!”

I remembered swallowing my Ladies multi-vitamin with black coffee on an empty stomach 15 minutes earlier, and rested easy. But a PMS mind doesn’t rest easy for long. The barf in combination with my complexion, that’s looking like Bill Murray’s these days, had me googling “Is it ok to chew Nicorette Gum while pregnant.”

I’m blaming the corona-masks for my zits. My face hasn’t looked this bad since I was pregnant with my daughter. Lots of women report bigger boobs and a pregnancy glow, I looked like I was carrying my baby in my butt and had a face like Freddy Kruger. 

Halfway through my pregnancy I walked into the elevator at work, and my co-worker looked at me and said, “You’re having a girl. I can tell because she’s stealing all your beauty.”

She was right! I ended up with a beautiful baby girl. 

My period came later in the day, so I didn’t have to worry about figuring out how I’d fit a pink baby bassinet in my closet. It does concern me, I’d have no acne indication if it were a boy, and his embryonic development would be getting a steady stream of nicotine from ten pieces a day.

Boys don’t suck beauty from their mom, I didn’t get one zit when I pregnant with my boy. I don’t know where boys get their beauty, but they do get just how to drive their mom crazy with a big smile on their face. This afternoon doing homework, he kept saying, “Mom, I have to tell you something,” and then get up to my ear and burp. He didn’t tire from it, and found it just as amusing the tenth time as the first, and by then I was swatting him away with the kitchen broom.

On YouTube he watched prank videos made by some kid. Not understanding what a prank was exactly, he walked out of my bedroom holding a pair of scissors and said, “Pranked ya!”

I yelled, “What have you done?” And raced into the bedroom, to see that he cut a hole in the fitted sheet.

I told him, “A prank isn’t destroying someone’s property, it’s a trick, like putting Red Bull in someone’s TheraFlu.”

I can just imagine him throwing a cup of juice against the wall, and shouting, “Happy April Fools Day!” 

After which, I drop the broom for a mop and scream, “Its freaking May!”

My daughter is so curious about the idea of starting her period. She is only nine. I get it though, she is ready for her super power, PMS clarity, to kick in, even though I can’t imagine how whack her mood swings will be. When we were talking about it, I started singing in a low raspy voice, “Girl, you’ll be a woman soon, blah, blah, blah.”

And she asked, “Who sings that song?”

Then I got a grossed out look on my face and said, “Some freaking weirdo.” And her and G laughed.

Later, my daughter took out her markers and gave me one of her tattoos. She made a big heart and inside it wrote, “Alicia, but my preferred name is Mom.” It took up my entire back. When G walked up asking what we were doing, I told him Kiki is giving me a tattoo and it says, “Alicia, but my preferred name is…” 

And he quickly finished my sentence saying, “freaking weirdo.”

I hid my face behind my hand because I had to laugh. I’ll probably get more zits from that. He’s figured out a way to make up for the lack of pregnancy acne. Of course.